Side Story 8 – Exploration (Patreon)

Mahya had a good seven years. After deciding to stop traveling through the Gates, she gave up all the Skills and Spells she could afford and instead bought engineering Skills relevant to her current world. She conjured all the needed documentation and spent 500 mana to be added to the world’s database as an engineer.

This world had zero mana, so she had to visit the closest Gate to regenerate discreetly.

She cast her net wide, applying to every opportunity related to space exploration that she could find. And then, after a nerve-wracking seven months, the moment she had been waiting for arrived – an offer to join an exploration mission as a maintenance engineer on an FTL ship. The thrill was palpable, and she accepted the offer without a moment's hesitation.

Her current world was technologically advanced but had several serious problems. The pollution levels were very high, and they suffered from severe land degradation that was affecting food prices; for the last few centuries, they had a population explosion and were experiencing overpopulation, and they had too much garbage. Hence, their mission was two-fold:

• Explore the neighboring galaxies and find uninhabited planets to exploit for resources.

• Find a planet with optimal conditions to colonize.

They set out on their mission and spent five years in space. Mahya loved every moment of the journey, even more than traveling to new worlds. Every spare moment she had, she spent in front of a hatch, looking at the beauty of space. It was mesmerizing.

After two and a half years, they completed their first mission objective and sent an uncrewed spacecraft back with the information.

They found a suitable planet for their second objective a year and a half later.

For the first year after finding the planet, the biological and medical teams visited it many times to collect samples and worked around the clock to create vaccinations against viruses and bacteria.

Finally, the day arrived for them to go down to the surface and start the second stage.

When she set foot on the world for the first time, she opened her Map and saw that the world was completely unexplored; the whole Map was greyed out. Since that day, Mahya was stationed in a compound that had the mission to assemble the power plant they brought with them packed in crates. She liked this part much less since she preferred space, not empty worlds.

One morning, Mahya woke up and felt something familiar. She froze.

She stood there trying to convince herself it was her imagination but was unsuccessful. She could feel it–like she could feel the cold in the air and the ground beneath her feet. It wasn't there before, but it was now.

After her shift, she told her supervisor she was going for a walk to get out of the compound for a while and headed in that direction.

She arrived at an entrance into a ravine guarded by two cliffs. Those cliffs were the anchors. She touched one of the cliffs.

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Travelers Gate #1463517667

Destination: Nami

Status: Integrated

Mana level: 94

Threat level: Lethal

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