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Ep. 1114 The Shipwrecks Part 3

Especially if I can get a third direction to plot from the last shipwreck. Three points will make triangulation not only easier but far more accurate. At this point, I have almost completely forgotten my original reason for coming out here.

However, I have no way of telling which wreck the ghost in the golem came from. So, clearing all the wrecks I can find is my best bet in accomplishing that mission. If doing that helps me to satisfy my curiosity, then it is just a bonus.

I redeem all of the ghosts, loot the wreck, and then head over to the last one. When I reach it, I redeem a ghost and focus on the fluctuations to see where they point. This time they are pointing more towards the east than the north.

Mentally drawing lines from the three wrecks I get a general idea of where the lines meet. I want to rush there straight away to see what's there, but I have to clear the wreck first. I quickly start redeeming the remaining ghosts on the ship, only stopping when I need a refill.

After the last ghost is gone, I quickly search for any loot and then head for the area. However, when I get there all I can see is an expanse of the ocean's floor. There is nothing odd that I can see, so I start scanning and look for fluctuations.

However, Even after searching for thirty minutes, I am not able to spot any. So, using all of my remaining mana I send out the strongest detection pulse that I can. Luckily, it allows me to detect something, but it is hundreds of feet beneath the ocean floor.

While my meg form is great for a lot of things, digging certainly isn't one of them. The most I could do is blow some sand away, but I am also completely out of mana. Despite having found what might be the source of all this, I have no way of getting to it.

If I resume my normal form I will need to breathe and without mana I won't be able to shapeshift again. I can't meditate as a meg because if I stop moving I will drown. My only real option is to leave for now and come back once I have recovered my mana.

Reluctantly, I swim up to the surface, drop shapeshift, and let myself float. I try to meditate while floating, but the movement of the waves keeps disrupting my concentration. It turns out that taking off from the water is a lot harder than I thought it would be.

In the end, I have to swim down and then swim up fast enough to break free of the water. Once free of the water's grip, I fly towards the coast to find a place to land. I land on the first beach I see and start meditating to recover my mana.

The biggest drawback of having increased my mana pool is the amount of time it now takes to refill. I really wish I could just pray and have it refilled like I do with my divine power. Maybe if one of the sisters was a goddess of magic it would be possible, but I'll never know.

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In the end, I get impatient and when my mana is half full I stop meditating. I take off, fly back to the area I was at before, and land in the water. Then I take a deep breath and dive down until I reach the ocean floor.

I quickly use my mana to push back the water and create an air pocket for myself. I walk over until I am above where I detected the anomaly and start digging. I use my mana to push the sand and dirt aside and make a tunnel going straight down.

It gets quite a bit harder once I am past the dirt and am having to deal with rock. However, with my curiosity driving me I work at it without stopping. Luckily, I already have experience in digging using my mana so it isn't all that hard.

Since I already learned how to do it, digging through the stone doesn't use up too much mana. After about a hundred feet, the rock I am digging through changes, it contains mana. At that point I stop to take a look at the stone and once I do I decide it is worth taking.

So, instead of just digging through the rock, I start cutting it into square blocks. As I cut free each block, I store it into my ring, I will add it to the castle when I get back. It takes some extra time, but I figure it is probably worth the effort.

After removing the magical stone it goes back to normal rock and I resume digging. The further down I dig, the easier it is to sense the anomaly that I detected. Now that I can scan it with mana I can tell its rough shape, that of a ship.

My first thought is, how can a ship possibly be buried this deep under the ocean floor. My second thought is, what kind of ship could still be intact after being buried in rock. If the shape wasn't similar to that of a wooden ship I would probably be thinking along the lines of an alien ship.

The closer I get, the more details I can sense, the ship isn't as intact as I thought at first. There are numerous holes in the hull and the hull is actually broken in half. I can also tell that there is some room around the hull, maybe a cavern.

However, before I can dig my way down to it, I start having trouble breathing. It looks like I have used up the air in the pocket I made, so I have to stop digging. I take a few minutes to use mana to pull more oxygen out of the surrounding water and then go back to digging.

When I finally break through the last of the rock into the cavern I am blinded by light. Once my eyes adjust, I find myself looking at hundreds of ghosts, they fill the cavern. I immediately cast redemption on the ghost closest to the hole I made.

Surprisingly, the ghost accepts the offer and disappears in a flash of light. Since it worked once, I start casting it on more of the ghosts and they all accept. I quickly run out of divine power, but just as I am about to pray for a refill Krenocia speaks to me.

Krenocia says "Ash, what are you doing?!"

"Huh? I was just redeeming more ghosts. Why?"

Krenocia says "The last group of ghosts you sent to me aren't human!"

"Oh, really? Then what are they?!"

Krenocia says "They are what you call the First Ones. Luckily, souls communicate in a way that doesn't require language, because I don't speak their tongue. What am I supposed to do with these people?"

"Well, that's a surprise. I guess that means that this ship is really, really old. As for what to do with them, I guess keep them? Unless some of their gods are still around?"

Krenocia says "No, not that we know of. Our afterlife is meant for humans, I don't know if it is suitable for them."