"I can’t see shit!" The skinny guy shouted. Panic gripped his heart and not wanting to let go.

The words burst out like a flare in the dark, loud enough that even the palm leaves seemed to flinch. The shrubs around the oasis weren’t normal brush. They were the kind that grew like they hated being touched, thick, thorny, and dense enough to swallow silhouettes whole. In the shrubs, everything beyond arm’s reach became a smear of shadow and needles.

"Then back off, you don’t want the monsters to get the jump on you." Garron raised his spear forward.

He planted his feet like he was bracing against a wave, spear angled toward the black mass of greenery. The tip trembled just slightly, not because he was weak, but because holding a weapon steady while your body begged for water was like asking a dying man to write a signature without shaking.

Fracture rose over everyone’s head.

One stack each, just from the stress of having to fight something unknown.

Kael felt it like a cold tick behind the eyes. Not pain. Not fear. More like the tower nudging your spine and reminding you that your mind was just another resource to drain. He didn’t need a system prompt to know what the group was thinking. Unknown enemy. Limited water. Weak weapons. One bad move and the desert wouldn’t even bother to bury them.

Kael thought for a second. Should he just burn everything to the ground? And force whatever is inside the shrubs to reveal itself?

The image flashed clean in his head, fire rolling through thorns, smoke forcing bodies out, heat making the hidden visible.

The thought came and disappeared as fast. Fire in this heat is a death sentence.

Not just because of the sun. Because burning the only shade in miles was the same as digging your own grave and politely lying in it. And if whatever lived inside the oasis survived the flames, they’d still have to fight, only now with lungs full of smoke and eyes full of ash.

Just then, something hissed, a sound Kael recognized immediately, two pointy sharp fangs were the first to show up as a large, abnormally so snake shot up from the shrubs toward his face.

It didn’t come like a creature testing danger. It came like a spring-loaded knife. One moment, the shrubs were still; the next, they spat motion straight at his eyes, fangs gleaming wet and pale against the dark.

His honed reflexes, thanks to his training, allowed him to see, perceive, and catch the snake before it reached his face.

Time didn’t slow. He did. The world snapped into the simple geometry his master forced into him for a year: angle, trajectory, timing, weight. Kael’s arm moved before his thoughts finished forming, gauntleted fingers clamping down mid-strike.

The thing writhed instantly, muscle and hate twisting in his grip, trying to coil around his forearm, trying to get teeth into any seam it could find. Its scales were slick with oil and sand, its body thick, too thick for something that was supposed to be "just" a snake.

No flourish. No wasted motion. One hand anchored the head, the other took the tail and pulled like he was tearing cloth. The body stretched for the smallest fraction of a second, then the internal structure failed.

Blood, viscera, and organs fell down the desert sands.

Warm stink hit the air immediately. Metallic, sharp, and sour in the wrong way, like the creature’s insides were half venom and half rot. The group went silent in the way people go silent when they realize they were one blink away from dying.

The rest of the group looked at Kael in awe, but he was smiling, "Meat’s on the menu, boys!" he said as he dove into the shrubs.

He went in like the shrubs owed him money. The thorns scraped across his arms and jacket, snagging fabric, but they didn’t slow him the way they would’ve slowed anyone else. His skin had taken worse. His nerves had been taught not to scream unless something was truly worth screaming about.

Inside the shrub line, the world tightened. Visibility dropped to nothing. The air was damp and heavy, smelling of stagnant water and decay. Leaves slapped his shoulders and face as he pushed through, and somewhere beneath that wet smell was the unmistakable scent of reptiles, hot, musky, and hungry.

The red dots on his minimap, unlike when normal monsters would converge mindlessly to kill off climbers. These were different.

They weren’t stupid. That alone was worth noting. Most monsters on trials rushed the loudest thing. These pulled back. They scattered when the second one of them died, like they understood the value of survival more than the value of feeding.

One tried to vanish under loose soil near the waterline, its body slipping like a rope into a crack. Kael stomped, pinned it, and grabbed it by the neck before it could disappear. The second tried to coil around a branch and whip past his arm; he snatched it mid-motion, fingers closing like a trap.

He wrung their necks this time and didn’t waste their fluids.

A quick twist, a clean snap. Less mess. Less stink in the air that could attract worse things. His master would’ve complained about sloppiness. Kael could already hear the lecture in his head, and it annoyed him enough that he tightened the kills faster.

"Let’s go," he said as he approached the lake in the middle of the oasis.

He stepped out of the shrubs carrying them like trophies. Three limp snakes slung over one shoulder, the bodies heavy and still warm. The ripped one, half of it, hung from his other hand like a grim warning.

No one argued now. No one questioned the detour or the "nose." They moved because he moved, and because the alternative was staying in thorn-shadow and waiting for the next set of fangs.

He got closer to the water, but it didn’t look clear, not the crystal clear one you’d expect. But olive green.

The oasis wasn’t a blessing. It was a problem. The surface shimmered with faint scum, and when the breeze touched it, the smell rose: moss, algae, and something sour underneath, like a pond that had eaten too much and never digested it.

Kael clicked his tongue as he saw the color.

He’d seen water like that before. Not in the tower, on Earth. Construction sites with stagnant runoff, ponds that looked "fine" until someone with too little brain, too much muscle, and a horrible sense of gambling drank and spent the next week praying to gods they didn’t believe in.

The young man, however, immediately went to try to drink.

He dropped to a knee so fast it looked like he was going to kiss the water, hands already cupping.

"Stop, not safe for drinking," Kael said.

His voice wasn’t loud, but it cut. The kid froze with water almost touching his lips, throat working as if swallowing air could replace swallowing water.

"Are you serious, man, after all this?"

"You want to get parasites? Be my guest," Kael said as he began digging a deep hole not too far from the oasis, about a couple of feet.

He picked a spot where the sand looked slightly darker, damp beneath the top layer, and started digging with one arm like it was nothing. The earth fought him for a bit, then gave way in clumps. Every scoop carried that wet smell, and as he went deeper, the sand turned heavier, clinging to his fingers.

"What are you doing? Wasting energy when we’re exhausted," Garron asked.

Kael didn’t stop digging. He didn’t even look up. He answered the way you answer someone who’s never had to learn things the hard way.

"Need filtration, this is one way to do so. It won’t completely cleanse the water, but it’ll get rid of most moss and algae in it," Kael said as he finished digging the hole with one arm.

He punched the last bit loose and widened the hole with his fingers, shaping it like a crude basin. His rings clinked faintly when his wrist flexed. The sound carried oddly in the oasis shade, as the place itself listened.

Soon, the hole’s color darkened. The seep came slow at first, dark wetness spreading, then a thin puddle forming, then a steady rise as the sand surrendered what it held. The water that collected here wasn’t green. It was mostly clear, filtered by layers of soil. Still had a faint tint, but the difference was obvious enough that even the skeptical kid stopped looking ready to dive in face-first.

"Anyone got a container on them?" Kael asked.

Only Garron pulled out a metal helmet.

"Would this work?" he asked.

"Sure, perfect," Kael said as he grabbed the helmet and pulled water using it.

The helmet was filled with translucent water. Kael lifted it and gave it a short sniff. Cleaner, but not clean enough. The tower loved letting you survive just long enough to die later from something stupid.

He then held the helmet from the bottom and unchecked the heft rune.

A steady flow of fire emerged from his gauntlet.

The flame wasn’t a wild burst. It was controlled, tight, steady, the kind of heat that didn’t roar; it worked. The water began to tremble, then bubble, then roll into a full boil. Steam rose and condensed on the helmet’s rim. The smell changed as the heat burned the swamp taste out of it.

Soon, he placed it on the ground, "Start drinking once it gets cold."

The metal hissed against the sand. The group stared at it like it was a treasure. Not because it was magic, but because it was safe.