“So, what did you find out?” one of the researchers asks me as I open my eyes. Everyone other working with me on the portal to the Netherworld and hopefully other places.

“Ohh, nothing much,” I say with a feigned dismissal. “Just a larger chunk of a village and couple of people.”

“What?” Another researcher blurts out and every single one including the portal operator sitting a little further from me stare at me.

“Come on, don’t joke about that. “

“I’m not joking,” I start, then qualify a little. “Well, I’m joking little, but I really did find a village with four people in my field of view. Now we know that it’s not just a bunch of empty instances.”

“Are you certain there were people?” He asks me and I just stare at him. “Ok, ok, just checking.”

“What are we going to do then?” The operator asks from his seat.

“Keep going, but I think I want a modified version of the portal. If I’m not crossing it doesn’t need to be so big. Besides the mana savings here might bring other advantages.”

Everyone nods and we settle on a bowling ball sized portal.

Through the corner of my perception field, I see the operator lowering the dials responsible for the size of the portal as he starts the mana input sequence, and the portal this time comes into full bloom in an instant a moment after I pull my perception field out of the area. I was already mixing my perception field with special shenanigans, no sense in increasing my headache without even properly exploring the other side.

I put my finger inside and then do something slightly different. I extend the perception field like last time, except I advance at a snail's pace aiming at the precise middle unerringly given the smaller size.

Millimeter by millimeter I extend the thin conduit of perception field from the tip of my finger. The portal, now with a nearly negligible mana consumption in comparison to the original version can stay open for a lot longer before the cost got to me. I could keep it going for days with a large battery.

After the initial spike settled down, it barely used 1 Mana/s.

I try to hold myself steady as I get closer and closer to the middle of the portal.

An almost infinitesimally small spot that I concentrate on, without extending the field beyond it more than a fraction of a millimeter. Not quite the precision of a microscope, but enough that it should minimize the strain in my mind.

The moment passes as the other side slowly comes into view.

And I sense….

Air, a meter wide irregular blob of air.

My head feels the slight strain, but I push through it already used to worse even when not dealing with spatial distortions.

I extended the perception field to the sides, up, down and forward to find anything, hopefully another village as expected.

The strain begins to increase, but there is something else there as well.

I blink a couple of times and retract my perception field I mentally shift my perception field basically switching channels, and then extend the perception field again.

As I hit the ground I can tell that it is the netherworld, which sends me laughing. This is what I’m was supposed to see all along and this mental shift that I had to do is just returning my perception to the ‘right place’. I instinctively know I peeked behind the curtain as it were.

As I retract the natural version of the perception field and extend the much more unwieldy skill version the system gifted me, I only see the nether world.

I play for a minute trying to make the mental shift, and although there seems to be something there, it’s is ‘locked’ and I don’t have even a hint of the other village using the system’s version of the skill. Even after I unlock the way to change the channel with the skill perception field, I doubt that system would let me peek at the other instances with the skill that it granted me.

The one advantage of this version of the skill is that it limits my headaches. There is not a single instance where this version is better except in the ‘safety’ features of the skill and I wonder at the purpose of its myriad of limitations.

Laying back on the ground, I say:

“Keep it open, I’m going to rest for just a minute,” I don’t pay attention to what they say exploring what just happened in my mind.

This mental shift, the only place where it comes into place is the portal, but it is essential if we wanted to go anywhere else, my gut told that much.

I catch my ‘mental’ breath and head in again. This time extending my perception field much further after crossing the barrier to the village while anchoring myself. Extending the perception field through the tendril seems to help me avoid the worst of the headache.

I don’t rush for the entire distance, instead sweeping the entire area. Some 20 meters around the spot dwelling by dwelling.

With the much larger area covered, I find people again. Three people, all calmly walking in the direction of the center of the village.

Withdrawing my perception I rest for another minute before working on improving this mental switch to go from one ‘channel’ to the next.

Back and forth to the netherworld than the village, trying to knock something loose in my noggin and see if there is something more, and after a good 5 minutes, I finally succeed. Just for an instant, a headache inducing moment that the image of the village is replaced by another one, but something is different and the connection breaks instantly.

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All I manage to see is a picture of devastation. Battle damage like I had seen in a couple of other villages during the night, but much more extensive.

I try to get to it again, but tired from all my attempts, I stop.

“Shut it down,” I say as I withdraw my finger from the portal.

“Ok.”

I grasp at my temples trying to massage away the pain. I go back to the runes that they suppose are responsible for dialing, look at them in a new light and draw a dozen different small variations. With a flick of the wrist and a pulse of mana one of them replaces the address of the nether world.

“Make a portal the size of a juju bean, I think it won’t make a difference for what I need.”

“Are you sure?” The operator asks me. “You won't be able to fit your finger through.

“That’s exactly the point.”

I extend a pair of shields from the inner world and put on my root armor to protect me if anything goes unexpectedly wrong. As the very small and almost negligible portal is formed, I extend a root tendril and send my perception field through it. As it passes the middle I feel the root being consume and ripped apart.

The portal formed with the random ‘address’ that I put in, but it seems to head nowhere. My perception field passes the spot in the middle of the portal and I find nothing at first, but as I attempt to ‘switch channels’ there is something in the distance.

It seems to be another village, but as soon as I try to get a better look it’s gone and the portal collapses.

Thirty seconds and folds in itself, luckily without any damaging side effects.

We begin to experiment and dozens of tries all end up with similar results.

Open, 30 seconds pass and the portals fold in on themselves.

After a while, with each attempt more refined I start to see some progress. I switch a few symbols in the first address understanding a little bit behind the logic and slowly ever so slowly ‘randomly’ finding the numbers that get me closer to the destination.

Sometimes the ‘channel’ looks to be closer, sometimes it’s more distant, but I struggle through and form a basic working for how the coordinates are determined even if I have trouble referencing with this single point. Even if I’m getting closer it is too slow so I mention my concerns to the others.

The head researcher, the one who least talked, always waiting until he had something meaningful to contribute starts:

“Well, what if you start multiple portals simultaneously. The mana consumption is small enough even without connecting to the Nether world that you can afford it.”

“Not sure if it will work,” I say.

“It’s worth a try at least. I want to see something interesting, even if all we see is it blowing up.” I look at him and after a moment I shrug and agree to his proposal.

I look down at the formation and ideas of how to split the formation of portals with the current setup would be possible so I could summon multiple portals. It would give me another data point to help ‘triangulate’ the closest village.

I form roots over the copper and silver of the central working of the main part of the engraving and I directly tie a few stops trying to troubleshot the novel application of the portal formation.

Setting up just two this first time, I give a nod and the man starts rushing through the place. The ground rumbles and the suddenly chill air blows over, much more than the subtle signs that I had seen, like opening a frigorific camera. It’s bloody strange if you not used to it.

I simply ignore the signs, the longer time frame and much greater interference between the portals from being so close to each other.

They also didn’t have the help of something stabilizing them on the other side, not being aimed at the netherworld which only adds to the problems, but I patiently wait.

When they are fully formed I poke my perception field through both, with long roots extending as I hide behind a fully powered mana shield. It takes me a few seconds and there is some confusion for a moment, but just a few seconds before the 30 seconds is up, I manage to ‘mentally’ switch, to change the channel and I grin widely.

The dichotomy is strange, but the portals standing a foot apart head to nearly the same place, the same village. And as I feel, one of them is much much easier to switch with and closer to the critical point. I analyze its address as the little portals collapse.

The root tendril is blended and shot out of the portal, but even Aspen ignores the loss too interested in the exploration I’m pursuing given the negligible loss of mass.

I pull my clipboard from the inner world and start a new notation trying to create a system to the find address of the closest other instance.

There was a chance that my impressions were wrong and things to be random, I still didn’t think so. I was on the tail of something and the time that I was spending on his didn’t seem like a waste, it was simply something that would lead me to one of my main goals.

Establishing contact with the other instances. Regardless, stopping when the inspiration struck was just wrong.

I keep going strong for the next few hours cataloging dozens of addresses, none of them actually led anywhere directly, not on a single case but I find a few sets of addresses that were close to each other and a few of the disturbances indicating I was close to something and could change the ‘channel’ on my perception field were getting easier and easier to find.

The list is growing and becoming more ‘organized’ as runic rules form and the logic behind the addresses becomes ever so slightly less inscrutable.

When I started this I had absolutely no idea of what I could do and the direction this would take, but today was not the day to hold back and I keep going. My perception field acted like a compass guiding us to the place where we would find the other instances.

As one of the addresses luckily gets much closer than all the others I start focusing only on improving it. A dozen tries later, two small steps in the right I hear:

“We have to diminish the portal size again.”

“Why?” I ask confused.

“These last couple portals are putting a strain too large on the engraving. Too much mana.”

“They are pretty small already, how much smaller can we even make the portals?”

“Not sure, before even the juju bean sized portals we started out with were the smallest we managed to come up, but your modifications helped with stabilizing it further.”

“If they need to be smaller they shall be.”

Though as I find over the next few minutes, I fail to improve the portals by any substantial amount.

Initially, the change was non-existent, but after we crossed a critical distance to this other instance the mana consumption simply skyrocketed.

The current portal, already some 70 percent the size of juju bean is drawing about 300 mana a second each in the closest spot to another instance. Together that was the limit of what the current setup could handle. Reducing the portal did help reduce the mana consumption, but getting even a little closer of the other instance erased all the overhead freed with the smaller portal. Even only opening one portal at a time wouldn’t be enough to progress that much.

“Well, today is not the day.” I look at the lead researcher after hearing him speak. Glancing at this team I notice all far more tired and disheveled than normal after sunrise. I get his hint and say:

“Well, I kept you all long enough, thanks for all the help.” As he moves off, I call him. “Wait just a minute.”

“Ok.” He says and I can almost feel the need to sleep wafting off him.

“Don’t worry I will let you get your sleep, just there is something that I thought about, I will leave a few things over here. Before it wouldn’t have been very productive, but I think even before a new built for more powerful engravings, you guys should be able to narrow down where the direction of the incomplete address by the mana consumption.

“Ohh,” He says. A moment later taking my idea a step further he says: “Just pulsing mana into the engraving and seeing how long it lasts should be a good way to get rough measurements to dial in the address the rest of the way. We don’t have precise runic clocks, but they should be good enough for something like this.”

I grin and nod.

“You are on the right track.”

Both of us part ways with large and stupid grins on our faces.

Now they have a direction to go on for the next few days.

Looking at the setup, I decide to work just another few minutes to design a more robust and precise engraving to be manufactured out of proper copper and silver. Roots and branches are incredibly useful, but they can’t beat the precision and power that raw metal can provide.