Chapter 77: Mineral Bait

Chapter 77: Mineral Bait The blood moon slowly faded away, and the sun crept up quietly, showing just a sliver on the horizon. The skeletons had been killing all night long. Under their heavy shields, the sand was completely drenched with the yellow-brown blood of the worms. Blood and flesh mixed with sand, creating a thick, metallic stench that would make anyone gag. Looking around, the sand was carpeted with Sand Worm Monster corpses that had been squeezed up from underground by their own buddies. Body parts of all shapes and sizes lay scattered and twisted everywhere—rotting flesh and gore as far as the eye could see. In this absolute bloodbath of a desert, the Sand Worm Monster swarms kept up their relentless underground attacks, twisted and completely nuts. [Spiritual Essence +1.6] [Spiritual Essence +1.6] ... After a whole night of slaughter—about 10+ hours of non-stop carnage—over a thousand Sand Worm Monsters had met their end under the greatswords. Spiritual Essence had piled up to 3481/10000. Carlos stared at the sun slowly climbing the horizon and muttered: "Daylight’s coming. Time for them to head back to their holes." The second the sun broke free from the horizon, the Sand Worm Monster swarms that had been going absolutely berserk seemed to hear some kind of cosmic alarm clock. They all stopped their attacks cold. One by one, they drilled up from the sand and surged toward the maze of sand holes nearby. They didn’t look back once, completely forgetting the blood-soaked battle that had just gone down. They all squeezed into the sand holes one after another, and the rustling sounds of their movement slowly died away... Until there wasn’t a single Sand Worm Monster left topside. "Weird. Even the dark mist’s crazy bloodthirsty curse can’t override their natural instinct to hide during the day and party at night." Carlos touched down, folding back his crimson-gold wing bones. He stepped onto the soggy sand, and the sharp smell of blood smacked him right in the face. Carlos randomly grabbed a Sand Worm Monster corpse and used his greatsword to slice it open about a quarter of the way down the body. "SLASH!" That’s where the blood chamber was located. Yellow-brown bug blood immediately came gushing out, and a yellow-brown object got carried along with the flow, plopping onto the sand. Carlos bent down and scooped up the yellow-brown thing. It wasn’t huge—about 4 inches across. Surprisingly, it was a perfect cube crystal with six flawlessly smooth faces, like some kind of masterpiece. This was the Sand Worm Monster’s heart core, and also the crystallized result of all the minerals they’d been chomping down for ages. It floated in the blood chamber, bathed in bug blood, feeding continuous power to the whole worm body through some kind of resonance. "Alright, boys! Follow my lead and extract all the heart cores!" Carlos barked out orders. The twenty-two skeletons spread out across the dunes, slicing open the bug corpses’ blood chambers and yanking out the heart cores. Plenty of Sand Worm Monster bodies were buried in the sand, so the skeletons had to dig them out—which ate up quite a bit of time... It took about half a day to stack over a thousand heart cores in front of Carlos. Carlos did some quick mental math and shook his head. "One of the dark mist strongholds in the Desolate Desert—the Mineral Ant Nest—is absolutely massive. To use these Sand Worm Monster heart cores as bait to draw out the ant soldiers in waves, I’m going to need way more heart cores than this!" "Let’s head back and get some shut-eye for now. When the sun goes down, we’ll come back and farm more monsters!" Carlos stashed the heart cores and skeletons, spread his crimson-gold wing bones, and started heading back to the Flat-Top Mushroom Stone Pillar. On the way, he took a little detour and found a monster pack with spirituality between 5-10. Then he deployed the Purple Thornblade Shield Guards, Redrose Sword Guards, and that regular skeleton soldier together to start the massacre. "Make sure you protect the regular skeleton soldier. Don’t let the poor guy bite it!" It was fine if Spiritual Essence built up slowly—better safe than sorry. With the Purple Thornblade Shield Guards running interference, the Redrose Sword Guards and ordinary skeleton sword guard should be sitting pretty. After setting up the skeletons’ assignments, Carlos flew back to the Flat-Top Mushroom Stone Pillar and caught some Z’s... ... Night fell, and Carlos woke up right on schedule, swooping down from the Flat-Top Mushroom Stone Pillar. He first flew over to the area where he’d stationed the skeletons. There, the monsters with only 5-10 spirituality were like sheep to the slaughter when facing the Purple Thornblade Shield Guards and Redrose Sword Guards. Even though there were tons of them, wave after wave charging forward, the Purple Thornblade Shield Guards held the outer ring. The monsters kept smashing into the giant shields, but the Purple Thornblade Shield Guards didn’t budge a single inch. Greatswords came down like thunder, and whole batches of charging monsters got chopped clean in half. Mangled body parts scattered across the ground, and bug blood soaked deep into the sand. The inner circle of Redrose Sword Guards was absolutely dominating too. However, their kill rate was obviously slower than the Purple Thornblade Shield Guards’, and they had to keep ducking behind the big shields to stay healthy. As for the ordinary skeleton soldier smack dab in the center, it honestly gripped its busted bone knife, constantly whacking away at monsters that had lost their fight and were barely hanging on. And how did these half-dead monsters come to be? Well, naturally their good buddies had taken the time to chop them up just right. ... "Storm!" A blast of wind came howling down from the sky, whipping up sand and rocks, scattering the monster pack like bowling pins. The skeletons temporarily broke free from the monster mob’s grip, and Carlos took the chance to call them back. Then he flew toward the Sand Worm Monster territory... ... The same old song and dance played out again. The Sand Worm Monster swarms once more threw down with the skeletons, while Carlos hovered overhead, keeping tabs on the whole battle... "Rustle!" "SLASH!" "Creak!" "BOOM!" [Spiritual Essence +1.6] [Spiritual Essence +1.6] ... The sun slowly climbed up, and the Sand Worm Monster swarms left behind a field of corpses before retreating like the tide once again. Carlos checked his Spiritual Essence count: 5593/10000, already past the halfway mark. The skeletons got to work like pros on the dissection duty, and the cubic heart crystals went up by another 1000+... Return journey, mid-route deployment, skeletons kept farming monsters, Carlos went back to crash... ... The blood moon rose, and another night rolled around. The dark shadow came swooping down from the Flat-Top Mushroom Stone Pillar again. Mid-route Storm casting, rounding up the monster-farming skeletons... Deploying skeletons to butcher Sand Worm Monsters... The sun came up, Sand Worm Monster swarms beat it out of there, cubic heart crystals went up by another 1000+, Spiritual Essence count hit 7705... Return trip, mid-route deployment for farming, then back to rest... ... The blood moon dropped down again, and Carlos numbly started another night of the grind... ... [Spiritual Essence accumulation 10000, Spirituality +1, current Spirituality 11] [Gained Attribute Points +1, Skill Points +1] "Spirituality went up?" Carlos’s somewhat zombie-like brain snapped back to attention with the commotion of the spirituality boost. On autopilot, he pumped Strength +1, Skeleton Revival +1. After allocating the points, he looked up at the horizon in a daze. The sun’s glow was quietly showing up. "Hang on a bit more. Let’s wrap up this round." ... The Sand Worm Monster swarms called it quits, and the skeletons started their dissection work... After the carving was done, the cubic heart cores had grown by another thousand or so. Actually, the night before, he’d already stockpiled enough heart cores. But Carlos saw that his spirituality was about to level up, so he decided to grind for one more night. After these days of crazy killing sprees, the soul fire of the 10 Redrose Sword Guards had become incredibly intense, hitting the threshold for their second power-up. Even that ordinary skeleton soldier had reached the point where it could get its first major upgrade.