A frosty gale surrounded Icy and kept him chilled, a comfortable sensation as it naturally fit his ideal temperature. However, as a gentle hand rubbed his nape, the exhaustion filling his already soft body made it tough to merely rouse from sleep, let alone open his eyes. That didn’t at all mean he had the luxury to do so though.
With great struggle, the ice cream eyelids lazily opened, and while he saw a layer of snow and frost about him, clearly some spell to keep him alive whilst unconscious… What laid in front was not any land that he knew.
Fine yellow grains stretched out in both directions, and in front, a clear ocean with middling waves. The sun above shone down on the sandy shores, and he, with great effort, looked above to see massive palm fronds barely covering his entire body. Raccelline sat beside him in a less restrictive white dress with her hair tied into a neat plait with ribbons. She noticed his awakening and didn’t hesitate to shout out to those on his left that he’d completely missed.
“He woke up! He’s awake!!” Fortunately, she didn’t shout at the top of her lungs, only so loud that the group of five nearby came over to check on him.
While everything appeared fine internally, he stared in grave concern and regret at the sight in front of him. The events of the night were not clear, but given what happened to their ship alone, he made some conclusions about the situation. His mana sense obviously saw the marks and destruction caused by such raging bolts of lightning on the ship before it flipped.
And so, when he looked out onto the clear, tranquil ocean, his eyes did not settle on the far horizon but rather on the wall of cloud and fog, both of them, in fact.
Looking about as though avoiding something in his vision.
“I’m sorry. I should’ve known better than to sleep in the storm,” he said with eyes still glued to the ocean. The sheer degree to which he’d screwed up made it hard to look at the group.
“It was never a problem before though… You’ve slept in several rainstorms on the way.” While Jaren tried to weakly argue in his favour, there was a very obvious reason as to why this never happened before.
His Soul awakened.
Korridan spoke up, “At the very least, we made it out alive… I was able to pull up some of the sailors as well, but I believe a couple perished in the waves.” There was nothing to say in that regard. There was the very real possibility that Korridan chose to save his team first and only then began to help others where he could, but none there could criticise such a decision.
[Killed Level 27 Steel ranked spearman! Received 2% EXP
Killed Level 25 Steel ranked assassin! Received <1% EXP]
Right… Criticising it…
After most of them were secured, Mala used a water breathing spell on everyone, resolving the threat of any further waves, but reaching this inner region wasn’t an easy task, even if some things absolutely helped. The waves of the Stormwall actually worked to always push a vessel into this region, which often made exiting the tough part for regular vessels. But Stormbreakers got around this problem with their arrays.
Just by holding on tight to the overturned vessel, they eventually reached this calm belt, and from there, easily swam to this island. From nearby footprints which had yet to be washed away, Icy noticed that several individuals already left the group to travel elsewhere. Likely the sailors who were now left stranded in the calm belt.
“Which island is this anyway?” While still guilty over the matter, being stuck in this place raised other concerns with far more consequences.
Fortunately, Mala had an answer ready and waiting, “This is No.357. We haven’t seen any settlements since arriving, nor anyone investigating.” He too already flipped to a book in his memories detailing the individual islands within the Stormwall. Funny that the dragons offered a book dedicated to this but barely anything about the wall itself.
He didn’t refute her analysis of which island this was, but found his notes just as useless as it was last updated twenty years ago. He’d be in a far worse shape if every book in his memories didn’t give a precise date of the last time a dragon added or changed information.
“So we’re stuck here… Practically dead to the world… And this island is pretty much uninhabited?” His reply was not in any way negative, instead, he only saw how this was a great stroke of luck.
If the eternals, or anyone really, ever began to hunt down Raccelline with full force, they’d get to this point and find out from Breakhead in Avril Port that their boat sank in the Stormwall! And how many would choose to believe that after a dreadful storm, they not only made it out alive but then swam to an island within the calm belt?
While not an outrageous guess, it wasn’t at all intuitive.
“If you phrase anything that way, it looks great,” Rebecca said critically. For once, she wasn’t in stealth and simply stood alongside the five.
“Well, it’s not like escape is that difficult. But it will take time.”
None argued with him there, but something still had to be done. Uninhabited didn’t mean deserted, and from the lush vegetation behind him, it could be assumed that quite a few things lived within. But what made this clearer was the mana density of these islands, as it was well recorded that every last one had an amount which was either above average or a truly magical land.
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However, the reason for this is even simpler as the Stormwall is not natural. It required ridiculous amounts of mana just to form basic bolts of lightning, control the waves, and create that massive wall… All of these things surrounded the entire continent of Trifel. And that meant a stable way to gather mana and distribute it was also needed, to which the elves refused to build platforms across the ocean but instead produced hundreds of islands.
This ring of islands, now encircling the continent, was used to house hundreds of massive arrays, which linked up to create what is known as the Stormwall.
All that mana ended up gathering on such islands like this one, which meant dangers ranking from gold tier beasts being rather common, to lords even reaching master tier! Island 357 was at least weaker on those scales though, but finding gold tiers rather often would still be a massive pain for them all. That also made the first goal for their group rather obvious.
Have everyone evolve or train further. Only once gold tiers could be handled with ease could they move onwards. If not for further requiring techniques and skills, they might even have had enough time to all rise up a step further.
For now, they needed to get a better idea of the island’s situation and see what lay nearby.
While it seemed to be clear in the direction that Icy stared out into, that could not be guaranteed for the island’s opposite side. Additionally, the horizon was actually just some miles away, so who knew if an island existed just beyond it? Almost any vessel would be able to travel in the calm belt, making travel extremely easy.
Besides the calm belt’s natives, food was the next immediate priority.
At first, the group tried hunting some weaker beasts on the island, most of which was a sort of tropical jungle, but with Icy warning them of gold tiers around every corner, it was a miracle they found a lone steel tier beast to hunt. Following which, fishing seemed to work far better as quite a few species easily traversed the Stormwall, likely being the natives’ major food source.
On the other hand, water didn’t worry the group for a single moment. As nothing blocked their mana, it was easy for both Icy and Mala to simply create water with spells.
Food was easy to come by, and the majority of flora they ate were all mana-bearing fruits which existed to be consumed. Not that any of the plant bloodlines that Icy found amazed him. Thus far, the Elder guard bloodline would be the best of this current evolution.
“I wonder if there are any giant skeletons on this island. Unless the things here are gluttons, there’d have to be.” As the group slowly made the trip around the island’s shore, it was inevitable that their growth during this time would become a contentious discussion.
“Depends on how large you need it to be, but given how flat this place is, I wouldn’t place many hopes,” replied Korridan. He knew the line of thought Icy considered, but the random sorts of skeletons that the young dragon hoped for simply weren’t that common. As the bones were always on display, and the weather rather pleasant, most skeletons were eaten within a year or decomposed soon after.
Mithril tier bones lasted some decades before decomposition set in, but such mana-rich bones would be appealing to the scrabble of beasts here.
He more or less confirmed this by making use of Sky Sight Barrier to quickly take a look over the island, but from sight alone, the thick foliage blocked any sight of dirt below. Additionally, as Korridan stated, it was a rather flat island, and so any larger bones should’ve been easily visible from above.
At the same time, he saw what appeared to be land far off in the distance to the place they were walking to. It wasn’t so much of a concern that he didn’t use the spell earlier, as they wanted to walk around anyway in hopes that a better spot to camp was easily found by the shore. At the very least, the fact that another island was nearby further confirmed their position in the calm belt.
Island 357 was an uninteresting place. At most used to gather some mana-rich produce for stronger individuals, but even that pushed its purpose quite a bit. As a result, with so many gold tier beasts, it simply wasn’t worth trying to turn it into habitable land.
Or, to put it less kindly, those in control had enough land to house most citizens, making an expensive and dangerous expedition to this island unnecessary. Centuries of this attitude are actually what only raised the island’s relative danger. As what once only contained a smattering of gold tiers and a few mithril tiers had completely changed to one where the former became a common sight! And this island was still considered rather weak even considering all that!
This exact process was why adventurers and armies culling beasts was required everywhere on both continents.
“I don’t think any place on this island is great to stay. There are no caves, few areas of clear grass patches, and the shore all around is slanted, along with tides that can be anywhere from as high as soil to almost ten metres out,” Mala listed off the problems they’d seen since circling the island for the past few hours, and the conclusion they came to was that it sucked.
Just that. This was a horrible place to live.
Icy made a suggestion, “The water here is gentle enough for Waterwalking to be pretty easy. We could always try moving to that other island and seeing if it’s any better.” Of course, the six more mature of them knew that was a stupid idea. He made a suggestion, but nothing said it was a good one.
“This is taking way too long. Not a single thing has stepped out of the jungle to attack us here. Let’s just pick a place with a higher shoreline and stay there.” Not in the mood to argue about where to make camp, in the end, they settled for a spot near where they started, where the island had a slight slant upwards. With the extra height in this corner, they could stay without the worry of the tides waking them up.
“I guess… We just push to evolve as fast as possible? Rebecca, have you come to any decisions about your path?” Jaren said as they removed their armour to train, as usual, looking at the other two who hadn’t evolved. While in Avril Port, she ended up switching between two other techniques for three days straight, these being the final developments required for her evolution.
Additionally, Darak should evolve any day now as he had more than enough bloodline energy for an evolution. And he knew over twenty Apprentice true divine spells, making the knowledge base he accrued more than focused on his desired path. All that remained was to burn all his cells with a combination of divine power and mana at the same time, after enough of which the mixture would merge with his body and initiate the evolution.
Meanwhile, Jaren… Just needed to fire arrows for twelve hours a day to hurry up and finish the technique.
With everyone so close to an improvement, it was, in fact, Icy who needed the most time to go up a tier. And in that regard, he only had three relatively fast ways.
Transform his heart, mutate wild beasts for body parts, or finally begin soul training.