After flying for a while, Mark stopped over an area.

  His eyes were locked on the ground, watching the ripples in the sand with a mix of fascination and disgust.

  Sand Worms.

  In the game, Sand Worms were just 3D models with brown textures and looping “up and down” animations. There, they looked almost clean, made of polygons that vanished in a flash of light when defeated while invading Ziggurat.

  Reality, however, didn’t know graphical limits.

  It was the difference between seeing a photo of an accident and standing in the middle of the wreckage.

  The realism of that world was a double-edged blade; the beauty of the landscapes was balanced by the nauseating rawness of wildlife.

  One sand worm had half of its massive body exposed, its mouth wide as it tried to snap at Mark in midair. The creature’s skin was a wet, segmented carapace, gleaming with a grayish, viscous secretion meant to let it slide between grains of sand.

  Its jaws were an orifice of exposed muscular layers, drooling milky mucus that dripped onto the sand with an acidic hiss.

  Every movement made the shell creak with a sound like bone scraping against stone.

  Mark could see tiny land parasites scurrying through the gaps in the chitin and smelled the stench of rotten flesh mixed with damp earth rising toward him.

  “This is… disgusting.” Mark narrowed his eyes, feeling his stomach lurch slightly.

  Fortunately, Vaelin suppressed his human revulsion. When he looked again at the worms, they didn’t seem so repulsive anymore.

  Now they looked like… targets.

  Without overthinking it, it was time to test his strength in practice. He wanted to feel the real impact of his abilities without the safety net of a game interface.

  Because, for the first time since waking in that world, he didn’t need to hold back.

  The vast stretch of sand was his testing ground, and the worms were perfect training dummies.

  ...

  “[Mana Barrier].” Mark whispered, feeling a light pulse of energy spread across his skin.

  This was one of the abilities that didn’t require a class to use.

  It created an invisible film of neutral energy around the body, serving as basic defense against physical and magical damage, consuming only Mana in the process.

  “[Sanguine Core Acceleration].” He activated a reinforcement skill, feeling a warm sensation bloom inside.

  The skill worked by optimizing blood flow, drastically increasing reaction time and muscular strength.

  Not that Mark needed it, but he was curious to push his abilities to the limit.

  At that moment.

  Below him, the desert seemed to come alive.

  The gray sand swelled and burst in a cascade of dust and debris.

  Another colossal Sand Worm erupted upward, throwing half its chitinous body out like a pillar of dark flesh.

  Its circular jaws, lined with teeth like jagged stalactites, spread in a silent roar as the beast tried to reach Mark in the air.

  The leap was powerful. Its many-meter-long body closed the distance between them, nearly reaching him—but not quite enough.

  Mark watched the jaws snap shut on empty space just meters from his boots and extended his index finger with disdain.

  “[Blood Bolt].”

  Mark activated a skill. It was a basic precision attack, a rotating projectile of Blood Essence meant to deal simple piercing damage.

  The crimson dart fired, breaking the sound barrier with a sharp crack.

  BOOM!

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  It struck the worm’s head and not only pierced the chitin, but blasted straight through the creature’s body, leaving a smoking hole as yellow, viscous fluid gushed out.

  Insect blood painted the dunes as the worm collapsed like a giant, dead before it even hit the ground.

  ‘Wasn’t that too strong?’

  Mark had expected the attack to merely test the density of the monster’s shell, but the result was excessive.

  Even the lowest tier of his abilities felt lethal against local monsters.

  The ground trembled.

  As if answering the chaos, another silhouette—larger than the last—began tearing through the surface of the sand, drawn by the scent of the first creature’s fluids.

  Mark narrowed his eyes, feeling the energy in his chest surge.

  “Raising the output then… [Sanguine Spear: Impalement]!”

  Unlike the previous projectile, this was structural manipulation magic, using Blood Essence shaped by a Mana framework.

  It didn’t just pierce—it expanded after contact, ignoring internal biological defenses to destroy the target from the inside out.

  The dark crimson spear began forming before his finger, vibrating with power that made the air around Mark feel heavy.

  “Take this.” He flicked his finger.

  SWOOOOSH!

  The spear shot out like lightning.

  The second worm didn’t even have time to close its jaws. The spear struck straight into the center of its open maw, and in the next millisecond, the “Impalement” property activated.

  Mark clenched his fist in the air, and the spear, already inside the monster’s entrails, branched into dozens of transversal spikes that burst through the shell as if the worm had swallowed a metal porcupine.

  THUMP!

  The sound was muffled—a wet noise of flesh tearing and chitin shattering.

  Carried midair by its own momentum, the worm hung suspended for an instant before turning into a grotesque mass of spikes and yellow fluid.

  The remains crashed to the ground near its first companion.

  “Overkill.” Mark muttered, frowning.

  His basic Blood Essence skills felt stronger than he remembered.

  “The Sovereign is amazing!”

  Pippin, still in combat state, hovered a few meters away, wings beating hard to keep him stable. His white eyes shone with fanatical adoration as he looked at the remains scattered across the sand.

  Mark didn’t answer.

  He was too busy staring at the mental interface that had just blinked into his vision.

  [Target Defeated: Ash Sand Worm] [Level: 29] [Reward: 120 Blood Essence Absorbed]

  “One hundred and twenty?” His mouth twisted bitterly.

  In the game, these things gave at least five thousand essence in early waves.

  That meant one of two things: either the outside world was pathetically weak, or the reward system had been drastically reduced to fit the new reality.

  If Mark wanted to recover the millions of Blood Essence he could burn in high-level battles just by hunting worms, it would take decades.

  Fortunately, his body didn’t rely on that alone.

  His natural recovery was far faster.

  The silence after the second worm’s death lasted only a breath. Beneath Mark’s boots, the ash desert began to boil like a cauldron.

  It wasn’t just one or two worms—the sand rose in waves, revealing dozens of chitinous columns emerging at once.

  Mark frowned.

  Had he stopped right over a nest?

  ‘Wait… this is good.’ Something snapped in Mark’s mind.

  Four years of boredom clicking on glass screens and the shock of waking in a strange world finally collided, releasing an adrenaline he hadn’t felt in ages.

  He wanted to kill them all.

  A slow, predatory smile tore across his pale face.

  More and more worms burst from the ground.

  “More…” Mark whispered, a short, dry laugh escaping his throat.

  “[Sanguine Rain – Needle Storm]!” he shouted, spreading his arms.

  From his pores, a massive amount of Blood Essence evaporated into a scarlet mist that rose into the sky and, in a millisecond, condensed into thousands of solid stakes of crystallized blood.

  Unlike normal rain, the stakes fell with the weight of iron spears.

  The sound wasn’t water—it was a machine gun tearing through carapace. Worms that tried to leap were nailed back to the ground, their flesh pierced by hundreds of needles that pinned them into the sand while they still writhed.

  But he was only getting started.

  Mark wanted to feel the scale of his new body.

  “[Blood Eruption]!” he said, pointing his palm toward the center of the nest.

  Instead of firing anything, his mind issued a command of authority to the blood inside the already-wounded monsters.

  Mana acted as the trigger, and the Blood Essence inside the worms became unstable.

  BOOM!

  BOOOOOM!

  BOOOOOOOOOOM!

  The ground shook before exploding from the inside out, followed by consecutive detonations that made the air tremble.

  The pressure was so great that sand was hurled hundreds of meters high in jets of mud and blood.

  The worms’ bodies were shredded by the internal pressure of their own fluids, carving deep craters where sand soaked in yellow blood turned into thick, dark paste.

  “That’s it! That’s it!” Mark shouted through laughter, his eyes glowing vivid red.

  He could definitely get used to this.

  Combat was way better than in the game!

  Mark dove a few meters, hovering dangerously close to the jaws of a surviving worm that tried uselessly to bite him. Its body was riddled with cracks, making it look pitiful.

  “[Crimson Grasp].” With a casual motion, he used another skill.

  A gigantic hand, formed entirely from blood, burst from the sand beneath the worm.

  The hand closed around the twenty-meter creature and, with a mental command, crushed it like a paper tube, spraying fluid in every direction.

  The heavy sound of meat grinding and bones snapping echoed across the desert. Where a sand worm nest once existed, only a basin of destruction remained, filled with fragments and fluids.

  After several minutes.

  Mark stopped, breathing hard.

  He wasn’t tired—just euphoric.

  The air around him was saturated with blood particles that he began absorbing passively, feeling his Blood Essence reserves pulse.

  Pippin, floating at a safe distance, trembled from the tips of his ears to the claws on his feet.

  He had never seen the Sovereign in action from this close.

  “Sovereign…” Pippin called, his voice shaking. “I think… I think the nest has been destroyed.”

  Mark looked down, the smile still on his face.

  The desert was silent.

  He had gotten a little carried away.

  Author's Note: If you’re enjoying the story, a follow really helps support it. Thanks for reading!