SLV Chapter 16: Ferocious Skeletons! The Mechanism Tower's Might!
April 12
"Master, I found the hemp rope!"
"Well done, Milya."
Lin En heard Milya's voice and answered with a single easy word.
Milya had been quietly hoping she might get another pat on the head, but none came.
Feeling a small pang of disappointment, she stepped to one side and didn't interrupt further.
Lin En was focused entirely on what he was building in his hands, checking the sky at intervals with a glance.
"Should still have enough time."
He had only thought of the problem after the upgrade was already finished.
With the sand spirit mechanism tower now strengthened, both fire rate and attack power had improved substantially.
Would a single source stone still last through an entire night?
Lin En had no idea but to be safe, he had assumed the worst possible scenario, that the upgrade would cause source energy to drain faster, unable to sustain a full night of operation and since he couldn't risk running outside mid-battle to manually feed the tower, he had urgently set about building the thing in his hands.
"Done!"
Lin En held up the modified clay pot and examined it carefully.
Checking that the structure was sound.
Inside, he had rigged strips of torn linen to cradle the source stones, with chair legs serving as rails.
If he lashed this modified pot to the sand spirit mechanism tower and aimed it correctly over the source stone slot of the obelisk, it would feed the tower automatically.
He loaded all the remaining twenty-odd source stones into the linen cradle inside the pot.
Once he confirmed they would roll down one after another, Lin En headed outside without delay.
The sky had deepened to a dark red. Night was moments away.
"Milya, bring the rope."
"Yes, Master!"
They stepped out of the shack together and came to the base of the sand spirit mechanism tower.
Lin En directed Milya to hold the pot at the right angle while he lashed it firmly to the smooth surface of the tower with the hemp rope.
He confirmed it was aligned with the source stone slot inside and then hurried back to the shack with Milya.
Above the horizon, the blood moon rose at last.
Inside the shack, space had grown rather tight.
Milya sat on the bed with her head lowered, lips moving silently.
"Master will definitely be all right..."
She knew exactly how terrible a blood moon night could be. What she had witnessed during her flight still haunted her, casting a long shadow over her heart.
Now that the blood moon was here, Milya's pulse quickened with every passing moment. But all she could do was pray.
Worried about Fortune surviving the blood moon, Lin En had brought her inside as well, a hemp rope loosely tied around her neck in case she panicked and caused some accident.
Fortune offered no resistance and was now crouched in the corner, ears up and alert.
Only the Bactrian camel, taking up the most space of anyone, was unchanged, still methodically working through its cud.
Lin En stood on the table, eyes narrowed, watching the outside through the ventilation gap.
The blood moon had painted the desert a shade of red, like a vision of a desert purgatory.
"Here they come..."
"Hm? That's not right!"
The moment Lin En saw the skeletons crawling out of the sand, his scalp went tight.
One after another, they erupted at a speed far beyond anything a normal night produced, and in numbers that dwarfed anything he had seen before and unlike their usual aimless wandering, these were moving with clear, deliberate purpose, heading straight for Lin En's oasis.
They were forming an enormous tide of bone, about to enter the range of the lead sand spirit arrow tower but what truly made Lin En's skin crawl was not the sheer number of skeletons.
It was that these skeletons were glowing.
Every single one of them was giving off a faint green light, like will-o'-wisps.
Why were they glowing?
He had never seen it before. He had never even heard of it.
Looking at those softly glowing skeletons, Lin En felt a deep unease settle in his gut.
A sharp hiss cut through the air!
One sand spirit arrow tower completed its charge and launched a sand arrow at the first skeleton to cross into its range.
A moment later the second tower fired as well, arrows flying simultaneously.
The towers' accuracy was nothing impressive, but the skeletons were packed so densely together that both arrows found marks almost by accident.
"That effectively improves accuracy, which is something at least... Hm? Why aren't they dead?"
Lin En had barely begun to ease the tension in his chest at that thought when he saw something that stopped him cold.
The two skeletons that had been hit weren't dead.
Because they were glowing in the darkness, he could see it perfectly clearly.
He watched those two skeletons absorb the arrows and saw that all they lost was a few scattered bones.
These glowing skeletons couldn't be killed in a single shot!
This was bad.
Two sand spirit arrow towers were nowhere near enough to hold back an advancing tide of glowing skeletons.
Along the edge of the oasis, a vast sea of bone was beginning to form then, at that very moment, a cluster of glowing skeletons entered the range of the sand spirit mechanism tower.
The mechanism tower responded instantly. The blue orb at its peak pulsed.
A high-pitched hiss rang out, and sand gathered like a constricting python, flowing into the tower. In an instant, several thicker and longer sand arrows coalesced and shot out!
Fire rate up fifty percent. Attack power up fifty percent!
Damage high enough to kill a skeleton outright with a single hit!
One arrow, one kill!
Unlike the regular sand spirit arrow tower, which needed two shots to bring one down.
Under these conditions, a single sand spirit mechanism tower was worth at least three ordinary arrow towers.
That overwhelming firepower tore a gap in the glowing skeleton tide in an instant.
Lin En immediately set the two regular towers to prioritize the skeletons pressing closest then he turned his full attention to the mechanism tower, connecting his focus to it directly.
Wherever the skeletons surged too close, he directed the tower to concentrate fire there.
Under Lin En's control, the situation began to stabilize at last. The spreading tide of bone was pushed back.
"It's a good thing I spent everything preparing for the blood moon and got that tower upgraded to a mechanism tower."
"Otherwise this wave would have been the end. Milya and I would both be dead."
As the situation gradually came under control, Lin En allowed himself a small breath of relief. But in the same moment, a wave of cold dread washed through him.
He quietly turned and looked at Milya, head bowed in prayer.
He could picture it clearly. Without the mechanism tower, he and Milya would have been facing certain death together in complete despair.
At that moment, Milya seemed to feel Lin En's gaze like a gentle touch.
Her body gave a small shudder.
Her wet eyes looked up toward his silhouette.
In them was equal measure of worry and fear.
"Milya is so scared, Master..."
Milya opened her mouth, but the sound was too small for anyone but herself to hear.
"I can't distract Master. Master has already been so kind. He didn't make Milya go outside."
She forced the fear back down with quiet determination and in the silence of her own mind, she returned once more to going over every first aid method Lin En had taught her, as carefully as she could.
…
Watching the situation hold steady and begin to improve, Lin En was suddenly struck by a thought.
Three sand spirit arrow towers were the standard loadout for an outer city oasis.
Even Medya's oasis was no different.
Only a few owners spent the extra source stones to build and maintain additional towers.
Upgrading towers wasn't considered essential either, just a precaution taken by slaveowners with enough source stones who valued their own lives highly.
If that was the case...
His own oasis had an upgraded sand spirit mechanism tower.
That was the only reason things hadn't collapsed completely.
Which meant ordinary oases elsewhere were in serious trouble right now.
Like his unfriendly neighbor, Zalimu, who had been eyeing his source energy obelisks for so long.
If this blood moon took Zalimu with it...
The thought arrived, and the weariness in Lin En's eyes vanished in an instant, replaced by a bright gleam.
If that happened, he could walk over and claim the towers from Zalimu's oasis directly. Three new sand spirit arrow towers for his own land.
If he could get three more and upgrade them all, the next time a blood moon of this scale arrived, he could sleep through it without a care.
How things had turned.
For so long it had been that old schemer Zalimu plotting and coveting his arrow towers.
Now it was his turn to covet Zalimu's.
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