"Alright, with this amount of energy, I should be able to inscribe the spell or at least give it a few tries." Said Lux, encouraging himself as he had barely done anything else than cleaning up the shop and working on his training in these last two weeks.
Sitting down, closing his eyes as he focused on his almost half-filled core, he created an engraving pen made of the core's energy before starting the inscription of the gate creation spell.
The spell, contrary to the professional pattern, was harder. Spells had various difficulties, the more difficult and special the spell, the harder it was to engrave it upon the core. Thankfully, once successfully engraved, only energy would be required to activate it in the future.
Failing repeatedly despite having researched and properly understood the spell in these last two weeks, he didn't stop for he had to complete it.
As he ran out of energy in the space wanderer's core, he simply continued training his profession using natural energy.
Finally, three days later, he managed, with pain, luck and misery, to complete the spell pattern.
'Yeah, that was hard. If it is this hard to simply engrave the spell, I can't imagine how it is to research coordinates in the universe.' He thought as he understood why many professionals preferred to join a group.
The resources offered were simply too attractive. Had he joined a guild or family, he may have engraved the spell in the first week of his awakening instead of the middle of the third week. After all, they not only had energy replenishing resources, but energy-filled land, the right information books for the professions, the spells of the professions and professionals who could teach them how to walk on the right path without taking any detours.
Compared to others, he walked a harder path but he walked his own free path.
"Status". He called as he looked at his progress since his awakening.
Lux Arden
Human
18 years old
- Profession
Lv.1 Space Wanderer (55%)
- Lv.1 Gate Creation
--> Open the Gate 100 times (0/100)
--> Open a gate in three location (0/3)
--> Open a gate 24 hours straight (0/24)
--> Improve two gates to level 2 (0/2)
--> Form the lv.2 skill pattern (0/1)
'Not bad at all.' He thought with a smile. His first profession was already more than half-filled of energy. On the other hand, he had to complete conditions to promote his skill to the next level.
As he looked at his school books which had the condition's information to get promoted to the second level, he confirmed it to be the exact same. 'It seems that my system will help me know the exact condition for upgrading.' He thought with a smile.
"Alright, now that it's complete, it's time to open the shop." He decided as he took the signage he had previously ordered and hung it up at the top of the shop's door.
The completely black signage with some spots of lights representing stars had big and bold words of the name of the company.
"Finally, I opened my shop: StarGate." He said to himself, using the name of the system as it was a pretty great name for a shop that dealt with opening gates across the stars of the universe.
Looking left and right once done, he could only shake his shoulders, knowing no one was even aware that such a shop existed in the lost parts of this small town.
His building was located at the north-west of the town, quite close to the town walls that protected it from the beasts that more often than not tried to invade and attack this town.
The original's parents had died to three tier one horned-wolves that had managed to invade the town after causing a breach in the wall. As such, most of the citizens had moved from this location towards the center of the town, leaving behind only a few homeless, old and poor people that couldn't leave this part of town.
Shrugging his shoulders as he wasn't really bothered about the current lack of customers, he instead turned towards practicing his new spell.
{Gate Creation - Proteus}
As he lifted his right hand, the spell pattern in his space core activated, sending energy right to his hand, slowly creating the gate according to the sole coordinates he currently possessed.
After a few moments, a spiraling blackish-purple light started appearing next to the south wall of the shop which grew rapidly before steadily stopping at three meters high and two meters wide in an oval shape.
"So, is this a portal to another world?" Wondered Lux as energy steadily left his body without his input to keep the portal active. He was quite interested in exploring the other side of the portal. However, he knew that danger existed on the other side and he had neither attack nor defensive spells.
Opening the system, he selected the second function, Celestial Body Status.
- Name: Proteus
- Size: Tier 1
- Gate level: 1 (9/1000)
- Activation cost: 9 energy/hour
- Time Remaining: 29d, 19h, 22m, 21s
- Environment level: 1 star
- Monster Danger level: 1 star (94%)
- Ressource level: 1 star (87%)
- Map: None
- Cost per hour: 50 Bym
"Hum, I can still keep it up for 7 and a half hours before closing it due to lack of my own energy. The time remaining represents the time until I can't open it even with all my energy." He said to himself with a frown as while it wasn't much, it wasn't little either.
After all, many gate shops temporarily opened a gate at select time to let people in or out with their loot. However, keeping it open was certainly better than temporary opening in case something happened.
Deciding to be bold, he wasted no time and after equipping his iron sword, he walked straight into the portal.
Weirdly, in this world, every planet had breathable air and an atmosphere, allowing every type of creature to survive. However, some were completely immersed by water while others had volcanoes everywhere around which stopped many of the weaker adventurers from exploring.
Walking across the portal, Lux was immediately attracted by the thick, dark clouds which blocked out any light from above except for some rays of light that barely pierced the clouds to bring some warmth and light to the otherwise dark celestial body.
The gravel made some noises as he walked forward, the humid air made him feel sticky as he kept his sword held tight in his right hand.
As he edged forward, exploring the location of a tier one celestial body meaning less than 10 miles in diameters, he arrived face to face with a grove of thirty meters high trees which were weirdly dry.
Looking around for monsters, he wasn't surprised to see a few snakes with ink black scales slithering on the ground nor the numerous pink frogs that lived amongst the hundreds if not thousands of holes beneath the tree trunks.
Retreating from the grove as he had no interest in fighting against those few creatures he recognized as Plague Frogs and Shade Snakes which were reputed for their poisons for the former and the defenses of the latter, he turned to the right.
Walking for about a hundred meters, still in range of his portal which he refused to lose sight of, he saw in the distance some recent traces of human activities. However, he had no intention of exploring more about it as he simply turned around and went back to his shop, his curiosity satisfied.
Arriving in his shop and seeing no customers, he closed the portal as portals were two-ways and any creatures on the other side could enter his shop through the portal. As such, until he got some protective measures for his portals, he would only keep them activated when someone entered it or he looked them over himself. Thankfully, humans couldn't go through a second portal as the moment they passed through one, they were linked to that one unless it was destroyed. As such, there was a little bit of safety on that front, not that it would stop them from fighting on the celestial body instead.
Closing the door as it was almost seven in the evening, he decided to try and learn the second and last space wanderer spell that was public.
Taking out his old school book, he placed it on the table and after opening the right page, he reproduced it a couple of times on paper until he memorized the spell before beginning.
Starting from the middle, he raised the stroke for five centimeters before transitioning to a deeper stroke while changing direction at a 54 degree angle.
Continuing, he failed repeatedly but this spell seemed to surprisingly be simpler than the gate creation spell as he managed to complete a third of it by the time his energy hit rock-bottom.
Refining his ever replenishing natural energy into his space wanderer's core, he eventually went to sleep.
At a certain professional level, one could forgo sleep completely or at least stay up for a week or two without any problems. However, this was only for stronger people and he still needed his sleep.