Chapter 67 – I’m a Real Adventurer Like in the Books (Patreon)

I trudged wearily to the Gate, my mind and body drained of all energy. When I crossed, I had even forgotten to cast Invisibility, a sign of my exhaustion. Fortunately, there was nobody on the other side. Lis and Mahya, though tired, still had some spark left in them. Rue, on the other hand, was full of energy; he napped while we worked. I was so worn out that I couldn't even decide if he was a lucky dog or a lucky familiar.

We checked our phones on the other side of the Gate, and five days had passed on Earth. That was a surprise; I didn’t think we were that long on the other side, maybe a day and a half.

I asked Lis, confused, “Don’t you think the time skip looks too long?”

“No,” he answered. “It can be even longer. I think it has to do with distance, but I don’t have proof.”

“Distance?”

‘Yes, the distance between the planets that the Gate connects.”

I was too exhausted to even try to understand this idea; my body craved only a long, uninterrupted sleep. Mahya called Lyura to find out which hotel she was at, and Lis ordered a taxi for us. I just stood and dozed.

On the taxi ride to the hotel, Mahya asked me quietly, “Do you have Silence or Privacy?”

“Privacy.”

“Cast it, please.”

I did, and she said, "Lis, I think there might be a wild dungeon on the other side of the Gate."

"What makes you think that?" he asked.

"We cleared three tribes of mana beasts, but you still managed to find enough monsters for John's class. With that number of mana beasts, there shouldn't have been a single monster; they would have killed them instantly. The monsters weren't strong enough, either; they were too weak for a world with a mana level of 61. I believe it's a concentrated pocket of high mana, which explains the presence of three tribes of mana beasts instead of one, leading to the formation of a fledgling dungeon in that area."

"You might be right."

"We should go back, clear the dungeon, and get the core. It will help us with our project."

Lis seemed lost in thought, and after two minutes, he said, "You're right, and we'd better do it quickly. With the time skip, the dungeon can mature and grow stronger if we delay too much."

When we returned to the hotel, Lyura hugged Mahya and said, "I was so worried. Thank you, Spirits; you're all right."

"Do you know about the time skip?" Lis asked her.

"Yes, but I thought it would take three days, not five."

I hadn't even considered a one-day skip. Why does everyone seem more knowledgeable than me? It’s not fair!

I was too tired to think, so I just asked, “You got us rooms?”

“Yes, here is your key card.”

I took it and went to bed.

The following morning, we went to breakfast at a cafe, and after the waitress brought us everything, Lis cast Privacy and said, "Mahya thinks there's a wild dungeon on the other side of the Gate and that it might be a good idea to clear it." He turned to Lyura and asked, "You want to come with us?"

"I'm not sure I can handle a dungeon in a world with 61 mana. It's too high for me."

"We think it's a young dungeon, at least judging from the monsters in the area. It might be your level. What's your element?"

"Lava."

"A good element."

"Not really. It's very limited."

"Maybe now. But once you advance, you can separate it into stone and fire, and you'll have control over two very powerful elements that are abundant, so you'll always have mana available."

"Yes," replied Lyura. "My mother said that, but it's very limited right now, and with my mana level, I'm very limited if I don't have a source to fill from."

"What's your mana?"

"620."

"Any other skills that can help you in a dungeon?"

“Sword fighting and Archery, but they are at a low level.”

"Yes, I agree." Said Lis, "This dungeon might be too hard for you."

He asked me if I was coming with them.

"You tell me. I've never been to a dungeon before, and the snake seemed terrifying, so I don't know if it's just me or if the difficulty is too high."

"I think you'll be fine. You were able to kill the monsters I brought you without a problem, and anyway, healers advance in dungeons not from killing monsters but from healing the party they're diving with. So, Mahya and I will protect you, and you'll heal us as needed."

"What about Rue?"

"He should definitely accompany us. It's critical for him to gain experience; being at level 0, he will gain the most from this."

“I think we should wait a day or two.” I said, “My mana channels feel raw and strained after everything I did.”

“Actually,” Lis responded, “this is the optimal time for this. Enlarging your channels through strain is a common method for advancement.”

“But what about the book you recommended about channel enhancement?”

“That one is for the secondary channels. For the primary channels, you have two options: either employ your method with the spirals, a technique exclusive to wizards, or push them to their limits without causing damage and continue to advance them.”

“Okay, if you think it’s a good idea, I’m in.”

He turned to Lyura and said, “See if you can find a short-term apartment for us. There is no reason to spend a fortune on a hotel, and when we return, John will have a lot of cooking to do.”

“Thanks for voluntelling me!”

They all laughed at me! Lis clapped me on the back.

I asked Lyura, “Can you drive?”

“Yes, I bought the skill.”

“Good, let’s rent a car. I don’t think repeatedly calling a taxi to the Gate is a good idea. Especially since it's in the middle of nowhere, without anything near it that can explain our presence. I’m still worried that the US knows about the Gates. I don’t want to be captured.”

Mahya and Lyura spoke together, “What?” “How?”

“I have no idea. But when I was Gate hopping in the Americas, eight of the Gates had army basses around them.”

“That’s not good,” Mahya said.

“No, it’s not,” I answered. “That’s why we need to be careful.”

“I forgot about it,” said Lis. "I think we should check out of the hotel, go somewhere crowded, use a bathroom, and change our glamour and documents just in case. We lived in London and then Paris for a long time, and we have been moving a lot recently. Let's hide our trail.”

We all agreed with him.

We went to the Revontuli mall, found the bathrooms, verified that there were no cameras around and nobody inside, and changed our identities. I chose the name Jonathan Clark; with all my fighting, I felt like Superman. I shifted my vision to look at Rue; he looked like a mountain of brown fur, even more than his actual state. I had to search for the breed online, and now Rue was a Tibetan Mastiff who looked really fluffy.

I had to re-conjure his identification and service dog credentials; thankfully, we were heading to a high mana level. My re-glamour and re-identification cost 400 in total—Rue’s cost 500 for re-glamour and 600 for re-identification, 300 each. Familiars were an expensive business, meat-wise, point-wise, and mana-wise.

I discovered that it's possible to purchase prepaid cards in R-Kioski, so we took advantage of this, and I stored the old cards. I’d empty them before leaving Earth again. Once we changed the cards, we purchased new burner phones. I couldn’t think of anything else that might lead to us, so we rented a car and drove to the Gate.

After we crossed again to Tuonela, Mahya stayed with me at the Gate, and Lis went to check that nothing dangerous awaited us.

When he returned, he asked me, "Do you have armor?"

"Yes, I bought some in Shimoor."

"Show me."

He examined it and said, "With a mana shield, it would be fine, but you should buy something better at the first opportunity. Perhaps you should consider checking on Earth; they might have developed something beneficial for the police or the military.”

Mahya asked both of us, "Do you have spare armor?"

Lis said no, but I took out the three armors I had left after selling the rest and gave them to her to choose from.

Lis asked her, "Did you convert your mana shield?"

"Yes."

"Why don't you buy stone armor?"

"Not a good idea for me. My combat sub-class is Bladesinger, and I'm very dependent on my Agility."

I never thought to ask and didn’t know if it was rude, so I asked, “May I ask you what kind of classes you have, or is it presumptuous or considered taboo?”

“Generally, you don't ask, and this applies to all world levels. The only situation where it is considered acceptable and polite to ask is if you are planning a dungeon dive together. So today, you can ask. However, I will always answer you, regardless of the circumstances.” She said, “As I said, I’m a Bladesinger, a fast, acrobatic melee fighter that combines spells. I use the spells Slow, Entangle, and Sink to slow down my opponent, Blind and Confuse to confuse them, and various other spells to increase my speed, such as Wall Dash or Jump. I also have the Wood Artisan profession.”

“So, the trees were for you?”

"No, we are working on a project that integrates both my profession and his new sub-class. You don’t always get to cooperate with a different profession, so it’s a chance for both of us.”

“Sounds cooler than a Merchant.”

"It depends on how you see it. You, as a new Traveler, are already richer than I was before the bastard elves robbed me, so there are benefits.”

“I spent close to a million dollars on Earth before leaving; it’s not from my profession.”

“It's still a good way to earn money to travel without care.”

While talking, Lis took out one of the green snake skins, cut a large piece, made holes on both sides, cut some more into leather cords, and threaded the leather cords through the holes.

He called, "Rue, come here; I want to fit you in armor."

He wrapped the leather around Rue, then made holes in the leather to thread one side of the cords through before tying the cords on his back.

He told him, "Walk around and see if there is anything that bothers you."

After a minute, Rue approached him; Lis untied the cords, fixed something, and retied them. Rue walked around again and sent us all the "I'm good" feeling.

Lis told him, “Cast a mana shield on yourself and re-cast it every time the spell ends. When you start running out of mana, ask John to re-cast it.” He looked at me and said, “You too, John.”

“Yes, Dad.”

Mahya started laughing, and Lis shook his head, smiling.

We began our walk from the Gate, with Lis leading the way, followed by Rue, me next, and Mahya at the back.

After about three hundred meters, I asked Lis, "How do you know where to go? You don't look; you just go."

"This is where I found all the monsters yesterday. At some point, we will have to start looking for the dungeon."

"Is there a way to locate them?"

"Some specific types are easier to spot, but usually just by appearance."

"What does a dungeon look like?"

"Like a very dark entrance."

"Which types are easy to spot?"

"Fire or ice is relatively simple because the monsters that escape from the dungeon typically burn or freeze the entire area around them. Undeath is also easy to detect; everything around it begins to die. You have to look for the other types."

"Do you know what kind of dungeon we're going to?"

"I'm thinking of nature, a forest, or something like that. All the monsters I found were either a variation of lizards or felines."

We continued to walk another half a kilometer or so, and Rue started growling. Lis glanced in the growling's direction and told him, "I control the monster; you kill it."

After a minute, something jumped out of the bushes, froze in the air, and fell. It was like a cat, but with oversized teeth that looked metallic. Rue tore out its neck, and Lis asked me, "Want to harvest the crystal?"

I harvested the crystal, and it took only five minutes. I also learned how to de-aspect crystals, so I harvested a “neutral” crystal.

 After repeating this scenario over twenty times, I came to the conclusion that monsters are stupid. Even though the largest monster was the size of a poodle, they still attacked a group of three people with a large dog.

The monsters were coming from a specific direction for a while, but then they started attacking from various directions, so Lis said, “We should start looking for the dungeon.”

He told me, “You and Rue go together, have your staff out and ready, and monitor with your mana.”

Shit! I forgot to monitor with mana.

We split into three and looked, but didn’t find anything. We continued walking, looked again, fought some monsters, looked again, continued walking, and rinse and repeat.

After searching for ten or twelve hours and going so far away from the Gate that we had lost any sense of its presence, we finally discovered the dungeon. It did indeed look like a dark entrance into a cave; it wasn't cave-dark, but like a dark portal of doom. If I had stumbled on something like this alone, I would have gotten out of the area fast!

Lis looked around, walked away a bit, and took out his house.

I was surprised and asked him, “Why did you get your house?”

“It’s getting dark; we walked for hours and are tired. It would be stupid to go in like this.”

“But why the house?”

“My cabin has good protections, and it is a high-mana world.”

"I thought you killed everything."

"Yes, in the Gate area. If you haven't noticed, we've pretty much moved away from it."

I started to worry, and I looked around in fear.

Lis laughed and said, "Don't worry. I'm pretty sure some of the mana beasts we killed came even further than here. It took some of them a long time to reach us, and they didn't attack us all together, but alone or in pairs.

"Anyway, just to be safe, I recommend that we sleep in my house with all the defenses on, and in the morning, we enter the dungeon. I hope you're not disappointed that we're not doing it today."

"Disappointed?! no way! I'm in a high mana world, and I've killed monsters; I feel like an adventurer from the books I've read."

Lis laughed and waved us inside the house.

Mahya and Lis convinced me to give the scary snake a chance, and I cooked a stew with it. They were right—mana snakes are delicious and melt in your mouth. It was so good, I was sorry I added vegetables. I cooked a big pot to last the four of us for a couple of days, but Rue somehow managed to finish the whole pot. We were all truly impressed. Rue was large, but not in the "eat 20 kg of meat in one meal" sense.

We went to sleep early to be ready for our dungeon dive tomorrow. I must admit, I was excited. I don’t really like fighting, and I don’t want to fight, but the idea of a dungeon dive still sounded intriguing.