"I want to ask a question: why is your merchant group's travel route map so similar to our route deep into the Eight Greed Kings desert?" Barrett asked.
"Ah? Is that the case?" Steve wore a shocked expression.
"I happened to see your map and noticed a lot of similarities," Barrett said.
"Is that so? You have a map of the Eight Greed Kings desert too?" Steve asked cautiously. "Could I borrow it for a look?"
"It's just a map, nothing special to see," Barrett hesitated.
"I just want to get a sense of what other hydrological and terrain maps of the Eight Greed Kings desert look like..."
Steve immediately dropped his captain's airs and begged persistently for Barrett to lend him the map. With no other choice, Barrett rummaged through his spatial ring for a moment and handed over a few parchment maps to Steve.
"This is a map surveyed by the Slane Theocracy's Six Scriptures—it's extremely valuable. Make sure to return it right away once you're done," Barrett instructed.
Steve nodded eagerly in agreement, took the maps, and headed back to the captain's quarters, saying he wanted to study them thoroughly.
...
The calm days didn't last even two full ones. One night, a continuous clatter of metal impacts suddenly rang out from the side of the Emerald Sandboat warship, like a shower of metal raindrops pounding the vessel.
WOO!~ A sharp steam whistle blared immediately. Soon, everyone realized it was the sound of armor-piercing arrows piercing through the deck and hull.
A white phosphorus flare shot up into the pitch-black night sky, its white glow spilling over the land. Under the light as bright as day, the crew saw the scene below the ship, and their faces turned deathly pale.
An army made of yellow sand and skeletons was marching rapidly across the desert. They pursued the three-masted warship, their iron crossbows and longbows launching volley after volley of rusted copper arrows. Several night-shift crew members had already met gruesome deaths under the arrow rain.
This army seemed like skeletons buried in the desert for hundreds of years. They rode skeletal horses, their blades spotted with rust, and grains of sand spilled from the fine cracks in their skulls and neck bones.
Under the eerie moonlight, the vast skeleton legion charged across the desert, drawing ever closer to the Emerald Sandboat three-masted warship. Already, a few mounted skeleton soldiers were swinging iron hooks in their hands, trying to fling them onto the deck and climb aboard.
"FIRE THE CANNONS! FIRE! Let these remnants of the Eight Greed Kings see the might of us City Alliance folk!" First Mate Bill waved his curved blade, roaring madly as he urged the crew on.
The Emerald Sandboat was equipped with 32 16-pound fire magic cannons: 12 on the top deck, 18 inside the cabins, one at the bow, and one at the stern.
The crew rushed to their stations, loading crystals into the cannon chambers. The dark muzzles spat out tongues of flame, and brilliant magical shells arced through the air, slamming into the skeleton legion and blasting apart huge swaths of them, scattering bones and dust in all directions.
EeDechi stood on the deck, leaning over to watch the skeleton soldiers below. The bursts of fire from the cannons lit up her face brightly.
The skeleton soldiers blew hoarse, droning notes on their copper horns, merging into a single raspy voice: "LIVING FLESH, OFFER UP YOUR BLOOD AND MEAT!!"
EeDechi raised her hand, unleashing the 5th Tier spell "Earthquake" over and over, turning herself into something like a mobile artillery piece as she bombarded the skeletons trying to climb the deck into fragments.
Barrett stood nearby, drawing his bow and loosing arrows that pierced the skulls of dozens of cavalry skeletons. Though he excelled with throwing axes, he was an all-around adventurer, skilled with bows as well.
Franco wasn't idle either; he stood with two traveling mages, casting magical light shields and offensive spells from the 10th tier.
"SKELETONS ARE BOARDING THE SHIP!" A crew member at the stern howled in agony. EeDechi and Barrett hurried over, but they were already too late.
Several crew members were snagged by magic chains resembling scorpion tails, the sharp iron hooks piercing straight through their guts, dragging them alive off the ship and into the yellow sands below. More than a dozen streaks of dripping blood on the deck spoke of their dying agony.
The others on board had no intention of saving them. The three-masted warship cranked its speed to the max, plowing through the dunes like a ship cleaving waves, racing away from the battlefield in a desperate bid to shake off the skeleton legion's pursuit.
After battling fiercely for half the night, the skeleton legion had taken heavy losses, their fierce assault finally petering out. Only a scattered few dozen skeleton soldiers remained, standing atop the dunes, gazing distantly as the Emerald Sandboat pulled away.
"These are all undead armies from the Eight Greed Kings era. They've been buried in the yellow sands, their spirits refusing to fade, waiting to ambush any travelers passing by," Captain Steve sighed. He directed the crew to inspect the ship's damage—they might need to stop for repairs.
...
Four or five days flew by in a blink. EeDechi leaned against the deck railing, gazing out at the desert landscape.
The boundless desert stretched like a yellow ocean, the sun beating down and sparking a thousand points of light. The rolling dunes truly resembled waves on the sea, and the Emerald Sandboat was sailing across this sandy expanse.
Over these past few days, attacks from all sorts of desert monsters—Sandstorm Stalkers, skeleton soldiers, ghosts, corrosion beasts...—had come one after another without end. The Eight Greed Kings desert had fully bared its vicious fangs to the travelers, hell-bent on stripping this lone, struggling sailship to the bone, then devouring its flesh and picking it clean.
The carefree mood from when they first entered the Eight Greed Kings desert had vanished like a drop of water in the sand. The Golden Aquarius merchant group had already lost more than ten crew members, most of them dragged into the yellow sands by the monsters, their bodies gone without a trace.
And this was still the result with EeDechi turning the tide; if not for the Last Defender of the Way adventurer team, the Golden Aquarius merchant group would have been wiped out long ago.
The whole ship was steeped in an atmosphere of sorrow and exhaustion, but the journey continued.
"Put your backs into it! Don't slack off, don't give up! We're already very close to the Vast Stellar Gate; in just a few more days, we'll pass through the Vast Stellar Gate and return to our homeland. Then, everyone will earn chests full of gold coins—so many they won't even fit in your bathtubs!..."
Captain Steve stood on the bridge, using a magical amplification device to shout encouragement, boosting the crew's morale. If it weren't for this energetic middle-aged man constantly inspiring everyone, the crew would probably have sunk into despair in this hopeless desert.
The three-masted warship traveled a distance, and amid the endless sand and dust, earthy yellow towers loomed behind the dunes. It was another Eight Greed Kings city ruin buried in the winds and sands. The captain ordered the ship to slow down and stop, heading into the ruins to dig for treasures.
The crew disembarked under the scorching sun, shoveling away the yellow sand and dust, and soon collected a large amount of gold and silver vessels, along with some magical items of unknown effects—wondering if there were any terrifying things like the Box of Bewilderment among them.
Wiping the lustrous treasures in their hands, the crew members were all grinning happily, and the captain and first mate were beaming with joy.
Digging up ruins and picking up treasures along the way was one of the few activities that brought hope. Everyone believed they could strike it rich, of course, on the condition that they made it to the Vast Stellar Gate alive.
Barrett naturally wasn't idle either. As a veteran adventurer, when it came to searching for gold, silver, and jewels in ruins and ancient castles, these crew members and merchants had to admit defeat.
Casually, Barrett took out his compass and glanced at it. Rarely, the compass needle wasn't swinging around like it was drunk. The surging magical turbulence in the Eight Greed Kings desert, and the magnetic field disruptions caused by magic, often made compasses fail.
The compass's lodestone needle pointed south at one end, and Barrett noticed that this matched the direction of the three-masted warship's bow—the Emerald Sandboat was still heading deep into the Eight Greed Kings desert.