SLV Chapter 17: The Beginning of a Great Upheaval!
April 12
But thinking it through carefully, the excitement that had risen from Lin En's speculation began to fade under the cool weight of reason.
"Skeletons this strong, with only three standard sand spirit arrow towers, they normally wouldn't hold."
"But Zalimu has slaves. He can build some defensive earthworks."
"And then use the slaves as part of the defense line..."
It might not guarantee a successful claim on Zalimu's remains, but Lin En had no intention of letting the opportunity pass either.
With the Bactrian camel now on hand, going and coming back was far more practical.
When dawn broke tomorrow, riding over to check on Zalimu's oasis would be perfectly manageable.
If Zalimu's oasis had truly been overrun, he could take every source energy obelisk there for himself and even if that didn't work out, Lin En was certain the source energy obelisks for sand spirit arrow towers would never be as impossible to obtain as they once were.
There would definitely be other oases that had been destroyed, and plenty more like his own that had been left in a half-dead state.
That meant a large quantity of source energy obelisks would inevitably flow onto the market.
With enough source stones, there would be no need to worry about not finding any to buy and in truth, the changes wouldn't stop there.
After this blood moon, the entire Atreydi City-State, and perhaps the whole desert, was about to enter a period of sweeping upheaval.
For one, source arts masters would see their status rise again, reaching heights never seen before.
Even if source energy obelisks became available, there would never be enough.
Without sufficient sand spirit arrow towers, upgrading the ones you had would become the only path forward.
Upgrading sand spirit arrow towers would go from a luxury to a necessity for slaveowners and he himself was something close to half a source arts master.
There would be far too many cascading consequences to count. A vast number of things would shift because of this blood moon.
If he could seize even a few of the opportunities that came out of this upheaval...
His mind was still turning over what changes might follow the blood moon when, without warning, Lin En felt his connection to the sand spirit mechanism tower cut off completely.
He spun around. The light orb at the top of the mechanism tower had gone dark.
In that same instant, the glowing skeleton tide that had been pushed back surged forward again in a fierce counterattack.
The source stone's energy had run dry, just as he had feared but in the very next moment, the light orb at the tower's peak took shape again, blazing as brilliantly as it had at the start.
Lin En let out a slow breath.
Thank goodness he had rigged that automatic source stone feeder in advance.
Without it, there would have been no way for him to get outside in time to reload the mechanism tower manually.
Judging from what he had just witnessed, the counterattack the glowing skeletons would have launched in that gap, he would not have made it back.
He took control of the mechanism tower again and quickly suppressed the glowing skeleton tide once more.
At the same time, he quietly replayed in his mind how long the mechanism tower had taken to exhaust a single source stone.
After a rough calculation, he estimated that running the mechanism tower continuously through a full blood moon night would consume roughly four source stones in total.
Thirty stones loaded into the feeder was more than sufficient.
Once the situation was fully under control again, Lin En allowed himself to relax and looked out at the oasis.
The view outside had transformed completely.
Skeletons were falling in great swaths, like grass before a blade.
Especially the ones that the mechanism tower's sand arrows struck directly, blasted into scattered heaps of bone.
In Lin En's eyes, the sight was deeply satisfying and even more electrifying was what gleamed faintly beneath all those shattered skeletal remains, a deep blue shimmer rising from the bones!
What was that?
Those were all source stones!
The number of skeletons on this blood moon night was at least four or five times what a normal night produced and they had all marched in with organized purpose, straight into the line of fire.
A horde of skeletons this size, the source stones they could yield, Lin En estimated it would come to at least two hundred.
This was, without question, a windfall.
Two hundred source stones might not be enough to purchase something as rare and precious as a source energy obelisk but it would be more than enough to buy slaves.
Especially the kind of high-scoring slaves he needed most.
The Triumph Festival slave auction in six days...
Lin En thought back to what the slave trader who had sold him Milya had mentioned at the very beginning.
Something about noblewomen and the like. That sort would likely carry respectable scores and there might be other surprises as well.
Two hundred source stones, added to whatever he could accumulate over the coming days, would give him the means to not miss a single worthwhile slave.
Which in turn would let him push his slaveowner score upward rapidly.
As long as he kept using the Slaveowner's Manual to unlock more and more rewards, his ability to generate source stones would grow in kind.
"Awooo!"
At that moment, Lin En suddenly heard a wolf's howl from behind him.
He turned quickly.
Fortune, the lame she-wolf, had jumped to her feet and was barking furiously at the door.
She looked agitated beyond reason.
"Ah!"
Milya, who had been sitting quietly to the side, was startled badly. She ran toward Lin En on instinct.
"Don't be scared, Milya."
Lin En caught her small hand and found it ice cold.
It was easy to imagine how frightened she had been throughout all of this, sitting there without making a sound, waiting obediently on the bed.
"Master, I'm sorry. Milya has disturbed you."
Milya, realizing what she had done, felt a flash of guilt cross her eyes.
"It's all right."
Lin En offered another word of reassurance, then turned back to look at Fortune in the corner with a furrowed brow.
"Awooo! Arwoof! Woof!"
Fortune's body was low to the ground, curled forward in a tight crouch.
Seeing that she had caught Lin En's attention, she barked at the door several more times in rapid succession, glancing back at Lin En after each one.
The door?
Had Fortune sensed some kind of danger?
Lin En immediately pressed his head out through the ventilation gap.
He hoped it wasn't some skeleton business at the door. That would be far too alarming but when he checked the doorway, he found nothing. Not a single thing out of place.
The surrounding area of the shack was equally clear.
"Woof! Awoo! Woof!"
Yet Fortune's barking only grew more frantic, short and sharp and loud.
There was genuinely nothing nearby.
Could Fortune be sensing danger from much farther away?
Lin En had suspected from the start that desert wolves surviving in the lethal wilderness must possess some exceptional alertness but he had never considered that a desert wolf might have some kind of innate supernatural sense for danger.
If that was truly the case, finding her had been a real treasure.
Fortune kept barking without pause. Lin En swept his gaze over the outside in every direction.
He was about to give up when a distant point of light caught his eye.
At first glance it looked almost like a torch.
"What is that? Why is there a light out there?"
He narrowed his eyes and stared at it for a moment, and it seemed to grow larger in his field of vision.
Wait.
It wasn't growing larger.
It was getting closer.
"Get down!"
With no time to figure out what it was, Lin En wrapped his arms around Milya and pulled her beneath him.
A tremendous boom rang out from outside.
The wooden shack shook violently. Sand that had accumulated on the ceiling for who knew how long rained down, filling the room instantly with a haze.
"Pfft!"
Lin En slowly sat up, spat out a mouthful of ancient accumulated sand, then pressed himself back to the ventilation gap, this time only putting half his head through.
A crater had appeared in the sand not far away.
Skeletons could attack at range?
Lin En immediately turned his head toward the direction the light had come from.
He could finally make out something in the extreme distance.
A skeleton, standing there motionlessly far beyond the range of any tower, making no move to approach the oasis the way the others did.
In the skeleton's raised hand was something that glowed with a deep blue light, aimed directly at his oasis.
It appeared to be... a bow.
A bow?
A glowing bow?!
Was this... a skeleton archer?
A skeleton archer. He had never heard of such a thing.
How was it that the very first blood moon night after crossing over had to come packed with so many things that had no right to exist?
And what on earth was this glowing bow?
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