The Gate Traveler

At breakfast, Mahya said, “I think Al is right, and the gorge has a dungeon.” She stirred her porridge thoughtfully.

“How? It’s so close to settlements. Surely they would have discovered it long ago,” I questioned, frowning as I set my cup down.

“In the guild, they told me about a group of three gold badge adventurers who come once a season to clear the gorge of monsters,” Mahya explained, her eyes narrowing and sounding pissed. “I think they know about the dungeon and didn’t tell anyone to keep the resources for themselves.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, but it makes the most sense,” she replied, shaking her head slightly. “Higher mana levels and tainted mana are the perfect conditions for a dungeon to form. The chance that there isn’t a dungeon there is about five percent, and then it’s just a matter of time.”

“So, what do you want to do?”

“We need to go deeper into the gorge and check it out,” Mahya said firmly, meeting my gaze. “Luckily, it’s long and narrow, so we won’t have to search. If we keep going in, at some point, we’ll encounter the dungeon.”

“And what about the adventurers? They’re a gold badge, so they will be strong. And to be honest, I’m pretty okay with fighting monsters, but I don’t want to fight people and certainly not kill them,” I admitted, glancing around uneasily.

“Don’t worry,” Mahya reassured, waving her hand dismissively. “At the guild, they told me they come once a season, and the last time they were here was three or four breaths ago at the beginning of autumn.”

“What’s a breath?” I asked, puzzled.

“That’s what they call the ten days between days off,” Mahya replied, taking another bite of her breakfast.

“I thought it was called a cascade,” Al chimed in, looking up from his meal.

“That’s what they call it on the island. On the mainland, they call it a breath,” Mahya explained with a shrug.

Al and I exchanged a look, both of us shrugging in unison.

“Are they consistently using this entrance to the gorge?” Al asked, glancing over at Mahya.

“I think so,” Mahya replied.

"We ought to find another way into the gorge as a precaution,” Al suggested, pushing his plate aside.

“I can go up with the balloon and look,” Mahya offered.

“I have a better solution,” I interjected.

“What solution?” Mahya asked.

“I can hover and look.”

“I thought you had no control over your flight,” Mahya said.

“I have no control over moving; the wind is not cooperating. But I can go up and down without a problem.”

“So after breakfast, you’ll find us another entrance,” Mahya concluded, nodding in agreement.

I nodded back, and we continued to eat in companionable silence.

After we finished eating, I went outside and connected to the wind. I did it gradually to ensure everything worked here like it did in the valley, and it did. I slowly rose and looked around. There were enormous cliffs on both sides of the gorge that seemed complicated to navigate. I hovered about 200 meters above the ground and looked down at the scenery. There were patches of grass and moss on steep, jagged cliffs. I could see scattered rocks and vegetation around, and some spots showed signs of erosion. Trees with yellow leaves added some color to the scene. The gorge looked like a black scar running through the landscape. I couldn’t see inside the gorge, only the cliffs on either side.

I rose further and took out my binoculars. The gorge continued several kilometers into the distance in zigzags. From where we were, it continued for perhaps ten or fifteen kilometers into the distance, but because of the zigzags, it was at least three or four times longer inside. Cliffs lined both sides and also at the end. I used my most powerful binoculars and took another look. I couldn’t see any other entry point except where we were. High cliffs surrounded the area with steep rock walls leading into the gorge. Because of the darkness inside, I couldn’t accurately estimate their height, but based on what we saw from the inside, the rock walls were at least eighty to a hundred meters high.

After I got back down, I took out my strongest telephoto lens, hovered again, and took some pictures. The view was so primal that I couldn’t help myself. After I landed for the second time, I told Mahya and Al what I had seen. “Look for a place to put the house,” Mahya said.

“Why?” I asked.

“You don’t want to meet the adventurers. Although, from what I understand, it will take them an entire season to get back, we’d better not take any chances. We can go down to the gorge from there if you find a good place to put the house. It took us a day to clear maybe two or three kilometers, so the rest of the gorge will take time, and if we find a dungeon worth clearing multiple times, it will take even longer.”

“And how do you want to get down to the gorge? There is only one entrance, and it’s here.”

“We have miles of rope for that,” she said, patting me on the back. “Don’t worry, we’ll find a solution. Right now, find us a place to put the house.”

I hovered again and searched for a suitable spot, but couldn’t find any. After getting down, I told them, “I can’t find anything from here. We must be directly above a spot to see if it’s good. But since I can’t move, I can’t find one. We’ll need the balloon for that.”

“Before we go up in the balloon,” Mahya said, “I want to experiment with the house.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“The polluted trees at the entrance, do they have a lot of mana in them?”

“Yeah...”

“We should harvest and feed them to the house, but tell it not to filter the polluted mana but create monsters instead. I want to see if it will work, and I think it will. You told Al a lot of things there had polluted mana, so we should monsterize and crystallize all the useful stuff.”

“I don’t want to feed my house polluted mana. What if it gets infected or something?”

“I don’t think so. It’s based on an experiment Lis suggested, and I trust him.”

“He answered?” I exclaimed. “I checked the Archive almost every day, and there was nothing.”

“Yeah, he answered yesterday.”

I opened the Archive immediately and looked.

“He added you to the correspondence,” I told Al.

“He did?”

“Yes, look.”

Al opened the Archive, and a huge smile spread across his face.

Tr. LM “Inventor, Clueless, Hungry, Prince, Versailles.” Hello, my dear friends, Sorry for the delay in replying. Gafirebreatha and Viserrant, my dragon friends, took me to another dragon world through a Gate to visit a Magitech inventor. Until this meeting, I must confess that I was thinking too small. I’m currently staying with Hollankorasun, the inventor of Magitech, and we’re working together. While I teach him English and help him go through my collection of books from Earth, he teaches me dragon runes. I’m sure, knowing me, you can imagine how much I’m enjoying myself, but even multiplying that tenfold wouldn’t come close to my actual level of enjoyment. It’s so amazing to be a Traveler sometimes. Regarding your question about the book, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I hate doing it. I have experience with dungeon cores. I know that with a dungeon core from a well-established dungeon with three floors, you can build a magic circle that allows the core to absorb materials and expand or strengthen its connected structure. However, it can only do these two things, and there is a limit to the amount of materials it can absorb. Cores cannot absorb such a massive amount of materials, build a large house, or create technological devices. Fortunately, when we read or write fantasy, we can let our imaginations run wild and invent things that cannot exist in reality. If I were the author of this book—by the way, the book sounds very entertaining, save it for the next time we meet—I would imagine the dungeon core with capabilities far beyond what’s possible. Imagine a dungeon core that could convert any absorbed material into valuable items or structures based on the master’s needs and knowledge. It’s impossible, of course, but in fantasy, you could feed the core metals, plastics, fabrics, etc., and request it to produce tools, weapons, or magical artifacts. The core could then potentially extract mana or energy from absorbed substances and distribute it throughout the structure, ensuring everything runs smoothly. Picture a core with enhanced storage capabilities, able to store vast amounts of materials and increase its capacity as it absorbs more items. Again, it’s pure fantasy, but it’s fun to think about. For example, if I had a wizard in my story who could harvest crystals, I could put the core on a vent and use it to create monsters to kill and convert. The core could seamlessly integrate advanced technology in a magical world, combining magic and modern devices. It could craft specific items from provided materials, like weapons or magical artifacts, and even manipulate spatial dimensions to create hidden rooms or expand existing spaces. Imagine the core adding magical properties to items and structures, like enchantments or runes. You could provide the core with enchanted items or magical materials and request it to enhance your house or other items. One experiment could involve continuously feeding the core various materials to see if its storage capacity increases. Another could include inflicting minor damage on the structure to observe the core’s repair process and understand its ability to self-repair. For environmental control, you could instruct the core to adjust internal conditions like temperature and humidity and see how well it maintains optimal settings. For spatial manipulation, you might request the creation of hidden rooms or the expansion of existing spaces, testing the core’s abilities to alter dimensions. Or even tell it to shrink the external dimensions of a structure and create all the spaces inside in an expanded spatial dimension. If I had an Alchemist in my story, I would have conducted experiments to test the core’s ability to facilitate the growth of potent and mana-rich plants and grafting new and unique plants with desired capabilities. If I had a wizard in my story, I would have created an area with spatial expansion, advanced protections, and mana absorption capabilities to practice my spells. For a genuinely fantastic twist, if my story had an engineer dreaming of a spaceship, I would have tested the core’s abilities to create various means or methods to use alternate methods of propulsion, such as mana and anti-matter drives, with adequate precautions to prevent the clash between the two. After all, in stories, we can create a world where mana and tech do not oppose each other. Of course, these experiments are impossible in reality. But that’s the beauty of fantasy—we can dream of dungeon cores capable of doing extraordinary things and let our imaginations soar. I look forward to discussing these wild ideas with you when we meet. And do please tell me about your adventures. I enjoy hearing about them. Lis, aka Inventor

 

“He suggested your idea of creating pocket dimensions,” I told Al, watching as he tapped his fingers on his leg in thought.

“I saw it, and it is a logical deduction based on fundamental core capabilities.”

“Yeah, you’re right. We have to test it.” I turned to Mahya, who was adjusting her notes. “The suggestion with the vent is something we did with the small core; how come he doesn’t know about it?”

She glanced up from her papers and shrugged. “We did it after I wrote him.”

“Oh, makes sense. I hope when we feed it the polluted stuff, it doesn’t create the scary stuff we fought in the dungeon.” I felt a shiver at the memory of those monsters.

“Not if we feed it the items one by one. It won’t have enough polluted mana for the really dangerous monsters,” she said, her brow furrowing as she leaned against the wall, tapping her foot thoughtfully.

“Yeah, okay. You’re right,” I said, nodding slowly, trying to shake off the uneasy feeling.

We returned to the gorge entrance and spent the whole day cutting down the trees and then going in deeper to collect the other stuff rich in mana. We didn’t venture past the point we cleared with the giant mushrooms. Besides the trees, some rocks were mana-rich, the strange colorful crystal petals that grew from the cliff face, the big stone mushrooms with the glowing caps that took us an hour to figure out how to collect—my mining tools turned out to be very helpful—the geometric vines, the glowing moss, and the metallic ferns.

We cleared the significant threats two days ago, but some small fry tried to attack us. Today’s fights went differently from two days ago. Of course, some of the ease was due to the smaller size of the monsters, but not only the size. Whenever monsters tried to attack us, Al, Rue, and I would grab them with telekinesis and smash them. After the training the day before, Al and I could grab up to three monsters each, and Rue could grab two.

If there were more monsters than that, Mahya got rid of them with the rifle. The first time she saw us smashing monsters, she looked at us wide-eyed and commented, “Al told me about your training, but I didn’t believe it was that effective.”

When we got to the giant mushrooms with the spores, Al took out a long needle, stabbed one mushroom, and licked the needle.

“Hallucinoid,” he said.

“Like a drug?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I don’t want to feed my house hallucinogens,” I declared firmly.

Al and Mahya laughed at me, shaking their heads. “Your house isn’t sapient,” Mahya said, trying to suppress a grin. “There’s no way it would get high.”

Al chimed in, “Essentially, the core is a device that converts mana. It cannot experience physical effects.”

I crossed my arms and stood my ground. “I’m not willing to take the chance. I’m not feeding my house drugs.”

They laughed some more at my expense, but didn’t insist.

In the afternoon, we returned to the house. I gave the core the order to open the deck and started feeding the house one tree at a time. I instructed it not to filter the tainted mana but to create a monster. Three minutes after the first tree disappeared into the deck, a serpentine figure, similar to the guardian of the second floor in the dungeon, materialized on the deck. The only difference was that the snake in the dungeon was five meters long, while this snake was only forty centimeters long. Much more manageable. I smashed it with telekinesis and proceeded to feed the house.

I kept at it until it got dark, and I had to cook dinner. During this time, I had processed maybe five percent of our collected materials. The next day, I continued to feed the house all day, and it showed no signs of slowing down or getting full. No matter how many materials the house absorbed and filtered, it continued to take in more and more. By that evening, I had fed it about eighty percent of all the materials we collected, and I had accumulated over two hundred tiny crystals. I started combining the crystals into larger ones to occupy myself between killing snakes. In the evening, not including the three large crystals we collected from the giant monsters in the gorge that Mahya kept for the jeeps, we had sixteen crystals of suitable size for engraving.

Mahya wanted eight crystals for each jet ski and insisted that we needed more crystals to feed the small core in the boat and stock up for future projects. After some discussion, we decided I would stay home to continue feeding the house and converting the crystals while she and Al would continue collecting materials in the gorge. Al could sense which plants contained mana, and Mahya could sense which trees contained mana, so they only needed me for the rocks. We agreed they would collect all the materials they could, and I would do a last sweep and point out what they missed.

That’s how we spent the next three days. They collected materials, and I fed the house and smashed snakes. At a certain point, it crossed my mind that it was very boring. The next monster that materialized was a pim.

Oops!

It turned out I should have been careful with my thoughts. Who knew? If I got too bored, maybe the core would have created a very “entertaining” monster to provide me with interest and an adrenaline rush. Better not.

After they finished collecting all the materials, I did a last scan of the cleared area of the gorge. The only thing containing mana, besides a few rocks and stones I pointed out, was the pool of smelly water that the pims came out of. None of us wanted to collect water that smelled like socks an athlete wore for three weeks straight, so we devised a solution. We returned to the house, and I collapsed it. We returned to the gorge, and I threw the core into the pool with instructions to absorb all the water.

As the water level dropped, individual pims emerged from the pool. I let Mahya and Al kill them—I had killed enough. My job was to convert them into crystals.

Once the pool was empty, we discovered it was nearly five meters deep. Luckily, my telekinesis level had progressed enough for me to reach the core, but the depth almost reached the limit of my ability.

After I collected the core, Mahya said, “This time, all three of us are idiots.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Instead of bringing you materials to the deck, we could have gone in with the core into the gorge, placed it next to the materials, and told it to absorb them. It would have saved us a lot of back and forth.”

Al and I exchanged a look, sighed, and I said, “You’re right. Next time, we’ll do it that way.”

When we left the gorge, we decided to take a couple of days off to rest from the intense work and then use the balloon to find a new place for the house in a less accessible area.

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