Boblin the lizard, without warning, dove underwater.

Vivi nearly dropped off the ride, holding tightly to Boblin's scales. She closed her eyes and blocked her nostrils and ears with ether. The pond's water was far from clear. Getting any amount in her body could spread diseases. She focused hard on her sixth sense, blocking her nostrils, ears, mouth, any spots where corrupted water could enter.

The water pressure grew harsh. Vivi's head was being crushed upon itself. She quickly required ether just to protect herself from being crushed. Boblin kept swimming at tremendous speed. The lake was slowly moving deeper. The pressure grew overwhelming. Sharp wisps of ether flowed around her, grazing her skin.

The pressure grew harsher still. Her lungs requested air. Vivi was forced to reach into her void core.

When the void wisps took her senses, the beauty of the area really came to life. The walls of the underwater tunnel sparkled with wisps of ether. The ancient kinds of wisps that belonged to the world itself. These wisps weren't dwelling for a storm or ready to be collected; they'd been here for thousands upon thousands of years, keeping the world itself in one piece.

"We're between levels now," Lucius said. "That's levelstone around us. The most impenetrable material of all. Levelstone is what stops the world's levels from crumbling on each other."

Vivi recalled hearing that in school. Geography class, or whatever. Scientists had tried to break levelstone for as long as runesmiths had tried to invent inside-carving. At most, scientists had managed to drill a few inches into the stone. Levelstone had to be strong to protect the world from collapsing under itself.

What the books never mentioned was just how majestic the area between levels was. The world glimmered. Vivi could imagine a crystalline, otherworldly glow around her. Or perhaps she was just imagining it. Her eyes were still closed to protect herself from the corrupted water.

After a few more minutes of diving, the overwhelming pressure took priority over admiration. Ether and the void wisps worked overtime to keep her body alive. She needed air. Her heart was somehow slowing down. Without ether, her body would have collapsed upon itself under the water pressure.

Boblin, you damned lizard! Vivi screamed in her head. How long will this take?

She exhausted hundreds upon hundreds of wisps of ether, void and live. The pressure around her stopped feeling like water. She was just being crushed. The fall continued deeper and deeper. Vivi felt her consciousness slipping. Any more of this, and she'd really lose her head.

Until finally, the pressure around her disappeared, and Boblin's momentum stopped.

Void ether slowly dissipated, and Vivi blinked herself to reality. She squinted. The landscape ahead was bright.

Vivi stood atop a cliff next to what she would describe as a waterfall. Except, as the water fell, it turned to sand particles. The sand flowed downhill, into the desert below. Boblin stood on the edge of the cliff. They must have been two hundred feet in the air, but the sky kept ascending for four hundred more.

The landscape below made Vivi forget nearly dying a minute ago. There was sand. So much sand, spanning miles upon miles into the distance. The area was relatively flat, until distant mounds finally blocked Vivi's vision. There wasn't much vegetation, even less than on the grey wastelands of the fourth level. There were a few stubborn thorn brushes and cacti, but for the most part, the area was just sand.

The sky wasn't grey with daylight gems anymore. The faceted ceiling above was far more sky-like with a yellow-ish glow that lit up the entire desert in perfect clarity. Looking directly above hurt Vivi's eyes, as if staring at the sun. The sky also seemed to radiate heat. Air in the distance was rippling, forming mirages.

Vivi saw figures moving within the desert. Wisps of ether oozed out of the larger ones. Monsters, she presumed. Of course, by heading deeper into the earth, the surges only grew more rampant.

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She could hardly believe she'd made it. The fifth level, right here, right in front of her eyes. She couldn't see mountains yet, but she knew she was near. Shivenar, the city of runesmiths, must have been less than a hundred miles away.

While Vivi was still locked in awe, a tail suddenly wrapped around her chest. Vivi blinked in surprise. Boblin squeezed her tight. Lucius instinctively pushed more ether to her body to keep her from being crushed.

Vivi was just about to summon Abyss Destroyer to free herself when Boblin said. "Boblin remember Vivi. Goodbye."

Then the lizard flung his tail, sending Vivi into the distance with the force of thousands of wisps of ether and an air-shattering shockwave.

She flew through the landscapes she'd just admired at speeds that nearly made her faint. She pushed void ether into her body and braced for impact.

She collided against a sand-mound. A cloud of sand particles shot to the air. Vivi breathed in by accident and immediately coughed. She stumbled to her feet, then walked out of the cloud.

Boblin was standing majestically atop his cliff. Sand flowed down underneath him. The sand didn't seem to be going anywhere. It just fell through the ground, as if the whole cliffside was just a giant quagmire. Boblin turned around and as quickly as he had come, he swam back to the fourth level.

Vivi stood there in awe for half a minute longer. Whiplash from void ether pinched at her head. She hardly registered the pain. What did we just experience?

"That was one of the wilder level transfers, for sure," Lucius said. "Usually the pathways are just some boring stairways or holes in the levelstone."

Vivi let out a laugh. She struggled to believe she was actually out of the blight. Being surrounded by something that wasn't just red poison felt like a godsend. Even if it was all just sand.

"So…" Vivi asked. "Where are we?"

"Stranded by the looks of it," Lucius said. "When did you last eat?"

"Probably twenty hours ago," Vivi said. That sounded like a lot, but in the blight, eating any more often took too much effort. Vivi had managed with the help of ether, though she had still lost a lot of muscle.

"We're growing far too accustomed to ether," Lucius said. "We will need to actually rehabilitate your legs at some point."

"We'll need to reach the city first," Vivi said. She summoned her map. Vivi hadn't properly looked at it in ages. Trying to follow it had proven utterly useless in the blight. Here, however, the map should have been far more accurate.

"We're in a desert underneath the blight," Vivi said. "So, uh, what does that tell us?"

"Not much," Lucius said. They stared at the map together. The western side of the map was mostly just stone. There were mountains. In between those mountains was more sand. Further westward were more mountains and more sand, until eventually, the city of Shivenar.

"The good news is that Shivenar is a trade city. Dozens of popular roads and trade routes pass in almost all directions. The bad news is, uh, we might still need to walk tens of miles to find any road at all. And the Shivell mountains are known to be brutal for those that get lost."

"If we head westward, we should eventually find the city, right?" Vivi asked.

"We should at least find a road to follow," Lucius said. "Perhaps we can even hitch a ride. We're technically rich. Although, you look like a hooligan. We should have visited a clothes store and taken a bath before entering."

"Shame that every store in the blight was closed," Vivi said. "Which direction is west?"

Lucius flew in the air and performed some sort of spirit nonsense. Apparently, Lucius worked as a compass too. Spirits really were the best tools an adventurer could have. He pointed in a direction, and Vivi continued her journey.

Walking in the desert proved to be painful right away. Her boots weren't built for the weather. Her foot sunk into the sand with each step, and Vivi required energy to lift her feet again. She could manage with ethereal strength, of course, but she also required ether to protect her from the heat above. She was wasting over three wisp per minute just to walk.

The desert monsters, however, actually dropped ether.

Vivi was amazed when she cut down an oversized reanimated scorpion with an aura hardly tougher than a simple amalgamation in the blight, and the scorpion dropped over a hundred wisps of ether. The desert monsters weren't uncommon either. Vivi came across lone golems, scorpions, sand worms, all of which dropped significant amounts of ether.

"Didn't you say the desert was supposed to be brutal?" Vivi asked.

"Just one of these monsters could kill an entire carriage worth of humans," Lucius said. "You're just a bit strong for this."

"I don't even need void ether or Abyss Destroyer," Vivi said. "You can barely even call these monsters."

Lucius didn't appear so happy. "If it's not the monsters that kill hunters here, it's the thirst."

After walking under the endless scorch for ten more hours, Vivi realized that Lucius was entirely right. This desert had no water at all.

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