Timothy, and the team returned to the waters. Once they swam a hundred or so meters, he released the Sea Orc from the crippling set of extra bones that he had riddled it with. The beast was free now, well, its spine was still messed up, but the hundreds of Albino Scavenger Leeches that lived within the dragon, said that they could heal the dragon’s spine, so it was far from dying!It was expensive for Timothy to let the dragon live, but he didn’t want to upset those little guys either, because he feared that his head would be split in two, if the leeches chose to get violent! The albino leeches possessed flesh mana, a kind of mana that even Arvena was unaware of, so it was best not to anger them! The dragon was spared, and it was also in no condition to chase the team, so this was a win-win, and lose-lose situation. Anyway, since the team was in the water, they could continue their seemingly insane motive of chasing after the Ruins of Aqumus! It was looking more and more insane to go

The Mana Quotient upgrade was as painful as it was expensive! Not only did it put his guts and spine into a strain, but it also affected his brain, since intelligence was primarily located on one's brain! Timothy felt as if a viral virus was attacking his nervous system, he felt dumber by the second once the pain intensified, but he didn’t fear such foul effects per se, because he knew that they were temporary.Timothy endured the pain for a whole hour, and at that point, the pain threshold was too high for him to handle, so he fainted. Fainting was one of the best things that could happen to him right now, because the pain he felt while unconscious was reduced by at least a third! He got a bit of peace like this.The upgrade was lengthy, because it would ultimately make him different from most mages. As a fish, he would end up being almost godly after this upgrade, and if he chose to shift into a mammal again, then he'd be one of the most magically fluent mammals within the Fintelus’

Timothy created a new ability, a fully necromantic ability, even, because he was supposed to reanimate skeletons with it! He absorbed the new power in his body, and hoped that it would work like it was supposed to, because he didn’t want to spend all day tugging on strings of mana channels, regardless of how enthralling that may sound, especially since it didn't cost any mana to experiment. It was interesting, but he didn’t want to spend hours creating abilities that he would then dispose of.“Okay… I need test subjects.” He muttered.Afterwards, he slipped out of the bony den, swam nearly twenty meters away from it, and tried to put his new ability to the test! A dark cloudy substance oozed out of the barb of his tail during the attempt, but this cloud was small, because he wasn't cranking the ability up to the max. He didn’t need to.The cloud then traveled around his close vicinity, and sought out skeletons to reanimate. This part of the process was costly, he was spending two-hund

After these couple of successful experiments, Timothy went back to his den. His slaves tried to follow suit, but he ended up discarding most of them, particularly those bigger, useless skeletons. He didn’t want them flapping around aimlessly, without even a pair of eyes to call their own, so he disposed of them mercifully. However, he couldn’t find the strength to dismantle that little anglerfish, and the assfish that he had reanimated, it seemed cruel to kill them, so he allowed them to follow him, though he wasn’t sure what he was going to do with such useless creatures!Anyway, regardless of the ethical dilemmas regarding his experiments, Tim was still quite happy that he was able to recreate life! The MQ upgrade that he bought, may be one of the most important purchases that he had ever made, regardless of how expensive the purchase was! It was worth the points!Tim's understanding of magic had increased exponentially, and he was happy about that, though due to the same few experi

Timothy was excited that he got a significantly higher IQ now! He was up at a scale where he would be considered a supreme genius amongst the fish world, he was one of a kind, and he'd be amongst the small percentage of absolute geniuses no matter what species he shapeshifted into! Be it a spider, a lizard, a goblin, or a human, he'd always be at the top in terms of intelligence! It was accelerating!However, intelligence didn't mean anything, if he didn't know how to put it into use. In this case, he wanted to use it so he, and his friends could survive whatever challenge was to be thrown against them after a couple of weeks. He wanted to survive The Old Sea with his friends, and surely, survival came hand-to-hand with great rewards!“I need an army,” He plotted, “Since we can't fight all these bastards in the sea without emptying our mana pools, I might as well make an army fight for us! System, can I give powers to my skeleton slaves?”Timothy asked that question, because he planne