It was a change too sudden to go by unnoticed. As if they had all lived in the middle of the night and suddenly the sun stood at its highest point, the cruise entered the natural Illusion Barrier that surrounded the Atlantic Fuse.

John had imagined leylines to look something like they did in World of Warcaft, just massive torrents of blue and purple, simply said arcane, energy ripping through the ocean. What he was presented with was much, much more than that.

It looked like someone had taken the polar lights from the sky and drowned them in the sea. The whole colour spectrum was shifting along a wide line with unclear borders. Constantly changing in their position, but never straying too far away from the tectonic gap, they were much, much bigger than their arctic sky counterpart, having their base somewhere on the seafloor and reaching high above the unnaturally still ocean water in a steady rise from the rim of the barrier, where the normal ocean outside and the still body seemingly met in dissonant isolation.

When there was a barrier created on some body of water, the thusly copied water kept whatever kinetic energy its original had and continued waving like normal until that would have run out. On board of the ship, with its constantly moving its own barrier, there had been no visible difference. Now that they were inside a barrier that had been up for some millennia, that factor was completely lost. There was still some movement, presumably from some monsters underneath the surface.

“I wonder if it is possible to follow a leyline upstream,” John mumbled; he and everyone else were standing on the flat roof of their apartment to get the best view possible. The one they saw, the northern leyline feeding in from Great Britain, Iceland, Greenland and Scandinavia (to name the most important or completely affected places), vanished under the waves just at the edge of it all.

“Yes and no,” Metra answered for him. She knew this, with her origins in modern day Iraq, she practically was created on one. “You can track the leyline no problem, but the natural barrier sinks underneath the sea or the ground, barring a few exceptions like these fusing points, making accessing it a giant headache that is absolutely not worth it, with the energy being unusable for humans and all that. Monsters spawn just as well without the need to unearth them.”

“I see,” John nodded and directed his attention south to look at the actual thing that made this place so special.

The Atlantic Fuse was… yes, what was it? A mountain range of light, that was the easiest description, yet way too simple to truly encompass what he saw. It had a roughly triangular base and reached several kilometres into the sky, with its peak being most definitely in the western half, where the two leylines crashed into each other. Like any other mountain range, the highest peak was by far not the only one, but unlike those, these were all shifting in a less than natural way.

The whole thing looked like it was made out of an endless number of polygons that were indecisive on their relationship with their size and corner positions on all three dimensions. The surfaces of these triangles reminded John of soap bubbles: smooth, translucent but breaking down the light spectrum inside. That last attribute had been kicked into overdrive, and to top the colour fest off, the whole thing was glowing on its own, shimmering in an aura of dispersing polar lights.

From its highest point, it slanted downwards, with several lower peaks making it more of a trend rather than a clear decline. Eventually, the last polygon touched the water, giving way to another leyline that was at least three times as wide and colour intensive as the northern line.

John had an inkling that the second leyline, feeding in the Faith from Latin and the eastern South America, as well as West Africa, had a bit more oomph behind it. The bigger number of people, that had their thought power dripping into that stream, had to have some influence. Or did it? John actually had no idea how this whole network was functioning globally. If the whole northern rim of the Eurasian plate was one stream in one direction, this leyline would also be including energy from Russia and reach all the way to northern Japan. What was Remus’ design, if there was one?

He presented the question to Metra. “I have no idea,” she answered. “In the first place, these things are not steady. Over the decades they shift according to some sort of balance. The only thing we know is that it all ends somewhere around Sicily. The power just clashes and is neutralized… or at least that’s what everyone told me before Romulus told me there is a giant thing guzzling it all up.”

“Why wasn’t that your first theory?” John asked; this amount of energy just vanishing sounded illogical.

“Because everyone was in agreement that there is no way anything or anyone could handle this amount of power, especially seeing how not even Romulus can get his hands on it,” Metra told him. “There were a few people that thought Gaia may have been claiming all of that, but there was no evidence to back that up. Guess they were right after all.”

“I see,” John hummed. So, chances were there was no greater design to it. Maybe, much like rivers forming, the energy had just flowed along the path of least resistance. That was a way more satisfying explanation than any other. There was no way, no matter what kind of sociopathic genius he had been, that Remus knew the shape of the entire globe and everything in the crust that far back in the past. That would have been way too scary a mind and highly improbable.

As was announced, they were now beginning their slow circle around the thing. To John’s surprise, they were not keeping to the absolute edge, where they could pass over the leylines, but were instead heading further in on a diagonal course. They were heading directly for a part of the polar lights that was high enough to encapsulate the whole ship.

“Th-that’s safe, right?” Gnome asked in a mild panic. “Right?!”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Metra, the current expert for these things, waved off with a bored yawn. “As I said, the energy is vast, but we can’t interact with it. If you want to see something interesting, keep an eye on Nia though.”

With that announcement, they went silent and waited. Then they started talking again and waited. They were sailing at a low speed over not short distances. John eventually suggested they take this to the jacuzzi and just have fun as they waited.

“I don’t think just sitting around out of your battle garment is wise,” Maximillian was sitting underneath an umbrella to not get roasted by the sun. By the amount of water he consumed, it was pretty clear that he was still feeling way too hot.

John, in the meanwhile, felt great where he was. Basically, everyone in his harem was with him in the jacuzzi, in their individual bathing suits.

“Think for a second, you crown-wearing shithead,” Eliza swore at him, “who, in this tub, needs fucking battle garments?!” The answer was rather simple. The elementals were out, Eliza was out, so were Aclysia and Metra, leaving only John and Rave.

That was also Maximillian’s answer, pointing at the two of them sitting as close together as two people could. “I can just pull stuff out of my inventory,” John reminded the king. “If I want to change clothes, its two clicks away.”

“…Fair enough,” Maximillian said and looked at the last person here.

“I won’t need a long time either,” Rave said, just grabbing her sneakers she had placed nearby. Immediately the things started to become semi-liquid and spread over her arm like a symbiote from Spiderman. While formed like sneakers, the only thing the twin crystals inside those shoes needed to que transformation was skin contact to feel the intent of being worn as a battlesuit by the person they were bound to. “See?”

“You all have way too convenient stuff,” the gravity mage declared.

Hawpler tremored about in a way that sounded like it was laughter. “All you need to do is get yourself your own skin-tight outfit. Your female fans will love it.”

Thirty minutes passed as they talked about how that was a terrible idea all around, then about if Maximillian even had female fans, then about if John had any. That was, at least according to the fact that the king had a subreddit and the Gamer didn’t, a pretty clear thing. The talks slithered into other such unimportant directions. John directed his attention towards Undine every now and again, but the ocean elemental was still happily swimming around in her natural habitat.

Interestingly enough, she was not alone. There was a myriad of small, fishlike monsters that lived around the shifting spectrum of light rising from the bottom of the sea. There were even structures, much like coral reefs, extending far down towards the distant depths. Some older, more sophisticated or just plain different monsters must have left those there.

A school of Orcas was swimming by, encircling the swarm, and began feeding. It seemed every place began developing an ecosystem if left alone long enough, even one where a supernatural fusion point of mind-power caused random monstrosities to spawn. As Amalia had promised, however, it didn’t seem like anything truly dangerous was around. Safe for the Orcas, who actually reached a top level of 70 as John had found out by checking at an opportune moment, but those seemed to understand that messing with Undine would have had some unwanted consequences. Aside from some playful movements, they stayed away.

‘I should consider getting something else to possess,’ John thought as he sent Jack flying high to observe the situation at large. ‘A sparrow is usable in public, so Jack still has his clear uses, but underwater he falls a bit flat. Maybe I should get some sort of hover enchanted orb? That should be able to operate under water.’

As he pondered some more about that, the nose of the ship touched the light and… nothing happened. Despite Metra’s assurance he had expected some sort of thing to happen. Like a bolt of lightning around the impact site or something else to that dramatic effect. Instead he was greeted by the literal and complete uncaring of the leyline about their existence. It cared so little, in fact, that the light just streamed through the cruise ship itself as if it was an ephemeral object.

John preserved some inhibitions until he saw, through Jack’s eyes, people getting engulfed by the light without any drawbacks. ‘This really is stray energy we can’t do anything with, huh?’ John thought as it came closer and closer to them inside the jacuzzi.

It was quite pretty, being surrounded by a rainbow on all sides, but after the two dances of yesterday, it didn’t have quite the same impact. It was just another lightshow, a natural one with an impressive source, but still, just another lightshow. He felt like he was seeing an original after having already enjoyed perfect copies, like playing the Dota mod on Warcraft 3 after playing League of Legends for a while. Sure, it still was pretty awesome, sure, it was unique, and sure, there were certain things this natural thing did better, but it really wasn’t impressive enough to seek out. In a weird way, John would have preferred to be watching it from a distance again, at least then it was a unique sight.

Speaking of unique sight, following the berserker babe’s earlier comment, he looked at Nia. Where the light normally just kept streaming upwards no matter what was in the way, around the blank it bent as to not touch her. It looked like she was spun into some sort of cocoon or if she was inside an upside-down jellyfish.

There was a slight bit of light that did go through her nonetheless and turned black and white in a sea of rainbows in response. Interested, Nia, sitting inside the jacuzzi in her dress, stretched out her hand. The light shunned away wherever she moved, even when she started flailing with an empty expression.

That show made it funny to watch, but if she had just sat still, it would have been unsettling to say the least.

Eventually the light started to thin and the nose of the ship pushed out, much to Rave’s dismay. Unsurprisingly, she liked whatever lightshow they could get. “Can we bribe the captain to play some really loud techno music in the second one?” she asked as the end of the experiment was quickly approaching.

“Theoretically, he does owe us,” John responded, then jumped as a sudden flood of panic touched his spirit. Not just some of it, no short spike like someone dropping his phone, more like someone being attacked by a beehive. The other elementals with him had a similar reaction.

They all turned inwards to see what was happening to Undine.