Foreign Land Reclamation By a Vegetable-growing Skeleton

“The same weight in silver coins?” The three desert thieves manning the Dragon Crossbow were dazzled. If they could have that much money, they would definitely not be thieves anymore. They would return home to farm, buy a small estate, marry a wife and have many children. Such a life seemed so perfect.

Now, they had just shot dead a heavily armored shield-bearer who was worth one such perfect life? This was too satisfying.

“Um, look.” One of the desert thieves sounded startled and gestured everyone to look quickly.

A woman with an alluring figure wearing a black veil skirt ran to the heavily armored shield-bearer who had just been shot by an arrow. She reached out with two fair-colored hands, grasped the arrow that had penetrated the man’s body, and forcefully pulled it out. Surprisingly, the arrow came out smoothly.

One shouldn’t underestimate the force required to pull out an arrow. An arrow embedded in the body will be tightly gripped by instinctively contracting muscles due to air pressure. Any slight falter in force would make it impossible to remove. Many stab wounds have blood gutters, which aid smoother removal of the intruding object.

This alluring woman, however, managed to pull it out effortlessly, indicating that her strength was no less than that of a grown man.

But that wasn’t all, after extracting the arrow, the woman invoked the Holy Light and placed it on the armored shield-bearer’s wound.

The sight of that spark of Holy Light made everyone involuntarily gasp, with some even stopping in their tracks.

Could those people on the other side belong to the Church of Light? They were not a group to be trifled with.

There were those that hesitated and those that didn’t, as well as those that harbored resentment. One swordsman, picking up a one-handed shield, yelled, “Church of Light, I &￥#@$!”

Summoning his fighting spirit, he faced Ange’s fireball, rushed to the trench and tried to leap onto the earthen wall.

As he was about to leap, a pale hand grabbed his ankle and dragged him into the trench. Some of his dead fellow desert thieves had somehow come back to life. With their eyes rolled back and wounds ripped open, they reached out to the swordsman with their bare hands.

“Ah! Undead?!” Just as the words left his mouth, he was bitten in the neck by a corpse, the bite piercing through his blood vessels.

The swordsman quickly bled to death. In a short while, the dead body staggered to its feet, picked up the shield and sword, and attacked a desert thief who had just reached the trench.

The other thieves were so terrified that they began to shout, “Ah~, Undead!”

Feilin and Aisike, hiding behind the heavily armored shield-bearer, were leisurely chanting a spell and even joking, “The sun in this world is too harsh. It greatly weakens our necromantic magic.”

“Yeah, it weakens it a lot. Next time, let’s have an umbrella with us when we fight.”

“No, let’s wait until nighttime. That’s when we necromancers are at our best.”

One by one, corpses were being summoned. Aisike could control eight corpses at once whereas Feilin, who was stronger, could control twenty at a time.

Of course, given enough time, he could resurrect corpses into Undead first and then control several thousand at once.

Although their numbers were small, there were many corpses. If one got mutilated, they would replace it with another. As long as their magic power didn’t run out, they would never run low on corpses.

A mental barrier suddenly arose in front of the trench and the earthen wall. Many desert thieves would rather retreat than confront a defense line composed of their recently deceased comrades.

The older desert thief shouted from the back, “Go around, go around. Attack their flanks.”

There was only a trench and an earthen wall at the front, and two green date groves on the sides. Negris had deliberately chosen this location to minimize the area they needed to defend. After all, their numbers were too small, and they could not afford to leave any area unguarded.

Reminded by this, the desert thieves swarmed into the date groves on both sides.

Not long after they entered, many of the desert thieves screamed in horror as over twenty giants nearly three meters tall emerged from the groves, brandishing large clubs and taking swings at them with gleeful laughter, much like whacking moles.

All of the Purple Skeleton Titans had swapped their weapons for large wooden clubs. Sofia, uncharacteristically generous towards the guests, had allowed them to use date tree branches crafted into wooden maces by wrapping bramble vines around their heads – the only items available for free onsite.

Despite being made of wood, their maces were sizable and capable of causing serious damage when used for an attack.

The desert thieves that invaded the groves retreated at an even faster speed, leaving behind hundreds of horribly mangled corpses.

The Purple Skeleton Titans, driven by a killing frenzy, rushed out of the groves to pursue the enemy but were promptly scolded by Negris, “Don’t chase! Whoever dares to chase will go back to farming and won’t be called to fight next time.”

“Ah! Oh….” Even the Purple Skeletons seemed disheartened and obediently retreated back into the grove.

From a distance, the old sand bandit continued to command the launching of the dragon crossbow. One after another, arrows capable of breaking scales were loaded on the crossbow and targeted to shoot.

The armor shield men kept getting shot and pierced.

Lisa ran over, pulled out the arrows, and treated wounds, the whole process becoming smoother with time.

The old bandit’s heart pounded with trepidation, for he began to notice several oddities. The holy light from the woman in the black veil seemed limitless. The armor shield men who were shot, pulled out their swords, and were treated maintained silence throughout. Their bodies didn’t even shudder.

Taking into account the corpses that were summoned, the old bandit had an astonishing conjecture: “Perhaps these armored shield men are not human.”

But how did the undead get mixed up with the Church of Light?

As he paced in confusion, suddenly a voice rang out: “Hey, what do you call that weapon?”

The old bandit turned his head and found a young, unfamiliar swordsman speaking. His attire was strange and he was munching on something that looked like a dry beet.

The sand thieves were temporarily assembled, and it was normal not to recognize each other. The old bandit casually replied, “This is the Dragon Crossbow, assigned by the leaders of the Winged Knight Squad.”

“Dragon Crossbow? Is it a weapon specifically to deal with dragons?” asked the young swordsman curiously.

“Of course, each member of the Winged Knight Squad has one, combined with these scale-breaking arrows, it can penetrate dragon scales…Wait, you are not a sand thief, why is your scarf on your head?”

The old bandit realized why he found the young man’s attire odd; the young swordsman had tied the wind-blocking scarf, usually worn around the neck, around his head as a headscarf.

A scarf is breathable, light and could easily cover the mouth and nose against the wind and sand when pulled up from the neck. But a headscarf is thick, used to block the sun. A legitimate sand thief would never confuse the two, unless they weren’t legitimate at all.

The young swordsman flashed a grin, threw the last large piece of beet into his mouth, invoked his battle aura, and created a sword from condensed aura between his hands.

The old bandit exclaimed, “A high-level Sword Saint!?”

With a flash of the sword, four heads flew into the air. Luther’s air sword struck the dragon crossbow, breaking it to pieces.

The sand thieves around stared dumbfounded by this spectacle.

Luther had taken a long way around to sneak up here, but he didn’t feel like taking the same way back. He picked up a broken sword from the ground and started fighting his way back.

The sand thieves finally panicked and started fleeing back.

The first wave of sand thieves was around 1500 men, and about 500-600 bodies were left behind as they fled, even abandoning their horses.

Without unified command, the first wave was mostly made up of those who wanted to be ahead and snag the first wave. They didn’t expect to encounter such resistance. Their swift retreat led to swift deaths. As they fled, the sand thieves who came later hesitated.

This situation didn’t match their initial plan. They thought they would take advantage of Sand People’s unpreparedness and murder everyone in the oasis, be they men, women, or children, drawing out the Bronze Dragon.

The winged knights would then kill the dragon. The knights would take the dragon’s corpse and they would divide up 100,000 demon crystals and all the treasures of the oasis.

But how could they have suffered so many losses before even entering the oasis? They lost nearly 500-600 people, a casualty rate of about ten percent.

The sand thieves behind started to hesitate. They weren’t sure whether to continue the assault or wait until the winged knights arrived.

Ange lost his targets and had to stop. He tilted his head somewhat bewildered, looking straight ahead, especially at the position of the trench. The sight of the corpses there felt strange.

The aura of death was spreading, and he could feel it. Between him and the corpses summoned by Feilin and Aisike, there seemed to be some invisible connection, as if he could command the corpses to stand up when tugging that invisible thread.

At this moment, the aura of death emanating from those deceased corpses made Ange feel like he could pull them up too.

Subconsciously, Ange made a pulling motion. The death aura acted like a pulling force, causing Ange to slide forward, which forced him to take a step forward.

He pulled again and slid forward again, forcing Ange to take another step forward. In this way, pulling, sliding, and stepping, Ange seemed to be walking in place.

Those around him noticed Ange’s strange action. Negris asked in confusion, “Ange, what are you doing? Dancing?”