For the next few days, we tried to gather information. The primary problem we had to be keep in mind was that we didn’t want the Sprites and their suspected Overlord to catch wind of our existence, meaning our experiments and attacks had to be spread out and, if at all possible, the methods involved varied. We roamed along the edge of the area and hunted down a wide variety of enemies.

After we destroyed that first copse of Living Trees with Ice-Magic, the next target, a large boar with some metallic threads running through its pelt, got killed by Adra, with support from Rai and myself. Rai kept us all concealed, while Adra channelled a huge amount of power into an arrow, onto which I added as much Death-Magic as I could safely control. The resulting projectile hit the boar’s chest, piercing deeply into its body, before the combination of Wind-Magic from Adra and Death-Magic from me tore out of it, ravaging its internal organs. There was no fight, but amusingly, it took just as much Astral Power as the destruction of the copse had taken, maybe even a little more.

At that corpse, the Sprites appeared again after some time, but they didn’t absorb the Astral Power in the area, instead, they used Death-Magic to swiftly destroy the body by increasing the rate of decay, turning it into fertiliser within a few seconds. It returned the vitality of the boar to the cycle, maintaining the balance of life and death in the forest.

It was a curious realisation that the Sprites carefully controlled both sides of the equation.

Either way, we continued gathering information but sadly, there was little we actually learned. From travelling directions, reaction times and observed speed, we were confident that the Sprites came out of the deeper forest, the areas where I had seen the highest trees when scrying during the first night.

We had yet to try fighting the Sprites, an attack on them undoubtedly alerting the powers-that-be to our existence. So far, they hopefully would think they were dealing with multiple groups or maybe a broad probing action by one large group, not a single group travelling around Obviously, there was only so much we could do to spread things out, but hopefully, our efforts to obfuscate would bear fruit.

Ultimately, the whole probing action was quite successful in one department, namely when it came to levels. While the biggest winner in that regard was Jenn, we all gained some levels, in my case two, and a few skill points. For me, those gains were a single point in Darkness-Magic, two points in Death- and Mind-Magic, and a point in Stealth. Quite the pleasant harvest, even if it sadly lacked any meaningful gains in Ice-Magic or my rune-magic.

The point in Darkness-Magic was likely caused by repeated experiments into that strange, utter Blackness that even absorbed light, as long as I supplied Astral Power. A part of me wanted to call it a Black Hole, even if it was most certainly not that, but the name sounded imposing. From my experiments, I was able to conclude that I could stretch the area in any shape I wanted and that nothing could pass through it, not physical and not magical, at least nothing that Lenore threw at it managed to pass through.

On the flip-side, blocking things required an immense amount of Astral Power, likely scaling with the amount of force an object carried when hitting the barrier. That included thermal energy, as well as kinetic energy, those were the two I had been able to test. It had been quite strange to see a prepared, burning branch hit my shield, only to instantly stop, the fire was extinguished and replaced by rime. I hadn’t been able to test how the shield affected the air around it, simply because I hadn’t been able to conjure one for long, but it would likely create a cooling effect.

Altogether, there was massive potential, but sadly, I hadn’t been able to get it to work in an efficient manner. Maybe if I managed to combine it into my Rune-Magic, I’d be able to stabilise the effect or make it easier to handle. Either way, I hadn’t managed to do so yet. Thus, it was added to my ever-growing list of magical experiments.

One advance on that front had been an interesting discussion between Leonard and Mal, hosted in my capsule space. When I asked Mal if she would mind if I invited another player to our regular discussions, she had been quite interested in exchanging ideas with someone else outside the completely open forum. She had made a few posts there, but ultimately, she wanted to keep most of her ideas and discoveries private, to have an advantage when Road to Purgatory was fully released. Just like me, she had ambitions and was curious how far she’d be able to take things with the right preparation.

Leonard was quite understanding and highly enthusiastic. Curiously, their two approaches to Alchemy and magic were completely opposite, Mal was mostly seeing Alchemy as Chemistry with some extras, while Leonard mostly worked in the mechanical department, using Alchemy to improve or enable larger mechanisms. A chemist and an engineer, so to speak.

Their middle-ground was quickly established as fuel and their discussion regarding magical fuels and their efficiency was quite interesting. I mainly remained a quiet observer, only occasionally bringing my own views into their discussion, mostly in regards to the enhancement of already existing material, similar to the work Mal and I had done with her black powder.

The more the two of them talked, the stronger the shivers running down my spine became. What had started as ideas to enhance a simple combustion reaction, to make fuel burn stronger, had slowly morphed into a discussion on how to take a combustion reaction and make it self-sustaining, by drawing in energy from the Astral River and letting it react with the air.

Or in other words, how to set the air itself alight and watch as it spread across the world.

A part of me wanted to kill both of them before they could utter a single extra word but sadly, I had no idea where they lived. So killing them was out and I could only listen in fascinated horror. And even as I was horrified, a part of me was fascinated as I considered my own understanding of the Astral River and how it could be exploited to achieve massive things. Thinking back to the Nexus in Neyto and my previous exposure to it, I started to wonder, was it possible to use a Nexus to affect the Astral River directly, to introduce a magical reaction into the very fabric of Mundus itself? And what could such an effect do, how far would I be able to take it?

After all, I knew that the Astral River wasn’t quite bound to space and time, or at least that there was no transmission lag I could detect. When I had been talking to the Grandmother the last time, it had worked perfectly well, despite half a continent between us. Maybe I would have to experiment some more in that regard.

More practical than ideas for apocalyptic magic were a few ideas Mal had suggested, regarding the infusion of Astral Power into substances and objects. For her, that meant to enhance her black powder, but for me, it might open up a way to effectively store Astral Power in drained Blood, similar to the orbs I could create with my Athame, only more efficient and with a higher energy density.

By the end of the discussion, my mind was awash with ideas and I could barely wait to do some experiments on Mundus. Sadly, I actually had to wait, due to a need for human resources, something I couldn’t acquire in the deep forest.

But while I couldn’t begin with Blood Magic experiments, after a week of hustling around the border areas of the forest, testing our opponent's reaction time, Adra and I decided that further tests were needed and our next step would directly involve the Forest Sprites that came and disposed of the energy released when something died in the forest.

We just hadn’t decided what we wanted to do, whether we would follow one such group back to their origin or whether we wanted to ambush one, testing what the powers of the Forlorn Forest would do if one of their squads was destroyed.

Both ideas had their own, inherent risks and both had their own challenges. Either way, our next step would be a dangerous one but without danger, there couldn’t be any excitement.

And without excitement, there couldn’t be growth.