After making a hasty retreat through the portal pipe, Alex popped out at Bob and Martha’s snowy farm. She looked at the sky in the general direction of where the temple would be but couldn’t see anything. With the farm being in a lower spot near a stream in a mountainous area this wasn’t surprising. Fufi and Alex took a moment to brush the snow off themselves and hopped into the pipe that would take them to the grotto in the swamp.

  “That was a close one.” Alex rubbed her arms to warm up. “You okay to keep going Fufi?”

  “Yes,” Fufi nodded. “No telling how fast that thing can go and it might be headed straight for us.”

  Wanting to make as much distance from the angel, Alex and Fufi hurriedly prepared the air boat and with a quick rev of the mechanical fan set out and plotted a course back to the river. She had to stop and get changed into her winter outfit after a few minutes. The wind was too much to endure when wearing the plumbers outfit. But she and Fufi made good time, skimming along the slush and mud of the swamp.

  Days passed, and with some sketchy piloting through the rough spots on the river in a boat that was made for ft waters they eventually nded on the isnd that they used for staging when evacuating the humans. Alex pulled the air boat out of the water with the help of some dancing and dolls, and secured it to the carriage. She made sure to wear the plumber's outfit, turned the carriage back into a card and jumped into the portal pipe that would lead back to their isnd.

  A small blessing was that the dream catcher held and Alex had no more lewd dreams. Not sure what had transpired in the few days that passed, the magical girl relished that the sanctuary of her mind provided when it remained free of dream demons.

  “I hope this is far enough away.” Alex climbed out of the pipe followed by Fufi.

  “Let me take a quick look around.” Fufi flew off into the sky, did a quick loop then came back down. “Wow this pce has a whole lot more people.”

  “Of course it does.” Alex dusted herself off with the feather duster. “We had ice bergs full of people show up. It has to be over a thousand now.”

  “It might be closer to two thousand.” Fufi commented. “Also, it looks like they got the flying cloud pirated and anchored in the harbor.”

  Alex grumbled. “Yet another thing that isn’t finished.”

  The magical girl deployed the carriage and swapped costumes again. She wrapped herself up in long sleeves and gloves and a veil to hide the evidence of her demonic corruption before heading out and looking around the crowded town.

  Surprisingly, the metal-smelting doll-powered assembly line skill kept pumping out gears and ptes.

  Several ice fairies fluttered around the area. No one seemed to pay them any mind.

  “I’d think with Merumeru and Ariel absent that they would have run out of materials by now.” Alex commented and continued further looking around the harbor district.

  “I saw some of those stone boats filled with scrap that people were unloading in my flight. I think that the people here figured out how to do it on their own.” Fufi commented.

  Alex thought that was a good sign. “Maybe there is some hope for humanity.”

  Along with the familiar faces of the tribesmen and some of Yvne’s countrymen, a bunch of people that ran the gambit of appearances wandered around, looking lost. Some of them looked very thin.

  Not wanting to be rude, the bck-haired girl and her companion, a pink fmingo, walked down to get a closer look at the spectacle. The 'flying cloud' , a massive clipper ship whose masts shot up a hundred feet to the sky, was securely shed off to a several hundred foot stone slip. This was the same slip near where the harbor’s dry dock accommodated the sturdy but mundane barge and the smaller, utilitarian ferrocement boats. Beside these, the newly arrived clipper ship dwarfed everything, its hull a testament to grand, ambitious seafaring. The air around it was thick with the scent of salt, new rope, and heated human debate.

  “Drilling extra holes in the hull is the stupidest, most idiotic, unsound idea I’ve ever heard of in thirty years of honest shipbuilding,” Shipwright Donald decred, his voice a low, gravelly growl that promised immediate doom for the structure in question. He was arguing heatedly with the other shipwright, a man named Marcus, who they had picked up on their first, less controversial trip.

  “I’m telling ya, Donald, I’ve seen it with my own two eyes!” The irate man spat out. “I’ve seen the ship that magical girl Ariel was using. It has a whole lot more things in it than just a few sails and a keel, I can tell you that much. It doesn’t even need sails to move, not really. It has a bunch of holes and powerful pumps that pull the water directly out from under it to create some kind of lift or propulsion. And that spinning rod, that whole complex rotary mechanism that powers the ship looked like it worked just fine.”

  “For now,” Donald sounded dangerously angry, his face an arming shade of crimson. He jabbed a thick, calloused finger at the ship’s waterline. “Mark my words. You start putting holes in the pressure boundary of a hull, and soon enough it’ll start leaking. It’ll leak, and it’ll fill the whole damn bilge, and then your so-called magical ship is just a very expensive, very wet coffin.”

  Donald paused for breath, then offered his own, less magical, solution. “The smarter way to achieve propulsion like that would be to put holes on the port and starboard side above the water line and fix them with paddles or something like a water wheel. Use that spinning rod to turn them, then the water you don’t let into your bilge is what pushes you forward.”

  The pair of senior level shipwrights were quickly joined in their impassioned debate by several others. They really enjoyed picking apart these newfangled, half-understood ideas, highlighting everything that wouldn’t work well or, more satisfyingly, everything that could go catastrophically wrong. The clipper ship floated silently, a potential masterpiece of engineering or a tragedy waiting to happen, all depending on which shipwright one chose to believe.

  Alex felt the urge to jump into the debate but shook her head. If they wanted to find out how inferior a sternwheeler was, that was on them. She needed to figure out if there was an angel still after her and a way to purify the demonic corruption, clearing the level cap.

  Cecil, the adventurers guild master had set up a rge tent where the combat cssers came and went. “Greeting Magical Girl Alex. Rumor had it you went back to the forest or something. How did that go?”

  “I think we might have unleashed some kind of doomsday weapon.” Alex mented.

  “Oh?” The human combat csser sounded like he was expecting a joke.

  “An Angel activated when a succubus attempted to invade Alex’s dreams.” Fufi added. “That is when we decided to get out of there.”

  “Talk to Ariel then.” Cecil tapped a finger on his leg. “She’s been using the flying toy boat to keep an eye on the capital. Last I heard some kind of high level battle was going on with that mountain of an earth demon and some shining flying opponent that is shooting rays of light.”

  Alex let out a sigh. “I was worried it was hunting me. It said something about purging outsiders. Do you know where I can find her?”

  “She might still be out airshiping around.” Cecil stated. “I don’t see the mini-flying cloud in the harbor. The sailors have been taking trips back and forth in the clockwork boats every few days trying to see if they can find any survivors from the attack of the angel.”

  “She should be somewhere to the east then.” Fufi fpped her wings.

  After a bit, Fufi agreed to find her fellow fmingo and the diminutive magical girl. Alex went back to the carriage and offloaded some of the food in the warehouse that they had recently set up. The pce was mostly stone and a lot more utilitarian than the nymph grown pce they had before. It worked, but the ck of pntlife around everything made it feel less like a pce of life.

  An hour ter, a pair of fmingos and several fairies crewing a toy boat nded in a spot in the harbor with a small slip that would be more fitting for a dingy than the mini-flying cloud.

  Alex saw it and headed down to greet them. “Hey, what’s going on Ariel? Is it safe here?” With more than one blue-skinned fairy it took a moment to identify the correct one.

  “Hey Alex!” The pirate magical girl greeted. “How’d things go at the temple? As for it being safe. I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be. Mister Skeleton, the general and the angel are busy tearing up the countryside. They’ve been fighting a stalemate but the earth demon has really been tearing up the countryside to try and drive it off. Was just taking some of the combat cssers that are small enough for crew to get some easy levels.”

  “We were trying to see if we could fetch mister skeleton.” Funi added. “But there are a group of martyrs that are doing their best to keep him in the fight. The demon general has to avoid killing them to avoid the curse.”

  “I told Cecil, but the succubus invaded my dreams when I was in the temple and it set the angel off. So we retreated to get away from it.” Alex said.

  “Considering that Alex isn’t a native from this pne.” Fufi added. “She is technically an outsider as well.”

  “Hmm,” Ariel considered the situation. “I know you just got here but it sounds like the angel is occupied right now and I think that the demon might head west into the ocean to try to get underwater to escape the angel. It keeps chanting something about requesting permission to break the second seal and everyone is a little freaked out about what that is going to mean.”

  “This is so confusing.” Alex groaned. “But we got everything we need to head back. It'll take another week. And I think that you might be right. If the angel is distracted this could be a good opportunity to fix my demonic corruption problem. I still have no idea what to do about that tier 4 demon, hopefully the angel takes care of it.”

  Ariel nodded. “That’s the spirit.”

  The two fmingos cheered her on.

  Alex packed up, turned the air boat and the carriage back into a card and took the portal pipe back to the river isnd.

  When she got there, a slime girl was waiting, holding out a sailor doll. “Meru!”

  “Merumeru?” Alex asked. “What are you doing here?”

  “Meme ru me.” The slime girl expined. Pointing to the water where the bathysphere sat, beached on the river isnd.

  Alex took the doll and inspected it. “Hey you found the real one!”

  “Meru meru me me ru meeee.” Merumeru added, making some more gestures, one of them holding her little hands to her head and curling her index fingers then point to the bathysphere.

  “You want me to open it?” Alex walked over to the bathysphere.

  Merumeru nodded.

  She opened the hatch and gasped.

  A red-skinned female demon was in there wearing alluring clothing.

  “Hello,” The demon’s sultry voice echoed. “I got your doll back. Could we perhaps talk?”