"So what level and who is the owner of the gate you found?" Asked Lux as he knew of the location but none of the details yet.
"The name on the gate was Brandon Ashe and it was a level four gate." She replied as she saw Lux's eyebrows frown slightly.
For such a small celestial body, having two gates on it was already pushing it but if a third one, his more precisely, entered the competition, then it would lower the resources they could collect and this directly affected their benefits. A level four gate, represented not only the resources spent to develop the gate but also their background as they weren't a small shop that had just started but most likely had a proper group behind them. Finally, each upgrade of a gate increased the defenses and size of the gate.
'I'll have to strengthen the gate and for that I'll have to keep the gate open for a while.' Thought Lux as it was also a condition to upgrade the skill level. As for whether there were any requirements to upgrade the gate once the portal had stabilized, he had no idea and would have to see at that point.
Most space wanderers were part of an organization and as such had people who could guard their gate which was one of the few benefits in joining an organization. However, just as they could guard, they could also attack other gates.
Destroying a gate was pretty easy. One just had to directly destroy the structure of the gate which would break the portal and cut off the coordinates from the mind of the space wanderer. Such a way was pretty direct since all celestial bodies kept on moving in the cosmos and as such, once you lost the coordinates, you wouldn't find them easily once more.
Similar to Minecraft in his previous world, the gate also known as a portal had a structure all around it. As the level of the gate improved, the structure would develop along with it granting a bigger size, better defense and regeneration speed.
Unfortunately, simply closing the gate didn't prevent it from being attacked. The moment the portal was first made, a portal frame had appeared and even if he were to close it, others could simply destroy the frame and as such, cut off his connection with this celestial body.
"Thanks for the information." He replied as he kept note of strengthening his own portal.
With a nod Nellya left the counter. She could obviously tell that he was worried about the gate. After all, it wasn't a secret that space wanderers were rarely friendly with each other. Sitting on the side of the shop, she waited for her remaining team members to come back from the gate.
It was only an hour and a half later that the group came out with a badly but still surviving young man.
As soon as they got out of the gate, John rushed to his truck, carrying his wounded friend on his back as he was certainly going to rush to the hospital.
Without interrupting them, he noticed that fifteen bills of a hundred Bym had been left on the counter, paying for the extra time of both his friend and the rescuers.
"They are welcome to come back at any time." He said to no one in particular as the leader still remembered to pay double for the time his injured friend spent inside the gate.
"With this we'll be coming back tomorrow morning boss." Said Nellya as she waved her hand while leading her subordinates out of the shop.
Looking at them leave, the six feet two inches young man didn't change his facial expression as he went and locked the door behind them.
[Do you wish to exchange Bym for Credits?]
"No." He replied as he still needed as much money as he could to afford to pay the visitors for the information he bought from them.
"Now." He said as he looked at the gate. "I need to get stronger and complete the requirements." He decided as he closed the portal only to reopen it right after.
Compared to keeping the gate open, opening and closing the portal took a lot more energy. Opening the portal itself took nine energy and then keeping it open for an hour kept another nine energy. As such, by directly opening and closing the portal, he could effectively flush his gate with a large amount of spatial energy.
Done with this seemingly easy but extremely demanding task, he moved straight to the bathroom to take a shower before starting on his own training.
Spending the entire night working on it, opening the gate from time to time whenever he had enough spatial energy, the sun soon got up.
With some fatigue in his eyes as he had decided to improve himself all night, he walked down the stairs but waited for a while as it was yet to be eight. Despite being able to open up in advance, he preferred to follow his own guidelines and open at the right time.
Taking the chance, he looked at his own status and the Celestial Body status.
Status
Lux Arden
Human
18 years old
- Profession
Lv.1 Space Wanderer (81%)
- Lv.1 Gate Creation
--> Open the Gate 100 times (20/100)
--> Open a gate in three location (1/3)
--> Open a gate 24 hours straight (0/24)
--> mprove two gates to level 2 (0/2)
--> Form the lv.2 skill pattern (0/1)
- Lv.1 Coordinate Research
--> Locate three towers (1/3)
--> Locate five gates (2/5)
--> Explore for 24 hours (6/24)
--> Form the lv.2 skill pattern (0/1)
Lv.0 Core Formation (53%)
"I'll have to continue opening and closing the gate as much as possible. Moreover, I'll soon reach the maximum of energy for the level one space wanderer profession. With perhaps a week of intense training, I should be able to completely fill the space wanderer core. At that point, I'll only have to inscribe the level two profession pattern and I will be able to become a true level two professional." He said with a nod of his head as he turned to look at his skills which now only had five and four conditions respectively.
"The gate creation skill will only upgrade if I open two other gates. While it isn't impossible to create new gates on the same celestial body, the energy cost is certainly exponential, making it quite an arduous task to complete, especially for a tier one celestial body where it isn't needed at all." He said to himself with a shake of his head as he would have to postpone leveling up the skill for a while as he turned to the second skill.
"It seems that whenever a condition is achieved, it will disappear from the list on the status." He said as he looked at the list of tasks which were pretty basic and easy to complete as long as he invested enough time into it.
With a hint of a smile at both the fact that he had slightly become stronger and because the status was a little clearer than before, he finally looked at the last entry on his status panel, the Lv.0 core formation. This new core which he had been working on developing recently was a bit more than halfway there and he would soon need to think about which profession he wished to carve upon it.
Turning his attention to the second panel, this one definitely had a lot more information.
Celestial Bodies
Name: Proteus
Size: Tier 1
Gate level: 1 (351/1000)
Activation cost: 9 energy/hour
Time Remaining: 28d, 05h, 55m, 56s
Environment level: 1 star (55%)
--> Tier 1 - Cave of Illusions (32%)
Monster Danger level: 1 star (93%)
--> Tier 1 - Plague Frogs: 19%
--> Tier 1 - Shade Snakes: 8%
--> Tier 1 - Wind Ants: 15%
--> Tier 1 - Goblin: 25%
--> Tier 1 - Bone Monkey: 16%
--> Tier 1 - Kobold: 5%
--> Tier 1 - Orc: 5%
Ressource level: 1 star (87%)
--> Tier 0 - Iron Ore: 23%
--> Tier 0 - Oak Tree: 8%
--> Tier 1 - Epnola Wood: 12%
--> Tier 1 - Pygmy Leaf: 11%
--> Tier 1 - Nightweed: 20%
Map: 39.5% explored
Gates: 3
--> Lv.1 gate - Lux Arden
--> Lv.4 gate - Brandon Ashe
Tower: 1
Cost per hour: 50 Bym
"Alright, so the gate needs to be activated for either seventy-three hours or opened seventy-three times to reach the next level. The time remaining with the gate is plenty with more than twenty-eight days. It is worth noting that as I get stronger, I can keep the gate all the further away and as such the time remaining doesn't go down as fast as the real time. Unfortunately, as it goes further and further away, the energy cost will eventually surpass the worth of keeping it active and I'll need new celestial bodies.
The environment still has one or more dangers worth 23%, there are 13% of the ressources still unfound and the map still has a lot of exploration to do with 60.5%. Finally, one gate and a tower still need to be discovered." Said Lux to himself as he was a bit happy that the exploration was doing well.
Once the exploration was complete, he would stop spending so much money and could simply sell the information to those who entered to collect resources to make money or train in combat against the monsters.
Seeing the half hour still remaining before opening, he made a proper copy of the system map and kept them on the side before finally opening for the day.