Chapter 241 - "The 9,000 kilometer mark"

It was interesting to find an oil rig here, in the middle of the ocean, but apart from it being a good spot to spend the night in, it was otherwise useless. The rig was abandoned, and considering that Timothy wasn't in the path of becoming an oil tycoon anytime soon, he didn’t need to study the tools and machinery here, as they were all useless to him. In a world of magic, mana was wealth, while actual, monetary wealth wasn't as important, especially on the occasion where he lived as a fish. As for other circumstances, he figured that any good mage would always have money lying around, so he didn’t care much about it.

In simple words, they left the rig as soon as they woke up in the morning. The North Pole was still about fifteen-thousand kilometers away, according to the system, so they had to be on the move. Today was to be another day of restless swimming, so they shapeshifted accordingly, into a school of Sailfish, and then split the seas, heading north!

…

After a week's worth of traveling, the team felt as if their souls were trying to escape through their noses! It wasn't easy to swim ten hours a day without so much of a break, and it was especially difficult to do it everyday! Their bodies felt sore, they haven't had a good night's sleep ever since they left that oil rig, five days ago, so they were quite miserable right now, but they found comfort out of the fact that they were almost half way there to the North Pole! That was the only thing that kept them from tearing through one another.

The temperatures had dropped quite a bit as well, which was a telltale sign that they were close to the treacherously cold environment that the northernmost point of the planet housed! They weren't too excited about the cold, they knew that at some point they couldn't push on as Sailfish, and they would have to shapeshift because they were feeling the cold deep inside their bones already!

The team had been right to predict that part, because two days later, at the nine-thousand kilometer mark, the waters felt too cold for them to bear! Lucky for them, they found an island out here, in the middle of nowhere, so they decided to crawl on to its dry sands as Degranus Goblins, and spend the night there. Odds were that they passed hundreds of islands so far, but it wasn’t as easy to spot them when one swam 100 km/h on average, so finding this spot the moment after they ran out of energy, was purely lucky!

Although the night air was very cold out here as well, it was a lot easier to stay warm on dry lands. Timothy cut a couple of thick birch trees down, sliced them into many bolts, and then set them on fire, creating a massive fire pit. This fire was surely hot enough to last them until morning, and it just might shake the cold off of their bones!

The next day, at early noon, the team woke up, and tried to decide on what step they were supposed to take next, because they couldn’t push forward as Sailfish! Even the air temperature over here was -10°C at noon, not to mention the temperature in the water, so it was apparent that they had overused their Sailfish bodies practically five days ago! It was a perplexing situation, but they felt more relaxed now, and felt capable of making the right decisions!

“We can turn into seals, but I don’t think that they’re the fastest swimmers of the sea. Orcas are pretty fast, as far as I know, but they’re big bastards so we’d need to sacrifice a level of our mana quality again if we want to turn into Orcas.” Tim started off this critical conversation.

“I’d rather enjoy this island for a couple more days, the campfires specifically. Why do you insist on getting back in the water so quickly?” Ortana asked.

“We have about seven-thousand kilometers to go, do you really wanna waste time when summer is just around the corner?” He argued, “We have to swim.”

“I wouldn’t mind resting either,” Gustav then added, “Summer is almost three months away, and if we’re lucky, it won’t even take us a month in total to snatch some of those Frost Orcs, and bring them back to the reef, so why rush? It doesn’t even get hot until the sixth month. We could use a break.”

“He makes a good point,” Skendus added, “But we shouldn’t spend more than a day here, because Timmy is right, we shouldn’t waste too much time, but also, this island looks very boring! I don’t want to stare at the sea for a damn week.”

“You know what wouldn’t be boring? Exploring the ghost world!” Arvena added.

At this point, the conversation had steered far beyond what Timothy hoped to steer it towards, but this wasn’t too much of a surprise. They were a team of five people, with very distinct personalities, and in this case, most of them were putting their interests in front of the bigger picture, so in one way or the other, most of them were looking for the best way to relax after what could be considered a honest day’s work!

It was needless to say that they hadn’t gotten any closer to deciding on what species they were supposed to shapeshift into next, that topic slipped from their fingers at the very beginning of the conversation. They might turn into seals, or penguins, but neither of those species were fast enough to help them make good distance in a short time, so this topic altogether had to be looked into thoroughly!

Anyway, after an hour of debating, they decided to explore the ghost world, using the Explorative Soul ability! They were irritated that they hadn’t progressed much in that category of magic, so they were enthralled to give it another go, now that the ability had cooled down already!

Timothy didn’t hate the idea, but he made everyone promise to avoid spending more than two days in the Ghost World, because the mission they had was more important than anything else. They had a reef back home which was supposed to house hundreds of mana roots, so anyone in their right minds wouldn’t neglect the reef, and its demands! Not to mention, their goblin bodies wouldn’t survive for long in these temperatures, even after they were pushed towards a hibernating state.

Regarding the ghost world, once the team activated the Explorative Soul ability, they found themselves in a place that they did not expect. They were suddenly in a city, and a very detailed one at that, and they didn’t know how to feel about it!