‘Marnok… you were awfully quiet during the meeting with the Saint. What are your thoughts on all of this?’ Micky asked once they were alone.

  The sailor sighed. Before replying, he walked to the edge of the platform, scooping up a handful of glowing moss. It felt cold and slimy, but he would have to eat it sooner or later.

  Tossing some in his mouth, he clearly struggled to swallow it without throwing up. Micky didn’t appreciate the flavour either, though he was used to eating random stuff in his adventures. Not to mention all the rotten meat he’d been forced to eat for decades back on Huehue.

  ‘It all sounds so strange. All this time, we thought that runnin’ out of Fools’ – no, Saints’ – Amber was ‘ar biggest issue. We were worried ‘bout what would happen to ‘ar descendants after the last White died… to think that there’s such an abomination incubatin’ on Robari… Poor Flammy never stood a chance,’ the sailor replied.

  ‘My offer to take you out of this planet is still on the table,’ Micky said. ‘If you want my honest opinion, I don’t think you, your leader, or anyone else here will have a good end. Is it worth throwing everything away for revenge? Besides, that guy who got your family killed will also get screwed by the infestation sooner or later.’

  ‘Ya ain’t wrong,’ Marnok admitted. ‘But this goes beyond just petty politics between Green-borns now. Ya saw how hard ‘ar Saints worked to give Robari every fightin’ chance they could. Who am I to just run away? I want to stay and do me best too,’ the sailor replied, his soul alight with determination.

  ‘Okay. As long as you understand what you are signing up for,’ Micky said.

  Pulling some mana from his host’s cores, he slowly forged a block of ice as large as his spatial seal, placing it in an empty corner of the raised platform. He then started engraving various enchantments on it. Mostly, he included preservation and heating runes, as well as self-repairs and structural integrity enchantments. Once he was done, he hollowed it out to create a large, frozen box.

  ‘What’s this for?’ Marnok asked.

  Micky answered the sailor’s question by emptying all the beast meat that they’d salvaged from the lake into the construct. Then, he began pouring more mana into the self-repairs, slowly refilling its internal space with ice, encasing all the food.

  ‘Teaching you runecrafting would take a long time, but I don’t have to do that. Just use the self-repairs every few days to maintain the box, and you’ll be able to preserve the meat for several months. You’ll still have to mostly live off the moss, but at least you’ll be able to break it up with something tastier every once in a while,’ Micky explained, before scratching the back of his host’s head. ‘Well, as tasty as raw frog meat can be, at any rate.’

  He would have loved to make an oven for Marnok too, but his self-repair enchantments could only restore constructs made of his mana, and creating an ice oven was obviously impractical.

  Perhaps he could have drawn a few regular heat runes on limestone and fuelled them out of air mana, but they were unlikely to remain functional for long without proper maintenance.

  Micky also created a few enchanted weapons for his host to use after exiting the cave. Of course, Marnok would advance by then, which was why Micky included adaptive self-repairs this time, to allow the constructs to essentially upgrade themselves with the more potent mana later.

  Finally, he passed the sailor all the spare healing potions that he had left. They would inevitably grow even less effective after his host reached Green, but it wouldn’t hurt the sailor to have them just in case.

  ‘How much Saints’ Amber are you planning to consume before you go? Still planning to hand most of it to your boss?’ Micky asked.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Marnok admitted. ‘I need to reach at least Green with both cores to stand a chance out there. Even then, it might not be enough. Especially if I have to escape from the island on me own. But I don’t want to spend decades eatin’ moss inside a tiny cave. Also, I’d rather not waste too much Amber, so I’ll be dilutin’ it...’

  Micky nodded. ‘Green is plenty. You’ll be even stronger after I teach you a couple of other things, though mastering them will take a while.’

  Over the next few days, Micky showed Marnok the Cascading Cracks technique, which would eventually allow him to get twice the value out of the coins. The sailor had a difficult time wrapping his mind around it, because he wasn’t even used to cleansing his cores the normal way – let alone via some highly advanced technique from a greater spring.

  According to the sailor, some people on Robari knew how to cleanse their cores without beast mana, but the method wasn’t very popular. It took around a century to see any results, and most people didn’t even survive that long, causing them to view it as a waste of time.

  The sailor’s inexperience wasn’t the only problem with Micky passing him the technique. He wasn’t the best teacher either, since he had yet to master it himself. Well, his main bodies might have done that already, but he wouldn’t have the memories until he returned to Remior.

  That said, Marnok didn’t need to learn it immediately. Micky prioritized showing his host how to work on it safely – to avoid permanently damaging his cores. As soon as the sailor knew what he was doing, Micky would let him practice by himself.

  Perfecting it would inevitably take the man a few years due to his lower starting point, so he was bound to waste some time and Amber at first, but his efforts were bound to pay dividends down the line. Especially after he passed the technique to his superior.

  Hopefully that Commodore Vent-Noir guy would be happy enough about the Cascading Cracks technique and the map to nineteen other tombs to overlook Marnok consuming some of the Amber for his survival.

  Maybe the White cores would even reconsider their petty dispute after Marnok told everyone about the Cardinal Devil. After all, this issue had to do with the very survival of their species, and the protection of everything they held dear.

  ‘Of course, it’s entirely possible that the Commodores will put themselves first…’ Micky thought but kept that to himself. If Marnok insisted on trusting his leader, then it wasn’t his place to butt in.

  Outside of Marnok’s promotions, Micky instructed his host to train his body and temper his channels. He crafted an ice statue of the sailor, carefully carving pathways corresponding to his three affinities inside the construct, to serve as a three-dimensional model for Circulation. He even engraved lots of self-repairs on it, so that the man could freely break the statue, study its interior and restore it to its previous shape whenever he wanted.

  Unfortunately, the model wasn’t perfect. Micky had based it off his own physiology. Marnok’s networks were bound to differ at least slightly – especially due to his ice affinity being split across two separate cores. Consequently, he would have to figure out any necessary adjustments by himself after he was done clearing his channels.

  Even so, Micky explained in great detail how the boosting art was supposed to work, giving his host everything he would need to complete the spell by the time he advanced.

  Finally, Micky taught him the basics of pre-casting and even explained how the liquid and gaseous variants of ice mana worked, though he wasn’t sure how Marnok would replicate that with two cores.

  As for the Dance… he didn’t bring it up. It was way too complicated to explain when Marnok didn’t even know the Refined version of the spell yet.

  Marnok’s training aside, Micky took advantage of their downtime to work on his own project. By the time his host was ready to commence his seclusion, Micky was able to draw controlled self-repair enchantments in either core, regular self-repairs in both at once, and structural integrity enchantments in just the water core. He was still a long way from achieving his artificial promotion, but he would have to continue working on this on Remior.

  ‘I suppose this is goodbye then?’ Marnok asked.

  Micky nodded. ‘Take care of yourself. I know that the past couple of weeks have been rough, but at least you’ll be safe for the next few years,’ Micky replied.

  ‘Well, unless you end up infected by the Devil…’ he thought to himself, though he didn’t bring that up, not wanting to sour their final moments together.

  The truth was, they still had no idea how Flammy had fallen prey to its insidious influence. Considering how powerful it was, it might be able to infect anyone on Robari whenever it wanted. Unfortunately, there was nothing they could do about that – Marnok was already as isolated and concealed as anyone could be.

  ‘Will ya ever come back?’ the sailor asked again.

  ‘I don’t know if I can even find this place.’ Micky shrugged. Thinking of the new mindset that Saint Ludwick had granted him, however, he added, ‘but I suppose I’m about to find out.’

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