It took some effort to activate the Explorative Soul ability, but the fact that it was possible to activate it, confirmed that Timothy did a great job with the replicas that he made! In order for the ability to be activated, they would need to enter a hibernating state, and this was difficult for species who could not hibernate naturally!

  Aqus Goblins, as a species, did not hibernate, and since the team had assumed the form of Aqus Goblins, they had to spend a few hours just to snap into the hibernating state! They had to pour mana into the ability, constantly, as to enthrall it to cooperate.

  It worked eventually, but each member of the team spent at least a couple hundred thousand mana points in the process! It took quite some effort to get where they wanted to be, but at least it worked.

  The five of them turned into ghosts. Well, they separated their souls from their own bodies, so technically they were not dead ghosts right now, but rather, they were traveling souls, or explorative souls as the name of the ability suggested!

  The team members had their own bodies to get back to whenever they chose to do so, which was the main difference between them, and actual ghosts! Nevertheless, they were to behave like actual ghosts during their little journey here, because they now were in the same, non-physical world that the ghosts were!

  “Wow… Underwater rainbows!” Ortana gasped. “I thought that we'd slip into a micro-universe or something, you didn't tell me that we can see ghosts in our universe!”

  “Ghosts have worlds of their own, in every universe, I assume? We don't have to go through any portals, thankfully. The ghost world is really pretty though? I completely forgot how beautiful the world could be through the eyes of a ghost, or, er… through the eyes of a free roaming soul.” Tim added.

  The colors were the first thing they noticed as soon as they entered this state of being, and it wasn’t a surprise that they were amazed by the colors, because the phantom world was truly beautiful! Even the sea, who was either infinitely blue or dark in color, was riddled with a wide color scheme here in the ghost world!

  The ghost world was beautiful, and better yet, each random color that they saw around them, wasn’t actually random. It could either be some kind of phantomized mana, or any other type of gas that the team was yet to understand!

  The team quickly discovered that the colorful clouds around them were not phantomized mana, or perhaps they were, it was just that the team wasn't able to harvest anything. As mages, they were quite powerful, but in this ghostly form their phantomized mana wasn’t as honed, in fact, everyone’s mana quality was at level one within the first realm, except for Timothy who was at level two. The team was collectively weak.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “We’re gonna need to find a bunch of mana clouds,” Tim guided them, “Our phantomized mana quality is brickshit poor, so we’re gonna need to level up if we're to make this form worth our while.”

  There was no contesting his idea, especially since this was the first time that the rest of the team entered this world. They followed his lead blindly, no question asked. They cooperated, and hit the sky together!

  Their bodies were in the coral reef, hidden well within appropriate wedges, so they could explore the ghost world without worrying about their bodies for a while. Their bodies were in a hibernating state, and could go about five days without any sustenance, so the team had plenty of time to explore!

  Their work was cut out for them, as the sky was endless, because the planet they were on was at least twice as big as planet earth, it wasn’t small. Timothy remembered traveling for hours at a time just to make minor progress, so he knew what to expect here!

  Timothy expected to make really slow progress, and this was reasonable, but he was mistaken. He realized that he was mistaken, as soon as they traveled across the sky for about an hour!

  The skies were a lot busier than they used to be several months ago! Sure the ghost kingdoms were separated from one another at a large scale, but the rogue ghosts were far larger in numbers this time around!

  The team saw hundreds of them floating around, about two hundred meters away from them. These ghosts weren't part of a group or anything, no, they just floated around, shooting at one another, collecting the phantomized mana of their enemies as if it was their god-given right!

  “What the hell…” He grunted, and then he warned his friends. “Let's try to single out a couple of ghosts that we can shoot at. Try not to get hit, because if your opponent is too strong, you'll get sent back to your body!”

  “How are we supposed to shoot them?” Arvena asked, she was a bit nervous.

  “You should have a silver-colored kind of fireball that you can shoot, it comes with the Explorative Soul ability. Try to summon it, just like you would do with an actual fireball.” He guided them.

  The team acted accordingly. With little effort, they shot these tiny little silver fireballs across the air, and this felt as natural as breathing to them. It was very simple!

  After that, without catching any attention, they calmly approached the aerial ‘battlefield’ in front of them, and started hunting ghosts down. They quickly confirmed that these flying essences were ghosts, because they left a sort of a tiny cloud behind them, as soon as they were vaporized for good!

  This cloud was full of mana, and the team could harvest it. From what they could understand, this was the exact kind of mana they needed if they were to level up their phantomized mana quality, so they were all the more motivated to hunt as many ghosts as they could!

  The team approached the aerial battle space strategically, and singled out a bunch of stray ghosts that they could overwhelm! Their strategy worked flawlessly, because so far, they hadn't run into even a single ghost who could fight them back!

  They didn't expect to be shot down either, as this crowd of opponents did not make them as nervous anymore. They've seen worse!

  The team of five kept hunting ghosts down for about ten minutes, and had accumulated quite the phantomized mana points along the way, despite how many silver fireballs they shot! Their competence glowed like the rainbow-like world that was around them, but metaphorically, there was always a bigger fish!

  Being as alert as he was recently, Timothy noticed one of these ‘bigger fish’ within the crowd of ghosts! He recognized it as a problem, because the individual souls of the team were tiny, weak, and insignificant!