We shift uncomfortably in oursleep, trying to retain the only happiness we possess.


    However, ourbodiestellus it is indeed time to get up. Henceforth, we unwillingly open our lazy eyesto the harsh lights of the desert.


    Detaching our bodies from our night hug, we stand up from our makeshift bed, the only safe haven from the boiling sand around us.


    Naturally, we used the furswe collected from the frozen hell a couple of floors before. We killed a decent bear there and although it was only 20 meters in lenght, his fur was really cold. Naturally, we stored it away for occasions like this for we very much prefere frost to this boiling heat,as frost is one of our elements.


    After storing away the bed, we resume our search through this floor. We have long forgotten why we search for stairs, but we hope it was for a good reason. Actually, we can''t really remember much of anything.


    Our firstmemory that we can rememberfrom 834 floors ago. That was when we discovered how to use magic, but we can''t remember exactly how many years ago it was.


    But, what we still remember are all of the combat techniques we developed over the ages. Those are burned into our bodies so deeply that we could neglect them for millenia and our bodies would still do it unconsciously. And spells too, but those we are constantly changing and creating, so there is no point in remembering any in particular.


    We continue to walk through this desert for days, never stopping and never making a noise. Not a single droplet of water can be seen, nor can anything that isn''t yellow and dusty.


    Unfortunately, this peace is broken when we notice the sand rising and revealing a colossal snake, at least a couple hundred meters in lenght.


    If the book we found a couple hundred floors ago is correct, this should be a [Sand Leviathan], a snake that dwells in deserts and is said to swallow caravans whole. Not a dangerous monster, but it''s ambushes are quite annoying. Luckily for us, this one is a complete dunce and revealed himself without even ambushing us.


    We charge at the retarded snake whilst avoiding the fire blasts he shoots us and tanking those we can''t avoid. We eventually reach it, and it tries to escape under the sand once again, but we quickly put an end to itby chopping it in half.


    We notice one of us fell behind during our rush. How stupid of we, we forgot one of us isn''t as fast as the other.


    We turn and walk back towards our other body. We are definetly tired in that body, as we are not meant for running.


    Our stronger self picks up the weaker one and puts us on our shoulder. We hug our stronger self''s face and rub faces, as it feels quite nice since our weaker self''s skin is very soft.


    Walking back towars the dunce-snake, my weaker self concentrates for a second whilst siphoning the stronger self''s mana in order to conjure our much needed spell.


    After all, we can survive years without nourishment, but the last floor was completely barren. We had to make due with a couple of years of starvation, but now that we finally found a nice and large source of food, why waste it?


    The snake contorts and twitches. After a dozen seconds, blood flows out from it like a tidal wave, gathering in the air in a giant red orb. The smell is ridicously attractive, and my stronger self can barely contain the saliva in our mouth.


    After 10 minutes, the ball had grown to be 50 meters in diameter and 20 minutes after that, the sphere had condensed to only 30cm.


    The orb floated down in front of us, who could barely contain ourselves from pouncing on it. It split in two equal, smaller orbs and each floated towards one of our two bodies.


    My stronger self opened our waiting maw and a tongue shot out from it, coiling around the orb and flavoring it for all of it''s delicious nutrients. The tongue quickly retreated back into our impatient maws, whom quickly closed shut with a metallic sound.


    The other orb floated in front of our weaker self. Our mouth opened as well, but instead of a tongue shooting our, the orb itself broke down and flew right into our eager belly.


    Only after our meal had been consumed did we finally relax. After all, you don''tjust keep attentionafter having finally eaten something after many years of going without food.


    Our strenght finally resurfaces after such a long time of starvation, mana coarsing through our bodies and rushing into our cores. Naturally, my weaker self has at least a couple thousand times more mana then my stronger self, so from now on we won''t need to sipher mana from our stronger self for conjuring such basic spells.


    After our little encounter with the oversized noodle, we continued our endless march through the desert. Days passed by, followed by weeks and then transforming into months. The only sight that encountered us was sand, sand, sand, sand and the occasional bush. The spiky and seriously poisonous kind of bush.


    Finally, after 4 months of our first encounter with a monster, we are greeted by some living beings. Well, greeted by a bunch of arrows and fireballs being shot at us.


    Our weaker self quickly puts up a barrier which easily deflects all of the incoming attacks, and only then do we finally get a glimpse of what attackes us.This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.


    Strange, small monkeys that stand on two legs with skin that seems to fall off of them. They all seem extremely weak, and they only number 8 in total, so we were suprised that such dumb creatures would actually attack us. We mean, we have been attacked by hordes of neverending ants, skeletons, wolves, giant frogs and even moles, but all of them had at least the brains to attack with giant numbers despite their individual weakness.


    Instead, these undersized monkeys not only are individually weak, but even seem incompetent. As we continue our internal rant, our weaker self lightly smacked my stronger self in the head, reminding us that we have monkeys to kill. Naturally, we don''t want to dissapoint ourselves, so we swiftly charge at the still far away apes. I wonder what they taste like...


    [Arianna''s Pov]


    "Holy shit... It''s so... HOT!" Screamed out Ryan, our tank for this exploration party. Well, I personally can''t blame him, as I too am sweating buckets ever since we set foot on this god damn level.


    I was selected in this party due to my capabilities as a healer, so I can deal with it due to my various spells, but it seems that overly-armored dunce of a swordsman didn''t even think that a desert could sometimes behot.


    "Hold on, I got this! {Cold Wave}!" Shouted out our party''s mage. She''s quite the hottie, even more so then me. Eh, I''m no narcissist, so I don''t really care, but seriously, why would such a cute girl even think of becoming an adventurer?


    Why are we here again? Ah, right. The guildmaster claimed that a party that ascended to this floor found the corpse of the Boss of the floor, but no adventurer has even come close to conquering it yet, so he first launched an investigation amongst all present adventurers. This was big news after all, as that boss was considered a [Calamity Class] and almost reaching [Apocalypse Class]. To suddently find such a creature dead in the middle of the desert, cleaved in half and completely drained of it''s blood, would naturally give goosebumps to higher-ups. Especially since experts claim that it was defeated very quickly, as signs of battle were almost non-existent.


    Thus, here we are! One of the numerous exploration parties in search for the cause of the Boss''s death. Hurray! Since none of the high-ranking adventurers killed it, orcould kill it for the matter, the only answer is another, stronger monster killing it.


    Our job is to find this monsterand report it, maybe provide a few details whilst getting out alive. Which, unfortunately to say, probably won''t happend if we actually encounter it.


    We continue chatting and walking around. I personally hate how the sand gets in my shoes, but the others don''t seem to mind, so I keep my mouth shut.


    Alex suddently turns around and notices me lagging behind the group. He smiles at me and slows down, waiting for me to catch up to him. Which I do, rather quickly as well.


    "H-hey Alex! What''s up?" I say, trying not to sound too embarassed. I''ve always been somewhat shy, which people judge cute. However, deep down, I somewhat regret it. After all, it''s extremely hard for me to even just speak my mind.


    "Eh. Nothing much. Rather, how are you holding up?" He asks with a concerned face. I turn red and glance away before quicky answering "I-I''m fine! Don''t worry about me!"


    He laughs a bit and pats me on the shoulder. I swat away his hand and pout whilst turning my face away. This only makes him laugh harder, before he suddently pales and looks somewhere in the distance.


    Alex is our rogue, so he has excellent vision. I wonder what he saw?


    "G-Guys! Come here for a second!" Everyone turns from the front with a confused expression, but when they see his serious face they quickly gather up.


    "I can sense a presence 10 kilometers from here. Do you know what that means?" Everyone shakes their heads in denial. He sighs and says "It''s way too far away! My [Detect Presence] only reaches out for a kilometer! This means that whoever is over there is strong. Seriously strong. I can even feel it that they''re trying to suppress their presence, but they''re simply too overwhelming! Now do you know what I mean?"


    Some people nod with a serious face whilst other simply look confused. I quickly understand what''s going on and speak out "U-uhm... Is it the boss?"


    He nods fervently. "Yeah. He probably hasn''t sensed us yet, so we can try and get a look at him. Let''s go!" He says, apparently pumped up.


    However, Emily silently said "This is a horrible idea...". This gave us all a strange feeling, but we ignored it and began to follow after the presence.


    After 30 minutes, we were only 2 kilometers away from him. We all popped out from behind a dune and silently looked at the monster. No. Monster isn''t enough for descripting the pure terror we got from the abomination.


    The monster resembled a human but was 3 meters tall. Alex also said that his eyes were pitch black with no irises, just like his claw-like hands and his hair were a fiery red. Hewas obviously naked, and we could see a long, leathery red tail swishing behind him.


    What astonished us however, was the girl trailing after him. She too had pitch-black eyes and a red tail behind her. Naked as well, but nobody really payed much attention to that detail right now. She was only 5.6 or so feet tall and had long, white hair.


    Overall, they looked like some sort of death gods. Or perhaps monsters would be more accurate. Yes, monsters was the only word we could describe them as. That was the mere feeling of terror from just the idea of encountering them.


    As we silently began to retreat, Alex suddently shouted "Shit! They''ve seen us! Get in formation and prepare the transport spell!" We quickly did as he said whilst our three mages and Alex began to bombard the monsters with arrows and spells. Naturally, since we were so far away, our accuracy wasn''t the greatest, but we aren''t S-ranks for nothing! Unfortunately, the monster girl suddently raised her hand and a pulsing-red barrier appeared in front of them, blocking all of our attacks.


    The man then grabbed the girl by the waist with one hand and shoved her on his shoulder, before turning towards us and charging.


    His speed was something beyond this world. He crossed hundreds of meters in mere seconds. Knowing that we needed more time then they allowed us to charge up the transfer spell, Alex jumped out from our group whilst ignoring our cries for him to come back.


    He ran towards the monsters. He activated all of his speed skills and assassination abilities to the max even though he knew it was futile.


    The monster-man was in front of him in no time and ran him over without Max being able to do much of anything, but he did stop to look at the dying rogue.


    We were all breathless as we continued to pour mana into the spell. The last thing we saw before teleporting would probably haunt us all forever.


    The man opened his maws to an impossible degree and an extremely long tongue shot out and wrapped around Max, crushing him. He screamed and tried to free himself, but he was mercilessly brought back to the monster''s waiting maws and was quickly gulped down. We could see Max''s slim figure slide down the monster''s throat, bulging out. He then shoved a hand down his throat and pulled it out with an arm. He then gave said arm to the girl on his shoulders, who began to munch on it happily.


    When we finally finished our spell and transported away, all of us feinted. The pure pressure of those monsters was enough to make us all freeze in fear, in fact, it was a miracle we hadn''t fainted there and then.


    I silently cried tears of regret over Max, and swore to myself that one day, one day I will get revenge. I''m sorry I am so weak, I''m sorry I am so shy, I''m sorry I didn''t go instead of you. I don''t deserve this...