Solo Strategy

"I hate swamps," I muttered, sitting on a small dry patch in the middle of an impassable bog, pouring the murky sludge out of my boots.

Across my knees lay the First Feather. Over the past few days, I had grown fond of a habit: every evening, if I found myself alone, I would take out this blade and—as if it could hear me—tell it everything that had happened during the day. There was something meditative, calming about this act, allowing me to organize my thoughts. It was as if, in the process of telling, everything fell into place—and it made me feel a bit lighter inside.

Today's story didn't take long. And if you removed the swearing, it could be boiled down to two sentences. Because, essentially, there was nothing to tell.

I was just walking through the swamp.

Or rather, sometimes walking, sometimes crawling. From morning until sunset.

Back when I was planning the journey to the two Seguna altars hidden in the Patanga Swamps, I thought I could manage it in a week at most. Alas, as practice showed, my estimates were overly optimistic. I believed that if the memory of the future held precise directions to the location, there would be no particular difficulties. Reality, as usual, quickly made harsh corrections to my plans. I got caught in the trap of memories of the future again—and it was beginning to irritate me.

The problem was that these memories were never true recollections of lived experiences. They were more like a vivid movie: rich, fragmentarily familiar, but at the same time devoid of details, smells, sounds, the feeling of cold, the pain in my legs, and the buzzing of a swarm of mosquitoes in my ears. Such memory easily glossed over all inconveniences—and that's precisely where its treachery lay. It was as if offering an image of the event, but not its essence. And once again, I fell for it.

Yes, I remembered that the Patanga Swamps were enormous. I remembered that it was a dangerous and grim region, almost untouched by civilization. But it was one thing to know about this "enormousness"... And quite another to experience it with every cell of my body.

The area occupied by these swamps could easily fit an entire country like France. And this whole expanse—from the poisonous mist-filled hollows to the shaky grassy plains, from the humps covered in black moss to the sleepy lakes where it seemed death itself slumbered—formed one immense swamp.

No paths. No landmarks. Just a gray, viscous mix of rotting water, wet roots, yellow mist, and ground that sank beneath your feet. Stones and permanent trails had no place here. Even the hummocks couldn't be trusted—the moment you put your weight on them, what seemed like solid ground would slowly begin to sink, pulling your leg down with it. And if you strayed just a few steps from your chosen direction, you'd find yourself facing a vortex of black, oily water with no bottom.

The mosses here seemed alive, breathing. The reeds dully rustled, even when everything else was still, and their sound resembled distant whispers. Every evening, a cold, damp fog descended on your shoulders like a shroud, blurring the line between reality and an eerie dream.

No, the memory of the future didn't warn me about this. Not about the swamp's fetid breath, nor the rotten water seeping into my boots through the protective fabric, nor about how hard it was to keep going when, after a whole day, you advanced a measly couple of kilometers. This was not a journey; it was a test of my will, perseverance, and attentiveness.

At first, nothing foretold such hardships. After passing through the Gates, I found myself in a city called Forsakeham—fairly large yet seemingly rotting alive—which the locals referred to as Rotten Hoof[1]. The settlement was located on the southeastern edge of the Great Marshes, and as far as I remembered, it was closer to the places I needed than any other city with Sundbad's Gates.

For preparations, I gave myself a few hours—all I could afford. It was enough to visit three local shops, a dilapidated trading pavilion, and a half-closed workshop at the Pantheon temple. Everything needed for a marsh expedition in such backwater turned out either extremely expensive, suspiciously flimsy, or already used. Still, I managed to gather a few things.

Special boot attachments. An oil-treated cloak lined with black meadow moss to somewhat shield against rain and fog. It quickly absorbed moisture but didn't let it through—especially with the use of simple household magic. A net against swamp insects with repellant symbols sewn into the edges—the charms protected as much as the net itself, but I wasn't going to complain. The mosquitoes here were the size of cherries, and their bites promised not just itching, but possible fever. A Pure Step Totem, which allowed to find at least somewhat reliable paths in the swamps. And, of course, I had all my belongings securely packed by local craftsmen.

Then came a quick march along the edge of the swamps to a settlement familiar to me from the memory of the future. There, I bought a week's supply of clean water and food that could withstand the swamp climate. While negotiating, I casually asked the locals about a "brazen group" of tunnellers-strangers.

It was here, in this very place, that a conflict between a group of earthlings and representatives of the local baron occurred in the Last Cycle. The quarrel escalated into open hostility—a real hunt was declared on the earthlings, and they were forced to flee into the most remote parts of the swamp. They were lucky then: not only did they evade pursuit that lasted several days, not only did they avoid drowning, but they also managed to escape the swamp alive. And, most importantly to me, during this flight, they ventured into such depths where even the local tribes, who had lived in these areas for centuries, dared not go. It was there that they discovered two forgotten altars of Seguna.

My inquiries led nowhere. Yes, some outsiders had been here—they stayed for about a week and left a month ago. But none of the locals had heard of any conflict with the baron's men.

What did this mean?

Perhaps I'd arrived earlier than everything had happened in the Last Cycle. Or—and this seemed more plausible to me—the questers had mixed up all the earthlings during the distribution, and the group that got into trouble back then simply hadn't formed in this Cycle. This meant there was no reason for a conflict with the local authorities at all.

The next day went as I'd originally planned: I turned northwest and delved into the seemingly endless swamps. The pace I maintained was pretty decent. Luckily, the Echolocation spell I learned from Arien proved to be a great enhancer for the Pure Step Totem—together, they allowed me to somewhat reliably choose where to step without the risk of sinking or drowning.

But then everything went awry. With each kilometer, with each step, the swamps became more treacherous. The ground lost its last remnants of firmness, the paths blurred, and familiar landmarks disappeared under the gray mist and the monotony of the mire.

On the third day after leaving Feyst, I reached a small village perched on a relatively high hill by the shore of a perfectly round peat lake. There, I replenished my supplies and set off again.

And a day later, after wandering through the bogs and escaping a pack of rather large deykans, I found myself back at that very same village!

It was almost insulting. I navigated well by the stars. And, after all, in the Last Cycle, I began my journey through Ain right from the Patanga Swamps. But even that experience didn't help—the direction slipped away like water through my fingers.

Then, I finally realized that I couldn't count on an easy stroll, and relying solely on my own skills was naive. I had to hire a guide.

When the locals found out where exactly I needed to go, almost everyone flatly refused. However, the promised substantial reward combined with my four Stars in the Talent of Orator did the trick. A woman, a hunter named Gatya, eventually agreed to guide me into the depths of the swamps.

Two days ago, Gatya refused to go further. She stopped and tried to stop me as well. Warned me. And her fears were quite justified. Thanks to the memory of the future, I knew that the places I was heading to were the hunting grounds of two apex predators of the Patanga Swamps.

The first was the Great Deykan, compared to which, the one that attacked the peasant caravan and was sliced up by Boundless Pride was nothing more than an overgrown pup.

The second was the Seven-Headed Hydra. A monster that required at least two, preferably three warriors and mages of the Mithril rank to defeat.

In essence, Gatya, with her vast experience, was absolutely right in persuading me to abandon this venture. Encountering either of those monsters for me, who'd only just overcome the First Wall, would mean a quick and certain death.

But she didn't know what I knew.

I was aware that, right now, neither the Great Deykan nor the Seven-Headed Hydra posed a threat. The source of this confidence was the same memories of the future. One of the earthlings, who had fled from the baron's squad in the Last Cycle, turned out to be a skilled tracker and a decent mage. He mastered the Art of Earth and Water equally and learned several detection spells. It was he who stumbled upon the traces of a colossal battle. Apparently, the Great Deykan and the Seven-Headed Hydra clashed over territory. The fight had no winner, but both creatures were so maimed that they retreated to their lairs to "lick" their wounds and fell into a prolonged "hibernation."

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If my memories were correct, the battle had taken place about a month ago, and until the Demonic Invasion itself, the monsters didn't show up again. In any case, when I was in these parts during the Last Cycle, none of them made their presence known.

Of course, the memory of the future was not flawless—I had already realized this more than once. But earthlings didn't participate in that battle, meaning there were no prerequisites for changing this branch of events. Everything was supposed to repeat itself. Supposed to… Unless I'd miscalculated again.

So, I let Gatya go and continued on my own. From where we parted, it was about thirty kilometers to the first landmark preserved in my memory. On solid ground, I would have covered this distance in a couple of hours—leisurely, with breaks. But here, there was neither solid ground nor even the most rundown roads or paths.

I'd been wandering through these Da'Nnan's swamps for three days now, like a mouse in a maze. Everything around seemed deliberately designed to throw you off course: identical, seemingly endless thickets, roots twisted like snakes, slimy hummocks floating in the fog... Each turn was a reflection of the last. It was hard to tell if I was moving forward or returning to a spot I'd already been in. Everything blurred into one: gray, viscous, nauseatingly similar to what I'd seen a thousand times.

The weather only made things worse. The sky was covered with heavy leaden clouds, from which endlessly poured... not rain, but all-pervasive dampness that seeped under my cloak, into my skin, into my thoughts. Navigating by the stars was out of the question due to the low clouds. Even Echolocation and the Totem of Pure Step no longer always helped—every step was a struggle, and every direction seemed equally wrong. Any hummock or patch of relative dryness, by the third day of this journey, felt like a divine blessing.

Back on Earth, in one episode of "Man vs. Wild," I had heard Bear Grylls talk about how a team of American special forces—the elite Navy Seals—landed on the coast of Nicaragua. They landed in mangrove thickets. And it all ended with this trained and heavily armed unit advancing only about ten kilometers from the shore, and then... Either they requested evacuation or surrendered to local guerrillas. Maybe it was just a soldier's tale, but right now, I completely understood those Navy Seals.

"Honestly, I'd surrender to someone too," I muttered, echoing my thoughts and running my finger along the blade of the First Feather. "To whoever promises a warm room with a fireplace... and a change of dry underwear!"

Taking a small sip of clean water from the second-to-last flask, I wrung out my footcloths and tried to dry them using household magic. Water had to be conserved. Unfortunately, the filtration spell I learned from Wong couldn't handle the swampy sludge found at every step here: the stench, swarms of tiny creatures inhabiting even a drop of the murky liquid, and the greasy rainbow sheens on the surface reduced the effectiveness of the magical filter, if not to zero, then to a level dangerously close to it.

The entire journey could have turned into a nightmare if not for one unexpected discovery: the Shroud of the Hidden Heart aura granted at Seguna's altar, for some reason, repelled insects. It was as if I became invisible to them, an intangible shadow they couldn't bite. Here, in the heart of the swamp, bloodsucking creatures were everywhere—from annoying, ear-buzzing mosquitoes to translucent things resembling flying jellyfish with pulsating poison sacs instead of stingers. If one of those brushed your skin, the itch would spiral into ceaseless madness, driving you to shivers. And that was the best-case scenario, without hallucinations and fever. You'd be scratching for no less than two days, provided you were lucky enough to avoid poisoning.

Besides, my journey was significantly eased by having Gatya accompany me for a while. The scout girl would spot potential predators in time and quietly change our route, so we didn't have to fend off anything with three rows of teeth and chitinous legs. And when she left, I had already ventured into the hunting grounds of two Great Monsters. Paradoxically, this played to my advantage. Most of the large and truly dangerous creatures, capable of easily snapping up an Opal-ranked traveler, stayed away from these places to avoid becoming someone else's breakfast themselves.

"By the way," I said to the First Feather, having dried my footwraps and now working on my boots, as if it could really understand what I my words, "if Morpheus had wandered into these parts instead of me, he probably would have guessed about the hidden altars of the Night Sister nearby without any 'memory of the future.' Just look: two Great Monsters in a relatively small area. And Seguna is also called the Mistress of Monsters. And for good reason. Near her altars, monsters grow and develop much faster than usual."

Noticing a murky drop on the blade, I carefully wiped it off with a dry cloth, then swung the First Feather in the air and continued talking to myself:

"If we add what I heard from Gatya... She said their tribe was once much larger and controlled vast lands. But then something happened—something that local legends omit, or it simply has been forgotten—and their former prosperity fizzled out."

Returning Katashi's firstborn to my lap, I pondered for a moment, then spoke again:

"It's quite possible that Gatya's tribe lost their sacred relic. And that's precisely what led to their decline. Add to that the respect they show towards the Night Sister in their settlement. Also, the fact that Gatya herself, it seems, if not possessing an Affinity with Shadows, at least knows one shadow spell. I noticed this during our journey together when she once let her guard down and used Shadow Sense. And there's more: the village elder mentioned that she is the granddaughter of the last great shamaness of their tribe. And that shamaness was known as Whispering in the Twilight."

Letting out a heavy sigh, I brushed away the cold fog approaching my very nose:

"Knowing Morpheus, I'm sure he would have pieced all this together and reached a definite conclusion. So, First Feather, remind me: when I see him, be extremely cautious. Not a single unnecessary word. This man can get to the truth from a single stray remark, as if he knew where to dig from the start."

Having dried off somewhat, I put the First Feather back in its case and secured it to my belt. Then, I pondered for a while whether to stay on this relatively dry island for the night or to continue on right away. Of course, moving in the dark involved additional risks. But on the other hand, night was the time when shadow spells worked noticeably better.

Having made my decision, I quietly cursed, blaming myself for excessive recklessness, drank a stamina-restoring potion, and, once its effects began to be felt in my body, put my shoes back on. I unwound the rope wrapped around the totem bought in Rotten Hoof and, with a swing, threw the scanning artifact into the fog about ten meters ahead.

Crouching at the edge of the stagnant mire, I sent a directed wave of Echolocation towards the flung totem and waited for the return signal. Then, I wound back the rope and repeated the procedure twice more, "feeling out" a relatively safe path for at least thirty steps.

Thus, I made my way. Covered by the Shroud of the Hidden Heart and Shadow Cloak, constantly maintaining the aura of Perception, I carved my path through the treacherous mire step by step.

Thirty steps forward—throw the totem, wait for the response, analyze, move on. And again. And again. And again.

Due to the dense clouds and the cold fog swirling everywhere, it was impossible to determine the time even approximately. No moon, no stars—just a gray haze hanging in the air. I had no idea how long my journey lasted that night, how much of it I walked, and how much I literally had to crawl through.

It felt like this journey would never end. Only the stubbornness developed over the years of my sports career and the knowledge that the lost altars were nearby pushed me forward. Though, in these conditions, the concept of "nearby" became quite relative. Here, you could wander in circles for days on end in a single square kilometer—and not even notice.

Periodically, I stopped to summon Shadow Player. As I had noticed earlier, when this spell was activated, the shadows began to behave strangely—jerkily, nervously, as if trying to point something out. The closer I got to Seguna's relic, the more pronounced this behavior became.

At some point, almost at the limit of my strength, when I was searching not so much for the altars as for a patch of dry land to rest, I summoned the Player again. And then, the shadows started to dart around with increasing urgency, twitching and jerking as if being pulled in one specific direction.

After moving for another hour—if it could even be called an hour and movement—I felt this "something" myself. The aura of the Shroud of the Hidden Heart seemed to stretch forward, as if it sensed a call and reached out to it, to something still hidden from view but already near.

Obeying this call, I stepped onto a large—by local standards—island elevated almost a meter above the swamps, which for these marshes was practically an Everest. The ground underfoot turned out to be unusually dry, and the entire shoreline of the island was encircled by a continuous wall of thorny shrubs—fused, dense, like a living fence, deliberately grown by an experienced gardener.

Long ago, this living fence was complemented by protective magic, and its echoes could still be felt—a faint residue of power hanging in the air. The magical background quivered like a memory, like the ghostly trace of a long-faded flame. If not for my heightened sensitivity to Shadows, I wouldn't have noticed this residual aura at all.

Gripping Striking Whisper more comfortably, I imbued the spear's blade with the power of Light and, without overthinking it, enhanced myself with Bull's Strength and hacked a path through the thorny thicket. The wall of shrubs parted reluctantly, with a cracking sound, and each strike required my full strength. As soon as I took a step forward, the mist receded—as if the very air was afraid to approach what lay behind the green barrier.

I knew what I would see. Memories from the Last Cycle surfaced clearly and without distortion.

On a small island raised above the endless swamps stood a house. Or rather, what was left of it. The long-sagging roof, as if tired, lay on the remnants of the walls, seemingly forever bowed. One wall was completely missing—it looked as if it had been torn out, brutally and violently. Another was sliced diagonally, as if by a knife, and thrown aside, now resting half-buried in the ground, ten steps from the foundation. In the doorway, where a door once was, blackened boards creaked in the wind—rotten, twisted by time, like forgotten symbols of an old musical score. All that remained of the windows were empty, gaping holes, with darkness swirling inside.

This place looked like a wound that hadn't healed since it was inflicted. The house, once a shelter for a forgotten alchemist of the Heroic Coil, now seemed a dead shell—yet not completely abandoned.

Because the Shadow here… breathed.

[1] Translator's note: Rotten Hoof here is a literal translation, but what is meant is most likely not a hoof, but a hoofprint filled with spoiled swamp water. Then again, the majority of the original's readers probably understand it literally as well.