The Gate Traveler-Chapter 13B6 - : My Library’s Having a Growth Spurt

We spent most of the day chatting with Malith. He was a fascinating guy who’d been traveling for over a hundred and fifty years and was a lot less cagey than Lis when it came to sharing stories. I got where Lis was coming from—not wanting to spoil anything in case we ended up visiting a world he’d been to—but it was still a lot of fun hearing about all the different places.

At some point, Al straightened up and gave Malith a curious look. “Do you know what your future plans are?”

Malith didn’t hesitate. “Yes. I want you to give me the Gate chain so I can go to the integrating world.” He leaned forward, elbows resting on the bar, voice picking up with excitement. “Twice, I found a world that had just been through one, but never one still in the middle of the process. I would very much like to experience it while it happens.”

“And the classes and ability points won’t hurt,” Mahya added with a sly grin, nudging him lightly with her elbow.

He tilted his head to the side in agreement, the corner of his mouth twitching upward.

“Do you need to pick up something from the moon?” I asked. “We just pulled you out and didn’t think about your stuff.”

“No. My most important equipment is in my Storage.” He gave a short, self-deprecating laugh and rubbed the back of his neck. “You might think I’m ridiculous, but the thought of going back makes me fear I might get stuck there again.”

I patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry. If you need to go back for something, I promise you we’ll get you out once more.”

He smiled, a flicker of emotion passing through his eyes. “I know. However, irrational fears are exactly that—irrational. Besides, I have everything I need with me. Some tools and tech that won’t work here... they’re of little importance.”

“Don’t worry,” Mahya said, patting his knee. “The mental Strength will take care of it in no time.”

“I’m sure, but it didn’t happen yet,” he said with a sigh.

While we talked, I asked my core to create a room for him. In the afternoon, he went up to rest. He looked much better by then. His shoulders no longer drooped, and his eyes had even started to glow a little.

When he was out of earshot, I turned to the gang. “What do you think of him?”

“Malith smell nice,” Rue announced, tail thumping once against the floor.

We burst out laughing.

“Well, if he smells nice, that means he’s good,” Mahya said, trying to sound serious but failing to hide her grin.

Rue nodded, all conviction.

“He is fascinating,” Al said.

“He’s not a mountain,” Mahya said, folding her arms and raising an eyebrow.

Al shot her a glare. “I meant his stories, not his physique.”

“Yeah, his stories are fun,” she said softly, her voice turning wistful as she stared off into the distance. “It’s almost like listening to my parents. Or Lis, when he actually talked about the past. It made me miss all of them.”

I sighed. “Yeah. Me too.”

We sat quietly for a while.

Mahya suddenly shook herself, like Rue flinging off water after a swim. “Alright. What are our future plans? Next Gate? Back to the moon for more education for you two? Escorting Malith to Earth?”

“He does not need our escort,” Al said, folding his arms. “He is much stronger than us. Even you.”

“Yeah, but maybe John wants to check up on them,” she countered, tilting her head toward me.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”

“So... next Gate?” she asked.

“I want to check out the Nami Gate on the moon,” I said.

She shot to her feet so fast her chair skidded back and slammed into the far wall. “Are you nuts?” she shouted, pointing at me.

“I’m not gonna cross it! Sheesh! I’m not an idiot, no matter what you call me sometimes,” I said, throwing up my hands.

“They say curiosity killed the cat,” she shouted.

Rue jumped up beside me, tail stiff. “John is no stinking cat!”

I pointed at him. “Exactly.”

Mahya grabbed both my hands, her fingers latching on tight. “Please don’t do it,” she said, her voice low and pleading. “You have no idea how dangerous that place is. Mana ninety-five sounds high, but it’s abstract. You don’t get what it means until you feel it. At that level, the laws of reality—of physical existence—they’re just suggestions.”

“Relax,” I told her. “I’m not even going to get that close. But Malith said it’s changing the moon itself. I just want to see what that looks like.”

She stomped her foot like a furious kid. “No! I won’t let you.” Then, without warning, she threw her arms around me and clung tight. “I might be a bitch sometimes. Okay, more than sometimes. I know I’m difficult and mouthy. Judgmental and bossy. My family told me that my whole life. But I really, truly love you. There’s no way I’m letting you do something so dangerous on my watch. I’m not losing you, not even if you try your best to get lost. So throw that idea out of your head right now.” She let go and grabbed my hands again. “You’re not going there, and that’s final. Got it?”

I’d never seen her like that. She was shaking. She clutched my hands so tightly I could barely feel my fingers. When I looked into her eyes, I felt it. Raw, honest fear. Some of it was for what the Gate could do. But most of it was for me, that something might happen to me.

I sighed and gave her a small nod.

She leaped forward, hugging me again, tighter than before, as if she could anchor me with sheer force. She held on for over a minute, refusing to let go.

Just before she released me, she whispered, “If I have to, I’ll even save you from yourself.”

I stepped outside for some air, and Malith’s cores were still lying there on a large sheet of metal, surrounded by a ridiculously complex magic circle. I crouched down to examine it. There were quite a few runes I’d never seen before. It took me a while to learn them and decipher the whole thing, and it was brilliant.

The circle pulled ambient mana from the air and ran it through a series of filters that converted all the polluted mana into clean mana. My house had filters too, mainly to stop monster formation. I even had Lis’s blueprints for them. But this? This was on another level.

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The filters I had just stripped out the pollution and blocked the dirty mana from reaching the core. This circle didn’t just block it—it converted it.

I facepalmed. When I designed the spell to convert monsters into crystals, I adopted the same concept: purify the mana, remove the pollution. But this was way better. There was no waste. No loss.

I inspected the circle from every angle, already thinking about how I could adjust my spell. If it worked the way I expected, the crystals we would harvest in the future would be at least twice as large. Rubbing my face, I let out a frustrated groan. I should’ve thought of this sooner. I didn’t have some of the runes Malith used, but I had others that could’ve done the job just fine.

Live and learn. Live and learn.

Inspired by the circle, I started crafting the new spell right then and there, my mind buzzing with possibilities. The runes practically danced in my thoughts, pieces falling into place one by one. I lost all track of time as I worked, crouched over the metal sheet, fingers tracing shapes in the air with mana.

At some point, Rue padded outside, his claws clicking softly on the stone. He nudged his massive head under my hand and declared, “Rue is hungry.”

I scratched behind his ear without looking up. “Of course you are.”

That was when I finally noticed the dark. The spell I was creating glowed softly with my mana, casting a purple light around me. It had been enough to keep me going, not realizing the sun had long since set. I let out a breath, “stored” the circle under the skin of my palm, and headed inside to cook.

Inside, laughter echoed from the living room. Malith was sitting with Mahya and Al, all three relaxed and grinning like old friends trading jokes.

“Where have you been?” Mahya called out, one brow raised.

“Outside,” I said.

She gave me the look. “Where outside?”

I jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “Right out the door.” Then, I turned to Malith. “Your circle is brilliant.”

“Thank you,” he said with a small smile.

“Do you have any rune or magic script books you wouldn’t mind sharing?” I asked, walking over.

He shifted uncomfortably on the couch, his eyes flicking toward the hallway as if he were calculating something.

“Of course,” I added, “in exchange, I’ll share the ones I have.”

“It’s not that,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Some books I have are from the Enchanters' Guilds. I had to swear not to share them when I got them.”

“Ah. Got it. Do you have any books you didn’t swear about?”

He thought for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Two, I think. Maybe three. I’ll need to check.”

“Any other knowledge?” Mahya asked, leaning forward with interest.

Malith nodded. “Some.”

“Alchemy?” Al asked, eyes lighting up.

Malith shook his head with a regretful sigh. “Sadly, no. I’d love to learn how to make basic potions, but I haven’t had the chance yet.”

“We’ve got some interesting books,” Mahya said, jerking her thumb at me. “Technically John’s, but we’re all about swapping knowledge around here.”

“What kind of books?” Malith asked, curious now.

“A lot,” I said with a shrug. “Some I haven’t even opened. A friend gave me his whole library.”

“After traveling for four hundred years,” Mahya added, giving it a dramatic flair.

Malith looked at us like we’d just handed him the keys to paradise. “That’s a really good friend.”

Mahya and I sighed dramatically in perfect sync, exchanged a knowing look, and burst out laughing.

“Yes,” I said. “He’s a very good friend.”

“Where is he now?” Malith asked.

“Visiting some dragons,” I said.

He stiffened like someone had just dropped ice down the back of his shirt. “You know a Gate to the dragons?”

We grinned and nodded in unison.

Malith jumped to his feet and extended his hand with mock formality. “Please, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Malith, and I will be your friend forevermore. Of course, after you hand over that Gate chain.”

Rue harrumphed and jumped up from his beanbag, his ears twitching. “First Malith be friend. Then Malith get Gate. Friend come first.”

We all laughed, and I scratched Rue’s ear. “He wasn’t setting conditions. It was a joke.”

Rue narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Malith, who immediately pulled the most innocent face imaginable: wide-eyed, hands raised slightly, and a sweet smile.

Rue huffed, unimpressed, and gave a grudging nod. “Rue protect John from pretend friend.”

I gave his head a few pats. “Don’t worry, big guy. It’s fine.”

He gave one last skeptical grunt, then flopped back onto his beanbag with a dramatic thud, letting out a long sigh, like the weight of the world was back on his furry shoulders. ƒreewebɳovel.com

The next two weeks became a blur of parchment and a mana-sapping effort. Our living room looked more like a scholar’s den—or a very messy secondhand bookstore—than anything else.

It started with Al offering Malith some basic alchemy books and a few tomes from the cultivator world. Malith took them with a reverent nod, thumbing through the pages like someone holding sacred texts. We also gave him all the runes and magic script books we had, along with a few others he found interesting.

While rummaging through my collection, I made a fun discovery.

“Hey,” I called out, holding up a book with a faded green cover. “Turns out I only have nineteen books left that I can’t read.”

Mahya arched a brow from across the room. “Only nineteen?”

“Yeah,” I said, flipping through the pages. “I guess all that time training my mana channels in Tír na nÓg and burning mana on languages while searching for stuff paid off.”

“So… you’re going to learn them now?”

“Already started,” I said, grinning.

I spent the next few days knocking them off one by one, absorbing the last unread corners of my magical library. The regular one could wait; it was mostly wizard-speak anyway. Every time I learned a new language, the others would groan, especially when it turned out to be something useful.

“Wait,” Al said, deadpan, holding up a book with a picture of a bird. “You had a book about transmutation all along and never told me?”

“I didn’t know what it was,” I protested, laughing.

Mahya narrowed her eyes at me. “Uh-huh. Likely story.”

They both gave me synchronized stink-eyes, but it was all in good fun.

Malith, for his part, brought out books on nearly every subject imaginable. Not all of them were useful to us at the moment, but we copied everything. An open library equals an open mind. Or something like that.

Unfortunately, a huge portion of his rune and magic script books were off-limits.

“I took guild oaths,” he said again in an apologetic tone. “I can’t share them. I’m not even allowed to show them to you.”

I frowned, disappointed, but he scratched his chin and added, “However… the oath only covers the books, not the actual knowledge inside them.”

He looked far too smug when he made that statement.

I blinked. “You’re saying you can teach me, just not let me read it?”

He nodded.

I grinned. “You know? The guilds need to up their lawyer game.”

“Absolutely,” he said, completely deadpan.

I snickered. Then, very solemnly, looked up at the sky and whispered, “Dear guilds, thank you for your oversight. With love, me.”

After that, between copying texts, I learned runes and magic script. Sadly, it wasn’t that much. Yeah, he had a lot of books, but runes and magic script were universal for some reason, and I already knew seventy percent of his entire collection.

Malith didn’t have a copy text spell, or the magical version of it, and no free ability points to buy them, either. So the burden of copying fell squarely on us. Mostly on me. The moment he found out how many ability points we had to spare, he got antsy and started hovering like a librarian, urging us to copy faster.

One afternoon, after the third time he paced past the desk muttering under his breath, Mahya finally snapped.

“Malith, if you don’t chill,” she said, rising halfway off her chair, “I swear I’m going to sit on you.”

He stopped mid-step and turned to her, blinking. “Sit on me? Why would you do such a thing? And what does my body temperature have to do with your inefficient copying speed?”

I choked. Al dropped his pen. Mahya just stared at him for a moment before we all burst into laughter.

Malith looked around, confused but patient. “I see this is amusing. I don’t yet understand how.”

That made it worse.

He frowned slightly, then crossed his arms. “You are strange people.”

We laughed even harder.

Those two weeks were chaos. Books everywhere. My mana was constantly draining. My channels were sore from casting and regenerating almost non-stop, but the trade was worth it. We’d shout excitedly across the room whenever we uncovered something cool, whether in my library or in Malith’s.

“I found a kinetic rune variant!” Mahya called out one night, waving a book over her head.

“Found an extensive book on advanced circle-drawing techniques for unstable environments!” Al said the next day, eyes gleaming.

Even the books from my own collection—ones I’d finally learned to read—surprised us.

“Hey,” I said, holding up a slim book. “Turns out this one’s about tactical shielding. Buildings, gadgets, or even armor.”

Mahya groaned. “You’ve had that since before we left Earth.”

“I didn’t know what it was!”

Al shook his head. “John, you are a danger to knowledge itself.”

We all laughed a lot, even through the exhaustion.

By the end of the two weeks, we had stacks of copied books and sore channels. Finally, it was done.

I dropped onto the couch like a dying man. “Please. No more knowledge.”

Mahya tossed a rolled-up parchment at my head. “Liar.”

I didn’t even dodge.

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