The chilly moonlight shone through the porthole into the room, making the rough wooden floor look like it was coated with a layer of white frost.
Steve still retained the appearance of a bloodthirsty fiend, with sharp white fangs protruding out, and bulging eyes crawling with bloodshot veins. But just a few minutes ago, he was still the captain of this ship, the leader of the Golden Aquarius traveling merchant group.
The surrounding crew members timidly emerged from their hiding spots, silently walking to Steve's side, simultaneously removing their hats and placing hands on their chests, mourning the former captain.
"The Eight Greed Kings Desert, truly a dangerous and cruel place," EeDechi sighed softly.
Things had come to this, and there was no way to turn back. Barrett squatted down, removing the spatial ring from Steve's hand. The ship's only correct navigation chart should be hidden in the spatial ring.
Franco put his (self-proclaimed) legendary mage skills to use, silently chanting a spell to remove the captain's soul imprint from the spatial ring, then dumping out all the contents inside.
Two gilt boxes with open lids rolled across the ground with a gurgling sound. One was the Box of Bewilderment that a crew member had opened before, releasing a devil that possessed the crew member and led to the tragedy of the crew's dormitory being massacred. The other Box of Bewilderment must have been the one Steve opened.
Barrett picked up these two culprits and hurled them into the vast desert, hoping that such scourges wouldn't escape the Eight Greed Kings Desert.
The first mate Bill quickly found the correct navigation chart; the path to the Vast Stellar Gate should head northeast, not continuing south deeper into the Eight Greed Kings Desert.
In a bleak atmosphere, the three-masted warship Emerald Sandboat slowly turned its bow, sailing toward the Vast Stellar Gate.
The first mate led a group of crew members, along with the adventure team and travelling mages they'd hired, to stand before EeDechi. They thanked her and begged the Last Defender of the Way adventurer team to escort them for another stretch of the journey, all the way to the Vast Stellar Gate.
EeDechi agreed without hesitation, but seeing everyone's downcast faces, she stepped up onto the high platform at the edge of the hall, cleared her throat lightly, and began delivering an important speech to rally morale and lift spirits:
"No matter what difficulties we face, don't be afraid—face them with a smile. The best way to conquer fear is to confront it head-on. Persistence leads to victory—keep going!..."
Barrett sat below the stage, a glittering golden parchment spread out on his table. It was the Imperial Map that Steve had pieced together.
Barrett pulled out his own two Imperial Map Fragment pieces, muttering to himself in his mind: What was the deal with his own Imperial Map Fragments?
Still, Steve's Imperial Map provided a wealth of valuable information. The Eight Greed Kings Desert could be divided into an outer ring, an inner ring, and the most central ancient city, where legendary riches that could rival entire kingdoms—and the power the Eight Greed Kings used to rule the world—were said to be buried...
...
The fallout from Steve finally died down. Bill Hades took over as acting captain, leading the three-masted warship Emerald Sandboat at full speed toward the Vast Stellar Gate.
Along the way, no one dwelled too much on the treasures of the Eight Greed Kings Desert. Even when they passed through sand-choked city ruins and spotted clock towers and ancient buildings tilted and half-buried in the desert, the Emerald Sandboat didn't pause for a second, racing away.
In the dead of night, EeDechi and Barrett leaned against the deck railing, checking their direction against the positions of the stars in the sky. Magical surges raged wildly through the Eight Greed Kings Desert, indirectly scrambling the magnetic fields and often rendering compasses completely useless.
Sandstorms that blotted out the sky and sun were as common as dirt, turning the heavens a murky yellow and leaving not a single star visible at night. The travelling mages on the ship often had to fly far up into the sky, piercing through the thick, dark yellow clouds, just to use the constellations in the night sky to figure out their direction.
Tonight, though, was a rare clear evening, with a crescent moon shining bright and pure, and pale yellow stars clearly in view. Across the vast desert landscape, a few lonely cacti stood rooted in the sand dunes.
EeDechi looked up at the sky, learning to spot those strange constellations with Barrett's help. Suddenly, her eyes lit up as she saw streaks of silvery white glow in the clear night sky, each trailing a long tail and streaking diagonally across the heavens.
"Meteor shower! It's a meteor shower!" "The meteor shower's here!"
The night watch crew shouted out in excitement, and cabin windows flung open one by one, heads poking out to gaze at the meteor shower in the sky, soaking in this rare and beautiful sight.
"A meteor shower, huh? Should I make a wish? I heard wishing on shooting stars really works." EeDechi pressed her hands together, closed her eyes, and murmured to herself.
"But the legend I heard is that for every shooting star that falls from the sky, someone in the world passes away," Barrett teased.
"So, you're saying that for every person who dies, a wish gets granted?" Franco summed up.
"That's not far off—Equivalent Exchange." A gray-haired travelling mage leaned against the railing, oak goblet in hand, and chugged a big swig of wine before continuing:
"Equivalent Exchange is the fundamental rule of the world. To gain something, you have to give something up, just like us—we might make it across the desert and rake in a fortune, but it'll cost a ton of lives, maybe even our own."
EeDechi knew this older travelling mage had lost his only mage apprentice during the journey.
That mage apprentice was tough and hardworking, with an honest personality. He was willing to join the travelling mage on endless travels, but got dragged off the ship by skeletons attacking the Emerald Sandboat, vanishing into the endless desert. Ever since, the travelling mage had been drowning his sorrows in booze day after day, cursing his own uselessness.
A crew member in a felt hat came rushing excitedly onto the deck to see the spectacular meteor shower, but Bill Hades grumbled and swore as he chased him back to the ship's control room to keep steering. Even at night, the Emerald Sandboat didn't slow its pace toward the Vast Stellar Gate.
BOOM!
Suddenly, an earth-shattering explosion erupted from the bottom of the ship, causing the entire warship to tilt abruptly and halt its forward motion, with the propeller at the stern grinding out Ka-Ka sounds.
Everyone stared in shock toward the ship's underbelly, only to see a massive pincer claw piercing through the hull, while its owner's enormous body hunkered down in the sand, exposing a menacing brownish-yellow shell.
"Burrowing fiend! Sand burrower lizard!" The crowd cried out in alarm, utterly horrified.
"How the hell did this thing get so huge?" Barrett marveled. He remembered sand burrower lizards usually only grew to the size of a canoe; all he could say was that the monsters in the Eight Greed Kings were way too freaky.
The sand burrower lizard thrust half its body out of the desert, raising its claws toward the pale-faced crowd on the ship, flaunting its steel-like massive jaws and sharp iron-pincer foreclaws. It planned to use those claws to rip apart this wooden magic ship, then devour the people inside like squashing bugs.
"You ruined my meteor shower viewing—drop dead!"
EeDechi scowled in annoyance, facing the sand burrower lizard's gaping bloody maw head-on. She leaped off the deck in a single bound, raising her giant sword to slash down.
BANG!
The strike landed solid, the sound of bones cracking and shattering like popping beans in an endless chain. The sand burrower lizard, which had been strutting its stuff just moments ago, now had its entire forejaw fractured, its once rock-solid body slumping like mud, its head and eyes bursting open, blood plasma spraying and drenching the sand dune, turning the barren sands a vivid crimson.
With the troublemaking monster taken care of, everyone let out a sigh of relief, but a graver problem stared them in the face: the power core of the Emerald Sandboat was wrecked, and the mechanical parts inside were damaged.
Bill Hades wore a troubled frown, but there was no helping it; he could only order the crew to shift the sand burrower lizard's corpse aside, halt on the spot, and use the ship's spare components to fix the vessel.
The Emerald Sandboat three-masted warship was stuck like a beached whale, unable to budge. Luckily, this wasn't a genuine ocean, or the holed Emerald Sandboat would sink to the bottom.
"By Gaia, I hope we fix the ship fast, and no monsters hit us in the meantime." Bill prayed.
If another terrifying monster struck, even with the Emerald Sandboat's 32 fire magic cannons, it'd just be a sitting duck.
The monsters in the Eight Greed Kings Desert, boosted by the winds and sands, mostly unleashed devastating wide-range attacks; EeDechi couldn't possibly save every life on board.
"First mate, you're a real jinx!" The travelling mage leaned on the railing, forcing a bitter smile onto his lips.
Shrill wails like screaming ghosts echoed one after another, as if hell's demons were harmonizing in chorus. In the distance, dust clouds billowed high, and seven or eight murky yellow sandstorm tornadoes raced straight toward the stranded Emerald Sandboat.