Chapter 188: Chapter 173: Gate

"Go. I doubt I can help, and it would take me a minute to get dressed," said Cluma. Not having any clothes at my house, she still had her armour half on, and given the poor condition it was in, she'd need to take time and care to either remove it completely or redress.

I'd changed into my usual home clothes. Perhaps my armour would have been more appropriate for whatever was happening, but it was in my [Item Box], so I could change en route if needed. I was, however, very glad I hadn't put on my enchanted dress, regardless of the massage enhancement it may have offered. I rushed out of my front door and Krana grabbed me without a word the moment I emerged, not even giving me a chance to close it.

"Another anomaly," he explained a few wing beats later, confirming my guess as Dawnhold receded behind us.

"But wasn't it due yesterday morning?" I asked before realising the implications of his rush. I hadn't checked [Clock], but surely it had been more than ten Earth minutes since the first foreign soul notification? "Wait, it's still open?"

"Indeed. It formed late and is lasting longer. Not only that, but this one is different. It is not an unstructured crack, but a perfect circle."

"They're trying to make it traversable? Wait, how do you know? Have you visited it already? Just how long has it been open?"

"It has been active for twenty minutes and has displayed no sign of abating."

So much for taking a break from adulting. This was about as adult as things could get. "What do you want me to do?" I asked seriously.

"First, communication. From our previous experience, we can assume that those on the other side speak your language. Should anything emerge, we need you to talk with them. Should nothing emerge, we shall be relying on you once more to enter the anomaly and instigate communications on the other side. I assume you are fully healed and can repeat your previous actions?"

"Yes."

"Good. Second, should anything occur that poses a risk, use your spatial affinity and [Expert Mana Control] to disrupt the anomaly. You will have the support of Bruleggiamlixanax in such a situation, but without a physical presence on the inside of the anomaly, his skills are of little use. Furthermore, Serlvrenalliacta is collecting Darren. If needed, he should be able to disrupt it from the outside."

"You were already in Dawnhold. Couldn't you have picked up us both? And how did you even know where I was?"

It was a reasonable guess that Darren would be in the village, but I could have been anywhere.

"We were too pressed for time for me to make multiple stops, and Tilyana divined your location."

Fair enough. She could probably find anyone. But that only tweaked my question to how they found Tilyana. I supposed it was more likely that Tilyana found them.

ding
Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates <Error>
Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates <Error>
Administrative notification: Foreign soul detected at coordinates <Error>
6 further administrative notifications follow.

Fewer than the last batch, but still... This one was spreading.

Krana was flying at silly speeds, and the breakneck rate at which my plans for the evening had been shattered left me too preoccupied to even suffer my usual airsickness. Or at least, to notice it. As Cluma had picked up, the anomaly this time was west of Dawnhold. It wasn't far, either, situated in the middle of the forest that housed the Emerald Sea. As Krana had stated, a perfect circle hung in the air. He hadn't mentioned the fact that it was a hundred metres above the ground, well above the forest canopy below, but I had my enchanted rings, so I could cope with heights. They were better than centipedes.

The dragon I recognised as Bruleg was hovering in front of the anomaly, Tilyana standing on his back. The [Spatial Archmage] from last time didn't appear to be present, nor had Serlv yet returned with Darren. [Mana Sight] showed that Bruleg was holding back the ambient mana in the same way as Darren had previously, preventing it from spilling into Earth.

"Any developments?" asked Krana as we arrived, at which Bruleg wordlessly stuck out a front limb and uncurled his claws. Sitting within was a sphere of perfectly clear ice, and inside that...

"This came through the anomaly four minutes ago. It moved around in the air without falling until I caught it. Do you know what it is?"

"It's a (drone). Umm... A (remote control flying vehicle). How do I translate that? Like a cart that doesn't need a horse to pull it, and can fly, and the (pilot)... I mean, driver, can be at a distance. It probably has (cameras) on, which would let the driver see around it. They were likely using it to see what was on this side of the portal without risking anyone by sending them through in person."

It was a helicopter, half a metre in length, and on closer inspection, it certainly had cameras. Lights, too, as well as other interesting components that I had no clue about. More sensors? It would make sense. If they wanted to send people here, they'd want to know the air composition, local gravity, ambient radiation, and so on. Heck, if this was another universe, the laws of physics could be completely different. I knew they were at least superficially similar, having lived in both worlds, but it wasn't as if I'd ever flown to the sun and checked it was a big ball of hydrogen and helium, powered through nuclear fusion, and not a giant light crystal or an oversized light affinity monster.

Nothing on the drone was moving, encased in ice as it was, but I saw a small light still on. How much of it was still working? Was it still sending back video, despite being frozen?

"Can it be used for communication?" asked Krana.

"It's possible. If it has (speakers) and a (microphone), and they survived being frozen, and it's able to communicate through the anomaly, and physics is sufficiently similar that it all still works."

On consideration, physics must be the same. That drone was made of atoms, just like everything else, and there were almost no tweaks that could be made to the laws of the universe that would let it cross between without something horrible happening to it. Same with my hand and eye from the last time. My hand still moved, and my eye could still see. Atoms were still atoms and light was still light. Physics must be compatible.

The fact that it had been flying before Bruleg caught it didn't confirm it could communicate through the portal, though. It could have been operating on auto, rather than being remotely piloted.

Tilyana was being uncharacteristically quiet again, and looking over at her, she was lacking her usual slight smile. I could only guess that her skills had fallen silent, and she wasn't used to lacking their support.

"Then once Serlvrenalliacta returns with your brother, I shall free it, and we shall see if we and they can talk."

I nodded and looked back towards the anomaly. It looked very similar to one of the usual travel portals, a black disk hanging in the air, but it lacked the violet lightning flickering around the edges, and didn't have even a whiff of space affinity mana around it. It didn't have any mana around it. Whatever they were doing on the other side, they'd succeeded in tunnelling without the use of magic. It was slightly larger than our portals, too, at maybe five metres in diameter. Why did it need to be so big? What else would be coming through? It would need to be something capable of flight, given the drop.

Why did each portal come out in a different location? Did they not have control of the end point? In that case, coming out a hundred metres in the air was likely an accident.

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My musings were interrupted by the return of Serlv, and Darren was with her.

"Any developments?" she asked, mirroring Krana, and leading to a repeat of the explanation about the drone. "Very well. Free it, and we shall see what happens."

The ice sphere melted away, vanishing without producing water, leaving the drone intact and dry. Bruleg held it upright in one paw, but the blades didn't spin up, and it showed no signs of activity other than a few small LEDs.

"(If this is an attempt at communication, I speak your language,)" I said in English, to no response. [Eye of Judgement] gave no results when used on the drone, nor did any of my other skills.

"Maybe it's broken? But why is the portal still open? Shall I send a hand-eye thing through?"

"I cannot hold back the flow of mana forever," pointed out Bruleg. "I vote for resolving this as quickly as possible."

"Then yes, send a part of yourself through, and we shall attempt communication."

Darren helped to relieve some of the burden from Bluleg, while I once again removed a hand and eye, throwing the combination into the portal. The inside was nothing like before, still dark and empty, but with no resistance to impede my progress. I didn't need to crawl forward, forcing my way through the fabric of space or whatever the inside of the rift was made from, and my hand popped out back in the experimental room purely from its initial momentum.

There had been some changes, not least the array of a dozen people in hazmat suits, kneeling behind barricades, with assault rifles poking through gun ports.

Unnamed human, Commoner (1/1)

Who responded to my appraisal skills. They had no names, appearing as fresh newborns, but the System recognised them as human. I couldn't view their detailed status with [Analysis], which implied the one year thing wasn't merely to do with age. [Eye of Judgement] worked, but every status was completely blank, except for their stats. They didn't even have affinities. Was the first year the time the System used to get to 'know' the soul of its hosts? I flipped on [Soul Perception], the skill greatly weakened when used from my remote drone, but enough to show me an out-of-place sphere embedded in each of them. Even smaller than those embedded in the twins the first time I'd seen them and completely featureless, with none of the System's branches, but they were there. Positive proof that the System had started to interfere on Earth, at least in those close to the portal.

I saw no chains, but if the System could breach the rift, why not the Law? Was it only a matter of time?

"The other side is a place of fear," said Tilyana. Was it my hand on the other side that let her skills connect, or was it the strong reaction they had to my hand? Either way, her message wasn't exactly reassuring. Fear and guns did not make for a good combination. I also had the problem that I couldn't hear anything. As much as I wanted to add an ear to my drone, there was no way I could extract the required bits from my head.

The walls of the room were covered in white plastic sheeting, the logo painted on the wall no longer visible. The sphere had been removed, replaced by a ring. The rods were still present, but the ends were no longer hidden inside the shell of metal, and they were tipped with equipment I couldn't even begin to guess the purpose of. An array of complicated looking machinery was aimed at the ring, and, of course, within the ring hovered a disk of darkness.

Further behind the barricades were more people in hazmat suits, working on more drones. I could see another couple of helicopters and a plane. That explained why the portal was still open; if we'd waited longer, they'd likely have sent the next one through. They were going over one of the helicopters with a dull, violet light, that stung to look at. UV? Were they trying to sterilise the drones? That would be a very good sign; it implied they were trying not to contaminate our world with Earth microbes. If they were planning to invade, that wouldn't be a thing they'd care about.

With my real body, I pulled out sheets of paper and a pencil, Bruleg needing to transfer Tilyana over to Krana's back to help me, given my missing hand.

"Any idea what I should write to bring about the best ending?"

"Alas, the voices are still unclear. There is little nature on the other side. Only metal."

"Explain that the anomalies are damaging our world," said Serlv.

It was a message influenced by Law; she couldn't comprehend anyone deliberately harming our world, and therefore assumed they didn't already know. Chances were good that her assumption was correct, though. Given how quickly they'd established a traversable gate, whatever they were doing previously obviously wasn't supposed to be traversable. That they'd built this stable one the moment we'd revealed ourselves implied they didn't previously know we were here.

But simply informing them the portals were dangerous was no guarantee of a good outcome. At best, they would shut down this project, but it was already too late to kill the idea off completely. I'd seen the array of people on the other side. Even if they burnt the facility and destroyed its data, people knew. This was too big for them all to hold their tongues. Information would leak. The knowledge that another world existed would lead to more experiments. The technology would be recreated, and eventually we'd be back where we started. Maybe not for another few decades, but I found it hard to believe that simply warning them of the dangers would mean we'd never hear from Earth again. I may have shed my [Self-Destructive] title, but Earthen humanity as a whole could probably re-earn it.

We could handle the mana drain on our side if we could control the location of the portals, simply by having the exit in a null-mana room. But they had problems on their side, and how serious they were depended on why I'd seen more foreign soul notifications. Was it because this portal was stable, there were more people closer to the portal, or was the System adapting somehow? If the System was adapting, continued use of portals could contaminate all of Earth.

If we could open portals safely, what other options were there? There was almost certainly trade that could be done, but establishing formal relations had the issue that I had no idea who, on our side, they would be with. Earth would likely have a similar problem; other countries would want to get in on the act, if we had anything valuable. But really, one goal of any continued portal research needed to include how to block them from our side.

What could people with portal technology and nefarious intent actually do, anyway? If they tried to cross over, the Law would bind them eventually, and if they started at level one they'd be weak as children. Yes, they could pour bombs through and cause damage, but why? There'd be nothing in it for them. Depriving this world of mana seemed to be the biggest danger.

"How long can this gate be left open?"

"Thanks to your brother, I am no longer as strained, yet the weight of mana is still crushing. We can give you an hour."

I nodded and got to writing, translating the timescale into Earth hours. "The anomalies you create are damaging both worlds. This gate can be left open for two Earth hours without issue on our side. I can't predict what's happening on yours, but there is likely to be an effect on anyone near the gate. I advise keeping communication brief. Why have you opened a portal to our world, and what is it you intend?"

I teleported the note to my hand, making sure to place it face upwards, then back-peddled away from it.

When the first response came, it was so stereotypical that I nearly slammed my face into Krana's scales.

"We come in peace."

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