Following the river was uneventful for the most part. We ran across the occasional [Snakeroot], stopping and taking the time to kill them for the experience. They dropped a few resources that might come in handy for crafting, but other than the occasional coin, nothing important.

I would soon reach level five. Grandfather felt that it would be one of my first milestones. I wasn't sure what he based that assumption on, but he did hedge his bets by suggesting that System might save any major advances until level ten.

He had theorized that I would be getting new spells and skills or at least upgrades to the ones I had once I reached certain levels. These milestones as he insisted on defining them were predictable. The Hindu and People Pantheons followed that type of methodology.

Our group was close to leveling, but as we headed upstream, there were fewer encounters. We didn't notice anything different, any reason why the mobs we encountered would become sparse, but other than an occasional splash as a fish jumped to snatch an insect out of the air, our journey had become strangely quiet.

We never encounter anything but [Snakeroot], but those seemed filled with vitality. They were bursting with health, so had to have been able to attract enough food to survive. Perhaps the noise we made was scaring off the native wildlife, our progress giving them enough warning that they retreated.

The [Snakeroot] did become fiercer the farther we traveled, their levels increasing, some of the more difficult fights occurred against plants that had reached level ten. That they managed to thrive and survive along the bank of the river, even without the protection the cove had provided demonstrated that they were a hardy species if nothing else.

"Does anyone else find it strange that there seems to be so little bio-diversity?" I asked.

"Yes," Sieph immediately answered.

"It's to be expected," Thutmose said. "The planet's eco-system is in the same state of transition as System. Although there was a stable eco-system with a diversity of life that existed when Ijal was discovered, the process of System integration forestalls that diversity.

"You'll have noticed that everything we have encountered has been an insect variant?" He pointed out. "It is a function of System mechanics to begin editing and adapting the local ecology almost from the moment the first person stepped on the planet.

"System is changing the world, starting with animal life, to be more suitable to the people that manage to stake a claim. Part of the process of integration that you underwent when you gained your class and level, included a complete scan, down to the DNA and molecular level of each of your bodies.

"System is adapting the world, removing some life-forms that have no practical use, placing them in dungeons, similar to zoos or reservations so that you can find them and see if they can be adapted or used.

"The rest, those that are compatible with the Sidhe, will be earmarked for release, seeded by zone when integration is complete. Most of those species have vanished. Some people theorize that System has stored them, saved them until it has decided to release, adapt, or allow them to become extinct," he concluded.

"What if we fail to claim the world?" I asked.

"System will continue changing the eco-system with each new arrival, each new person that submits to integration. It is why I had to have already ascended to join your party," he explained. "If the Sidhe fail, the next Pantheon will make an attempt in fifty years, and the planet will undergo a fundamental shift as the people of that Pantheon become the blueprint the ecology is based on."

"Then aren't the Sidhe, King Teigh has scouting and surveying wasting their time?" Sieph asked.

"Not entirely," Thutmose replied. "The monster and animal populations will continue to evolve and change, but the flora, land, and minerals will remain mostly the same. System very seldom makes large wholesale changes to the planets tectonic plates. So, mountains, rivers, and oceans will remain the same."

I sent a quick text message off to grandfather detailing the information Thutmose had just shared. If it wasn't common knowledge and had been excluded from the information he had been given about what we might find, I wanted to make sure he had that information now and made plans accordingly.

I wanted him to be aware that any outpost, town, or settlement that he was considering establishing, should be postponed until after full System integration. Anything he might have planned before then, might find itself located in a high-level zone once the shifting tides of change were calmed and the planet had fully adapted.

"You have to remember the only Divine influence that has graced this world occurred billions of years ago when the Gods joined their will and created order out of chaos. Until the planet is claimed and the Tuatha de Danaan have had the chance to imprint their Divine mandate, the world will continue in a state of flux."

I wondered if that was why the monsters and animals we had found and fought all had an element of insect life as part of their makeup. The wolves were armored with the carapace you would find on ants. The [Toadstool] used a faux flower with the attendant pollen and nectar to attract prey but was protected by giant hornets, and the main body was more beetle than an amphibian, and the [Snakeroot] used attack methods and root systems that were used trapping techniques similar to antlions.

I thought it likely that we would continue to find creatures that contained a mix of insect and plant, at least until we found a dungeon according to Thutmose. And if he was right, and System had removed and stored what life had evolved on the planet, saving it to be reintroduced, it might be that the method used to seed Dungeons could be finally resolved.

"Will everyone get a chance at character creation once the integration is complete?" Sieph queried.

"Doubtful, or at least not in the manner you did," Thutmose answered. "It is possible that System mechanics will expand to be more in line with the character creation process that you experienced, but chances are that the large-scale adaption that you encountered won't be necessary.

"What most often happens, is that the addendum to menus, classes, spells, and skills are compressed into a package upgrade that those that Ascend will get access to as part of System, upgrades that are made available and occur as part of your planet's ascension process."

"What about people that have already Ascended?" I inquired.

"Once this planet is fully integrated, and System had decided on what mechanics to keep, people of Talahm will sleep, and during the course of their dreams, System will upgrade their compatibility, and give a type of 'tutorial' to teach them how to use the new functionality," he explained.

"You weren't given any of this information before you were sent here?" He asked in disbelief.

"The information was probably ordered restricted, not to be shared with the Sidhe," I complained. "Olympus and Asgard are not fans of ours, and anything they can do to put their thumb on the scale, to make our first attempt at adding to and increasing our Pantheon's holdings a failure, is something they would certainly try."

"Ryu?" Bob reported as he landed perching on a nearby tree, tentacles clasping tightly to the rough bark, "the path ahead leads into a ravine. If we are going to continue following it, I will be limited as a scout. Although the crevasse widens, there are points that are too narrow for me to navigate while flying. I would have to ascend higher than we'd agreed I should.

"Are we going to keep following the ley-line? And if so, should I still restrict my flight path to the 180 degrees forward I have been using?" He asked.

"Can you tell how far, deep, and wide the chasm becomes?" I asked.

"Only for the first few miles. The view is unobstructed, as the walls of the canyon form an arch, The overhang almost touches the further you travel. The canyon walls creating that natural arch is what is restricting my flight," he replied. "I will have to travel on foot with my side fins furled tightly along my back if I am to remain within range."

"I think we have to risk it," I decided after a few moments of consideration. "If history is anything to go by, King Teigh found CERN Dungeon in a ravine, very similar to this location. It was hidden behind a waterfall. How fortuitous would it be if we came across a similar location?"

"System does tend to follow methodologies that work," Sieph opined. "There is a certain beauty to that kind of logic, the methods that repeat a guide that allows us to understand System."