A single-player post-apocalyptic game, but with an all-female teammate mod.

The interior of the ruins is far larger than imagined.

In the dimly lit passageway, faded murals remain on the walls, and the stone slabs underfoot echo dully with each step.

The passageway in the ruins narrows as you go deeper, and large-scale reliefs begin to appear on the stone walls on both sides.

Although mostly covered by sand, some patterns are still discernible: a pharaoh holding a scepter, kneeling subjects, and a giant scarab beetle...

These reliefs share a unified and solemn style, exuding a profound religious atmosphere.

Aono walked at the front, condensing a fireball with chakra in his left hand.

The firelight flickered in the narrow passageway, casting the three people's shadows long and short.

"Stop." Aono turned around and whispered, raising his hand to signal.

There was a bend in the passageway ahead, and the area illuminated by the firelight ended there, after which it was pitch black.

Aono leaned against the wall and slowly moved to the corner, with Kage and Ika following closely behind.

After turning the corner, what appeared before the three of them was a relatively spacious square stone chamber.

In the very center of the stone chamber stands a broken obelisk, its body covered with sand vines.

A sandy structure resembling vines climbed from the ground all the way to the top of the obelisk. Around the obelisk, six human figures stood in neat rows.

They remained motionless, as if guarding something.

The firelight illuminated the silhouettes of the two figures at the front, as well as the system labels above their heads.

【Sand Soldier Lv.35 (Normal)】

The new monster, named Sand Soldier, wears a yellow mask, is wrapped in yellow and white cloth strips, and has a curved sword hanging at its waist.

The six sand soldiers stood in two rows and three columns, with perfectly even spacing.

They had no breathing, no looking around, and not even any light shone through the gaps in their masks.

They just stand there, so straight, as if they've been standing there for hundreds of years, and will continue to stand there for hundreds more.

Aono stared at them for a few seconds, considering whether he should make the first move.

Just then, the sand soldier in the very center of the front row moved his head slightly.

The arc carved on its mask met Aono's gaze perfectly.

The next moment, a dense sound, like sand pouring down from above, came from inside the stone chamber.

All six sand soldiers turned around and approached Aono and his companions with perfectly synchronized steps.

The yellow mask gleamed with an ominous matte light in the firelight, and the sand on the scimitar began to spin faster, emitting an increasingly sharp hissing sound.

The three of them, Aono and his companions, exchanged a knowing glance and then decisively went to meet them.

There's no need to think about it anymore; just kill them first.

Aono was the first to rush forward.

When the alloy battle axe struck the first sand soldier's shoulder, it felt like cutting into a bag of wet sand. There was a lot of resistance, but once the axe blade went in, you could feel the sand grains quickly filling the wound.

The sand soldier staggered backward from the blow, leaving a gash on his shoulder, but almost instantly, the surrounding sand rushed over and the gash healed visibly.

The sand soldiers' self-healing ability is indeed troublesome. Every gap left by their slashes will be filled by the surrounding sand within seconds, making normal attacks almost useless.

But don't forget, Shadow's purple lightning comes with a severe injury effect.

After Aono copied her talent, his lightning naturally carried the same effect.

In particular, last night he copied Mai Shiranui's talent, and his attacks even have fire damage.

Despite being in a dry desert, these sand soldiers seemed to be terrified of fire.

Sand dried by lightning and fire almost immediately loses its ability to heal itself.

Aono and Kage quickly noticed this and decisively increased their lightning element output.

As for Ika, she dutifully served as an observer, preventing new enemies or unforeseen events from occurring during the battle.

Unfortunately, this area severely limits her performance.

Moreover, it seems that there is no need for her to play a role at present.

101. Room clear

Sand soldiers who have lost their self-healing ability are easier to deal with than sand snakes.

With a horizontal slash, Aono severed the two front-line sand soldiers in two.

This time, instead of sand rushing in to fill the gap, it collapsed into two piles of loose sand with a crash, like a cut hourglass. The upper and lower body lost their support at the same time.

Shadow's naginata followed closely behind, its main arc piercing through the head of the sand soldier in the middle.

The yellow mask cracked open, revealing a faint light in the darkness beneath, which then went out completely.

The sand soldier's entire upper body collapsed with a bang, like a sand sculpture with its skeleton removed.

The remaining three sand soldiers tried to regroup, but Aono didn't give them a chance.

His attack rhythm accelerated dramatically, with each strike carrying the effects of both lightning and fire.

Just a dozen seconds later, the last sand soldier's scimitar was still raised in mid-air, but his body had already scattered into a pile of sand.

The passageway fell silent.

Six piles of loose sand were scattered on the stone slab, and the sand flow edge of the curved knife had long since disappeared.

Aono crouched down and used his hands to push aside the sand pile, revealing the gold coins and materials inside.

Ding, ding, ding...

A crisp metallic clanging sound rang out, and then the gold coins and materials turned into streams of light and automatically entered his system inventory.

"A good harvest."

Aono raised an eyebrow, opened his backpack and glanced inside. "I have more gold coins than Sand Scorpions, and the last upgrade material has also appeared."

[Broken pottery shards]

The final upgrade material is a lower-level material for the [Sun Etching Mark].

To continue upgrading the Ark, besides the [Heart of the Sun], the four required materials are [Sand Dust Bag], [Crimson Scorpion Sting], [Quicksand Core], and [Sun Etching Mark].

Sand snakes and sand scorpions only drop the first three low-rank materials: [Rough Sand Scale], [Dried Scorpion Tail Tip], and [Sand-Clad Beast Bone].

These four materials are also needed to upgrade the rest of the buildings, so you can never have too many.

After sorting through their loot, Aono shook the sand off his clothes and, along with Kage and Ika, ransacked the stone chamber.

There were almost no supplies, only some oddly shaped handicrafts piled up in the corner.

Brass hourglasses, stone slabs with bas-reliefs of unknown characters, half-rotten wooden masks, and so on.

However, as long as the system's backpack can recognize it and can hold it, pack it up and take it away.

They didn't even spare the scimitars that were scattered on the ground after the sand soldiers died.

The sand-like blades of these scimitars completely disappeared after their owners died, turning them into ordinary bone scimitars.

It feels heavy in your hand, with a rough texture, almost like it was made from the ribs of some large animal.

Through continuous exploration and breakthroughs, Qingye also discovered more patterns.

As expected, the only resources in this level are these handicrafts, decorations, and weapon wreckage.

The only purpose of these resources is to be sold to the system store in exchange for gold coins; they have no other use.

Like the special cold-resistant plants collected in the previous level's extreme cold world, this special item can only be used to exchange for gold coins.

At the time, Matsuzaka Ume and Miyauchi Kazuho tried to cultivate them in the Ark's planting area, but not a single sprout appeared.

In the end, they could only sell the entire batch to the store, which resulted in an unexpectedly large sum of gold coins.

And it's highly likely that we'll no longer have similar basic materials for food, drinking water, and manufacturing.

You can either grow it yourself or buy it from the system's supermarket.

During the search, Aono discovered a hidden door on one side wall of the stone chamber, almost the same color as the stone wall.

After confirming that there was nothing left in the stone chamber, he walked over, placed his palm against the door, and gently pushed it open.

Behind the door is a corridor.

It's almost exactly the same as the one I walked on before.

The same stone floor, the same low dome, even the dust particles floating in the air seem to be replicated.

The three exchanged a glance, then passed through the corridor again, and found themselves in another stone chamber.

Aono paused for a moment.

Inside the stone chamber, eight sand soldiers stood in neat rows, the darkness beneath their masks all turning toward the entrance.

"Um……"

Aono blinked, looking at the almost identical stone chamber and sand soldiers, and then it dawned on him.

Isn't this just the classic roomclear?

One room, one wave of monsters, clear them out, loot them, open the door, move on to the next room.

It shares similarities with the floor structure of the metal buildings in the mechanical city, but it's more classic.

At least the metal building had some puzzle-solving elements and different types of building tricks, but this place is just the most primitive and brutal roomclear.

"If even the BOSS room setting is copied..."

Aono's heart skipped a few beats.

Following the standard RoomClear template, clearing out several small rooms will reveal a larger, specially marked room.

It's usually a BOSS room, but it could also be an elite room.

If there really is a BOSS room, then this level might be the earliest level to encounter and defeat a BOSS to date.

Thinking of this, Aono tightened his grip on the alloy battle axe, a long-lost excitement appearing in his eyes.

"Shadow, Ika, prepare for battle."

At Aono's command, the three of them spread out in formation in perfect unison.

Soon, the eight sand soldiers, with the help of Aono and Kage, were also reduced to scattered sand.

Then pick up the dropped items, loot supplies, and push open the door to enter the next room.

Clear it again.

Search again.

Go in again.

The number of rooms silently accumulated in Aono's mind.

The third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth...

Until the three of them entered the seventh stone chamber.

This time, the stone chamber was almost twice the size of any of the previous ones.

The dome is even higher, the floor is paved with neatly arranged stone slabs, and the walls are fitted with wall lamps that have been turned off.

Clearly, this is no longer an ordinary monster room.

Aono didn't rush into the room, but stood at the door for a while and looked around.

There weren't many sand soldiers in the stone chamber, about five or six, similar to the previous rooms.

However, standing behind the sand soldiers, there were two distinctly different figures.

One got bigger, and the other got smaller.

Of course, what Aono cared about more than their size was the blue system tag on their heads.

[General Sand, lv.38 (Elite)]

Sand Mage lv.38 (Elite)