Ch.29 - Closing Gate

Other gate shops would simply annonce it a few hours beforehand, not certain themselves when they couldn't continue keeping the gate open and instead aiming for as much profit as they could. Not only did it cause many explorers to be left stranded in the other world but it also caused many explorers to lose their friends and families to such a situation.

Despite everything, Lux couldn't help but shake his head. He understood that some people just wanted to make some money, but he had already notified everyone beforehand that the gate would close three days prior. For larger celestial bodies, he would inform them before but for such a small celestial body, a few hours was all that was needed at the condition that they weren't on the other side of the planet.

Entering the gate, Lux noticed seven people currently standing in the camp, bringing out the few remaining resources of their groups. The camp was left there as it would be used once more once the gate could be reopened.

"The gate closes in six hours, please evacuate as soon as possible." He said as they nodded their heads gratefully, accelerating the collection of those resources, ready to make their way abc as soon as possible.

Sitting on the ground, Lux controlled his energy and released the next spell.

{Cosmic Insight}

Using the spell on his own gate which unfortunately didn't count to increase his upgrading requirements, Lux finally located everyone remaining on the asteroid.

Taking out a map, he handed it out, writing down the location of every remaining explorer in the gate.

With a stir, each explorer looked and chose one to bring back, going in teams just in case something happened. No one was willing to risk their lives and bringing someone with them could surely reassure them.

In this way, four hours and a half later, everyone was out of the gate, no one remaining as Lux decisively closed the gate. The ressources remaining were poor and the monsters almost non-existent. Perhaps next time he opened the gate, new monsters would have popped due to a tower or perhaps, it would still be the deserted asteroid that they could currently see.

As time went by, he felt his connection to the asteroid seemingly widen. Although still present, he knew he couldn't open it anymore with his current amount of energy and as he looked through the system, he saw the time until it came back close enough.

'Five months, 21 days and eleven hours.' Thought Lux with a smile. For the moment, he had plenty of work to do and this asteroid would perhaps have the chance of getting new ressources with new towers.

{Gate Creation - Poria}

'Let's start work.' He grinned as while he hadn't greatly improved himself, he could certainly offer some assistance to his customers and guards from then on.

"The new gate is open. Please note that there are many enemies in that gate, not only monsters." He stated before pointing at the small board at the right to the portal. "The public information and the cost for private information is written. Please feel free to buy it from the information devices." Finished Lux as he himself headed inside of the gate along with many other explorers who paid their dues.

While the new price wasn't cheap at 143 Bym per hour, the resources, monsters, jobs he had released and exploration rewards they could bring back were certainly worth their effort.

"Alright, start building the camp." Said Nellya who had been waiting anxiously for the new gate for quite a while. The previous gate, Proteus, held no interest for them from the moment they cleared the tower. With the incredible amount of rewards her group had received after clearing the tower, allowing her to once again boost her group's strength, she was not only after the countless ressources her members would be able to collect but also after the various towers.

Compared to the towers in the wild which had an unknown amount of monsters and beasts that ranged from small wolves to dragons, the environment in the celestial bodies were a lot more controlled.

The reason why Earth, which was actually ranked as the lowest amongst the tier five celestial bodies in size, had so many tower invasions and other races invasions was unknown. Some rationalized that the amount of the population attracted more towers and enemies, perhaps lighting up as a bulb for enemies. However, despite everything, none were clear on the reason the Earth continuously received a beating from the towers. All that was known was that there were countless beasts in the wild and none were certain which one was hidden in some corner.

Dragons, Hydras, Hellhounds, Thunderbirds, Demons and more walked freely on Earth. No one knew if perhaps a Leviathan or Behemoth lived deeply in the unexplored zones. However, it was certainly dangerous to enter the wild to attack the towers, especially with so many monsters out of it.

"Zakaria, take your men and start scouting around, kill any enemies and see if you can find the monster's location around the tower." Said Nellya, as Zakaria, a gruff looking man nodded his head heavily. As the new leader of the first expeditionary team of the Hatch's family, he had to prove his worth. With this first official mission handed over to him, he'd make sure that everything went well and receive as few casualties as the situation could offer.

With the Hatch family groups leading the way, the other groups took their respective positions, strengthening the camp together as they were now used to.

With a space wanderer being the leader of his own force and someone who followed his own moral principles, they didn't need to fight each other to get as many resources as possible and instead could develop peacefully and in group, strengthening them all and allowing the group to increase their survival chance.

Compared to gate shops where they pitted everyone against each other due to their own greed, the speed in which they brought back ressources and their overall strength was certainly greater in StarGate.

"Enemies spotted." Shouted an explorer from John's group, a group which were still wondering which name to take as their group's name.

With everyone taking arms and Lux's guards approaching him as he was the more important person in the entire group, Lux didn't follow them as except for his space wanderers auxiliary spells, all he had was a defensive and an area spell to create fog.

Instead, as he confirmed that there were no big problems, he went straight into the house built closest to the gate and entered it. This house, which would become his own house for whenever he entered the gate, was the most protected of the entire base. After all, his security was primordial.

{Cosmic Insight.}

With the spell released, he sent it straight at the gate they were constantly fighting against, the gate of Scitt Haven.

From what he could tell, the other gate of Avue Arven didn't seem to be humans. With some differences, he couldn't tell exactly what their race was as in both lives, he had never heard of a similar description. In his previous life, he focused on the fictions he had read and the mythology of their world and in this life in the various races that existed on Earth. After all, with countless attacks from other races and the battles initiated between gates, many other races ended up being captured or saved and brought back to Earth.

Oftentimes, the other races were slaves, just as much as humans were slaves to other races. However, there were always some exceptions such as in his current barony of Nielty where slavery wasn't accepted.

Well, slavery for humans wasn't accepted as he had never seen or heard of another race in the barony.

With his spell reaching the gate, he immediately started the investigation of the portal leading to another world. However, he immediately felt some resistance from the gate. It was normal as his energy was invasive and would directly be repelled by the gate, alerting the enemy.

Thankfully, despite everything, the only way to block the attack was by flooding the gate with spatial energy and blocking the attack until the energy of the spell dispersed or by simply knowing the counter spell. As for whether the space wanderer on the other side knew of the spell, he didn't count on it as the inheritance of skills weren't openly passed between people.

Finally, after half an hour where he continuously spent more and more energy, knowing that it cost a lot more for the defensive spatial wanderer, he finally breached the defenses.

'Seven open gates, 33 inactive gates.' Thought Lux as he was surprised by the number of gates owned by the other person. 'There are most likely more than a single spatial wanderer on the other side or the group has a deeper background having existed for many years and passing the coordinates to one another.' He continued before turning to the more important matters ahead.

'476 targets.'

Counting the number of threads for the number of enemies, he followed the threads of a few of them before his spell's energy was completely exhausted, causing him to lose track of the threads.

"Those are the closest to us." Said Lux as he took a map and handed it over to his guard as Lux went straight back to the shop. His guards would take care of the rest, perhaps with the help of a few explorers.