Emp advanced with at a good pace even if his leg was still hurting him. It had a pretty ugly look to it now but he had no idea of what to do with it besides to let it be. He traveled eight more days before reaching the lake. In those eight days he saw all manners of incredible things and got soaked by the rain many times.

For example, he saw a hill that looked a lot like a rolling wave and formed some kind of overhang over the road. It was an ideal place to protect yourself from the rain and rest but there wasn't much greenery growing under it.

Of course, he saw many branching paths going left and right, some clearly more used than others. He kept going on the main road like Chinui had told him to do.

Once the road got to a river again, he saw the first bridge of his life. It was very large and Emp thought that it was probably used a lot. Since the river here was much larger and deeper than the one on the other side of the mountain, that bridge was very useful. Large tree trunks were used as pillars to keep it above the water, thick boards were tightly nailed together to form the path and there was even a sturdy railing. The rail had all the spaces between its posts filled with more wood and was so thick Emp couldn't wrap his fingers around it. At each end of the bridge, a lamp stood above the last post of the railings. Even in the afternoon, when Emp passed on the bridge, the lamps were lit. He wondered who took care of them but since there were no houses nearby, the answer remained a mystery.

Aside from interesting scenery, he also saw more creatures. Every day since got on that side of the mountains, it seemed, he came across a new one. A big bird, orange and green with a human head flew above him. Twenty or so small grey-skinned men with strangely long faces and wearing skins watched him pass from the top of a nearby hill. He came near a field covered in rabbit sized rocks with faces carved on each of them. They turned on themselves to always look his way as he passed by.

On the other side of the river, he saw a group of four birds bigger and larger than him while he was filling his canteen. They seemed viscous, dripping a foul pinkish brown liquid from the tip of their wings. They had a long and curved crystal beak they held up high as they paraded in front of the one with the lightest pink color. Then, a giant pincer came out of the river at lightning speed and caught one of the birds right by the midsection and brought it back into the river easily, scattering the rest. If the birds were bigger than him and the pincer had been large enough to grab one of them, how big was the thing to which it belonged? Emp quickly got back to the road and chose to walk a little further away from the river. If he had known such a thing lived in the river beforehand, he wouldn't have filled his canteen here.

He also saw around fifteen giant ants with the heads and legs of a deer instead of their own. He didn't go near them either.

He started to encounter actual people as well. They traveled in large groups of at least ten wagons. They were always escorted by a large amount of armed people, sometimes riding horses. The wagons were always covered by cloth, forbidding him from seeing what was inside of them. Emp was very curious to see but, not enough to brave the guards. The majority of the time, they stayed on guard against him and he had to step aside from the road to let them go by.

Most of them wore swords or bows but some had more exotic things like a pick or a trident. Since they weren't wearing any uniforms and all of them had their own set of strange armor, Emp could easily guess that they weren't soldiers. Maybe they were mercenaries, or death seekers. Sometimes, one of them would come to him to talk, probably to ask him some questions but Emp didn't understand any of them.

When he had met Space, he had wondered if he needed to know another language. Now he was certain, it was really frustrating to not understand what everyone was saying. His interlocutor always gave up quickly in front of the clueless Emp and the caravan went by without minding him too much. The only thing he was able to confirm was that his clothes weren't that strange compared to them all.

And then, the day finally came where he was able to see a big mass of water at the end of the river. It was the bloody lynx lake. From the road, looking towards the lake, he could see water and only water until he could see no more. If he had not been sure it was a lake, he could have believed that the water went on forever.

A misty fog rolled lightly above the lake pushed here and there by the wind giving the sky a grayer and grayer tint the lowed you looked towards the horizon, stopping him from witnessing the true size of it all. It was surely a paradise for the fishes. The lake was so vast, it was impossible for them to complain about their living space.

The pincer had vanished from his mind long ago and Emp left the road to walk on the rugged beach. Once his feet touched the water brought by the waves, he bent himself to grasp some water in his hands. This wasn't the same water than the water he had gathered in the same way on the other side of the mountains but, however, it looked the same. The sparkling was missing because of the mist but aside from that, it was the same. Would the water on the other side end up in the same kind of place as the water over here? There were hundreds of millions of droplets here, reunited after a glorious trip through mountains, swamps and forested rivers. They now all rested together in the lake, waiting for the fog to take them. It was pretty but Emp also found it a little sad.

After all those efforts, the only thing left for that water to do was to calmly await it's end in a shroud of grey mist. Were the waves that attacked the beach nonstop a last ditch effort for the water to escape its fate or only a way to pass the monotonous time they had on the lake? Wasn't the trip better than the destination? If Emp was like a droplet of water following the river, would becoming an emperor be his lake?

Maybe he should stretch the trip as much as possible. He felt scared of the silence ruling over the lake. It was not the same silence as the one he remembered from the serene clearing nor was it the agonizing silence that oppressed the surroundings of the woodland horror. It was only an empty silence, the silence of the end. He had the wrong question when he stood in the river.

If the two rivers could join like that, he had asked himself, could they part again later? If that was the case, how did the water droplets know which of the two branches they belonged to?

Now he wondered, how was he to know were those branches were going? How could he choose the one that didn't end up in the lake?

Emp took a deep breath and hit the road. It was too early to think about it now, he was still at the start. He had plenty of time to figure out which way to go. However much he would think about it now, he wouldn't find an answer. Better get back on the road instead and let the current bring him further.

Later that day, the rain finally decided to fall, drenching him and clearing some of the fog. Now that his vision wasn't hampered anymore, he could see much further and truly appreciate the vastness of this place.

It wasn't only the first time he saw that much water, it was also the first time he saw such a big area without any trees. Even around the lake, they had cut down all the trees to grow fields. They spread far and wide around the lake, circling dozens of watchtowers as if it was a second lake grown out of wheat and potatoes. Around it all, many groups of twenty soldiers in armor patrolled to protect the slaves working there and the harvest they collected.

Here, at the end of the furthest fields from town, was the most dangerous place to work. If a monster got out from the woods, they would be the firsts in line to die. Chinui had explained it to him, when a monster appeared, the nearest watch tower had to light an alarm fire. The nearest soldiers would see it and rush to repel or kill the creature but often, by the time they got there, at least one worker had died.

To account for that, the fields had been classified in order of importance. The nearer it was to the city, the more the crops grown there was valuable to it, leaving the less valuable crops further to absorb most of the troubles. In the same manner, the nearer you got to the protective walls of the town, the less slaves there was, replaced by paid workers. This way, the nearer to town the field was, the more profitable and safe it was.

The road Emp followed passed through the fields in a mostly straight line making it so that he lost the sight of the lake because of the tall crops. He would soon be into town.