The Gate Traveler-Chapter 57B5 - : Metamorphosis

I stepped through the Gate back to Zindor and lasted three seconds before hurling myself back to Lumis, unleashing a string of curses a minute long.

Maybe I’m spending too much time around Mahya.

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In those three measly seconds, two ice boulders—because calling them hailstones would be an insult to reality—slammed into my skull with a thunk, while a few more pummeled the rest of me for good measure. By my calculations, it was still supposed to be autumn, not winter, dammit.

I waited an hour before trying again—nearly a full day should have passed on the other side.

The hail was still going strong, but at least the ice missiles had downgraded from “boulder-sized doom” to something slightly less catastrophic.

Fingers crossed, I pulled out an umbrella—a complete failure.

The first few impacts rattled the canopy like a war drum, and within seconds, two ribs snapped under the onslaught. Less than a minute in, my so-called shield was a crumpled mess of metal and fabric, about as useful as a wet paper towel in a hurricane.

With another impressive string of curses, I hightailed it back to Lumis.

Yeah, I’m definitely spending too much time with Mahya.

This time, I waited three hours—and it worked.

On the other side, the sky was clear, the sun shining like it hadn’t just spent the last days trying to pelt the world into submission. The hail had melted, leaving behind a swampy mess of oversized puddles and thick, clinging mud.

Thank the Spirits I can fly.

As I flew toward the Gate to Lishuan, my thoughts drifted to Mahya’s last task—pilfering a self-driving cart.

Finding some idiot cultivator willing to attack me wouldn’t be hard. Spirits knew they had a talent for reckless aggression. But the whole idea didn’t sit right. Every time we’d looted one of them before, it had been after they attacked us, unprovoked. Setting up a provocation on purpose felt different. Like waving a red cloth in front of a bull—except I wasn’t interested in playing matador. The whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth.

Besides, if Mahya wanted a damn cart, she could get one herself. Maybe my flying speed was faster than the flying sword, but not by much. If she really wanted it, she could get there in a day if she pushed herself.

And if the hail starts again, I'll be fucked.

Decision made, I changed my trajectory toward the Gate to the dead world. Calling it “dead world” felt strange, but without a name on the Gate, I didn’t have a better option.

The good news was that I was right about the season. It was autumn.

That brutal hailstorm must have been one of the early ones because now, instead of flying over an endless stretch of green, I glided above a rolling sea of orange, yellow, and deep brown. Most of the leaves still clung to the branches, their colors catching the sunlight in a way that made the forests look like a golden ocean, rippling with every gust of wind.

Mesmerizing.

I couldn’t help myself—I had to take a picture.

This world might be the definition of shitty, but it had its moments. Beauty existed if you knew where to look. And from up here, above it all, everything looked better.

When I flew over the mountains, another hailstorm hit. This time, the ice balls were smaller—closer to Earth’s version of hail rather than the skull-cracking boulders from before—but that didn’t make me any less miserable.

I scanned the rocky slopes for a ledge big enough to set up the RV and wait it out. Nothing. No flat ground, no shelter, just sheer cliffs and jagged outcroppings that would do more harm than good. Resigned, I braced myself and pushed forward through the onslaught of murder balls.

Halfway through, an idea struck. I still hadn’t used the ice affinity I got from the wolves, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to test it. Or at least, that’s what I thought—for about three seconds.

The moment I tried to direct the hail away from me, reality smacked me upside the head. I had zero control. I could feel the ice and sense the mana running through it, but moving even a single piece was a pipe dream. Not one measly ice chunk so much as twitched under my will.

I knew it was possible. I had worked with other elements, and this was just ice. I had the affinity. The problem was the lack of practice. And practice, it turned out, was something I could have used.

By the time I accepted that cold, stinging reality, the hail had already pelted me into near numbness. It was frustrating but not wholly unexpected. Deciding to be at least marginally smarter about this element, I spent the next half hour trying to influence the ice balls as I flew through the storm. Progress was painfully slow. By the time I reached the edge, I had occasionally managed to nudge one off course—barely.

The issue was speed. The hail fell too fast for me to latch onto it, and my reaction time was nowhere near quick enough. If I wanted to use this affinity, I’d need serious training, preferably somewhere other than in the middle of an aerial stoning session.

Outside the hailstorm’s perimeter, the sun blazed with scorching intensity, as if making up for the ice barrage I had just escaped. The heat dried me off in minutes, and Healing Touch took care of the bruises, but I still shook my head.

This world’s weather was utterly psychotic. Summer was manageable, just hot. But the rest of the seasons had a split personality disorder, flipping between extremes without warning.

At least the sand collection went fast. Pop in, scoop up a metric ton with my mana sense—now stretching over thirty meters in diameter—and pop out. The whole thing took less than five minutes. The only annoying part was the Gate rule. Once you crossed a Gate, you couldn’t add it to the count again. That applied to all Gates, but for some reason, this one irritated me more than usual. Probably the hail’s fault. I was still grumpy about it.

On my way back, I made a quick stop at the edible dungeon. Getting back fast was the plan, but the mana-rich honey and nuts were too good to pass up—especially with how useful they’d been in my pemmican. They cut body mass loss by a solid eighty percent. I doubted it was just the nuts and honey—I had thrown in other ingredients—but their mana content definitely played a significant role in the achievement. The eggs and bananas weren't bad either.

Running dungeons wasn’t my thing, but this one was just too useful to ignore. I popped into the edible dungeon, determined to clear it as fast as possible.

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The moment I stepped inside, the humid, resin-scented air hit me like a wall. Thick, damp, and suffocating, it was like breathing through a soaked towel. The tree trunk walls glistened with that same faintly glowing sap, and the narrow ledge spiraling upward was just as treacherous as before—slick, uneven, and full of splinters waiting to stab me in the shins.

No time to waste. I kicked off the ground and took to the air, skimming just above the ledge to avoid the worst of the footing. The dungeon had other ideas. A buzzing roar filled the chamber, and just as before, a cloud of oversized bees came swarming toward me, as if I’d just kicked their nest.

No need for finesse here. I raised a hand, sent a surge of chaotic lightning through the swarm, and watched the entire thing explode in a storm of crispy wings and charred bug guts. I barely slowed down, casting and scooping up their small, unimpressive mana crystals mid-flight.

There were only three honeycombs this time, instead of five, but the swarms were smaller—both in terms of numbers and size. A fair trade-off, in my opinion, although I would have preferred to get more honey.

The squirrels came next. I blasted shots into the tunnels just like last time, and sure enough, the fur-missing monstrosities shot out, all teeth and rage. The last thing I needed was to get tackled mid-air by a giant rabid rodent. More lightning, more charred fur, and more nuts were added to my growing collection. And the mana crystals were nice, too.

This was actually going faster than I expected. Maybe I was getting good at this.

I wished I could just shoot straight up the tree’s central shaft and be done with it. The problem? The width was inconsistent—some sections were spacious enough to maneuver easily, but then, without warning, it would tighten again, leaving barely enough room to squeeze through. Worse, jagged branches jutted at random angles, clearly designed to impale anyone unlucky enough to fall off a ledge.

Technically, I could weave between them. My control was good enough. But threading through a death trap at high speed wasn’t exactly my idea of fun. In the end, flying in tight spirals around the ledges was still the fastest option, even if the constant circling left me a little dizzy.

Next came the woodpeckers—the oversized, jackhammer-beaked nightmares. They screeched, dove, and nearly took a chunk out of my shoulder before I smacked them out of the air with wind manipulation and fried them with an electric burst. Sticky sap, feather dust, and a growing irritation covered me by the time I reached the top of the dungeon.

At last, I landed on the final platform. The hazy, surreal canopy stretched around me like a pocket dimension, and there it was—the final guardian.

The massive green gorilla perched on its branch, glowing yellow eyes locked onto me. It let out a thunderous roar and launched itself forward, tossing aside the half-eaten pink banana it had been casually munching on, as if beating me into the ground took priority over finishing its snack.

Without hesitation, I let loose a full-powered red lightning storm, every bolt crackling through the air in an unpredictable, glorious mess. The beast twitched, seized up mid-air, and crashed down with a final, undignified grunt.

Boss down, and a bigger crystal in my Inventory.

After harvesting the bananas, I touched the core. A sleek white box materialized in front of me. Identical to the ones from before.

I grabbed it, cast Identify, and frowned.

Sap Collector

A device that harvests tree sap with 200% efficiency and automatically filters impurities. Handy for alchemy or culinary use.

I stared at the box.

Seriously? I’d fought through swarms of murder bees, mutant squirrels, and oversized jackhammer birds—alone—for a sap collector?

I let out a long sigh, tucked it into my Storage, and shook my head.

At least Al would be happy about this one, assuming he actually used sap in his alchemy.

When I reached the keep area, I floated above with my jaw hanging open. Yes, it had been almost six months, but wow! Just wow. I had no words.

They had finished renovating the keep before I left, but now it was bigger—much, much bigger.

They didn’t build the new additions from the massive stone blocks I had brought from Almatai. Instead, they used salvaged stone from the ruined city or the farming area. The material resembled concrete blocks more than naturally hewn stone, giving the expansion a rough yet solid and functional look.

Even with the change in materials, the scale was impressive as hell. The keep had grown, sprawling outward until it was larger than the palace I had dismantled. Well, more expansive, at least. It didn’t match the palace in height, but its sheer footprint had surpassed it, now covering most of the hill instead of just the summit where it once stood.

They also made tremendous progress on the wall. It stood about twelve meters tall, and halfway along its length, a noticeable step broke the otherwise straight structure. One half had an extra layer of stone, making it slightly taller, while the other half stopped short, missing that last addition. It was a clear marker of where the stone supply had run out, leaving a visible divide between fully completed and work-in-progress areas.

On the inside, scaffolding stretched along the keep-facing side, with wooden platforms spaced every twenty to thirty meters, forming a network of walkways. Wisps of mana swirled around them, but the patterns differed from the mana currents in the area.

Curious, I flew closer to inspect one platform. The poles surrounding it were etched with runes, each drawing energy from a distinct mana flow. Tracing the energy source, I hovered underneath and found the answer.

Beneath the platform, a precise network of runes funneled mana from a small pocket of mana crystals at the center, distributing it to each pole. Focusing, I reached out with my senses, pulling apart the mana aspects. Defense. Wind. Flexibility.

A wind shield?

The runes at the bottom served as simple conduits, but those on the poles were far more intricate. It took me some time to read them, but eventually, I pieced together how the poles worked. Brilliant.

It was a wind shield, but not a constant barrier. Instead, it was reactive. Rather than staying up constantly, it only activated when a fast-moving object entered its field. Instead of outright blocking the projectile, the runes bled off its inertia, slowing it down rather than stopping it completely.

Fascinating.

I had never seen Mahya create something like this before. The only things I had seen from her were the invisibility poles and various mage wands and staves she had crafted. This was on another level.

A wooden wall, with gates leading to piers, lined the riverbank. Three fully completed piers stretched beneath the keep, while several more were in various stages of construction upriver. Downriver, they built additional gates into the wall, clearly for more piers, but construction on those hadn’t started yet.

New wooden houses stood in rows in the small valley between the keep’s hill and the one in front of it, with some houses under construction climbing up the other hill.

Outside the stone wall, three large enclosures curved in a semicircle, pressed against the fortifications and reinforced with wooden palisades. Each was massive, larger than the entire living area of Sanctuary, and inside, herds of animals roamed freely.

The first enclosure held cattle, their hulking forms grazing lazily, tails flicking at flies. The second housed the huge, furry pigs they raised here, their thick coats rippling as they rooted through the dirt. In the third, herd animals we had encountered before moved with more nervous energy, heads flicking up at every distant sound.

Beyond the enclosures, fields stretched outward, a vast expanse of tilled earth and green growth spreading nearly five kilometers from the wall. Near the settlement, workers moved methodically, tending the rows of cultivated crops, their tools flashing in the sunlight as they worked in an organized rhythm. The land here was thriving and carefully managed.

Further out, the contrast was stark. In the distant fields, groups of people with dogs hitched to carts moved at a slower, more deliberate pace. These fields remained wild, the furrows still visible beneath patches of overgrown vegetation. Once cultivated, now left to reclaim itself, the land bore the marks of abandonment. Instead of farming, the workers there were harvesting what they could, gathering whatever produce still grew without planting new crops.

At least two thousand people filled the new city and the surrounding fields, a number that boggled my mind.

Mahya could take about ten people per trip in the balloon. Before I left, she had been making two runs a day. Even factoring in the time I’d been gone, that was a ridiculous number of people to ferry over.

I hovered in the air for over an hour, just taking it all in, trying to wrap my head around the sheer scale of the metamorphosis. The advancement was insane, beyond anything I had expected.

I knew people could achieve amazing things, but this—this was something else. No words really captured it. Only wow.

And beneath the shock, a deep sense of pride settled in. We had been the impetus, the small nudge that set everything in motion. Watching it all come together, I had an overwhelming urge to dust off my shoulders in smug satisfaction.

But… being invisible kind of ruined the effect. No one would see it, and that just felt like a waste.