Channelling his host’s mana through the constructs, Micky rapidly filled the gaps between the enchanted slabs with more ice. A frozen island formed beneath Marnok’s feet, encasing the entire formation in mere moments before continuing to expand outwards.

  Blooming like a pale lotus, it disturbed the lake’s still waters, growing to thrice its original width in less than half an hour. Only then did its expansion begin to slow down, the complex flow of mana reaching a delicate equilibrium.

  Marnok’s cores absorbed water and air mana as fast as they were expelling it, essentially leaving his reserves untouched. At the same time, the frozen island was large enough that chunks kept tearing off its perimeter as quickly as new liquid was solidifying to join it, preventing the island from growing any larger.

  This created the illusion that Micky’s efforts had stopped yielding results, but he knew that couldn’t be further from the truth. Examining the area around the island, he saw countless discarded pieces of ice floating away, like a river of peeled petals. He was willing to bet that the water was still growing colder by the second too.

  ‘If stackin’ so many runes together is workin’ so well, why don’t ya add more layers to the formation?’ Marnok suddenly asked.

  ‘It’s not that simple,’ Micky said, mentally shaking his head. ‘The enchantments make the cooling process more efficient, but I still need to keep fuelling all the small runes. You don’t have enough mana for a fourth layer, and I can’t control too many separate streams at once either, nor can I send your mana too far from us.’

  The configuration that Micky was currently using was already several times simpler than the one he had unleashed on Thess’kala, yet fully activating it while being mindful of his host’s expenditure was still difficult and time-consuming.

  Even so, Micky was more than satisfied with its output. By nightfall, he was confident that he had driven away all the living creatures in their immediate surroundings. The absence of sunlight would hopefully help the lake stay cool for longer too, giving him ample time to begin his search in earnest.

  He wasn’t exactly thrilled to do so in the dark, but he understood that the operation was never going to be perfectly safe, no matter what he did. Sighing, he ripped the enchanted slabs out of the island’s surface, stacking them on a tall pile by its edge for later.

  Next, he grabbed the magical spears from the other pile, setting them vertically in various spots across the island, their tips pointing downwards. Pouring mana into the rotation runes, he allowed the tools to drill through ice, water, mud and stone alike, leaving one narrow hole after the other on the lakebed.

  Moving around the island methodically, he scanned the area beneath it for any signs of unexpected resistance. Another twenty minutes later, he was done with the frozen region entirely, coming up empty-handed. Still, he knew that his little island only constituted a tiny fraction of the first section of the lake that he intended to explore.

  Returning to the stack of slabs, he tossed them out into the water, freezing their edges together into a makeshift raft. Hopping on, he willed the constructs to move, sailing through the lake while continuing to poke at its depths with his magical drills.

  He was mindful not to move too far from the formation, lest he ventured into warmer waters by mistake. Searching everything in a wide circle around the island took him the better part of the night, though he sadly had nothing to show for it by morning.

  ‘Oh well… we were never going to find it on the first try,’ he thought with a shrug, consoling both himself and his host.

  Stopping at a different location, he allowed the raft to split into its components again, repeating his earlier actions to form a second island. The rising sun didn’t make his life easy, slowing down the expansion.

  However, his efforts from the previous day most certainly did. Looking back, Micky saw that the first island was still there. It had shrunk slightly, but it looked like it would be a few days before it melted completely.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  ‘That’s good,’ he thought. ‘Every region will go a little faster than the previous one.’

  He wasn’t sure whether he would manage to freeze the entire lake at some point, or whether he would hit diminishing returns and never exceed a certain volume of ice. Either way, it didn’t really matter. At his current pace, he’d be done exploring the lake in a week anyway.

  Micky and his host continued to search one region after another, averaging two new islands per day. Of course, Micky was doing most of the work, but Marnok still found various ways to contribute. He helped pour mana into the enchantments, took care of their bodily needs, and kept an eye out for any attacking beasts.

  A few aquatic creatures did try sneaking up on them every now and then, but the only thing they accomplished was to add to Micky’s stash of frozen food. Having learned his lesson a long time ago, he’d rather not break his host’s teeth on Yellow meat, but they’d thankfully slaughtered plenty of Orange beasts too.

  ‘The frogs are still going to the very back of the queue,’ he told his host on the fourth day, preferring to feast on just about anything else before he resorted to the raw amphibians.

  While Micky and Marnok had settled into a productive routine, they still remained tense throughout the operation, the threat of a Green beast constantly looming over their head. Micky didn’t know whether he could handle one by himself with his current means, and he didn’t want to find out either.

  If there were any such monsters in the water – and that was looking increasingly unlikely – then Micky’s plan of forcing them away from their habitat had clearly worked like a charm. However, it was entirely possible that the beasts would lose their patience at some point if he kept chasing them around, so he was really hoping that they would find the tomb before it came to that.

  The good news was that no land-dwelling creatures had bothered them. Even if they’d tracked them down to the lake, they clearly had no interest in swimming toward Micky’s raft.

  By the sixth day, Micky and Marnok were beginning to lose all hope. They’d already explored over eighty percent of the lake, finding no sign of the demigod’s resting place. There was a chance that it was located in the tiny area that they had yet to search, but there was also a much greater chance that they had missed it, or worse, that it wasn’t here at all.

  ‘Now what?’ the sailor asked, his voice gloomy.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Micky said. ‘If we fail to find it in the last two areas, our only option is to start over.’

  Maybe they’d get lucky if they drilled even deeper, shrunk the intervals between the holes, or just paid more attention. As long as they didn’t provoke some Green monster in the process, their supplies would last.

  However, searching the lake more thoroughly would inevitably take a lot more time. If that didn’t work either, they’d have to try a different lake, hoping that Marnok’s information hadn’t been entirely baseless. The problem was that they’d need to trek through the jungle by themselves to get there, which was practically suicide.

  As for escaping the island or surviving here indefinitely – those were even more unrealistic options. Micky may have originally come here looking for a quick vacation, but he wasn’t going to leave Marnok alone in such a hellish place, so he’d have to find an acceptable solution for his friend before returning to Remior.

  ‘Maybe he’ll reconsider moving to the Vault if we run out of alternatives…’ he hoped.

  Just as Micky was trying to think of the best way to breach the topic again, one of his drills hit something hard, halting its descent. He didn’t immediately think much of it, guessing that he had probably just poured too little mana into the construct, weakening its momentum – it wouldn’t be his first blunder this week.

  Yet, his borrowed heart skipped a beat as soon as he recharged the tool and still struggled to pierce deeper, and then a second time once his host came to the same realization as him.

  ‘Do ya think…?’ Marnok asked, clearly too afraid to jump to conclusions. Technically, it could just be a naturally occurring vein of some harder mineral inhibiting the tool, though they hadn’t found anything of the sort over the past few days.

  ‘Only one way to find out,’ Micky said.

  Using several more drills, he tried to narrow down the dimensions of the suspected tomb. It soon became clear that Micky had greatly underestimated how large the structure was – though that had admittedly been on purpose, to make sure that they didn’t let it slip through their fingers by mistake. Either way, it was a square over thirty metres across, its clear-cut shape further evidence that it was artificial.

  Micky’s constructs could still penetrate the ceiling with enough effort, but he didn’t rush to break in just yet. Flooding the tomb would only make their subsequent exploration harder. Instead, he arranged the enchanted slabs above the structure, spending the next thirty minutes activating the formation again and freezing every drop of water separating them from their destination.

  This was one of the deepest spots they’d searched so far, the lakebed about twelve metres from the surface, the ceiling of the suspected tomb another five metres of stone below that.

  Once everything was ready, Micky dug a tunnel wide enough for Marnok to crawl through, reaching the enchanted layer in less than a minute. Their heart thrummed wildly the more certain they grew that this was indeed the place that hundreds of Marnok’s crewmates had lost their lives searching for.

  ‘And it’s all ours for the taking!’ Micky thought, rubbing his host’s hands with anticipation.

  Books 1 & 2 on at no extra cost, grab copies for your shelf, or listen to the audiobooks on .