The Gate Traveler

We ended up staying by the stream for about two weeks—maybe more. The area had an irresistible magical charm: a bubbling brook running through the woodland over smooth, moss-covered boulders. Occasionally, I saw tiny sparkles dancing over the water created by the sunshine. The air was fresh, smelling of damp earth and floral perfume from surrounding flowers, with a gentle breeze and the sun’s warmth on my skin. There was vegetation everywhere—ferns, thick leaves, and towering trees—that made the entire place seem alive. Birds were flying around, their happy chirping blending with the sound of the stream as if they were part of the same song.

This place affected me bit by bit. From being on edge, a fighter in the middle of hell, it was like I was being reset and returning to myself. I felt like I returned from the trenches of war. This place was exactly what I needed to remember the feeling of simply relaxing and breathing, to remember what it was like to be normal again.

For the first two days, I did nothing special. I played with Rue in the water occasionally, but mostly lay beside the stream, looked at the clouds floating in the sky, breathed deeply, and relaxed.

After two days, I remembered all the new and interesting vegetables and fruits I bought and started experimenting. I first experimented with the yellow root that looked like a twisted pretzel. According to the seller’s explanation, it was a kind of substitute for a potato. Identify said it was called Raak. For the first experiment, I peeled one root and boiled it in water. I tasted it, and it tasted like a potato, but with a sweet undertone and something else mixed in. As if I mixed a potato with some sweet potato and roasted chestnuts and added a little bitterness. The bitterness added a unique twist to it.

As a second experiment, I peeled a few more roots, diced smoked crab, mixed it all with sweet cream, fried onions, black pepper, and nutmeg, and baked it. The result was so scrumptious that I had no words to describe it. Perfect harmony among all the flavors produced a fantastic balance that made me feel like I was soaring in seventh heaven. The first bite was pure bliss. I couldn’t resist smiling like a moron, delighted with the result. Baking five more pans, I eventually ran out of raak and almost caved into the temptation and licked the pans clean—almost.

When Rue and I sat down to eat, we couldn’t stop because the food was delicious. Rue kept muttering, “Sho goof,” which made me laugh.

I asked him, “You speak telepathically. Why do you sound like you’re chewing? Your mind doesn’t chew.”

“mah mouf iff fuww.”

“Yes, your mouth is full, but your mind isn’t. You speak with your mind, not with your mouth.”

“Roo’fs mouff if buhsy.”

Shaking my head, I let him eat in peace. It was a lost cause.

It was so delicious we both ate too much. After dinner, Rue lay on his beanbag on his back, his four legs in the air, pointing skyward, and whimpered, “Rue’s tummy ouchie. Bad John. John make food too much delicious. Rue’s tummy ouchie.”

I lay on the couch in a food coma and grunted. It was the most I could do.

Next, I tried the crushed red vegetable in the leaf bowls. Identify called it flimo. After boiling it, I tasted it, and it was simply delicious. It reminded me of a tomato flavor with added beef stock and fried mushrooms. Maybe it was the elusive umami flavor that I never entirely grasped what that meant. I made lasagna until I ran out of flimo paste, this time in the oven, not on a campfire. Rue wouldn’t have forgiven me if I hadn’t given him one pan, so I gave him one and stored the rest.

I went to the Archive and updated my lasagna recipe.

To get to my recipe, I had to scroll through hundreds of pages in the Archive. The amount of garbage added daily to the Archive was crazy. I haven’t yet received an answer from Lis to the message I sent him, but the number of questions and comments under his posts kept growing. Curious, I checked the post about the special Traits, and now 328 people called me a liar because they were merchants and didn’t get Luck.

There was a recent addition from a Traveler who wrote that he received the Artisan Scholar class and received the Trait Diligence. There were already twelve people who called him a liar. They, too, were Artisan Scholars but didn’t get Diligence. It made me laugh. While the Archive was one big mess, there was some fun stuff in there. I added my own comment and asked what criteria they met to get the class. Maybe they will answer, maybe not. Anyway, I was curious. Artisan Scholar certainly sounded interesting.

The next thing I tried was the scaly fruit. It was too sweet, but I thought it could be an interesting smoothie if I mixed it with yogurt. I didn’t have a blender, sigh! So I had to chop the fruit with a knife and then mash it with a fork. When I mixed it with yogurt, it came out luscious—sweet with the sour delicacy of yogurt and simply amazing. Of course, I gave one to Rue and stored the rest as a refreshing treat for the future.

The last thing I tried was the tiny orange fruit. It had a crunchy flesh like an apple, and the taste also reminded me of apples—but like it was more apple-ish. Years ago, my wife and I were on vacation in Mexico, and there, we saw someone selling apples that looked bad. They were small and wrinkled—as if they were old. But their price was more expensive than all the other apples. Out of curiosity, we bought some and tasted them. They were the best apples we’ve ever tasted. Their taste was as if someone had created the distilled essence of an apple—concentrated and rich. That’s what this little fruit reminded me of—the distilled taste of the fruit concept.

After eating over twenty, I used the rest to make a pie with honey, raisins, nuts, cinnamon, vanilla extract, and allspice, and the result was mouthwatering. While the pie was still in the oven, Rue sat in the kitchen, stared at the stove intently, panted, and asked me, “When is ready?” every two minutes.

After tasting the pie, I made more pies from most of the remaining fruit. I left a small portion for myself to eat raw. They were too yummy.

After two weeks by the creek, I felt ready to move on. I had already achieved complete mental balance, with no more outbursts of anger, so I was confident that I wouldn’t be a danger to others. We flew towards the major river, waited for a boat to pass and be out of sight, became visible, and took out the jet skis. We flew along the river on the jet skis and passed some boats. I saw the people on the boats looking at us in wonder or astonishment.

Now and then, Rue called out enthusiastically, “Rue love fast! Rue love Mahya.”

My jet ski ran out of energy, and I had to keep replenishing it with my personal mana so it would keep moving. I was sure Rue would stop and ask me to charge his ski, but he continued to ride. After another hour, we stopped by the river for lunch.

I checked his jet ski, and it was empty.

I asked Rue, “How did your jet ski kept going?”

“Rue gave ski Rue’s mana.”

It suddenly occurred to me I had never checked his mana progress. After checking him, I discovered his orbs were bigger! When I checked in the past, he had three tiny orbs, two and a half to three millimeters in diameter. He also had the four mana channels in his legs, but they were hair-thin, and he didn’t have the network of the smaller channels throughout the whole body.

Now, his orbs were the size of a grape, the channels in his legs were wider, and I saw branches of thinner channels throughout his body. He still didn’t have as many channels as I did. Or maybe he had them, but they were so small that I didn’t see them.

“Your orbs have grown! Congratulations, buddy. It’s amazing you have more mana!”

“Yes. Rue eat yummy snakes with mana. Rue get yummy mana!”

“Are you sure this isn’t an attempt to get a snake steak?”

“No!” He shook his head emphatically, but didn’t meet my eye—the sneaky dog. “Rue never do something like that! Rue need yummy snake to have more mana!”

Ha! I didn’t buy it even for a second.

But his mana did advance. Lis said mana beasts progressed by eating other mana beasts, and the proof was right before my eyes. So maybe not so sneaky after all. I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I charged Rue’s jet ski and sat to regenerate actively. To speed things up, I also cast Absorb Mana on myself. My channels didn’t even tickle. I was ready for the next spiral.

I made the spiral and compressed it as much as possible. Before going down the first channel, I gave the rings another squeeze downwards and managed to add another ring. I repeated this in all the orbs and channels. The way down with the spiral was easy, but the way back up was much more difficult. I had to split my mind into three parts: one creating the spiral, the second holding the Absorb Mana concept to add that aspect to the channels, and the third compressing the spiral as much as possible. At one point, the spiral almost escaped me and unraveled, so I split my mind into four, and with the fourth part, I just kept the progress so it wouldn’t unravel. The fourth part was still difficult, but easier. The problem was that the spiral was fighting me the whole way, and with the difficulty of the fourth split, it was almost too much.

After an unknown amount of time, I finally finished. My body shook from the effort, and streams of sweat ran down my face and stung my eyes. I felt like I ran a marathon, climbed Mount Everest, and swam across the English Channel without taking a break in between. I fell onto my back and just laid there panting. Night had already fallen, and the sky was full of stars. Rue was sleeping next to me.

After I recovered, I checked the red light.

When I checked my profile, I saw Mana Regeneration x 4. I continued to lie with my profile open as I counted the seconds. My regeneration had increased to thirty-seven units per minute. Additionally, I noticed Firearms advanced from [Novice] to [Apprentice].

I love progress!

For a few more minutes, I remained lying there, intending to open the house shortly.

The “tongue alarm” woke me up in the morning, and the word “Food!” echoed in my mind. It was so nostalgic that I couldn’t help but laugh.

Spirals were an exhausting business. And I still had to figure out how to build them in others. I didn’t forget that I had two friends and a familiar who also needed increased regeneration.

This is how we continued on our way for two days. At noon, we would stop for lunch; I would charge Rue’s jet ski, eat, and continue on the river. In the evenings, we made sure no one could see us; I located a good place to put the house on the Map, and we flew there. At home, we had dinner, talked a little, or watched a movie together, rinse and repeat.

On the third day, I placed the core on the ground and was about to tell it to open the house when I felt dirty mana enter my mana-sensing range. I turned around and saw two pims charging toward me. Without thinking, I shot lightning at them. It killed them on the spot, but the place where the lightning struck lit on fire. I rushed there and stomped on the fire until I put it out.

This was not good. Before, my lightning was white, like regular lightning, and didn’t cause fires. Now my lightning was red and had fire in it. I had to figure out how to get my regular lightning back.

After I opened the house and fed Rue, I left him in front of the TV—he was now watching the Chicago P.D. series and was already in season three. I flew towards a tributary connected to the major river and sat in a hidden corner. I preferred to shoot lightning into the water. It might kill some fish, but at least I won’t burn down the forest.

I repeatedly shot a weak bolt of lightning from my hand, which was constantly red. Despite my attempts to will it, make it, or intend for it to return to the standard white lightning, I was unsuccessful. I tried to apply what I learned about intention and magic when I learned to fly to this situation, but I couldn’t figure it out. My intention was precise and specific—I wanted my white lightning back. After hours of trying without success, and a lot of “fried” fish in my Storage, I thought of something.

My lightning turned red when I connected with fire. The fire colored it red and turned it into fire lightning, not regular lightning. So, I had to “remove” the fire from the lightning. It took me another hour to crack it, but I finally did. I didn’t have to remove the fire, but hold it back. It required a mind split—one side fires the lightning, and the other holds the fire back, but it worked great. I still felt that I didn’t achieve the desired result. It was my lightning. I even had the word “Lightning” in my profile as an affinity, so I felt I should be able to control Lightning without mind splitting and holding fire back.

After trying a few more times, I gave up for now. I was exhausted and needed to go back home to sleep.

We stayed in the same place for two more days, and I practiced my lightning. I’m embarrassed to admit that I probably killed all the fish in the tributary. Or at least it felt that way. In the beginning, when my lightning hit the water, a lot of fish floated belly up after each strike. The numbers declined steadily, and the last four strikes made only one fish float belly up.

But fish or no fish, I cracked the mystery. It was simply a matter of practice and familiarity. I learned the two types of my lightning intimately, learned to distinguish between them, and learned how to fire them at will. In this case, it wasn’t a matter of intention or desire but simply learning to recognize the two different types, improving control over them, and then controlling the type of lightning I wanted.

And most importantly, on my profile, now next to the word Lightning was [Medior] instead of [Junior]. It was very nice. Although, in my opinion, I should have gotten a separate ability or affinity—Fire Lightning or Burning Lightning or something like that. But the system didn’t think so.

Stingy system.