Chương 35: The Valley Blockade

The morning sun hit the limestone crags above Hazor like a brass mallet, baking the outer terrace tracks into blinding white paths. Ethan crouched behind a fractured dolomite ledge at the lip of the ravine, tracking the lines of digital dust characters rising two kilometres away. His eyes burned slightly behind his visor, but his focus was absolute. Loban's black-market run with the newly forged Truth-Flasks near the cattle pens had been an illicit masterpiece.

The quiet, rolling stream of transaction notifications from the independent grunts had pushed his character smoothly to Level 13 Apprentice Yotzer HaRishon, but the sudden spike on the regional charts meant he had to stay entirely clear of the main gates to evade the global administrators' automated network scans. The main southern caravan highway below was a total bottleneck.

"Nobody crosses the dry terrace lines without clearing the regional boundary levy!" a voice boomed across the flats. A joint enforcement blockade had taken position across the narrow throat of the trade road. Twenty high-level frontline soldiers—half wearing the dark blue iron scale cuirasses of Pixel Rex and the other half in the silver-and-crimson sashes of Merlion Holdings —had formed an interlocking wall with their heavy bronze Naue II swords drawn.

They had parked three heavy cedar supply wagons across the track, completely boxing out a desperate crowd of nearly eighty independent F2P players who were trapped under the mounting desert heat penalties. A strategic consolidation, Ethan calculated, his inner voice flat and clinical as he observed the lines from the ridge. The syndicates aren't just taxing the gates anymore.

By locking down the main valley corridor, they are forcing the independent grunts to liquidate their raw beast pelts and unrefined bronze wires to the corporate brokers at a forty percent discount, just to buy passage back into the safety zones.

"Etan, bro, we are totally dead money if we stay here," Loban whispered from the shadow of the ledge behind him. His wicker basket was entirely empty, his private balance sheet pulsing with the silver transfers from their successful twenty-canteen sales run.

"The corporate patrols are sweeping the low paths with Level 12 scouts. They are checking every single flax bag. If they catch us with the Hacksilber margins, they will flag our IDs for cross-sector cargo smuggling." Ethan didn't look back at him. His eyes were scanning the vertical geometric lines of the limestone cliffs flanking the bottleneck. Standard players navigated using the server's pre-rendered graphic mesh—the obvious roads, the cleared passes, the open steps.

But under Ethan's expanded profile, his Structural Analysis passive and expanded Perception allowed him to read the server's terrain. He wasn't looking at rock. He was tracking the ancient, water-carved erosion faults buried deep behind the limestone textures—the unmapped drainage veins scooping beneath the ridge. There, his mind clicked, a cold, stingy focus locking onto a narrow, sand-choked fault line three hundred metres behind the corporate vanguard line.

That fissure is a dead-end because the entrance is blocked by five-tons of gravel. But it's not solid rock. It's just loose, uncompacted Adama sediment held together by dry limestone calcification.

"Gather the F2P caravan," Ethan said, standing up.

"Tell them to bring their baskets and move in three-man cells through the brush. Price for passage through the ridge is half a shekel weight of raw bronze wire per character." Loban's digital eyes widened.

"Bro, you want to tunnel through solid limestone? That will drain your whole stamina bar to zero in five minutes!"

"I have a way," Ethan said, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper as he stepped down the gravel slope. Ten minutes later, forty-two desperate independent players had huddled inside the blinding heat of the hidden rock cleft, their baskets rattling as they dropped their unrefined bronze wire pieces into Loban's sack. Ethan stood before the massive, five-ton wall of collapsed gravel choking the cleft. He didn't swing his arm like a common manual miner.

He pressed his palm flat against the wet, red-streaked silt binding the rocks together. He accessed his Grade 2 Semitic Syntax Layout, mentally isolating the consonantal root א-ד-מ (A-D-M) and executing a high-velocity vowel inversion straight from Adama (Soil) to Adom (Red/Liquid Iron). He did not call for an explosion. He simply withdrew the structural cohesion parameter that held the clay binder together. The five-ton gravel collapse didn't fracture; it flowed.

The red mud holding the massive boulders together turned into a loose, watery red slurry instantly, the sand and stones sliding smoothly down the incline like liquid grain spilling from a torn sack. A pristine, two-metre-wide subterranean drainage vein opened cleanly through the heart of the ridge, leading straight past the corporate blockade directly onto the lower-city gate steps. [Genesis Modification Successful: Structural Displacement] Terrain Integrity Altered: 100% Volume Cleared.

Operational Resource Cost: 12 Mana Units / 0% Stamina Decay. Artisan Trade Experience Awarded: +2, 400 XP (Caravan Volume Multiplier Applied). The F2P players let out a collective gasp, their visors flashing as the system cleared their environmental dehydration warnings. They didn't wait for a command; they rushed through the cool, tax-free mountain throat in a silent, frantic sprint, completely bypassing the corporate shield-wall guarding the empty highway below.

Ethan stood in the cool shade of the new cave, his level milestone bar vibrating as the massive trade volume experience surged through his character sheet. The golden pixel ripple rolled up his burlap apron with an automated system chime that echoed in his ears. [System Alert: Milestone Achieved!] Your status has expanded: Level 15 Apprentice Yotzer HaRishon Reached. All Baseline Attribute Caps Expanded (+1 to All Core Stats). Ethan closed the notification with a swift, dismissive swipe of his hand.

He gripped his heavy bag of newly extracted bronze wire scrap, looking out through the exit aperture at the massive mud-brick gates of Hazor. He had officially caught up with the frontline player average, his pocket was bursting with raw, untaxable metallurgical wealth, and the corporate syndicates were still standing out in the sun, guarding a border that no longer existed. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.