My nose is telling me this is the right gate. The trouble is that there is a camp of mostly bronze-rank people camped outside.

At first, I thought they were there to ambush me. However, they are not set up for an ambush. Their tents are set up in a non-obvious place, but they are not particularly hiding, and I don’t think there are stealth experts there, although it is hard to tell.

What they are doing is some sort of ritual at the gate. I have counted six people, and the tents indicate they have been, and possibly will be, here for a while. I can’t wait for them to leave. I am also interested in who they are and what they are doing. Are they from the Magic Society carrying out tests similar to those of the Professor, or are they perhaps the cause of the anomalies? Putting this together with the impending disaster, is it related to the astral spaces, and is this preparation work toward it?

That is wild speculation, and there is no evidence to connect the two events. Unless I am looking at the evidence right now. I am going to have enough trouble getting past their bronze-rank senses, let alone figuring out who they are and what they are up to.

Priority one is getting past them and into the unseen astral. Everything else is secondary, and I need to act soon, or Moon Girl and Mage will get here. There are years yet before the disaster, and now I can investigate this more even if I don't get any more information this time.

I plotted my route down the side of the steep gully. The gully may be the reason they chose this gate… if they were up to no good. On the other hand, it may just be the closest gate to their research base.

I crouched in the shadows not far from the gate. I could see they had drawn a ritual circle in front of the gate, and the outer edge of the circle included the gate. It was definitely astral magic, although what type was beyond me. I memorised what I could.

It was also doing something to the gate. It looked … less stable, less… It just looked less. I was unsure if I should go through it. I didn’t have much choice, and I had already wasted several hours sleeping.

Going south past Boko would have been a month's worth of travel if I could keep up this pace, which I couldn’t. It is probably two days through the astral. If I remember the way. We didn’t go directly between the gates when I was with the professor, and we had the boat. Maybe three days.

When everybody was turned away, I slipped through the gate. Going through gates was like going through a portal. There was a feeling of power and disorientation, and then you arrived and were possibly suffering from nausea, although I was fine these days. A gate was like an overpowered portal, and instead of the power that felt like the mage that opened it, it was an impersonal and vast power. Some sensed it differently, but that was my sense.

This time was different. This time, the vast power seemed to be choked or reduced by something. I am assuming this was the purpose of the ritual. The lack of power meant I didn’t appear in the astral space as quickly as I usually did, but I felt stretched or thinned.

I could die here. Is halfway between Pallimustus and an astral space still within the realm of my goddess? What is that I can see through the edge of the stretched tunnel? My mind was not up to comprehend what I saw, but the worst was the smell. I could smell magic, and the smell was overpowering and pure. Complete and far, far too much.

I stumbled into the astral space, threw up, and had a pounding headache, which I have never had since I achieved Iron Rank. I was dimly aware of Kai spreading out, but what I felt like was having a massive dose of mana poisoning.

I just had to sit in the ankle-deep water and wait to get my senses under control. All of a sudden, I felt a furious fight break out near me, and Ardisia left. I got up to help and turned to see. I had to steady myself when a dizzy spell came on at the sudden movement.

Kai was swarming over a bronze Shab, and Ardisia had arrived and tangled it up. Bat Kai was landing on its back, and others scrambled up its legs. It was trying to turn and get its teeth on one of its attackers, but Ardisia had it fast.

I pulled out a spear, but instead of going to help, I used it to steady myself. My familiars seemed to have it under control. That was new. I was so used to fighting up a level, from iron to bronze, that now I am on par with most things in this astral space. There are still silver-rank monsters, but I felt I could almost relax a bit. I shouldn’t, or I would be surprised and get killed, but this was new. I was proud of my familiars.

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I tested my skills by activating Blend, and a wave of nausea swept over me. This wasn’t good. I wondered how long this would last. I needed to get away from the gate, so when the familiars had finished, we set off in the direction I thought was the right one.

I helped take down the next Shab with my spear. The Fire Chitin spearhead worked well. I had to keep stopping myself from using skills, and I still had a wave of nausea, but it was fading.

I used my net and Hunters Tether to bring down the gulls, and the familiars finished them. It was four hours later, and I felt my skills, or should I say my mana, were back to normal. That ritual is definitely something I need to investigate. When I took my first break, I sketched what I remembered out on a shield and stored it away. My bronze-rank memory is better than ever.

Having a Kai in the air was fantastic for scouting in this open terrain. We steered around trouble a lot easier than before.

The first non-monster manifestation I sniffed out was a Sand Essence. I offered it to the Kais, but they weren’t interested. There is something fundamentally different between Essences and Awakening Stones.

The next day, I found a water Awakening stone of some type. I didn’t bother to get out of my identification ritual; I just offered it to Kai. The first two Kais turned up their nose at it, but the third one gobbled it down. I was not aware of so great a difference between Kais, although it makes sense when some pick up an ability before others.

Water Kai, as I am calling him, seems to have some sort of water manipulation skill. He moves fast through the water and can shoot a jet. It is not a powerful jet, but it could surprise someone or put out a flame. When I next took a break, I tested it, and he didn’t seem to create water; he just manipulated what was around him.

We kept moving, and the monsters seemed to be reducing from bronze to more often iron rank. Iron ranks monsters were easy. I often left them to Kai or Ardisia. I figured I was heading in the right direction if we were reducing the magic density.

As was normal in this astral space, I collected a lot of quintessence—water, sand, air and sun. I was surprised at the Sun quintessence. I was on the lookout for a sun type Awakening stone.

On day three, I admitted that I was lost. We were still in the iron rank zone, but I was exhausted. I made a bed on an island's warm sand and slept a few hours while my familiars watched. They could handle most things here, and I was reasonably sure I had shaken my pursuers.

When I woke, I felt a lot better. I still didn’t know where I was.

I sat and ate and contemplated opening my Garden, but this was still an astral space and not really safe. I looked at my skills. Oh, there is some magic that has been reaped. “You guys took out some seasnakes, huh? Quite a few, by the look of this. You guys are awesome.”

I put the magic into skin and meat with some venom. Seasnake venom is quite potent. All of this was only iron-rank, though. Then I noticed Venom Kai was back. “Good on you, buddy.” Six Kais had specialisations now. There were only three to go. I was thinking I used to have a stone Kai and the liquid fire Kai, so finding an earth or stone awakening stone might be good, as well as a fire awakening stone if those were the things they were more attuned to. I also had a second Mana Drain Kai. I need to look for those types of things. The Kais may not be limited to those, but those are the clues I had. I wish they could talk.

We headed out, and I was sniffing for a gate and awakening stones. I was getting quite a pile of quintessence. On day five, I found a gate. It wasn’t the one I was looking for, but it was a way out. The trouble was it was underwater and one of the waterfall gates. I wouldn’t suffer the way I did when I came into this space, so I checked the gate carefully. Water Kai went down and investigated, and I dove under several times, sniffing and trying to get used to water up my nose. It was easier at bronze rank, but getting used to it would still take some time. I think I wouldn’t be until silver-rank that I didn’t actually need to breathe any more.

I didn’t have any of the professor's rituals to test the astral magic at the gate. I could probably recreate some of them from memory, and my mana was now bronze, but I was iron-rank back then, and my memory is a bit hazy regarding some of the details.

As far as I could tell, this was a standard gate. There was the small matter of the water continuously rushing through it, and if it was one of the waterfall ones, then there was a large drop at the end. Hopefully, there is a pool of water at the bottom.

It was a risk. I had a bronze-rank body now, and it could take a lot of damage, not that I wanted it to. I needed to get out of here, and I was pretty sure this went into Greenstone territory. The answer to my problem was Ardisia.

Ardisia wrapped me up in a cocoon of vines. All the thorns were pointed outward, and her bronze-rank vines were tough. Having a few vines broken was not a big deal to her, and she would be in me the whole time, so her life was not in danger unless mine was.

I retrieved all the Kais and swam down to the gate. Ardisia extended her vines and created the cocoon, and I let the water suck us through the gate.