Book 7: Chapter 31
I seriously can’t say for certain. This place isn’t a mountain range or a forest. This place is a continuous path of dunes and sandstorms that come as the wind dictates. There was nothing here that could be examined. Furthermore, I’m clueless to how this sort of mine is distributed around in this world so I just looked at the desert blankly. Like an idiot, I watched Lorana and Tarak struggled through the desert on foot. They had dismounted to examine the sand under foot and would look up every now and then to see the dunes rise and fall. They also occasionally used a very long bit of metal to stab into the ground. I stood aside, afraid I’d get in the way of our two leaders.
I didn’t have a clue as to what the two of them were doing, but I assumed it was the method for locating the metal. I’m just going to trust the two of them.
Since the two of them had dismounted to walk, our team’s speed slowed down significantly. I sent out a sufficient number of scouts, and organised guards to watch our back, front, left and right sides as per Lorana’s instructions. There’s nowhere to hide in the desert. As long as it’s another team, we’ll be able to instantly see them.
At the same time, it will be just as easy to discover us so we must locate others before they can locate us. Therefore, if we discover them, we need to take them out first instead of conversing with them. As they say, a long night is fraught with dreams. They might stick one in our back before we know it.
All the teams here have their own backers. They aren’t just here to fight for the mine. A better way to put it would be that several powers are playing a death game here; teams killing other teams for the sake of their power. The employer who hired the team are benefitting from it. And no nation can do anything if you kill their people in this area with no administration.
That’s why there won’t be any peace talks or alliances. This is basically a killing field, a place where you need to kill every living person you meet.
After walking for some distance, the two of them mounted their steeds again. I rode over to their sides and asked, “How is it?”
The two of them shook their heads and replied, “No discoveries, your majesty. Though we knew this already, it feels unfortunate to have to say it again. Very unfortunate we would say. Your majesty, let us head to another spot. We will not need to search this area again…… However, we found traces others left behind here which prove that people had searched this area already.”
I nodded. I looked at them and responded, “That’s all right. If it could be found on the first attempt, it wouldn’t attract so many people here. But you said that you noticed traces of others being here before. So does that mean that it’s very likely that there’s a team up ahead of us or maybe even several teams?”