As I travelled along the coast, I continued to try an enhance my magic with little success.
A passed through a few towns but had no luck finding a map. But what I was able to do is make a copy of my old map and develop my own map for the areas I'm passing through with [Soul Archive].
This useful little quirk will make it much easier to return to Auralia sometime in the future.
During my travels the dark creatures have continued to leave me alone for the most part. One or two did try to eat me, mistaking me as prey, but that didn't work out for them.
Eventually I found the next island, Molgi, which connects to Mahagi via a land bridge.
Molgi is much smaller that Mahagi and is mostly covered in sand from what I can tell. After crossing the land bridge my feet sink into the shiny white sands of Molgi island.
The sand is incredibly fine and soft on the feet. Under the midday sun its also quite hot but it doesn't bother me.
Crossing the sandy island will hardly take an hour but the quality of the sand has given me an idea.
The sand on the beach at Auralia had cooked into glass chunks which would be useless, but sand this fine could probably be used to make high quality glassware.
I don't have any need for glass items, but it could be a useful experiment in temperature control.
Developing my ability to control the temperature of fire could only be beneficial right?
Deciding that I'll spend a night here to test my control, I move to set up a camp. Mainly I need somewhere to sleep and some food for the night.
A few stand-alone trees in the distance have large leaves which would make for a useful mattress, but I can't see any creatures to eat.
Leaving the tree leaves for later, I explore the entire island in search for dinner.
However, not a single creature is on this island, which is incredibly weird given this island is connected to a land bridge.
Going back to Mahagi to get food for the night is annoying but I guess I have no choice.
Dashing back down the land bridge I quickly gather some food before returning to Molgi. I only have a few hours of sunlight left so once I have my food ready and have collected the tree leaves, I sit down to focus on making glassware.
The results won't be particularly good since I don't have all the materials needed for clear glass, but I can at least try to shape it successfully.
Calling upon my flames I have then seep into the sand in the shape of a dagger. I figure something simply would be best to start.
As the flames form the shape of a dagger, I increase the heat to turn the sand into glass.
Increasing the heat slowly I wait for the glass to form.
CRACK
Well… it would be miraculous if I succeeded immediately.
The glass chunk shattered into an unrecognisable mess.
Trying again I keep the temperature lower and cook it for longer and it didn't crack this time.
But it didn't look like a dagger either. It was a clump of disfigured glass with uneven temperaments throughout.
I continued trying with no real success until the sun was down and well into the night.
I was so enthralled with my project that the island around me was merely an afterthought.
As morning approached, I eventually succeeded in creating a halfway acceptable glass dagger. It held the right shape, but it wasn't sharp and definitely wasn't quality glass.
Without all the right materials it would be impossible to make the clear glass that I'm used too but the dagger not being sharp shows I have a ways to improve.
After being up all night, I was quite exhausted, so I opted to remain on Molgi for another day to rest and practice some more.
Rolling onto my leaf mattress I slept for a few hours before getting up for the day.
I will need to gather more food as I didn't prepare for a second day here.
On my way to the land bridge back to Mahagi I noticed an unusual gradient in the sand. It's as if something was dragging itself across the island. The track went all the way to the water's edge before disappearing.
It seems something came out of the water in the night before returning.
So, there is something living on this island besides me.
Moving on I hunted enough food to last me the day and night, which amounts to a rather significant number of corpses.
Dragging them back to the island was a rather arduous task in itself.
I definitely need a storage spell of some kind.
After returning to the island, I continued with my experiments.
This time I tried making a wine glass and some other cuplike shapes. To speed up my experiments progress I opted to do multiple at a time.
This caused the fine temperature control to get a little more difficult, but I managed.
The simple glass cups succeeded fairly easily but the wine glasses almost always cracked around the stem part.
I continued to attempt at the wine glasses whilst changing the regular cups to other items such as daggers, swords, random shapes, glass panes, and other sculpture like constructs for more of a challenge.
By the end of the day my temperature control was getting significantly greater and I was able to make most designs I wished with only a few attempts.
At this point the beach was looking like a glass graveyard since I had failed so many times.
As the sun went down, I tucked into bed early tonight to get an early start in the morning.
However, during the night I was woken by this strange gurgling noise.
It was low, somewhat distant but still distinct and rather annoying.
It was definitely whatever creature had come onto the beach the previous night but I wouldn't care if only it would shut up.
I tried to ignore it and go back to sleep but the noise was so bloody annoying that I couldn't get it out of my head.
Eventually I decided I would kill it just to shut it up, so I got up in annoyance to dispatch the creatin.
Following the gurgling noise I crossed the beach to the shore near the land bridge until I could see its figure in the dark.
It was a large blob like mass and was dragging itself up the beach with long stringy tentacles.
The light costal winds brought its smell to me, and I almost gagged in disgust. It smelt like rotting fish.
I tried to purify the air around me with heat, but it just made the smell worse.
Only getting as close as I dared to the smelly octopus creature I watched as it dragged itself further from the shore.
It looked as if it was a dying animal trying to escape. Although I assume it does this every night given the skid marks from the previous night.
The creature didn't show any signs of noticing me or if it did, it didn't care.
The low gurgling sound matched the rhythm of it dragging itself along the sand, as if it were grunting in effort.
Honestly, it's a disgusting creature, but I allowed it to continue as I was curious what its goal was.
Eventually it seemed to reach its goal as it started digging in the sand. As it dug the scent of rotting fish escalated.
Once it was finished digging it pulled itself up close to the hole and vomited in it, before covering the hole back up, and retreating back towards the shore.
The whole sight left me with a scowl on my face as I couldn't understand why it would do all that.
Once the creature was gone, I forged a glass shovel out of sand to investigate.
Given the creature just threw up in the hole I wasn't particularly keen on using my hands.
Digging in the spot where the hole was, I could hardly breathe as the smell of rotten fish overpowered me.
I felt like I was going to throw up as well.
Eventually I broke through the sand and found the mass of half-digested fish that the creature had left behind.
Shovelling the vomit out of the hole I searched for the only reason I could think of that the thing would do this, and sure enough I found it before long.
Six large spotted eggs were in amongst the vomit.
The creature is a mother.
I guess the vomit is supposed to be food for the hatchlings, or a defence mechanism meant to dissuade nosy predators.
Either way, this serves as proof to something I hadn't witnessed yet during my travels.
The creatures are capable of breeding.
Odd thing to need to confirm I know, but I have never seen a juvenile dark creature even amongst the pack animals.
Frankly though I'm not keen on the idea. The less dark creatures there are the better.
Not only for the world but also for my contract with the Goddess.
So I smash the eggs with the shovel before purifying the entire area with maximum heat flames.