After returning to our ship after our Ordeal in the Castle, we head back to Crescent Town, killing sharks along the way. We return to Crescent town, kill a few millipedes, and then return north to the Ice Cave.

I'm not going to lie, I'm still nervous about the Mages. They can wreck us, but I'm hopeful the extra levels by our previous excursion will make it so that we can hit them (or run) before they get a shot. If they do get a shot, we are more likely to resist. As we journey down through the cave, we face only one fight with mages but are able to run away before they can rub us.

We trek through the freezing cavern and find our way to a giant Eye. It is quite a disturbing monster, much bigger than the big eyes we occasionally see crawling out of the oceans. We overtake the giant eye in a single turn and turn to explore the chest that it was guarding, only to find... a floater? Insert toilet joke here.

We gingerly put the floater in our pocket. It feels gross just thinking about it. Then, start the trek out of the cave into the warmer surface air. After a brief camp to recover, we head back out through the river maze and back on the ocean, heading due south.

We follow the coastline until we reach the continent's southernmost point, and there we find a miniature desert encircled by the mountains. Luckily, there is a nearby river where we can park our ship and get out via canoe. We get into the middle of the desert and use our floater. Lo and behold, a flying ship, all Star Wars-like, rises out of the desert. We now have a high-speed mode of travel that unlocks even more new locations on the map that we couldn't previously travel to!

How did I know to do this (outside of just having done it several times before)? The answer is that we are still well in the realm of the manual walkthrough, believe it or not. In fact, this is the actual endpoint of the manual's walkthrough, which feels really far into the game to still be handholding the player as to where to go next (well, sort of; the manual actually takes you through the volcano before the ice cave and doesn't do the Castle of Ordeals at all). I may have ended the manual after getting the player to Melmond personally; it would have shown the player that there are things to unlock and how to explore, and getting them out into the ocean is a pretty big deal. But I'm thankful that they take you to this spot in the desert because there is absolutely no in-game logic that you would know you must take the floater to this tiny desert. No NPC mentions what to do with the floater. I could see someone spending hours upon hours looking for it, and even if you found this desert, what would make you use the floater in the desert like this?!?! This was a really egregious lack of in-game direction. I appreciate the manual, but you shouldn't need it for something this important to the game. Keep in mind also. This is pre-internet; if it wasn't for the manual, we likely needed Nintendo Power for this.

But I digress. What I meant to say was... WE HAVE A FREAKING AIRSHIP!

We excitedly jump into the airship and take it for a whirl. When I say it's fast, it's REALLY fast. As we speed around the world, we notice a small town in the middle of the mountains. This place had zero way to access it before you could access the flying ship, so we promptly landed to check it out.

The town's name is Gaia, which is quite lovely, but boy, it is expensive here! None of the shops have much, but what they do have is super expensive. Even the Inn costs more than I had been to previously by a wide margin. Luckily, we have a ton of money because we never really spend it, so none of this is a problem, but it is pretty jarring. We also quickly stop at the armor shop to buy a proring for Jane and Pcrd. We don't usually worry about armor much. Still, this thing will protect us from the Rub spell that concerns us so much when battling some monsters.

Upon talking to the local citizens of this town, we happen upon a pirate who brags about capturing a faerie in a bottle and selling it to a caravan that was passing through. I panic at the thought and instantly get back in the flying ship and search out the caravan.

We spot something in a giant desert that looks like an oasis and land there to check it out. Wouldn't you know, we landed directly on the caravan! We enter, and the salesman doesn't seem to mind the giant airship that landed on him, so we buy the fairie bottle from him and head back to Gaia.

In Gaia, we spot a small pond in the back of town, which would be an excellent spot for a faerie to reside, so we open the bottle to release it. The faerie pops out and seems extremely pleased by our assistance. She goes into her home, bringing back an object that is difficult to describe here. She calls it Oxyale. I have no idea what that is, but I thank her happily and put it in my pocket. Hopefully, we can find a use for it in the future.

However, after this excursion, we should get back on our quest. We get back in our airship and search for the volcano. We find it in the middle of the mountains just west of Crescent Lake and land our ship in front of it.

Not knowing what exactly to do as we surely aren't going to dive into the top of the volcano like we are Joe, we begin looking around the base. Pcrd is eagle-eyed and spots a cave entrance within reach of the bottom. We decide we should probably set up camp for the night before heading in to ensure we are fully rested for this excursion.

Today's XP totals are:

Runecrafting: 1; Aurum: 1; Dominus: 1; Glyphus: 1; Iteron: 1; Dracorius: 1