Void between civilization

The areas between villages, towns and cities are mostly avoided of settlements, in most cases it's only hunters and the very brave farmer that elects to live away from the protection that gathering together provides against both nature and bandits.
An old explorer once is said to have described settlements as small islands in the great void that are the nature between them. The islands of civilization vary in size depending on how many of them are clustered together and how big they are, as the bigger the settlement is the better it is to patrol its surroundings further out from the settlement. Out beyond the range of the patrols, the wild nature begins, with only the bravest of people wanting to live there, this is mostly hunters and the odd brave hermit.
The areas between the settlements are where the dangerous wildlife live, anything from wolves to more mystical creatures, some even say that the dragons otherwise only known from ancient history hide out in the void between settlements, but this has been disputed by most people as there would be more evidence of them out there other than the dead dragon that adventures sometimes run into. like the one that was found outside the small village of Swanmeay by Azran and Ira that were found to be spreading sickness to the local village but were taken care of by burning the corpse.
Its said that back in time, the void between the settlements were smaller or at least safer to traverse, but with the fall of the Ancient Empire and the following centuries of near constant warfare, with far more settlements being destroyed than were being founded, the void grew and some of the creatures living there even begame bolder or developed a taste for humans having feasted on the battlefields and started to attack settlements that had not been touched by the wars.