Chapter 23 - Dreaded Fortune, Irrational and Devoid, Flowing Alway: Part 1 - The Unforgettables: A ZeroYear litRPG

  "I managed to find where the wyrm came from! It was buried in the middle of a lone mountain a few dozen miles southwest of here. Now there's nothing left there except a huge hole," Liora commented, continuing to speak as she flew over the region from afar. "There's a good thing about this: those serpents are territorial creatures, and since the portal is inside the region it controlled, chances are there's absolutely nothing else around here."

  Petra and Amanda concentrated on the critical initial moments of the magic to start closing the portal. At the same time, Liora completed a second, even broader, scan of the region before rejoining Petra and Amanda in the ravine. Meanwhile, Frank woke up in a medical bed in his room and received good news via comlink that they had finally managed to get rid of the wyrm. When his body was minimally restored due to his regeneration, he went down to the cargo hold and returned through the portal to join the others; Silas remained on the ship's bridge, piloting and helping Liora to organize the sensor data.

  "Hello, team! I just had nightmares about this wyrm while hearing you guys talking telepathically in my dreams. Is there any way for us to find out if it's really dead inside Petra′s universe?" Frank asked, still walking crookedly.

  "That sounds like a good thing to find out, but we'd need perception school magics to know," Amanda commented, noticing that Frank was still injured. "Frank, are you sure you're really okay?" Amanda commented while Petra just shook her head, focused on closing the portal.

  Frank winced in pain, his bones cracking loudly as he was regenerating. "Thank you for your concern, Amanda. I'm just a little tired of almost dying every time I enter a fight." Frank leaned on his legs, unable to breathe enough to speak. He shrugged off the wounds and insisted on talking, "The wyrm, guys… focus..."

  "Leave the part of perceiving the wyrm to me!" Liora said, landing back from her patrol and striking a hero pose with her temporary flight power. "For now, I haven't found anything else in the entire region. I discovered that this flying magic immensely enhanced my super speed. I covered an area almost one hundred times larger than planned. But going back to our problem with the wyrm, Frank's rush makes sense. I had an idea to use the scanning devices pointed inside the portal. Let's see what I can do."

  "Liora, I'm going to bring some things from the ship and join you down there; I also have some creative ideas to test. The ship is almost reaching a safe position," Silas said, leaving the bridge and giving instructions to Liora's copy.

  While Silas and Liora mentally discussed what to do with their devices, Frank responded to Amanda, who was still looking at him with concern: "I'm fine! I've been training my regeneration these past few days, and it'll be a matter of minutes until I'm brand new. But it's you who seems to be in terrible condition. Surely some magic could improve that, right Amanda?" Frank stretched again, cracking his shoulders, apparently putting the bones back in place.

  "Well, most healing magics kill the undead. There are, however, magics from the pollution school that could theoretically drain mana from people or drain life from the environment and convert it into mana, but I haven't learned that school; I don't really think it's very cool to use that kind of thing," Amanda commented, tilting her head back.

  "There's a pollution magic school?" Frank asked, impressed. "I didn't see anything like that on the school lists!"

  "It's a naming problem. If you learned under the Nailia tradition, they used the verb 'to wither,' and in the ancestral tradition, the term is 'defile school.' Just incredible names for the same thing," Amanda grumbled.

  "And then they say I get too worked up about mages. Why is that?" Liora said while helping to prepare the devices along with Silas.

  "Okay, but Amanda, what exactly would that magic do to heal you?" Frank asked curiously.

  "Despite the name, this magic is quite simple; it drains mana from anything to the mage who casts it. It can drain mana from another mage, for example, but it's not the most common thing to learn anywhere, much less in the world of the dead, because if used against the Suma, this magic could actually kill us. It's a controlled teaching school in my city, and it used to be in Metropolis as well," Amanda commented.

  "I see, but then, theoretically, if something pumps you up with mana, then everything would be okay, right?" Frank asked, having creative ideas.

  "Uh… yes, I think. Among the Suma, in an emergency, we sometimes share our mana; it would be similar to a blood transfusion among the living," Amanda said while Silas and Liora were utterly focused on their devices.

  Petra telepathically: "Team, let's focus on our problem here. If this wyrm is territorial, as Liora said, and assuming it survived inside, it must be trying to come back." Silas: "Yes, the good news is that I managed to get practically all the sensors working with readings from inside the portal; the bad news is that the readings don't make the slightest sense." Liora: "Amanda, from the sensor readings we have, the gravitational force on the other side of the portal seems a little weaker, and thermodynamics seem quite altered by the magic. Is that possible?" Amanda: "It's not common, but it is possible. From what I'm observing, all this metallic material coming out of the portal is magical; some effect probably accompanies this magic. I suggest analyzing the metal that's coming out as well!" Silas said as he began connecting other types of sensors: "Good idea, this will only take a few minutes!"

  Frank, after reflecting for a moment, said, "Petra's right about the wyrm; if it returns, Amanda will be our best bet for escaping, but under these conditions, it won't be possible. I thought of using my mana like we enchanted each other in combat with Amanda to see if it would work. What do you think?"

  "I appreciate your concern. I could only perform one more magic at maximum power before returning to the World of the Dead in my current condition. If you want to test your idea, I wouldn't mind. What I do know is that your regeneration power doesn't work very well if a Suma trains it, but mana transfer doesn't seem to be a problem." Amanda mused, happy with Frank's empathy.

  Without delay, Frank enchanted Amanda one time after another in the same way it was described in the Vabala about how to use mana wildly but repeated times in sequence. This worked sufficiently well; in a matter of minutes, Amanda was completely healed and full of life, as much as an undead could be.

  "Wow! Thank you so much, Frank; I'm much better now!" Amanda said, genuinely happy with the result.

  Petra commented, "I have to admit, Frank, your ideas work much better than mine when it comes to magic. And we still have to decide what to do after I close this portal."

  "Well, team, Silas and I finished the preliminary analyses. It's all bizarre, but the news seems good. The most important thing is that there's no sign of the wyrm on the other side!" Liora said mentally. "The flow of molten metal is completely chaotic and moves at an extreme speed; even if the wyrm is alive on the other side, I don't think it can see anything inside using normal senses."

  "Well, then we can be a little more at ease, at least!" Petra said, relieved, preparing for a long night in the ravine.

  Silas said calmly, "And the material coming out of the portal is fascinating. I'm going to take some samples to make technology with it. It happens that this metal will stay hot for a long time; the mana inside decays and transforms into heat, and it's possible to restore this effect using an electric current. It works like a mana-to-heat battery. According to my calculations, if left scattered around the environment as it is now, the temperature should stabilize slightly below the boiling point of water, with a half-life of mana, let's say, on the order of tens of trillions of Gate years for half of the magical material to become normal metal."

  “It's a good idea to try throwing a Vo portal into this universe to collect this material more easily, right?” Petra suggested.

  "We can do the same as we did with the wyrm," Frank added. "I activate one of your stones with mana, Petra, and Silas throws it inside with his ray!"

  "Let's do it!" Silas said, already preparing to send another one of his rays into the portal, now aiming at the edges around the plug that Amanda had created as a contingency with her other portal. "There are still more interesting things about this universe that we're trying to discover now from the data," Silas said, looking at Liora when Petra interrupted him.

  "Frank! I remembered something important! Put the dark red pebble inside this portal, not the pink one! Okay?" Petra warned.

  "Yes, Petra. This one?" Frank asked, holding up the pebble and showing it to Petra before sending it to Silas. Petra nodded affirmatively. "Opening a portal to this universe by mistake would be an unforgettable moment!" Frank thought, laughing to himself telepathically. Petra agreed, smiling.

  While Silas sent the enchanted pebble into the metal inferno with his ray, Liora continued to speak. "Well, gravity works differently inside, and if I'm not mistaken in my calculations, everything indicates that this new universe is very large, maybe infinite."

  Petra paused to think and asked, "How in the world did you realize that, Liora? Does any light get through the metal?"

  To which Liora replied, "Not light. It happens that the immense flows of metal inside never collapse into black holes due to the different gravity, which makes space more rigid in relation to the mass of matter; at least, I think so. But even with this different gravity, all this matter moving in colossal blocks creates gravitational waves with local maxima and minima. In addition to the largest peaks, smaller noises were detected, with smaller gravitational wave crests moving in all directions, as well as a granularity as small as I could detect with my devices. I'm assuming that the smaller crests are a reflection of more distant metal flows in other directions; this pattern suggests a vast universe, or even infinite if the crests are truly infinitesimal."

  "Wow! So we have an infinite source of molten magical metal; is that right?" Petra exclaimed.

  "It seems that's right!" Silas commented after successfully throwing the pebble into the portal. "Now, let's decide what to do."

  "Well, I'm going to close this portal, and we'll get out of here!" Petra concluded.

  "Or maybe not. Without the wyrm, even with the light and heat spreading, for Gate's proportions, this effect is encapsulated in this location. We can take advantage of this and stay here for a few days for training. I don't think anything coexisted with that wyrm; if there had been, with all this activity, it would have certainly already appeared," Liora suggested.

  After a short silence for thoughts, Amanda spoke. "It's a risk because, in the middle of Gate's eternal night, this will attract attention from things far away, so the time we'll have without visitors will be proportional to the speed of whatever is supposedly arriving. I suggest considering Petra's idea and trying to access another universe as soon as possible."

  Everyone was impressed by Amanda's proposal. Petra said, "I don't know if it's a good idea to try this magic again now; I must have the opposite of that luck power for magic."

  "Let's do this differently, Petra. I can take you to one of my empty private universes, and you perform your Va magic from inside. I don't offer my universe for you to train inside for a long time because you're being pursued, and I use it for my classes," Amanda suggested.

  "Are you sure about this, Amanda? You've already helped us a lot, and if I go in, the Golems could also follow me into your private universe when they get here!" Petra commented.

  "I know, but I'll move the entry point later. If the Golems do enter, I'll stay outside waiting, and from what I understood, this will still take quite a while, right?" Amanda asked.

  "More than 2000 days. We have a vehicle tracking them," Liora replied. "If you're going to do this with Petra, I'll share the Golems' estimated arrival time via network; we update it automatically."

  "Well, I'd be comfortable following this plan as soon as possible after Petra finishes closing the portal and rests tonight!" Amanda suggested.

  "That sounds like a good plan!" Silas replied thoughtfully. "I still need a day to finish the network security device, and then I'll start other projects, maybe already using this new material."

  "In four days, I'm going to Rocatrista, and it would be great to use that time to prepare ourselves," Frank commented. "If this place is safe, even if only for a few days, it will be enough until Petra gets access to a more friendly universe."

  Petra, restless, focused on her magic while listening to the terrain's devastation from the other side of the portal increase whenever the flow jammed as a larger part solidified along the way. She used telepathy to avoid competing with the noise of the metal storms and explosions: "Team, I agree with this plan, but right now, I'm feeling guilty about putting everyone's lives at risk. If I had trained better, maybe the result would have been different…"

  "Don't beat yourself up about it, Petra," Liora replied immediately. "The decisions were collective, and we're doing everything in a far-from-ideal situation."

  "We have to learn to play with the cards we have, Petra. I can't say whether other options wouldn't have had even worse results," Silas added calmly. "Besides, this metal universe of yours seems like it will be far more useful than it appears right now."

  Amanda also said mentally, "Things will work out; you need to be patient. As I tell my students, magic isn't hard science for some reason; not all the elements are under our control."

  "We're doing the right thing, and this is far from over," Frank commented, better understanding what it meant to be a mage's apprentice.

  Time passes in mental silence, contrasting with the end-of-the-world sounds that insist on altering Gate's landscape for long hours. Silas, Liora, and Frank went to the top of a nearby taller mountain to better observe the region in case something approached and set up a mobile control post inside the aircar to coordinate the various sensors that had been spread throughout the region. Meanwhile, Petra and Amanda remained beside the portal, chatting animatedly and planning how to make the next portal.

  From the top of the nearby mountain, Silas and Frank barely needed to use the life support devices to maintain a pleasant temperature. However, from time to time, they smelled a pungent odor of what seemed to be chlorine, and at these moments, the life support devices in their clothing beeped and created an isolated atmosphere around them.

  Liora noticed what was happening and, with her shiny green eyes, explained: "These are sporadic concentrations of osmium tetroxide. It has a pungent smell and is quite toxic to humans and ebex. However, the reactions with this magical osmium that emits heat aren't very stable; they only concentrate due to the large quantities of material coming out of the portal. Our devices filter this easily; nothing to worry about."

  "Nothing to worry about…" Frank said, smiling. "This is crazy; a novice mage causing such an impact on the world."

  "We're under constant pressure, and in Gate, that means our potential grows much faster, but not necessarily the control," Silas commented, rolling his eyes at Frank. "But even so, Petra's magic was extraordinary; Amanda even considered helping Petra further with those portal magics."

  "Do you think this will be a problem?" Frank scratched his head. "I mean, especially a problem for Amanda herself."

  "Generally, it's Petra who's the most paranoid about outsiders. Amanda took a while to perceive the situation; perhaps Mosh spoke well of us or of our idea of finding Seneca. But anyway, she seems to have good motivations, at least. As for it being a problem for her, that will depend on how things heat up in Metropolis," Liora commented, remembering the previous night.

  "Well, perhaps Amanda has other business here, but I wouldn't mind if she decided to stay with us for a while," Silas said, stretching his arms to feel the warm air of the environment better.

  "That would be great!" Frank smiled, feeling the same ambient warmth enveloping him like the heat of a beach—a sensation he was already beginning to forget. The molten metal illuminated the entire region like a sunset. Frank continued, "If this metal comes from an infinite universe, it could be used to transform all of Gate into a much more pleasant place."

  "Ha, ha! That's a nice dream. Among many other things that could be done with it, that would be a quick, cheap, and almost permanent way to improve the light and heat city towers," Silas commented with some perplexity. "Sometimes I think about returning to my village and disappearing to some remote place, living a simpler life. But that's just an illusion—a dangerous illusion."

  "We could go to a place far from the Golems and build our own city on top of an isolated monolithic plate or maybe even inside one of Petra's universes. Let's forget Biggus and Seneca and live peacefully for a few years until the rest of the world catches fire; with a little luck, we'll stay alive for a long time…" Liora provoked, without any conviction in what she was saying.

  "Maybe, Liora. Since I came here, I've started to think that I didn't live my life on Earth. I burned my time running away from ghosts in conflicts that haunted me but weren't mine. I took too long, and when I realized it, it was too late," Frank replied, kicking a pebble down the mountain. "What a mess! It's like sticking your head in a hole and leaving what's left of the world I was born in at the mercy of a madman like Biggus; it would be fair revenge for the treatment I always had when I was alive."

  Silas looked at Frank with one eye narrowed, better perceiving Frank's hesitation to speak more about his past on Earth. He said, "Most of the people revived in Gate, after a while, have a similar feeling. Frank, the 'escape from everything' card will soon be on the table. If you want to play it, nobody will criticize you."

  Frank laughed, "Nobody except myself." Frank crossed his arms. "I've already played that card, Silas; maybe someone played it for me. But now, that hardly matters. I can make new mistakes, but at least I'll try not to make the same old ones."

  "On the day we found the Vabala, maybe you thought a little differently, Frank. What made you change your mind?" Liora asked.

  Frank paused to remember and shrugged. "I don't know, Liora. But you're right; maybe I am finding my place in this crazy world. Or just a less bad place, or maybe, after all, I still have some patriotism left that moves me to try to help my fellow earthlings who have no way of defending themselves. Anyway, I'm with you guys until the end of this."

  Liora said determinedly, "Today, I would miss you if you left, Frank. But now that the subject has come up, the end of all this means preventing your Earth from disappearing from existence, and that will already be almost impossible. If we succeed, I'll go after Biggus, but I'll go alone, and Silas will return to his village to try to help those who survived."

  "Well, we'll see when the time comes, but yes, Seneca first," Frank replied, returning to look at the explosions on the horizon.

  "I don't even know what's left of my past, Liora; maybe there's no place for me to go back to," Silas replied. "But to act against Biggus, let's proceed with caution; we certainly won't be alone against a tyrant. In Metropolis, we lived in a bubble; we don't even understand how he managed to get so many allies."

  "One thing at a time, but why don't we all help Silas's village after we solve Seneca's problem?" Frank suggested.

  Silas lowered his eyes and placed a hand on his forehead, saying, "I appreciate the concern, but it's like this, Frank. We were nomads, and when things got terrible in the village, they sent me and my uncle to one of the Eastern capitals, and then we managed to spend the resources to try our luck in Metropolis. A short time after arriving in Metropolis, we broke all contact with our village, and as soon as I got settled in the city, my uncle returned to the East alone, making me promise that I would never go after him; I should wait for him to find me when it was safe. That was almost five years ago, and nothing so far."

  "There are no communicators to find out what happened?" Frank asked. "Or magic? I mean, how is this possible?"

  Silas sat on a stone and began to speak. "So, Frank, after the cataclysm, a large part of the younger population was marginalized, and this wasn't something that only occurred in New Metropolis."

  Frank and Liora turned to Silas and listened silently as he continued. "Amidst the chaos, everything began to matter in deciding each person's role in society, and the ebex were among the first to be set aside from any societal role other than practically that of slaves. The taboo already existed for a long time but was previously veiled. The nomadic ebex villages in the East were formed like this, from ostracized refugees who competed among themselves to get some work in the border regions, but always with insufficient resources for mere subsistence. Thus, we were forced to try to survive with practically nothing. My village had about 20 people and received food from the capital only when it managed to fight some Gate creatures in the big city perimeter."

  Silas looked up at the sky as if he remembered some pain and continued to talk about his past: "I had an elder sister named Jorgia who managed to leave the village to work as security on a mission paid directly by Metropolis. She wasn't my blood sister, but she decided to forget her past and live again around the same time I was born, so we effectively grew up together. Jorgia disappeared on a mission after a few months; we never knew what happened."

  Silas stopped speaking, and everyone felt a profound mental pain through the telepathic magic. Silas closed his eyes as his past came back to haunt him. But this time, he was awake. Liora, noticing something was wrong, asked, "Everything okay, Silas? You don't need to say anything more."

  Silas interrupted Liora with a hand gesture, asking them to wait while he lifted his head and began to look at the sky with eyes that seemed like mirrors. He remained silent, listening to the metal sounds for a long time, Liora and Frank joining him.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.