Chapter 268 - Shunned

The team continued their search for Frost Orc eggs. The task was quite difficult, as their search was purely based on luck and chance itself, but the method they developed was the best that they could think of, so they just pushed forward.

The team found comfort in the fact that a Kelketuk demon was guarding them, and thanks to that fact, they could melt a hole through any bit of ice, without fearing what could pop out from there. That way, their luck-based search didn't feel as overwhelming, and the sheer size of the North Pole wasn't as intimidating to them either!

Through the help of fire, with waves of them in various sizes, the team managed to melt another hole for themselves. Then another.

The holes they dug, or melted, were usually a hundred meters wide, and at most, thirty meters deep. They didn't want to dig deeper than that, because they figured that at such a point, there was nothing to be found anyway, not with the waters of the sea being just a couple more meters below. It was best to be efficient.

“This is gonna take forever,” Ortana complained, as she was sick of waiting around.

The fireballs that she could summon were tiny, and insignificant, so she hasn't been of much help throughout the past few hours. Skendus was equally bored, as he was an illusionist who was the furthest away from attacks relating to fireballs, and he wasn't going to start using them now either! Timothy and Gustav did all of the work, basically.

“We have at least two months to find the eggs, so it's okay if it takes ‘forever’ to find them.” Skendus added, as he tried to remain positive.

“Me baws splashing on tha wata,” Tim faked a scottish accent, ignoring everything that his friends said. “Cauld wata!”

It was cold in the North Pole, without a doubt. He felt it a bit, even as a Polar Bear, and the environment was just another factor that they had to endure while they were out here. Realistically, they were hoping that the cold temperatures were going to be their main problem, and they were hoping that they didn't have to fight any monsters whatsoever! The novelty of fighting a serpentine dragon of any species, wore out on the first ever battle that they had. The battles themselves didn't leave much to yearn or admire, as serpentine dragons were absolutely horrifying creatures! They hoped for the best.

Anyway, the team spent two days melting through the ice, and at that point, they've created many crater-like holes, twenty of them to be exact, but regardless of that, they hadn't made any actual progress. They absolutely destroyed the layout of a single, ten-kilometer wide area of the arctic, but they didn’t find any dragon eggs whatsoever, from any species, so they began to think that all the effort that they had put in was actually pointless!

The normal, non-gigantic creatures had avoided them like the plague throughout these past couple of days, so they haven't seen even a single bird in the sky so far. They hadn't seen any adult dragons either! The various species here were likely afraid of the fire, because the arctic wasn't supposed to produce fire of any kind, not even from its various monsters! Fire seemed odd out here, and surely terrifying, so the team had accidentally secluded themselves from the rest of the arctic quite thoroughly.

When Tim caught up with what was going on, he sighed, and said. “That's a good thing, kinda? I can't afford to summon a Kelketuk anytime we run into something big.”

Regarding the previous Kelketuk demon that he summoned, he had to return that horrifying pet back to the universe of hell, because cold-blooded demonic creatures weren't supposed to be in cold environments. The Kelketuk started moving very sluggishly four hours after it was summoned, and considering how explosive these creatures usually were in terms of movement, he understood that the cold temperatures were killing the Kelketuk, so he spared it.

Tim went over to the spot where he summoned the beast originally, and it was really easy to find this spot, because a bunch of dry tar had covered that specific area. These beasts made quite an entrance when they were summoned, but, as if poetically, their cinematic entrance was also their own weakness! Or, their exit.

Once he found where the beast had first popped up on, Timothy then started pouring raw, blue mana on that very same charred spot. Only blue mana could dismantle the effects of dark mana, thoroughly, so once Timothy washed the patch of charred, dark mana away with the aid of his blue mana, the Kelketuk then disappeared, safely! Tim sent the beast back to hell, and under these conditions, his gesture was nothing short of merciful, because the beast would've frozen to death otherwise.

Anyway, the de-summoning of the Kelketuk demon helped the team realize just how desolate this place truly was, for them! If they could go for two days without having to summon a guard dog to protect them, then surely they had isolated themselves from the rest of the environment quite thoroughly. They even took long naps, without worrying about who was guarding their backs, and although this was lovely, it halted their task severely! Fire was the tool of the superiors under these settings.

“Even the dragons might be learning to avoid us,” He said.

“That's not the worst thing in the world, right? We lost half of our mana pools, so let's hope that they'll avoid us for a little while longer.” Gustav added.

At this point, they came to accept the fact that their plan wasn't working. They needed to figure out a different approach towards their task, because from what they could understand, Frost Orcs were smart enough to even move their eggs if they sensed danger. They weren't dealing with stupid creatures here, as larger dragons had brains that were nearly a meter wide in size, after all, so this made the team's slow, destructive plan seem quite useless!

“I have an idea, but it might be hectic.” Tim said, after half an hour of thinking. “What if we enter the ghost world, and simply float through the ice? The dragons won't see us coming if they simply ‘can’t’ see us at all, so we can find a bunch of nests in no time!”