Odd thoughts aside, Chieftain Morack remembered why he brought Renald with him in the first place.
While Erin's starship descended into the planet, the chieftain had Renald explain what he saw in detail. Although Erin wasn't trying to eavesdrop, it was hard not to listen with the two of them sitting so close.
It all started when Renald returned to the lifestone room. While walking around, he noticed a tiny white dot on Stuart's lifestone. Renald thought it was a minor blemish and tried wiping it off.
While he was trying to clean the stone, the dot suddenly expanded into a crack. At that moment, Renald realized something was wrong. Before he got a chance to report the matter, the deep red glow on the lifestone started fading away quickly.
Once the glow was gone, the stone would receive the last memories of the deceased and project it into the holder's mind. Because this event was a one time occurance, Renald knew his report wouldn't arrive on time. Thus, he had to bear the responsibility of receiving these last memories.
In these memories, Renald saw Stuart locked up in what appeared to be a metallic interrogation chamber. The instigators were all Planetoids! They were all using translator devices to communicate.
The most important part of these memories was that they also recorded Stuart's last thoughts.
Knowing that he was on the brink of death, Stuart forced himself to think despite being mentally exhausted. He started repeating several sentences in his mind.
'The inner spatial channel is compromised. I confused them into believing the next reversal is in one year.'
'They are searching for something..'
Stuart didn't stop these thoughts until he took his last breath.
Chieftain Morack's eyes watered up as he listened to this. The fact that his great grandson was still trying to help the tribe in his last moments made him feel both proud and sad. He didn't doubt any of these words because the chieftain had special means to detect if Renald was lying. None of those means activated while Renald was giving his explanation.
"..There is also one more thing." Renald spoke these words quietly and looked at Erin.
"When Stuart thought about the Planetoid's search, a brief memory popped up. It was a scene where the Planetoids were projecting different types of images in front of Stuart. They were asking him many questions about these images."
"..And, if I'm not mistaken, one of these images was.."
"..your starship."
Renald's words caught Erin's full attention.
When Erin decimated the Planetoid starships around Winslow's planet, he knew that the wreckage would be a problem. From reconstructing the battlefield, to salvaging data, there were many ways to find out what happened.
Since then, Erin anticipated that his starship would eventually be recognized as an enemy by Planetoid forces. He just didn't expect that his starship would be prioritized by them.
"..I see. This is not too much of a surprise." Erin said. He had the AI playback the records of him attacking the Planetoid starships around Winslow's planet.
Watching this video, Renald and Chieftain were very intrigued. Although the Planetoid starships were clearly just scouts, it was still an achievement to wipe them out simultaneously. The attack sent from Erin's starship was also something they have never seen before.
As the video recording reached the part where Erin's starship was about to descend into the planet, something caught the chieftain's attention.
"..Wait, pause the recording." Chieftain Morack suddenly interrupted. Erin obliged and manually paused the video scene.
"Can you give me control over this display?" Chieftain Morack asked. Erin had the AI place a touchable holographic screen in front of the chieftain.
Adjusting the video feed and zooming in were very simple functions. The chieftain could do this even though he did not understand the UI's language.
After a moment, the chieftain zoomed the screen on the wreckage of a particular Planetoid starship. The insignia on it was still recognizable.
"I believe this is why you are being targeted." Chieftain Morack said.
"Although the starship looks ordinary, the insignia represents a high-ranking member of the Planetoids. Given that this starship was mixed in with scouts, it was probably a younger Planetoid noble trying to gain experience. They probably never expected to encounter someone like you."
Listening to this, Erin sighed. Given the Morack Family's background with intelligence, he knew that a Chieftain Morack's knowledge was most likely true. Erin thanked the chieftain for his input.
Now that he knew this, Erin had to be more cautious when using his main starship. Although he could simply just escape, Erin didn't want to go down that route yet. In such an unfamiliar universe, anything could happen. It was already quite fortunate that he managed to gain some standing in the Ursidae Tribe.
Suddenly, the AI interrupted Erin's thoughts with a notification.
[The starship has now reached the southernmost region. A large dimensional gate has been detected nearby.]
"Approach the dimensional gate." Erin ordered immediately.
[Understood.]
As the starship shifted directions, it went through a bunch of clouds. When it finally broke through these clouds, the sight before him made Erin's brain short-circuit.
'Dimensional gates can be this big?!' Erin thought to himself as his jaw dropped.
No wonder it was on its own continent! The gate's size was enormous!
From just a glance, Erin believed that it could even fit a smaller carrier-class starship with ease! The top of the gate was touching the sky while the width covered at least a quarter of this continent. The most stunning fact was that the entire dimensional gate was made entirely of marble.
The platform below it was made of grey-stone, and this platform stretched across the entire continent too. Thus, despite it being a continent, there was no greenery in sight. It looked like the entire continent was leveled off and encased with a reinforced stone floor.
Neither Renald nor Chieftain Morack appeared surprised when they saw the enormous dimensional gate. If anything, they sighed in disappointment.
The dimensional gate was only one of many good things that the tribe inherited. It was a pity that, once the ancestor's wealth dried out, the current generation couldn't even afford to use most of their inheritance.
On the other hand, Erin's face was twitching a lot.
'..How much would it cost to activate this thing?'
Erin knew that the Morack Family couldn't afford to use it. Otherwise, the dimensional gate would not have been inactive for centuries. Ever since they departed from the moon, Erin was already prepared to bear the brunt of these costs.
In spite of these mental preparations, when he saw what he was actually dealing with, Erin faltered a little. This was thousands of times bigger than what he expected. Even large dimensional gates paled in comparison to this behemoth!
A short while later, Erin's starship finally hovered in front of the dimensional gate. Chieftain Morack directed Erin to land at a particular spot. Erin complied and had the AI land the starship on that same spot. The group exited the starship shortly after. Although they were now in front of the dimensional gate, because of the gate's size, the trio was still a one-hour walk away from where the actual portal would be.
"Is this where the gate's control panel is?" Erin casually asked.
"..Control panel? Why would a dimensional gate have a control panel?"
Both Chieftain Morack and Renald looked confused.
In the Beastman Universe, dimensional gates were very simple. One side connected to another side. These sides were always determined during the construction of the gates and, once built, couldn't be changed. To them, the idea of interchanging dimensional gates was a glorified dream.
Chieftain Morack explained this since he knew Erin wasn't from this universe.
Listening to the chieftain's explanation, despite being dumbfounded, Erin nodded in understanding. It seems that the gates here weren't as advanced as his universe.
After quelling Erin's confusion, Chieftain Morack took out a special stone trinket. Upon activation, a signal was sent out throughout the entire continent.
In response to this signal, 12 large holes opened throughout the platform. These holes surrounded the dimensional gate like numbers on a clock.
Many drones flew out of these open holes and quickly gathered where the trio was. By the time they finished gathering, there were exactly 120 drones quietly floating in front of their group.
"For stability, the power needed to activate and maintain this dimensional gate is spread out. The energy is sent through 12 different channels that are built into this platform. Our ancestor's found it tedious to manually insert the dimensional crystals, so they installed drones to do this work for them."
"After placing the dimensional crystals in front of them, they'll automatically pick-up and evenly distribute the crystals to their respective channels. All 12 power channels require crystals before the activation process can begin."
"Just like any other dimensional gate, the activation crystals are permanently installed. They are used as a catalyst for the spatial portal and will disintegrate the moment the portal is turned off. So I recommend using the bare minimum to activate it. We can use supplemental crystals if the energy is not enough to sustain our future dimensional transfers."
Chieftain Morack carefully explained the activation details to Erin.
At this moment, Erin's facial expression was indescribable. With his sharp eyesight, he could clearly see that there were over a hundred drones here! That meant over a hundred crystals.
"What is the minimum grade required for the crystals?" Erin asked with some hope in his tone.
"According to the records, our ancestor's used mid-grade dimensional crystals for these gates. So grade 4 is the bare minimum needed. Since there are 120 drones here, I am assuming activation will require 120 of those crystals." Chieftain Morack answered seriously.
"If you prefer to use crystals above grade 4, I believe only 12 would be needed. Less is not possible because all 12 power channels need to be filled." The chieftain added. The historical records clearly stated this.
Listening to these words made Erin sigh in relief.
"I see. That's fine. We should start the activation process immediately."
Erin said before taking out twelve grade 9 crystals.
Chieftain Morack and Renald were left speechless. Neither of them were blind. They both clearly saw that Erin was about to use grade 9 crystals to activate the dimensional gate.
In terms of power, a single grade 9 crystal would equal a quadrillion grade 4 crystals! The differences between them were simply incomparable!
"..Honored one, is that necessary?" Chieftain Morack asked with a stunned expression.
"Necessary? What do you mean? Erin was confused by the chieftain's expression. He was still holding all twelve crystals.
"Grade 5 or 6 crystals would easily be more than enough. Isn't it too wasteful to use grade 9 crystals?" Chieftain Morack's heart was pounding. Even though it was extremely large, the dimensional gate was merely a mid-grade artifact at best. To the chieftain, supplementing it with higher-grade crystals was literally wasting pure dimensional energy!
"Oh. I don't have any mid-grade crystals. Do you have any?" Erin asked bluntly. There was a tinge of sarcasm in his words. Although he understood the chieftain's concern, Erin only had grade 9 crystals available.
"..This.." The chieftain's heart fell.
He explained that even if he wanted to, the Morack Family couldn't even provide any mid-grade crystals. After the death of their ancestors, all of the high-grade crystals were shortly used up thereafter. A few generations later, even the mid-grade crystals were gone.
As of present day, the tribe only had low-grade dimensional crystals in their treasuries. The core realm had grade 3 crystal reserves while the inner and outer realms had grade 2 and 1 crystals respectively. The Outer Reaches of the Beastman Universe were simply too poor.
This is why, when Erin rewarded him with grade 9 crystals, Chieftain Morack was completely ecstatic! While most of the things the ancestors left required mid-grade crystals, there were a few powerful weapons and starships that required high-grade crystals! While each chieftain in the tribe had inherited a share of these items, none of them could even use them.
Grade 9, as the peak of the high-grade crystals, would make it possible to use these things for an extensive amount of time. Each one was incomparably precious.
So when Erin was about to use a bunch of these grade 9 crystals, the chieftain couldn't help himself from speaking up. Standing next to the chieftain, Renald had a blank expression on his face. Even as a beastman noble, he had never seen so much wealth before.
"Since you don't have any mid-grade crystals, there's nothing we can do." Erin sighed as he placed the twelve grade 9 crystals on the ground. Time was of the essence.
12 drones automatically grabbed these crystals before flying to their respective holes. Upon entering, the platform detected that the energy received was sufficient and recalled the remaining drones.
Watching this, Chieftain Morack felt helpless. Renald's face was still blank.
With all the crystals now in place, the entire platform started rumbling. The mechanics that have been inactive for centuries started turning on again. All 12 energy channels were steadily gathering the energy from the crystals and sending it to the center. The dimensional gate greedily absorbed this energy and a portal could be seen forming at the center.
As time passed, the portal grew larger and larger before it finally touched every corner of the dimensional gate.
Right when the portal was about to finish activating, the gate itself started shaking!
Unlike the platform, which had moving mechanics, there were no moving parts on the gate. Even if it was gathering energy to open a portal, Erin was well-aware that a stable portal would never physically influence anything!
A flash of concern stemmed on the chieftain's eyes as he noticed these abnormal changes.
Before anyone could react, the nearly complete portal inside the dimensional gate suddenly exploded!
"..F*ck."
This was Erin's last word before the explosion reached his face.