Chapter 249 - "Turn into a bug"

The time of day reflected in the phantom world, equal to the physical world. The sun rose from the east, and set to the west, so the team met at midnight after they spent a few hours away from each other. They met at the tavern where Ortana and Gustav were wasting their time at.

They didn't intend to drink, however, because they had some strong conversations to hold with each other. Most of them found the phantom city of Fortuna very useful, so it wasn’t surprising how they wanted to stay here for a few weeks, and one of the main topics tip-toed around that matter!

“We're all adults here, kinda… let's admit it, this city is amazing! We've only been here for a few hours, and I'm up an entire realm in my phantom mana pool already!” Timothy started out the conversation, “I could stay here for years if I could afford it, and I wouldn't regret it for a second!”

“Oh, I would spend my afterlife here too, trust me.” Arvena followed along, “This city is a very literal example that immortality is possible, in this spooky ghost world, without losing the major components of what makes us feel civilized, goal-oriented, and normal. These guys really have it figured out, but unfortunately, we can't stay here, not now, regardless of how beneficial it may be...”

“Let’s not rush with our decisions here,” Skendus chimed in, “Our souls are very weak, so we could benefit from spending a few weeks here, and cultivate our soul, just in case our blue mana lets us down. I mean, what are we even going to the North Pole for at this point? We don't know how to remove the mana brackets off of our pools, so those mana roots that Genta is trying to grow are useless to us.“

“I was getting to the mana roots, and brackets.” Arvena interrupted, and then she pitched. “I need to stay here in the city, because I found something, a book, that describes how the ancient mages suffered just like we did. Right now, it's wishful thinking at best, I don't have much information about mana brackets, but the library here is vast, it might just help us remove them! The chances for this are slim, but if I don't try to make sense of it now, we could be stuck with these darned brackets for decades! I need a few weeks, perhaps months, but if we reluctantly manage to remove our brackets, then we're really going to need those mana roots, and that's where I'm getting to! We can't abandon the mana roots that Genta’s trying to grow!”

There was no arguing with her logic. The team intuitively understood that if there even was a slight chance to remove the mana brackets off of their mana pools, then the grand power they could achieve afterwards was virtually boundless, even though it technically did have bounds!

The idea she pitched, however, made it a mandatory task for the rest of the team to leave the phantom world. They didn’t have as much as a great reason to stay in the city of Fortuna, they had to leave, because the importance of their prior task regarding mana roots, was all the more radiant now! They had to go to the North Pole, and find a bunch of baby Frost Orcs to bring home, and in order to achieve this task, they needed as many hands (or fins) on board as they could get! The city would always be here, waiting for them in the future, after all.

“If there even is a ten-percent chance to remove our brackets, you gotta go for it, Arvena. You can stay here, but the rest of us are gonna go ahead and freeze our asses off at the North Pole.” Tim expressed.

“Can we at least make our journey easier? I’m not looking forward to over-working every muscle of my body, everyday.” Skendus added, “We should hit the air, because we’re not meant to swim these cold waters. Mother nature won’t make it easy for us, no matter what species we shapeshift into, but I have a feeling that it’s easier to travel in the air, than in the water. Birds travel all the time.”

Skendus was the least willing to leave the phantom city of Fortuna, so it made sense that he wanted to make himself more comfortable in the physical world. All of them could use a bit more comfort, actually, and they realized this after spending a few hours here in the phantom world, where they couldn’t feel pain, muscle spasms, or overall soreness. Comfort was a luxury that they wanted to have this time around!

Thankfully, this was a matter that everyone could agree on. Initially it did make a lot of sense to be in the water, but after travelling a few thousand kilometers, they realized that the seas could only get them so far without putting them into some kind of an exhaustion-related stroke. It wasn’t optimal. Math and biology, in this case, shouldn't be calculated separately, but together.

“I guess we can all make use of shapeshifting properly,” Tim sighed, “You too, Arvena. I’m guessing that you can’t get much research done if you go back to your body every five days, and then wait for the Explorative Soul ability’s cooldown timer to run out. Turn into a bed bug or something? Maybe a beetle too? Bugs always hibernate in the winter, so fatten up, and hibernate. You can get a lot more research done in three months, in comparison to four days, that’s a no-brainer.”

With that said, it was a done deal that the team had to separate. Arvena was to stay in the city of Fortuna, while the rest of them had to continue their travels to the North Pole.

Timothy found Lena, and said goodbye to her. She had taught him a few of the fundamentals regarding Phantom Potion making, and this was a gift from her that he wasn’t to forget about anytime soon. She wasn’t too happy about him leaving, but he hugged her, and promised her that he’d visit the city after a couple of weeks, which lessened her sadness a bit.

“You helped me bounce up to level five, Lena, you’re priceless. We’ll see each other a lot in the future, I can promise you that…” He whispered in her ear.

Lena didn’t speak much, but even though she was a frog in the physical world, she understood that some tasks were more important than others. It wasn’t easy to be present in both worlds.

“The next time you visit me, I’ll help you cross the Tamed Entity Realm of mana. After that, you can visit our city whenever you like, no matter where you are in the physical world.” She explained, and she sounded formal, but it was obvious that she wanted to be visited by him, specifically, as often as possible.

“I look forward to it,” He smiled.

…

The next day, the team did exactly what they planned to do. It was easy to snap back into their bodies, they woke up on that island the moment they chose to do so. Although they had tried to protect their bodies from the elements while they had been up in the ghost world, the environment out here was quite cold regardless, so they woke up feeling as stiff as actual corpses!

A campfire fixed most of their problems, they built a big one, and warmed up. They put Arvena’s ‘hibernating’ body near the fire, so she wouldn’t die during her research back in the phantom world. It was very easy for a mammalian, goblin body like hers to get cold.

Now it was only the matter of deciding what bird they should shapeshift into, and considering that they had sacrificed a level of their mana quality, they wanted to shapeshift into a greater, big bird. They wanted to optimize their sacrifices to their fullest, if they could!

After cross-checking some ideas with the system, Timothy pitched a species that had a great wingspan-to-body ratio, and was actually built to endure the cold weather of the arctic; The Arctic Tern!

Now this bird wasn’t the fastest in the world, but since it was known to migrate for nearly a hundred-thousand kilometers every year, it was apparent that its body was made for such long journeys! This species could fly far more than ten hours a day, up to forty-kilometers-an-hour too, so if they pair such speed with a little bit of magic, they may even make it to the North Pole faster than they previously aimed for!

Since the team couldn’t think of other species of birds to shift into, they agreed with his idea. They couldn’t turn into massive eagles, or dragons for that matter, as that would be inefficient, so they just had to settle with being smaller, arctic birds.