Maybe it was due to worry in the back of his mind about what happened to his parents. Even he he pushed it out of his thoughts, it was still there as a background noise of wondering if they were dead or alive. A feeling that only got worse when Jordan discovered how few humans were actually on the individual leaderboard. He’d tried not to immediately think about it, but that wall of mental fortitude couldn’t also block the wave of nostalgia that was currently hitting him.

The tears he’d fought back immediately began to well up again as his brain was sent straight down memory lane. Of that one road trip where his father had saved up just enough money to afford to take a whole week off from work. Of those precious days in a row where his mother was perfectly healthy, and didn’t suffer from her frequent bouts of illness and weakness. Of the time that Jordan spent playing in the sand and wading into the water.

His parents had done all they could to provide him with a fun childhood, while trying not to let him know how much of a struggle it was for them to give him a better early life than they had experienced themselves. Though children could be oddly perceptive little things. So it hadn’t taken him that long to be old enough to get the sense of how they were really doing.

Which was why he’d acted as his mother’s caretaker while not in school, on her especially bad days. Why he had gotten a real job as early as he legally could while still in highschool. And why he had taken out a loan for his higher education while funding the rest by himself, while hoping that an eventual career in robotics would pay enough for him to at least let his parents live comfortably in their older years.

But now they were out there, their fates unknown. Even if they were dead, the chances of Jordan ever knowing for sure were astronomically slim. How could one person ever find two bodies on an entire planet? Especially if said bodies might not even be findable, because someone had turned them into a pair of Advancement Crystals and looted whatever was on them?

Yet, here he was, about to take the second trip of his life to the ocean. This time, one that he’d be going on without them.

“Is something the matter?” Haje asked, snapping Jordan back to reality.

“Y-yeah. Think a bit of sand must have gotten in my eyes from that breeze. That’s… that’s all,” he tried to explain away, now that his goggles had already been taken off as a valid excuse. Jordan took a deep, shaky breath. He must have looked weird from Haje’s perspective, just staring into the portal while frequently wiping his eyes.

Even with someone else at his side, he’d gotten pretty used to being able to freely just get lost in his own thoughts. It was to the point where Jordan had momentarily forgotten that Haje was even there. Something that he should probably make sure to be more mindful about, from here on.

“Well,” Jordan began. “We’re already here, so we might as well check out the other side, right? Maybe you can go into the water and see if you can now hunt anything swimming around. Now that your Stats should be way higher than when you first came across this thing, hunting in the deep parts should be easier for you. And I’ll come as well to explore the beach and try out a few things. Maybe even see if there’s another unclaimed Mandate around for me to expand my Kingdom’s territory some more. How does that sound as a general plan?”

Haje seemed to consider the question for a moment. “Hmm, yes. I see no issue with it. With my current Stats, the depth I reached before should not be an issue now.”

“Right, no time to waste then!” Jordan exclaimed. The sooner they could get to the other side, the sooner he could distract himself by focusing on the search for another potential Mandate. If he got lucky, maybe the System would even reward him with yet another Title for having a single Kingdom that controlled three different territories. Not that he really knew what territories were even good for yet, besides apparently alerting someone when they entered his turf.

Having already hopped off his drone, he sent a mental command for both it and the other land drones that had followed to gather underneath the sphere. Just like the one before, it was hovering a few feet from the ground. He also went ahead and dismissed his air drone too, since he knew that it wouldn’t be able to cross anyway.

Jordan stepped up to the first drone and bent his knees to begin picking it up. Something that should be even easier than it had been before, thanks to his latest Title and its solid boost to his Strength. Yet just as he was lifting it above his chest, Jordan’s companion took notice of what he was doing.

“Hmm? Let me help,” Haje offered before reaching for the drone. Jordan simply let it go, not even trying to fight against the decision the stone giant had already made. However, as he then lifted it up, the resulting sight was one that really reminded Jordan of just how big of a difference it made to be, well, big.

The way Haje picked up one of his land drones was almost comical. Something that reached up to Jordan’s stomach was so relatively tiny in his hands. From that perspective alone, it looked more like a toy tank that a kid might bring to play with in the playground sandbox. This only proved to appear more true as he easily poked it into the portal, while his other arms grabbed the remaining land drones at the same time in what seemed to be rather casual multitasking.

“Huh, well, thank you. I’ll see you on the other side in just a second then,” Jordan said as he touched the gateway. And in the next instant, he was on the other side. Once more, he fell by a few feet before his shoes landed on the ground below. He was greeted by warmth, and glanced up to see that the sun’s location here was still just shy of its midpoint in the sky.

The sound of the ocean waves gently hitting the beach was the first thing he heard upon crossing the portal. Something which made Jordan only then realize that the portals didn't carry sound to the other side.

They let the wind and any scents it carried through just fine, but for some odd reason, all forms of sound was where it drew the line. Perhaps it was due the the same reason that caused his connection to his air drone to be forcibly desummoned when it tried to enter. Yet, who could say for certain?

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But not that he was here; Jordan was quick to note a few things. The first was the beach itself, or to be more specific, the sand it was comprised of. It was a dark grey, almost black color. And now that he was standing on the other side, there was a scent in the air that hadn’t been carried by the breeze that went through the portal. One that was rather metallic, and left a very mild but lingering taste in his mouth.

Yet if that wasn’t big enough of a hint, what this sand is made from was pretty much confirmed when Jordan looked at the land drones that had been deposited to this side of the portal. Pulled to its metal body were clumps of the dark sand.

It’s a whole beach of magnetic sand! No… not sand, Jordan thought to himself as he picked up a handful, and closely inspected it. Meanwhile, Haje had already sent through the last land drone and also fell through the gateway with a heavy landing.

There were a couple of different materials that could be branded as “magnetic sand.” Which Jordan was fairly familiar with them because magnetism itself was awesome, and those packets of stuff were always fun to mess around with. But one good look at the handful itself was enough for him to be fairly confident that it was iron filings. Or just iron powder, to put it another way.

Now, was it the safest thing to be constantly around without nose protection? Not really, since even at the very moment, he was probably breathing in trace amounts of the stuff. But even without taking the potential benefit against such poisoning from his Stats into account, it wasn’t really an issue. As far as Jordan knew, it was less a risk of him dropping dead at any moment, and more a long-term thing from weeks of constant exposure.

He looked around. As Haje simply stomped toward the calm water, already acting on his intended goal, Jordan watched him for a moment. The stone giant just walked into the ocean, the bottom of his legs sinking into the powder but seemingly having zero issues with just wading through it. Then Haje’s body steadily began to disappear under the water, as each movement forward took him deeper and deeper into the ocean’s embrace.

Jordan waved him off. “Happy hunting!”

Haje didn’t say anything in return, but raised an arm over up to wave him back. A gesture that made Jordan wonder if Haje’s people also had waving as a thing, or if he’d seen and mimicked him. While the latter would require him to be able to see from the back of his head, the lack of actual eyes made anything technically possible in terms of how he could see.

In any case, Jordan did the usual maneuver of summoning a new air drone first. As for the land drone smashed by Haje, that one had been replaced a while back. So now his fleet of drones had hit a new record of exactly half a dozen that were ready and waiting for his commands. Which he then gave in the form of the standard order to hunt for any creatures and then do the usual signal if they found anything else.

All except for one land drone, which had been singled out as the unlucky pick for something he quickly wanted to test out. Were they waterproof? If so, that would open up the possibility to also drive into the ocean and find some sea creatures to shoot at. So, he promptly gave it the order to go straight into the calm sea water and… no.

It turned out that the land drones were, in fact, not waterproof. Jordan’s initial worry was that the barrels would prove to be the point of failure, but it didn’t even come to that. The moment the power cell crystals alongside the base of the twin guns were fully underwater, Jordan heard a popping noise. One that was very, very quickly followed up by bubbles of boiling water immediately around the drone.

“Oh shit!” Jordan exclaimed with wide eyes. Expecting an imminent kaboom, he was quick to cut off his supply of TP to the drone. And just in case that wasn’t enough, he also gave it the order to shut down its core, just to be certain.

Of course, only being a few steps away from the gateway meant that he could easily just leap back to the base of the mountain. Something which he promptly did, in case it was too late and an explosion was about to happen anyway. From the other side of the portal, Jordan gave it a count of ten. Even if the sound of a big kaboom didn’t get carried through, the heat and pressure wave definitely should. But even after ten seconds, and then some more to be safe, passed, there was still no blast.

Jordan then decided to pop back onto the beach. The land drone was still there, notably not in smithereens and spread out as a thousand pieces of shrapnel. Though the water around it was still boiling, at what seemed to be the same rate as before. After staring at it for a few seconds while still ready to jump back into the portal, he finally allowed himself a sigh and relaxed his tense body.

Okay, duly noted. They are not waterproof, and the outer power cells do not like being submerged. Will have to find out later if that’s just a property of what’s likely saltwater, or if it’d be the same way in that freshwater river as well back home. Though when it comes to diving, I doubt the air drone would do much better underwater. So no grinding Experience Points from sea creatures in the near future for me, it looks like, he concluded.

However, he imagined that it might not be that way forever. If the System provided him access to a land drone and an air drone, then who was to say that a water drone wasn’t in the cards as a potential new Skill? It almost had to, to at least be a full set. Even if he didn’t end up picking it since underwater drones wouldn’t help much in literally any other environment.

As an alternative, the multiple shapes option for his land drone’s Fundamental Evolution might have also been a solution. Maybe instead of a tank, one of those shapes could have been a submarine or boat mode? Well, when it came to that evolution, it was no use in regretting a ship that would remain forever sailed. Pun fully intended.

Well, at least I learned something new about how my drones work today. Something that the System didn’t automatically give me from using it, or by exploring its functions while Tinker added to knowing how the different parts worked. Now… if I ever wanted to do Operation: Self Destructing Drones Go Boom As A Final Fuck You, I guess I could explore dumping them with water as an idea?

Jordan just stretched his arms as he contemplated the thought. Whatever he planned would need to be deployable under three conditions: mid-combat, far away from him, and automatically triggered without his input. Obviously, the ideal would be something that put a checkmark next to all three. But in the meantime…

Now kneeling, he proceeded to begin scooping the iron powder straight into his pocket space. While his Jordans did their thing, he intended to take as much of it as he could. If he could refine it as properly usable material through the Industrial Transmuter, then it meant that Jordan was already sitting on a metric ton of iron.

A few minutes passed as he just continued to shovel the material into his pocket space. He didn’t know exactly how much he’d even collected at this point, bit already felt like quite a good bit. Jordan’s intention had been to do for ten minutes, and then summon a new land drone to see if he could find a third Mandate to claim. However, that plan was then tossed out the window as he felt something.

Like on the mountain range, he’d sent the air drone to specifically go on head to scout out the distance and direction where the Mandate might be from the portal. Yet after about six minutes of collecting iron powder, he felt his mental connection get cut off. Jordan immediately looked up, and stared in that direction. He then got back up to his feet. While there was the chance it’d been desummoned from getting destroyed by some monster, there were also the orders he’d given it.

And that was to desummon itself if it spotted anything he considered a built structure, or recognized as a sapient Species.