Over the next few days, Luna and I continued to travel north while I observed the ongoing events back at the farm. Luckily, the paths Luna and I were walking on were fairly nice, almost certainly old hiking trails and strangely untouched by the change and subsequent events, making me once again wonder about the rhyme and reason there. Why did some roads deteriorate at a pace that made one think it hadn’t been months but decades since their maintenance stopped while this path was essentially intact? Admittedly, I had no idea how often hiking trails needed to be maintained to remain in a good state, but I was quite certain they needed some maintenance. After all, in the middle of a forest, it was inevitable that leaves and other detritus would land on them before decomposing and forming new soil, therefore slowly burying the path until new growth sprouted in that area.
Hel, back home, the paths in that forest in which we had set up our first shrine had already deteriorated when we got there a scant few months after the change, leaving the forest in an almost primal state as if humans had never touched it. At least when ignoring the hotel-turned-dungeon in the middle of it. And even there, I wondered if the hotel had been there before the change or if it was some sort of artefact created by it. Here, on the other hand, the paths remained but nothing else, no roads leading to the paths, no parking lots, no signs, nothing but the neatly maintained paths. Maybe Luna and I should keep an eye out for some elves or fey or something like that, but given that we kept an eye out for danger anyway, it shouldn’t be a problem.
Another aspect of our continued travels was that we had slowly shifted from the completely nocturnal lifestyle we had used to a somewhat less odd one. Since Lia had stayed behind at Jademoon Tower, we had mostly travelled during the night out of habit, not necessarily out of necessity. Sure, I was more comfortable at night, but I still despised the day and was weakened by the sun, but I could deal with it. Solid clothes, portable shade, a bit of Darkness Magic if all else failed, there were ways to keep comfortable, at least as long as I wasn’t running around outside in the bright summer sun. But then, even humans were uncomfortable in those conditions, so I wasn’t overly bothered by this.
For Luna, on the other hand, travelling during the day was, at least to my somewhat limited knowledge of medicine, simply a better option. Humans had, by and large, evolved as diurnal creatures and needed a certain amount of light and sun. Luna was, even with the alterations done to her body by Lady Hecate, especially those gorgeous eyes of hers, a human and a growing one at that, even if her growth was likely coming to an end, leaving her in a body at the cusp of adulthood.
Which was an entirely different headache but, luckily, one I didn’t have to deal with at the moment, even if I had been wrestling with it for a while. How was one supposed to treat a person who was chronologically aged seven, as in, it had been about seven years since she had been born, mentally aged closer to thirteen or fourteen, thanks to the lessons Lady Hecate had given her, and physically around seventeen or eighteen thanks to the boost given to her by her attributes and the increased level? I didn’t have an answer and was, slightly unrealistically, hoping that I wouldn’t need one. This was, amusingly, one of the things I would even be willing to pray for, but who was I supposed to pray to? The Mother?
Regardless of that, travelling during the day had some advantages, which made up for the slight discomfort I occasionally had to endure. This is why we had switched over and were now moving during the day, with the added benefit that it was a lot easier to observe the people at the farm when my sleep schedule was roughly the same as theirs.
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My observations regarding the farm, however, occasionally made me shiver at the crude way the system implemented the punishment and what apparently needed to be done to overcome its effect. From what I could observe, they were trying to form some sort of consensus from which to judge those who attacked me and those who had egged them on in some way, but nobody trusted one another due to the Oathbreaker effect. As soon as people were talking while looking at each other, they were pushed to argue until they looked away. It was almost like in some of the oldest games I had ever played, where you were forced to battle if you looked another trainer in the eye, just with actual people. All thanks to the brutal mental beating caused by the Oathbreaker effect.
But the people back at the farm were actually making progress, slowly but surely. Part of that might be because they had started to use Lady Hecate’s Shrine, which seemed to partially shield them from the effect. It turned out that Lady Hecate, mostly in her guise as the Grandmother, was giving them some advice and taking a far more active role than I would have expected her to, which was another curiosity.
As was the fact that Sylvia was chosen to be the caretaker of the Shrine by Lady Hecate and essentially inducted as a cleric, though I could see that her education was focused on arcane magic given to her by the statue of the mother in a guise very much resembling yours truly. Watching the lessons was somewhat eye-opening, especially when I compared what I was observing to my memories of lessons I had given in the past and quickly realised that they matched to an almost frightening degree. I could only guess at the reasons why Lady Hecate was recycling my old lessons. Maybe She wanted the source of arcane development on Terra to be of Terran origin, not something given to the people ex machina as Divine Magic was, or maybe She wanted to strengthen the association between the Mother and lessons on Arcane Magic; both were somewhat plausible possibilities.
Regardless of Her reasons, it was quite interesting to see my own lessons from an outsider’s perspective. At the same time, I could marvel at the fascinating effect surrounding the Mother’s statue; it seemed to be a mix of Darkness and Mind Magic, effectively concealing any association between the statue, which looked like me, and my own identity. The statue was of the Mother, not of Jade Morgana, even if the Mother and Jade Morgana looked exactly alike. This made me wonder why Lady Hecate was acting like this here but differently elsewhere, like at Jademoon Tower. Maybe it was just Her mood, maybe She had actual reasons, or it might even be caused by the simple roll of a dice; by now, I wasn’t about to assume anything.
One midday, as Luna and I were comfortably enjoying one of the many gorgeous views we had from up here in the mountains, I realised that the landscape below wasn’t what it should be. Sure, it was gorgeous, but as far as my eyes could see, which was quite far from up here in the mountains, I could barely see any remains of human civilisation. Sure, this used to be one of the Dakotas or maybe Montana, so one of the less populated places, but still, in the hundred-odd kilometres I could see, there should be more than the handful of broken towns and shattered roads.
And yet, there were no regular shapes, nothing that hinted at fields and such, just the endless, fairly flat land, filled with slowly growing grass, a few trees, hedges and a bit of wildlife. A part of me wondered if there would soon be herds of bison or buffalo, maybe changed by the system from wild cattle. At the moment, those sorts of beasts would find these endless lands probably close to heaven. At least until their natural predators returned or humans regained their footing and started to systematically hunt them, time would tell how that would turn out.
It would probably not turn out as it had in the past, but if the system boosted animals just as it boosted humans, improving their bodies and, maybe more importantly, their intelligence, possibly giving them magical abilities to fight back, it would be fascinating to see. And given that the system seemed to be returning large pieces of land to a primal state, with only minimal, if any, remnants of human civilisation, I had a feeling the system would be, at best, neutral in regards to humans, not giving them any additional boosts over the many other animals. But, again, only time would tell.
