After lunch the crafters that have been working on the siege engines arrive. I leave installing the weapons to them, the platforms are already done. If they mess something up I can always fix it later when I am doing the enchantments.

Instead of worrying about what others are doing I keep focused on my own tasks. All the vital parts of the ship are being built by me, so I only need to worry about my mistakes. Of course, if I have made mistakes then I will find out about them when the ship sinks.

Anything less than the ship sinking is fixable, especially since I can just do it with mana. Originally I expected to have to shapeshift and do a lot of the work by hand, but that hasn't been necessary. So far I have been able to do everything by using my mana, in fact it has been easier.

If I was doing the work by hand I wouldn't even be halfway done by now. As it stands, I think I will be ready to put the ship in the water tomorrow or the day after. Then, assuming it doesn't sink, I will probably need another day or two to be ready to leave.

The only other factors are how long it will take the elves to prepare and Brightfire. If Brightfire isn't back by the time the ship is ready I will go looking for her. It has been a while since I tested out how long I can shapeshift before I get a headache.

If I have to go looking for Brightfire, it will give me the chance to test out my endurance. Over the past little while I have also grown a bit more, now I am larger than a normal lion. It looks like my hopes of staying small and playing at being a mage are gone.

At least I can play around as a mage in the soulscape and the planes behind the doors. Which I should have plenty of time to do once our voyage begins. The months we will have to spend at sea will be extremely boring if I don't play in the soulscape.

Besides, I really want to see what leveling up my soul the rest of the way will do. Maybe it will even fix the chunk that I lost when Blitz was destroyed. I also have no idea what other things might be affected by my soul getting stronger.

Just thinking about the possibilities has my curiosity perking up, as usual. However, this isn't something I can find out quickly so my curiosity will just have to wait. It will bug me a little, but there are so many things I haven't been able to satisfy my curiosity about that one more won't matter.

By the time I am ready to stop for dinner the sailors and crafters are done with their tasks. The siege weapons are all mounted on the platforms and the sails and rigging are set. We won't find out if any modifications need to be made until we try sailing the ship.

It is the same with the weapons, until the ship is in the water there is no point in testing them. As usual, once I am done eating I make a soulscape and play with the kids. When the kids are gone I return to the hall and look at the doors that I have already explored.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Instead of returning to the desert I decide I want to explore a new door. So I move past the door to the mortal plane and open the next door after it. When I enter the door I find myself in a dark place, it is a world covered by dark clouds.

There is no trace of sunlight, but it isn't completely dark, there is some light reflecting off the clouds. It is red light from fires and lava, this world seems to be mostly volcanoes. As I am building my body and looking around I find myself wondering if my immunities also apply to my soul.

There is only one way to find out, so I move to the nearest river of magma and stick a paw into it. To me it feels just like sticking my hand into the water of a warm bath, it doesn't hurt me at all. Of course, I have my mana spread out to detect any threats that might be hiding in the magma.

The terrain is going to make exploring this world very time consuming. Other than the volcanoes the rest of the terrain is either mountains or broken by ravines. The ground everywhere I can see is rocky and there are no signs of any plant life.

Of course, this is just the immediate area around the gate, who knows what might be further out. As I explore the area around the gate I finally find the first sign of life, living in a pool of magma. When I take a look at it I learn that it looks like an alligator made from molten rock.

It is floating just beneath the surface of the magma, waiting for something to come close. Its location makes it rather hard to attack, fire is obviously useless and lightning won't penetrate. The environment is far too hot for me to form any ice spells, even if I did they would just melt.

Even if I used an earth spell to attack with rock it would likely just melt. So, I either need to think of another way to attack it, or lure it out of the magma first. Luring it out would probably be the easier of the two options, but I will still have to figure out how to kill it.

Using my mana I start pulling the heat out of the magma around the beast. As the heat is removed the magma starts to solidify, either the beast will come out or it will be trapped. The beast leaves the magma just as soon as it realizes that something is wrong.

It is about twenty feet long, decent sized when compared to a normal alligator. As soon as it is completely revealed I hit it with a lightning bolt, but that doesn't kill it. Its magma-like hide seems to have dispersed the lightning without taking much damage.

Since lightning has little effect my next spell causes rock spikes to erupt from beneath it. The rock spikes manage to pierce the beast's belly in three places causing flaming blood to spill. The beast is lifted off the ground by the spikes and after thrashing around for a while it dies.

1 Infernogator defeated! 200 Soul Exp gained!

Soul Coins +30

While the soul exp is decent, the coins are higher than anything else I have killed so far. While killing the beast was a bit difficult and the terrain makes travel slow, this should still be a decent hunting ground. Of course, if I wasn't immune to fire I probably wouldn't dare to hunt here.

However, since I am immune this place should be a really good hunting ground. At least until I reach level two, after that the exp will drop and I will probably have to find a new spot. For now I continue moving around and hunting the gators until my mana runs low.

4 Infernogators defeated! 800 Soul Exp gained!

Soul Coins +103

Two out of the four gators actually dropped healing crystals, but again they have no effect on me. It is too bad they are used automatically, it would be nice to collect them and save them for later. Since I have less than a thousand mana left, I return to the gate and leave.