Io touched down and everyone got off besides Toxic Donkey and I.

  “Io, can you stay like this? I don’t want to walk over the sand…”

  Shit where is it!

  I was looking through my dimensional pocket for sand repelling clothes, for my fox onesie but I couldn’t find it.

  Nooo! My life... is over… Screw this it’s time for [Meteor]!

  “Noo!” Toxic Donkey dove at me and pushed me off Io which interrupted my [Meteor] cast but what was worse was that I fell in the sand.

  So, you have declared war on me!

  My tail used [Howling Updraft] and launched Toxic Donkey off Io and he also fell in the sand after making some strange and funny flips.

  “So, you have chosen death! Ouch sand in my eye! This place sucks!”

  Then let me [Meteor] this place!

  “And what about us?”

  Just dodge?

  “How am I supposed to dodge a [Meteor]?”

  You can’t? Sounds like a skill issue to me.

  “Hey stop fighting! Let’s find the dungeon!” A random adventurer said, deciding that he would be the leader. “Let’s split up in two groups. Our group has cleared the first floor of the Nightmare dungeon so we will be the leaders. Water users are useless in this arid area so you can go with the other group.”

  Uhh sure.

  The arrogant team got the best adventurers and headed north west. Toxic Donkey, Io and I got left with the unconscious Golden Angels, Wild Fang and 7 other adventurers that were quite weak. They took Sandy and I was sure all this sand is his fault.

  Toxic Donkey shook his head. “Why are they this stupid? Does the world know that you can use other stuff besides water magic?”

  I honestly don’t even know what the world thinks of me anymore, either way this works out for us, all the weaklings left.

  “Uhh, what do you mean? All the strong adventurers went with Sendly and Virion.” The woman, who had lost her husband, said, thinking that we were the weaker team.

  They… left a dragon in the ‘weaker’ team. That should say enough.

  “I think they went for a team that was easier to move around with. They are all in parties with each other, while we are just individual adventurers.”

  Toxic Donkey’s assessment seemed correct. It was still stupid of them to leave a dragon and all the Golden Angels behind.

  Why do I always get to deal with unreasonable people. Do any of you know some healing skills? It sucks to have all our Golden Angels be knocked out. It just makes me think this all has been planned.

  The widow walked over to Healerguy and used some weak healing spells. I took clothes out of my dimensional pocket and had the other adventurers dress them. Io was using her wings to protect us from the sandstorm.

  “This place is stupid. Let’s find a space out of the sand.”

  I nodded and we took the unconscious people on our shoulders and dragged them to a rocky formation. We found a spot that was hollowed out and used it as shelter. Io turned into her human form and I threw some clothes at her.

  “So, what now? The investigation… There’s only sand here.” Toxic Donkey said while shaking sand out of his pockets.

  While I agree there is still something that bothers me, the mimic, taking out all the healers. Doesn’t this sound suspicious to you?

  I said while I was getting the sand out of my tail, having a fluffy tail surely backfires greatly when sand enters the battlefield. More reasons to hate sand. Getting sand out of fluffy tails is a nightmare!

  “But we didn’t find anything and now were stuck in this hell!”

  “Uhh guys, what is that?” A random adventurer pointed at something in the distance. It was round, brown and it looked dried up but had large eyes and a large creepy mouth full with sharp teeth. It looked monstrous and ugly.

  So, Satan has come to collect our souls.

  “I am too young to die…” Kyle and I collapsed to the floor.

  “What is with you guys! It’s probably just a monster!” The smartass adventurer commented but Kyle’s and my morale were rock bottom.

  “I will take care of it! Take this!” Io used fire [Dragonbreath] and torched the strange monster. It writhed and screamed and it screamed again and again. Wait those screams didn’t come from that monster. A horde of the same monsters appeared and they were all screaming.

  Screw this!

  We got covered in illusions and the horde ran to a hollowed-out space far from us, thinking we were there.

  “Huh that’s weird, not that I’m complaining.” The random adventurers said, having no clue what just happened.

  I want to go home…

  Healerguy moved, groaned and got up. “Ugh, my body hurts. What happened?”

  We explained the situation to him. He also agreed that this seemed quite deliberate. He rested for a bit then healed himself first and then started to heal the Golden Angels. “Thank you, guys. I will file a report to complain about the behavior of those other adventurers. This is not a situation where the group should split up.”

  They probably want to find the dungeon first, complete it and get all the credit.

  “I see, also Agnis, I forgot to tell you this but you really should visit Giana. She wants to talk.”

  Uhh I will get to it. Someday.

  “I am not so sure about that, you’re a master of evading and avoiding but I suppose that’s what has kept you alive for so long.”

  “Oh Healerguy tell me about this Giana! What is Agnis’ girlfriend like?” Toxic Donkey said. Is Healerguy’s nosiness rubbing off on him?

  She is not my girlfriend!

  “Yet! So, tell me Healerguy!”

  “Uhh, this can wait Kyle, I need to heal the others first.”

  Yeah, stop harassing him! Such a Toxic Donkey!

  Healerguy got the other healers up in no time and Wild Fang also got up. “Wow that was a wild dream!”

  “That wasn’t a dream, sorry Wild Fang, I didn’t realize that the sickbay was a trap…” Healerguy seemed to feel responsible for this disaster. But it’s not his fault that this place is filled with sand, which is the real disaster.

  I still don’t understand how people can live in places where it rains sand, there’s sand in the food, in your clothing, in your tails. I freaked out and resumed gettting all the sand out of my tail.

  Ugh! I had brushed it before I came here! My beautiful tail! I will never forgive sand!

  “So, what is the plan? We’re quite stranded here.”

  Don’t you mean Sanded?

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Kyle smacked me.

  Healerguy sat down and took out a tablet. “No reception here, as expected. Normally I would suggest to complete the assignment but a lot of strange things are going on so I would recommend going back as soon as possible. We will be able to report what this place is like and return with a team that’s better equipped for this situation.”

  Toxic Donkey and I will sacrifice our spots for more eager and willing adventurers, it’s only fair, we should give them a chance too.

  Toxic Donkey nodded in agreement.

  Healerguy shook his head and sighed. “That’s the most insincere decline I’ve heard in a while…”

  “We don’t like sand but what are we going to do with the other adventurers? I would like to leave them behind but they are quite strong and it would be a great loss for the AA.” Toxic Donkey said as he helped Io get sand out of her hair. I had almost forgotten that they were a couple. I then got struck wth an idea.

  I have an idea! I will work on my boat magic. You guys go get a better grasp of what this Island is like while I do that. When I’m done and I made a boat, I will create illusions to make them think the boat is the dungeon. We lure them in, they think they’re in a dungeon and we will use the boat to go back. They also won’t be a pain in the ass as bonus points!

  Healerguy seemed to process my idea. “Can you pull that off? Making a boat that can bring us back and create a dungeon with illusions?”

  Uhh, first part not sure, last part absolutely! I’m 100% confident I can pull it off!

  “Probably because he made a dungeon before…” Toxic Donkey said with a malicious glint in his eyes.

  “Interesting, tell me about that later Kyle. Let’s go with that plan.”

  Do you really need to spill all the beans to Healerguy?

  Toxic Donkey stuck out his tongue and our team started to get ready to explore a bit while I started to work on boat magic. I can’t believe I’m actually doing this. What do I know about boats? They have a hull, sails, a deck, cannons, a kitchen maybe a rudder. That should be enough, right? It doesn’t need to be a real boat, just boat enough to bring us back home.

  I could freeze the pieces of the boat and then freeze them together but it would be more efficient if I made a magic circle that created a functioning boat and tweak it later to make it more… boat like. I’m not a boat expert so it’s going to have flaws.

  Everyone spread out except for one Golden Angel who stayed with me. I created the basis of the magic circle, added runes for the element which is frost, then tweaked the size shape and purpose. I messed around more and created the first prototype.

  Gogo boat magic!

  I used [Boat Magic] and what appeared was a boat! At least if you knew it was a boat it would be recognized as such.

  [Boat Magic v1.0] is a bust!

  I used [Boat Magic v2.0]. it was better but still shitty. I kept going until I arrived at [Boat magic v7.1]. It was too small though so I tweaked it more and more and arrived at a decent sized ship. [Boat Magic v7.5.2] was the version that I would go with, I think. It had taken me almost 3 hours to create this as this is so hard without the required setup.

  “Isn’t a ship made out of ice going to cause troubles?”

  The random healer posed a good question but this was frost magic so it wouldn’t melt or break unless hit with strong lost magic or divine energy. But if that happens then the boat breaking was the least of our problems.

  Fighting a god on the ocean… oof. I would rather avoid that. If I was alone maybe. Inyr is probably also still sleeping so no ‘Deus ex machina’ for me. Maybe I should piss off Della so she would come and help me when I get into trouble. She might slap me around a bit but at least she wouldn’t kill me.

  I walked toward the sandy shore of this nightmare island and tested out how well my boat floated. It floated too well and capsized. Isn’t the boat supposed to sink a bit deeper into the water? Do I need to put heavy stuff in it? I took random heavy objects out of my dimensional pocket and froze them to the inside and bottom of the hull which seemed to work.

  So, this is how ships work.

  More ballast got added until the ship floated like most normal ships do. I was unsure if I could solve this with magic. Frost magic was lighter than water. My water filled [Ice Mines] came to mind and I tweaked the magic circle a bit more and made a second ship. It took in water and used it as ballast after which it froze the chambers shut and trapped the water.

  Wow boats are difficult.

  Some extra ballast would make the ship perfect but this was good enough. I dispelled the earlier version of this ship. I was done! I layered illusions over it so it looked like a normal ship. Although my ship had a lot of cannons. They were my [Steam cannon v2.0].

  The final version was [Boat Magic v8.2.1] but it will be simplified to [Boat Magic].

  After layering illusions over it to make it look like a real ship, I layered illusions over it to make it look like a dungeon. The insides would be similar to the jungle dungeon I had visited with Elliana near the elven village.

  It was done! Now to make illusions to lure those idiots into the ship. I sent a flare into the sky which would notify my team that I was done. Maybe it would attract the idiots too.

  My curiosity for this island had been completely killed by this shitty sand. I dusted all the sand off me and inspected my tail. It’s going to take forever to get the sand out of it. I kept improving the boat/dungeon when I felt something messing around with my tail.

  Hey Toxic Donkey, who gave you permission to touch my tail? Do you want to get curs..

  I turned around and saw one of those creepy monsters chomping down on my tail.

  Get the fuck off my tail!

  I yanked my tail out of its mouth and smacked it away with the same tail. The monster screamed as it flew away and this attracted more of those tail biters.

  You got to be fucking kidding me.

  It did feel oddly satisfying to smack that monster away with my tail. I confronted the horde of tail biters and I tried to only attack by smacking them with my tail. I had a good balance but spinning around and moving around like this in the sand was quite difficult. A good exercise for my balance and ankles.

  I made spins on various axis to keep these monsters away from me. I could only use 1 tail so I had to be creative with my movements. I did unfortunately, mess up several times, fell over and ate sand. This made me more determined to take out my frustration on these tail biters.

  Wild Fang arrived first. “Whoa, this is wild! So, there was an option to do this with your tail?” He tried to copy me but he fell over multiple times.

  It’s quite rough because of this shitty sand.

  Wild fang started to get better at it but his technique was… wild.

  “Haha this is wild! And it feels so good! Take that! [Wild Tail Slam]!” The monster got launched into the distance and I heard a loud ‘Ow’.

  Uhh I think you hit someone with hat Wild Fang.

  “I bear no responsibility for that wild accident!”

  I agree! They should just dodge!

  Toxic Donkey, Io, Healerguy and the rest arrived at Wild Fang and me tail smacking monsters away.

  “Who of you smacked that monster at me? I bet it was you Agnis!” Toxic Donkey said angrily while breathing heavily.

  Sorry bud I won’t take the fall for this.

  “It was a wild accident!”

  “So this is what those screams were about… The fighting style of you two is quite… inefficient…” Healerguy said disapprovingly.

  All the monsters got wiped out 10 minutes after my allies had arrived.

  Toxic Donkey approached me. “Did you leave some for us or were you trying something stupid again?”

  It’s not stupid if it works! The boat is finished! To you guys it will look like a ship to those idiots it will look like a ship…dungeon!

  “And what is it really?”

  A ship?

  “So, it’s not a raft or a rock disguised as a ship?”

  Silly donkey, we can’t get back home on a rock!

  “Why is there no reaction to ‘raft’…”

  It’s not a raft! A raft doesn’t have a kitchen!

  “Right…”

  The ship got boarded and only Toxic Donkey, Io and I stayed behind.

  “Let’s go chase them on to the boat!” Io was about to turn into her dragon form again but Toxic Donkey stopped her.

  “Io, please... no more dragon transformations! Your wardrobe can’t handle it!”

  Yeah, Io, think about Kyle, do you think he likes it that everyone sees his chick naked?”

  “Ohh, I’m sorry Kyle.” Kyle pulled his donkey hood more over his head to hide his reddened face.

  You have to be direct and clear with dragons Kyle, else they won’t get it. Anyway! Chasing them to this spot isn’t such a bad idea! Let’s see what kind of illusion am I going to make! Oh, maybe of the mimic that followed them on land! Hehe it’s time to suffer assholes!

  “Do you even need us for this?”

  Oh, I do here is the plan.