Irwin watched the moon as he hung in the odd place just between it and the gas giant. He was already feeling himself falling toward it, but it was so slow it wasn't distracting. Not compared to looking at the moon.

Covered in vast brown-leaved forests split apart by vast regions of green liquid, he was startled by the lack of diversity. Just a single type of leaf and a smooth, homogenized green… stuff. Part of the oddity was likely due to the time dilation difference, making everything move in slow motion, but even knowing that, the world looked off.

"The green is some sort of water?" he asked, slightly hopeful.

"Acid or poison, I think," Ambraz said. "I'd leave this one for now and check the other one."

Irwin looked down for a bit longer before sighing and spinning around until he saw the blue moon. It was large enough to see that the part angled away from the world was a shiny, silvery white, while the other side was blue. Some of the shiny parts seemed to move away from the far side.

"That doesn't look much better either," Irwin said.

"Just aim for the dark blue region opposite the gas giant," Ambraz said. "I have heard of worlds like that, and I think it's tidally locked."

Irwin blinked, then turned to Ambraz. "What locked?" he asked.

"Tidally locked. It just means that one side of that moon always faces the gas giant."

"And what would be the alternative?" Irwin asked, somewhat confused.

"Many worlds and moons slowly spin, and they move around their sun," Ambraz said.

Irwin looked at the distant, bright glow of the sun that was poking around the gas giant, then at the moon.

"It's why there's day and night," Ambraz said slowly. "If a world is tidally locked, there's one side that's always night and the other always day."

Irwin thought about it for a bit, wondering if that wouldn't be a great world to split between the Frozir and the Ignitzians. Then he looked at the moon and let out a shout before traveling across the sound waves.

It took him a good while to get to the world, and most of his attention was on his other self, talking with Greldo and Ambraz. They initially discussed the moons, and if this one wasn't any good, they could just continue searching for another. Eventually, their conversation drifted to other things.

"No, they're not useless," Ambraz said, sounding annoyed. "Yes, unfinished heartcards can only be slotted moments after being reforged into cards, but just because neither of those-" he pointed at the two glowing cards, both confined in spheres of pale light with golden barriers. "-are directly useful to anyone we know, doesn't mean they won't be in the future!"

Greldo snorted, lying back on the couch, glaring at the two spheres. "I still don't get it. I can see the Chaos whale card being weird and unusable, but is it an Earth Titan? Why doesn't that do something with heat, fire, or earth?"

"It does, but that part is too unstable," Ambraz said. "If we tried to stabilize that part and draw it out into the card, it would either be a very bad, non-upgradable topaz one or shatter during the process."

Irwin grinned as Greldo rolled his eyes.

"Don't worry," he said. "I'm sure we will find someone who needs a card that deals with pressure at some point."

"Right… but you are sure that neither of us can slot it?" Greldo asked.

"We have too many types already," Irwin said, shaking his head. "For you, you need to stick with things that are body improvement, non-type utility, summoning, and shadow."

Greldo crossed his arms, quietly looking at the wall for a while before humming.

"Fine. So, do you think there are any ship summon cards?"

Ambraz barked a laugh while Irwin grimaced.

"You really want it all, don't you?" Ambraz snorted. "Yes, there are ship summon cards, and from what I know, there's exactly one in our entire branch. To get one, you would need three matching soulcards. One to summon the sails, which would require you to have six very specific cards that can be combined into them, another for the hull, and one to increase the size of a summon."

"Increase the size of a summon?" Greldo asked, humming thoughtfully. "I've heard about those but never managed to find one."

"They are pretty rare," Irwin interjected. "I want one that increases my own size, and when I was searching for those, I did find references for others. There are cards to grow and shrink yourself, others, and summons, both living, utility, and weaponry."

"Cards to shrink others? That sounds interesting… and dangerous!"

"All of them are also incredibly rare," Ambraz said. "Worse, they aren't just one size fits all. We have three growth cards, but one is specifically for serpent-type summons with the water typing, while both others are for near-useless utility items."

"So? Can't you just reforge them like you do with some cards?" Greldo asked, waving his hand around.

"Not that far. Sideways reforging only works within the scope of the card," Ambraz said.

Irwin saw Greldo frown in confusion and took over.

"Imagine a utility card that gives the ability to keep a pan at the perfect temperature," Irwin said. "We could sideways reforge it to focus fully on the temperature control and give the wielder the ability to control the surrounding temperature while the pan is summoned. Or we could focus on the pan and make it resizable like my hammer. Lastly, we could focus on the pan's metal and turn that into something special. However, no reforging will allow that card to turn into something that will change the person's body to metal, give them fire control, or turn the pan into a weapon."

Greldo blinked and seemed ready to interject, but Irwin raised his hand.

"Yes, I can reforge a card upward to make a utility card into a weapon. We could change this quartz or amethyst pan card into a topaz metal club or something similar, but doing so could remove or change the heat control part to something else. If we are lucky, it could become better, but with some bad luck, the handle always becomes heated. Sadly, we have less control over this outcome. Now, we can then sideways reforge the result and increase the metal type, or if it retained the temperature control, perhaps extend it to control the person's own temperature, but that's it."

Greldo was nodding. "Okay, so you can improve what is there. In that case, why don't you reforge that one-" he pointed at the unformed heartcard that had belonged to the earth titan. "-into a quartz or amethyst card, but with the types you need and just go from there? It might lose you a lot of the power it could have, but at least it would become useful now?"

Irwin looked at his friend in surprise, then at the earth-titan card. He couldn't sense any of its types in the turbulent soulforce that made it up, but Ambraz could. Ambraz had told him that it was mostly meant for pressure control and very specifically for subterranean pressure. However, it also had some other types, one of them being a very powerful yet unstable form of stone-shaping.

"Ambraz?"

"It would be such a waste… but he is right," Ambraz said slowly.

"Say we do this," Irwin said, turning to look at the Chaos Whale's card. "What could we do with these?"

"I'll have to check them more closely," Ambraz said absently. "It's hard to sense the underlying typings, but…"

His voice trailed off, and Irwin knew he was lost in examining the cards.

"So, while he is doing that. What kind of cards can you get in the future?" Greldo asked.

"Flame and any flame-control cards," Irwin said, raising a finger before listing the types he could get without making his future heartcard forges near impossible. "Coperion control, anything that improves a utility card like my hammer or my guitar, sound, soulforce senses, and steam."

"Okay, and what things can we slot that won't cause troubles that aren't typed?" Greldo asked.

"Mostly body improvement of any type," Irwin said. "So things that make you stronger, faster, enhance your eyesight or hearing. Make you more resistant to poisons, heat, cold, and more like that, but only up to a certain point."

"And non-typed cards," Greldo said.

Irwin nodded.

"So, there's no way I could get a summoned ship?" Greldo asked, sounding sad.

Irwin was about to shake his head when he stopped and wondered about something.

"Well… not a real one," he said slowly. "But perhaps you could get a shadowrealm one. Something that would allow you to bring more people into the shadowrealm and transport them?"

Greldo leaned forward, eyes gleaming with interest. "I've never heard of that!"

"Neither have I," Irwin said. "But I know there are cards that allow people to create things like ships or wagons of ice and even of certain types of gas. I don't see why a shadow one shouldn't be possible."

"I want one!"

Irwin barked a laugh, shaking his head. "What are you? Five? We would need to find way more shadow cards for me to experiment on and see if we can draw one to the utility spectrum."

"There are worlds filled with shadow-walking demons," Greldo said as he got up and began walking around excitedly. "I'm sure I could get to one and find cards!"

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Irwin listened to his friend imagine what it would be like to have a way to transport many people through the shadows, or even a ship that could move in the real world through the shadows. As the ideas became more and more far-fetched, he stopped listening and began thinking about his own future cards. By now, his soullake was over half-full, meaning he wasn't that far from Greldo's progress. It was progress that was unheard of, according to Ambraz, and most of it was due to the odd things that kept happening with Earth Titans and Chaos Whales.

Size and soulforce, he pondered. He knew they were somehow linked, as the bigger things were, the more soulforce they seemed able to hold. As he let his thoughts drift, an image of Tang came to him, and he frowned. Tang's soulforce was powerful for one with a low-rank soulcard, but was that really all there was to it? Many Loydin and Fiz'rin were far bigger than other species, but they didn't necessarily have a stronger soulforce. It couldn't all be due to cards, or he would have learned about that in the academy.

As he thought about the academy, he remembered Vera, the teacher who could change her shape into a thirty-foot behemoth while reforging cards. According to her, it made it easier.

I'm missing something, Irwin thought.

He remembered having pondered this before, and there had been something… something not dealing with size, but with-

"Weight!"

"What?" Gredo asked, stopping in the middle of some impossible idea about creating a card that would allow him to generate shadows himself.

"Nothing, I was just thinking about something," Irwin said.

"You think I can create shadows if I get heavy enough?" Greldo asked, frowning in confusion.

"No, I think weight has something to do with how much soulforce you can hold and use," Irwin said.

Greldo scratched his chin. "So, you can become stronger if you are heavier? Didn't we already discuss this?"

Irwin didn't respond, trying to remember when they had and failing.

"I need a card to increase my memory," he muttered.

Greldo laughed. "Yeah, just don't get one that makes you like Daub, alright?"

Irwin grinned, wondering how his other friend was doing.

"It's mass," Ambraz said suddenly.

The Ganvil flew from Irwin's shoulder and landed on the ground before changing into his working shape. "The more mass you have, the more soulforce you can hold. It's one of three ways to increase your soulforce capacity. The others are high-rank cards and the size of your soullake, but technically, all three do just one thing. Increase the size of your soulscape, which allows your lake to become bigger."

"Okay, so that's why Tang was so much stronger, even with his weaker cards," Irwin said.

"Yes, and it's why you are so much stronger than others with one soulcard," Ambraz agreed.

"So, what if we get soulcards that just focus on making us heavier?" Greldo asked. "Would we be able to get very strong?"

"We would need to be strong enough to move," Irwin said, remembering vividly when his Copperion Body card had increased his weight. He had become slow and cumbersome, and it had taken a long time to get used to it.

"Say… isn't this general knowledge?" Greldo asked. "I mean, people would be able to find this out pretty easily, right?"

"Size change cards are one of a group of cards that are both rare and usually bought up by the nobles and guilds as soon as they are found," Ambraz replied. "Just like anything dealing with soulscape increasing cards, soulforce cards, and others."

"In other words, people do know, but only those in power," Greldo muttered. "Why doesn't this surprise me?"

Irwin remained quiet for a while before humming thoughtfully. "When we return home, we need to talk with Daubutim about this. If these cards are so rare, we need to make sure they aren't wasted back home."

Greldo blinked, then grimaced. "Isn't that doing the same thing the guilds and nobles are doing?"

Irwin nodded. "Yes, and I'm not saying we should just take them from people who find them. But what we should do is make sure they are properly reforged to be the best they can be. Perhaps even buy or trade them from people."

Greldo snorted. "Still sounds the same to me, but I guess there's little choice for now. We need to prepare, and if these cards are going to help us, why not?"

"Worse, if we need them, the chances of getting them anywhere else will be very small," Irwin said. "Even Brazardian only gave me those three growth cards, and none are truly useful for me."

"What if you get yourself a serpent summon, then get a bonding card like me and add the growth card?" Greldo asked.

Irwin grinned. "That's exactly what I thought about, just like adding it to another utility summon. But before I can do that, I'll need to get a lot more soulforce in my soullake."

"About that," Greldo said, looking at the open door that led out of the spacious living room of Irwin's soulscape house. "You are close to three-fourths full already, and from what I heard, most of it was from either the Earth Titan thing or that dead Chaos Whale. What if we start looking for more of those? With the storm, there's a much larger chance to find them."

Irwin hummed as he looked at the wall, pondering Greldo's idea. It wasn't that the idea hadn't come to him, but how were they going to find them? After a few moments, he said as much, and Greldo snorted.

"Well, after I'm done with this hearcard, you just need to get me a card to increase Coal's sense of smell! There's a card I saw called Blood in the Water that allowed a sea-based summon to smell a single particle of blood, determine the direction it came from, and get some details on what creature it was. If we can get something like that for soulforce…!"

Irwin froze, then he jumped up and ran to the table, summoning a few stacks of cards from where they were in the locked closets. They appeared on the table. As he reached it, he began flipping through them. Greldo came beside him, eyes wide with interest.

"Don't tell me you actually have one of those?"

Irwin shook his head, a grin on his face as he picked a single card from the stack.

"Not for Coal, but one for you," he said, raising the topaz-ranked card that he'd gotten from Brazardian. It was one of the many that did something with soulforce sensitivity, and one he hadn't slotted because he had no affinity with smell-based things. "It allows people to smell soulforce. A warning, though… I've heard that some smells aren't very pleasant."

Greldo snorted as he gently took the card. "That's fine with me! So… do you have anything that would boost its efficiency when I'm in the shadowrealm?"

Irwin hadn't thought about that, and he began flipping through another stack. He had very few shadow cards left, having given most to Daubutim, and the few he had left were odd utility ones he'd planned to experiment with. His own soulforce sensitivity gave him a simple idea of what all cards did, and when he finished, he shook his head.

"Nothing that would work with this one," he said. "A few simple cards that allow someone to hide an item in the shadow and take it back out, and one that is a short-range shadow dash. Both are very rigid, and I can't sideways reforge them to become anything better, really."

"Well, I guess we will be able to buy some when we reach Dimarintsia," Greldo said as he stared at the stack of cards sadly.

After talking a bit more about the cards, Irwin eventually put them back in his hidden area below the house, and they returned to chatting.

Hours later, when Irwin's otherself in the real world finally reached the second moon, Greldo and Ambraz were fast asleep.

There are islands or something, Irwin thought as he gazed down at the enormous deep-blue, dotted with what looked like tiny brown-green smudges. They had started appearing when he closed in, and as he finally reached the point where gravity began to slow and invert, he noticed one that was roughly below him. A variety of blue and pale green soulforce swirled across every part of the moon that he could see, turning denser in some areas. Far in the distance, close to where the border between dark and light seemed to be, he saw storm clouds swirling around. Large chunks of what he guessed was ice drifted from the dark region into the light, melting slowly.

"Ambraz, wake up and come see!"

It took a bit to wake the Ganvil up, and when Irwin was already falling at a breakneck speed, he finally appeared.

"Oh! A waterworld," Ambraz said. "These are actually pretty rare. If we had someone specialized in it, we could probably get some interesting resources from it."

"What resources?" Irwin asked curiously.

"Flesh, bones, teeth, and scales," Ambras replied." Most of these worlds have large amounts of fish and sea demons."

"Sea demons? As in the kind that drops cards?" Irwin asked, scanning the sea below. He didn't see any living things.

"Yes, though each world has its own specifics, so don't ask me for those. Still, many can be the size of Earth Titans," Ambraz said. "So don't expect any easy cards."

"... do you think they could be just like Earth Titans and Chaos Whales?" Irwin asked.

Ambraz was quiet for a while before answering.

"I'd have said no if you'd asked me this a year ago, but now? Somehow, it wouldn't surprise me."

"Then let's see what we can find," Irwin said.

They continued dropping, the speed now so high that it was hard to have a normal conversation, and Ambraz returned to his soulscape.

Irwin waited until he was a mile or two above the island, which was larger than he'd expected and covered in odd, teal, and green vegetation. The outer edge was nearly completely made up of pale sand, and Irwin began teleporting around the island to ensure there was nothing waiting to ambush him. The vegetation consisted primarily of tall, spindly trees with a large bulbous canopy of teal leaves and dark green bushes that seemed to have vines that climbed up the tree trunks. There wasn't any movement, nothing that charged out to check who was bellowing loudly from all sides of the island.

Irwin focused on the soulforce, pulling it fully into view and quickly scanning for any anomalies that could indicate something living roaming the dense undergrowth.

Alright, let's check it out, Irwin thought as he focused on the beach and teleported onto it. He came to a skidding halt, a cloud of sand billowing out behind him. The island was quiet, the only sound coming from the gentle lapping of waves and rustling of leaves.

Ambraz appeared on his shoulder moments later, followed by Greldo and Coal. Both raised their heads and began sniffing while Coal's massive ears twitched.

"So much better," Greldo exclaimed happily. "I'll be right back!"

Irwin sighed as Greldo and Coal ran to the nearest shadows and vanished. Closing his eyes, he focused on the sound of the soulforce from the forest. If there was anything alive, there was a big chance he could hear it among the soft, melodic music of the ambient soulforce.

Initially, he heard nothing, but as he tried to get used to the constant soulforce sounds around him, he began to notice a soft background resonance. It took him a while to pinpoint it, but when he did, his eyes snapped open as he stared at the ground below his feet. The pale sand was flowing over his feet, and there was no sign of anything but a normal beach, and yet…

"Ambraz…"

"What's got you so spooked, kid?"

"What do you sense straight down?"

Ambraz was quiet, and then Irwin felt him freeze on his shoulder.

"I… we are standing on top of something very big," Ambraz whispered.

Irwin was about to answer when Greldo appeared beside him, grabbed his arm, and pulled him into the shadowworld. Irwin looked around, expecting something to appear, but nothing did. Instead, Greldo rushed down the beach towards a location where the trees threw shadows into the Water. There, he rushed into the Water, and a moment later, they were moving down and at an angle before Greldo stopped. Due to the speed with which he was moving, they were now far from the island, and Irwin watched in awe at the massive being that hung there. So large it dwarfed even the Chaos Whales, and with long, strand-like limbs dangling down, it looked like an enormous lantern with frills on the ends.

There was no sign of any mouth or eyes, and after a short time, Greldo rushed back towards it and up, depositing them both back on the beach.

"It's incredible!" Greldo shouted. "Have you ever seen anything like it?"

Irwin shook his head, turning to Ambraz, who miraculously managed to stick to his shoulder.

"Ambraz?"

"They are called Draighneán Neamha, but most people just call them jellyfish islands," the Ganvil said thoughtfully.

"Are they dangerous?" Irwin asked, surprised by Ambraz's calmness.

"No… far from it," Ambraz said, shaking his head. "I have only heard about them because Gynerigon managed to get a tentacle card from them. It cost him half of all of his own cards, and even then, he only got an eighty percent one."

"A tentacle card?" Irwin asked, sure he'd never heard of those before.

"The tentacles of jellyfish islands eventually snap off when they grow a bulb. After they do, the bulb eventually grows into another jellyfish island. The thing is… there's a card inside those snapped tentacles, and they are reasonably easy to get as the tentacle has no defenses."

"That's incredible," Greldo said slowly and slightly sarcastically. "But are they useful cards?"

Ambraz sighed, and Irwin had the feeling that if he could have, he'd be shaking his head.

"Oh, they are… they are. They are called template cards-"

Irwin sucked in his breath as he recalled what he'd learned about those.

"-and I think we found another place we might need to hide from the public eye."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.