Dreams could be decidedly weird; there was no question about that. Not only were there instances of Lady Hecate using dreams to communicate with me, pulling me into Her realm so we could have a conversation, but there were also recurring dreams about Neyto, or rather, about the Crystal Forest surrounding the small village and the Nexus at its centre. While it wasn’t a nightly occurrence, the dream about Neyto happened almost as often as the various dreams I enjoyed about Sigmir and what we would do once we finally reunited, much to my annoyance. I would much prefer to dream about my beloved than the forest, even if the snow-covered forest was gorgeous and walking towards the edge, where I could see the endless snowfields around it, was fun, it just didn’t compare to dreams of Sigmir.

Additionally, in the dreams of Neyto and the forest, a few oddities made me feel a little strange. For one, there were occasional faint and indistinct calls for help, pleading for assistance, which made me wonder who could be calling and what I might be able to do, especially if those calls sounded particularly desperate. I could rarely make out any actual words when hearing those calls, but their sheer emotion made me empathise, as I readily remembered the feeling of losing Sigmir and screaming at the heavens to give her back. Not that the heavens had cared so, now that I was hearing those calls, I couldn’t help but care. And wonder what I might be able to do to help. Or how I should help, if I could.

Amusingly, it didn’t take all that long for me to realise that my ideas of how to solve problems followed two fairly distinct paths. If a problem was immediate, meaning it needed to be solved right now or something seriously bad would happen, the solutions I considered were almost universally magical, some quick charm or conjuration to solve, or at least alleviate, the problem until the root-cause could be addressed.

On the other hand, if the problem was more systematic in nature, a deep-seated long-term issue that couldn’t just be solved with a bit of magic, my solutions tended to require a lot of research and the collection of information, until the root-cause of said problem could be found and, if possible, fixed. Not that all problem could be fixed, some had to be avoided or, if at all possible, prevented from coming into existence in the first place.

Granted, when it came to prevention I probably was the worst being in existence and could likely claim to be the root-cause of a whole host of issues in the future but those had been side-effects of my research. The various magical creatures I had brought into existence came to mind, I had no doubt that some of those would eventually become a problem for a lot of people but you had to crack some eggs to make an omelette.

Magic and Research, the two pillars needed to solve any problem, at least in my mind. And especially if both pillars were combined.

Which left the question, how to solve the problem of the burned land?

The slow, methodical approach we were using alongside the tribe, as I had started to refer to the small village the chief had created, was one thing, but I wasn’t convinced it was enough. Sure, we managed to stall the burned land along a single, fairly long stretch of land but I wasn’t delusional enough to believe we would be able to keep that up forever. Not if the burned land’s area correlated to the number of Bitumen and goop it could create, which I currently assumed. And even if there was no correlation, the land was growing fast enough in other areas to spread around the strip we currently held, meaning it would eventually encircle their village, if the ever-growing front didn’t overwhelm the defending force.

No, this needed a bigger solution, or at least something to stall the area was needed. Though what exactly I could try, I wasn’t sure.

This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

A ritual seemed to be the obvious answer but given what had happened the last time I tried that, I wasn’t sure how to go about it. I had no interest in getting bombarded with goop again, though if I took the right precautions, I might be able to make it work, even with the artillery beasts. I just needed to research a bit and prepare while waiting for the right conditions, and then I could strike. It might not turn into a fatal blow, if one could even fatally wound what might be a sentient piece of land, but I was willing to try.

Because that was my biggest worry, that the burned land wasn’t actually land but that the goopy sand I was seeing on the surface was part of a larger being, just like the artillery beasts and Bitumen were essentially constructs of goop and sand wrapped around a central core and would continue to regenerate as long as said core was intact. If the burned land was the same, a shell of sand and goop protecting a core hiding somewhere below the ground, likely completely entombed in enough sand, goop and rock to withstand even nuclear strikes, I wasn’t sure what I could do about it.

Sure, I was powerful, but if the core had any intelligence at all, it wouldn’t just spread across the surface but would dig down, too and hide about two-thirds of the way to its deepest part, while creating layers and layers of protection around it. If the vertical depth were even just a hundredth of its horizontal spread, I would never be able to dig the thing out, unless I spend literal years trying to do so. While assuming that it couldn’t just dig deeper, I had no idea how the thing worked, or if this was even the case. Sadly, I was suffering from a lack of information.

Some of the things needed to find out were small. For example, how many artillery beasts were there and would they launch goop at the small parties destroying Bitumen on the edges of the burned land? What conditions had to be met for them to act, assuming that I was right and it had been one of them that interrupted my first ritual? Another interesting question was how high the artillery beasts could launch their goop, or if there were other larger creatures like them, able to attack targets high in the air? Depending on that answer, I had a few ideas I wanted to try out, but I’d need a suitable base to hide first.

In hindsight, it was the obvious step and I wondered why I had latched onto the other possible solution as readily as I had, to the point that Lady Hecate decided to nudge me into a different direction. Trying to defeat the Bitumen by killing them one at a time wouldn’t work and, quite frankly, their levels weren’t high enough to make killing them for EXP worth the time, so why had I stopped looking for a different solution?

Maybe it was due to fear after almost getting killed by an artillery strike, but that only meant I should have thought harder, not decided to do something utterly foolish, even if it was seemingly easier.

Even now, I could only shake my head and make a mental note not to quit thinking just because I had a possible solution, especially if I didn’t actually have enough information to make an, well, an informed decision whether the course of action I decided to undertake was a wise one.

With all that in mind, I decided to add another measure to our current campaign against the Bitumen and the burned land in general by, quite literally, coming at the problem from another direction.

In order to do that, I moved to one of the local hills, still a few days away from the ever-growing stain of the burned land, and started to dig in. Not trying to eat the hill but, quite literally, digging into the hill to give me a suitable shelter, a place from where I could work, regardless of the Bitumen’s actions and any bombardment from the Artillery Beasts.

Once I had secured a nice place for myself and made sure the others knew I was working on something elsewhere so they stepped up their efforts in helping the Chief’s people, I set up a lair for myself, hidden deep underground and only accessible via Shadow Stepping.

There were numerous tests I needed to complete before I could fully trust the place, one of which was a question whether I could use Wind Magic to provide oxygen into the enclosed space and, if so, what else I could do in that regard, and a few similar tests, trying to make sure that this base was as unassailable as it could be.

Finally, once that was all done, I set up my Throne and started to work on ways to reach out and bring some chill to a few beings.