"Why did you accept this mission?" Falk asked with raised brows while walking beside a huge wagon.
"The payment is okay," Kyle said, "but I think it would also help you guys. You haven't been to the peninsula, right?"
Michael and Falk nodded, while Lily just snorted.
"Still, one Ether Stone per person for a two-day mission is a bit small," Falk said.
"View it as experience," Kyle said with a smirk. "Also, we might find some valuable ore. Not everything is filled with mines there. We might stumble upon some ore that's just lying there."
Falk sighed. "You're the boss."
Kyle just smiled.
Right now, team Sandstorm was guarding three huge wagons.
The wagons were part of a caravan entering the peninsula.
However, this was not a normal traveling caravan that visited different Cradles.
In fact, it wouldn't visit a single one.
"Do we have the Skysand maps?" Kyle shouted to the person controlling the beast pulling the first wagon.
"Yes," the man answered.
"Good!" Kyle said.
As soon as the caravan traveled out of the Big Bazaar, Falk, Michael, and Lily saw the peninsula for the first time.
"Wow, a bunch of sand," Falk commented sarcastically. "Who would've thought?"
"This is not a bunch of sand," Kyle said. "This is a bunch of opportunities!"
"Well, I have a bunch of opportunities in my boots right now," Falk said, shaking one of his feet.
Kyle just laughed and looked at Lily. "It's time for you to go wild."
Lily just snorted.
Then, ten golems with feet and ten flying golems all charged away from the secured path.
The people in the caravan looked at the golems with worry.
They just hoped that they wouldn't attract any unwanted attention.
The caravan continued traveling for around two hours before the first golems returned.
Within the next hour, the ten flying golems all returned, but only six out of the ten ground golems returned.
"The remainder is dead?" Kyle asked.
"Destroyed," Lily said. "They are not alive."
"Did you get what you wanted?" Kyle asked.
Two of the golems had returned with a bunch of ore, but the remainder came back empty-handed.
At most, the haul was worth 20 Ether Stones.
Meanwhile, Lily lost almost an entire Ether Gem's worth of golems.
"Yes," Lily said as she focused on the flying golems.
Lily's main purpose of sending out the golems was not to find valuables.
It was to gather combat information. The best way to optimize a golem's logic was to test it against similarly powerful and more powerful opponents.
Human combat data was easy to acquire. Lily just needed to pay a couple of people to fight her golems.
However, beast combat data was not easy to acquire.
After all, hunting a ton of beasts without a hunting license was illegal, and programming the golems to follow all the rules of a hunting license needed an unnecessary amount of programming.
They would need to have ways to differentiate different beasts, which required the inclusion of more modules for sensing.
On top of that, they needed to learn how to properly break down a corpse and deliver the valuables to the Hunter Guild.
Even more, there were many beasts they were not allowed to hunt.
All of this would make the production of every golem more expensive, and the information gathering wouldn't be very efficient.
But on the peninsula, the rules were not as strict.
People were allowed to basically hunt anything as long as it was not a lot weaker than them.
The ground golems had been fighting the enemies, while the flying golems were recording the information.
Usually, Lily would come here on her own from time to time, but there was a potential issue.
Some of the beasts were quite smart and would follow the golems back to their source.
At that point, Lily might need to fight a Late Ferocious Beast, which would most likely kill her.
Because of that, she had to be extremely careful when it came to gathering information on the peninsula.
However, with team Sandstorm present, she could go wild.
Monsters would not be interested in her, and everything else that arrived was potentially beatable by the team.
Peak Ferocious Beasts avoided the safe pathways due to the Monsters.
In fact, Late Ferocious Beasts were already in danger of being attacked.
As long as there was not a very good reason, no Ferocious Beasts would enter the safe pathways.
Yet, one could never be careful enough.
After consolidating all the data, Lily changed the programming of her golems for the next couple of hours.
The caravan wasn't traveling very fast due to the heavy load it was carrying.
A couple of hours later, Lily sent out some golems again.
Once more, two of her golems didn't return, but that was an expected expense.
Ten hours after the journey started, the caravan arrived at the northern edge of the peninsula.
Usually, this would be where the peninsula ended.
Yet, there was a 100-meter-wide pathway that extended out of the peninsula's coast.
At the entrance of this strange pathway stood a single soldier.
When Kyle saw the soldier, he was quite impressed.
'Peak Knight,' he thought.
The soldier didn't say anything and just stood in the middle of the path.
The person leading the first caravan came down from his beast, approached the soldier, and handed him a bunch of documents.
Next, the soldier inspected the wagons and all the people.
"You may pass," the soldier said, stepping to the side.
"Thank you," the man said before returning to his beast.
Then, the caravan stepped onto the path.
"Now comes the spicy part," Kyle said with some excitement.
In total, there were twelve Ether Essences in the entire world, and this path was related to them.
On the Winterfire Kingdom's mainland were two Ether Essences.
On the Skysand Kingdom's mainland were two more.
One was at the World's Peak, which was to the west of the world, between the two kingdoms.
One was in the Twilight Duchy, which was to the east of the world, also between the two kingdoms.
One was in the Holy Sea, which was surrounded by the Winterfire Kingdom.
This left five.
Where were these five Ether Essences?
Well, all five of them were on a big landmass in the middle of the world.
The landmass was around a thousand kilometers long and 500 kilometers wide, and there were around 500 to 1,000 kilometers of water between the landmass and any of the continents.
Over the years, both kingdoms had built gigantic land bridges leading to the landmass.
This landmass was where 80% of the war between the kingdoms took place.
At this moment, both kingdoms controlled two of the Ether Essences of the landmass, while the fifth one was highly contested.
The battles on this landmass were the biggest and most destructive in the world.
The path the caravan was currently on was a land bridge, but it was not one of the two leading to the landmass.
This was a second path the Skysand Kingdom was building.
When it was finished, it would lead to a place very close to the contested Ether Essence, giving the Skysand Kingdom another avenue to attack.
For now, it was only halfway there.
It would take a long time to finish constructing it.
But until it was constructed, the Earth Sorcerers building the path needed a steady supply of high-quality materials with Earth Ether.
This was what the caravan was delivering. The caravan would need to follow this path to its end, which was around 500 kilometers away.
However, due to the relatively small size of the path, anyone traveling on it was always quite close to the ocean.
These caravans were regularly attacked by Ferocious Beasts from the ocean.
That was why team Sandstorm was here.
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