As we made our way upriver, I realised just how fascinating the area we were in truly was. Not only did the lake provide ample water, but the water also had a fairly interesting effect on the local wildlife, something I hadn’t noticed before due to their relative weakness. A beast around level thirty, unable to detect us before Lia or Silva could strike, wasn’t even a minor threat, even if it was comparatively resistant to magic, or able to use some magical abilities itself. It turned out, that was why those cats we had seen before enjoyed the trees growing in the recently flooded area so much. They were able to walk on water, much to my surprise, allowing them to pounce from above before retreating across the water and back into the trees. If their prey tried to pursue, they’d have to enter the water and from what we had seen that was highly hazardous to one’s health, leaving the felines scot-free.

Unless, of course, they tried to pounce on somebody with a long-raged weapon or maybe some animal with needles, spikes or something along those lines. In that case, the cat would likely be left with bleeding paws and a small, somewhat sadistic, part of me was curious what would happen then. Did the cats actually touch the water or was there some thin layer of air between, would the blood disrupt their ability and if yes, would the water start to destroy them from the foot up? How long would it take for their ability to disappear, was it tied to their paws? The pads of their paws? So many questions, but alas, I didn’t think I’d have a chance to investigate. After we were attacked by another cat, after the first pounced on me during the night and we dispatched that cat, too, no additional felines tried to test their luck.

Similarly, we noticed a few deer, drinking from the water, and when I tried to hit one with an Icicle so we could have venison for dinner, I could feel the icicle weaken a great deal when it was about to hit, similar to the effect of my Ice entering the water here. Only that the effect was in the air around the deer, making me wonder how that particular effect worked. Sadly, the deer didn’t stick around to let me study them, they ran off immediately, leaving us with no dinner and me with even more questions about this area. It was quite obvious that the water didn’t destroy creatures that drank it but changed them. A part of me was curious about what would happen if I drank it, but I wasn’t about to test it. Maybe we could catch some animals to experiment on, to see how their physique and abilities would change but it might take too long, or too large doses of water.

Similarly fascinating, and just as inexplicable, was the existence of the will-o-wisps. As of yet, none of us had managed to Observe one of them, but after watching one of them come into existence, I was fairly certain they weren’t a threat, somewhere around level twenty if I had to guess. Their only real strength, from what we had seen so far, was their ability to move at incredible speed and with unmatched agility, making me think that they either had some way to counter inertia or they had almost no weight, or maybe both. Whatever the case, when we tried to close in on one that was wafting around near the shore, it had demonstrated speed far beyond even a magically launched Icicle, making attacking them a fool’s errand. While they might not be able to outspeed a bullet, they could do so with arrows and magical attacks, leaving us with no recourse. Luckily, no real recourse was needed, the things seemed to be content to waft around the lake, floating above the water and possibly trying to lure unsuspecting people into the water where they would be dissolved.

Learning about the origin of the strange, necrotic energies I had noticed in the water turned out easier than I thought after we moved upriver for a bit. After the lake narrowed back into a normal river, I could feel the influence far stronger than before, partially because the saturation with Water Astral Power fell rapidly, and partially because the necrotic energies grew stronger, making them easier to detect.

Either way, when we rounded a bend in the river, the reason became obvious when we saw a small rise that had partially collapsed into the river, a rise decorated with numerous stone crosses and headstones. It was, or used to be, a graveyard above the river but one of the earthquakes after the change seemed to have destabilised the ground, dumping a good chunk of it into the water. And with that earth came the buried bodies. It was fairly simple to see the debris, the broken coffins partially sticking out of the ground and even a few partially buried bones were there. Given the situation, it was almost certain that more of it had ended up in the water, some of it getting carried with the flow but all of it rotting and slowly seeping into the stream. I wasn’t sure just how much water a single body could poison, but it was fairly obvious that the influence I had felt came from here.

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“Let’s check the graveyard out,” I suggested, curious what a place once consecrated might feel like, if there was an appreciable effect. Had the fact that the graveyard used to be hallowed ground before such terms had meaning gained some magical meaning after the change, even if there was no actual cleric to perform the service? Did that ‘God’ have influence or were the gods, for some unknown reason, limited to the Norse and Greek Pantheons? It was an odd idea, that somehow only those Gods were supposed to be real, what about the rest?

Humans had imagined thousands, or even millions depending on the exact definition of a God, of Gods but somehow I was supposed to believe only the limited number existed? That didn’t really track, making me fairly suspicious. Especially if what the Grandmother had written about apotheosis was true, if the ‘only’ thing needed to become a God were followers on a different plane of existence willing to offer up Astral Power.

Hel, it was suspicious that the Gods imagined on Earth somehow matched the Gods existing elsewhere, making me wonder if that was a coincidence or if the Gods simply had certain inherent aspects and took on a fitting form to be worshipped. Having a God of Lightning or Thunder was fairly obvious, before people understood what lightning was, it was an incomprehensible and impressive occurrence. Even knowing what lightning was, it was hard not to feel a certain awe when watching a thunderstorm. It made a person feel small, and attributing that sensation to a God diminished that sensation.

Similarly, people wanted certain things, it didn’t matter if those people were human or not. A mate to procreate, giving you Gods of Love and Family, food, giving you Gods of Hunting, Agriculture and possibly Fertility, protection, giving you Gods of War and such, people weren’t terribly complicated. So, maybe the existing Gods holding those domains simply took on a fitting shape to influence a new world?

But if so, why take on the guise of Gods that were almost solely used in entertainment, in fantasy and such? Why not use the guise of Gods still worshipped around the world? Sure, the majority of people worshipped one of the monotheistic Abrahamic religions, so having multiple Gods take on that guise wouldn’t work, but why not the Hindu deities? There were enough of them and they were already worshipped by many people, even if the Norse and Greek deities might be better known.

Maybe that was the reason, the Norse and Greek Gods were known due to their role in Western media while the Hindu deities were worshipped and known primarily in Asian countries. Did the average Westerner know about Brahma? I wasn’t sure, but I was fairly certain that most people in India had at least heard the name Thor or Zeus.

Though, if I went with the idea that the Gods only took on a certain role, why would there be two Gods of Thunder, wouldn’t that make things less efficient? Conflict felt inevitable in that case, Just like it had happened on Mundus.

Which was a whole different thing to wonder about, why did Mundus have so many similarities with Earth? It was too much of a coincidence to believe that the continents had just happened to form in a similar shape, even if some of their positions had shifted, with cities and rivers roughly in the same position.

So, there had to be some connection, but how that might work, I had no idea.

Shaking my head, I focused back on Lia, who looked at me with a raised eyebrow, as I had obviously failed to hear her answer to my question.

“I said, Sure, let’s go,” she repeated, a grin on her face, “But if you’re already dreaming, maybe we should head back and you can get some sleep. Wouldn’t want you to be injured because you were lost in your mind, Mother.”