Chapter II - The Desert

After deciding to embark on my journey in this possible new world, which I believe to be the afterlife, I headed straight west, where the sun sets, which turned out to be a terrible decision.

At first, didn't have many problems. The only real issue was the scorching sun on my pale skin and the dry desert air. But these discomforts were inevitable no matter which direction I chose to follow.

However, I wasn't bothered so much due to the school clothes I was wearing at the time: a sweater and jeans.

"I've never been so grateful for always wearing this sweater to hide my body."

What really troubled me about heading in that direction was that, over time, the large, sharp-edged rocks embedded in the muddy ground became scarcer as I advanced, and with that, the shadows that could provide relief were also disappearing.

"I should be fine as long as I conserve my energy. It's only been about an hour since I started this walk, so I shouldn't worry yet."

After walking straight for 2 hours, I began to feel the weight of my lack of physical conditioning. This had never been apparent to me other than the moments when I was beaten. Each step felt like carrying the weight of the world.

The pain I felt in every muscle of my legs seemed to be caused by thousands of tiny needles piercing me simultaneously. Add this to the temperature of around 40 degrees Celsius, and I felt like a pig in a furnace, roasting to death.

"Arf... Arf... Arf... Is there any water or shelter here somewhere?" I asked myself, using every ounce of my willpower to keep moving.

After 4 hours of walking, the accumulated fatigue and scorching heat started affecting my mind, but not in a negative way. It was a more positive effect.

"How foolish I am; if this truly were the afterlife, I wouldn't be feeling my body so vividly and agonizingly, and even if it's probably hell, I refuse to accept that after everything I've experienced on Earth, I wouldn't be in heaven. But if this isn't heaven, where am I?"

Step after step, second after second, as time passed, my doubts about this place grew, along with the confusion in my mind. Unbeknownst to me, five hours had already passed since my arrival.

"Arf... The sun is about to set; maybe I should find a place to camp," I said with a parched voice, looking at the sun in front of me.

I was so busy surviving and absorbed in my thoughts that I hadn't noticed that the immense pain in my heart had diminished over time. Even more so, it was being replaced by a newfound desire to survive and an infinite number of questions.

"I probably won't find any shelter in this place, but I've heard that desert nights can be very cold. Will I survive?"

"I should think of a way to survive, but how?"

"Do I really have anything to fear?"

"I haven't seen any signs of life in this place; it must be safe, right?"

"The sun is setting; that means I can finally have some relief!"

"No, first, I need to find shelter since that should increase my chances of survival. But where can I find shelter in this desert?"

"Come to think of it, if I remember correctly, in the Sahara Desert, it can drop to -5 degrees Celsius at night; following that logic, shouldn't my priority be to find a way to stay warm?"

While an internal struggle raged in my mind, the sun set, the night came, and the day ended.

Seeing the majestic sun at rest, my mind calmed, and my heart slowed. My exhausted body finally released all its tension, and fatigue overtook me.

For the first time since I had arrived in that world—or perhaps the first time since I had lost my grandparents—I felt my inner voice fall silent.

"...Ah, the day is over."

I stared at that scene in silence for a few seconds until a new question emerged.

"I was so determined to die before falling into this world; why does everything I did and all the pain I felt seem to be losing meaning now?"

The daily humiliation caused by my peers, my mutilated body, my shattered mind, and the sweet memories of my grandparents all seemed to be fading, replaced by something new I had never felt before: determination to move forward.

Instead of tears, I had thirst; instead of loneliness, I had confusion; instead of anger, I had fatigue; and instead of sadness, I had determination. Everything I had felt was being carried away by the desert winds.

"Ridiculous! My pain can't just disappear like this! My pain can't simply vanish in just a day of walking!"

Of course, when I was plummeting towards death, I had thought it would be nice to stay alive, but that didn't mean I had renounced my pain. I was willing to live with it, forever.

"No matter how much time passes, I can't forget what I felt! Never! Never! Never!"

No matter how much resistance I displayed, acceptance always followed depression. I had known from the beginning that at some point, I would accept their departure and eventually forget them.

"I...I can't forget them... Urg... Never... Urg... WAAW... WAAAW..." I cried, kneeling on the ground and covering my face, as it was the first time I had accepted the loss of my grandparents.

With tired, sorrow-filled eyes, I raised my head and saw the orange hues of the sunset giving way to the starlight.

The silence of the night arrived, bringing its comforting darkness and the dry sighs of the wind, which were now also cold, embracing and refreshing me, calming me.

"Maybe I should leave all these questions for later. Whether I move forward or not, I'll decide tomorrow" I thought sleepily before falling onto the hard, uneven ground of the desert.

"POW."

Lucky as I was, without realizing it, I slept like a log in that abandoned place.

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"Hmm...?"

Feeling the first rays of the morning sun on my face, I rose in the midst of that arid environment and gazed once again with my weary eyes at the path I had chosen to follow.

"So it wasn't a dream after all."

The second day of my journey. After a strangely quiet night's sleep, I decided to move on, regardless of the outcome, to the end of the desert.

Some significant changes could be immediately noticed compared to the moment I woke up.

"My skin isn't burning anymore."

The first of them was that my skin wasn't burning. This should be inexplicable since I'm quite pale, and I should have low resistance to intense sunlight. My skin should have been incredibly irritated and burning, just like it had been yesterday, but today, I didn't feel any of that.

"My throat isn't sore."

This was the second change. The hot and dry environment had left my throat extremely dry and sore, but today, I didn't feel the pain that was there yesterday, although it was still dry.

"I'm not hungry."

The third change was the most subtle. I'm not a big eater, so it took me a while to realize that, despite being in this place for a long time, I wasn't feeling hungry, just thirsty. At first, I thought this might be due to a good night's sleep, but I knew that no matter how well I rested, it couldn't help with my underlying physiological issues.

Continuing on my journey, I also noticed an unusual physical endurance that couldn't be of natural origin.

"This could mean that my body is adapting better to this situation than I imagined, or it's on the verge of total collapse."

I leaned towards the second option, even though at that moment, I was more focused on moving forward.

Like the previous day, the walk was incredibly peaceful during the first hours. But when the sun reached its zenith, something changed.

"Are these... ruins?"

The arid and lifeless environment appeared to have been a place of an ancient civilization. In the distance, I could see small structures that seemed to form a small village.

Moved by my curiosity and a desire for knowledge, as well as the possibility of some shade, I decided to explore.

"How beautiful."

The ruins themselves weren't grand; only remnants of ancient cubical buildings made of black and white marble blocks with some gold-like adornments resembling letters. The streets were paved with white bricks.

What caught my attention most about these ruins was the large number of statues scattered around the area.

There were many statues resembling angelic female figures, elves, and a supposed king holding a sword in one hand and a book in the other, unlike anything I had ever seen.

The statue of the king stood out from the rest. It was made of pure gold and placed on a pedestal, while the others were on the ground, appearing more like living beings fleeing from something, especially the elf statues.

"These statues probably represent the deities worshiped by this people, but I can't relate them to any culture I know," I thought to myself while resting in the shade.

I decided to stay in that area for about an hour before continuing my walk.

An hour after leaving the ruins, I still saw small signs of civilization along the way, but nothing grand. However, there was something intriguing about these structures. They all had something similar to golden letters engraved on them, but I couldn't understand them. It seemed to be some kind of warning.

"Was it a bad idea to come in this direction? Maybe I should go back to the ruins."

I was about to turn back and set up camp in one of the abandoned buildings I had found earlier when something surprising happened.

"CRAW" "CRAW"

Hearing an incredibly loud and unusual noise coming from the sky, I looked up, squinting my eyes, and there I saw a bird, much like a heron, with large wings and long legs, flying incredibly beautifully and gracefully.

It was quite distant and nearly imperceptible to my sight, but I was sure of one thing.

"There must be a river!"

Where there's a heron, there's a river, where there's a river, there's life, and where there's life, there's a chance of humans.

"That heron is my best chance for survival."

Step by step, I followed the heron's flight path until, on the horizon, I saw something remarkable.

"Hmm...? What is that?"

Enshrouded in a cloud of dust, a blurred figure could be seen in the distance.

It was tall, with some greenery, and appeared to sway with the wind.

"Are those... trees?"

The heron I had seen earlier was flying above a small forest of tall trees. Furthermore, the trees were surrounded by a kind of high stone wall made of square blocks.

On top of the wall, I could see small people walking back and forth, patrolling the perimeter.

"Unbelievable!" I exclaimed in astonishment.

I was so shocked by the sight that I ended up speaking aloud without realizing it.

In the middle of a desert that seemed devoid of any form of life, I had stumbled upon a small temperate forest inhabited by humans—a situation never before documented in any history book I had ever read.

"Am I hallucinating, or did I really find an oasis? No, that's not important now; I need to focus on making contact with them."

Determined to establish contact with the natives of the region, I walked toward the oasis for about an hour until one of the sentinels on the wall noticed my presence and waved frantically, as if warning me of something.

"What is he saying?"

The sunlight was shining directly in my eyes, so I couldn't make out what he was trying to convey.

It was then that the heron-like bird started flying towards me, and I realized someone was riding it, pointing down.

Without thinking much about the situation, I instinctively lowered my head and squinted in the direction they were indicating. There, I saw something astonishing.

"...Unbelievable!"

Rushing toward me at an alarming speed, there were thousands of small gray-skinned reptiles with black sclera and purple reptilian pupils, enveloped in a cloud of dust.

"Dinosaurs!"

I had doubts before about whether I was truly in another world, but in the face of such an anomaly, my only certainty was that I wasn't in my own era.

"They look like Velociraptors but smaller, much smaller. Judging by the distance and speed, I have less than 7 minutes to escape!"

The distance between us must have been around 5 kilometers, which allowed us both to be perfectly within each other's field of view.

They ran at an alarming speed and were in great numbers. Given the situation, the best decision was to run. But my body was already exhausted from the long journey, dehydrated for two days; I couldn't run or use all my strength even if I tried.

"...Looks like this is the end."

Faced with such a situation, I accepted my fate and submitted to the will of the heavens.

"I should have been dead to begin with; there's no point in wishing to live now."

Awaiting my end, I hoped for a quick and painless death, until I heard a voice.

"Hey. Open your eyes and run!" shouted a distant androgynous voice.

"Hmm...?"

Slowly opening my eyes, I noticed that the raptors were only seconds away from reaching me, and right behind them was a heron-like bird being ridden by a person wearing a black hood and a face covered with a black cloth mask.

"You're just standing there, why don't you run, idiot? Run!" they shouted.

I don't know why, but instinctively I began to run with the little strength I had left in the opposite direction of the herd of dinosaurs.

"Why am I running? There's no way I can survive."

Even convinced of my inevitable demise, even without realizing it, I felt a glimmer of hope in my chest.

"Kid, raise your arms!" ordered the person mounted on the heron.

Without looking back, I raised my arms as I continued to run.

"KIIRQ" "KIIRQ"

Even without seeing, I could hear the sounds of the raptors' cooing and feel my pants being torn.

Milliseconds later, I felt thousands of small pinches on my calves, pulling at my skin and tearing it.

"Aarg!" I groaned.

Feeling a deep pain in my calves, I looked back and saw that thousands of those creatures were already biting my legs, tearing my flesh and causing a river of blood to flow over them as I ran. However, what shook my psyche the most was the fact that there was no one behind me; the figure mounted on the heron had already disappeared.

At that moment, I was about to stop running and accept being overwhelmed by those creatures until I felt a great shadow over me and powerful claws gripping my hand and pulling me up.

"Are you still alive?" asked the person mounted on the heron with an androgynous voice.

I didn't respond; I just kept looking down, slowly gaining distance from the ground and seeing my blood being poured from my legs torn apart by the reptilian creatures.

Watching that scene, my consciousness slowly faded due to the loss of blood and excessive fatigue, with only one thought in mind.

"I... survived ?"