Three days later, Talos and Dolores finally crossed the Andes, the backbone of the Vietnamese Andes, six days after they set foot on the land of the New World.

Thanks to the magic carpet, without this magic item, they would have spent at least twenty days in this majestic ancient and dangerous mountain range.

After another day's flight, Talos and Dolores made their way through a desolate Gobi and officially entered the Cordillera Desert.

This is a forbidden area for life, and what appears in front of Talos is the yellow sand, the dunes that stretch until the end of the line, and the territory of the desert Naga is located in the depths of this desert, the most inaccessible place.

Talos looked at the desolate desert, took a deep breath, and said to Dolores with a slight apology, "I'm sorry, because of my problem, I'm afraid the journey that was supposed to be only a few days will be extended to a week." ”

"It's okay, I can accompany you. Dolores smiled and lowered the height of the magic flying carpet, "Also, it's my honor to witness you learn Iron Will. ”

Yes, in the next few days, Talos will no longer ride the magic flying carpet, but will crawl through the desert in the most primitive way of Naga, tempering his will through ascetic practice for nearly a week, until he learns the combat specialty Iron Will or reaches the Sand Mountain.

This is the suggestion made by Leonhard after Talos reported the progress of the mission to Sandra yesterday: "Tenacity of will is the foundation for a bloodline knight to be strong, not afraid of hardships, not afraid of challenges, will not retreat because of strong enemies, and will not be afraid of death!"

"The power flowing in your blood that belongs to the Immortal Whale needs the guidance of the bloodline will, and a combat specialty, the Iron Will, can reduce a lot of unnecessary troubles when you are promoted to the third order, control the bloodline power, and awaken the bloodline specialty. ”

"For some reason I can't teach you Iron Will myself, but the Cordillera Desert is a good choice. ”

Iron Will is a support combat specialty that does not directly increase combat power, but can help the owner to offset the effects of first- and second-order psychic faction spells to the greatest extent when necessary.

In the Black Sea, Iron Will is a must-have combat specialty for every Black Sea Knight, who usually travels to an undersea vortex called the Spooky Eye to unleash their potential with the terrifying suction and danger from the vortex to gain more willpower than human.

The desert is a forbidden area for the terrestrial races, representing existential challenges and dangers, while for Talos, who usually lives in the sea, this danger will be doubled or even tripled.

Whether it's the drought of the desert, the heat, or the dangers lurking within, it will be a necessary part of Talos's tempering will.

So far, Talos has mastered a total of four combat specialties, dual-weapon combat, fierce charge, furious tail strike, and the most basic homeopathic slash!

Four years in the Afalon Plane was enough for Talos to accumulate enough experience in the four combat specialties to master it after advancing to the second order.

Now, he's going to learn the fifth combat specialty.

The fruits and delicacies that Dolores had planned to enjoy while crossing the desert had long since been put away, and Talos changed his specially enchanted leather armor, put on a coarse linen robe, and got off the magic flying carpet and stood directly on the desert.

Since it is an ascetic, Talos naturally does not use any extraordinary powers, nor does he use magic items to resist the drought and heat of the desert.

He wants to challenge this desert that has swallowed up an unknown number of lives in history as a tidal naga, a sea tribe, whether it is a sandstorm, a black storm or a desert tornado!

In the next second, the place where the snake's tail came into contact with the desert part faithfully transmitted a hot touch to Talos's brain, incinerating the newly raised pride.

This is only the outer edge of the Cordillera Desert, and the temperature is only 40 degrees, but the yellow sand on the ground has already reached 70 degrees under the scorching sun, and it is not so much yellow sand as red-hot iron sand, which is extremely hot.

Talos wagged his tail in discomfort, "Father is right, there is no better place for a Tidal Naga to learn Iron Will than the desert." ”

The muscles on the snake's tail contracted, propelling its body forward on the soft but hot dunes.

Naga is good at swimming, or swimming on the surface of the sea, so making your way up the dunes is not difficult for Talos.

The real difficulty came from the environment and the climate, and after only ten minutes, Talos could feel a lot of water draining from his body, turning into salty sweat, and the originally colorful scales on the snake's tail were dried out by the scorching sun.

Talos felt like a snake crawling helplessly on an iron plate, waiting to be roasted.

Inexplicably, he was a little nostalgic for the time when he was a human in his previous life, if he had two legs, the contact area between him and the hot yellow sand at the moment was only two feet, not a whole snake tail that was 8.5 feet long!

But soon, Talos put away this thought, and this nostalgia and yearning for the past is also one of the manifestations of weakness, which belongs to the part that needs to be tempered.

As time passed, Talos's progress slowed down, and he needed to allocate his strength and energy carefully to avoid succumbing to exhaustion on the first day of his asceticism.

The sweat on his body had long been evaporated by the high temperature, and a layer of hoarfrost had precipitated on the hemp and skin.

The prolonged exposure to the scorching sun and high temperatures, the vast expanse of yellow sand as far as the eye could see, and the scorching sunlight reflected everywhere by the yellow sand, made Talos feel dizzy and nauseous at the same time as his mouth was dry, which was a sign of heat stroke.

- The desert is still too much for a tidal Naga who is not protected by any spells.

But Talos still braved the scorching sun, and he knew that these were places where his will would be tempered, and he finally persevered with his amazing will.

As the sun went down, the yellow sand, which had been scorched for a day, finally stopped being so hot, and nearly sixteen hours of scorching sun exposure made the skin of Talos's bare arms dry and red, accompanied by bursts of burning and stinging sensations, and even blisters in some places.

As for the tail, which was in direct contact with the ground for a long time, the injury was even more serious, and the incessant wandering on the hot yellow sand caused a certain degree of extensive burns to the scales and snake tail.

Every writhing of the snake's tail on the rough yellow sand is a painful torture.

But Talos knew that this was only the beginning, because as the sun went down, the yellow sand and air under the tail, although it began to get cooler and less torturous, was followed by a huge temperature difference between day and night.

The high temperature that had almost evaporated the last shbit of water from Talos's body a few hours earlier had gradually turned into a low temperature, and night had fallen.