After reaching level 50, people are blessed with the class that suits them the most. People below level 50 and people above level 50 have vastly different levels of power it is very difficult for a no-class awakener to defeat one with class. After getting a class people just don't gain extra stats, they also gain new abilities that the class has to offer. To use these abilities people had to use mana in them, after a person awakens, they cannot just feel the mana but also freely control the mana that is inside their body.
The more mana a person has the more powerful he is, without a large amount of mana people wouldn't be able to perform may skills that the class provides. The only way to increase the amount of mana one has in their body is to level up and one of the easiest ways to level up is to kill monsters. So, the awakeners always wanted to enter a dungeon where they would find monsters, but that wasn't the only reason awakeners went into the dungeon. There was more stuff that could be gained from the dungeons.
Mana crystals were one of those things that awakeners sought the most inside a dungeon, these things are found inside a dungeon and they could be sold for a hefty amount. Most of the earnings that came to awakeners were through the selling of the mana crystals. Mana crystals are found only inside those places where there is an abundant amount of mana present. Mana crystals form because of the solidification of mana, so one small mana crystal houses a lot of pure mana inside of it.
Mana crystal was a type of light that guided the path of humanity after the catastrophe that took away electricity from the world. After many years of research using the mana crystals that people found, they were able to discover that the mana crystals could be used as an alternative source of energy that replaces electricity. As time went by people started to experiment using the mana crystals.
After many, many years of research and development, people were finally able to find a replacement for electricity. Now the earth is no different than in the past in terms of technology, some might even say the earth now is a little more advanced as the versatile nature of mana crystals. Scientists still believe that there are more uses to be discovered from the mana crystals.
Many unexplained phenomena still exist in the world, like why nothing changed for Earth except for its size. One day on Earth is still 24 hours one year on Earth is still 365 days. None of the other planets changed even after the catastrophe, they all remained the same as they used to be. People had many questions about space but no one cared enough to investigate, the more pressing matter for the people now was what was happening to the earth itself and what are these dungeons.
Along with dungeons was also one more weird anomaly similar to the dungeons in some sense but also way more different. People called that thing gate, like the name suggested the gates were a kind of gateway that led a person to a whole new and different place. The place that the gates had inside them varied from gate to gate but most of the gates had a huge land mass inside of it. It is said that no one has ever been able to see the ending of a gate, there are even rumors that the gates link our world to other worlds.
Unlike the dungeons where monsters spill out if it isn't cleared on time, gates had no such thing as a monster spill. As the world inside the gates is huge people go inside for exploration, and to understand and map out the area. But no one has been able to map out the entire area as of yet. Unlike dungeons, gates didn't provide any mana crystals that easily. If one wanted to search for mana crystals, one had to search for mana veins. Just like on Earth mana crystals were found in mana veins, but finding one was like finding a needle in a haystack.
So, most of the people didn't go in the gate to find mana crystal but rather, to hunt monsters and search for items. After many years of comparing people found out that the mana density inside the gate was way above that of the Earth's. So, the monsters found inside the gates were more powerful compared to the same level of monsters inside the dungeon or the monsters found on Earth. By killing them people also leveled up 1.5 times faster than in a regular dungeon, although that sounds very enticing to many there is also a huge risk involved.
A dungeon's monsters can be predicted by using the level of the mana density, so if a dungeon is excluding a very low amount of mana that would mean there are only 1st shard-level monsters present inside the dungeon. By knowing what to expect inside a dungeon the mortality rate of the explorer increases a lot. Whereas in the case of the gates, if you are inside one of the gates that means that means it is all up to your luck as to what monster you would encounter.
As the gates are a world of their own, they are not bound by rules like the dungeons, those lands are like wild lands, where monsters roam freely. So many still prefer dungeons over others.
Although the risks that it contains are higher, the rewards that it can bring are also very high. Unlike dungeons where you can only get mana crystals, inside the gates, a person can also gain new skill books, weapons, etc. Those are only the gist of things that can be found inside a gate. There have been many people who didn't have to risk much and gained something very valuable. Those people became rich in an instant, and this woke up the greed in people, and a lot of people started to pour inside the gates in search of treasures.
Even now many people out of greed go into the gates never to return. The most valuable that that one could get from a gate was a skill book. For an awakener, skills are a very crucial thing to have, but getting one is extremely rare, you do get some from your class but if one wanted to expand their power, they had to increase their skills.
That is the reason why an awakener is willing to buy a skill book even if they had to pay a fortune for it in return. There were also some restrictions on using the skills as some of the skills were exclusive to certain classes.
Sometimes because of weird phenomena unique items are born, and these items possess extraordinary strengths. These kinds of items are found both on Earth and at gates, people also search for such items as they are also sold for a huge sum of money. These items not only have great strengths they also provide their wilders with extraordinary boosts to their status.
A Wielder of one such item can easily defeat another person even if both of them are of the same level.