Pan Long fled in one breath until the city's ruins had shrunk to a dark smudge on the horizon. Only then did he stop.
Even now, his heart still raced.
"What the hell was that thing?" he burst out. "What the hell kind of place is this?"
It had scared the life out of him!
Those tentacles were not only enormous, but terrifyingly strong. They had pushed over and snapped the remains of metal buildings as easily as brittle biscuits.
If he had not run so fast, even a brush from one of those tentacles might have cost him an arm or a leg.
Worse, it might have caught him and eaten him.
Any fool could tell there had to be a massive body beneath those tentacles. At his size, he would barely count as a snack. Maybe a sunflower seed, at best?
After a few more curses, he calmed down a little. He stared at the dark smudge, now almost impossible to make out, and fell into thought.
A desert setting, a metal city, a gigantic monster.
Put those three together, and not many possibilities remained.
The first thing that came to mind was an old game. In it, interstellar pioneers discovered a planet covered in Desert. The planet produced a strange mineral that could serve as a highly concentrated energy source and was also the core ingredient in a new life-extending drug.
To seize that mineral, all manner of factions fought across the sand-covered planet. Countless Warrior soldiers and machines clashed without end, while the planet's own terrifying giant creatures added to the carnage... Every piece of ore shipped off-world was soaked in blood.
Was this that world?
He thought about it for a long while, then shook his head.
"No. The monsters and the buildings are both