A Serpent's Tale
Chapter 223: Finally Back in the Desert

Chapter 223: Finally Back in the Desert

When I entered the portal, I could feel the world around me distort as the vortex pulled the rest of my body into it.

Going through it felt like I was both falling and flying at the same time as I kept on continuously tumbled through this spatial tunnel.

The blue and indigo colours blurred past me as I zoomed by them to reach my destination. Which was somewhere at least near enough to Krara city that I could get there within the year. Hopefully.

Eventually the tunnel started to turn completely white, which I assumed meant that I was finally nearing the end of this spatial tunnel.

This continued on until my vision was filled with nothing but a blinding white light. Which forced me to cover my eyes until I felt myself suddenly stop.

I opened my eyes to the sight of me free falling like fifty metres of the ground.

"SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT!!!!"

*Bwoom*

"Ptu, pte, pte, ptu, ptu, bleagh, earg, pthu."

I fell face first straight into sand and a bunch of it got in my mouth so I spat all of it out before getting up and taking a look at my surroundings.

I appeared to be in some sort of dune area, so I slithered up to the top of the dune that I landed in and couldn’t really see anything else apart from sand, which I wasn’t particularly happy seeing right now given what just happened.

Looking up to see where the sun was, it was just about nearing midday I think. I can’t really tell though so it’s best to just stay put for now and wait for a few hours until the sun has moved a fair bit and I can get a grip on which way I should go.

...

Or not...

I don’t actually know which direction the city is in.

Fuck.

I looked around for a possible taller dune so that I can see some more and thankfully, off in the not too far distance, there was one so I headed over to it.

This would also give me something to do whilst waiting for the sun to move as well.

And so, I spent roughly what felt like a couple of hours slithering over towards the taller dune and got on top of it to look around when all of a sudden it trembled and began rising.

"Shit."

I’d accidentally stumbled upon a Dune Worm.

They’re feral beasts with a monstrous form. They have long circular bodies like my tail and have ridges going along it which are covered in this hard skin. And their faces are just the worst as they are dismorphed and disfigured, with their entire mouths being able to expand to nearly the size of their whole bodies.

They have four eyes which all surround the mouth and for some reason they have hair on top of them. I curse whichever god even thought to conceive this abomination.

And that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is their slimy and snaking tentacle tongue, which can extend to nearly half the length of its body, which is normally several tens of metres if it’s an adult, and has the figure of a human woman on the end of it to lure in prey.

I hate these things. They’re a nightmare to deal with. Not only are they incredibly intelligent, but they’re surprisingly nimble too. I must’ve accidentally woken this one up when I got on top of it.

Then again, these things are surprisingly rare. If I can kill it and harvest i’s parts or better yet, drag it to the city with me, I can fetch a hefty sum for it. The money won’t mean much to me but the reputation I get for it will garner respect.

And just as this thing reached the precipice of dislodging itself from the sand, I could see a city off in the distance to my left. It was barely visible, but I could still see it.

Before I was thrown off of this thing, I took a look at the suns position and saw that it was past noon, and that it was headed in the direction of the city itself to a degree. That was good as it meant that I could just follow the sun till I could see the city myself and go from there.

"GGGGRRAAAAAA!!!!"

The worm roared and flung its head back, throwing me off of its back. Thankfully I didn’t land face first into sand again and just landed on my back instead.

I got back up to see the giant hideous creature turning to look at what disrupted its slumber. Which was me.

It shifted around, preparing to attack me, just as I did the same, getting ready to dodge its attacks. As I said earlier, these things are feral, so their attacks are pretty basic so all you need to evade them is to be faster than these lumbering wads of meat.

The beast opened its mouth and lunged straight at me.

I dashed to the side, using a skill that I haven’t used in a while [Dash], which gave me far more of a boost to get out of this things way than I realistically needed.

The beast then crashed into the ground and began burrowing into it, and hiding itself underground, thinking it could hide from me.

Unfortunately for it, I have too many Skills now, several of which can be helpful, one of them being [Divine Instincts].

And since I was hunting it instead of it hunting me, my [Apex Predator] kicked in, giving me even more strength and power to beat this thing.

Using these two skills, I sensed my surroundings, waiting for the worm to strike. Only for me to strike back as well.

I waited and waited. I could hear the ground beneath me shifting slightly as the worm prepared to pounce.

Silence reigned in the area as I slowly observed my surroundings for more clues as to when and where the worm would strike.

And then, it struck.

I burst out from the beneath the sand to my left,, half its body still submerged as it planned to swallow me up and drag me down under so that I couldn’t escape.

Unfortunately, I was ready for it, and could sense it’s movements before it even surfaced, but I didn’t move as I knew that the worm would notice and change its strategy.

So instead I just stayed in place, waiting for it to surface so that I could use my [Petrifying Gaze] Skill, not to turn it to stone, but to paralyse it, as I could still do that as that was now just a subskill of [Petrifying Gaze].

And after waiting for it to surface, I turned to face it and tried to paralyse it. And to make it even more potent and effective, I used [Divine Eyes] alongside it.

My eyes started to glow with a golden hue, catching the creatures attention as it looked straight into my eyes.

I grinned in satisfaction as I focused all my attention on trying to paralyse it.

The creature continued to charge at me, but just as I entered it’s the range where it would be able to swallow me and drag me underground, it completely stopped moving.

I had won. I had succeeded in paralysing this giant monster.

Now all I had to do was find a way to drag it all the way over to the city.

I didn’t have anything that I could use to tie it up with. Not to mention that I had to dig half of it out of the ground as well.

And since I didn’t have any idea of how to go about moving it, I decided to just start with digging it out of the sand for now as that would give me time to think about it.

And that was what I did for the next hour or so, occasionally looking into the worms eyes and paralysing it again to make sure that it stayed paralysed and didn’t try to eat me again or escape.

And eventually I managed to excavate most of the worms mouth from the sand by just using my new strength to punch the sand away from it.

During that time, I found the tongue of this thing and realised that I might be able to use that to pull this thing across the desert. Though, I would have to find a way to stop it from stretching out so far first.

That’s a problem for future me.

And future me is now because now that I’ve got this huge thing that has a width of about five metres in diameter and who knows how long.

Still, I have to try my best to do this. I don’t have any reason to bring it with me as I could just kill it and report it to the city guard when I get there, I just want to challenge myself a little to see if I can really drag it all the way over there, alive if possible.

But the more I look at it, the more unlikely that seems possible.

I suppose the only thing I can do now is just grab its tongue and try dragging it along and see where that gets me.