Chapter 15 - Divination & Detection

With the various groups pulling out ressources from the gate in case something went wrong, the day gradually reached an end.

True to his words, despite the time for closure having come, he kept both the shop which was experiencing a boost in popularity after the news of the various released tasks and the gate open, allowing the explorers to enter and leave at will.

Besides, since he had a task to keep a gate open for longer than twenty-four hours, he figured he could kill two birds with one stone. After all, improving his gate creation skill would go a long way in the future. Perhaps there wouldn't be many changes but the energy efficiency of the skill would certainly improve.

During this time, he didn't even have the customers pay to enter the gate. After all, he himself couldn't defend his gate and he was solely relying on his customers for this battle. Besides, with the new spell he needed to learn and master overnight, he neither had the time nor the people to take care of the shop which reminded him.

'I need to get myself a cashier or something to work in the shop.' He thought as it limited his development time to work in the shop by himself.

Finally, midnight arrived.

[Do you wish to exchange Bym for Credits?]

"Exchange 2,754,000 Bym." Said Lux, exchanging everything except two million Bym which he kept as reward for the various tasks he had released.

[Exchange completed. Current balance: 2754 credit.]

Buying the new skill: Cosmic Insight, he immediately went upstairs, leaving the gate open for any new customers as he entered his meditation state.

Buying a skill from the system shop allowed him to only get the level one pattern of the skill which explained the low price. However, considering that it granted him a channel to learn new things related to professionals, things that wouldn't be sold nor spread otherwise, he didn't mind the price nor the obvious limitations as he only got the level one skill pattern.

Taking some time to learn and master the pattern without spending his energy on it, he finally started to slowly inscribe it two hours later, once the pattern was seemingly imprinted in his mind due to how much he studied it.

He had no choice. After all, he knew that he was limited in the number of tries he could have. Not only did he have to learn the skill and thus expend the limited amount of energy he had, he also had to keep his energy flowing to keep the gate open downstairs.

Closing the gate in such a time would be a devastating blow to not only his shop but to his reputation and his customers who would from then on always have some doubt at the back of their minds.

As he thought of the current small-scar war happening in Proteus, he couldn't help but have a headache.

'At least it wasn't the level four gate.' Thought Lux, comforting himself with the thought that he may not even have had the chance of protecting himself had it been the other gate.

After all, the higher the level of a gate, the more energy had been spent on it and the obviously stronger background of the gate owner.

Even he, a new space wanderer, a common civilian professional, was thinking of forming his own team since it would be a lot easier to fight and defend instead of being at the mercy of his customers.

Shaking these thoughts out of his head, he went straight into meditation, beginning his pattern inscription attempt.

——

6 hours later.

"Finally I got it." Exclaimed an exhausted Lux who had spent a large part of the night simply trying to inscribe the pattern without failing.

Looking at the time through his tired-looking eyes, he knew that the sunrise would soon arrive. Not only did it mean more actions from both his customers and enemies, it also meant that he had to use his newly mastered spell to bring back the necessary information to the explorers helping him defend his gate.

Walking down the stairs in the shop and noting that there weren't any problems much to his relief, he didn't waste any time as he entered straight into the shimmering portal much to the consternation of the customers who for the very first time witnessed a space wanderer entering his own gate.

Not only was such a practice dangerous for the space wanderer as they would become a prime target to any enemies but he would also endanger the explorers who entered the gate.

After all, should the space wanderer die, not only would the portal close down, but the explorers already on the other side would be stranded forever. Of course, they could, at that point, enter another gate but who knew where it led and who knew how the other side would react?

Staying in the makeshift camp and not stepping a step further, knowing how dangerous such a practice was, he noticed that the explorers were instantly on edge as they started to look everywhere around, searching for any enemies.

None would joke with their lives and at this point, each wasn't feeling well of such an obvious risk.

{Cosmic Insight.}

As he cast the spell, Lux instantly noticed a large and continuous decrease in his energy.

Thankfully, the planet under his foot wasn't overwhelmingly large and he had no problem locating the gate thanks to his system which had perfectly mapped it in his mind.

Immediately scanning the gate as he didn't have the energy to simply mess around, information from the other side gradually updated in his mind.

'Hum, the opposite space wanderer currently has two activated gates and two unactivated ones.' He started as he got the gist of the opposite space wanderer's strength before turning to the small threads that seemingly left the portal and headed in various directions.

With a proper understanding of the enemy's strength, Lux knew that despite the opposite side having a stronger group than his own, he still had a fighting chance. After all, the opposite had two gates to take care of while he had only a single one. 

Following the threads that went far away with his energy, Lux was happy to see how strong and useful his new spell was. Not only did he find their current location but he could also guess their average strength not that it mattered as they were all pretty much of the same strength.

As an explorer entered the portal into another planet, they would be tied with an otherwise invisible thread which linked them to their respective gate. This specific thread was exactly what stopped people from entering a gate and exiting by another and thus accomplishing fast travel between two locations.

And once again, this specific thread was also the reason he could track them down with relative ease.

"There are 64 enemies on Proteus." Started Lux as everyone around listened to his words, awe filling them as for the first time they saw a skill that could almost render other tracking classes obsolete.

Taking his world map, he directly wrote down their locations on the map. Most enemies were in groups of two of threes and about half of them were harvesting resources while a few of the others were seemingly hunting them down as they weren't very far from their current makeshift camp. Finally, a group of about twenty explorers protected their own gate from being breached.

"Alright, let's go guys!" Shouted Nellya as she immediately started to send out various teams to take down the enemies with the most ease possible which was quickly followed by the other teams who found their own target and moved out.

As for Lux, his job done, he immediately turned and went back inside the shop. He wouldn't be risking his life for nothing, especially since his life was the linchpin between both worlds.