161 A Coarse and Rough Kingdom

Strolling around the sandstone floor of the buried sand kingdom, Mitsuna observed the castle from afar.

'The barrier of the place is originating from there. The flow of mana reveals it quite easily.

Besides that, the castle seems eerily similar to the castle above ground. In the capital.'

Taking another glance at it in its entirety, Mitsuna let out a quiet sigh and inaudible mumble as she looked down.

Sensing that the insides of the houses weren't quite filled to the brim with sand, she decided to explore beneath as well while she strolled towards the capital.

Smashing the floor with an inhuman speed punch, Mitsuna fell along with the debree for half a second as she reached the ground.

Much to her displeasure, the first house she dropped into had a small family of skeletons. Dead and party fuzed to the sandstone walls.

Not paying them much attention for her own sake, she kept moving towards the castle's direction. Now IN the 'city' itself.

Opening the door to the next 'house' she was honestly intrigued by how the civilians' situation in this city even functioned. A thief could simply randomly dash through a few houses and not get caught, no?

Ignoring the problems of the architecture as she wasn't the best expert on it out there, she moved on through another house.

Very few had skeletons in them. Some were simply filled with sand until the knee or even the waistline in some cases.

The story behind the place was definitely a sorrowful one if Mitsuna was reading between the lines correctly.

Nothing of interest caught her eyes in any of the houses. No valuables and not even any identifiable biological matter except for the bones. Not even a piece of clothing was left anywhere.

It was almost as if everything but the bones were turned to sand and sandstone.

Having enough of exploring the 'insides' of the city after about 20 or more minutes of walking forwards, Mitsuna punched a hole in the ceiling and jumped up only to hit another ceiling.

It was another room.

She didn't remember or even sense going 'down' by any slight margin, which left her confused.

Taking a step away from the walls, she observed them closer.

'...no mana. No signs of life. It's like a cube set isolated from all space.'

Activating [Silksong], she brute-forced her way out by swiping her hand in front of her as if she was swatting a bug.

Ultra-thin and sharp threads cut through the sandstone like it was made of air. No resistance could be felt.

As she cut everything surrounding her to bits and pieces, she was expecting to fall to a lower floor or at least see the exit. No.

She stayed completely in place, standing on nothing but darkness itself as the broken pieces of sandstone 'fell' away in every direction, becoming unseeable a fraction of a second later before new walls of sandstone were created around Mitsuna from the shadows of darkness she was standing on.

"What the actual..."

Before she could finish her own words, she combined a few Skills.

For a fraction of a few moments, she stopped time using [World of Silver and Obsidian]. During that split moment, she created countless threads with [Silksong] while enhancing them with her Elements of [Fox Flame] and [Space].

The threads started burning in a white flame.

Shooting the threads out like straight pikes in all directions while slamming a fist in the ground, at the tips of the threads the moment they made contact with anything that had mana or mass, a miniature version of [Dome of Hell] activated.

Time Continued.

In one moment, she was about to swear and in the next, she had slammed her fist on the ground as straight flaming cuts in space appeared all around her while flames burned everything not cut by space itself.

Between the lines of white flame that cut space, a spiderweb of cracks spread out with Mitsuna at the centre. She had created a space element spell faster than in a hundredth of a second and activated it with a punch to the ground.

Everything around her, as far as the eye could see, shattered and broke apart.

And as everything shattered, she jumped up while using [Branded] and [Dissolve] to identify and break down anything else in her way.

Thankfully, there was nothing as she broke through a sandstone ceiling after a few seconds and appeared back on the 'surface'. On the roof of one of the buildings.

Looking behind her, she was only one room away from where she entered.

Frowning slightly at not being able to sense what was there, she brushed it off for the time being and walked towards the castle yet again.

'I better come to study what's left of that place of shadow and sandstone and unsensible secret shit. If there is anything left.'

Mitsuna let out a semi-tired sigh.

"On the bright side. Using all that mana gave me some brief respite."

She thought to herself as her mana was regenerating.

When her mana wasn't at max capacity, each breath of air felt fresh. With her mana maxed, it felt stuffy to breathe and an overall uncomfortable feeling spread through her body.

During her experimentation time, she couldn't quite make something that reduced her maximum amount of mana as she wanted. She could make a constant mana absorbent item but it would simply be filled in an hour or two with nowhere for that ownerless mana to go.

If the item simply let the mana flow out into the air, naturally being her own mana most of it would be absorbed straight back in and what couldn't would increase the natural mana density around the area until she at some point was out of mana, during which it would all just swarm right back into her.

That was her current theory on her state after a few tens of quick tests and two or three hypotheses.

Now, reaching the castle walls after a few lone minutes of silence and her own thoughts, Mitsuna wasn't quite bothered to explore the place in its entirety as the surprise illusion trap or whatever was inside the city had her slightly peeved.

Teleporting through the halls into all the empty areas she could sense around her, from the bedroom to the kitchen to the ballroom, Mitsuna soon found herself in the 'garden'.

An empty and barren patch of sand with what was once most likely a view of the sky.

In the middle of the garden, there was an obsidian-coloured pillar of sorts.

Near its base, were colourful crystals that shot out of circular sandstone-like material that surrounded the base of the pillar-like large bones.

Taking a single step closer in interest as she finally found the treasure of her treasure hunt, Mitsuna stopped in an instant.

A small pulse of fear made her heartbeat quicken and her spine tingle.

A beast hid in the sand.

No, it was safer to say that beast was part of the sand around the city.

All the sand around the castle itself moved as if it were one. Like the waves of an ocean but much more ominous.

Feeling a presence, Mitsuna couldn't help but not fully trust her instincts and senses.

'Nahh... What creature is This fucking massive?'

She questioned herself.

The sand stopped moving.

A glowing 'spot' bigger than the size of the entire castle lit up behind a thick layer of sand and 'blinked' once.

Following that, four more 'glowing spots' appeared behind the wall of sand covering the capital.

Mitsuna instinctively appraised the beast.

The System called it an

[Eldritch Wyrm of Sandstone].

It's Level? Inconclusive as there were no numbers, simply question marks.

Taking some steps back from the 'walls' of the place, Mitsuna's goosebumps made her shake nearly as much as the sand.

'I wonder if I could escape?'

She thought to herself. Rather confident in her use of Spacial magic to teleport.

She was waiting for the beast to make a move first, however. Stupid as it might seem, she didn't feel much resentment or negative feelings from the beast. Not even any hunger or anything that would mark her for death.

A few seconds passed and the beast had locked all its eyes on her.

'...This continent is fucked. War or not.'

She decided for herself as the sand around the city shifted.

The beast closed its eyes one by one, only leaving its biggest eye open for another few moments.

The sand shifted again and the beast let out a noise. It wasn't a roar, screech, growl or anything of the sort. There was no defined Wyrm language in use on the planet it was on, thus no one could even translate it if they heard it.

Mitsuna however, interpreted some sort of meaning from the noise. She couldn't put it into words. She couldn't even explain it to herself if she tried.

Beyond simple words and meanings, it was more like the sound that made all the sand on the continent momentarily shiver sending on emotion or something similar.

The eye engulfing the city didn't close afterwards but moved away, disappearing behind the thick veil of sand.

All Mitsuna could see of the beast was a small portion of its tail that scraped the side of the city's barrier as the beast slithered away, deeper into the depths of the sand. Bony and seemingly made of sandstone, the tail easily shattered a large chunk of the barrier, causing sand to flow in like a calm avalanche.

The city quaked and shook.

Mitsuna refused to take her eyes off the sight for a moment, committing it all to memory with every detail as best as she could.

"Hot fucking damn..."

She muttered to herself as a drop of sweat fell down her brow and a nervous smirk sat on her face.

Taking a glance at the obsidian-coloured pillar, or obelisk as some might see it, there no longer were any sandstone-like large bones surrounding its base.

What was in their place, however, were a few small piles of strange crystals.

'Seems like the that Wyrm had some kind of 'small' tendrils around its body to act as arms...'

She thought as she tried to change her mental topic while falling back and sitting down.

'... I dislike sand even more now.'

She thought to herself after a moment while glancing at the crystals.

[Heyo. Quick chapter here so enjoy,

and guess I'll say that the first 3 chapters of the new book "The Spacial Terror of the Dragon Continent" have been officially released, totalling about 7.2k words as of now.

The three chaps can be thought of as an introduction and foundation for the novel and its update schedule may become just as unstable as this one's but I hope that if you like my work to some degree you might check it out and who knows, maybe you'll even enjoy it? Maybe not. I ain't ordering you to read it but if you do then feedback would be a nice treat :).

Anyway, AD break over and have a good day, guys.

- Author <3]< p>