The calm desert...

"Did it come to life?" Raya spoke to herself as she disappeared from where she was and appeared as far away as possible.

From there she had a little time to see what was going on. The phenomenon was odd to say the very least.

The pocket dimension she was in was at least fifty square kilometres. Five times bigger than the one Muku was in. Which was under some Raya and her opponent was bigger.

Anyway, that wasn't the problem. The problem was how the sand below her began rising and falling like water. It looked like a sand version of a tidal wave. And it was getting worse and worse with more time which passed by. Soon enough Raya won't have anywhere to run.

Then she would be forced to take action. And taking action usually meant attacking the opponent, right? Unfortunately, the sandworm was nowhere to be seen.

"Is it the one behind this? No... That can't be it. What's going on isn't something possible with spells. If it were just the surface which was being controlled, it would be understandable. But this is coming from underground. Such a thing should only be possible with a domain. Even a domain armour can't do it... I'm so confused. What's happening? And as much as I don't want to admit it. This is probably because of that dummy. Does being dumb come with some tricks these days?!" Raya spoke to herself while trying to formulate an attack plan.

She was also trying her best to locate the sandworm with her mana sense. If she could attack it, maybe she would be able to stop what was going on. After all, attacking the caster was a sure way to stop magic attacks. No matter how weird they were.

Unfortunately for Raya, the sandworm which was already super good at hiding was now hidden in the chaotic ground. It was basically impossible to locate it now.

And so, she gave up...

"Well, if you won't come out then I'll strike you where you are.... What the..." Raya was about to unleash one of her strongest spells when she was cut off by the scene in front of her.

Countless small sandworms made out of sand formed from the ground and quickly made their way toward her.

The ground also didn't stop being chaotic. In no time at all the chaos had covered the whole space and Raya had no choice but to float in the air to avoid them.

Of course, she could fly, like Jade said before, as long as your mana control was good enough. Anyone could fly. In fact, Jade had long taught the others how to do it in the past year on the other side.

Anyway, just like the pocket dimension ground and space, the sky was also limited. Raya couldn't go beyond thirty kilometres in the air. It was like she was stuck in a box.

The height was decent, but it wasn't high enough to completely keep her safe from the sand element sandworms(SESs).

The little creatures of mana and sand would shoot out of the group with mouths wide open intending to bite her to death. Most would miss, but some would reach her. Of course, she would easily dodge or destroy them with a light beam, but that wasn't sustainable. They seemed endless while her mana wasn't.

She could go for a while, but she was almost certain that the sandworm could outlast her. No, she was definitely certain, the creature not only had an environmental advantage, it also had a level advantage.

So yeah, Raya definitely didn't want the battle to be too long. Unfortunately for her, the sandworm was still not showing up. Was the creature really brainless like she thought? No... It definitely wasn't much of a thinker, maybe its instincts were so used to the hunt that it instinctively knew how to deal with all kinds of opponents.

She wouldn't have minded what it was doing if there were no SES problem. And just because the SESs were described as small, it didn't mean they were that small. They were only small when compared to the giant sandworm itself. However, when compared to Raya, they were quite big.

They were almost as big as her actually. They were around seven metres wide with a length of around twenty. It was safe to say that if Raya were bitten by something like that, she would suffer a serious injury.

So, she couldn't relax. She had to be constantly on guard against the little creatures. There were so many that she gave up on teleporting and just defended herself in the sky, after all, there was nowhere to run to. So teleportation would just be a waste of mana.

As a beast not used to such a situation, of course she made a few mistakes. They weren't major but they did get her fragile body injured in a few spots.

It was heartbreaking for her to see the scales she was so proud of get injured so easily. It made her appreciate them more in a way.

Anyway, after a few minutes, Raya was practically entranced as she defended herself against the countless mana beasts. No matter how many she destroyed. More would come to take their place.

It got to a point that it looked like she pretty much forgot about the real sandworm and treated the mana ones as the real enemies. Maybe that's what they were really for... Their purpose could be to lower the opponent's guard for the real sandworm so it can swoop in and finish the job....

"Aha! Found you!"

Pew!!

Raya suddenly exclaimed as she turned around and shot out a light beam behind her. She was expecting to hear a screech or the sound of something solid being hit but there was nothing. The beam just passed through the sand without hitting anything significant.

Raya was confused as she thought she had sensed the sandworm behind her. That's when something even more odd happened, she could sense the sandworm... everywhere??

From all sides, the ground, the sky, everywhere! It was almost like she was in the belly of the beast or something. It was something one would usually feel when they are in a domain. Which was odd in the current situation since she was certain she wasn't in a domain.

And again, Raya was confused by what was going on. The sandworm's means were just too weird!. It didn't conform to common sense at all. Even worse was how a sandstorm suddenly appeared when she was trying to look around closely since her mana sense was practically useless now.

The storm got so back she had to protect her eyes with mana, but that didn't help much with visibility. She couldn't see beyond a few centimetres in front of her. And she had the best sight in Muku's group. Even better than Jade, yet that's all she could see.

Even worse was how she couldn't see the SESs anymore. And they seemed to have been powered by the storm. Their speed was even quicker. She would manage to react in time and dodge dangerous attacks but her body was hurt quite a bit during the process. Just being grazed by them and the sand was enough to hurt her now...

Seeing that the situation was developing in an undesirable direction, she made up her mind. It was time to make her move.

"Domain armour:Dark.... Destruction!" Raya who has been holding herself back for her plan made her move.

Her pure white body which had been turned red by blood suddenly turned pitch black... Well, it was still white, just that a black domain armour was now covering it.

She didn't stop there, she then released one of her strongest spells she calls destruction.

A black orb appeared around her and exploded in the very moment it appeared. It erased all the sand it passed by with nothing getting left behind. The spell cleared out ten kilometres of sand in every direction. It left Raya floating in the middle of empty space. As she looked around her seriously.

That's right, unlike Layla, Raya's darkness element has offensive capabilities outside the shadow realm or domain. Then again, it only made sense, the darkness element was a corrosive force with countless capabilities. Layla's Shadow element was a specialised variant of the darkness element.

The two worked differently despite their somewhat similar appearance and origin. Raya's darkness was offence-oriented while Layla's Shadow was evasive.

Anyway, that didn't matter for the time being. Raya wasn't happy despite the feet she had accomplished. After all, her plan was ruined.

He wanted to draw the beast out by pretending to be weak but it didn't work. She felt that it was a good plan since randomly attacking could just waste her mana without results.

So she thought that the dumb beast would think it was winning by smelling her blood and sensing her distress. Unfortunately, things didn't go according to plan. Who would have thought that Raya wouldn't be able to fool a supposedly dumb beast despite the intelligence she was so proud of?

In her defence, Raya was misinformed. She had been thinking of normal beasts when she made her plan. She assumed that since the worm couldn't see, it had a good sense of smell which would tell it when an enemy was significantly hurt.

Unfortunately for her, the beast couldn't smell anything at all, it operated on aura.

The problem was that despite everything, Raya's aura was as strong as ever. She kept it well hidden, however, it wouldn't fool the sandworm with its keen mana senses.

Raya really had been quite unfortunate that day.

Even worse was how the area she had cleared up was getting filled up quickly.

What did she have to do to make it show up?!