The Gate Traveler

Needing a day to recuperate from my "shit storm," I moved the camp to a nice clearing at the foot of a mountain and spent the entire day swinging between annoyance at the lack of data and acceptance that I needed to figure out everything myself.

It was also a good opportunity to empty my garbage barrel. Walking about a kilometer from camp, I dug a hole and emptied the barrel. There were a lot of takeaway boxes. Initially, I planned to burn all of them, but on second thought, I cleaned the good plastic ones with the spell and saved them for the cooked food I'd store in the future. I discovered the broken sunglasses that shielded my eye from the "goat bomb" and cast Mend to restore them. This spell was outstanding; they were like new. After remembering my shredded leather pants and skinny jeans, I mended them as well. Sometimes, maintenance was necessary.

Eventually, my annoyance reached the point where I was willing to brave the Archive again. I returned to camp, got comfortable in a lounge chair with a footrest, and dove into the Archive. There was a new entry in the Archive to buy a supply of shoelaces on worlds that have good ones because the Traveler had to resort to using a rope. I wrote him a comment, "Buy the Mend spell," and continued scrolling.

I reached the discussion about additional Traits. The Traveler who got the Luck Trait from the [Treasure Hunter] sub-class now had 63 people calling him a liar. The Traveler who got it from the [Path Finder] sub-class now had 41 people calling him a liar. When I reached my "post," I felt like a social media star. 136 people said they had the Merchant Profession, didn't get the Trait, and called me a liar. I blew those guys out of the water.

Yay me!

Scrolling down until I reached the pompous ass who wrote "My Thoughts on the Difference Between Awakened Beasts and Monsters," which was the last place I stopped, I continued from there. Again, I had to wade through a lot of bullshit. Somebody posted a recipe for "An Amazing Siskek Campfire Stew." The only ingredient I recognized in the whole recipe was salt, and it amazed me to see three people thanking him and saying it was delicious.

Somebody else asked to please, please, please, when you write 'world information' about a world you're leaving, put the Gate chain that got you there and the cluster where it's located. I hadn't read anything about clusters before, but I could infer their meaning from the context. How to know what cluster you were in was unclear, and no explanation was provided, but the Gate chain request sounded like a great idea.

Further down, another Traveler also wrote about clusters and cleared up the confusion, at least partially.

I added my two cents and asked about the crystals.

Then, I came across something alarming. It was an article titled "Opportunities and Dangers in Worlds Undergoing an Integration." After reading LitRPG books, the title was alarming in itself, but reading the article alarmed me even more. It first described how you could recognize a world close to integration and listed mana levels 9-10 and over 200 Gates to that specific world from mana worlds. It explained that the first step before integrating a world is to increase the Gate count to flood the world with mana. Remembering that Earth had a lot of Gates, I looked for my notebook and counted them—139 Gates. Phew! Not 200 yet. I also remembered that some Gates I approached led to unintegrated tech-worlds. I rechecked my notebook. 10 Gates led to low mana tech-worlds. So, 129 potential mana-world connections. I checked my notes about Earth's mana level—3. It seemed like Earth would become integrated, but it still had time.

The description of the primary danger was enlightening in a way: "Waves of mana flood the world through the Gates, creating areas with uneven mana. Those areas can be as mild as a low mana world and as dangerous as a very high mana world, with all the dangerous mana beasts usually present in such worlds." That sounded scary; I wasn't sure I wanted to visit a high mana world.

Pausing in the middle of the article, I took a moment to assess my feelings.

Do I care?

I left Earth with no intention of ever returning, but my alarm at reading the article and worry about Earth told a different story. After some thought, I concluded Earth was not my home. I didn't belong there, but felt a mild responsibility for the place that birthed and raised me. Besides, there wasn't much left for me on Earth. Just two graves that served as reminders of a life I had lost.

So, I would occasionally check the Gates to Earth and monitor the mana levels. If I saw the mana reach level 9 and felt like it, I might help the locals in the area around the Gate. However, I wouldn't go out of my way to provide global help. I had no responsibility or debt to Earth; my life had moved on, and I no longer considered it my home. After reaching my desion, I felt better overall and less annoyed, so I closed the Archive. There's a limit to how much you can wade through nonsense.

I hadn't played my guitar for a while, so I took it out and started playing. I didn't learn new songs; I just played the ones I already knew. After a few songs, I played a song I discovered in the songbook and fell in love with. "Sleeping Sun" by Nightwish. After a few seconds, I stopped and started again, but this time, I sang.

"The sun is sleeping quietly
Once upon a century..."

Halfway through the song, Stretch sat beside me and began to howl-sing with me. We sang like this for hours, until I exhausted my entire repertoire.

The following morning, I was brimming with energy, and my body screamed for me to move. After I broke camp, I ran. Stretch thought it was a great idea and ran beside me, his tail going a mile a minute. I ran fast, but felt that I could go even faster, so I pushed myself faster, faster, faster, until it felt like I was flying. I didn't think I had ever driven that fast.

We flew through the wilderness for a few hours until I saw a big river in the distance. Instead of stopping, I tried something entirely new for me. I "stored" the clothes off my body, and it worked! Additionally, I stored my shoes, socks, and, lastly, my sunglasses. I was running buck-naked and laughing loudly. When I got to the river, I dove in without stopping. The flight through the air before I hit the water was the most exhilarating experience in my life. Stretch jumped after me, and we played in the water. I experienced an amazing sense of freedom and weightlessness.

When I got tired of playing, I floated on my back and let the current take me; it was slow and relaxing. Stretch swam beside me, and I told him to let me know when he wanted to come out of the water. He seemed content to dog-paddle beside me. For the first time in a long while, nothing pressed on me—no past, no weight, just sky above and water beneath. After a while, we climbed out, dried off in the sun, and shared lunch. I opened a bottle of wine, letting it warm my chest. It felt good simply to exist and be free.