Ugh, Midori actually got pregnant...?

That is going to be an interesting conversation when I see her again.

I should assume her sisters are also pregnant. Silverøse, Usagi-chan, and Lily too?

I was still mostly a fledgling Arch human back then, before my evolution, and I didn’t go to town on their vaginas with the kind of unrestrained enthusiasm and frequency that would have guaranteed pregnancy across the board... I think

So perhaps there is no pregnancy from those early encounters with certain women.

There are many variables to consider.

But I wonder, it has been nagging at my mind a little ever since Heka and co. made their announcement;

How can they tell so confidently that they are pregnant in the first place?

There is no modern medical equipment here to find that out, no ultrasound machines or blood tests, or even pregnancy strips with little lines that appear to indicate a positive result.

They should be only a few weeks pregnant at most, assuming the conception happened shortly before I was first kidnapped.

But should it be so noticeable to them?

Should they already be experiencing symptoms and changes that would alert them to the presence of a growing life inside their wombs?

Or is there some other method, some magical sense or Amazon-specific ability, that allows them to detect these things far earlier than a normal human woman could?

Nevertheless, after my quite nice and surprisingly informative gossip session with the... uh... what did they call themselves again? The Irinians.

Yes, the descendants of Irina. Pfft. A bit funny, though. I’ll tease Sara with it later.

Anyway, after finishing that conversation, I have teleported away from the Spire using my [Reality Jump] ability.

And I was now standing alone in the heart of the Whispering Wilds, the savannah-like region that surrounded the village and stretched out in all directions as far as the eye could see.

Ah, breathtaking.

The word does not do justice to what I was witnessing with my own eyes.

The view was absolutely amazing from where I stood, the landscape stretching out before me like a painting brought to life.

The moonlight was particularly bright tonight, unusually luminous and clear.

So the silver lights from above were reflecting off the tall grasses that waved gently under the soft night breeze, creating a rippling sea of silver and shadow that moved in hypnotic patterns across the entire landscape.

The effect was mesmerizing and otherworldly, as if I had stepped into a dream or a memory rather than physical reality. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

The Whispering Wilds looked quite a lot like a savannah, really, if you compared it to the descriptions I had read in books from my old world:

Wide open spaces, scattered trees with broad canopies, tall grasses (some of which could reached up to my waist in some places and up to my shoulders in others), and a sense of vast emptiness that somehow felt more alive than any crowded city I had ever visited.

Except, instead of lions and zebras (or warthogs, the kinds of animals you would expect to find in a normal savannah ecosystem), there were large abominations roaming these lands.

They would called themselves animals, but they looked like they had been designed by someone with a very strange sense of aesthetics and a complete disregard for the laws of biology.

Though, those kinds of creatures are different from monsters that particularly exist because of magic or magical contamination.

But the large beasts whose origins were not tied to magic, whose existence did not depend on supernatural forces or demonic influence, are just beasts — animals, plain and simple, no much different from the wolves and deer, and bears, I had known in my previous life.

Only sometimes as big as tractors.

And they mostly can’t do anything supernatural at all, relying instead on their physical strength and natural weapons, instincts to survive and thrive.

The one I was looking for right now, the Grootslang that the girls told me about, was assumably a magical beast:

That is a different category entirely from both ordinary animals and common monsters.

Those magical beast types are still sort of monsters in a certain sense, sharing some of their traits and behaviors.

But they are more sophisticated, intelligent and more self-aware than the average rampaging creature that might attack anything that moves.

Not that intelligent monsters don’t exist in this world — they do, in great numbers and variety.

But monsters are generally wild animals that can perform supernatural feats of various kinds.

They can jump into shadows and emerge somewhere else.

Some can turn someone to stone with a single glance.

Some can fly through the air without wings, defying gravity and physics alike.

Or some ultra rare ones can literally cast low-level spells, using a crude form of magic that mimics the abilities of trained human mages, but lacks their precision and control.

Magical beasts, on the other hand, operate on a different level entirely.

They can understand people using magic as a medium, perceiving the intent and meaning behind words even if they do not speak the same language.

And some of them can even speak to you directly, forming words with their mouths or their minds, carrying on proper conversations as if they were human.

Others can read your thoughts and respond to them, conversing without any spoken words passing between you.

Let me put it this way to clarify the distinction:

If a monkey with three glowing eyes showed up in front of me and casually said "Ah, nice morning we’re having here, wouldn’t you agree?" then it’s most definitely a Magical Beast, and I should probably be polite to it.

If the monkey could not speak any language I understood, however, could teleport around the battlefield while holding a large club like it wanted me dead, and be willing to use unconventional tactics to achieve that goal?

Then it is definitely a monster, and I should be prepared to fight or kill it.

If it was just a monkey — big or medium or small, it does not matter — with no proper use of magic or supernatural abilities besides its own natural strength and in-born physical capabilities, then it is simply an animal.

I stretched my senses abroad, outward into the surrounding environment, trying to find where something big and anomalous might be residing in this vast savannah.

But perhaps I did something wrong in my approach, or perhaps my new abilities work differently than I expected...

This was because the result I got was far beyond what I had intended or anticipated.

I could feel the entire Whispering Wilds spreading out before my perception like a map unrolled on a table.

No, that is not accurate enough.

From just lightly spreading my senses, barely extending them at all, I have understood the complete geography of this entire place in perfect, immediate detail.

Every hill and valley, every river and stream, every cluster of trees and every open plain — all of it were downloaded into my awareness in the space between one heartbeat and the next.

The Whispering Wilds truly is a savannah-like region, but situated on a large island!

I didn’t know that before this moment! M-Might I be a prophet?!