It’s been about a week since the new year began, and I am starting to feel that I need to stretch my legs. Because of that, I was planning an expedition out of my lands. I have gone to the South and seen the farmlands and grasslands there. To the north past the lake, I will not go as the higher energy density area starts there but I still have west and east to visit.

To the east over the bridge is quite a lot of forest that is still on my land. My land stretches to the base of the mountain where there are a few places that might be interesting to explore. To the southeast is the goblin encampment but I don’t think I will go and visit them. I want some nice clean exploration.

Before I left, I made sure to tell my apprentices that I will be gone for days if not longer, but I knew that they could take care of themselves. This time just in case I brought along some climbing gear as well and quite a lot of rope. Hopefully, I can just use my strength to climb but you never know when such things are needed.

Goose was quite happy with another expedition as he loved to fly around. He had become an excellent scout and I’m pretty sure he will soon unlock the evolution that allows him to control air to a certain degree.

I hope that the evolution that allows him to grow large will take a long time to unlock because then I will need to think up a building design for him to stay at. And I’m quite certain whatever I came up with will be quite hard to build.

At the start of the winter when the snow started to get thick I thought that I will not be able to explore as it would be too tough to get through the snow but being able to make myself so light that I could walk on the snow made everything so easy and actually a lot safer.

Many predators couldn’t chase you down when the snow was higher than themselves. But that's of course talking about normal predators, anyone that’s at the silver stage or above would not find themselves too troubled with this amount of snow.

I started to get a habit of collecting interesting things while I moved. Being able to see interesting energy flows and mana makes finding interesting plants and other stuff quite easy. Normally I wouldn’t stray too far away from the path that I’m taking but this time I really didn’t mind it.

I also brought along a notebook and a charcoal pen so I could start levelling my cartography skill. I was really hoping to get some sort of mini-map ability, so I was constantly thinking about that while scratching down landmarks and calculating the distances between places.

In the notebook, I also added information about the different items that I collected and what I observed about them. Looking at how much I had already filled in I might need to start buying a lot more notebooks.

The notebook more resembled an old-time journal with its leather covers, the customary leather string to tie the book together so it won't open by itself and a place to store your writing utensils into the leather covers. I honestly don’t know why would having a journal feel so good. It seems that I have found another regret. I would have liked to feel this feeling on earth as well.

What was the hardest to mark on the map was the exact location where the trees were unusual. I haven’t found anything on the level of the iron oak, but I did find some trees that had interesting energy flows that would suggest that they might have some sort of evolution.

As usual, identification didn't show anything interesting and I didn’t want to take the time to try to find out using my true nature connection. It takes hours to use that method but at least I know I have some way to find out exactly what makes these tree special.

While I don’t have time currently because I want to explore, I still want to know their exact location for a later date. Putting them onto the map was too inaccurate. What I ended up doing was putting a general location of it onto the map and then writing a code next to it that would lead to a page where I will note down the properties of the tree and how far from each of the landmarks this specific tree is.

Was this the perfect system, absolutely not, but I currently didn’t have any better ways. Even with my constant distractions we were making good time and made it about halfway to the edge of my land by nighttime.

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Making a shelter with this amount of snow was quite easy. I just needed to do some digging. The snow shelters were actually quite warm and there was no need to even make a fire. But I did need to let Goose join me in my sleeping bag as he couldn’t resist the cold as I did.

The great thing about making this shelter was that I was getting digging experience. The night went past quite quickly. The bad thing about exploring in the winter was the sun and it only showing up for a short time. That luckily wasn’t a big problem as I could see well even with low light, but I still prefer to explore when the sun was up as I could see a lot longer like that.

Seeing the mountains peeking through the forest was quite beautiful. I had been going uphill for quite a while now, but the gradient was quite low as I got closer, I could see the gradients started to ramp up quite a lot until some cliffs started to appear. That was not bad as I was able to clear them by jumping but soon, they started to get tall enough that I needed to start climbing. I was now officially out of my own land.

Looking back, I could see over the forest now. Some people might call this quite bleak as it was white and brown mixed thanks to the trees, only a few evergreens still showed their green adding a little bit of colour to the landscape. I would bet this view in the fall would be quite amazing with all the tree leaves being colourful. I decided to just sit down at the edge of the cliff and look over my land.

I could feel the strength that it gave me, but I also understood that I also gave it strength. The stronger I will get the stronger the land I’m connected to will be. It is a beneficial cycle, and it seems that the class homesteader and the trait true nature connection seemed to have a similar relationship as they both strengthened each other. I might have underestimated how powerful of a class this might be. But who would have guessed that a class with this kind of a name could be so OP?

It was time to stop admiring and look towards the unknown. My first objective was to follow a small river that flowed down the mountain. Why was this river special? Because it was still flowing and only started to freeze halfway into my land.

Testing the water, it didn't seem so freezing close to the mountain and tasting it, it did seem to have a lot of minerals in it. On its way up the mountain, it seemed to have multiple small waterfalls the size of two men and up to four.

What was disappointing was not finding a cave behind any of the waterfalls. But perhaps I will make one myself to have a secret hideaway. Then again it might be not the best hiding place as it would be the first place someone looked for a secret entrance. It seems that I might be lucky as the river didn’t seem to go inside the mountain or have cliffs on both sides so I couldn’t follow it anymore.

My travelling speed slowed down even more as I kept finding interesting rocks. There were even large deposits of rock that was no longer normal. I would suspect that something had happened to them similar to the fireclay. Their properties have been changed over time by energy and/or mana. I didn’t have the room or willingness to bring them back for testing, but I did mark them on the map the same way I did with the trees.

By the end of the day, I had reached deep enough to see steam coming off the river. Well, perhaps river was the wrong word as even a normal human could jump across it quite easily. Here the water was quite warm, and I was starting to believe that I might have a hot spring in my hands.

It was hard to get to sleep as I was quite excited, but I was able to force my body to relax so I could go to sleep. I had to travel a bit away from the river as there was a lot less snow around it. This night I did hear some howling probably a wolf pack somewhere, but I wasn’t bothered as it seemed to be quite far away.

The next day I ate my jerky while I was walking, and I started to move faster so I stopped going to every interesting rock. Like that it didn’t take me long to reach the small lake perhaps a big pond would be a better word to describe what I saw. There was quite a large plateau around it. The water steamed heavily from being so hot. It didn’t take me long to notice the springs that brought in the water.

I had finally found the starting point. It didn't look like hot springs from movies and anime. I might need to reevaluate my thinking as they were probably man-made to look like that. But I could already see the benefit of how they did it.

Multiple layers of smaller ponds would give a lot more real estate for everyone to enjoy. Even as I was thinking about making a few buildings here and starting construction on an anime-accurate hot spring I was simultaneously stripping down so I could go into the water.

It was warm but not scorching but that might be because of my body. If I had to guess I would say it was around 45 to 50 Celsius which I don’t think a normal human can survive for a long time. A quick dip might be alright.

I spent the rest of the day in the water and enjoying life. It seems that my first expedition to the east went extremely well but unfortunately it was not yet over as I wanted to visit a few more places that I think might be interesting.

There was also the bigger river to the north and following it will be my next goal. While I might not find something as interesting as this it might still be a good idea to see if I could find its starting point.

I could probably also get some salt out of this water, but the concentration didn't seem so high. Drinking this kind of mineral water might be quite beneficial but who knows if there's something bad in it.