After that we return to the ship to play with the kids for the next few hours. Once the kids are worn out I end the soulscape and go back to working on the ship. First, I move through the ship making sure the old enchantments cover everything.

There are a few places where the spacial enchantment has developed some problems. It takes me a while to track down and correct all of them, but it also allows me to optimize it. However, instead of reducing the mana used, I manage to increase the space created.

Now that the old enchantments are all set and working properly, I move on to the new ones. I start with the metal plates added to the bow and enchant them to enhance the strength and cutting power. Once that is done I take out some of the mana rich silver and the gem dust I collected.

Moving inside the ship I liquify the silver and mix the gem dust into the silver. Then I put small grooves into the walls of the ship and then fill them with the silver. This will give the ship a massive amount of extra mana for me to play around with.

Hopefully, this will be enough for now and for everything for phase two as well. Now I start adding to the enchantments on the ship, starting with the pontoons. I add several extra enchantments to the supports connecting the pontoons to the ship.

These are mainly strengthening enchantments to make sure the supports can't break. I am fairly sure that they are strong enough, but I am not taking any chances. When I finish those enchantments, I have to stop and meditate to recover my mana.

By the time my mana pool is full it is only an hour or two before the sun comes up. Since I still have some time before I need to head back, I go back to adding enchantments. Next I move to the back of the ship to enchant the propellers themselves.

This requires a bit of experimenting since I want the propellers to be able to change shape. Luckily, I have a ton of experience with shapeshifting at this point so it doesn't take long to figure out. However, once I figure out the enchantment I don't attach it to the core, that is for phase two.

That uses up all the available mana in the propellers, but I use some from the ship. Using that, I add an enchantment to let the propeller push more water or air. The ship's maintenance and repair enchantments will keep the propellers in top shape.

After that I move through the ship adding small enchantments to make the elves more comfortable. As I am doing that, I am also thinking about what else I can improve on the ship. My wandering leads me up to the main deck and my thoughts turn to the weapons.

When I take a look at the enchantments I did originally, I feel a little ashamed of myself. Luckily, no one is around and Lin hasn't seen them yet, so I quickly dispel them. Then I start to re-enchant the siege weapons, but as I do I have another idea.

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Siege weapons greatest weakness is the reload time, but I have an idea of how to fix that. Unfortunately, I get caught up in experimenting and completely miss breakfast. However, I do manage to figure out an enchantment that greatly improves the weapons.

The enchantment creates the ammo when the weapon is readied to fire. However, creating permanent ammo requires a massive amount of mana. So, I settle on creating ammo that lasts for a few minutes before it disappears.

A couple of minutes is more than enough for the ammo to be fired and hit before it is gone. The problem is, the mana required is still fairly high, but I can handle that with gems. The siege weapons are all big so embedding a dozen or so gems is easy.

When I am done with the weapons, I fly back to the beach and have lunch with Lin and the babies. After lunch I head over to see how the elven crafters are doing with the new ballistae.

To my surprise, the crafters have already finished the eight ballistae I asked them to make. When I ask how they managed it, they explain they had already made a lot of spare parts for repairs. Since the ballistae on the ship haven't been damaged, all those parts were just sitting around.

After thanking them for their hard work, I put the ballistae in my ring and fly back to the ship. Then I proceed to install them one by one, embed the gems, and enchant them. This takes me the rest of the day and uses up the majority of my mana, so I head back for dinner.

Lin says "Welcome back. How is the work going?"

"Pretty good. I should be finished tomorrow."

Lin says "Already? That's great! But Brightfire is going to be disappointed, she loves exploring."

"No, she just loves fighting! Besides, even if I finish tomorrow we won't leave till the day after. The elves will need time to break down the camp and move everything over."

Lin says "If you have finished with the spacial enchantment it should be safe for them to start moving things tomorrow."

"That's true. We will do it that way then."

Lin says "In that case, I will inform Stillwater after dinner."

"Okay. Oh, do you know how far the exploration teams have gotten?"

Lin says "No. Why?"

"When I flew over the island I spotted a jungle between the two mountains. It looked odd so I was curious about it."

Lin says "Why not ask Brightfire later when we are in the soulscape?"

"Yeah, good idea."

Lin says "Here, eat up!"

"Thanks!"

After we are done eating I enter into meditation and open up the soulscape. I invite everyone and send the kids off to play so that I can talk to Brightfire. Lin and Myria take on the job of keeping the kids distracted while we talk.

Brightfire says "What's up, Ash?"

"I wanted to ask how the exploration was going. Have you reached the jungle between the mountains?"

Brightfire says "No, we haven't. We haven't even reached the closer of the two mountains."

"How come?"

Brightfire says "There are too many beasts. Most of our time is spent hunting them. On the plus side, we won't run out of fresh meat or materials anytime soon."

"That's good. Any interesting beasts?"

Brightfire says "A few, why? Looking for another kid?"

"No! I was just curious. It's not like I went looking for any of my kids, I just happened to find them. But I don't regret adopting any of them."

Brightfire says "I didn't mean to imply anything. Your kids are all great!"

"Yeah, they are. Not that I can take any credit for that."