As I leave and fly back towards the ship I try to think of a more efficient way. Shapeshifting into a meg won't work well because they have to keep moving to breathe. I need a form that has active gills, so that I can breath while staying still.

On the other hand, shapeshifting into something that doesn't need to breathe would work too. Now that I think of it, if I use the earth golem form I wouldn't need to breathe. Not only that, it should make working with the stone easier as well.

I will give it a try once my mana has recovered and see how well it works. When I get back to the port I look around until I spot Stillwater and then land near him. Not far away from where he is standing is a pile of metals, but it isn't very big.

"Stillwater, is this all that you have found?"

Stillwater says "I'm afraid so. It looks like this place was only used to transfer cargo, nothing was stored here. Most of this was found in abandoned buildings and was covered in dust."

"Alright. Well, thank you for trying."

Stillwater says "It isn't enough, is it?"

"Nope. Not even close. For what I am planning I need tons of material."

Stillwater says "Well, we can still check the other city and the towns. Maybe we can find somewhere on the island to mine."

"No, don't bother. That would take way too long and I don't plan on us staying here. I will figure something out. For now, I want you to get your people to start packing. In a couple of days we will leave for the mountain."

Stillwater says "Understood."

I gather up the pile of metal, put it in my pouch, then fly to the ship and enter into the castle. I find Lin and Bella in the tattoo room doing some tattoos on a pair of elves. I let them know that I am back and that I am going to go eat some dinner.

They promise to join me once they finish the tattoos they are working on. Inside the main room, I find the kids have already eaten and are now watching cartoons. I am hungry, but not so hungry that I can't wait a while for Lin and Bella to join me.

Eating with others is always preferable to eating alone, I had enough of that in the pit. While waiting for the girls, I join the kids and hang out watching cartoons with them. When Lin and Bella finally come in, I join them and we eat dinner together.

The kids also join us, even though they already ate, but they basically just snack. However, instead of resting, Lin and Bella go back to do more tattoos after they finish eating. So, I head upstairs alone and sleep for a few hours before Lin wakes me up.

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After we have a couple of rounds of fun, Lin goes to sleep and I head downstairs. I have some breakfast then head outside and fly back to the bridge site. Then I shapeshift into the earth golem form, but I try to modify it so I keep my mind.

Last time I used this form I had some trouble with my thoughts being sluggish. I don't want that to happen this time since I am building something instead of digging. Once I am shapeshifted, I enter into the water and start walking towards the fourth support.

This form doesn't need air, so I can save mana by using it, but it is extremely slow. I am not used to moving this slow, so I quickly get frustrated with it. In the end, I stop and modify the shape to try and make it able to move faster.

I won't be moving things physically, so it doesn't need to be big and bulky. It also doesn't use muscles to move, so slimming the form down doesn't matter. Once I have modified it, I find that I can move about as fast as a normal human.

The speed is much better and nowhere near as frustrating, so I decide that it is good enough. I make my way to the fourth support and get to work shaping the stone. As I was hoping, shaping the stone is much easier while using this form.

The cost of shaping the stone is reduced to almost half and the shaping is also faster. The best part is that while using this form, fusing the stone to all be one piece doesn't cost me anything. In fact, I find that I can spend some mana to improve the quality and strength of the stone.

Once I figure that out, I finish the fourth support and then go back to strengthen the first three. As soon as that is done, I move on to the fifth support and get to work. Even with reinforcing the stone, I am still using less mana for each support.

I am putting a support every two hundred and fifty feet, so the total number of supports will be around thirty. The problem is that I am not sure if that is going to be enough, or if it is too many. If I wasn't using magic, I wouldn't have the confidence to even try building a bridge.

I know that there is a lot of math involved in determining how many supports are needed. However, I have no clue whatsoever of the formulas needed to figure that out. I am just guessing and hoping that the magic can make up for everything that I don't know.

I manage to complete twelve more supports before I run out of mana. That gives me a total of sixteen complete, roughly half of what I think I will need. I also am happy that I didn't encounter any problems with my thoughts getting sluggish.

As I fly back to the ship I am trying to think of where I can get the metals I need. With the earth golem form, I can probably mine what I need, but it would still take some time. I suppose that I could try to build the bridge only using stone, it might hold.

It isn't like the bridge will need to handle the weight of fully loaded semis. It is only going to be used by horse-drawn carriages at most, that should be easy enough to support. Still, I would rather reinforce it with metal if I can figure out where to get some.

I don't have time, but I do have money still, so I could always buy the metal I need. I need to go to the southern empire to check if they have any more elves anyway. So, I can go there and see if they have the amount of metals that I need.

However, right now I don't have the mana to open a gate, so I go looking for Lin. She isn't asleep when I get back, so I look for her in the tattoo room, but she isn't there either. When I ask Jarvis, he tells me that Lin is not currently in the castle, so I go back outside.

"Athena, do you know where Lin is currently?"