CHAPTER 167: CLOSE ENCOUNTER!

Zephyr tumbled down the dune, kicking up sand all around. He barely managed to dig his hands into the slope to stop himself from sliding all the way down when the sandstorm fully descended and overtook him with a deafening roar.

Immediately, Zephyr felt like he had been thrown into a grinder. Sand, like small, sharp blades, pelted him from every angle, biting his skin, entering every single opening on his clothes. At the back of his neck, inside his shirt, inside his pants, scruffing against his skin roughly.

But more importantly, his natural openings — the seven orifices on his head — threatened to be stuffed fully with sand.

He coughed, nearly choking as sand entered his nose and mouth.

If not for the fact that he had shut his eyes tightly immediately the sand storm overtook him, his eyes would not have been spared from the torture.

And yet still even at that, his tightly shut eye was still caked over on the lashes with sand.

It was a terrible and uncomfortable experience.

"Damn it!" Zephyr cursed, forcing a mana barrier around himself to shield from the prickling blades of the sandstorm.

The difference was immediate. His skin stopped stinging, and he could finally open his mouth to breathe without swallowing half the desert. But even with the barrier, the winds were still monstrous.

One had to know that Zephyr had not even borne the full brunt of the sandstorm for more than a few seconds before he executed the mana barrier spell.

It was only now that the full might covered him fully.

And it was crazy.

Aegis estimated the wind speeds to be above 125 miles per hour (200km/hr).

Even with his mana barrier, he could feel the sheer force of the wind trying to lift him off the ground despite being in the back side of a dune and in a prone, dug-in position.

But he forced himself to stay prone, crouched low, counting the seconds for the storm to pass.

And as if that wasn’t already enough... He felt something else...

"Danger...?!"

Zephyr lifted his head as slightly as he could without allowing the intense winds to snap his head backwards. He tried scanning through the storm, but he could barely make out anything past a few steps.

His whole view was taken up by sand and even more sand. Like a pitch blackness after a few meters in any direction.

He dropped his head down quickly, gritting his teeth.

He tried relying on the rest of his physical senses to pinpoint what was making his hair stand, but that was even more futile.

The thundering sandstorm outside the mana barrier that wrapped around his body, coupled with the intense vibrations that followed it, made it impossible for him to sense anything at all.

He was totally blind.

He tried calming himself down, writing off the feeling as a false call, but it just grew increasingly intense.

Something was coming for him. He was sure of it.

"Damn it!" Zephyr gritted his teeth, taking a leap of faith from where he crouched without a second thought.

His body floated into the air and got caught in the intense wind that flung him backwards instantly.

And within that second, just as a flicker of doubt crossed his mind as to whether he had made the wrong decision...

The ground erupted.

A massive, black maw the size of a school bus tore out of the sand right where he had been, spilling sand and debris into the air, seemingly unaffected by the raging sandstorm around.

Zephyr couldn’t see far into the sandstorm... but he could clearly see this.

The thing was massive.

With rows of jagged teeth that spiraled down into the blackness of its mouth. Even at his current height of almost a hundred feet (thirty meters) in the air, it had almost snapped his leg off cleanly.

Zephyr’s heart slammed against his chest rapidly. If he hadn’t trusted his gut feeling and leapt away, he would have been a snack right now...

"I’d have been swimming in the stomach of this... worm!" he shivered in fear.

Most of the creature’s body was still buried underneath the sand, but Zephyr could already tell this was some kind of worm creature... an insanely massive worm creature...

And it seemed to be after his life!

He saw its head follow after him as the storm pushed his body further away horizontally.

"?!!" Zephyr’s unintelligible yell was buried by the sandstorm and the eerie groan of the creature following after him in the air as it reached the peak of its lunge and started falling.

It descended back into the sand after failing to get Zephyr in that try, diving further in and following after Zephyr from below.

Zephyr, who was being flung around by the harsh sandstorm winds, tried to gain a semblance of stability.

His head was spinning from the rapid unpredictable movements his body was going through in the air... and yet he was also trying to keep his sense for danger wide open. He was sure the worm was preparing for another lunge from below.

’Fuck! I can’t do anything like this!’ Zephyr was in no position to react if the worm leapt up at him like before.

So he started firing off spells in random directions as he spun, but generally towards the ground where the monster was charging after him.

It was also futile — the sandstorm dispersed any spell long before it reached the ground — but he kept at it, feeling he at least had to be doing something. His only other option was to wait like a sitting duck.

The worm leapt up again, and this time, more intelligently.

It accounted for Zephyr’s sideways momentum, leaping into the space Zephyr was going to be, rather than where he currently was.

And immediately Zephyr saw that, his instincts kicked into action immediately.

The world around him slowed. He could hear the sound of his breath... Feel his mana node kick into action...

Out of nowhere, instead of the wild spells he had been firing off, he shaped the intense, uncontrollable winds of the sandstorm that surrounded him, redirecting the flow expertly to lift him higher, taking him just out of the reach of the worm.