An intense midday sun tried its best to incinerate my flapping robes. The twists and rotations made it difficult to understand where the hell Dreadhoof was, so I spread both arms out in hopes of grabbing onto him. Thankfully, my warhorse was swift, and I caught the stirrup on my way down from a rather stupendous altitude.

I hung on with one hand for a while and surveyed the great tan expanse. As far as the eye could see, there was sand, dunes, and rock formations scattered throughout the great desert. There was a great red beam of light off in the horizon, beckoning me to it like a moth to fire.

I was now in the dungeon.

With haste, I rode towards the light on Dreadhoof. In my lich form, the heat didn’t bother me too much, but I could still feel. Sure, it was a desert, but that heat would be unbearable to a normal person, and that was assuming they survived the fall.

It was hard to believe that I rode through desert air on an undead warhorse when I was just a normal girl half a year ago. As of late, I often wondered what my aim was in the new life I’d been blessed, or perhaps cursed with. Yes, I wanted to make friend and have fulfilling relationships; I rued making the same mistakes I made before. But, was that all? I sighed. To be a creature with enough power to destroy the world, yet be void of grandiose schemes or goals felt weird.

My mind settled on Lilith. She seemed to have a big plan to carry out with intentions ensure the survival of the Darkviper clan, but she still wanted to save the demons outside her clan as well. Her method – although I didn’t quite get the details from her – wasn’t as violent as her king’s.

For lack of better knowledge, I agreed with her plans, hence my presence in this damned desert. But ultimately, I remained torn between two arguments. Do I, a person who was never a native of this world, have the knowledge and culture necessary to commit to big ideas and plans and impact the lives of its inhabitants like that? What if something I did in good faith turned out to have an irreversibly horrendous result? What if my attempts to do good instead caused war and death? Those questions alone made me want to bury my head in the sands, cut my ties with everyone, and just live like a hermit in my castle; maybe get a dog.

On the other hand, I felt pressured to use the damn power I had. Strength was given to me on a silver platter; the least I could do is help where I could to make the world a better place. What would happen if the good guy did nothing? Was I even the good guy? Ugh… My head hung down as my mind warped around a crumbling moral compass.

While I was being sucked into that rabbit hole called ethics, a rumbling pilfered my attention just in time. A huge pylon of sand shot up out of nowhere. I teleported back a little to ensure I didn’t crash into it. When the sand fell from the creature was when I saw the monolithic worm. Its scales shone in the scalding sunlight; at certain angles, the color of the worm was an exact match of its surroundings.

My grimoire popped out so I could see the information on the monster, a scaleworm. It was easily a city block long, and that was just from what was exposed. The diameter of the middle was around fifteen meters. In other words, it could easily swallow hundreds, even thousands of people.

A great portion of the desert began shifting as other worms stuck out and their gaping maw faced me. A gurgling sound was heard and disgusting green goo pitched at me. And then another was spat, and another. There were about a dozen scaleworms spitting at me.

Some spat clear liquid, which appeared to be adhesive in nature. The green glop was highly acidic, so I made sure to stay away from that. Once I secured Mana Shield for defense, I then turned my eyes to attacks. Ray of Sol, a spell not quite appropriate for use if one had allies or even neutrals around, was my choice for the lengthy worms. Just the way they moved their bodies made me feel to hurl. The expert spell focused a beam of light from sky, and after a short delay, would cause a huge explosion at the first point of obstruction.

The area of effect was easily a football field. A couple of Rays of Sol and the worms remaining hurriedly burrowed underground again. Though, that didn’t save them. Their innards flew everywhere, and I mean everywhere. There was hardly a spot of brown in the sea of off-white matter splayed on the hot desert sands.

I continued my journey, and defeated a few more worms on the way.

On my way to the red column of light, I was attacked by other monsters as well, like rocs, which hated to see me fly unbothered. They were swift in the skies, but relied heavily on sight. Some overbright Dawnlights were enough take them out with a few casts of Electrostrike. The brown buzzard-like birds spiraled down after being shot from the air. If I didn’t take care of them quickly, their huge talons would easily hold and fly off with both me and Dreadhoof.

In the rockier parts were golems, rock monsters that moved with magic. They weren’t as slow as I imagined them to be, nor as big, but they were incredibly tough. Electric, fire, wind, and ice spells – depending on the spell – were all useless against them. I had to either crush them with earth spells that were tougher than their bodies, or immobilize them. Even Binding of Bones fell short when it came to their power. I found that the quickest method of dealing with them were to simply cut them with my scepter in sword form – the enchantment on it was simply overpowered.

In the freezing night, gorgons and sand hydras were my enemies. Gimme a break! The former monster, gorgons, were half-snake, half-women monsters with a mouth full of flattened teeth for grinding their petrified prey. They were capable of setting a curse spell that would activate after a few seconds and begin turning their foes to a special type of stone that they ate. If their spell didn’t work, then they were pretty defenseless, so it was easy to be rid of them after casting Dispel on myself.

Sand hydras were fearsome creatures easily reaching ten meters in height if they kept any of their heads upright. The middle head was especially tough and had a long mouth like a crocodile, with a strong stony hide encompassing it. The other heads were specialized in blasting a breath of sand or a paralyzing venomous bite respectively. Their strategy was a simple one. The sand head would blind, disorientate, or distract at first, then the large middle head would bite and hold the enemy in place. Finally, the venom head would inject the vile liquid, and from there it was feasting time. Despite their large body, they were surprisingly agile. I kept my distance from them and focused on the venom head. If that head was out of commission, they would retreat.

Early the next day, I finally neared the red light, and found some ruins almost swallowed by the sands. I floated along on Dreadhoof and examined the place, but suddenly found myself hurtling to the ground.