Chapter 2 – Sandworm Territory

Hiding in the shadows, although the ground was still hot and the air was still scorched, at least it was away from direct sunlight.

Rayne felt a slight sunburn and didn’t want to move at all.

His stomach was empty inside and he hadn’t eaten all day and was starving to death.

In this state, his lips were already dry and chapped from not drinking water for so long.

He suddenly missed his own claustrophobic room before crossing over, even the noodles he was tired of eating were a delicacy to look back on at this moment.

The only thing he could do now was to stay in the shadows to avoid the sun and recover his strength.

While looking up at the sky, he occasionally imagined that a plane would appear and land nearby to pick him up and take him home.

After a long wait for the sun to set, Rayne struggled to get up and dragged his tired steps east along the desert, trying to find a suitable place to spend the night before it got dark.

The desert was extremely desolate, with no vegetation in sight, and the whole scene could really only be described as hopeless.

After searching around, he finally found a small cave that could barely be used for shelter, and after cleaning it up a bit, he used it as a place to sleep for the night.

He searched here and there before dark but still failed to find any plants or animals, not even insects.

There were no resources here other than sand.

By nightfall, without a drop of water or a grain of rice to eat, Rayne felt the hatred of the Desert of Despair, and what had been hot as a furnace during the day was now a refrigerator, freezing him to the bone.

Fortunately, he found plenty of prisoner clothing in the internment camp and wrapped it around him to keep out the cold until the next day.

In these terrible conditions, Rayne struggled to walk east for four days, not knowing how he could keep going.

[You have entered Sandworm territory!]

Finally entering the new area, Rayne opened the virtual map and found a few more plant signs scattered across the map, very sparse.

Seeing plants was the same as seeing hope, perhaps he could find food and water, as well as materials to make equipment.

He moved towards the nearest plant marker and after more than two hours of walking finally saw the thorny plants and cacti scattered in the desert.

Under ecstasy, the exhausted Rayne didn’t know where the power came from, and ran to objects that looked a bit dry.

There were some dry wood and branches on the ground, a priceless resource in the desert.

Rayne picked them all up and stored them in her virtual backpack.

The wood could be used to make the most basic wooden tools, such as wooden axes, levers, hoes, shovels, etc. Although its durability is very low and it is easily damaged, it allows him to collect various essential supplies.

The branches can be used to make various tools.

There weren’t many resources here, so Rayne decided to take them all with him.

First, through the creation system interface, select a wooden axe and consume wood to create a simple cutting tool.

While it doesn’t look good, it does cut down trees.

Use the wooden axe to chop down the thorn-filled plant next to it, resulting in three logs, a large number of branches and some buckthorn seeds.

This turns out to be a sea buckthorn tree.

Unfortunately there are no sea buckthorn fruits.

Moving on to the cactus, cutting it down yielded some cactus meat and some cactus thorns.

Checking the items in the virtual backpack, the cactus meat turned out to be a food ingredient and edible!

This was good news for Rayne, he had been hungry for four days and could put anything in his mouth as long as he could eat it.

He hurriedly took out a piece of cactus meat and put it in his mouth, biting into it and feeling bitter and astringent.

The only blessing was that the system automatically separated the cactus spines from the cactus meat, so he didn’t have to worry about hurting himself while eating it.

Although not tasty, it was a food that was hard to find for days, so Rayne had no choice but to swallow it and replenish his energy.

With these resources, he recovered some of his confidence.

He was ready to eat his fill and then continue his journey to get out of the desert.

Now that he had wood, he could make a wooden shovel, whether to avoid the heat of the day or the cold of the night, he could dig directly into the ground and shelter in the ground, resting more comfortably.

Just as his mind was calculating, he felt the ground suddenly shake.

Confused, he looked around and realized that it was no illusion; the sand beneath his feet was indeed shaking.

“An earthquake?” Rayne wondered, “Does the desert shake? I’ve never heard of it ……”

As he wondered, twenty meters in front of him, sand instantly gushed upwards, and a hole more than ten meters in diameter appeared on the ground, from which a worm with a bloody mouth and countless sharp teeth burst out.

The worm was so large that it could easily swallow an elephant with its mouth open, not to mention Rayne.

[Sandworm: The terrifying predator of the Desert of Despair]

“Are worms from another world this big?” Goosebumps ran all over Rayne’s body, and he hurriedly turned and ran desperately.

He didn’t want to fall into the food of this giant worm.

“Roar-!!!” The giant sandworm opened its bloody mouth and let out a terrifying scream as it lunged towards Rayne’s position.

Terrified, Rayne turned away from the creature and ran as fast as he could.

He did not even look back.

He knew that if he hesitated, he would be swallowed up by the monstrous creature.

What an opening, to be thrown into a desperate sea of sand, even coupled with such a horrible creature!

The giant sandworm failed to pounce and instead went straight into the sand, quickly disappearing.

At the same time, the ground shook again, becoming stronger.

Rayne could clearly feel the vibrations spreading towards his side, leaving no choice but to flee.

“Roar-!!!” After fleeing some distance away, the giant sandworm once again broke through the ground and pounced once more.

Rayne exploded with all his energy in a desperate situation and dodged the attack again in an extremely thrilling position, no longer caring about the direction of his escape, just wanting to avoid this terrifying monster.

In this way, he kept running for his life with an S-shaped route ahead, and the giant sandworm chased after him.

When Rayne was exhausted and felt he was about to lose support, the terrifying sandworm behind once again burrowed into the ground and seemed to have stopped moving.

The ground also stopped shaking.

But he didn’t dare to stop, even though his legs felt heavy as lead, but he continued to run forward, afraid that if he stopped, the terrifying monster would appear.

Not knowing how long he had been running or where he should stop, fear forced him to move away from where the sandworm was.

Until a beep sounded in his ears.

[You have entered the desert wolf’s lair!]

Finally leaving sandworm territory?

Before Rayne could relax, a wolf howl suddenly sounded in her ears.

“Owoo~~” The voice was close, not too far away.

When he looked at the sound, there was indeed a wild wolf in the distant sand, and there was more than one.

Probably because of the wind direction, they seemed to smell Rayne’s scent and howled one after another, running this way.

Just out of the worm’s den, and into the wolf’s den?

He didn’t have the strength to continue her escape, nor did he think he could face a dozen desert wolves.

Fortunately, the wolves were far enough away that the only thing he could think of was digging a hole.

He made a wooden shovel and started digging in the ground, blocking the hole with a door made of wood.