You're A Man!

You are a young strapping man laced in your newly bought leather armor, brandishing a steel sword in one hand and gripping a hide shield in the other as your buckles gleam with the little sunlight landing on their metal, straps wrapped around your sides to help keep it a tight fit, and add additional protection. You are determined to find the treasure and can see three good possible ways to take from here to start your search. There are others to be found, of course, but these three are the first that catch your eyes.

The first is a long line amongst a field of massive lily pads. They grow from the water with their roots hidden by the murky brown and lead off into the left, out of sight behind a few rows of sick willows and flanked on every side by stubborn reeds that somehow manage in this diseased water. Maybe toads or local plant life have moved the riches to another location or it simply landed with them. The lily pads could also make for a nice makeshift road to avoid getting your feet soaked, should they hold your weight.

The second is an old black cobblestone bridge reaching out of the muck to lead into the mouth of a collapsed stone ruin to your close right, vines lining the outer walls as the building stands from the dark layers of sludge and mud, the stonework managing to survive for this long with only a few missing bricks and many old cracks in the walls, a spire of night amongst the trees. Maybe natives carried it off inside or maybe it fell into the half sunken structure. And if not, an ancient ruin would be the perfect place to find loot.

And the last is a large clearing of shallow water, stretching deeper into the center of the swamp, right in front of you. It is devoid of trees, reeds, and life of any king more advanced than algae, patches of barron land sprinkled about to act as miniature islands. It might get your boots wet, but that is a small price to pay for the amount of gold that could be found. Maybe something in the water took it or maybe it sank below view. But if it isn't somewhere in the waters, getting to the center of the festering lagoon is still a good starting point, and it is so wide open that you could see the chest from anywhere if it rests in that area.