"For worshipping like bootlicking,

It takes wits to receive,

More than hunting or prey killing,

I don't want to grieve."

Once again, Pengu put me in a pit of trying to understand what it meant with it strange poetry. Yet rather than trying to make sense of it and probably fail at understanding what it wanted to convey, I decided to come clean with this strange friend of mine.

"Pengu, I mean no disrespect, but at times I have troubles understanding what you mean. Can you nod your beak if you want to come with me, or shake it if you prefer to stay here?"

If I couldn't successfully communicate with Pengu, then bringing him against his will, even if accidental, could cause strife in our relationship. Seeing how I managed to raise only two of my statistics without being forced into a corner by some strange retribution caused by the unbalanced growth of my own body and core, I was quite confident that even if those old foxes that most likely protected the heavenly city were to come out from their holes in order to fight against my ambition to take over the entire place, I would still be able to defeat them, even without using Pengu as the proxy for the penguin sect guardian!

Hearing my question, Pengu at first energetically nodded its beak just like I asked, but then, instead of jumping in the joy that we managed to reach an agreement or doing absolutely anything else, it suddenly stared in a distance, as if some lethal threat appeared on the horizon. With its strange properties, the ice that limited all my senses to the interior of this cave alone, I was unable to take a look at what caused my friend to react like that.

Even after trying to spread my energy vision outside of this place, I found out that rather than penetrating through the walls of ice, it treated them as an energetical object, making me blind to what was happening outside! But just as I started preparing myself for a fight, I saw Pengu recovering from its daze and once again nodding its beak just as happy as it did before!

Wait, did the open format of my request confused it as to how many times should it nod its cute, fluffy head to answer my question properly? The first time to notify me that it understood how I wanted to communicate with him, while the next one was the final answer to my inquiry?

Seeing that all signs of tension disappeared from my fluffy friend, I realised that this entire situation was nothing but a stupid misunderstanding, once again caused by our faulty means of communication.

But since Pengu agreed, there was nothing else stopping us from moving back to the heavenly city, was there?

Just as I was about to start working my way to open the portal from Bonger's seed, I realised that there was still a huge problem in terms of size, but hopefully, just a small inconvenience seeing how Pengu was capable of changing its height.

"Pengu, could you maybe turn just a bit smaller than you are, right now? While I can easily transport you as you are right now to our destination since I need to sneak back into the city with you, the smaller you will get, the easier it will be."

Hearing my words, Pengu nodded its lovely beak once again, jumped into the air, and started shrinking even more than it did already, yet rather than landing on the ground, he suddenly propelled forward, instantly smashing its still as fluffy as always body right into my chest!

Do you know the saying of sinking into one's fluffiness? With its delicate fur making me feel as if my chest teleported to some kind of pillow heaven, I couldn't help but let my head drop to the back in the momentary feeling of pure ecstasy, yet when I managed to recover my senses, I realised that Pengu disappeared somewhere!

As if this feeling of sinking cheated my senses, it seemed like it sinks itself into my own body!

While I knew that this friend of mine would do me no harm, if it somehow managed to turn into an incorporeal form, I had no idea how it would react upon noticing a fragment of Eve's soul safely kept within my own incorporeal core!

Yet before my anxiety could turn into panic, I realised that instead of completely sinking into my own skin, Pengu simply turned into a small, cute, little head, that I could only compare to the freshly coming out of the egg penguin known from the popular franchise about penguins that wanted to visit a certain, big island at the south-eastern end of the African continent!

"Squeak!"

This time, instead of poetry or even nodding its little and adorable beak, Pengu came out with a strange cry, that despite how silent it was, I could still tell it was filled with joy!

Putting all the strength of both my soul and my corporeal body to fight off diabetes that suddenly activated in me, I rushed out of the cave, hoping that the freezing wind of this artic environment would clear my mind from the overwhelming cuteness of this little friend of mine.

But while getting out to the open was an easy task, I soon learned that not everything would go my way!

As soon as I reached the open space, I pulled out the seed of the portal with the intention to open it, yet as soon as I infused it with my thought… Absolutely nothing happened!

As if a strange barrier of this place blocked all attempts at breaking the barrier of this dimension, I was unable to open the portal from the seed, nor any of my later attempts to do it manually just for the sake of testing the possibility!

While it would mean quite a big pain in the ass to go all the way back to the arena city, since I not only opened a portal leading there, but also escaped from that area using one as well, even if that meant leaving the seed out in the open, it was the only place where I was sure I could make my way back to my stronghold, and then onwards to the heavenly city!