Chapter 121: The Undying God Stops Answering

When Seeing Ange sprinted back, he saw seven or eight sand bandits digging up his crops. These sand bandits stabbed their long blades straight into the soil, scraped around, and the ge-potatoes were pierced into chunks and pulled up out of the ground.

Picking up a chunk at random, the sand bandit said, "What the hell is this thing?"

He roughly tore off the skin and took a bite.

"Bah! What the hell is this thing? How is it so disgusting?" The sand bandit bit off a mouthful, chewed a few times, and spat it all out.

Ge-potatoes aren't good to eat when uncooked — they have a kind of powdery-crunchy, mouth-sticking texture. But they have moisture, and for sand bandits who have been trudging through the desert for days, the water in this plant is the sweetest thing imaginable.

After spitting it out, he smacked his lips a few times, decided it was still tolerable, took another bite and chewed it in his mouth, then tossed aside the clearly not-thick-enough ge-potato in his hand and kept on digging.

Every time he dug one up, he'd pick out the thickest, juiciest middle section, bite it off, and toss the rest aside — what he threw away was more than what he ate.

Seeing Ange ran back and saw exactly this scene. The soul flame on his head flared up a ring larger, and he condensed a fireball and hurled it at the sand bandits.

"Careful, it's a mage!" The sand bandit reacted fast, swinging his blade to slash the fireball and blasting it apart.

The Burst Fireball looked small, but it exploded — the blast force of the detonation knocked the sand bandit back half a step.

"What a fierce fire…" The sand bandit was about to loudly warn his companions, but the second Burst Fireball pierced through the fire-mist from the first fireball's explosion and struck him square in the face.

Boom! The sand bandit's head was engulfed by the fireball, and he let out a terrible, anguished howl.

"Double shot! No — chain fire! Careful, it's a battle mage!" The other sand bandits, seeing this, shouted in terror.

Not every mage is a combatant. Most mages come from noble houses, raised with everything handed to them on a silver platter. Without servants or followers tagging along, out in the wild they'd easily go hungry because they can't even peel a boiled egg.

But some mages have clawed their way up through hell, with incomparably rich combat experience. They never chase flashy magical effects — only the most appropriate spell to take down the enemy.

A battle mage of the same level is a hundred times harder to deal with than a showpiece mage with zero combat experience.

Low-level magic, high rate of fire — that's basically the standard configuration of a battle mage. If a first-tier spell can kill the enemy, they absolutely won't waste a second-tier one, because their mana has to be saved for defense and for running at any moment.

The sand bandit Ma Yueer felt the one he'd run into was exactly this kind of battle mage, and he warned everyone immediately.

But the moment the words left his mouth, the third Burst Fireball locked onto him, made a sharp turn in midair, and shot toward him.

"Gaze Lock!" Ma Yueer shouted in terror, but the saber in his hand slashed out without the slightest hesitation.

The saber he swung out, he held back thirty percent of his strength. Sure enough, he exploded the third fireball — and the fourth came right on its heels.

Ma Yueer slid back, reversed his grip and slashed diagonally, retreated again, slashed vertically, retreated and slashed again. His saber wove into a flower before him, airtight.

Slashing and retreating at the same time, fireballs exploded in a trail behind him. The blade, under the fierce heat of the fireballs, was gradually growing scalding — at this rate, even the saber would melt.

In the desert, the horse is your legs. Having a horse versus not having one is the difference between an able-bodied person and a cripple. Ma Pi are the lifeblood of the sand bandits.

But in this situation, how could Ma Yueer still worry about his lifeblood? He dodged and ducked behind his horse.

The Burst Fireball slammed into the horse's body with a tremendous boom, blasting the horse's hide and flesh apart, and flames simultaneously clung to the horse.

The horse let out a miserable whinny.

Dragging the horse with him, using it as cover, Ma Yueer scrambled and crawled toward a distant sand dune. Once he charged up the dune and got behind it, he could break the mage's Gaze Lock.

Boom boom boom — six Burst Fireballs in a row slammed into the horse's body, blasting it until its hide split and its flesh tore, flames bursting out all over it. It screamed and whinnied and crashed to the ground. But using it as cover, Ma Yueer had already charged halfway up the sand dune. He reached back, pulled the single-handed shield off his back, and ran sideways up the dune.

Running sideways like this was to keep his rear in view, so that if magic was shot at his back he wouldn't fail to notice. From this alone, one could see Ma Yueer's combat experience was extremely rich.

The rest of the sand bandits also took the chance to scatter in all directions. Seeing Ange hurriedly shifted his Gaze Lock to the other sand bandits. Some spun around and slashed, some raised shields to block, some did lazy-donkey rolls, some threw up sand to block his line of sight — every trick in the book, in short.

Seeing Ange quickly discovered that killing these sand bandits was actually harder than killing those Holy Spirit Angels — they were way too slippery, and some of them had a lot of gear on them.

For example, one of them — Seeing Ange had clearly locked onto him with Gaze Lock, and the Burst Fireball was about to hit him, when he suddenly slapped his chest and a magic shield enveloped him.

He tanked four or five fireballs before the magic shield finally vanished. If it were any other mage, this guy might really have gotten away — very few people can fire off four or five Fireballs in a single breath.

But Seeing Ange could. The instant the shield vanished, the sixth fireball struck him, blasting him into a stumbling lurch forward and spitting out a mouthful of fresh blood.

Forcing himself to rally, this sand bandit surged his battle aura and forced himself to leap forward several more meters — only to be hit in the back by the seventh fireball and sent sprawling face-first to the ground.

This sand bandit had no choice but to twist and drop flat onto the sand, raise his long blade, and cry out in despair: "Why! So many fireballs!"

What answered him was the eighth, ninth, and tenth fireballs. He slashed apart the eighth, but the ninth and tenth slammed into his body, and flames swallowed him whole.

Anyone who could become a sand bandit vanguard was without exception the elite of the sand bandits. In a loose outfit like the sand bandits, anyone without any skill would long since have been weeded out or killed off by their own people.

But what they faced was an asymmetrical enemy. Even though everyone gave it everything they had, only six people managed to escape Seeing Ange's range; the remaining dozen-plus all perished at the foot of the sand dune.

Ma Yueer watched, dumbfounded. He was the first to get away, up on the sand dune looking down, so he could see even more clearly. It wasn't double shots, it wasn't chain fire — the enemy mage's fireballs simply never stopped, like a magic artillery battery.

"Too terrifying — even an Ultimate-Art mage doesn't have that kind of casting speed, do they?" Ma Yueer was horrified inside.

The sound of hoofbeats behind him. He turned and looked — it was his own troop catching up.

The sand bandits gathered this time numbered a full five thousand. A single trade route could never support that many sand bandits — they belonged to different factions, each with their own territory, and their "businesses" weren't all the same either. Some were even mortal enemies.

There was almost no force in the world that could muster these sand bandits together. Even the strongest human empire, the most powerful cavalry corps — they couldn't be bothered.

Except for the Winged Knights.

The Winged Knights were a very distinctive knightly order. Their total number was only a little over a thousand, but their fame was tremendous, renowned across the continent. If not for their small numbers, they could absolutely compete for the title of one of the Ten Great Knightly Orders.

Their greatest feature was that they could fly.

Being able to fly meant high mobility, plus aerial line of sight — the perfect counter to these ghost-like sand bandits. So when the Winged Knights issued a muster to the sand bandits, most of them sent people.

Of course, Terres didn't shortchange them either. After the dragon-slaying, a hundred thousand magic crystals would be split evenly among everyone, with shares calculated by the number who set out.

By that math, each person could get twenty magic crystals, and it was calculated by the number who set out — meaning, the more people you sent, the more of a bargain you got.

Even sending cannon fodder was fine — it was calculated by the number who set out, and if they died, that was one fewer share to split. For a time, the major sand bandit outfits were fired up with enthusiasm.

Ma Yueer was at a disadvantage. His was a small sand bandit outfit, with only about sixty people in total — even if they all came, they wouldn't earn much. But they also didn't dare ignore the Winged Knights' muster.

The people came, but he also wanted to bring them back safe, so he volunteered to join the vanguard. The moment anything stirred, he'd immediately lead his people and run.

His men had been stationed not far behind the vanguard, and now they'd caught up.

Ma Yueer glanced at the artillery-battery mage below the sand dune, suddenly remembered something, and hurriedly called to his companions: "Quick, quick — where's that goblin engineer?"

A companion pointed at a crate at the back of the troop: "Over there?"

Ma Yueer hurried over, opened the crate, and dragged out a goblin who was being jostled into a state of limp exhaustion.

This goblin had white whiskers and hair, with hair only growing at the back of his head and on the sides — the top of his head, from the forehead up, was completely bald. Clearly the hairstyle of a powerhouse. Even being dragged out, he didn't panic, and calmly lay down on the spot, unruffled by the change.

Ma Yueer rushed over and yanked him up by force: "Didn't you say you were a goblin engineer? Got any invention that can blow up an enemy from a distance? Up ahead, below the sand dune — blow him up."

The goblin was dragged to the top of the dune and forced to look down.

The goblin took one glance, then lazily closed his eyes, striking a pose that said "do whatever you want with me."

"Hey! Did you hear what I said?" Mayorle grabbed the goblin by the collar and shook him.

The goblin said flatly, "Go ahead and kill me. A Gear Award winner would never serve you despicable sand-robbers."

"You want to die?" One of Mayorle's companions walked over and tried to stomp on the goblin, but Mayorle stopped him.

"If you'd rather die than cooperate, could it be that your invention is completely useless?" Mayorle mocked.

The goblin, who had been lazily lying on the sand, instantly leapt up like a different person, his beard and hair bristling as he roared: "Useless? You dare say my invention is useless? Ignorant fool, brainless zombie, overgrown imbecile, #%¥@! *……."

A string of curses sent Mayorle's blood pressure soaring. He clamped his hand around the goblin's neck: "One more curse and I'll twist your neck off."

The goblin, choked and unable to breathe, turned red in the face and kicked his legs desperately.

Just as he was about to be strangled to death, Mayorle released his grip and urged: "Use that weapon you mentioned to blast that mage down there to death, and I'll admit your invention is really useful."

The goblin gasped in big breaths. Once he finally caught his breath, he shot Mayorle a sidelong glance: "You think us goblins are fools? My invention won the Gear Award—it doesn't need the approval of a stupid sand-robber like you."

"Uh, then I'll let you go. Don't you want to continue your research? I'll return your toolbox to you." Mayorle said, holding back his anger.

At the mention of the toolbox, the goblin hesitated slightly, wavering.

Mayorle quickly added: "I'll give you another twenty magic crystals. Anyway, on the way here I already reported your name, and then I'll send you out of the desert."

The goblin's eyes rolled, and he said: "I can give it a try, but whether I hit or not, I can't guarantee—because my Magic Egg Cannon hasn't been tested yet. Also, I don't want your magic crystals. Twenty magic crystals? Heh, the magic crystals I used to drop in the cracks at the head of my bed were more than that."

"It doesn't matter if you miss, as long as it scares that mage."

"Swear an oath. A divine oath."

Mayorle placed a hand over his chest and solemnly declared: "In the name of the God of Immortality, I swear I will keep my pact with the goblin engineer Waligu. If I break it, may I die on the spot."

A symbol drifted out from Mayorle's body.

Waligu took the oath sigil, and his face visibly relaxed. Without ceremony, he beckoned to Mayorle: "My toolbox."

Mayorle had someone bring Waligu's engineering case over, though a faint smile crossed his face.

A divine oath—swearing in a god's name, certain to incur divine punishment if broken. But the question is, what if some gods don't work?

Take the God of Immortality, for instance. Mayorle's family has sworn divine oaths in the God of Immortality's name hundreds of times over the past few centuries, yet most of those people lived to a ripe old age. Could the God of Immortality's "divine punishment" simply be making one "immortal"—that is, living a little longer?

Mayorle himself swore a divine oath in the God of Immortality's name just last year, and nothing happened at all. Once Waligu blasts that mage, he'll just break the oath, grab the goblin on the spot, and oh, wouldn't the goblin's expression be hilarious then? Hahaha.

Waligu opened the toolbox and pulled out two iron pipes, each two meters long.

Seeing this, Mayorle's eyes burned with envy. The case was flat—only about twenty centimeters thick—yet it could produce something two meters long. This was a spatial artifact! Just this case alone must be worth a fortune, let alone however many things were packed inside.

Unfortunately, the case required Waligu's magical authentication to open.

Two long iron pipes and a pile of odds and ends—soon Waligu had assembled these into a slingshot-like contraption. Unlike a slingshot, it had a base and two guide rails.

Waligu tightened the ox-bowstring and loaded it, saying proudly: "This is the siege weapon I invented—the Magic Egg Cannon!"

Mayorle and his men crowded around, all talking at once:

"Isn't this just an oversized slingshot? This thing can siege a city?"

"I thought it was something amazing. Trash."

"Does it shoot stones? It probably can't throw farther than my hand."

Hearing others belittle his invention, Waligu was so angry his beard flew up, and he shouted: "Back off, back off! Let me show you the power of the Magic Egg!"

As he spoke, he carefully took out a watermelon-sized sphere from the engineering case and said: "I only have one Magic Egg. Whether it hits or not, there are no more. Hit or miss, you must keep your oath."

Mayorle laughed it off: "Of course, don't worry. The God of Immortality is watching—who would dare break a divine oath?"

The moment his words fell, Mayorle suddenly felt something watching him, but when he turned to look, he couldn't find anyone looking at him.

"Weird." Mayorle muttered, then urged Waligu: "Hurry up, hurry up."

Waligu pushed the Magic Egg Cannon to the edge of the dune, adjusting the angle, aiming down at Seeing Ange and the others. But after aiming, he turned it off by one or two degrees.

These blood-soaked sand-robbers—their enemy is very likely a good person. He couldn't let his Magic Egg Cannon become a weapon that hurt good people.

After aiming, Waligu placed the Magic Egg on the string, took out a wrench, inserted it into the Magic Egg, and stirred hard.

Gzzzz—gzzzz—zzz, something inside the Magic Egg seemed to start spinning.

But Waligu hadn't had a decent meal since being captured, so he had no strength. After a few cranks he was panting.

"Worthless goblin." A burly sand-robber shoved Waligu aside and cranked hard. Zzzz zzz zzz, the thing inside the Magic Egg spun at breakneck speed.

"Is it ready?" the burly sand-robber asked loudly and triumphantly. Hearing no reply, he quickly turned his head to look, only to see everyone had ducked aside, covering their ears and crouching on the ground.

The burly sand-robber asked dumbly: "What are you doing?"

"Haven't you heard? Never stand next to an activated goblin machine—you never know when it'll blow up." Mayorle shouted.

"Huh? It'll blow up?!" The burly sand-robber didn't dare crank any longer. He dropped the wrench and dove forward, crawling and rolling to get far away.

But the Magic Egg had already been cranked to top speed. The buzzing inside became a continuous roar, growing more and more urgent—clearly activated.

Waligu explained: "When the Magic Egg cracks, that counts as activation. It'll fire automatically."

Ding! The Magic Egg cracked, and a powerful magical reaction burst out from within. The reaction was extremely intense, carrying the oppressive feeling of a grand mage casting a spell.

A magical reaction of this magnitude—if it smashed into an enemy and then exploded, there probably wouldn't even be any scraps left, would there?

Mayorle was suddenly very eager to see the effect when the Magic Egg Cannon fired. But just then, a beam of light flashed and shone onto the Magic Egg Cannon.

Rounding up, two and a half chapters