Chapter 8: Returning from an eventful ride
Xhemile was disappointed. Not was it a legendary weapon or equipment it was a useless orb she couldn't even use. Her disappointment was immeasurable and her day was ruined. She sighed and put the orb inside her bag. What she didn't notice was that the orb lightly flickered as she put it in her bag. She suddenly heard the sound of stone against stone behind her. Her head turned so hard her neck gave protest in an audible crack. She saw the wall move. A small portion of the wall is moving to the side giving away the sight of a staircase unmistakenly leading upwards. She stepped cautiously inside the staircase which was carved in to the stone, going upwards in a spiral. She stepped each stair step carefully, afraid of a sudden trap which was placed there and still worked. After a while she got bolder as she didn't encounter a single trap in the staircase, walking casually upwards. Xhemile noticed a change in the staircase after a while, the carved stone got replaced by stone bricks which held the stairs free of the sand in which it is probably placed. A few minutes of climbing she came to the end of the staircase. It was a dead end. What!? That can't be! How am I supposed to escape here if the only way is a hole and a staircase which is a dead end! She hit the side of the wall with her fist. Xhemile jumped as the brick she hit gave way and she heard the moving of a contraption. Then the ceiling started to shake and the typical sound of stone against stone grinding filled the air with noise as well as sand which fell from above and released dust. Xhemile covered her mouth and nose with the top of her dress to protect herself against as, who knows how old dust, swirled in the air. When the dust settled a bit and the contraption stopped, she ran into the light which now came from above. When she reached the top, she stood in front a very surprised Nour, which held her spear towards Xhemile.
“MY LADY!”: Nane shouted and ran towards Xhemile and hugged her hard.
“My Lady! I was so worried!”: she shed tears of relief while talking nonsense how worried she was. Xhemile had a whole other problem. Nane hugs her so hard she can hardly breathe, and the enormous chest of the tall woman didn't help with it either. She needed to breathe! She started to weakly hit Nane with a flat hand at her shoulder. Fortunately, Nanu discovered the distress of her lady.
“Nane! Let her ladyship go!”: Nanu said loudly.
“Why!? I was so worried!”: Nane argued while sobbing.
“Her Ladyship is dying! You are suffocating her ladyship with your enormous udders!”: Nour said while yanking Xhemile out of Nanes hug. Xhemile’s head was nearly blue due to the lack of oxygen. She started coughing and stared at the culprits which nearly killed her. After calming down she turned to her subjects.
“Let's go back home, we were too long away and Neeth is surely worried about us.”: Xhemile said. Her subordinates only nodded, obviously relieved seeing their lady unharmed. They collected all their stuff and walked straight back to the castle.
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After arriving at the castle, they met with Neeth which definitely looked worried at her lady after hearing the story. Xhemile then looked at everybody present and took out the strange orb.
“Does anybody know what this is?”: She asked her subjects. After reaching it from person to person they all shook their head. Nobody here knew what this strange orb was or what it does. They then presented their rewards for walking in the desert, and started to count it. They had together collected 312 desert beetles which in liters would amount to 156 liters of water, enough for Neeth to craft enough leather for the bathhouse and still have plenty left for other uses. Xhemile then looked at the lord's marketplace. After scrolling through she saw that food still was astronomically high in demand and very expensive. She then opened three separate trades for her desert dog meat.
{[Marketspace]
[Trade offer from the ‘Queen of the forsaken deserts’]
[You get 1 unit of desert dog meat (Rank 0) -> you lose 5 units of wood or 3 units of stone]
[Remaining trades 300/300] [Remaining offer time 1:59 hours]
[Trade offer from the ‘Queen of the forsaken deserts’]
[You get 1 unit of desert dog meat (Rank 0) -> you lose 5 units of mud]
[Remaining trades 300/300] [Remaining offer time 1:59 hours]
[Trade offer from the ‘Queen of the forsaken deserts’]
[You get 1 unit of desert dog meat (Rank 0) -> you lose 2 units of reeds]
[Remaining trades 300/300] [Remaining offer time 1:59 hours]
She sold the 900 rank 0 desert dog meat and she could see at a visible pace that it wasn't even near enough for those billion lords and ladies. She opened the lord's chat platform.
[Messages]
“Guys our savior is here again with incredible amounts of meat for basic materials!”
“What? She trades now for stone, mud and reeds?”
“Incredible she really wants mud! I going to buy all the meat! Finally, it is worth something to start in a swamp!”
“Reeds! The river next to me has tons of it, I will never go hungry!”
“Guys aren't you asking yourselves how she has so much meat?”
“She probably hates dogs.”
“Or she has incredible troops!”
“I think she has a horde of monsters in front of her barrier.”
“That could be it. I also have constantly a war party of goblins hiding in the surroundings, trying to kill my subjects!”
Xhemile closed the again and promptly deleted all friend messages which clogged her friends list. She wasn't interested in the guessing game which took place after the trades were sold out in the first thirty minutes. She had obtained enough resources for the time. She had obtained 1000 units of wood, 300 units of stone as well as 1500 units of mud and 600 units of reeds. She then looked up in the system, how to make mudbricks. One mudbrick would require 5 units mud and 2 units of reeds. She could make 300 units of mudbricks, which would be enough to upgrade her castle.