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?!

There was even a beach at the shore several kilometers away from where I was, with waves crashing against sand and birds circling there.

A five-day journey in a car, driving at normal speeds on reasonable roads, would take you there from my current position.

Which meant the Whispering Wilds was a pretty large landmass, far larger than I had initially estimated when I first arrived here.

While I call it an island, the reality is slightly more complicated.

Small patches of land, narrow bridges of stone and soil, connect this place to another landmass far, far away across the water.

You could journey on those cracked and ancient stone paths, following them step by step, and eventually get off the island entirely, reaching whatever continent or territory lay on the other side.

I tried to spread my senses even farther, pushing past the boundaries of the Whispering Wilds to see where those stone paths led and what I might find at their destination...

And...

Yep. I was definitely not human anymore.

A normal human could not do what I had just done without thinking about it, could not extend their perception across dozens of kilometers in the span of a single breath.

[I just thought about this now, but... why am I seeing so far away without using my physical eyes again? What mechanism is allowing my consciousness to perceive visual information from locations I am not physically present in?]

{Answer: Master can use the surrounding magical energies present at the target location to send the information of visual data directly to Master’s perceptual framework, bypassing the need for optical input through the biological eyes.

This is a standard ability for beings of Master’s current evolutionary tier and requires only minimal conscious effort to activate and mainta--.}

[Yes, yes, thank you for that explanation, Sys. By the way, I’ve noticed that you seem to be in a good mood ever since I woke up from my evolution.]

{...}

[Great. Just ignore me.]

Anyway, what I saw far on the other side of the Wilds, at the edge of my expanded perception, was an ogre.

Actually, several of them.

A few of these ogres were fishing — or performing some activity that resembled fishing, at least — with some equipment that I could not clearly identify.

And I could see, standing among them, that particularly memorable ogre who had accompanied Dynamis this afternoon when she came to the summit.

This ogre was very tall and undeniably pretty, though less muscular than the rest of the ogres I could see in the group, with a leaner frame and more delicate features that set them apart from their heavier, bulkier kin.

Their red hair was tied in a long and elaborate braid that hung down their back.

And clipped at the tip of that braided hair, secured firmly in place, was a small silver pointed blade that gleamed in the moonlight.

If I was not mistaken, it looked as if the blade had physically merged with their hair, becoming part of them rather than merely being attached as an accessory or a decoration.

They had deep red eyes, the color of fresh blood or ripe cherries, and a dark red-tinted skin that reminded me of certain shades of mahogany wood.

They had claws at the ends of their fingers, long and sharp, and capable of causing serious injury.

Also, they had upward-pointing fangs protruding from their lower jaw, visible even when their mouth was closed.

But they had no horns — unlike a normal ogre, whose forehead was typically adorned with at least one pair of curved and threatening horns.

Flat as a board across the chest though, with no visible curves in that area, but they had modest curves elsewhere on their body and a nice overall figure that was pleasing to look at.

She was a very pretty woman, undeniably attractive in a wild and dangerous way... Except that person was actually a man.

A male ogre. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

I know, because of I look more intensely at someone now, focusing my perception with deliberate intent, I can see through fabric and other thin barriers as if they were made of clear glass rather than woven material.

The ability is not something I trained to develop — it simply came with the package of becoming a demigod, one of those unexpected side effects that no one warned me about before I underwent my evolution.

Ohhhh! I cannot wait to go to there and tease that ogre for being so feminine in his appearance.

I’m sure he will react with embarrassment or annoyance.

And I guess that place in the distance is Goliathens, then.

I will not say it’s particularly close to Verdant Spire, for it will take multiple days of travel on foot or by animal to cross the distance between the two locations...

But it sure was close to Verdant Spire, was it not?

Relative to the size of the island and the vastness of the Whispering Wilds, the ogre settlement was practically a neighbor to the Amazon village.

Just for fun, I teleported there real quick using my [Reality Jump] ability — appearing behind the femboy ogre in an instant, reaching out with my hand, and pulling his braided hair lightly, just enough to get his attention and make him aware that someone was there.

Then I ran back to my original position, teleporting away again before he could properly react.

I watched from a safe distance as the femboy recoiled in surprise and immediately entered battle mode, his body tensing and his eyes scanning the area for the source of the sudden assault on his hair.

Hehehe.

I might have found myself a punching bag for future stress relief, a target for harmless pranks and playful teasing that will keep me entertained during my travel there.

The ogre seemed strong enough to handle a little provocation without being seriously injured, and his reactions were amusing to watch.

Back to the task at hand, now that I have finished my brief diversion into ogre-teasing territory;

All these stretching of my senses have filled me with all manner of information, of which I am not allowed to share here, so that the novel and author won’t get in trouble with whoever enforces the rules of what can and cannot be published.

Let us simply say that I learned many things, some useful and some trivial, some disturbing fat underground, and leave it at that.

But one specific piece of information I gathered is the location of the Grootslang, the ancient serpentine creature that Heka and her sisters had told me about.

It was quite a bit far from Verdant Spire, deeper into the Whispering Wilds than I had expected, in a region I had not yet explored during my previous stay in this area.

I could sense the unusual energy swirling and pooling over one specific point in the landscape, a concentrated mass of something that felt old and powerful, and distinctly not normal.

That energy was enclosed by a... weakly done barrier, a magical construct that had been erected around the creature’s territory by the Amazons, presumably to contain it or monitor it.

But hold up, even the Grootslang itself would tear this flimsy construct down in a matter of seconds if it decided to test the limits of its confinement.

The barrier was that weak, that poorly constructed and inadequate for the task of restraining a creature of this magnitude.

Welp, I supposed that wasn’t the point, then.

They were not trying to keep the Grootslang locked inside its territory against its will — that would have required a much stronger and more sophisticated barrier, perhaps even something on the level of a divine seal or a legendary-grade containment field.

They were simply monitoring its movement, tracking how it moved and what it did, so that they would know if it became aggressive or started approaching the village.

So... let’s go greet this suspected Magical Beast and see what kind of conversation we can have.

Hopefully it is the talking kind rather than the fighting kind, but given the descriptions I had heard from the Amazons, I should probably prepare myself for either outcome.

***

BBBOOOMMM!!