Chương 76: Chapter 77: The Frontier Trading Hub

Ethan didn't look back at the dark, yawning expansion of the lower vault. The moment the final system text vanished from his periphery, he willed his iron-plated scarab beetle into a reverse crawl. He didn't gamble. With its durability at 102/384 and his iron bullets running low, charging deeper into the Descent of Athtar would be a ridiculous move.

He slipped backward through the narrow limestone bottleneck, guiding his failing golem back up the steep, chalky inclines until the humid, salt-tinted heat of the Via Maris valley floor hit his face. He didn't just step carelessly out onto the public trail. The hidden dungeon was worth a fortune; if anyone spotted him hauling apex fangs out of this dead-end wadi, they would tail his line, map the coordinate, and the dungeon would be crawling with other players.

Ethan halted at the fissure's mouth, his perception actively scanning the empty mountain ridges for any silhouettes or traces of people. Satisfied the pass was clear, he drove his bronze scrapper trowel into the scree line, letting a natural slide of dry limestone flakes collapse over the cave entrance. He didn't take a straight path to the trade post. He traveled a half-mile in the exact opposite direction along a hard, wind-scoured limestone ridge.

He paused behind a blind basalt crag, tracking the horizon for ten minutes checking that the coast was clear. Three miles north, he finally approached the isolated frontier hub at an old Egyptian watch-tower. The station was a chaotic hive of activity—swarming with low-tier independent player scouts and anxious local NPC caravan drivers trying to barter for supplies before the regional drought choked the roads completely.

Ethan walked into the mud-brick clearing under his Medjay disguise, his expression flat and un-readable as he unbuckled his salvaged rawhide scout pack. He bypassed the high-end corporate merchant tents entirely, heading straight for an independent, ink-stained frontier procurement scribe who was logging metals and raw materials onto a stained papyrus ledger sheet. He dumped his heavy cargo bundle onto the stone table with a hollow, wet thud.

The clerk pulled the linen wraps open, his weathered eyes widening slightly as he checked the items. The harvest was realistic and clean: 16x Calcified Rephaim Hyena Fangs, 4x Coarse Brief Pelts, and a neat coil of dried, heavy Leg Sinews. In this sector, due to the expanding charcoal crisis and the imperial bronze embargoes, local craftsmen and wagon-drivers were facing a raw material shortage.

High-density fangs were desperately needed for tool-tipping, the thick bristle pelts were valued for reinforcing merchant pack-straps, and the high-tension leg sinew was the premier materials for binding tool handles and weaving durable camp ropes. The scribe ran a bone stylus down his ledger line, "A single silver shekel and four copper bits for the entire cache." Ethan took the small leather pouch of coins and quietly slipped away from the outpost.

He retraced his steps using the exact same counter-tracking loops—shuffling along the rocky ridge-lines and checking his blind spots twice before slipping back behind the thorny caper bushes of his hidden wadi camp. Sitting cross-legged by the cold rock face, he went to work like a machine on a factory floor. He scooped massive mounds of the iron-rich red Terra Rossa mud, systematically rolling out more iron bullets. Finally, he drove his trowel back into the earth, completely re-moulding the scarab beetle golem.

He packed fresh clay over its cracked carapace and rubbed the dense charcoal dust deep into the hide, until the beetle's forward wedge was fully restored with a thick, pristine, gleaming layer of brittle cast-iron plating. His ammunition was stacked, his golem's Durability was repaired.