‘Aside from the paralysis, in which I just sat on the stool for the entire duration without anyone bothering me, the rest of the trip went surprisingly well. Nine times out of ten, I was with the Princess like some kind of emotional support dog. Most of the time I was in my wolf form, but I occasionally shifted back over to my humanoid one. For some reason, Illway found it really entertaining to play with my tail while I was bipedal. I wasn’t complaining since having my tail stroked was on par with back scratches.

For the entirety of the two months, I was mostly just relaxing. That didn’t mean I was entirely unproductive though. Over the two months, I learned exactly how magic was treated on this planet. I found that the magic of this planet was consistent with the magic of the rest of the galaxy. Of course there were tons of ways to use magic, but most, especially on terrestrial magic planets, used specific phrases or motions to cast it. This wasn’t a hard requirement, but the words and motions helped a person to conceptualize the magic they were trying to cast.

Two days out from the port, we saw a huge unmarred kraken that was at least two times the flagship’s size. It looked like a gargantuan squid with tentacles pointed every which way. A couple of the tentacles were tipped with some kind of spike that had a weird orb on the end of it. As it floated on the top of the ocean, the stench of rotten fish hit me like a comet.

Most of the crew cheered at seeing the dead foe, but a few of them, including me, were anything but happy at the discovery. Afterall, what kind of creature killed the kraken without even taking a bite? Whatever it was must have been extremely powerful to just shrug off the kraken like it didn’t exist. Especially since I learned from Illway that krakens had a minimum level of 80. As someone in a far away galaxy once said, “There is always a bigger fish.”

I used [Gambler] everyday, but I got nothing good from it. The only items of note were an iron hook and a head of lettuce. I traded the lettuce for an extra cut of meat, which was nice since the ship’s rationing was killing me. The cooks were saying something along the lines of ‘we can’t give you more food you glutinous wolf, so go away’. I mean, I only asked for more meat three times every meal and suddenly I’m the bad guy. Where was the fairness in that? The hook went to a special crewmember who had lost his hand. He was special because he was one of the cooks. After he received the hook, he was more open to my suggestions of more meat in my meals. Best trade I had ever made.

The end of the sea voyage neared and I couldn’t be any happier. I couldn’t wait to touch that sweet sweet ground once again. Even though my seasickness left, being on the ocean was extremely unsettling to me. I couldn’t run around and hint stuff like I wanted too. In my last life, I had never had those urges, but in this one they were extremely prominent. I wanted nothing more than to close my jaws around a deer's neck…

Estimated Time - one year and a little over nine months’

I closed the page of my journal after casually swiping a wet spot that mysteriously appeared after I thought of fresh deer. Dang, another one appeared. With a mournful sigh, I looked up at the port city just a few steps away. We were in the port of the city, but we weren’t allowed to get off quite yet due to some banal bureaucratic bullshit. It was a slow torture to be so close to freedom, but so, so far away.

The city itself was beautiful. Even from here on the boat, I could tell that it was a bustling place to be. The calm chatter of civilians and the machiavellian murmurs of markets resounded off the buildings directly to the triangles atop my head. Along with the sounds of the city, I could also see the motions of city life. The slow pedestrians and racing business people alike were visible walking up and down the white city streets from my vantage point aboard the Queen’s Arrow. Even though we were near a city, the massive galleon towered above the nearby buildings, allowing me a great view.

Speaking of buildings, the buildings in this city were a sight to behold. Every single one of them was made out of a glossy black and white speckled marble like material. Under the sun high above, the city looked like it was a sparkling nebula. Hanging off the commercial buildings were banners and flags proclaiming their establishments to the world in beautiful written calligraphy. I couldn’t see many residential areas since they were located further into the city, but the ones I did see had dozens of plants and other greenery out front, which was a nice break from staring at the reflective black stone.

In fact, the port city Elral would be an ideal place to stay, if it wasn’t for the man in charge, who so happened to also be the jackas- ahem, I mean man responsible for not allowing us off of the ship under the pretense of the Princess’s safety. He said that the surrounding woods were filled to the brim with monsters, and that we would have to wait aboard the ship until they were taken care of. If I had to guess, this was really Lord Elral VII trying to find an opportunity to further his own position by conversing with the Princess and “Protecting” her. In reality, all he was doing was making her-and me for different reasons that may or may not involve food-furious by delaying her journey home.

I straightened up from my position leaning against the railing closest to the port and stretched out lightly. If it wasn’t bound up behind me, my tail would’ve also stretched out, but it was bound because I thought we would have been in the city by now and it would be a hassle to be ogled by a bunch of strangers.

Stretched out and ready to go, I tried to decide what I wanted to do. I really only had three options: try to sneak off of the ship and into Elral, stay put, or use [Shadow Realm] since we weren’t moving anymore. Of the three options, staying put was the worst. I wanted to do something and I had too much energy like some kind of over excited kid. With the quick elimination, only two choices really remained: sneaking away and teleporting.

Of the two, I was leaning towards the latter. While it could be fun to sneak off of the ship, traveling to a different realm sounded more… exciting, I guess. Who knows what I might find? Sure, it would be extremely dangerous to just teleport into a random realm as a level eight, but I couldn’t really care all that much. I already died once after all.

With a plan starting to be put into motion, I walked down towards my room. I had received a room aboard the ship a little after I had been Illway’s tear rag for a couple of nights. It was, in a word, awful being with her every night. Thankfully, Captain Raven noticed and gave me a room next to hers that I could sleep in. Illway was sad to see me go, but I made up for it by hanging out with her nine times out of ten, mainly since I didn’t know anyones else aboard except for the hook chef.

I walked down the stairs and down the familiar hallway until I reached my door. I was about to walk in, but I decided that I would let Illway know that I would be indisposed if she came looking for me, which she often did. It should be mentioned that the boat was extremely boring. There was no technology on this planet, so all us seafarers could really do-aside from work- was hang out and occasionally practice fighting. Unfortunately, I was just a wee bit underleveled to fight, so I couldn’t do the latter. While I was highly trained, training couldn’t overcome the advantage of having an actual class.

I moved one door over and knocked on it lightly. “Come in,” I heard a muffled voice call from within.

I walked in to find Illway laying down on her bed while reading a book, “Hey Princess.”

Upon noticing who I was, she smiled brightly and closed her book, “Hey Kali! What brings you here?”

“I’m going to be practicing some of my skills in a bit, so I came to hang out before I returned to my room.” I told her the prearranged lie I had prepared.

A look of confusion briefly passed between her head before she said, “Okay Kali. Hey, while you are here, do you want to see this book I’ve been reading?”

I spent the next hour or so talking about books with Illway. It was a… boring conversation if I had to be honest. I was never much of a reader unless it was some kind of manual or a how to guide. Books just never hit me right. To be fair, no recreational activities like reading hit me right either, but that mainly had to do with how I was raised.

After the conversation, I closed Illway’s door behind me and strolled towards mine. There was no lock on any of the residential rooms in the ship, aside from the cozy Captain’s cabin and the Queen’s room , so I opened the door up without any hassle and walked in. My room was fairly simple. It had a bed in one corner, covered in sheets. They were all trampled down to the mattress from where I had circled in my wolf form before going to sleep. The only other things in my room were a small armour stood opposite from my bed and a small oak table next to it.

As the door closed behind me, I trudged over to my equipment and tried to decide what I wanted to take. For starters, I knew absolutely nothing about the Shadow Realm nor had I ever heard someone mention it. Since I knew nothing, I grabbed all of my weapons, which consisted of the two daggers and a bow that I had “liberated” from one of the sailors in a game of cards. I then grabbed my pack, my journal, and some rations that I had grabbed from Israle, the quartermaster. I didn’t plan to be gone for long, but instant teleportation was finicky at best. For all I knew, I could be stuck in the shadow realm for a few days, so I thought it would be best to bring food just in case.

Fully prepared- well, as prepared as I could be, I activated [Shadow Realm] without a second thought. A powerful sucking sensation, like when I had my foot stuck in mud and tried to pull it out, burst inside of me before growing to encompass my entire body. Along with the sucking feeling, one fourth of my mana was drained out of me to power the skill. My vision turned completely black and a loud pop! sent my ears ringing. After the sound, a huge sense of vertigo washed over me as I lost all sense of where I was.

Before I knew it, my vision returned to me, allowing me to see that I was in a completely new place. What surrounded me was, well, darkness. Everything was stained shades of the darker sides of the greyscale. Literally everything, there was absolutely no color in my surroundings. As for my surroundings, they were interesting.

I was standing on top of a lake of some kind, but the surface was entirely frozen over in some kind of icey substance. All around me in every direction but down was an inky darkness that seemed to be reaching out for me. Somewhere far away from me, the ice seemed to curve into a horizon, showing that wherever I was also seemed to have planets or something of the like. This was good since, according to Terry, flat realms tended to be extremely finite. Of course he could be very wrong, because in my last life research into other realms was extremely limited and most tended to research the Myzn if anything.

Standing here, it was like I was standing on a huge flat piece of ice with nothing around. Speaking of ice, I was feeling cold, though not enough for water to freeze, so why was the water frozen? I looked down at the ice and saw right through it. My vision extended for a ways down before being completely cut off by darkness, so I had no idea what was below me, which was worrying.

The first thing I did before I continued to explore was use [Shadow Realm] again to see if I could go back anytime I wanted. Nothing happened. I looked at the skill in my status and saw that it had a cooldown timer on it before I could use the skill again. The timer wasn’t long at fifteen minutes, but it was an annoyance nonetheless.

With an internal timer ticking down, I took a tentative step forward on the ice, afraid that it would break. For the second time, nothing happened. The ice-like substance didn’t crack or really react at all. I took a few more slow steps, just to make sure the substance was safe to walk on, and found that it seemed to act like normal ground that could be found anywhere. As I was watching the ground for cracks or negative reactions to my weight, I saw the water underneath me shift around, almost as if a wave was pressing up against the ice. Or something was moving down there. I shook off that terrifying thought before it could take root.

I checked the rest of my senses, to see if I could find anything out about this place. The air smelled odd, like a combination of iron and saltwater. It kind of reminded me of the times that I was in the Queen’s Arrow kitchen when the cooks gutted a fish. The air around me was cold, but not too cold that I would need to cover up. It was a slight chill that hung in the air above the ice, like a cool fall day.

Around me, I couldn’t hear anything. It was dead silent everywhere around me, which was unsettling. There wasn’t a single speck of sound, giving me the feeling that the realm I was in was dead. No sound suggested that there was no life either.

With nothing more to do than wait, I started to creep slowly on the ice in a direction. I looked up to see what direction I was in based off of the sun. Above me was near complete darkness all around without any stars. Hanging just past the noon position, a dull purple orb floated.

The sun was a little weird. The way it looked from down here was like an eye, but extremely blurry. It also didn’t seem to put off too much light, but it wasn’t too much of a problem since I had a little night vision. Pushing the thoughts about how weird this place was out of my head, I gauged that I was either walking towards the south or the north, depending on how the planet’s rotation was orientated to the sun.

After nearly ten minutes of nothing happening during my slow movements, finally something changed. The change was very welcomed, especially since I thought that perhaps [Shadow Realm] was a dud ability that just threw me out into the middle of nothingness.

The change was fairly subtle, but it was nonetheless extremely important. The area I was walking towards was starting to light up. The light was like a faint halo glowing in the darkness. The creepy halo effect also confirmed something else that I was beginning to suspect: the entire area above the ice was covered in a black fog.

I continued on towards the halo of light. My tail was starting to slightly ache as I walked from how straight it was due to my concentration. A faint scent trickled into my nose like a gentle breeze. I couldn’t exactly tell what was giving off the scent, but it smelled like a sour pine tree, which was an odd combination.

Right after the scent came through, I faintly heard a rasping sound, like something big was breathing in and out slowly. Along with the sound came a new view piercing through the thick fog. I approached closer to get a better view.

In front of me was a building of some sort. It looked a little like a grey mausoleum, but it was massive. There was nothing around it on the ice, almost as if the building had been teleported into the middle of nowhere. The grey stones that made up the building had the same marble texture that Elral, the port city I had teleported from, had, though instead of looking like stars, the marble looked like some kind of petrified wood.

The building itself looked to be a little like a massive box, but smaller boxes were coming off of it and towards me kinda like stairs. Each “box” had patio-like protrusions hanging off of them, which were held onto the box by pillars that looked a little like tree trunks. Engraved onto the sides of all of the boxes were symbols, but I didn’t know the meaning of them nor did I really care all that much. I wasn’t an archeologist or anything of the like.

The smallest “box”, which was about as tall as a three story building and thrice as long, had a large doorway on it. The doorway’s edges were caved in and sharp, almost like something had forced its way into the building and damaged the edges of the door in the process.

Sitting on either side of the doorway were large statues of some kind of dark gray serpent. They were as large as the doorway, being at least two stories. Both snakes had their tails curved up and around the doorway, almost like a frame of some kind. The snake's bodies were standing upright, like how I had seene a cobra sit when it was inspecting a potential enemy or prey. They looked fairly similar to actual snakes up to that point, but their heads were where they diverged from the norm.

Each of the tops of the snakes had three heads, almost like a snakey version of a cerberus. The head on the left and the right on both were opened wide as if they were hissing. Deadly fangs hung from the top of their heads and they seemed to be dripping with something, though I wasn’t sure what. Their eyes were like gems that glowed with a green light, which was the first hint of color I had seen in this unsettling realm.

The middle head was entirely different. While the other two heads of each snake were normal snake heads like one would find on a snake, the middle snake head had a more draconic look to it. Instead of being flat spade shaped, it was more like a scaly snout connecting back into the head. The middle head on both snakes was closed and their eyes, the same look and color as the hissing heads, seemed to be glaring out at the ice as if offended by something.

I couldn’t see into the building very well since I was too far away, but it looked like it had some kind of purple green fire glowing inside, which was the second speck of color I had seen in my time here. I listened carefully towards the huge building to see if I could find anything else about the odd place, hearing the breathing sound from before coming out of it. The breathing was loud and sounded labored, almost as if a giant creature was inside sleeping.

Standing in front of me a little ways back from the building was a statue, but it was of a person and it looked like it was the same kind of material that made up the ice below me. I couldn’t exactly see what the statue looked like, but it had a massive sword next to it and was covered in some kind of armor, also made of the ice. I quickly checked the cooldown on [Shadow Realm] just in case I needed to escape quickly, and crept closer to the ominous temple and frozen statue...