As my efforts to develop teamwork among the giants had yet to succeed, settling them was a bit of a challenge. I had continuously nudged them along with a combination of their own, innate desire to roam and find a place to settle and Mind Magic, keeping them interested in travelling and occasionally pushing the different giants to stumble across something interesting to them until we finally got to where I wanted them to go.

Into the foothills of the Alaskan Mountains, an area of stark contrasts in the landscape. Large parts of the area we were wandering in were just like the landscape we had been in for weeks, or even months, endless pine forests, with very little change in the trees that struggled for survival. During those months, almost since we entered Canada, the primary change in those forests had been the continued decline in deciduous trees until only coniferous trees remained here in the north. Additionally, those same trees hadn't been able to grow as large, with many of the trees in central Canada big enough to tower over the vast majority of trees from before the change. Here, however, the trees were far from that size, though I wasn't able to compare them to their counterparts from before the change, so maybe these trees had grown, too. As things were, the trees were standing about twice as tall as my giants, somewhere in the twenty-foot range. Not all of them, but the vast majority did, which was good enough for me.

But the trees were only one part of the contrasting landscape. Then, there were the many marshy meadows and swamps around the numerous streams coming down from the mountains. These were relatively boring and something to be avoided on general principle if one were a giant, trying to suck the unsuspecting down into a muddy quagmire to either drown or fall over from exhaustion and become easy prey for some of the things lurking within. And the change had been good to these marshy swamps, at least if one was a predator lurking within them. I was willing to bet quite a bit that these monsters hadn't been like that before the change, not unless Alaska had somehow become the Australia of the Northern Hemisphere. The place where nature dumped all the creatures that were far too dangerous for other parts of the world, or simply too strange to survive elsewhere, making it a very, very weird and decidedly deadly place.

For the strange swamps of Alaska, that meant, amongst other things, the return of a familiar creature, at least familiar to me. Back on Mundus, when we delved into that dungeon below a glacier, we had come across the Querder, a strange, worm-like creature with far too many teeth for comfort. These very things, including the name, were living in these swamps, likely always waiting for some unsuspecting leg to sink into the boggy ground and drill into them. I had tested things with a few chunks of Ice and, as it turned out, a Querder could drill through a chunk of Hard Ice the size of my thigh in about ten seconds flat. Given that Hard Ice had about the same consistency as bone, to say nothing of flesh, I really didn't want to know what they would do to legs, giant or not.

Then there were other creatures in those swamps, too. Armoured bugs somewhat similar to trilobites in shape, with strong shells and viciously sharp claws, poisonous centipedes that could use their many legs to move at incredible speeds and many other monsters I wanted nothing to do with, all happily living in the soggy ground, feeding on each other or anything unlucky enough to stumble into their territory. Even moose and bears weren't spared from the swamps and took a great deal of care to avoid them, from what I could see. I was curious what would happen during winter, as I couldn't imagine the swamp not freezing over, but I'd have to wait and see.

The third type of terrain we came across was possibly the strangest and least hostile, if only because there was nothing there to be hostile. I was fairly certain that landslides or glacial movement had created areas like these by pushing tons of rocks and gravel in their path, spreading them out and burying all vegetation, leaving nothing but a dead landscape until life could reestablish itself over a few years. For now, these dead zones were just that, filled with sand, gravel and smelling of regret, with nothing attracting wildlife to them. Maybe there was something under the surface. I might have to investigate eventually, but for now, they were dead and, amusingly, safe, unless you lost your footing and took a tumble.

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To settle the giants into this area was a bit of a challenge. Not only did I need to make sure they wouldn't accidentally get themselves killed in the swamps, I also wanted to have them live close enough together so they would be able to, well, socialise and build a society in the future. For now, that was a pipedream, but I was hoping it wouldn't remain one. Eventually, I wanted the different giants to work together, reaping the benefits of division of labour and specialisation brought with it.

So, I needed a forested area large enough to give them all their own space, which was something I hadn't managed to find. But I had found two areas that would work for half of them, separated by a deadzone filled with gravel and sand.

With that in mind, I split the giants into two groups, each with five giants, two males and three females each. I tried to keep the budding specialities separated, too, and did my best to push and prod the giants into settling in a predictable pattern, with the males living as far from one another as possible. It wasn't a perfect solution, but my previous observations had shown that a meeting between a male and a female had a chance to be resolved without serious damage to either party. In contrast, a meeting between two males or two females was a lot more troublesome. This was to be expected in a sexually reproducing species, unless the species had habits similar to those of the famous Black Widows, with females eating the males after mating.

Finding suitable spots for the different giants was a lot easier for me than it would be for them, especially as I was able to help things along. If there was no natural cave where I wanted one of the giants to settle, well, it took me about an hour to have one miraculously appear in just the right spot. If I were feeling generous, the cave might even have a natural chimney or some other completely coincidental feature that made it particularly suitable for habitation. Not that the giants had the ability to realise that these caves were about as natural as the average road, but that didn't settle them all.

Just about half of them got caves; the others had to make do and build their own shelters. It just happened that those who had to build their own shelters were the ones with better building skills, and they just, entirely coincidentally of course, managed to find other beneficial things on their path. I only had to intervene and position those things for three of the four builders; the last one was actually lucky and came across a large node of flintstone in a shallow river bed, giving her something to work with.

Hopefully, that giantess would learn how to make tools from flintstone. Something like spearheads, arrowheads or even simple axes could be made, though I wasn't sure how well the relatively brittle flintstone would interact with the strength of a giant. The few books I could draw knowledge from all assumed human levels of strength, not those enhanced by the system and certainly not that of a humanoid the size of a small house.

But, at the end of the day, the giants were settled down in their territories, and after observing them for a few days, it certainly looked like they were willing to stay here. There was a fair amount of food to be found, especially if they braved one of the wetland areas nearby. Luckily, it wasn't a real swamp with the numerous dangers that entailed, just a very wet meadow, irrigated by a nearby river. That river was also filled with a good number of fish, and no obvious large predators were lurking in the shallow water, meaning the giants would hopefully be able to use it. If not, they would have to get their water from one of the countless small brooks coming out of the mountains, providing more than enough water for the giants and the forests they were now living in.

Once everything was prepared, I could only nod to myself, knowing that I had done my best for the giants. They had their lessons, and I might even be able to keep contacting them from afar thanks to the time I had spent influencing their minds and a small shrine I had set up underneath the moon-like deadzone separating the forests I had used to house them.

I wasn't sure if it would work, but at the end of the day, it didn't matter. I had a date with a Nexus and, by now, I wasn't willing to wait any longer. I was even tempted to simply spread my wings and fly into the mountains, but I refrained, not wanting to take a stupid risk and fail just a day or three from my destination and destiny.

No, it was time to climb the Alaskan Mountains and find out just where the Nexus hid within them. I really couldn't wait.

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