The irony of getting ambushed by a group of beasts that hid their mana cores while he himself was working on a similar ability wasn't lost on Micky.
As soon as the battle was over, the survivors looted a few shards from the crabs' shells to fix into their clothes, to hopefully mask their mana signatures in the coming days. In a way, this rendered Micky's previous efforts moot, though he hadn't been practicing Internal Runecrafting just for Marnok's sake.
The group was rightfully distraught after losing nearly half of their members again, yet nobody complained much. Today's casualties were barely a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of people who had died the day before.
Each survivor contributed in whatever way he could, to clean up the mess and get some much-needed rest as soon as possible. Marnok and another air user worked together to funnel the stench of death and decay toward the ocean, to avoid drawing unwanted attention from the land-dwelling creatures.
The only remaining water user – or well… the only one that the other sailors knew about – washed away the bloodstains on the sand, while two earth users were in charge of burying the bodies and building a makeshift camp for the group. It might have been more prudent to move away from the battlefield before more monsters arrived in search of food, but the sailors were too tired to travel or carry the heavy carcasses.
Two fire mages took it upon themselves to roast the Orange crabs. The larger specimens were too tough to eat, but the sailors didn't rush to get rid of them. They hoped to offer them as tribute to any invading beasts, to hopefully avoid further bloodshed tonight.
There weren't any pure or lightning mages left. There had been some, but none had made it through the battle. All the sick men had died too – Micky didn't think it was a coincidence that the sailors with the lower grades, weaker affinities, or impaired physical conditions had been among the first to perish.
'Just the indifference of nature doing its cruel job…' He sighed.
Much to his host's relief, Flammy was the eighth survivor. The life mage hadn't been able to do much against the crabs directly, but his crewmates had gone out of their way to protect their only healer, and he'd returned the favour by keeping everyone in decent condition throughout the battle. He was currently walking toward Marnok to do more of that, his hand ablaze with the green glow of life mana.
"I'm good mate," Micky hurriedly said after seizing control of his host's mouth. "The others need yar help more," he added, making sure to emulate Marnok's speech pattern to the best of his ability. He pointed to another sailor that sported a couple of nasty gashes on his left leg, just below his knee.
Flammy nodded, quietly moving to heal the injured man as a mental frown bubbled up through Marnok's soul. 'Who says no to free healin'? I know we're doin' better than most, but I wouldn't mind gettin' some of me fatigue washed away, ya know?'
Micky felt the urge to roll his eyes. 'I've still got plenty of healing potions left,' he said, emptying a few doses into his host's stomach. The Orange liquid had grown even less effective on Marnok after he awakened his second core, but relieving some tension from his muscles wasn't an issue.
'Aye, if ya'd rather waste yar potions than to get patched up for free, who am I to judge?' Marnok replied with a shrug.
As soon as everyone was done with their respective tasks, the sailors feasted in relative silence around the campfire, only speaking briefly to discuss their plans for tomorrow.
The thought of venturing into the jungle with nearly half the men they'd started out with filled everyone with unconcealed dread, yet reaching the Saint's tomb might be their only shot at surviving the island. Not that the demigod's treasure was guaranteed to save them, but the alternatives were far less promising.
Nobody knew how long it would be before their Commodore sent more ships after them, and they didn't think that they'd be able to survive on the coast for weeks or months – maybe even years.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
"At least we no longer need food. We'll save a lot o' time if we 'ead straight there," one of them concluded, getting a round of nods back.
Half the sailors went to sleep, Marnok and Flammy included. Or at least, the former pretended to do so, to avoid having to explain his willingness to keep watch for a second night in a row. Closing their eyes, Micky and his host rested on the soft sand, listening to the soothing sound of the waves and the hushed whispers of the sailors on guard duty.
'A couple of them are coughing again,' Micky noticed, suppressing a frown.
They weren't the same people as yesterday – those men had already died. Worse still, the newly afflicted sailors were all Yellow-borns, which was a terrible omen if Micky had seen one.
Granted, he already had some guesses as to what was causing this, but he lacked enough evidence to be certain. Deciding to sit on the information a little longer, he ignored everyone else, turning his attention inwards again.
The fact that Marnok no longer needed the concealment runes lifted some pressure off Micky's non-existent shoulders, but that didn't deter him from resuming work on his project. He still had a long way to go before his new skill was at a satisfactory level for his goals.
'A single rune isn't challenging enough anymore. I need to push myself further,' he realized.
Maintaining the enchantment still took a lot of effort, but his improvements had slowed down noticeably after having kept the rune active for the past few hours. Clearly, he'd have to keep raising the bar if he didn't want to stagnate.
Adding more runes was a no-brainer, but Micky had no idea how he was meant to draw multiple enchantments side-by-side inside the spherical core. Instead, he opted for enchantments that involved multiple runes stacked over one another.
The most obvious next step was a controlled concealment rune. He started by forming one in his host's water core, to ease the transition, only switching to the air core about an hour later. The process hadn't changed much, but the shape in his mind was a little more complex, forcing him to expend more effort to hold it together.
Over the next couple of hours, Micky moved on to other types of controlled enchantments, drawing each one inside Marnok's water core first, before scrapping it and switching to the more challenging air core, getting faster and better with every attempt.
About halfway through the night, he realized that trying different runes wasn't helping as much anymore. Deciding to increase the difficulty again, he drew one of his favourite enchantments – and one that involved two intricate runes rather than one and a half:
A self-repair.
Micky had considered the possibility of using internal self-repairs to somehow accelerate his advancements in the past, though he'd long concluded that it wouldn't work.
Mana cores couldn't be repaired with just mana. Even if he could somehow get the memory runes to store the organ's blueprint before a cleansing session and the growth runes to restore it afterwards, the enchantment would most likely bring back all the purged impurities, essentially reversing the effect of the elixir.
If he did that, Micky would only be wasting time and beast mana. He just couldn't imagine a way to mend the cracks in the core the right way – other than feeding them crystallized pure mana, which his Aurora Dew already did.
'Come to think of it, none of my current enchantments are particularly useful when paired with the new spell,' he realized.
Other than the concealment runes that could be used in niche situations, the only others that might come close were heat runes, pressure runes or structural integrity enchantments.
Heat runes could potentially be used to warm up his body if he ended up stuck in a cold environment with a low grade and an affinity incapable of generating heat by itself.
The pressure runes might allow him to expel mana more forcefully from his body, to perhaps strengthen his spells slightly. Of course, he could achieve something similar with regular pre-casting, and he wasn't even sure that the organ would be able to endure the strain.
As for the structural integrity enchantments, they could potentially shield his cores from harm, though he struggled to think of many situations where that would be handy.
'I guess that they can be combined with pressure runes to offset the damage.'
It would arguably be too much effort for too little gain. That said, both the structural integrity enchantments and the pressure runes would be part of his eventual artificial promotion, so testing this out sounded like a nice milestone to aim towards.
'I'll worry about that later. Right now, even the self-repair is difficult to draw,' he decided, shaking the pointless thoughts off.
It took Micky two hours just to get the enchantment to work inside Marnok's second core, and another to resist the violent air mana in his first. Micky was debating internally whether to try a controlled self-repair next, or to go back to the simpler concealment runes but keep them active in both cores at the same time, when he got interrupted.
The first rays of the morning sun licked his host's face gently, the other sailors calling out to him – slightly less gently.
"Oy, Marnok! We're about to head out!"
Micky took a short break from his runecrafting, he and his host stretching their limbs, taking a few deep breaths of the salty breeze, and eating a couple slices of dried crab meat. It was finally time to trek to the Saint's tomb!
The sailors moved cautiously through the jungle, heading straight toward the nearest lake. Apparently, there were three of them on the island, the largest one sporting a crescent shape like a person's grin, the other two perfectly circular.
From the sky, the island looked like a skull, which was precisely how it had received the name that it was labelled by on most maps – at least according to the sailors who had actually seen said maps, though Marnok and, by proxy, Micky, had only heard about this from the others. The tomb was supposedly buried beneath the lake that made up the skull's right eye.
'No wonder it hasn't been discovered in so long,' Micky had thought upon hearing about it.
He didn't doubt that the people of Robari had turned their whole planet upside down in search of the hidden stashes of Fools' Amber, but few would think to dig beneath a random body of water on some remote island without a hint.
Technically, the lake was only a couple dozen kilometres away from the spot where the sailors had fought the crabs. After all, the marooned crew had spent the better part of the previous day circling the island precisely to shorten the distance as much as possible.
The trek still took a while as the eight men travelled cautiously, masking their cores and dulling their steps as best as they could. They'd even covered their bodies with mud to get rid of their scent, and kept their mouths shut – for the most part – to avoid drawing any attention.
If there was one thing that wasn't going in their favour, it was the sailors' intermittent coughs that kept echoing through the dense undergrowth. The afflicted men had wrapped strips of fabric around their mouths to stifle the sound, though there was a limit to how much cloth they could stuff in their faces without suffocating. As for where they'd found the excess fabric?
Well… let's just say that their deceased crewmates wouldn't be needing their shirts moving forward. They wouldn't be needing their boots either, which was why Marnok had "borrowed" a pair.
'Is it me, or are there more people coughing again?' Micky wondered, letting his host's lips curl into a frown.
Last night, it had only been two, but another three had since joined their ranks. Flammy was among them, which Marnok wasn't particularly happy about, clearly worried about his friend's health. Luckily, Micky and his host hadn't felt anything odd yet.
'Start coughing,' Micky told Marnok at some point.
'What?' the sailor asked, his soul flaring with surprise at the strange request.
'You heard me,' Micky replied. 'And once you begin, make sure you keep it up, or the others will know you're faking it.'
'But why?'
'Because, if I'm right about this, your friends will soon be asking why you're the only one who's okay.'
Marnok didn't seem entirely convinced, but he heeded Micky's instructions regardless.
The group continued to advance slowly through the jungle, prioritizing caution over speed. Had they sprinted toward the lake, the trip wouldn't have taken them longer than an hour. However, they opted to travel without raising a stir, and while carefully scanning every patch of dirt they stepped over. Despite the delay, they should be reaching their destination by noon.
Micky only paid attention to them intermittently, spending most of his time working on the new spell. He had already managed to form and sustain a controlled self-repair enchantment in his host's water core, though getting it to work inside the air core was proving rather difficult.
That was why he'd taken a break from pushing for more complex runes, instead switching his efforts to multitasking. Right now, he was trying to form concealment runes in both organs. The one in Marnok's second core was already complete, yet forcing the other one into shape wasn't easy.
'Maybe I should try doing it the other way around? It might be easier to draw the rune in the water core while holding one steady in the air core…'
Strictly speaking, this particular exercise wasn't very relevant to his project. His artificial advancement would certainly involve enchantments far more complex than his controlled self-repairs – so that part of his training was necessary – but he wouldn't need to draw them in multiple cores at once. As soon as he learned how to give his runes substance, he should have the means to upgrade his organs one at a time.
However, Micky felt that any practice was good. Even if an exercise didn't have an obvious application, it would help him spot and fix flaws in his technique that he hadn't even noticed.
He was about to test out his new idea, when a sudden scream pierced the jungle, drawing everyone's attention.
Several heads – including Marnok's – snapped toward the noise, Micky soon realizing that one of their crewmembers was missing. Of course, Mana Sense was often more reliable than regular vision. Marnok's soon revealed the location of the unfortunate sailor, the crab shells hiding his core having shifted from his sternum.
Guided by his sixth sense, Micky's gaze followed their crewmate's mana signature up a tall tree, his host's eyes widening upon landing on the man's mutilated body. A giant shape was slowly coiling around his torso, squeezing the life out of him. The sailor's bones audibly cracked with every centimetre the foreign mass travelled, his swollen flesh twitching in pain as blood oozed out of countless wounds.
However, the poor sailor couldn't let out another sound, a massive maw having already swallowed the upper third of his body, two yellow orbs shining on its head with unconcealed malice.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
'Some kind of snake? It's huge!' Micky thought as he tried to fathom the creature's entire length.
Its body stretched and twisted through the crowns of nearly every tree in the area, its girth thicker than the numerous trunks supporting its weight. It was so long in fact, that Micky wasn't sure whether it was a single beast or a whole pack of them. If it was just one specimen, it had to be at Green, though he struggled to read its grade.
Gasps and horrified shrieks broke the oppressive silence of the jungle once again as the surviving sailors stepped closer to one another, nearly pressing their backs together and facing outwards.
"H-How in the reefs did we miss it?!" one of them asked, his voice shaking.
That… was a great question. The abomination was practically everywhere – and yet it had somehow eluded all eight of their Mana Senses for such a long time. Scanning it more carefully, Micky noticed that its pitch-black body wasn't covered in scales exactly, but rather something else.
Shards of a material that appeared oddly familiar. Come to think of it, didn't it look exactly like the fragmented shells that Marnok and his crewmates were using to hide their own cores?
The pieces were rough and irregular, seemingly attached to the monster's body rather than naturally grown. Micky saw traces of a pale liquid spilling slowly through the gaps – thick, viscous and sticky – like molten wax, holding the stolen carapaces in place.
Swallowing hard, Micky was about to instruct Marnok and the other sailors to attack the creature while it was still busy with its meal, when he saw something else that caused the blood to freeze in his host's veins.
Micky had instinctively thought of the beast as some kind of snake – but this wasn't Remior. His preconceived notions clearly couldn't be trusted. The monster's elongated body didn't run across a single straight line – it forked at a certain spot, splitting into three ways!
One segment clearly led to the head currently devouring the unlucky sailor. Another likely ended up as the creature's tail, somewhere far in the distance. As for the last one…
Micky's borrowed eyes darted across the canopies as he frantically followed the abomination's body to its third extremity. The colossal beast stretched too far, winding through countless gaps in the dense foliage, almost forming a second layer of jungle overlaying the first one.
To Micky's great horror, his search eventually led him right above his host!
Rivers of transparent saliva gushed out of a jaw hung so wide it might as well have been a cave, rows of curved fangs glinting with hunger as a second pair of yellow orbs shone upon Marnok!
"Fuck!" Micky spat, shoving the others aside as he rolled along the dried dirt, barely dodging the monster's strike.
The enormous mass crashed into the ground where Marnok had just stood with enough force to shake the entire area, the surrounding trees still vibrating a couple of seconds later. Micky felt his host's eardrums nearly split, watching the earth crack as the violent impact raised a cloud of dust.
The creature's fangs remained lodged deep in the dirt, getting ripped out of their owner's maw as it pulled its head up, blue blood spilling out of its torn gums. Micky didn't get a chance to celebrate his opponent's defanging, countless new fangs soon sprouting to replace them – the beast was clearly built for precisely this sort of thing.
The other sailors finally decided to make themselves useful, a barrage of spells of four separate affinities flying toward the creature. Little good it did them, however, the projectiles splashing harmlessly against the stolen fragments, never so much as touching the monster's actual body.
"Focus yar attacks at the same spot!" Micky yelled. "We'll never kill it if we shoot randomly!"
He wasn't sure whether the others had heard him through the cacophony of the battle. Trees snapped in two every time the snake moved, colourful flashes blinding everyone as boulders, fireballs, green crescents and streams of water pelted the beast's armoured hide, plunging the jungle into complete chaos.
Thankfully, their attacks soon converged where the monster's necks split. Whether they had heard Micky or not, Marnok's crewmates clearly had the same idea as him. Nobody knew whether the monster could survive with a single head, so their best bet was to make sure that they severed both at once.
Micky actively assisted his host this time, making full use of his water mana. He no longer cared whether anyone noticed. They were probably too busy to pay attention to him anyway, and he guessed that they would be more than happy to swallow whatever explanation Marnok gave them later as long as they survived.
Perhaps he'd pack more firepower if he seized Marnok's other core too and fused the mana types into ice, but he decided that he'd rather have a second mind helping him than a composite affinity.
Everyone's priority was to keep track of the creature's head, as it posed the greatest threat to the group by far. At least, it had yet to demonstrate the ability to attack with any other body part. However, avoiding its blows grew twice as hard as soon as the monster was done devouring its meal, freeing up its second head.
The second sailor fell almost immediately – it was one of the earth users – increasing the pressure on the others once again.
The good news was that their attacks eventually yielded some results, peeling off the layer of chitin shielding the intersection of the beast's necks. The opening exposed a much softer body hiding beneath – translucent and slimy like a slug's. The sticky fluid was already flowing along the creature's length, dragging more of the glossy fragments with it, the monster clearly trying to repair its broken armour.
"Like hell I'll let ya!" the last of the earth users shouted, emptying his core to fire a massive stone spear into the creature's hide, stabbing into its vulnerable exterior.
Only, the sailor had left himself wide open in his eagerness. Worse still, he didn't have a drop of mana left to protect himself with. Others tried to save him, but the snake's fangs tore through their hastily crafted constructs as if they were paper, snapping around the man's body and leaving his torso riddled with holes.
To his credit, the sailor retained enough clarity of mind to will the spear to shatter with his dying breath, giving his crewmates an opening to pour their attacks directly into the creature's body.
"Come on! Just die already!" another yelled, hurling a fireball into the hole.
The abomination writhed in agony, apparently realizing that it was about to lose its life. It pulled both of its heads back, going as far as to let go of the mangled corpse still in its maw. Its serpentine frame moved along the trees' crowns as it attempted to untangle itself from the jungle and slither away.
Marnok's companions showed no interest in letting it go, however. They ran behind it, continuing to shower its body with spells, trying to aim for the opening that their fallen comrade had sacrificed his life to create. Most of their attacks missed, but a few didn't, the snake screeching in agony each time.
"Let it go!" Micky yelled, taking control of his host's mouth. "It's not worth chasin'!"
Before anyone even had the chance to register his words, a colossal shadow flew through the jungle, slicing every tree in its path like a giant's machete, heading straight toward the group.
Micky barely got Marnok to duck, scarcely registering that two others had done the same. Their three companions weren't so lucky, the snake's tail slamming into them more violently than its heads ever had, causing their upper bodies to burst into minced meat. Fountains of blood sprayed out of their severed torsos, as a rain of dirt, splintered wood, fragmented shells and gore showered what was left of the jungle.
By the time Marnok, Flammy, and the sailor with the red bandana raised their heads, the Green snake was long gone, the midday sun shining brightly over the uprooted section of the jungle that stretched for dozens of metres around them.
Not wasting a moment, Micky took control of his host's body, darting toward a certain direction while yelling at the others.
"Run toward the lake!"
Abandoning all caution, Micky sprinted toward the lake at full speed, the other survivors right behind his host. It was too late for stealth anyway – given the commotion that their battle against the two-headed snake had raised.
On top of that, they most certainly lacked the numbers to protect themselves against any other horrors that the jungle might throw at them, so their best bet was to avoid them entirely. Hopefully the monstrous serpent had scared the other beasts off. The group had already covered most of the distance to the tomb, so it shouldn't take them very long to arrive at this pace.
'Can't believe we lost two hundred men in three days,' Marnok said, his heart still racing. 'Just how unlucky can one get?'
'I don't think it was all luck,' Micky mentally shook his head, though he didn't bother to elaborate.
Nobody said anything else, the three men rushing through the jungle, this time keeping an eye up at the trees' crowns in case there were more snakes lying in wait. Fortunately, they managed to reach the circular lake where the Saint's treasure was supposedly buried without encountering any other creatures.
Technically, there was a chance that they'd lost their way in their hurry and ended up at the wrong lake, though Micky doubted that was the case. The other bodies of water were much farther away, so he and his companions wouldn't have reached a different lake this soon.
As for whether the demigod's tomb was truly hidden here… he had no idea. None of the deceased sailors had been certain either. Micky didn't even know how deep the lake was, or whether any aquatic creatures lurked inside its seemingly tranquil waters, as their intel hadn't included that information.
The only thing he could tell was how wide it was – a couple kilometres across. Even if the treasure was here, finding it wasn't going to be easy. Things would have been simpler if they had arrived with hundreds of men as originally planned.
Listening to the persistent coughs of their companions, Micky remembered that his host was supposed to be faking his illness too. Then again, it didn't really matter at this point.
The sailor with the red bandana was breathing and coughing a lot harder than Flammy. It hadn't been that long since he fell sick, but straining himself during the previous battle must have greatly worsened his condition. The island's humidity probably wasn't making things easy for him either.
"Need some 'elp, Nodarr?" Flammy asked.
The healer hadn't done as much as the others during the battle. Most of the snake's blows had been lethal anyway – by the time they connected there was nothing left to heal. That said, he seemed more than happy to contribute his life mana after the fact, as always.
Nodarr gestured for the man to proceed, prompting Micky to do something that none of the sailors could have expected. Taking control of his host's cores, he allowed a huge amount of air and water mana to spill out of his body, and to mix into a layer of frost that spread toward the healer.
"Don't touch him!" Micky yelled as a pale sheet of ice covered Flammy's feet, freezing him in place.
He didn't stop there, however, crystalline tendrils coiling around the healer's legs and torso, making crackling sounds as they restrained him further. Flammy tried to resist, of course, but the tendrils only grew thicker as they wrapped around his body, soon binding his arms and even covering his mouth.
"Marnok?! What in the reefs are ya doin'?!" *cough* "And how the–" Nodarr began to say before gasping mid-sentence, his eyes widening with realization. "Ya've a second mana core!"
"Stay away from him," Micky insisted, making no effort to imitate his host's accent anymore.
Meanwhile, Marnok didn't seem particularly happy about this turn of events either. 'Micky?! Mind explainin' why ya're attackin' me mate all of a sudden?!' he asked, trying to take back control of his body.
Micky sighed. Stirring the spectral fiends slumbering inside his wisp, he used their help to strengthen his hold on his vessel against the man's wishes.
"It's him," he said out loud for everyone's sake, his voice calm and confident. "Flammy's the one who's infected the whole crew. I'm willing to bet good money that he was behind the shipwreck too."
Marnok's resistance eased slightly, his soul flaring with disbelief, though Micky could tell via their connection that his host was still more inclined to side with his friend than him.
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
Nodarr didn't appear very convinced either. "That's a serious accusation, Marnok! 'ave ya 'nythin' to back this up?"
"I… know more about the life affinity than most people," Micky replied, scrambling to decide how to best phrase what he was about to say. "I've come across a family with multiple life users in the past. They could use it for more than just healing."
"That ain't proof," Nodarr said.
"No, it isn't," Micky agreed. "Which is why I didn't say anything sooner, even though I've had my suspicions for a while. But I've been paying attention to Flammy over the past couple of days, and everyone he 'healed' coincidentally started coughing shortly afterwards. Just think about it for a moment – aren't you the same?"
Nodarr creased his brow, clearly taking Micky's words seriously for the first time in this conversation. Even Marnok stopped trying to forcefully reclaim his body, finally willing to at least hear Micky out.
*cough* "What about ya, then?" Nodarr asked. "Couldn't 'elp but notice ya stopped coughin' the moment that thing attacked us. Were ya pretendin' all along?"
"I was protecting myself," Micky said, not a hint of apology in his voice. "He tried to infect me the moment I made it to shore, but I accidentally got rid of his mana due to reasons that aren't relevant. It took me a while to piece together what had happened, but I realized that he'd try to infect me again, so I've been rejecting all his subsequent offers to heal me."
"So what?" Nodarr pressed. "Ya didn't 'ave to lie to us."
"What choice did I have?" Micky shrugged. "When he started faking his own cough, I realized that he was planning to single me out. I would have been the one who looked suspicious if I'd been the last healthy person in the group. I still didn't have any evidence to prove that he had infected everyone or that he was faking his own cough, but he couldn't prove that I was faking mine either."
"What's changed? Ya still don't have 'ny concrete proof, so why did ya stop doin' it?"
"Well… believe it or not, playing Flammy's little game was the last thing on my mind while we were getting butchered by a Green beast. And, frankly, I no longer give a shit now that it's just the three of us. I can handle him just fine, so I could have waited for him to kill you, but I thought I'd do you the courtesy of letting you know."
"What about the second core?" *cough* "Or ya speakin' differently all of a sudden?"
"I don't mind giving you a detailed explanation about all of that, but I promise you that it has nothing to do with any of this. I'm not sure you even have the time to hear me out."
Nodarr fell silent, seemingly contemplating everything Micky had said.
However, Marnok clearly had a few more questions for him. 'This still doesn't make sense. I've known Flammy for decades! I've met 'is family! 'is boy calls me "Uncle"! Why in the reefs would he do this to us?'
'That much is obvious,' Micky replied with a mental shrug. 'I don't know if he's been lying to you the whole time or just recently decided to stab you in the back, but he clearly wants all the Fools' Amber to himself.'
'That's stupid! We ain't even sure it exists! And he couldn't 'ave known he'd survive this long – he could 'ave died a dozen times over!'
Micky scratched the back of his host's head. 'This… I admit it's the one thing I haven't been able to figure out. It's one of the reasons I've waited so long to tell even you. But I'm pretty sure about the rest.'
He didn't think that it was a coincidence that nearly every person Flammy had touched had ended up falling sick and getting killed in the very next battle, but the man's motivations indeed didn't add up.
Flammy could have drowned in the shipwreck or gotten picked off by the aquatic monsters while swimming to the island, and he could have just as easily gotten killed by the crabs or the Green snake. They didn't even know whether the demigod's tomb was here, nor did Flammy have the means to survive on the island by himself after getting rid of everyone else.
It would have been safer for him to betray his crewmates during the return trip, after they'd confirmed the Amber's existence and helped him claim it. And even if – by some miracle – he managed to get off the island with all the treasure, how was he going to escape from the Green-borns ruling the oceans long enough to use it?
It almost felt like the man's greed had robbed him of every trace of common sense, leading him to make all sorts of idiotic choices, gambling his life at every turn.
"Let 'im speak." *cough* "I want to hear what he has to say," Nodarr said after a while.
Micky complied, since he was just as curious as the others. He unsealed Flammy's mouth, only to reveal the world's creepiest grin. Much like Micky had warned Marnok and Nodarr, their "healer" no longer bothered to cough.
More importantly, he made no effort to deny the accusations or defend his actions, nor did he look very concerned that his treachery had been unveiled. He merely stared at his former companions, his eyes as still as the lake they reflected, with just the faintest glint of mirth simmering in their depths.
"Nothin'?" *cough* "Is everythin' Marnok" *cough, cough* "said about ya true?" Nodarr asked, his coughs growing more frequent by the second.
"Flammy! Tell 'em they're wrong!" Marnok suddenly yelled, Micky allowing him to use his body again.
Silence.
Nodarr raised an eyebrow upon registering Marnok's sudden change in tone, but Flammy didn't show the slightest reaction to his friend's outburst, nor to anything else that had been spoken earlier.
Not until a couple of seconds later at least, when he turned to face Nodarr directly. Ignoring the tight restraints, he shifted within the ice, his bones audibly cracking in the process. The grating noise made every hair on Marnok's body stand on end, though the healer didn't seem to even feel the pain. Flammy's core flared with mana, making Micky realize that something was wrong.
Countless veins squirmed beneath Nodarr's skin, the poor sailor clenching his chest in agony as he fell to his knees. His throat and chin turned purple and swollen, blood pouring out of every orifice in his body!
"Fuck! Stop this or I swear I'll kill you!" Micky yelled, but the life mage didn't so much as flinch.
Micky used the icy vines to constrict the healer tighter, but Flammy didn't seem to care about his misshapen body or the countless wounds tearing open across his skin.
Nodarr was having a much harder time enduring the violent symptoms of his infection, however. Bloody foam spilled out of his lips as he struggled to speak – or breathe – Micky wasn't sure which – but only choked gargles escaped his mouth. Before long, he was convulsing on the ground, clawing desperately at the dirt and his own neck, trying to dig a hole to inhale through, yet his flesh only swelled further to seal his self-inflicted wounds.
Realizing that Flammy wasn't going to let the poor man go, Micky formed an icy javelin in his hands, pointing it at his host's friend. He didn't know whether the healer's death would release Nodarr, but he had no idea what else to try.
Marnok didn't even try to stop him this time. Perhaps he'd fully accepted that Flammy was no longer the person he once knew, or maybe he was simply too shaken by the pointless cruelty transpiring before his very eyes.
Just as Micky fired the construct, veins squirmed beneath Flammy's mutilated skin too, his body turning red like a ripe tomato, in a manner that reminded Micky of his trollsfury potions. The healer's muscles flexed with new power, shattering his restraints as he smashed the projectile with his backhand. At the same time, life mana flooded his body to mend his wounds.
Of course, Flammy's injuries were way too serious to be fixed in an instant, even after emptying his core. His half-repaired bones broke again with every step he took, cutting through his own flesh as he charged at Micky on all fours like a wild beast, leaving bloody footprints and palmprints on the frozen ground.
Whether his goal was to rip Marnok apart with his bare hands, bite his throat out like a rabid dog, or just infect and watch him suffer the same fate as Nodarr, Micky didn't know nor care. Either way, he didn't panic, knowing that he was stronger and far more collected than the injured healer.
Flammy had only possessed half of Marnok's mana reserves to start with, and he'd already wasted a lot to worsen Nodarr's injuries, to free himself from the ice, and to fight against his self-inflicted wounds.
More ice spilled out of Marnok's body, a new layer of frost reaching Flammy, this one even thicker than before. Tendrils sprouted to stop the healer in his tracks once again, the man's face coming to a halt mere centimetres from his former friend's.
Flammy's eyes had remained perfectly placid throughout, no matter what he'd done or what had happened to him – almost as if his mind was no longer even present, his body acting entirely on its own. Micky had to admit that he was more than a little disturbed by the sight, even though he knew that the healer didn't pose much of a threat to him.
Not giving up, the life mage spat out a mouthful of infected blood into Marnok's eyes – or tried to, anyway – though Micky had seen that coming from a kilometre away, having already coated his host's face with a film of water.
Shifting his attention back to Nodarr, he realized that the man was already dead.
Sighing, he was about to finish the incapacitated healer off, when another change occurred in the man's body. His throbbing veins suddenly expanded once again, this time turning pitch black. The dark colour snaked toward Flammy's face before spilling into his eyes, a black cloud soon covering his scleras.
Micky instinctively took a few steps back, no longer sure what he was dealing with. Everything the healer had done up to that point could be explained by a life mage that had lost his mind due to greed, but they were quickly delving into stranger territory.
It was a good thing that he'd put some distance from the man too, because Flammy vomited another mouthful of blood the very next instant, once again trying to infect his friend. Only, this time, the liquid was viscous and black like tar, a series of disturbing shapes writhing inside the blob.
Micky intercepted the attack with a blast of pressurized air, only for the scattered droplets to move again by themselves the moment they landed on the ground. They formed a swarm of tiny insects – beetles? Or scarabs, perhaps? The nasty creatures – if they could even be called that – flew at Micky, trying to worm their way into his host's body.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
Gritting his borrowed teeth, Micky blocked them again with a screen of water, trapping them in the clear liquid. The scarabs didn't give up, however, turning back into droplets that tried to swim right through the azure barrier!
"Not gonna happen," Micky spat, gathering and rolling the mana into a globule as big as a watermelon, making sure that he pulled every last drop of filth to its centre. Scanning it with his Mana Sense, he soon confirmed that this thing didn't have a mana core of any sort – something that every living being in the universe was supposed to need.
Then again, he wasn't sure whether spectral fiends had any either – he'd never thought to check – nor did he know whether they counted as living creatures. Whatever the case, the tar-like material trapped before him looked nothing like them either.
'Another demonic infestation?' he wondered. 'They're much more common than I thought…'
How many clones had he even sent out in total? Four? Five hundred? And this was already his third time running into a world like this. Of course, every infestation he'd encountered had manifested in an entirely different way, but the similarities were uncanny.
'Could this have something to do with Robari's gods killing each other and ruining their only source of stable beast mana?' he asked both himself and his host.
Marnok remained silent, clearly still too shocked to utter a word. Even Micky was too tired to solve the mystery right now, and way too freaked out by the weird substance to keep watching it wriggling inside the azure bubble.
Pouring some air mana into the construct, he froze it completely before shattering it into powder – as fine as he could make it. Just to be sure, he stomped on both the pale and black dust indiscriminately, before freezing everything into an even larger block of ice that would hopefully last for several hours before melting. If that wasn't enough, he used more ice mana to drill a deep pit into the ground, burying the construct and sealing it with mud.
Turning to Flammy, he realized that the crazed sailor was somehow still alive. Whether it was his life affinity or his ailment keeping him breathing wasn't clear, though the man had reduced himself to a shrivelled mummy, too weak to fight against his new prison. Even so, he was clearly trying – and thankfully failing – to gather more of the dark blood to vomit out.
Not interested in finding out whether the healer would eventually succeed, Micky froze him completely into a statue, before giving his corpse the same treatment as the bugs.
Was it a little over the top?
Probably. Especially given the fact that he was borrowing Marnok's body to pulverize his friend's. Still, Micky knew that these demonic infestations could bring even gods to their knees. Robari had been even more developed than Amenthes, and had still suffered greatly, so he wasn't going to leave anything up to chance.
Only after separating and burying the minced and twice-frozen remains of the treacherous life mage in five different pits did he finally exhale in relief, plopping down weakly.
'Marnok… I'm really sorry about your crew and your friend. And for making you watch that,' he said as he tried to catch his breath.
'Just… what was that?' the last surviving sailor asked, his inner voice soft and defeated.
'If I'm right… something really, really nasty,' Micky replied vaguely. 'Have you ever heard of anything like this happening elsewhere on your planet?'
Marnok shook his head. 'Do ya think I could 'ave 'elped him? Had I realized sooner?' he asked, clearly caring more about the people he had lost than the fate of his world.
'Don't even go there,' Micky said, his voice growing firmer. 'I'm pretty sure that whatever happened to him has been going on for a while. Since before the shipwreck for sure. Probably long before that. You couldn't have known, and I doubt you could have done anything about it.'
Marnok didn't reply immediately, though he did eventually nod a couple of minutes later. 'Now what? Everyone is gone. I'm the last person on the damn island.'
Micky pushed his host's body back to his feet, scanning their surroundings once more. His gaze lingered on Nodarr's gnarly corpse for a second, the man's expression still twisted by horror, disease and sheer agony.
They should bury him. Micky didn't know whether the infection that had killed him had merely been the product of Flammy's life affinity or the infestation too, and he'd rather not wait long enough to find out. Besides, the poor guy deserved to be treated with some dignity in death. Either way, dealing with that shouldn't take more than a few minutes.
Peering past the dead sailor, Micky scanned the vast lake stretching before him as he answered his host's question.
'Unless you've reconsidered how important it is for you to stick around on this shitty planet for revenge – no offense – we're going to have to start searching the lake. Just pray that we find your Saint's tomb before we get eaten, and that the demigod has something useful buried with him.'
Micky and Marnok were still shaken by the things that they had seen over the past couple of days. Sadly, they didn't have the time to rest or mourn the others. A vast jungle teeming with monsters stretched behind them, a slightly less vast lake full of unknown horrors lying before them. While the sailor was busy burying Nodarr's body by the shore, Micky seized the opportunity to refill his host's cores, contemplating the best way to proceed.
Once Marnok was done paying his respects to his fallen crewmate, Micky began crafting a new ice construct. It looked a bit like a spear, though its blade had a spiral shape, leading to an extremely pointy tip. Not satisfied with the tool's hardness, Micky engraved a few unit cells on the ice. He kept the enchantments relatively simple, knowing that making something on par with his scythes or Cloak would take too long.
Even the half-assed runes he drew on the tool were bound to be quite useful, however. The structural integrity enchantments would help the construct endure the strain as it drilled into the lakebed, while the sharpness runes would allow it to pierce deeper and through tougher materials. The controlled self-repairs would not only help with the spear's maintenance but also give Micky the ability to easily replicate it. Finally, he included rotation runes to make the construct more mana-efficient for what he intended.
'Mind tellin' me what all this is for?' Marnok asked upon seeing Micky snap the spear in two, fuelling its pieces with mana to regrow them into a couple of brand-new copies.
'It's to locate the tomb,' Micky replied, before elaborating. 'It would take forever for us to shovel the whole lake out by ourselves, but we don't need to. We just need to find the right spot to dig.'
Burying a corpse didn't require that much space. However, this wasn't just some random person's burial site – it was the final resting place of a demigod, so Micky figured that it had to be somewhat spacious. More importantly, it had been designed either by the Saint himself or his associates to weather the endless march of time and, if Marnok's information was to be believed, to hide a sizeable stash of Fools' Amber.
All things considered, Micky felt confident that the tomb had to be several metres across at the very least – probably much larger. That meant that he wouldn't have to drill the holes too close to one another. If he spaced them out in fixed intervals, he could slowly poke around the lakebed until he found what he was looking for.
To demonstrate, he grabbed one of the constructs, pouring some mana into its runes. Stabbing the ground, he allowed the tool to start spinning. Within mere seconds, the sharpened drill had pierced dozens of metres through the dirt and even the thick layer of stone beneath it.
More importantly, Micky had designed the construct to consume as little mana as possible, so that he could have a bunch of them working at once without draining his host's reserves too quickly. Like that, he should be able to search most of the lake within a couple of days – especially since he and Marnok didn't need sleep. If they got lucky, it might not even take that long.
'That's good 'n everythin', but how are we goin' to know that we found it?' Marnok asked, clearly not entirely convinced.
'Well… I bet it's been enchanted to the high heavens to survive for so many years. Its ceiling should be much tougher to drill through than the surrounding stone, so we can compare how much resistance the tools encounter from one hole to the next. As soon as we run into something odd, we can keep pushing to see if there's a hollowed-out section even deeper.'
Marnok nodded in understanding, though he still didn't appear particularly thrilled. What Micky had just described was merely the method to locate the tomb. They'd yet to discuss how to protect themselves from the aquatic monsters most certainly living inside the lake.
Luckily, Micky had come up with a few ideas about that too.
Leaning over the edge, he dipped his host's hand into the water, channelling mana from both cores and allowing it to mix into ice. The liquid began freezing immediately, icy roots spreading out from Marnok's palm.
Micky carefully controlled the shape of the emerging constructs, having something very specific in mind. He also kept his consumption to a minimum, not in a hurry to empty his host's reserves.
Taking deep breaths one after another, he made sure to refill the organs as fast as he was depleting them, to always keep them above eighty percent of their capacity. It was imperative to have enough mana to defend oneself while working in a potentially hostile environment like this.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
'Now what are ya doin'?' Marnok asked again, sounding genuinely curious rather than critical. 'Ya'll never freeze the whole lake like this.'
'Of course not,' Micky replied. 'But lowering the temperature enough to make it unpleasant for its inhabitants should be manageable.'
The sailor creased his brow, probably finding even that to be overly ambitious. The lake was a couple of kilometres across, and they didn't even know how deep it was. Even if Micky kept pouring mana into the water for weeks, he'd never be able to cool the whole lake down fast enough to matter.
However, Marnok still had no idea what Micky was capable of.
Shaping the ice into a thick, square slab thrice as large as his host, Micky allowed it to float to the surface. Hopping on it, he confirmed that it was big enough to support a person's weight without sinking, and wide enough for him to balance on it with relative ease.
Getting off again, he began drawing enchantments on the slab, the runes mostly resembling the one's he'd adorned the drills with. Only, he swapped the sharpness and rotation runes with adaptive, controlled heating enchantments.
He didn't stop after the first layer either. With the help of his Scribing trait, he carefully arranged the unit cells into an even larger controlled heating enchantment that spanned the entire surface of the slab. Satisfied with his handiwork, he then broke the construct in half, using mana and water to grow more floating platforms.
Scattering the blocks of ice in a circular area with a diameter of a couple dozen metres, he spread them out into an intricate formation, once again using his spectral trait as his guide. As soon as the fiend inside his wisp was happy with his efforts, he finally began pouring mana into the slabs, fuelling the numerous enchantments he'd just drawn.
The smallest heating runes were the first to activate, a pale glow emanating from the constructs. The water appeared unchanged at first, but Micky didn't doubt that it had already started cooling rapidly.
It wasn't until the second layer of runes came into effect that numerous frozen tendrils emerged from the slabs, snaking beneath the surface of the water. They looked just like the ones from earlier, though they were spreading from several points at once!
Micky was still carefully rationing his host's mana, not consuming the resource any faster than he was recovering it, yet his enchantments allowed him to get much more value out of every single drop.
'Holy Saints' above!' Marnok exclaimed. 'I never knew ya could accomplish so much with runecraftin'.'
Micky grinned. 'You haven't seen anything yet.'
As if on cue, the pale roots interlocked under both his conscious and subconscious control, completing the final rune in the formation. Three layers of enchantments complimented one another, working in unison to accelerate the freezing process.
The air around Marnok instantly chilled, sending a shiver down the poor sailor's spine. A downside of fusing two common mana types from separate cores into their composite affinity was that it didn't grant their owner as much resistance to the resulting element. Thankfully, Marnok's two Yellow cores had strengthened his body enough to endure the leakage of the formation without much trouble.
'Brrrr… Yeah. I can see where yar confidence stems from,' he admitted. 'I'm still not sure this'll be enough though.'
'It will be,' Micky insisted. 'We don't need to freeze the whole lake. Just chill one section at a time, to drive the beasts away.'
Obviously, Marnok was far weaker than Kassorith, making it impossible for Micky to unleash a formation on par with the one that he had used in the tournament. His current host only possessed about a fifth of the Thess'kalan's reserves, and the lake was much larger than the stadium – not to mention filled with water rather than air.
Even so, if he were to split the place into, say, ten smaller regions, and take his sweet time channelling mana into each one, he should be able to lower the water's temperature by several degrees, giving him and Marnok space to start digging.
The lack of a domain also prevented him from preparing the formation in an instant, but that wasn't a problem in a drawn-out operation like this. Finally, he'd made sure that both the slabs and the spears he had crafted were highly mobile, so it wouldn't be difficult to move from one spot to the next.
Marnok whistled in appreciation once Micky was done explaining his plan in detail, though he still had some questions. 'How do ya know the beasts will swim away instead of attackin' us?'
'Well… I don't,' Micky admitted. 'But imagine that you're a dumb animal and your environment suddenly gets freezing cold. Would your first instinct be to go around looking for a mage that might be causing it, or just to leave for somewhere more comfortable? And remember that these beasts might have never even come across sapients before.'
Marnok nodded, yet Micky wasn't done.
'Some of the creatures might still attack us, so help me keep an eye out. However, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Our drills can be used as weapons, and I'm confident that we can handle a few isolated creatures here and there. They'll help us restock on food too.'
They still had most of Micky's rations, as well as a lot of leftover crab meat from the day before that they had frozen and stored inside the spatial seal. It should be more than enough to last Marnok for weeks. On top of that, all three of Marnok's affinities were excellent for surviving in an inhospitable environment for a long time.
He could conjure drinking water and breathable air, in addition to preserving food for months. That said, they had no idea what awaited them inside the tomb, so having some extra food wouldn't hurt.
Happy with their plan, the two said nothing else, commencing their operation. Whether the Saint's tomb was truly here or not, they were going to turn the lake upside down searching for it.
Channelling his host's mana through the constructs, Micky rapidly filled the gaps between the enchanted slabs with more ice. A frozen island formed beneath Marnok's feet, encasing the entire formation in mere moments before continuing to expand outwards.
Blooming like a pale lotus, it disturbed the lake's still waters, growing to thrice its original width in less than half an hour. Only then did its expansion begin to slow down, the complex flow of mana reaching a delicate equilibrium.
Marnok's cores absorbed water and air mana as fast as they were expelling it, essentially leaving his reserves untouched. At the same time, the frozen island was large enough that chunks kept tearing off its perimeter as quickly as new liquid was solidifying to join it, preventing the island from growing any larger.
This created the illusion that Micky's efforts had stopped yielding results, but he knew that couldn't be further from the truth. Examining the area around the island, he saw countless discarded pieces of ice floating away, like a river of peeled petals. He was willing to bet that the water was still growing colder by the second too.
'If stackin' so many runes together is workin' so well, why don't ya add more layers to the formation?' Marnok suddenly asked.
'It's not that simple,' Micky said, mentally shaking his head. 'The enchantments make the cooling process more efficient, but I still need to keep fuelling all the small runes. You don't have enough mana for a fourth layer, and I can't control too many separate streams at once either, nor can I send your mana too far from us.'
The configuration that Micky was currently using was already several times simpler than the one he had unleashed on Thess'kala, yet fully activating it while being mindful of his host's expenditure was still difficult and time-consuming.
Even so, Micky was more than satisfied with its output. By nightfall, he was confident that he had driven away all the living creatures in their immediate surroundings. The absence of sunlight would hopefully help the lake stay cool for longer too, giving him ample time to begin his search in earnest.
He wasn't exactly thrilled to do so in the dark, but he understood that the operation was never going to be perfectly safe, no matter what he did. Sighing, he ripped the enchanted slabs out of the island's surface, stacking them on a tall pile by its edge for later.
Next, he grabbed the magical spears from the other pile, setting them vertically in various spots across the island, their tips pointing downwards. Pouring mana into the rotation runes, he allowed the tools to drill through ice, water, mud and stone alike, leaving one narrow hole after the other on the lakebed.
Moving around the island methodically, he scanned the area beneath it for any signs of unexpected resistance. Another twenty minutes later, he was done with the frozen region entirely, coming up empty-handed. Still, he knew that his little island only constituted a tiny fraction of the first section of the lake that he intended to explore.
Returning to the stack of slabs, he tossed them out into the water, freezing their edges together into a makeshift raft. Hopping on, he willed the constructs to move, sailing through the lake while continuing to poke at its depths with his magical drills.
He was mindful not to move too far from the formation, lest he ventured into warmer waters by mistake. Searching everything in a wide circle around the island took him the better part of the night, though he sadly had nothing to show for it by morning.
'Oh well… we were never going to find it on the first try,' he thought with a shrug, consoling both himself and his host.
Stopping at a different location, he allowed the raft to split into its components again, repeating his earlier actions to form a second island. The rising sun didn't make his life easy, slowing down the expansion.
However, his efforts from the previous day most certainly did. Looking back, Micky saw that the first island was still there. It had shrunk slightly, but it looked like it would be a few days before it melted completely.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
'That's good,' he thought. 'Every region will go a little faster than the previous one.'
He wasn't sure whether he would manage to freeze the entire lake at some point, or whether he would hit diminishing returns and never exceed a certain volume of ice. Either way, it didn't really matter. At his current pace, he'd be done exploring the lake in a week anyway.
Micky and his host continued to search one region after another, averaging two new islands per day. Of course, Micky was doing most of the work, but Marnok still found various ways to contribute. He helped pour mana into the enchantments, took care of their bodily needs, and kept an eye out for any attacking beasts.
A few aquatic creatures did try sneaking up on them every now and then, but the only thing they accomplished was to add to Micky's stash of frozen food. Having learned his lesson a long time ago, he'd rather not break his host's teeth on Yellow meat, but they'd thankfully slaughtered plenty of Orange beasts too.
'The frogs are still going to the very back of the queue,' he told his host on the fourth day, preferring to feast on just about anything else before he resorted to the raw amphibians.
While Micky and Marnok had settled into a productive routine, they still remained tense throughout the operation, the threat of a Green beast constantly looming over their head. Micky didn't know whether he could handle one by himself with his current means, and he didn't want to find out either.
If there were any such monsters in the water – and that was looking increasingly unlikely – then Micky's plan of forcing them away from their habitat had clearly worked like a charm. However, it was entirely possible that the beasts would lose their patience at some point if he kept chasing them around, so he was really hoping that they would find the tomb before it came to that.
The good news was that no land-dwelling creatures had bothered them. Even if they'd tracked them down to the lake, they clearly had no interest in swimming toward Micky's raft.
By the sixth day, Micky and Marnok were beginning to lose all hope. They'd already explored over eighty percent of the lake, finding no sign of the demigod's resting place. There was a chance that it was located in the tiny area that they had yet to search, but there was also a much greater chance that they had missed it, or worse, that it wasn't here at all.
'Now what?' the sailor asked, his voice gloomy.
'I don't know,' Micky said. 'If we fail to find it in the last two areas, our only option is to start over.'
Maybe they'd get lucky if they drilled even deeper, shrunk the intervals between the holes, or just paid more attention. As long as they didn't provoke some Green monster in the process, their supplies would last.
However, searching the lake more thoroughly would inevitably take a lot more time. If that didn't work either, they'd have to try a different lake, hoping that Marnok's information hadn't been entirely baseless. The problem was that they'd need to trek through the jungle by themselves to get there, which was practically suicide.
As for escaping the island or surviving here indefinitely – those were even more unrealistic options. Micky may have originally come here looking for a quick vacation, but he wasn't going to leave Marnok alone in such a hellish place, so he'd have to find an acceptable solution for his friend before returning to Remior.
'Maybe he'll reconsider moving to the Vault if we run out of alternatives…' he hoped.
Just as Micky was trying to think of the best way to breach the topic again, one of his drills hit something hard, halting its descent. He didn't immediately think much of it, guessing that he had probably just poured too little mana into the construct, weakening its momentum – it wouldn't be his first blunder this week.
Yet, his borrowed heart skipped a beat as soon as he recharged the tool and still struggled to pierce deeper, and then a second time once his host came to the same realization as him.
'Do ya think…?' Marnok asked, clearly too afraid to jump to conclusions. Technically, it could just be a naturally occurring vein of some harder mineral inhibiting the tool, though they hadn't found anything of the sort over the past few days.
'Only one way to find out,' Micky said.
Using several more drills, he tried to narrow down the dimensions of the suspected tomb. It soon became clear that Micky had greatly underestimated how large the structure was – though that had admittedly been on purpose, to make sure that they didn't let it slip through their fingers by mistake. Either way, it was a square over thirty metres across, its clear-cut shape further evidence that it was artificial.
Micky's constructs could still penetrate the ceiling with enough effort, but he didn't rush to break in just yet. Flooding the tomb would only make their subsequent exploration harder. Instead, he arranged the enchanted slabs above the structure, spending the next thirty minutes activating the formation again and freezing every drop of water separating them from their destination.
This was one of the deepest spots they'd searched so far, the lakebed about twelve metres from the surface, the ceiling of the suspected tomb another five metres of stone below that.
Once everything was ready, Micky dug a tunnel wide enough for Marnok to crawl through, reaching the enchanted layer in less than a minute. Their heart thrummed wildly the more certain they grew that this was indeed the place that hundreds of Marnok's crewmates had lost their lives searching for.
'And it's all ours for the taking!' Micky thought, rubbing his host's hands with anticipation.