When Hermes told me that I should jump in the water where Charon pointed to me, I sincerely thought that this guy could only be kidding. The method for transmigrating is jumping in the Styx River?
I expressed, as politely as I could, that it seemed too bizarre that such a thing would work. Charon himself informed me that swimming in those waters will erase my memories. Hermes said that I should not worry, Styx is one of the more mysterious things that exists in all divine realms, only Charon knows how to navigate there and that from that river I could go anywhere, literally. His exact words were:
"All Creation is connected in the Styx. No exceptions."
I decided that at this point I should accept everything he said to me, regardless of how far-fetched something appeared. Furthermore, according to his instructions, this small piece of fabric would serve as a reference to Midgard. Anybody that dives in the Styx River would be transported to somewhere, usually to some random divine realms, most of the time to Tartarus. Yet, one could tinker a bit, gods can use their power to create a one-time use divine compass that the River would consume to transport someone to a specific realm.
In addition, Hermes explained that mortal souls are forbidden to return as transmigrates to their original realm. I wondered if I could return to Earth, but his explanation shattered my hopes. Even though, he simply said that the Styx way is not the only way, but it is the "correct" one. I should not worry presently about this, but perhaps one day I could travel back by myself.
So, after all, here I was on the ferry with Charon. So, I jumped at the place suggested by my guide. The waters were cold, not freezing, but far from pleasant. The first thing that I noticed, I was not soaked, and a small and thin aura encompassed all my body, I find that perk quite nice. I was worried about arriving at my destination drenched.
I did not need to breathe, so I was simply falling towards the river bottom. The second thing I noticed, there was no bottom. I looked for some reference, but I fell as I was accelerating towards pitless darkness. Suddenly, I felt as if the gravity itself had its direction reversed, my internal organs were juggling and I felt as if my head was spinning too fast. My conscience started to fade away…
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"Cough, Cough" I was completely soaked on a river's shore. I felt a disturbing feeling with my body, I was getting dizzy, I tried to cough again, then a lot of water went out of my lungs. I almost have drowned!
My breathing was very irregular, as if it were forcing its way on me. Now, I remembered, the dissonance between soul and body. As a soul, I quickly learned that I did not need to breather. However, I have a body now, thus I am required to have oxygen filling my lungs.
I do not know how I transformed from soul to body, but apparently Styx had done its magic. I no longer see Charon's ferry nor the incredible sky. The place that I arrived is a green forest, the temperate climate one, and the current season was probably the end of the winter beginning of spring. This shore was relative small, there were several rocks on the river that I came from…
I am ashamed, calling river it is too grandstanding it. It is a small stream of water, evaluating it from its "shore", it was not possible for an adult to drown there. I am not going back there, but its clear waters revealed that it was shallow. I could even see a few fishes there.
The Styx just transferred me somewhere close to my original destination, the village of Wheatstone. There I would need to establish myself and start to enrich this world by using all my previous and newly granted knowledge. Moreover, I should prevent its destruction from some "adversary" that I could not know, or otherwise I would empower them even more.
Pretty simple and easy. Clearer as this shallow stream. Well, first I need to get these drenched clothes from me, I have a new satchel on my waist and was using a typical medieval trader outfit. Leather boots, jacket, and pants and linen cloth for underwear, my small pouch was also made of leather and inside of it there were…
Oh, such a generous god, three iron and one silver coins. A map that resembled a leather rag that was not destroyed by the water, and nothing else. Nice, I was thinking this was starting to become some kind of Survival Transmigrating show, Hermes put significant effort here. Anyone could see that.
A map is a perfect thing to have, unless you lack any kind of directions and references, which meant that I basically lost. I could read it well because it was soaked as well. So, I decided to use my birthday suit and dry everything that I have in my possession.
In this last month, I learned how to use several basic level magics, creating water, fire, purifying food and water and some other minor conveniences. Including a drier magic, however using it while wearing the clothes was not very comfortable as you would get heated along your clothes. I could see Hercules face laughing hard when he put me against a small water elemental, and after my training session I tried to dry myself. Result: I got burned in three different places, one of them was a very personal area.
Lesson of that day: do not hurry, take your time and dry your clothes then cool them down. Thus, I got naked, put all my clothes and stuff on the ground and cast the dry magic. Arcane casting is "simple", it requires the use of mana, a kind of magic fuel, the visualization of the effect and how to bend reality to your will. Fortunately, as a former earthling and engineer graduate (despite my lack of professional experience in the field) I was confident in my basic physics knowledge. Hence, I merely needed to force the water molecules away from the stuff.
There are several ways to perform that, the most complex was calculating the position of each small drop of water and moving them away, quite hard. The simpler manner was to heat the water to evaporate it from the pieces of clothes.
Voilà, the simpler, the better. The moving water technique was quite interesting, but required an inhuman level of concentration. So my clothes were now hot, as I used mana to evaporate water, after being dried I used my magic again to cool down back the clothes.
Of course, heating molecule by molecule was even harder than moving then, so I supplied heat to all the clothes, as if I was an instantaneous drier machine. Oh gods, my linen clothes have shrunken.
Once again, I used my magic to stretch back the linen. And, finally, I wear everything back and could read my leather map. I sat down on a rock close to the shore and began my investigation to grasp where I was. The map covered the Therma Region, and Wheatstone was the southernmost village on that map, there was an indication to the south that it was going to another region. Assuming that I was dropped in the right region, I could only be at the east of the village.
The bad news was that the forest occupied a larger portion of undeveloped lands accounted for Wheatstone and no water stream or whatsoever river were signalled to be within this forest. I looked up and downstream of the stream, and it seemed that it was flowing for quite a distance, as both directions lead to the forest. The hardest part is that I did not know any of the direction. I think that because we are at the start of spring, in a temperate climate, the temperature would be a little hotter. According to Asclepius, the weather was very similar to the one I have known on Earth, four seasons, the greater the distance from the equator line the longer the day in summer and shorter in winter.
And the most important feature, this planet also spins towards the east as on Earth. So based on the shadow discrete movement, I have ascertained east and west. Nonetheless, it was not much useful, as the map did not have any reference point for inside the forest, only its borders.
After giving some thoughts looking at the map, I remembered that this region was most composed of plains in their developed fields. The water was going down, my map did not have mountains, but the Therma Region had some lakes surrounding the forest in the North. I assume that all water inside the forest goes there, this small river upstream is north, downstream south.
Unfortunately, arcane magic for foreseeing was not really my thing. As I have a strong physics background, my intuition towards the invisible thread of fate of the universe was bad, I avoided relying on in such random magic, as I called it the quacking school of magic. I remember that Athena found it very funny, and agreed with my sense, Asclepius did not have an opinion about and Hermes admonished me to not be prejudiced towards things that I "lacked profound comprehension".
Based on the sun's movement (ok, Midgard movements related to its sun), I knew that I arrived in the morning. So, I decided to venture myself toward the north, one of the shores of the lake connected to the roads that could take me to Wheatstone.
So after this trilling orientation experience, I started to journey in the forest for the rest of the day. I should not jinx it, but as far as I recall from my studies about this place, there should be few monsters here.