SLV Chapter 20: Treasure Beneath the Sand Sea
April 12
"So the source energy bow's light simply went out..."
Lin En's reddened eyes filled with sudden understanding.
Only now did the exhaustion begin to reach him.
A night of intense, unbroken combat, managing the situation, controlling both the mechanism tower and the sniper tower, had placed an enormous strain on his mind. Only now did Lin En notice how sluggish his thinking had become.
A memory surfaced unbidden of a general he had once read about who commanded battles for three consecutive nights without sleep.
At the time he had simply felt admiration. Now, having lived through a fraction of something similar, he understood viscerally just how remarkable it was to maintain clear judgment through that kind of sustained, high-intensity pressure.
"The difference between real life and a good story is exactly this. Reality always insists on being unpleasantly specific about the small details."
"I'll need to find some way to manage my own condition going forward. If I'm this worn down when something critical happens and I make a mistake because of fatigue, that could ruin everything."
Lin En noted it quietly to himself, then blinked a few times to wet his eyes.
He looked at the now-darkened source energy bow in his hands, then at the skeleton remains.
"Why did it go dark? Could it be because the skeleton archer is gone?"
"In other words, the skeleton archer itself carried some kind of energy that was feeding into the bow and allowing it to function..."
With a rough hypothesis forming, Lin En examined the source energy bow in his hands.
The longbow appeared to have been made from mountain copper, but showed clear signs of extreme age. Nearly all of the metal's natural luster had faded away.
The surface was covered in dense, intricate patterns.
They looked similar in style to the markings on the sand spirit arrow tower's body, the heart well, and even the slave rune on Milya's back but instinctively, Lin En felt they were not quite the same.
He couldn't articulate the specific difference just yet.
The closest he could manage was the gap between something printed and something written by hand or to put it another way, the patterns on the sand spirit arrow tower were precise and regular, while those on the source energy bow had a slightly loose, uneven quality.
"Strange..."
Unable to work out the reason, Lin En turned the bow over and found an inset slot on the grip.
He recognized it immediately. Clearly this was where a source stone was loaded.
He searched his person and eventually found one stone.
This particular stone had a specific origin. When he had been upgrading the sand spirit sniper tower, he had kept one stone in reserve just in case, and it had ended up not being needed.
Now it happened to be exactly what he needed to test the source energy bow on the spot.
He pressed the source stone into the slot. As expected, it began dissolving into the slot immediately.
The source energy bow blazed back to life with that familiar deep blue radiance.
Even with the rising sun painting the sky gold and red, the bow's glow was strikingly vivid.
"A bow with no string and no arrow. How is it supposed to fire?"
A rough idea was already forming. Lin En raised the source energy bow and tried pulling back an imaginary string.
Sure enough.
He felt a field of force instantly envelop his right arm.
The further back he drew, the stronger the resistance pushing against him and a deep blue arrow of light took shape along with it.
When he could pull no further, Lin En released his right hand.
With a sharp hiss, the light arrow shot away at tremendous speed.
A moment later, a thunderous explosion rang out from beside a distant boulder.
Far more powerful than what he had witnessed from the skeleton archer's shots the night before.
Lin En looked at the distant crater, and felt a surge of pure delight.
He looked back at the source stone slot on the bow. The stone was gone. The source energy bow had gone dark again.
"One full source stone per shot is a much steeper cost than what the sand spirit arrow tower uses."
"But area damage on that scale is absolutely devastating against skeleton hordes. This is an exceptional weapon."
"This is a reliable additional safeguard. As long as source stones hold out, a skeleton horde would find it nearly impossible to breach my territory."
A safeguard was understating it. This was nothing less than a life-saving treasure.
Lin En turned the source energy bow over in his hands and found he couldn't bring himself to put it down.
"Awooo! Awoooo!"
"Awoo!"
At that moment, a series of wolf howls rose from not far away.
Lin En looked up.
Two desert wolves had come running out from behind the boulder, near the edge of the crater his shot had blown out.
They were snarling at him, but both wolves, black-furred and lean, had their ears flat and their tails tucked between their legs.
Trying to look threatening while clearly being not entirely sure about any of this.
He hadn't expected a casual shot to flush out two desert wolves.
These two had apparently been lurking near the boulder for reasons of their own.
"Desert wolves! Now that's useful!"
A look of pleasure crossed his face again.
This whole blood moon night, Fortune the lame she-wolf had been genuinely invaluable and what had surprised him most was the strength of Fortune's ability to sense danger at a distance.
If he could raise a few more desert wolves...
He turned his attention to the pair in front of him. Both were clearly still rattled by the explosion.
In their current state, they were very unlikely to attack and where he was standing was still within the range of the freshly upgraded sniper tower.
If it came to it, he could simply ride the camel at a full gallop while remotely directing the sniper tower to lock on.
Two desert wolves in this condition posed no real threat.
Lin En raised a hand and waved it toward them, curious whether they might be called over and if they came, of course, some proper training would follow.
"Come here! My oasis has food!"
But the two wolves took his movement as the start of an attack.
They didn't dare hold their ground. Tails still tucked, muttering something in wolf that was probably unflattering, they turned and ran.
"What a shame. Not every desert wolf is a Fortune."
There was nothing to be done about it. Lin En accepted it without dwelling further.
If he could get more desert wolves, ten or twenty, tame them all and turn them into proper dogs, the uses would be enormous.
He put the source energy bow away and bent down to pick up the other item.
The cloth pouch tied to the skeleton archer's hip bone.
He opened the pouch and found another layer inside and when he opened that one, he was looking at an ornately made silk sachet.
"What is this?"
He examined it carefully. The sachet bore an intricate rune marking of its own.
Again it gave him that same sense of something slightly irregular, something hand-drawn rather than precisely etched.
He tried to open the sachet, which appeared to be made from a material he couldn't identify but no matter how much force he applied, it was completely useless.
After spending a good while on it, Lin En turned his attention back to the rune marking on the sachet.
"Does it need a source stone to open?"
Unfortunately, the one spare stone he had kept was already gone, spent testing the source energy bow.
He would have to wait until he was back at the oasis to try opening it with a source stone.
Still unable to resist the curiosity, he gave it a feel.
By touch alone, he could tell there was something inside the sachet, a small object with an irregular shape but there was no way to make out what it was from touch. He set it aside for now.
He turned and looked once more at the skeleton archer's remains then he lifted his gaze to the seemingly boundless desert stretching in every direction.
"This skeleton came up from beneath the sand sea. The source energy bow and the sachet naturally came from the same place."
"The sand sea below... there's no telling what other treasures are down there. It's practically a vault."
The thought made him restless with wanting and there was nothing he could do about it.
Lin En felt a deep, helpless frustration, the feeling of someone who could see exactly what they wanted and had no way to reach it.
Would the only way to access those buried treasures really be to wait and hope for glowing skeletons to surface and deliver them?
"Forget it. Back to the oasis first."
It was a desert, after all. Staying too long was unwise. That shot had only flushed out two wolves.
If a whole pack showed up, things could turn genuinely dangerous.
Besides, it was only just dawn.
The treasures below the sand sea would have to wait but the treasures on his good neighbor Zalimu's oasis were sitting right there in plain sight.
"I wonder if that old schemer and that son of his actually died..."
Lin En mounted the Bactrian camel and set off at a full gallop toward Zalimu's oasis.
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