I send a pulse of Mana into the ring and immediately find myself at the enchanted tree. This isn't the first time I've done it, but I don't have much else to do and I'm far too awake to try to sleep even though it's the middle of the night.

Silvia and the twins all went to bed already, so I'm playing around with the ring. The spell is instant – the moment I use it, I'm in the target location. It's teleporting me to about four feet from the tree, and if I teleport again immediately, it just moves me over some. If I put something in the way, it teleports me to another spot around the tree.

After about an hour of playing around with the ring, I think I've gotten a feel for how the spell works. It's taken me a lot of activations of the ring in order to do so, though. With how instant the spell is, actually sensing it was difficult.

From what I can tell as I mentally review the spell, it will require me to have either been to where I'm going or be able to see or sense the location. I need something to 'anchor' the spell to. For the ring, that anchor is the enchanted tree – which is why it always teleports me there. There's also a safety in the spell to ensure I don't overlap something and end up in a wall – or with an item inside of me.

Without having actually seen that safety, I probably wouldn't have thought about it on my own.

The spell's also a lot more simple than I thought it would be. I mean, I'm literally moving through space, I expected it to have some complicated setup or something.

Magic really is a cheat. The ring costing 5 Mana isn't because of the mysterious boy deity making it cost that little. Honestly, the ring would probably have cost that anyway even if it was a normal reward.

The maximum distance between two enchanted trees, according to Silvia, is one hundred miles. Trial rewards always have a cost that's in relation to the same spell having gained at least ten Levels just by reducing its cost. At least, that's as far as they've been able to determine when looking at items that have spells which can be cast.

That means that a [Teleport] of one hundred miles would cost no more than 5 Mana for an individual once it's Level 11, if I devoted all of the training into lowering its cost.

Walking away from the enchanted tree, I access my Mana Core and begin weaving together the spell. I use my memory of the enchanted tree as the focus point, keeping my back to the tree just to be sure.

Then, I activate the spell.

Immediately, I find myself facing the enchanted tree, only three feet from it.

[Teleport] learned!

There was a delay between the two. Normally, the notifications appear instantly, but… I'm fairly certain it didn't show up until after I arrived. That means that [Teleport] is faster than a System notification.

I'm not sure if that's useful or not, but it is interesting.

Teleporting such a short distance cost me about 6 Mana, which I find a bit odd when compared to the ring. I start teleporting all around the plaza, in and out of my tent and Terrence's, and then I teleport to Silvia's clearing. Since I'm wearing the amulet, I know that even if her dimensional wards protect it from this, I'll still arrive at least near it.

I appear by the pond in her clearing, exactly where I had visualized. This teleport only cost me about 6.4 Mana. I teleport back to the plaza, then I teleport to the front yard of the guild.

There's not much of a cost increase based on distance. That means most of the spell's cost goes into the activation itself, rather than actually moving me the distance.

Unlike the other spells, it actually takes me awhile to improve. Rather than being able to breeze through improving it, I spend almost four hours to bring it up to Level 10. Sure, others might consider that to be breezing through the spell, but it's not for me.

Since arriving here almost a week ago, I haven't needed more than fifteen minutes to bring any spell up to Level 10. I just spent sixteen times as long bringing [Teleport] up to Level 10.

That said, I am growing more familiar with it, and I continue improving its efficiency. This goes a little bit faster with me having gotten used to the spell, and it only takes me an hour to bring it up to Level 15.

Once it's there, I move on to the next focus: opening a gate between locations.

This spell takes me almost an hour to figure out even with what I know from [Teleport], but I do manage to succeed at last.

[Gate] learned!

The [Gate] takes the form of a difference in the world, a change of scenery for just one spot. My first gate is a rectangle four feet wide and seven feet tall, showing a field instead of the plaza and ruins. A faint bit of sunlight can be seen on the other side, not much more than what we have here.

There's also one of the quake unicorns, which starts charging toward me. I quickly collapse the [Gate], not allowing the quake unicorn to enter.

"That was awesome!" A pair of voices exclaim. "What was that?"

I look over to find the twins having exited their tent, the boys wearing their sleeping shorts, hair still slightly ruffled from sleep.

"Morning, boys," I say. "Just me playing around with magic."

"That smelled like the fields outside of town!" Sol exclaims.

"And you smell like home! And the fields! And the air lizards!" Shade adds.

"Why don't you two get changed," I suggest. "And after your mom wakes up, I can show you the spell again?"

"Okay!"

The twins hurry into their tent, and when they exit it a few minutes later, they're dressed in their normal clothes.

"In your excitement," I say. "You both managed to put your tunics on backwards."

The twins pull their arms into their tunics and quickly correct this mistake, and I chuckle. As soon as they're done, they rush over to me to pepper me with questions.

"Slow down, boys," I place a hand on each of their heads and the boys quiet down. "It's not like it can't happen again. Now, what's your first question?"

I pull my hands off their heads.

"Why do you smell like all those places?" Sol asks.

"Yeah!" Shade nods.

"I figured out how to teleport," I say. "And traveled to your home, to town, and to the fields."

"We could smell a quake unicorn as soon as we woke up," Sol tells me.

"So we got exited and came out here," Shade says. "And saw that weird thing! What was that?"

"That was a [Gate]," I tell them. "It's, well, it's a gate between two places. You enter it and appear in the area on the other side, sort of like actually passing through a gate."

"It really shouldn't surprise me that you've already figured that out," Silvia says as she exits her tent. "And yet, here I am, surprised."

"It did take me longer than any other spell," I admit. "But still, being an [Archon] really is unfair. This kind of feels like cheating."

"Perhaps it is," she says. "That may be why everything was changed when the System came about. It was easier to become more powerful, and having anyone able to learn everything and become that powerful could be problematic. We have issues dealing with dark mages already, imagine how things would be if they could do more than just the elements."

Blood magic, necromancy, and other horrific things, probably. Avoiding people getting super powerful while having access to all of that probably is part of the reason behind the binding of the Mana Gates.

"Yeah," I say. "Doesn't mean it doesn't feel like cheating."

"No doubt," she says. "What's your plan for the day?"

"I'll need to at least take a nap or two," I tell her. "Since I didn't sleep at all during the night. As much as I'd like to look through the ruins, experimenting with this spell and getting some rest is a priority for me."

"Alright," she says. "We found one of their research stations yesterday, so we'll be exploring it today. I'll let you know if we find anything relating to dimensional magics that I don't already have."

"Thanks," I say.

Silvia prepares breakfast for us, a meal consisting of fruits the twins found yesterday and some eggs she'd taken from a monster's nest. After we eat, they leave and I take a short nap.

I play around with [Gate] some more after my nap, working on improving it. Though nothing explicitly states it, I'm fairly certain that [Gate] itself won't be enough to take me back to Earth. To do that, I'll need to familiarize myself enough with [Gate] that I can create a more powerful version capable of bridging the gap between worlds while remaining stabilized.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Approaching a nearby shop, I open the door and step inside. While I could have passed through the door as the glass window is gone, I didn't want to bother ducking under the push bar on the inside.

Sitting on the counter in here is a register. It looks similar to one on Earth, but also different. Most of it's the same, with a cash drawer and keys on it, but the monitor is different. Rather than being a plastic and possibly some glass, it's a thin rectangle of light blue crystal. The piece is around fourteen inches long and nine inches tall.

Wires come out of it, and after an examination, I find it leading into an outlet similar to one back on Earth.

My assumption regarding the more powerful [Gate] spell only works if we're in the same dimension. While it's entirely plausible that intelligent life evolves in similar ways on different worlds, and that there might be other worlds similar to Earth out there, there also stands another possibility.

This isn't the same dimension that I'm from.

If that's true, then a form of the [Gate] spell designed to cross worlds probably wouldn't work. I'd need to find a way to move between dimensions as well.

Hopefully, that won't be necessary, but if it is, then I'll need to figure that out as well.

I give the cord another examination, not noticing anything that seems off. With the plug in my hand, I walk around to the front of the counter and take a deep breath, then create a small electric charge on my hand. After a few minutes of experimenting, I actually do get the register to turn on.

It boots up almost immediately once I have the right electricity running through the wires, which surprises me. This was just to give me something to do while waiting, I didn't actually expect it to turn on.

Even after thousands of years, the technology of the Ancients can still function. At least, some of it. Just who were they?

The screen that pops up when the register loads appears to be a login screen. I'm not surprised by that, a store would want to make sure other people can't just come in and use their registers.

Though I can tell it's a login screen, I can't determine much else. I don't recognize the letters at all. Logging in won't be possible.

I cancel the flow of electricity, and the register goes dead.

Curious, I break open the register drawer and pull it out. Cash and coins, though naturally, I don't recognize any of it.

That doesn't mean another theory of mine is wrong, though. Currency and languages change over time, so it's possible that's what happened here.

What if I'm not on another world or in an alternate dimension, but in the future of Earth instead? If so, then that means gods can't open passages to the past, but [Archon]s can.

That sounds pretty ridiculous, though, so I'm going to assume the theory of being in the future of Earth from my own time is incorrect. No, there's a separate reason why only an [Archon] can open the way back home for me.

Something I'll eventually find out.

For now, I focus on improving my skill with [Gate], only raising it up to Level 5 by dinnertime. It's much more difficult to improve than [Teleport] is, and even my instincts for magic and ability to read it pretty well doesn't seem to be speeding it up.

As I start the fire, there's a grunt of surprise from the direction of the tree.

"WHY DID I FALL?"

"Did you jump before accepting?" I ask without looking over.

"…maybe?" The embarrassment in Terrence's voice is quite evident.

"You're a dork."

"I expected your Trial to take longer than mine," Terrence tells me as he walks over.

"I was done that night," I tell him. "It was… significantly easier than I thought. Maztlit told me that the difficulty is partly based on the individual, and after something Silvia said to me earlier, I understood it a bit more."

"What do you mean?"

"My boss fight at the end," I tell him. "Was to fight a sea serpent underwater. Its eyes were sensitive to light, so I took advantage of that to continuously blind it, therefore causing it pain. I took advantage of that to just attack it over and over, not giving it a chance to recover by casting another [Light Bomb] as soon as it started to recover from the previous."

"Nonstop assault," Terrence says. "That is one of your primary strategies, and if you can find something that stops the enemy from attacking, you do it. That's just how you-ah. Yeah, I wouldn't have thought to do something like that. My style mostly consists of evading and striking. I'm so glad I didn't have that for a stage."

"You didn't have it?" I ask, and he shakes his head. "You're lucky. Maztlit said it occurs around seventy percent of the time."

"Aizdelin said that I encountered some stages that appear less than a single percent of the time."

"Damn," I say. "What was your water stage like?"

"I had three of them," he tells me. "Kind of annoying, I like fire. I faced seven stages in total."

"Four," I tell him.

"Bastard."

"I guess that's a [Perk] of being an [Archon]," I grin at him. "Though it's technically six, if we count the lightning wall and the ice wall as their own stages."

The lightning wall was probably a variation because of me being an [Archon]. Maztlit and I didn't discuss it, now that I think back on our talk at the end of the Trial. There were probably a few different ways I could have handled that, but I went with the one that seemed easiest for me.

"You're still a bastard," he pouts.

"Ironic, coming from you."

Terrence huffs a little. Maybe that was a little too harsh. It was meant to be a joke, but I suppose he's more sensitive to it than he's portrayed before. His exhaustion from the Trial is making it harder for him to hide it, though.

"So what did you pick as your rewards?" I ask.

"Some pretty awesome items," he says, placing his right hand over the table. "Look!"

His reward bracelet glows as a trio of glowing orbs appear. The bracelet then vanishes as the glows fade and the items drop onto the table.

The first of the items is an amulet with a silver chain and a dark blue magic crystal shaped like a teardrop, a pair of silver wings wrapped around from the back of it to cover the sides and bottom, leaving a portion of the front open. It allows the user to store up to 13,000 Mana in it, and Terrence says it cost him 7 Points as he happily slips it on around his head.

For his second item, it's a bracelet that he can infuse Mana into in order to conjure up a [Barrier] in front of him. The amount of Mana he puts into it determines how big the barrier is, with the defensive value being based on his Magic. As long as it's active, it will perform a small but steady drain on his Mana to sustain the [Barrier], and draw in more to repair it as long as the [Barrier] hasn't broken.

The bracelet itself is a light blue band that resembles the reward bracelet other than the color change, but with three sapphires set into it instead of a magic crystal. I'm not fashion geek for this world or for Earth, but I think it looks pretty stylish, and Terrence seems to like it as he slips it on. He says that it cost him 4 Points to buy.

Terrence's third reward is a ring, a simple black band with a pair of yellow magic crystals in it. It cost him the remaining 2 Points, and grants as passive power – with no Mana cost – the ability to remain able to see regardless of the lighting. This means that even in total darkness, he'll be able to see, and if someone uses a light-based spell to try to blind him, he'd be unaffected by it.

That's actually pretty useful.

"What did you get?" Terrence asks, and I show him the ring. "That's awesome!"

"Yeah, but it's useless to me now," I slip it off and toss it to him.

"What do you mean?" He asks as he catches it.

I [Teleport] to the enchanted tree, and Terrence stares at me with wide eyes. To impress him more, I open a [Gate] to Silvia's home. Terrence stares at that for a few moments, then bolts through it and looks around before dashing back here.

"That is amazing!" He says. "Wait! How did you learn those spells?"

"I paid attention to how the ring worked," I answer. "Then used the spell. I Leveled it up some to get used to it and improve my ability with it, then played around until I learned [Gate]."

"You're amazing," Terrence says.

His tail and ears droop for a bit as he looks sad, and I kind of want to hug him. Not in a romantic way, but because he looks like he needs a hug. Before I can decide what to do, however, Terrence answers for me.

He charges me and wraps his arms around me, holding me tightly. For a few moments, he just holds me, then I wrap my arms around him to return the hug.

"There were times I thought I wouldn't make it through," Terrence's voice is quiet. "I know you have to leave, Reid, but I like you. A lot. We've only known each other a week, and I really only knew you a few days 'cause of the Trial, but I feel like I've known you forever. Do you have to go?"

This… almost breaks my heart. I guess he's not strong enough to fight the budding feelings like I'm doing.

"I do," I tilt my head down and rest it on his shoulder. "I have friends and family that I have to get back to. I know I haven't shown it much, but I miss them a lot, Terrence. During the Trial, I got to a part where I couldn't figure it out. I started to despair over the fact that I'd never see them again, that I was dying there."

Terrence squeezes me tighter.

"But I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't really miss you," I tell him, and his hug tightens. "It hasn't even been a week yet, but I view you as another of my friends."

"Just… friends?"

"We haven't known each other too long," I tell him. "I know we can't be more than friends."

"So you do like me."

"A little," I admit. "But I know it can't be. In the first place, I'd rather be friends with someone for at least a few months before considering dating them, to know if it's a quick, short feeling born of the situation, or a more long-term thing that can develop into more."

"I guess that makes sense," he sniffles. "I'm sorry for being a baby, Reid."

"It's fine," I squeeze him a little. "Silvia and the twins will be coming back soon. Why don't you get some rest while we prepare dinner? And tomorrow or the day after, once you've recovered from the Trial, why don't we go kick some undead ass?"

Terrence doesn't respond.

"Just because I'm leaving," I tell him. "That doesn't mean we can't have fun together before I go. I want to do stuff here that will stick with me forever once I leave."

"Okay," Terrence nods. "And… sorry again, Reid."

"It's okay, Terre," I tell him.

He lets go and walks over to his tent, stepping inside of it. I stare at the tent for a few moments, then shake my head and return to getting ready to start dinner. Silvia and the twins should be gathering some additional things, but I can still get supplies out and the fire ready.

Terrence is getting too emotionally attached to me. Maybe it's a bad idea to stay around him so much, but I am falling in love with him despite knowing him so little. He's cute, kind of dorky, and a bit fun. I do want to go on at least one or two more adventures with him before I leave.

The only way I can keep myself from giving in and trying to kiss him is to remind myself that he's like Nick: someone I can crush on, but not be with.

It's the only way I can prepare myself for if another plan fails.

Silvia has mentioned that every spell that can be cast, can be enchanted into an item. Bigger, more complex spells can need bigger items and more complicated setups. Even spells outside of the elements can be done, as evidenced by Silvia's dimensional wards.

That's why no one from town questioned my statement of my people attempting to create a gate-portal deal between two cities.

It'll be difficult, but once I'm back on Earth, I plan on devoting a lot of attention to making one that leads here. That will require becoming significantly more powerful than I am now, I'm sure of it. I also know that the System is making actual changes to me based on the way my Mana Core and Mana Gate feel.

When I leave here, I'll retain all the power that I've gained.

Passing the Second Rank Advancement Trial isn't necessary, but I'm going to do it. Terrence and I can go on one or two more adventures, then I plan on getting as powerful as possible. I'll hunt down a thousand wyverns if I need to.

This isn't so that I can date Terrence. I don't expect it to be a fast thing, and I hope he finds someone who makes him happy who's from this world. No, it's so that I don't have to abandon the friends I'm making in this short time, that I can return and help them out whenever they need it.

Also so that I can introduce Terrence, Silvia, and the twins to my world. After all, what's the purpose of a long-term passage between worlds that probably defies some sort of cosmic law if it's not used for introducing friends to new things?