Looking around the area we had been in for the last few days, I decided there currently wasn’t anything else to do. The lake, while interesting, was currently beyond my capabilities to explore. I had bottled some of the water in a glass bottle, hoping that I could perform some experiments on the algae later, but that wasn’t a real priority. Similarly, the large creature in the lake wasn’t something I was able to tackle for now.

As I had realised during the day when Luna and I had gone on a walk, the creature was diurnal and by the looks of it, the best way to fight it was while it was active. During the day, I could see the strange, string-like tendrils whip out of the water occasionally and had even started to bait the creature by launching conjured Icicles across the water. Thanks to that, I had been able to learn that it was called a Swamp Lurker and level fifty, not a real threat in terms of plain numbers but it was one of those cases where numbers only told half of the story. The real problem was still the water shielding it and its Astral Power absorbing properties that made attacking the Lurker impossible. In addition, I wasn’t sure if there really was only one Lurker and not a few dozen Lurkers lurkering in the water, just waiting for a fool to challenge them.

Fighting them would require us to drag them from the water during the day, essentially using brute force, but given that Lia was completely incapacitated during the day and I could only muster a fraction of my power, that was out for us. The other option was to drain the lake, leaving the Lurker without the environmental protections that made fighting it impossible but alas, that would take even more effort for very limited return.

All in all, the Lurker was one of those things that wasn’t really worth the effort destroying it would take, neither in terms of EXP nor in terms of reward. If we needed to clear the lake for other purposes, for example, because we wanted to fish or to access it as a convenient water source, I could easily see some sort of large quest being offered, with dozens of people working together to take it down, but that wasn’t really the case here. And just to go after it because we could didn’t really appeal to me. Not when it was neither a danger to us nor had a significant reward in terms of EXP attached to it. Hel, with its level I would barely get any EXP, certainly not enough to make a significant investment in terms of time and effort.

However, one positive thing came from the whole expedition to the lake. During our downtime, it occurred to me that the strong influence on reality the Astral River asserted here meant it was close to the surface, so to speak. Or that it was exceptionally powerful in this area, or possibly both, I wasn’t completely certain about that. But either way, it meant that I could get a much better idea about the Astral River and its structure by delving into it here. With that idea, I might be able to find the different elemental Nexuses and their affinities, possibly allowing me to lay claim to the area the Nexus of Ice would eventually form. Or had formed, or was forming, I wasn’t sure about the state of affairs at the moment. Either way, I knew I wanted control over that Nexus, partially because of the power it promised but primarily because I didn’t want anyone else to have it.

The power promised by the Nexus was incredibly potent, that much I knew, to the point that the Grandmother had alluded that her ability to protect Neyto from threats Divine and Mundane came from control over the Nexus. And that was while also sustaining the Barrow Den, the dungeon that allowed her to both, keep prisoners and test travelling adventurers. Going by our experience within its walls, the dungeon had been created by the Grandmother, likely including its creatures. Her own little slice of Hel, so to speak, which just showed how insanely powerful the Nexuses were. But I already knew that, after all, using one had allowed me to bring the Nidhögg back into the world from its nearly destroyed state and afterwards, we had been able to use it to destroy the elven Empire and the Nidhögg had cast the world into a small Ice Age.

Sure, a big part of that was likely because the Nidhögg was an immensely powerful being before it had been locked away but that didn’t change what I had been able to do with it. And just for that, I wanted to control one again, the security granted by that kind of power was simply too valuable not to.

With that in mind, I looked through the Astral River, searching for a strand of Ice, something fairly illusive given that it was almost the height of summer and my beloved element was greatly suppressed due to that, but with a lot of perseverance and patience, and maybe a little luck, I managed. As had been the case on Mundus, I could vaguely feel that the power within that strand had a certain flavour to it, giving me a faint idea of where to search.

By now, I had something of an idea of how the Astral River worked, at least on a planetary scale, thanks to my experiences on Mundus. Astral Power was, to the best of my understanding, a cosmic force. It wasn’t constrained to a single Universe but was moving between physical dimensions, as indicated by the separation between Mundus and Terra. If my guess was correct, then Mundus was a version of Terra or the other way around, one that had been exposed to the Astral River earlier than Terra, and now, Terra had been exposed, too. How the Gods had managed to establish Pantheon Entertainment before that connection came into existence, I had no idea, nor did I have anything but some vague speculation about their motives but that didn’t really matter.

It just meant that the Astral River came from outside Terra, and was flowing into the planetary Astral River at different points separated by elements, the Nexuses, before spreading through the whole of Terra, until the different strands of power were flowing back out, into the cosmos or wherever they went. Within Terra, the Astral River wasn’t so much a River, or a circulatory system, as it was a web, with countless major and minor nodes between different strands, all suffused by Astral Power.

Now, I had one of those strands and wanted to figure out where they all came from. It wasn’t easy, far from it, especially as I lacked the magical fortitude to send my mind through the entire Astral River either back to the origin or forward, to the exit. Thus, I needed to go with vague sensations, carried by the Astral Power within the river.

The primary sensation I received, was, unsurprisingly, that of unrelenting cold. But it wasn’t only cold, there was more to it. There was a small trace of unrelenting, eternal wind, constantly grinding against snow-covered peaks, and that wind carried a hint of pine, faint, but clearly there. From the sensations, I could guess at a clear north-south divide, making me think that one Nexus was located in the Arctic north, the other in the Antarctic south. Sadly, that was all I could discern, leaving me with relatively little information, though there were some things I realised I had ignored previously.

Namely, the sheer amount of power flowing through our world and what it might do to the landscape. I doubted that the changes would be immediate, though there had been multiple earthquakes in a region that was supposed to be completely tectonically stable, but there would be changes. Likely major changes to the landscape and geography.

In other words, trying to use the old maps would work, to a point. I doubted that mountains would rise in a week, but a coastline could shift rapidly, depending on where you were. I could easily see a place like the Netherlands undergo a fairly drastic change, to the point that the people there might actually have transformed into Naga, since many of them had been living below sea level.

While making new maps would take time, especially as the changes had yet to settle, there was a part of me that wanted to explore already. The drive I had felt on Mundus, to see what was beyond the bend in the road or at the edge of the horizon, it was still within me. Still strong, and driving me forward.

Knowing that I could easily prepare a temporary shelter, maybe we should start travelling again. There was so much to see in this new world of ours, so much more than just the ruins of the Old World. Wonders and miracles, some curious, some macabre, just like the lake we had visited now. I wanted to see as much of it as possible.

And if our path mostly led North, until I managed to get a better idea where to go, then so be it.