Only a week had passed since Leica's further development. His Golem workers had expanded the central room and created some more storage rooms.

He hadn't touched the experience boost that earned him 50 levels and 1500 free new points. Although the temptation to top up certain things had become enormous and stamina gained another important benefit with the stealth skill!

Lately he had been working overtime in the laboratory because he could create, practice and practice his magic on the go, but unfortunately his laboratory was not as mobile as he would have liked. While there was enough room for the kettle and the refinement machinery, he decided to just take the kettle with him. On the one hand, he still needed space for animal bones, furs, mana crystals, mana silt, weapons, gold, potions and other little things. Even his most important books always had to be taken with him. This included all specialist literature from the quest rewards.

The overtime had also started to pay off. He was finally making the progress he had hoped for in alchemy. One of these was a void regeneration potion, which consisted partly of a healing potion and partly of its void energy.

He also managed to brew several different poisons that he could use in connection with his metal spikes via telekinesis, which expanded his possibilities for different situations.

He had started preparing for his trip north. The two old rucksacks were made into two saddlebags for Leica so that she too could carry something.

As discussed, the Elemental Golems would stay behind to take care of the facility while they were away. They would guard you too. With all the stone surrounding them, they were at a distinct advantage over most intruders. Besides, as he had progressed, Xo had evolved into an evolution that would be able to cope with anything. At least he hoped so, for there he left true treasures under the hill whose existence would have attracted more than a few nobles. In fact, they were probably worth an entire kingdom's military campaign!

Magna decided on something more than simply taking a route into civilization. He wanted to travel around. See and experience all kinds of things. In his last life he thought this was bullshit. Since there was only one specific species on earth, its cities in the general sense were all the same - big and filthy - but more than just other cultures awaited him here. New races, species that made his journey to something completely different. Maybe he just wanted to kill some variety on the side, or set a goal to work with.

He decided that they should first follow the old river bed, which was just lying dry and overshadowed by various plants. His companion took care of her meals. Most of them were avoided by other predators. Everything in the area they were hiking in was much lower than they were, so it was no longer a threat.

For camping they kept on their way to the empty river bed, which sooner or later led them to the first dungeon he explored and in the depths of which he so often almost came to his own end.

A few days in the open air, cuddled together by the campfire with the dried meat and legumes that he gathered in the forest, they found a few quiet days.

Shortly before the sinkhole, an unnatural silence returned to the area, which had settled on the land like a shroud. Magna wondered how that could be. Hadn't they recovered the bodies?

Even just before the sinkhole, the whole area was still far too quiet for a forest. Not even nature had returned to these areas. Instead, the land lay fallow. No, the country even looked infested. Maybe, even death? Yes. It looked like death. Leica kept ruffling her fur. A disgusting, mossy, rotten smell poured from the sinkhole. A mixture of mold and something sweet.

A deeply rooted fear struck, which is why he gave up his plan to stare into the sinkhole or even to climb into the deep via his previous passage, ignorant that both were already free, this time he decided to renounce the chaos. He trusted Leica's feelings. One swing on their backs and together they followed the other end of the river out of the former forest into the borderlands.

Using the river as a landmark, he explored the area at regular intervals. As long as you had a fixed point to return to, exploration was a lot easier. They also stumbled upon a place that corresponded to a former military camp. Only trampled tents. A few faded corpses. Scattered weapons. Well, he could make out some of the aftermath of the battle. He didn't even bother to search the camp any further. Nothing there could teach him anything. At least that is what he believed, which prompted him to continue following the previous flow with Leica.

Soon they were able to see the first abandoned huts on the river, farmsteads that had collapsed, neglected, as well as abandoned and other former signs of civilization. He couldn't even tell when exactly this civilizational residue had been abandoned. Was it weeks? Months or even years? At these latitudes, the environment seemed to be reclaiming things at a rapid pace. But the first signs did not end there, only the information for the first abandoned village, which was on the river itself. Magna didn't even have to go in to know this. Where there was no water, there was no life. Perhaps they had wells, but how long could they thrive on them? In addition, the palisades had collapsed, overgrown with vegetation, and the houses were in a dilapidated state. It was not even unlikely that there were masses of deserted places in the borderlands. Giving up even without a dried up river.

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After all, there have always been far more dangers. Who knew what was living in the woods, the rough terrain or everything else out here?

Maybe once there was a village for a hundred souls, maybe two hundred? You couldn't say anything like that just from the number of buildings. It was not uncommon in the Middle Ages for generations to live in the same household. The impoverished aristocracy liked to see how they shared a narrow keep with 10 people. How people built houses above them so that they could use the natural waste heat from the animals. In modern times during industrialization, ten or more people often lived in a one-room apartment! It saved money. There were centuries of completely different living conditions that had become unimaginable in today's western world. Even the luxury of private shitting was a relatively recent achievement. Toilets built by the Romans had no partitions, but you sat practically next to each other where people were still talking while shitting.

Once again he had to make it clear to himself that this wasn't his world so all of his assumptions were nothing more than wild guesses that he liked to tinker together in his mind. At least until he could see it for himself.

So he started searching the houses. As expected, he found several simple thatch beds in a single house alone. These were simple sacks filled with straw that the sleeper used as a mattress. Nothing special, but better than a cold floor.

The other houses didn't reveal much more that would have further refuted his assumptions. They were multigenerational houses with harsh living conditions. Cutlery made of wood. Simple cabinets. Chimneys with long-burned ash. An unused forge. Something that came close to a tanner or a tailor. No school, but something like a town square with the only house that was inhabited by a single family. Very likely either the richest man in town, maybe the village chief or both.

The house was different from the many that surrounded it. The outer areas were filled with mud huts, simple wooden crates and other ailing structures. Only the village center had the half-timbered houses characteristic of the Middle Ages - there was nothing to be seen in this village from ancient architecture such as the former ruin on the plateau, which was reminiscent of Roman or even Greek buildings, which were also created, perhaps even inspired, by a palace culture. Only this house had more than two floors. Crockery, furnishings and other components indicated a supposedly simple prosperity. In the study he found a book still open. Covered with dust, it contained things like village assets, taxes collected, debts, and everything related to money. So a real treasure for him, because this reading told him a lot about its value system.

If he got it right, it was mainly copper and silver that were used for trading so far out in the borderlands. Always ten of each yielded a large coin of the respective type, of which ten again showed the equivalent of the next increase. Assumptions that he had already gathered from the notebook seemed to be repeated here. He had to admit a beginning. But here in this house he found a bed that was still quite usable for the first time, which of course could never compete with a box spring bed, but was better than straw sacks, fur variants or grass in the middle of nowhere. He left enough space in his storage room for such a case! This thing should accompany him on his journey.

Only when he continued to search for a car could he find out what irritated him at this place all the time! It wasn’t simply nobody was here anymore, but there was no life at all. No pets, no wagon or any food, no pack animals or any form of life. Everything was just left standing and lying. Evacuated the village with the battle? Maybe something else too?

Everything of value seemed to be missing or what was not packed up quickly enough was simply left behind. Maybe that's why he decided to do the same. After removing the bed and the book in the attic, he swung himself onto Leica's back.

This unnatural feeling spread inside his stomach again. It almost looked as if the houses were sloping slightly in the shade of the midday sun. How huge creatures they would devour.

Something should come with the night. Something strangely dangerous. Something that was not allowed to exist and even seemed to overshadow its own new nature. Something went unfathomably wrong in this border area!

His premonitions were only heightened by Leica's attitude toward those around her. He had neither searched all the houses nor did he dig in the mounds of earth that were spread out, which looked like supposed graves.

He left the village quickly, riding from Leica's back along the former river, passing other smaller villages that were completely deserted in the same way. Not even a single sheep, wagon or anything else could be found on site. They were all swept clean in the same grim way, which only added to his discomfort.

It is important that the river did not run straight as a bolt, but mostly in curves, like meanders, so that some villages were not far from each other and parallel to each other. From village to village there were trampled unpaved roads that he ignored at the risk of one of the makeshift roads that might end in nowhere.

The river, on the other hand, was a clear line, even when there was no more water flowing in it. Accompanied by the sun, he spent the afternoon searching abandoned villages, although not everything looked like the first village. Often there were perhaps individual inns with a few others. Sometimes it was also the dwellings of hermits who came together to form small communities, but nothing from the size of the first place until the moment when it made stone walls some distance away, which drew attention to something larger than a village.

The city itself lay next to another river into which the original one he followed probably flowed into. However, the city was built on the dry one, while the remaining flowing water was still some distance away. Not so far that it would have been inaccessible, but far enough to cause problems with a supply situation.

On the walls, nowhere in front of the walls, guards had been seen. Presumably this place was left in the same way as the other dwellings. He began to approach the city cautiously, but the closer he got, the greater his inner disgust for the strange city became. He couldn't even tell what exactly made his hair stand on end. At least he could see that the city gate looked broken. The wood splintered and for the first time he could see why the queasy feeling never really disappeared on his whole journey since the sinkhole.

But what he saw there, could he expect, even though he already knew it inside?