Chapter 148: An inhuman test.

A blistering heat shocked Crule awake. He soon realized how unbearable the temperatures were around him.

Mouth parched and lips bleeding, Crule looked around at his surroundings.

It was a desert. A single sun loomed overhead. This shouldn’t be on Noxia.

The place where Crule awoken from was a stone slab. It was surrounded by large rock steles. Strange symbols that he didn’t recognize dotted the steles.

“Hello? Anybody?”

Crule asked hoarsely. His dried mouth made it difficult to talk properly. He needed water…and fast.

Slowly, he got off the stone slab. The heat was compounded by the continuous winds that provided not a single breeze of relief. All it did was made the heat feel worst as it brushed against Crule’s face.

Due to glaring sun, Crule could barely keep his eyes opened as he continued to survey his surroundings.

His only conclusion was this…Absolutely barren. The visible area around him consist of nothing but the strange rock steles, the stone slab, and sand. Endless almost water-like sand. A constant river of sand being pushed by the wind flowed around Crule. They eventually lead to several sand-whirlpools.

The most obvious concern that constantly triggers warning in his head, was his thirst. He didn’t know how long he had been baking there on the slab but it had evaporated a significant amount of water from his body.

Crule was borderline dehydrated. His body felt haggard and sluggish. Since he was already feeling dizzy, this shows he had already lost around 5-8% of his total body water. He was a third of the way to death by dehydration.

Since there was nothing around him in the nearest visible range, Crule first had to find a way to slow down his dehydration. He needed to find shade.

There were no trees, no bushes, and no tall standing structure. Crule quickly found the only thing in the entire place that provided shade…the stone slab he woke up on. It casted a small two foot long shadow that allowed Crule to fit in it if he sits down and scrunches up.

So that’s what he did.

Crule used his time to now recollect his thoughts but trauma made it difficult. He had died…but now he is alive? How can a ghost feel thirst? Was he really not dead? How come he can’t feel a single shred of energy in his body?

Lots of questions and no answers what-so-ever…Crule stopped thinking about those before it frustrates him too much. His current predicament was his top priority at the moment.

The clear blue sky also removed any possibility of a localized rain shower…Not that it rains often in the desert anyways.

Finally, Crule noticed something. On the back of his hands were three marks. They looked like they have been carved into his flesh and have left unhealable scars.

What’s more interesting was…his hand was back. The hand he lost to the wolf spider had amazingly regenerated. It was his own hands again. Staring at his hand, Crule decided to check out the stone steles. He walked over slowly and curiously probed the stele. The markings were strange but yet feels mystic. Crule carefully placed his hand on the stele he was observing…No reaction.

No reaction that he could see that is. A combination of fatigue and the blistering sun made Crule unable to notice the change.

A single shard of the stele broke off the top and fell on his hair.

Unable to get further information, Crule slowly walked back to the shade.

______

A period of time had passed but yet the sun had not moved at all. Crule was hoping to wait till nightfall to travel further but it now looks like the place perhaps has an extremely long day-night cycle or is perpetually daytime.

Feeling his body weaken further, Crule made a choice…He had to take the risk and move. It was better than staying here and die of thirst.

He picked his battered body up and walked sluggishly into the sand. When his feet touched the sand, it sank in a good half a foot. The loose sand wasn’t able to stay firm to hold his body on the surface.

Crule frowned. If he had to walk with his feet deep in sand, it will sap his already diminished stamina.

But what could he do? He walked on.

Soon he appeared next to one of the sand-whirlpools. Crule tread carefully, hoping to avoid stumbling into the swirling pit.

But just as his luck would have it, his body finally gave in. At more than 10% loss of total body water, his body’s physical functions starts to stall. He lost his footing and fell sideways…landing into a flowing stream of sand.

He fell deep. It was like sinking into the bottom of a heavy lake. He couldn’t control his body at all as the flowing sand both smothered him and carried his body along the stream into the whirlpool.

Just as he was about to pass out, Crule saw something that shocked him…At the very bottom of the pit…was what people would call an Antlion. Before he could snap out of it, the creature used his powerful mandibles and ripped his body apart. Crule felt a sharp and brutal pain before dying once again…His mind flat-lined and everything went blank.

______

What seemed like an eternity later, Crule woke up once again. The blistering sun was still overhead, his body was still lying on the stone slab, and once again… he was dehydrated. But there was something different this time. He remembered what happened.

He looked down and saw the marks on his hand had increased to four…But this time, he actually remembered what happened.

“So I have already died four times…”

Crule frowned. He could only remember his most recent death but the first three was completely blank. But why could he remember it this time? He reviewed what he did that might have been different but nothing came up.

He didn’t notice that in his hair, that small grain that fell from the stone stele still remained. As if the whole ordeal he was just in didn’t displace the speck at all. All the tumbling from falling into the sand stream and his body being torn and eaten by the Antlion…nothing disturbed that small piece in his hair.

Crule sighed as he stared upwards at the blue sky. He tried to avoid staring directly at the white hot sun.

“Just what kind of trial did master put me in…?”

And thus his trail continued.