NOVEL WEB Chapter 128: Sand
The troll of the thorn forest clearly knew how to build things, small houses, fences and tools, such as axes and fishing rods, they definitely held some level of skill in that department, so having them build a boat shouldn't be out of the realm of possibilities, unfortunately, communication was difficult, they actually seemed to understand Loimos more when he spoke in the death tongue than the pale tongue.
Those guys were awfully silent at all times, actually conveying things to one another by staring at each other and doing some eye movements, sounds meant nothing to them, so they actually got more of the undead's intent when he uttered words on the language of the dead, it carried more of his will, one might say.
It still wasn't going well however, none of the dispersed groups of trolls seemed to have experience in nautical travel, curiously, none had thought of going fishing anywhere further than the shores, but Loimos only needed something that floated and could support his weight, the equivalent of a piece of flotsam really.
Nothing too fancy, but with how unwilling his building partners were being, Loimos might just get proficient enough with his rot to create his own approximative boat before any of those trolls got the message, from afar, the undead looked like he was trying to communicate with a bunch of chimpanzees by making broad movements, and growing mouldy eyes to try and replicate their communication methods.
When that failed, and no progress was made, Loimos calmly made a troll home vacant with the help of his fists, tearing to thing down, he gathered the rough planks the monsters created and simply began to try and create something himself, he had no knowledge but he might was well learn, the trolls already had the required materials for it to work out, by being graciously given said materials, the undead went to build up multiple attempts, which really where just a few planks tied together.
Which were then thrown into the water and tested to make sure the skeleton wouldn't sink at one point, by doing nothing but this for an entire week, Loimos quickly began to see some amount of success, first it was that the flotsam could float on its own, then he managed to figure out how to prevent water from seeping in at all.
After another week of finetuning, Loimos had his floating piece of wood operational, and a paddle, which was just a branch, he sailed upon Mistdrown, the angular and unnatural shape of the rickety boat was definitely too foreign for any of the marine creatures to wish to take a bite out of it.
Some swam around curiously, but ended up deciding to do nothing, Loimos, whose senses were muddled by the fog, could only tell that much by the movements of the water, but as he traversed the lake, nothing came to disturb him, the fog didn't shift in an aggressive manner.
One possibility that didn't escape the undead was that The Mist-Drowned might take offence if an undead intruded upon the lake, after all, Loimos was very much willing to turn this beautiful lake into a swamp of black blood after all, he just didn't try it because he was well aware that his current mission would be much more conductive to his goals, and also because provoking guardian wasn't very wise for him at the moment. Continue your adventure at empire
He made it to the other end of the shore without any hitch, and with just a few weeks lost due to a poor cartography job, the foggy lake was situated near lands unclaimed by any major power, it wasn't a huge swath of land by any means, only a few villages and tribes were found within, the reason this area was left mostly untouched wasn't because the area wasn't rich or was particularly dangerous, it was a designated border between two nations.
And the one Loimos arrived in after making his way through here wasn't Tochi, but Pezerx, the land of sand, Loimos had to go through the gigantic desert empire before setting foot in the country he was aiming for, in the dreadful summer that was getting hotter by the day nonetheless, the people here had grown acclimated to the extreme heat, in more than one ways.
But Loimos, whilst unaffected by heat on a surface level, might actually catch on fire, not undeterred by the prospect of becoming a skeleton torch, move forward and it didn't take too long for the intense warmth to intensify even further within the desert, the air visibly distorted to hardly imaginable degrees.
However, there was one advantage that Loimos had in the desert, in the uncivilised portions of the desert, which included the entirety of the outskirts of the empire, most of the population situated closer to the center of the desert, where cities had been built around flourishing oases.
But on the spans of sand, where death was common for both the local wildlife and visitors from afar, undeads naturally rose from the sand, said to be swarming ancient ruins buried in the sand, sealed vestiges of the past containing untold amounts of corpses animated by death force.
"Follow me" the corpses that wandered the desert even in daylight were mindless, and followed their fellow who could utter word in the death tongue without question, this way, Loimos didn't have to worry about the monsters that also roamed the lands of the empire, together, they had the numerical advantage in case of problems.
On his way to Tochi, Loimos was planning on taking some time to visit the buried ruins, whilst Pezerx was an empire much too young to be known to Faraday, the great desert had been there for seemingly forever, it had been a land prone to death for a long time now and used to be under the watch of undeads trusted by King Nitok, the ancient forts and monuments erected by them had been destroyed and had sunken in the sand, so the odds that any of them still remained was slim, but not impossible.