image [https://imgur.com/VOEaM7J.jpg]

We were stuck in some spooky valley in the middle of nowhere, all because something went wrong with Indena’s Manona crest.

Fear gripped me like a bear hugging its catch of the day. There was no place like home, and heaven only knows how far away that was right now.

I sat down on the ground and started crying. I wanted to go home. I didn't want to stay in this spooky valley forever!

"Waaahh! Aahhh! I wanna' go home! Aahh!"

Maybe if Uncle were here, it wouldn't be so bad...but I was all alone with someone I didn't know.

Indena glared down at me in frustration.

"Hey, shut up!" she growled. "I'm tryna' think here! I hate Kids...such a pain."

"No! I'm too scared!"

"Yeah, so am I," she sighed, brushing around her lips with her finger. "Alright, this stupid portal thing must have F'd up and sent us somewhere...but where?"

My Elysium Positioning System wasn't working at all, I couldn't get a read on our location. So we definitely weren't in Elysium. What was this new world we'd discovered?

Luckily, my LOCATION menu was already recording environment data for me, so it was starting to write out a map of the valley. I think the map only captured about forty meters away from me before I'd need to move around. Otherwise, everything beyond was covered by the fog of war.

My crying slowed to a stop while I searched around the map. There were a lot of things going on, so let me explain how it worked.

This map made a 3D rendering of the environment. Up until now, most of it was usually filled out. This was due to the Elysium Positioning System, or EPS, constantly updating it.

I and anyone who was friendly to me appeared as green arrows, pointing in whatever direction we were facing. So we were smack dab in the middle of the map.

A few yellow dots were moving around the map, most of them looked like they were up in trees or scurrying around a few meters away. Those were animals. The size of the animal determined how big their icon on the map would be.

There were really weird icons all over the place. Some of them looked like location markers, but they had question marks over them. Others had words in Nazalian which read "limam," or "locked." Not sure what that meant.

Well, as useful as this map was, it wasn’t giving me much of an idea on how far we were from home.

I wasn't sure how this all happened. We weren't even in a Nalnara gate, so how did we teleport?

Hmm...no, that might actually not be true. Indena teleported into that forest near The Hive. So maybe we were closer to one then I thought.

*Sniffle*

"Indena…?" I wiped the tears from my eyes. "Can I see the Manona crest?"

"Yeah, sure."

She offered her wrist over, then I pressed the release button to undo it from around her arm, but it wasn't coming off.

"What the…?"

From what it looked like, it was locked in tight. Only daddy had access to unlock it now. It also had a big scratch on it, so I wonder if it got damaged in the fight.

Luckily, I still had access to the teleportation log. The crest wasn’t malfunctioning as far as I could tell, but something did input a command to send us to this place. There was no name, and the destination was left blank, but the log of our teleportation was recorded.

So, if this thing was working, that meant we must have somehow traveled through some kind of mana stream. There had to be a portal somewhere, but I didn’t see anything. Unless the portal was hidden. Or maybe…

“Maybe there's a mana cave near us?” I mumbled to myself.

Nalnara gates weren’t exactly the only way to use the mana streams for teleporting around, they were just the only way for us to manipulate and control the streams. There was a whole network throughout the planet in the form of mana veins. I’m sure someone else might have been able to control them, given how vast the network is.

On my map, I saw a crystal looking icon with six lines coming off of it. The icon was over a cave. I had an idea that it had something to do with our teleporting.

That cave was just a few hundred meters behind us. I ran over to it, thinking it may have been our fated mana stream.

The cave was glowing with faint blue light. On the walls there were crystal formation all over. The calming aura of life radiated outward from these crystals, giving both of us a sense of bliss in this chaotic moment.

"Eureka," I said. "This is a mana vein."

"What is this place?"

I explained that mana veins were responsible for sending mana from Elysium up to the surface world. From there, it would put mana into the air and soil so things other than humans could draw from it, since animals and plants didn't make their own.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"Oh, I get it." She nodded. "So, is Elysium the Heart of the World?"

Actually, that was correct. Elysium was the core or heart of the planet. Think of our world like its hollow with a moon at the very center. "Yeah, that's right." I nodded.

The moon in the center of Elysium, or at the very core of the planet, was the thing that produced all the mana, even acting like a sun for the inverted world.

Indena seemed taken aback as she leaned on a chunk of mana crystal. Her head nodded along and she smirked.

"I have a friend who's obsessed with trying to find that place. She says it's supposed to be paradise."

It really wasn't much different from the surface world, I think. There just weren't any people in Elysium, not humans, anyways. Depending on how you look at it, that might have been nice, I guess.

"It's not really that amazing."

"To someone who lives there, maybe. A place that literally makes spirit energy? I honestly didn't even think it existed. But here you are, telling me it does." She snickered. "Ahg...why did we come here again?"

After a brief explanation on how the mana veins and teleporting worked, she realized the problem.

"Can't we go back through the stream then?" she asked.

"We could if there was a Nalnara gate, but since one isn't hooked up…" I pointed to the Manona crest, "it looks like something went wrong with the crest instead."

Wrong wasn't the right word, since it seemed like something did this on purpose. But I was still confused how we were able to travel here with the Manona crest alone.

I wondered if there was a return to home feature. Some of my games had a fast travel method that allowed you to either return to your home base instantly, or head to a previously visited spot.

Ooh! There was one! But there were two issues…

The first problem was that we needed a Nalnara gate for this to work at all.

And the second problem was that the portal networks had been shut down. Meaning even if we did have a Nalnara gate, it wouldn’t work. That was likely a failsafe to prevent any further allegedly random teleporting.

I let Indena know about the development, she seemed frustrated.

Anyways, this cave wasn't a great shelter since we could hear noises deeper in. It sounded like screeches and struggles between creatures. If there's monsters deeper in, it would be best to avoid them for now.

Indena had some instructions. “We’ll need to find shelter for now. I was told if anything went wrong, we’d have to wait for someone to find us.”

“Okay.” I nodded. That someone was probably going to be Uncle.

"If we run into any monsters, let me handle them," Indena said. "You stay behind me. This valley's probably not gonna' to be fun."

Sounded good to me. She seemed to know what she was doing when it came to battle.

I opened up the map again to see if maybe I could find better shelter, but it looks like the map had changed locations. It was showing me the inside of this cave, rather than the valley.

Deeper in the cave I saw these icons moving around that looked like uneven 8 sided stars. It looked a little like those 'pow!' things you'd see in comics. Those must have been monsters.

"Let's go." I tugged her out of the cave. Those monsters were dangerously close.

Outside things got a little rainy. Droplets of water were coming down lightly. I had a feeling it was really gonna' start pouring down soon.

There was an overhang of rock on a cliff not far from us. Indena said that wouldn't be bad shelter from the rain. It was a bit too far for my map to see, but…

Uh-oh…something just popped up on my map in front of us. It was monster icons!

They literally just appeared about ten meters away.

Soil started to rise up all around us. Things covered in dirt and twigs peaked their heads up. They looked at us with purple eyes that had blue rings of light in them.

"Get back!" Indena took the helm and pushed me behind her.

When the monsters were no longer in the ground, they shook off the dirt quickly and revealed what looked like rats with lizard scales and furry manes around their heads.

-WARNING! Threat sighted! IFF tags active-

-Identifying monster...monster identified-

-Lizzarat monster tagged; foe-

-Enemy count = (11)-

-Indena tagged; Friendly-

The Lizzarat received a red outline around it due to my IFF tagging. Indena got a green outline.

The Lizzarat was about the size of a basketball, but they were definitely angry at us for some reason. Maybe these guys were tracking us from inside the cave.

One screeched and bolted at Indena, flashing sharp claws and fangs.

It leapt into the air, but Indena easily dodged it, keeping me close behind her.

As she maneuvered away, another one predicted where she would be and pounced her.

Another followed, then the one that missed joined in, and she quickly had three on her chest and arms.

"Get off!" Flame boomed to life around her, roasting the monsters and flinging them away!

More of them came in, this time 7 leapt into action.

Indena used fireballs to keep most of them away, but a few jumped at her.

While they were in the air, she sent out a few kicks to keep them from grabbing onto her. Those kicks were so strong, the monsters died instantly.

One had snuck around to get at me, but she pointed a finger gun at the Lizzarat and shot a bolt of fire at it.

BOOM!

The monster exploded into charred bits!

That seemed to be all of them. I didn't see any more on the map.

"You alright?" She asked me.

"Yeah." I nodded, a little shaken by the battle. "That was scary!"

I jumped onto her leg, clinging to it for dear life. She didn't know how to respond, so she just patted my head twice and pushed me off.

"Alright, don't touch me...let's go."

Before we started walking, a little box of info popped up in my vision.

-Lizzarat defeated. Awarding Xp-

A small sum of experience points were awarded to me for the battle. I didn't fight, but I guess the Xp system must have considered me as part of the fight. So that meant we shared Xp.

I didn't often get points for defeating enemy monster's, but it sure paid out a lot more then doing challenges.

currently I was a level 15, so I'd grown about 8 levels since I first discovered this system existed.

Indena was at a loss for what to think of my leveling system when I explained it to her. She said it seemed "really stupidly complicated." I'm starting to get an idea of how her mind works, she thinks a lot of things are stupid and unnecessary when they get complicated.

"As long as you keep growing, I guess you're doing your best at life." She nodded. "But a tip to the wise, don't tell people about this kinda' stuff. They'll just get confused. Like me."

That wasn't bad advice, especially since I probably needed to keep some things secret. But if dad trusted Indena, I guess I had to as well.