While Others Cultivate, I Use My Multiverse System-Chapter 8: The desert
Chapter 8: The desert
With not even the slightest idea of what I could expect from that new world that the system would open for me, I had no other choice but to go all in. Dressing myself as if I were to visit the deadly hot desert, I continued to add more and more clothing all the way to the point where I could be confident to survive in glacial covered lands.
Filling my backpack with both food and water necessary to survive any reasonable amount of time in any of the environments that I could potentially face, I quickly finished my preparations before standing in front of the doors.
"Here goes nothing…"
I would lie if I were to claim that I wasn't worried about what awaited me on the other side. So far, all three worlds that I visited were on the easy level, and as expected - they didn't pose any challenge for me to overcome. Yet now, I was about to enter a world on an entirely different level. And only by actually entering it I would have a shot at learning what was the gap between the levels that the system provided me with.
I pushed the doors open and stepped through the threshold. As soon as I appeared on the other side, the natural event happened. The doors that I used to transport to another world disappeared behind my back, leaving me completely stranded in what could be only described as a foreign… and pretty unwelcoming world.
"Fuck… It's so hot…"
In one instant, I took down most of the clothes that I wore, thanking the whatever god that existed for blessing me with enough foresight to dress in the way I did. Only once just my shorts and light t-shirt remained on top of my body I could feel that my sweating started to slowly subside.
A desert.
That was the simplest way to describe the landscape that surrounded me. As far as my eye could see, nothing but huge hills made out of nothing but strange, orange sand could be seen. But soon enough, with just a single gust of wind, I learned that it wasn't actually the case.
This wasn't a simple dessert. This was a desert that covered the ruins of what had to be once an advanced civilisation of some sort!
With the sand moving in waves, prompted by the local winds, I could see some elements made of what looked like concrete. After moving towards one of the elements that I spotted, I realised that they bore huge marks of being burnt by something, yet even despite those scares - the general skeleton of the building remained generally the same.
"Strange…"
By this point, in the easy worlds, the system would already announce both the name of this world and what would be my objective of clearing it. Yet, in my current case, it didn't happen.
"I guess that's already a part of this world being of medium difficulty…"
That was the easiest explanation that I could come up with. With no information regarding what I was supposed to achieve in this world, the difficulty of the tasks skyrocketed already, even if the true task itself wasn't something hard to achieve at all in the first place.
"Just what the heck am I supposed to accomplish here?"
Asking myself without expecting an answer, I noticed a small opening within the concrete wall of the building that I was currently scouting. Judging by the way it was laid out, I could only guess that it was created by some blunt object smashing through the wall at an insane speed. While it made me wonder how the heck the rest of the building could survive such a hit, I simply had no other ideas to explain the nature of the hole.
But there actually wasn't any point in finding that out. Since there was a hole in place, nothing was stopping me from entering the building!
Ignoring all the clothes that I left in the dust of the open desert - they were cheap ware from one of the second-hand shops that I learned to love ever since I was graced with my basement system - I slipped inside the building. Thankfully, while moving through this hole awoke all the deepest loads of claustrophobia that I had stored in my psyche, the journey itself wasn't that long for me to start freaking out.
"What the hell… It should be impossible…"
With the dust of the desert still tightly covering all my clothes and easily finding ways to penetrate even in the places where no man would want anything of foreign nature to ever be present, I couldn't even begin to understand how the heck the insides of this building were almost completely devoid of any signs of sand.
But it was the insides of this building that made me think that this world wasn't a place that I visited through my system, but something that my mind decided to produce in my dreams.
A shop.
That was the first idea that came to my mind when I attempted to name this place. But not a shop that one could see on earth. While the shelves were present, instead of holding the weight of the product that this place offered, they were filled with holograms of the wares cast by a set of small projectors present in each row.
This itself was already a wonder that I doubted that I could see anywhere on earth, but what was even more important, was that all the doors within this place were already in a state of complete decay!
For once, it allowed me to learn that while most of them were reinforced with some kind of still glistering metal, the pieces of half-rotten wood that remained on some of the metallic structures proved that in general, in their good times those doors most likely were exactly the same as the ones that I could easily find on earth!
"Oh my…"
Stepping into the shop, I found out that only a small portion of the images created by the holo-projectors actually shown something that I could identify. For example, a shining rectangle with a set of several icons surrounded by a black outline.
A smartphone one would say in a normal situation, yet the fact that this entire item was actually just a projection within a projection cast by what looked like a small bracelet proved that before whatever turned this world into a desert, this place was far more technologically advanced than earth that I knew!
"Don't tell me…"
Looking around, I quickly managed to come up with the idea of how this shop worked. While the wares weren't present directly on the shelves, once I approached what looked like a cashing area, a complicated set of conveyors revealed itself to my eyes.
With my curiosity piqued, I quickly to follow the trace of those conveyors. Even though some of them were clearly broken, it didn't hinder me from finding out just where the heck those conveyors had their source.
And it was there, where I found my first obstacle.
Or rather, something that would be an obstacle in the times of greatness of this shop.
The hole in the concrete wall that this conveyor penetrated was way too small for me to fit through. With some oil or some other slimy liquid, I could maybe attempt squeezing my arm through the opening. But there was absolutely no point in doing so, as right next to the conveyor's hole, a set of broken doors were present.
"Let's try it…"
Given how my cultivation already elevated my strength to the heights impossible to achieve by a normal human, I approached the decayed doors, placing my hand on their metallic structure.
With how the metal still managed to shine despite the obvious years that had to pass since the last person came to visit this place, I expected anything from the metallic skeleton being as tough as tungsten that I learned about on earth to being soft like a decarbonated iron.
What I didn't expect though, was that under just the slightest touch of my hand, the entire metallic skeleton of the doors simply broke apart into a myriad of pieces, turning into the same type of the orange sand that I saw outside of the building!
As surprised as I was by this event, it wasn't something that I would protest or be worried against. While I expected way greater challenges from this medium-difficulty world than what I encountered so far, I wasn't the type of person to protest when the world was clearly helping me out.
Yet, instead of confidently stepping inside, I started by taking a random stone that found its way into the former store and throwing it inside.
"Glazk habrain aterio!"
In one instant, the insides of the room that was formerly blocked by the doors all lit up, with a strange drone-like machine suddenly flying up towards the stone that I threw… Only to quickly turn into the orange sand and fall apart just like the metal of the doors I touched a moment ago!
Even with this drone-like thingy now gone, the lights still remained in the room, allowing me to peek at what it contained.
"Dear god… How could this world ever be claimed to be of a medium difficulty?!"
