'Ughh…'
A heavy, gritty weight pressed down on Lune's eyelids as he fought to open his eyes. He dragged his arms forward, feeling the sand grind against his skin. The grains were rough and clingling, slipping past his fingers as he pushed through it.
With a groan, he shoved himself up, spitting a mouthful of crimson sand from his mouth.
His eyes widened the moment they finally opened.
A desert stretched to every horizon, but not like any he had seen in the textbooks. This one was red, as if the very sand had been stained by blood or something far worse. A dry, hissing wind lifted streams of scarlet grains into the air, scattering them into the endless nothing.
And above it all, was the sun.
A merciless, burning disk of white radiance. Its light was like a physical pressure, sharp enough to sting his eyes no matter how tightly he squinted. There was no shade, no refuge, only the crushing weight of its endless glare.
'Well… at least it seems like there aren't any Soul Creatures nearby,' he thought, letting a sliver of desperate relief cut through his disorientation.
He lifted an arm to block the piercing glare of the sun, the motion felt clumsy as the weight of getting transported to the Realm Beyond still lingered in his body.
For a while, he simply stared at the sun through his fingers, letting a moment of strange awe take over his senses.
'So this is what it looks like…'
On Earth, the sun had died long before he was born. He'd read about it, seen the depictions, but its relentless, living brilliance was something truly otherworldly. One had to see it to truly understand what it was like.
He stared for a moment too long, only closing his eyes when the stinging pain became unbearable.
'But why does it hurt to look at it?'
Rubbing his eyes, his gaze swept his surroundings.
Before he could plan his next move, there was something far more pressing to do. And after confirming he was alone with a quick glance, he closed his eyes and concentrated on a single word.
'Status.'
A small burst of energy expanded from his abdomen. His eyes shot open, and there, hanging in the air before him, was a window of text.
***
Name: Lune
Title: Void's Servant
Title Description: [You are a loyal servant of the Hollow God.]
Core: -
Abilities: -
Relics: -
Quest: [Find the temple of the Hollow God and bring a sacrifice to show your loyalty.]
***
He paused at the description of his title, rereading the text as if it could change.
"A fucking servant? Seriously?!" he cursed into the empty air, as if the entity that made this decision could hear him.
After a long, disappointing sigh, his eyes dropped toward his quest.
[Find the temple of the Hollow God and bring a sacrifice to show your loyalty.]
It didn't sound too hard, at least in theory. The problem was that things in the Realm Beyond were never so simple.
He looked around once more, only to see what he already saw earlier. There were no landmarks, no targets that would take him closer to his quest, nothing but a sea of crimson sand and sun that for some reason hurt his eyes.
Gritting his teeth, he shaded his eyes and picked a random direction, making sure to keep the sun at his back and away from his eyes.
Each step was a struggle. His boots sank deep into the sand, dragging and slipping with every movement. The sharp grains clung to his clothes and scraped against his skin. He forced himself to keep moving, counting steps in his head and pretending that each would bring him closer to his goal.
But the dessert was ruthless.
////
The sun turned the air above the dunes into a wavering haze that twisted his sense of distance. His throat turned to dust, his lips cracked as he continued to push forward, forcing one foot ahead of another, ignoring the burning pain in his legs.
After what felt like an eternity—but was likely no more than twenty minutes—a sound tore through the oppressive silence.
Then, after what felt like an eternity a sound tore through the crushing silence.
A loud, unnatural screech echoed from above.
Lune froze, his heart hammered against his ribs as his eyes flicked upward.
There, in the sky above, a massive vulture-like creature was circling above him, its gaze locked onto him.
Then, with a loud snap of its wings it dove down, heading straight toward him.
"Fuck!"
He barely muttered the word as the creature's long, black beak tore through the air at immense speed. He barely managed to throw himself to the side as the bleak dug deep into the sand where he had stood a moment earlier.
For a moment, Lune's eyes lingered on the creature's dark figure. Its feathers were completely black, its beak a stark, bloody crimson that matched the desert.
Then, as the vulture-like monster tore its bleak free from the ground, Lune's senses snapped back into focus.
Without time to think, he lunged forward, wrapping his arms tightly around one of the creature's massive wings.
With a series of loud screeches the bird shook violently, trying to shake him off.
Lune held on with all he had, as if his life depended on it… because it did.
Unfortunately, the luck wasn't on his side.
The two of them tumbled down the small dune in a chaotic whirl of limbs and wings and during that fall, the vulture landed on top of him, pinning him down into the sand.
Lune wrapped his arms around its torso, but the bird's long neck gave it just enough space to strike.
The crimson beak tore deep into Lune's shoulder, sending tremors of excruciating pain across his entire arm.
Blood bubbled from the wound. But with no time to waste and no weapon to use, Lune did the only reasonable thing he could think of… he bit the bird back.
His teeth dug into the vulture's neck.
The bird shrieked in pain, dragging its bleak away from Lune's shoulder as it tried to escape. But Lune held on and bit again and again, his teeth sinking deep into the creature's flesh. Dark, foul-tasting blood spurted from the wounds he opened on its neck.
'Gods, this tastes awful!' he cursed in his head, but he wasn't about to let this overgrown bird kill him.
He continued to bite even harder. The bird shook in a futile attempt to escape, and in its desperate thrashing, it fell onto its side.
Suddenly, Lune found himself on top of the bird. His hand scrabbled across the sand until closing around a heavy, jagged rock. Without a second thought, he smashed it against the vulture's head.
He raised the rock again and again.
The shrieks grew louder and more desperate with each strike, until, after one final, sickening crunch, the bird's head fell and hit the sand with a soft, final thud.
Lune stared at the lifeless body, breathing heavily, his own blood and the monster's staining the red sand with a deeper, darker shade.
Then, a voice resounded in his head.
[You have slain a White Stage, Dormant Monster: Crimson Vulture.]
Just as the system announced the kill, Lune let go of the bloodied rock and fell to his side, laying in the sand as he gulped down ragged breaths.
But the system wasn't done.
[You have received a Relic: Scavenger's Glaive.]