Through the World Gate (1/2)

Once Haalfrin gets closer to the World Gate, he sees in greater detail that the gate appears to be… some sort of rip in space with light trickling through. The light has many different shades of green and white mixed in, and it all is twirling around in a hypnotic pattern.

Built around the Gate is a large pavilion with so many arrays of enchantments that Haalfrin can't casually read them just by looking. Outside the pavilion are many rows of storehouses – presumably full of supplies. After all, the Threshold Fortress is constantly being fed supplies through this very gate.

Hence, the setup on this side of the Gate is more for logistical reasons than for defense.

'Shouldn't be too hard to break through to the Gate…,' Haalfrin smirks. 'Why bother waiting for permission all the time? Ugh. Such a bad habit.'

Without hesitation, Haalfrin draws his sword and walks toward the World Gate. At first, nobody pays attention to him as he strides past moving carts and men carrying various loads. However, once he gets too close to the pavilion, 3 guards standing at attention hold out their hands. "HALT!" one of them commands, "Everything beyond this point is off limits without the credentials."

What Haalfrin doesn't know is that every authorized person carries a token on them that is enchanted to react to the guards' tokens. Since Haalfrin doesn't have a token on him, the guards automatically knew he wasn't supposed to be here.

Instead of answering the guards, Haalfrin leans to the side and peers past their shoulders – carefully studying the layers of enchantments.

"Hey!" the head guard barks irately, "I'm talking to you!"

"Shh…," Haalfrin puts a finger up, "I'm thinking."

'Hmm…,' Haalfrin ponders, 'I recognize an alarm enchantment… and maybe some sort of spatial enchantment? No, no. It could be an explosion… Ugh. With all the letters mixed in and layered on top of each other, it's so hard to read…'

'Hmph!' he decides, 'I'll just shoot as fast as I can past the enchanted pavilion and make it through the gate. If I fly by fast enough, the security traps might not catch me.'

Just before the guards attempt to lay their hands on Haalfrin, there's a loud explosion behind the rogue mage, and the guards are barely left alive due to their protective enchantments. Plus, the guards were sensing danger anyway, and they had prepared their own shielding spells in advance.

Haalfrin uses the momentum from the explosion, coupled with a fight spell, to rocket himself toward the gate.

Just before he reaches his destination… he goes *SPLAT* on a golden barrier and slides to the ground.

Indeed, one of the pavilion enchantments he failed to read was a spatial barrier built in a large square around the pavilion's perimeter. It was designed to activate whenever something enters the area, as everything that enters in or out of the Gate needs to be searched in a secure environment.

The moment Haalfrin entered the pavilion, the spatial barrier activated, and he instantly trapped himself.

Unlike mana barriers, which use hardened mana to act as a physical barrier, spatial barriers can't be broken with brute force. This is because spatial barriers quite literally isolate the space inside it. It functionally acts as another dimension, despite still being visible to the outside world.

You'd think spatial barriers are far superior, but not only are the secrets of spatial barriers closely kept by the imperial family, but they're also incredibly expensive to set up.

In frustration, Haalfrin looks around the pavilion and finds that the only people here with him are 6 guards standing at attention near the gate.

"Oi!" Haalfrin calls out, "Aren't you going to arrest me or something?"

The guards look at each other, and one shrugs, "You're that dragon slayer we got a report on. We can't beat you, so why bother?"

This candid reply catches Haalfrin off guard, so he asks, "Oh? You don't feel scared, though."

With Haalfrin's powerful spirit magic, reading another's rippling emotions isn't that hard.

Out of curiosity, Haalfrin releases his Death Aura, though he doesn't condense it into a lethal spear. He just wants to see how they react to his Aura. Is this guard completely unafraid?

Always, there have been 2 reactions people give to his Aura; they either piss themselves in fear, or they shout out their resolve and push through it.

These guys though….

"Why're you laughing?!" Haalfrin barks out in amusement as he watches all 6 guards give reactions ranging from faint smiles to hysteric laughter.

One of the Threshold guards looks up and says, "Eh heh, that's Death Aura, right?"

"That's not going to scare us, dragon slayer," another says.

"…Eh?" Haalfrin squeaks in genuine confusion. He's certainly seen people unaffected by his Aura before, but those encounters are few and far between.

Rather, the only people he's ever met who were completely apathetic towards Death Aura were other death gods, or Dakka.

Back while he was imprisoned in the Pit, he even estimated how many people have fallen so far to his Aura, as well as how many have braved through it. He used this to calculate how likely it is for his Aura to work on somebody.

The number he and little Frey agreed on was around a 1 in 30,000 chance – a 1 30,000th chance of not pissing yourself in fear.

If you take that number and consider how likely it is for 6 people in the same place and the same time to all be unaffected…

…Haalfrin looks down and counts with his fingers for a moment while he does the math. After a few seconds, he gives up and thinks, "Well, it's very, VERY unlikely!"

(Probability is calculated like this: 1/30,000 (The chance) ^ 6 (# of guards) = 1/729,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That's a 1 in 729 septillion chance – basically non-existent. Haalfrin may not have gotten the exact number, but he does know it's very big, and that's good enough.)

He looks at the 6 guards and narrows his eyes. 'What's so special about these people? How strange… OK! I'm curious now!'

So, Haalfrin points his Kareen sword in one hand at them while he lets the dragonbone ax rest on the ground, head first. "You," he says while pointing at the closest guard, "how are you all immune to my Aura?"

Instead of answering, the previously stoic guard finally gives in and joins the others in laughter. One of them points at Haalfrin and stutters out, "Ah… haha! That look on his face says he's supposed to be scary!"

"Eh heh," another chuckles, "After using such a normal spiritual attack too!"

Finally, one of the guards looks at Haalfrin and says in consolation, "The Rehkin Tribes are experts in spiritual magic. If we couldn't put up with this much Aura, then we'd never be allowed to be Threshold soldiers."

"…Oh?" Haalfrin raises his eyebrows. "So everyone in the Threshold is immune? Where'd your commander get so many people who aren't afraid of death?"

One of the guards looks down and shudders momentarily. "Oh… he makes them."

"Yeah, the training is brutal."

"Oi!" another guard barks while nervously rubbing his arms and twitching, "Don't talk about the Will Training!" In the man's eyes, Haalfrin sees some signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Hearing this, Haalfrin lifts his head up and laughs with them. "Ha! This Threshold doesn't sound as boring as I thought!"

Whatever this "training" is that the Threshold soldiers get, it probably makes them all a little unhinged. One of the guards walks over to Haalfrin and pats him on the back. "It's ok! You seem like a cool guy. You should just come with us and join the Threshold!"

One of the other guards shakes his head, "Nah. He tried breaking in. We're probably going to have to arrest him."

"…Oh."

Haalfrin sees this, and he can't help but think all these people are crazy. Still, he shrugs and says, "Well, that's unfortunate. I really want to get to the Otherworld, so I'll have to break through, somehow. You all going to stop me?"

As one, all the guards stand back at attention and draw their weapons. "Yeah," one of their leaders says, "Mind as well do our job, now that we're all stuck here in this barrier."

"Dude!" one of the guards protests to their captain, "can't we just wait for reinforcements and stall the dragon slayer?"

"Idiot!" the captain reprimands him, "The Threshold is in another dimension! There's no far-speak enchantment that can reach there. Plus, with the gate blocked off with the barrier, nobody can go through and ask for the commander's help."

Realizing there's no other option, one of the other guards bows to Haalfrin politely and says, "Make it painless, please."

Before the guards can even react, Haalfrin slaps his hand to the side and uses his magic to knock them over. He then uses gravity magic to keep them pinned flat while the air is crushed from their lungs. Wordlessly, all 6 guards lose consciousness and black out from the lack of air.

Haalfrin bows politely to the guards and says, "Well, you were all interesting, so I won't kill you."

He then looks up at the gate, which is just beyond the golden barrier. Ignoring the frantic crowd just outside the barrier, he puts his hand on his chin and mutters, "How to get across?"

The last spatial barrier he was in was destroyed because the core of the enchantment (the warden's tower) was destroyed by Dakka.

The question is… where is the enchantment nexus for THIS spatial barrier?

---------------------

Even before the Emperor reaches the Gate, he can see the translucent spatial barrier erected around the Gate even from a mile away; spatial enchantments are so packed full of mana that they glow quite brilliantly.

Of course, seeing the barrier up at such an unlucky time makes the monarch feel restless. It COULD just be another inspection… but there's always the chance Haalfrin decided to do something stupid.

Indeed, once the emperor arrives at the pavilion, and the frightened crowd gives way for their ruler, he sees Haalfrin sitting down on the ground, scratching calculations into the pavement while muttering to himself unintelligibly. Just between the man and the Gate are 6 unconscious guards - sprawled peacefully on the floor.

"Ugh…," the emperor sighs while he's helped out of his carriage. His head bodyguard tries to keep him in the carriage, but the old man waves him off, "Bah! The man's behind a spatial barrier! He can't hurt me! Help me out, so I can have a word with him."

Perhaps it's because the emperor of Brancotte is still sick, but the stress he's feeling right now makes the headaches and nausea a lot worse. Suppressing a groan, he turns behind him and beckons, "Emilia! Come with me. I want you to see this up close."

Princess Emilia scrunches her eyes and wonders, 'He's trying to present me in this kind of situation?! That's insane!'

Still, she obediently hops out and helps her father up toward the barrier. Once there, the emperor puts his hand on the rippling surface. "Sir Haalfrin," he calls, "Come over here. I'll have a word with you."

The man turns his head slightly to look at the emperor. His shaggy brown hair is obscuring most of his face, which (coupled with the faint Aura surrounding the man) makes him seem more menacing.

After finishing his thought, the dragon slayer finally stands up and walks slowly towards the barrier, crosses his arms, and stands before the emperor. "Are you here to finally give me permission to enter through the Gate?"

The old monarch bows his head slightly and says, "That was all a misunderstanding, sir. Some of my attendants weren't doing their jobs. They were going out of their way to bully Lady Prella, and they wouldn't let me know she was here to visit with you." He looks nervously at Haalfrin's stoic expression, and he finishes, "I've already dealt the appropriate punishment."

Haalfrin keeps his arms crossed while he scoffs in his heart, 'There's no way to know if the emperor himself told his attendants to leave Prella and I unanswered.'

He looks at the World Gate, which is sealed just beyond his grasp. 'However, even if he's lying, there's no point in letting my pride get in the way of getting what I want.'

He looks back at the emperor again, and he narrows his eyes. 'Hmm… I don't fancy the idea of working for a king again. People like him always throw others away when they're not useful anymore.'

Glancing up subconsciously, Haalfrin remembers his traumatic mistake with King Kanus. 'Politicians can't be trusted.'

With these pessimistic thoughts in his head, Haalfrin answers the emperor with an unfriendly tone, "If you don't lower the seal here, I'll figure out a way to do it myself. I'm asking nicely right now."