The sailors moved cautiously through the jungle, heading straight toward the nearest lake. Apparently, there were three of them on the island, the largest one sporting a crescent shape like a person’s grin, the other two perfectly circular.

  From the sky, the island looked like a skull, which was precisely how it had received the name that it was labelled by on most maps – at least according to the sailors who had actually seen said maps, though Marnok and, by proxy, Micky, had only heard about this from the others. The tomb was supposedly buried beneath the lake that made up the skull’s right eye.

  ‘No wonder it hasn’t been discovered in so long,’ Micky had thought upon hearing about it.

  He didn’t doubt that the people of Robari had turned their whole planet upside down in search of the hidden stashes of Fools’ Amber, but few would think to dig beneath a random body of water on some remote island without a hint.

  Technically, the lake was only a couple dozen kilometres away from the spot where the sailors had fought the crabs. After all, the marooned crew had spent the better part of the previous day circling the island precisely to shorten the distance as much as possible.

  The trek still took a while as the eight men travelled cautiously, masking their cores and dulling their steps as best as they could. They’d even covered their bodies with mud to get rid of their scent, and kept their mouths shut – for the most part – to avoid drawing any attention.

  If there was one thing that wasn’t going in their favour, it was the sailors’ intermittent coughs that kept echoing through the dense undergrowth. The afflicted men had wrapped strips of fabric around their mouths to stifle the sound, though there was a limit to how much cloth they could stuff in their faces without suffocating. As for where they’d found the excess fabric?

  Well… let’s just say that their deceased crewmates wouldn’t be needing their shirts moving forward. They wouldn’t be needing their boots either, which was why Marnok had “borrowed” a pair.

  ‘Is it me, or are there more people coughing again?’ Micky wondered, letting his host’s lips curl into a frown.

  Last night, it had only been two, but another three had since joined their ranks. Flammy was among them, which Marnok wasn’t particularly happy about, clearly worried about his friend’s health. Luckily, Micky and his host hadn’t felt anything odd yet.

  ‘Start coughing,’ Micky told Marnok at some point.

  ‘What?’ the sailor asked, his soul flaring with surprise at the strange request.

  ‘You heard me,’ Micky replied. ‘And once you begin, make sure you keep it up, or the others will know you’re faking it.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because, if I’m right about this, your friends will soon be asking why you’re the only one who’s okay.’

  Marnok didn’t seem entirely convinced, but he heeded Micky’s instructions regardless.

  The group continued to advance slowly through the jungle, prioritizing caution over speed. Had they sprinted toward the lake, the trip wouldn’t have taken them longer than an hour. However, they opted to travel without raising a stir, and while carefully scanning every patch of dirt they stepped over. Despite the delay, they should be reaching their destination by noon.

  Micky only paid attention to them intermittently, spending most of his time working on the new spell. He had already managed to form and sustain a controlled self-repair enchantment in his host’s water core, though getting it to work inside the air core was proving rather difficult.

  That was why he’d taken a break from pushing for more complex runes, instead switching his efforts to multitasking. Right now, he was trying to form concealment runes in both organs. The one in Marnok’s second core was already complete, yet forcing the other one into shape wasn’t easy.

  ‘Maybe I should try doing it the other way around? It might be easier to draw the rune in the water core while holding one steady in the air core…’

  Strictly speaking, this particular exercise wasn’t very relevant to his project. His artificial advancement would certainly involve enchantments far more complex than his controlled self-repairs – so that part of his training was necessary – but he wouldn’t need to draw them in multiple cores at once. As soon as he learned how to give his runes substance, he should have the means to upgrade his organs one at a time.

  However, Micky felt that any practice was good. Even if an exercise didn’t have an obvious application, it would help him spot and fix flaws in his technique that he hadn’t even noticed.

  He was about to test out his new idea, when a sudden scream pierced the jungle, drawing everyone’s attention.

  Several heads – including Marnok’s – snapped toward the noise, Micky soon realizing that one of their crewmembers was missing. Of course, Mana Sense was often more reliable than regular vision. Marnok’s soon revealed the location of the unfortunate sailor, the crab shells hiding his core having shifted from his sternum.

  Guided by his sixth sense, Micky’s gaze followed their crewmate’s mana signature up a tall tree, his host’s eyes widening upon landing on the man’s mutilated body. A giant shape was slowly coiling around his torso, squeezing the life out of him. The sailor’s bones audibly cracked with every centimetre the foreign mass travelled, his swollen flesh twitching in pain as blood oozed out of countless wounds.

  However, the poor sailor couldn’t let out another sound, a massive maw having already swallowed the upper third of his body, two yellow orbs shining on its head with unconcealed malice.

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  ‘Some kind of snake? It’s huge!’ Micky thought as he tried to fathom the creature’s entire length.

  Its body stretched and twisted through the crowns of nearly every tree in the area, its girth thicker than the numerous trunks supporting its weight. It was so long in fact, that Micky wasn’t sure whether it was a single beast or a whole pack of them. If it was just one specimen, it had to be at Green, though he struggled to read its grade.

  Gasps and horrified shrieks broke the oppressive silence of the jungle once again as the surviving sailors stepped closer to one another, nearly pressing their backs together and facing outwards.

  “H-How in the reefs did we miss it?!” one of them asked, his voice shaking.

  That… was a great question. The abomination was practically everywhere – and yet it had somehow eluded all eight of their Mana Senses for such a long time. Scanning it more carefully, Micky noticed that its pitch-black body wasn’t covered in scales exactly, but rather something else.

  Shards of a material that appeared oddly familiar. Come to think of it, didn’t it look exactly like the fragmented shells that Marnok and his crewmates were using to hide their own cores?

  The pieces were rough and irregular, seemingly attached to the monster’s body rather than naturally grown. Micky saw traces of a pale liquid spilling slowly through the gaps – thick, viscous and sticky – like molten wax, holding the stolen carapaces in place.

  Swallowing hard, Micky was about to instruct Marnok and the other sailors to attack the creature while it was still busy with its meal, when he saw something else that caused the blood to freeze in his host’s veins.

  Micky had instinctively thought of the beast as some kind of snake – but this wasn’t Remior. His preconceived notions clearly couldn’t be trusted. The monster’s elongated body didn’t run across a single straight line – it forked at a certain spot, splitting into three ways!

  One segment clearly led to the head currently devouring the unlucky sailor. Another likely ended up as the creature’s tail, somewhere far in the distance. As for the last one…

  Micky’s borrowed eyes darted across the canopies as he frantically followed the abomination’s body to its third extremity. The colossal beast stretched too far, winding through countless gaps in the dense foliage, almost forming a second layer of jungle overlaying the first one.

  To Micky’s great horror, his search eventually led him right above his host!

  Rivers of transparent saliva gushed out of a jaw hung so wide it might as well have been a cave, rows of curved fangs glinting with hunger as a second pair of yellow orbs shone upon Marnok!

  “Fuck!” Micky spat, shoving the others aside as he rolled along the dried dirt, barely dodging the monster’s strike.

  The enormous mass crashed into the ground where Marnok had just stood with enough force to shake the entire area, the surrounding trees still vibrating a couple of seconds later. Micky felt his host’s eardrums nearly split, watching the earth crack as the violent impact raised a cloud of dust.

  The creature’s fangs remained lodged deep in the dirt, getting ripped out of their owner’s maw as it pulled its head up, blue blood spilling out of its torn gums. Micky didn’t get a chance to celebrate his opponent’s defanging, countless new fangs soon sprouting to replace them – the beast was clearly built for precisely this sort of thing.

  The other sailors finally decided to make themselves useful, a barrage of spells of four separate affinities flying toward the creature. Little good it did them, however, the projectiles splashing harmlessly against the stolen fragments, never so much as touching the monster’s actual body.

  “Focus yar attacks at the same spot!” Micky yelled. “We’ll never kill it if we shoot randomly!”

  He wasn’t sure whether the others had heard him through the cacophony of the battle. Trees snapped in two every time the snake moved, colourful flashes blinding everyone as boulders, fireballs, green crescents and streams of water pelted the beast’s armoured hide, plunging the jungle into complete chaos.

  Thankfully, their attacks soon converged where the monster’s necks split. Whether they had heard Micky or not, Marnok’s crewmates clearly had the same idea as him. Nobody knew whether the monster could survive with a single head, so their best bet was to make sure that they severed both at once.

  Micky actively assisted his host this time, making full use of his water mana. He no longer cared whether anyone noticed. They were probably too busy to pay attention to him anyway, and he guessed that they would be more than happy to swallow whatever explanation Marnok gave them later as long as they survived.

  Perhaps he’d pack more firepower if he seized Marnok’s other core too and fused the mana types into ice, but he decided that he’d rather have a second mind helping him than a composite affinity.

  Everyone’s priority was to keep track of the creature’s head, as it posed the greatest threat to the group by far. At least, it had yet to demonstrate the ability to attack with any other body part. However, avoiding its blows grew twice as hard as soon as the monster was done devouring its meal, freeing up its second head.

  The second sailor fell almost immediately – it was one of the earth users – increasing the pressure on the others once again.

  The good news was that their attacks eventually yielded some results, peeling off the layer of chitin shielding the intersection of the beast’s necks. The opening exposed a much softer body hiding beneath – translucent and slimy like a slug’s. The sticky fluid was already flowing along the creature’s length, dragging more of the glossy fragments with it, the monster clearly trying to repair its broken armour.

  “Like hell I’ll let ya!” the last of the earth users shouted, emptying his core to fire a massive stone spear into the creature’s hide, stabbing into its vulnerable exterior.

  Only, the sailor had left himself wide open in his eagerness. Worse still, he didn’t have a drop of mana left to protect himself with. Others tried to save him, but the snake’s fangs tore through their hastily crafted constructs as if they were paper, snapping around the man’s body and leaving his torso riddled with holes.

  To his credit, the sailor retained enough clarity of mind to will the spear to shatter with his dying breath, giving his crewmates an opening to pour their attacks directly into the creature’s body.

  “Come on! Just die already!” another yelled, hurling a fireball into the hole.

  The abomination writhed in agony, apparently realizing that it was about to lose its life. It pulled both of its heads back, going as far as to let go of the mangled corpse still in its maw. Its serpentine frame moved along the trees’ crowns as it attempted to untangle itself from the jungle and slither away.

  Marnok’s companions showed no interest in letting it go, however. They ran behind it, continuing to shower its body with spells, trying to aim for the opening that their fallen comrade had sacrificed his life to create. Most of their attacks missed, but a few didn’t, the snake screeching in agony each time.

  “Let it go!” Micky yelled, taking control of his host’s mouth. “It’s not worth chasin’!”

  Before anyone even had the chance to register his words, a colossal shadow flew through the jungle, slicing every tree in its path like a giant’s machete, heading straight toward the group.

  Micky barely got Marnok to duck, scarcely registering that two others had done the same. Their three companions weren’t so lucky, the snake’s tail slamming into them more violently than its heads ever had, causing their upper bodies to burst into minced meat. Fountains of blood sprayed out of their severed torsos, as a rain of dirt, splintered wood, fragmented shells and gore showered what was left of the jungle.

  By the time Marnok, Flammy, and the sailor with the red bandana raised their heads, the Green snake was long gone, the midday sun shining brightly over the uprooted section of the jungle that stretched for dozens of metres around them.

  Not wasting a moment, Micky took control of his host’s body, darting toward a certain direction while yelling at the others.

  “Run toward the lake!”

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