When Zoe and Emma arrived back at the southern gate of Foizo, they saw a bit of a rowdy commotion just inside the city walls. A group several dozen large were shouting over each other, barely corralled by a few members of the city’s council. Joe and two women Zoe didn’t know but recognized from some of the announcements they made.

“How can you be sure we’re safe!?" A man shouted from the crowd.

“A dungeon has formed in Flester, it’s not expanding. The elementals can’t be removed by force. We can’t be absolutely sure we’re safe, but there’s no significant cause for concern right now.” One of the women with Joe said. The shorter one, with thinning black hair.

“When do we get to go raid it?” A woman shouted out.

“We’re not holding you. You can leave whenever you want.” Joe answered.

“But when are you making a party for it? I want to be in it.” The woman shouted back.

“Yeah!” Another man shouted from the crowd. “We already lost the first clear, if that spectacle was anything to go by. Hurry it up!”

Emma laughed. “Looks like Joe’s in for a long day.”

Zoe nodded, and the two teleported into their cave on the outskirts of Foizo’s boundary. Fennel and Oliver were sleeping in Emma’s room, so the two sat down in the kitchen and Emma summoned some food for them to eat. A simple salad with a zesty vinaigrette.

“So what’s the plan, now?" Emma asked.

“I dunno. Haven’t thought that far, really. Didn’t actually expect it to be a dungeon, to be honest. I don’t know what I expected. I guess a dungeon, but it’s weird seeing it actually be a dungeon, you know?" Zoe said.

Emma nodded. “It’s weird, knowing it’s right there. We’re just sitting here, eating salad at our dinner table. And seconds earlier, we were in a dungeon. Less than an hour ago we were fighting the boss, we got feats for being the first to clear it! It feels.. What’s the word? Unreal?"

“Surreal?” Zoe suggested.

“Yeah!” Emma pointed at Zoe with her fork, splashing some of the vinaigrette on the table. “Oops. Yeah, that’s the one. It’s surreal.”

“Mhm.” Zoe smirked. “There’s a bunch of dungeons that are just a few seconds away for me, but I get what you’re saying.”

Emma threw a soggy leaf at Zoe. “Shush.”

Zoe laughed and burned the leaf as it flew at her with her Fire skill, leaving a trail of smoke and ash that she caught with Cinders and threw back at Emma.

“You gonna stick around for a while longer?" Emma shook her head.

“Maybe. You wanted help with learning some skills, right?" Zoe asked.

“Yeah, if it’s not too much to ask.” Emma said.

“Of course it isn’t. I’ve gotta pay you something for being my live in maid, you know?” Zoe laughed.

Emma rolled her eyes. “Seems to me like you’re just a home invader at this point.”

Zoe chuckled. “I’ll help you learn some skills and then I dunno, back to exploring? Maybe I go to space? I don’t think I’ll die instantly if I go to space. Maybe I could live for a while up there with my mana and healing.”

“You ever tried it?” Emma asked.

Zoe shook her head. “No, I’ve never really had a need to go to space.”

“You wanna?" Emma grinned.

“Do you wanna?" Zoe asked.

“Yeah, kinda.” Emma laughed. “Lets go. Take me to space!"

“You can’t just teleport up yourself?” Zoe asked.

Emma shrugged. “Kinda. Most of the glimpses I can step through to are on the ground though. I can control it a bit, but getting it just in the air is really hard. Plus, if it’s in the air I don’t really know how high it is? Or where in the air it is? My teleportation doesn’t work like yours at all. It’s more… natural? But less precise.”

“Right. That seems really weird.” Zoe said.

“It’s super weird.” Emma said. “But enough of that, take me to space!" She held out her hand.

Zoe grabbed it, and teleported them to a glimpse she saw of the garden just outside, then up into the air where she caught them in suits of earth. “How high do you think space is? Where does the planet end and space begins?"

“I dunno? When we stop breathing? How does that work anyway?” Emma asked.

Zoe started floating them up in their suits of earth. “We did a lot of science back home on this. We had an obsession with getting off our planet and exploring the vastness of space. And we did, actually. We conquered at least a small section of space. Made it to the moon, it was a whole thing. Very cool, big moment for humanity back home.

“I never cared for it much, though. I did, to an extent. Everybody did, I think, a little. It was amazing, you know? Going to space, setting up satellites that sent signals all around the planet. Landing on the moon and leaving our mark. It was infectious, I think. You couldn’t avoid it, you couldn’t not be proud of it.

“Well there were some folk that thought the world was flat and that the moon landing was faked. So I guess some people avoided it, but whatever. Point is, I know a little about what will happen cause I watched some movies by people who hopefully did their research properly.” Zoe laughed.

“Okay, how’s this gonna work then?" Emma asked.

“Well, all the movies I watched were about being shunted out into the vacuum of space from a spaceship, not just… drifting up into space gradually. I don’t really know how we’re going to feel. But we’ll be fine, probably. If you notice yourself feeling ill just say something.

“But if we did get shunted into space suddenly, then we would feel very very cold cause all of the sweat and moisture on our body would evaporate because of the low pressure, which would cool our skin down extremely rapidly. Then our saliva would begin evaporating, air would get violently ripped out of our lungs however it could be, and we’d pass out in about ten seconds at most. We’d still live for a few minutes if we could get back to normal air pressure, though.” Zoe said.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Right. Okay, all of a sudden it’s really scary.” Emma laughed nervously.

“It’ll be fine. Probably.” Zoe said and looked down at the town shrinking several kilometers below them. The air pressure had declined a noticeable extent, but neither Zoe nor Emma seemed flustered by it yet at least.

“Yeah, it’ll be fine. We’ll be space travellers!” Emma laughed.

“Astronauts, is what we called them.” Zoe said.

“Nah. Space travellers.” Emma said.

Zoe shrugged, and continued dragging them up. They passed through dense clouds that Zoe pushed aside with her Gales skill, cutting a tunnel through them for the two to drift upwards through. After a few more minutes of ascending, they broke through the clouds and could look over the lands from a perspective Zoe hadn’t seen since she flew to another country back home.

“Woah,” Emma said. “Is that Moaning Point?” She pointed to the south.

Zoe squinted and nodded. “I think so, yeah.”

“It looks so small? How high are we now?" Emma asked.

“Ten kilometers maybe?” Zoe suggested. The air pressure had lessened even more, but it didn’t seem to be causing any problems for either of them yet. Would it at all, Zoe wondered? Would they drift through the vacuum of space, unperturbed by the lack of oxygen? Or would there be a point when even their enhanced bodies struggled to maintain themselves with the poor air supply?

“Wow. It’s beautiful?” Emma asked.

Zoe laughed. “It is.”

Trees as far as the eye could see, with distant mountains looking like little more than tiny hills. Foizo far below them was but a small speck in the sea of forest, and the hill Zoe lived in may as well have been a flat gravel pit.

“How much farther till we’re in space?" Emma asked.

“I dunno. I think back home we agreed that one hundred kilometers was outer space? But we would probably die at like fifteen to twenty kilometers back home without proper protection. As far as I knew, we should have been struggling to breathe at this point already.” Zoe said.

“Maybe it’s all our stats? We’re just more rugged than you all were?" Emma suggested.

“Maybe. Or maybe Abyllan is just so much bigger that we’re still not far enough away for the air pressure to be reduced very much? Or maybe it’s just denser? I don’t know how it all works, anyway. Could be a bunch of things.” Zoe said.

Emma nodded. “Well you know a lot more than me, anyway. I didn’t even think it was possible to go to space before I met you. Well, before we saw that book anyway. Richard’s book?”

“Yeah, Richard’s Legacy I think.” Zoe said.

The two continued rising in silence, staring at the surroundings around them in awe. Twenty kilometers, thirty kilometers. They kept rising, and neither of them had the slightest problem breathing until they reached about fifty kilometers off the ground to Zoe’s estimate. It was difficult to be accurate so high up, Zoe found.

“Okay,” Emma took a deep, slow breath. “I’m feeling the low air pressure now. How much farther do you think?"

Zoe shrugged as she continued lifting them into the sky. “I dunno, really. We’re way out of anything that would be relevant from my home. Halfway? A quarter of the way?”

Emma nodded, and the two continued rising into the sky. Sixty, seventy kilometers. Zoe lost track of how far away it was, the ground below them seemed flat, and the curve of the planet was even beginning to be visible — a suggestion that Abyllan was much larger than she expected. Though, Zoe had no idea how high she’d have to be to see the curve of the planet back home.

Would she see it on a plane, flying ten kilometers above sea level? Or would she need to go even higher? She wasn’t sure, but at least back home she was confident that she’d have reached outer space and yet while the air pressure was plummeting, it was still enough to breathe, if only just. Was that because of all the stats they had on their side, or because the air really was that much more dense? Wouldn’t that make it far denser down at the surface, even to the point of being uncomfortable?

She continued lifting them, and after a quick check with Emma began teleporting them a kilometer at a time upwards. And very quick after they began teleporting, they found their limit. One moment, Zoe and Emma were struggling to get any oxygen but managing. And then at the next hop, they couldn’t.

Zoe watched as her health began to drop at the altitude they were at. The drain was slow at first, but as she felt her body begin to freeze and her vision grow blurry the drain sped up. She pumped Restoration into herself, keeping her and Emma’s health topped up, but the drain continued to speed up as their bodies were worn down by the low pressure, overcoming what Zoe could manage with her skill.

She teleported them back down a few kilometers to where they could manage to breathe, even with difficulty, and the two caught their breath with Zoe’s healing skill helping them along.

“Was that… space?” Emma spat out between her long breaths.

“I… don’t know. Probably… not?” Zoe answered.

“Can you… give air?" Emma asked.

Zoe pushed mana into her Wind skill and created a bubble of breathable air around them. The low pressure environment around them threatened to rip the air away, so Zoe had to push against it, pulling the air in to around their heads and sealing off their bodies with earth. Maintaining the air around them while keeping their suits of earth floating over a hundred kilometers in the air was a struggle, Zoe found. But she managed, and brought the air pressure around their heads back up to a more normal range.

“Wow. So that wasn’t even space?" Emma asked.

Zoe shook her head. “Probably not. I don’t think space is really a defined point? We’re in space, but we’re not totally out of the atmosphere yet. Probably. I don’t know. I barely knew this stuff back home, and this is very different.”

Emma nodded. “Okay. Take us all the way to space then. Lets go. I bet there’s a feat.”

Zoe laughed. “You know what, there probably is, too.” She teleported them back out again, and with the air floating around their heads, breathing wasn’t a struggle anymore.

Another minute flew by, as Zoe teleported them a kilometer at a time further into the air, away from the planet. The planet itself began to be visible far below them, and it wasn’t as much water as Zoe expected it to be. Most of it was dirt. Brown, plain dirt. Mountain ranges stretched along the surface, far larger than Zoe would have expected. Even Foizo was near the top of a massive mountain. Did the oceans drain, Zoe wondered? Or was it just a dry planet?

*Ding* For surviving in the vacuum of space, you have been awarded with the [Spacefarer] feat.

[Spacefarer]

To many, space is the final frontier. But to you, it’s a stepping stone. Thousands of planets to explore and astral power to harness. Under your own ability, you’ve conquered the vacuum of space. All classes gain a bonus to space affinity. Gain the space skill.

“Ooh!” Emma said. “A free skill!”

“You got the feat too?" Zoe asked, looking at the point about it being under her own ability.

“Mhm!” Emma hummed.

“Under your own ability, huh?” Zoe asked.

“The requirement is just to survive, not my fault the description’s weird.” Emma said.

“You don’t have some secret manipulation skill you’re using to force me to do your bidding?" Zoe asked.

Emma laughed. “Get us back down, but this was fun. Would’ve been cool if the feat let us breathe in space though.”

Zoe chuckled. “Maybe there’s another feat for it. Or a skill. We’ll have to figure something out, I guess.”