Chương 121: Book 2 Chapter 73 - The Warp Gates

She pulled one of the gates from her soul space. It was a large archway, straight on the sides with a rounded top. It looked to be made of the same silvery-white metal that her [Delayed Resurrection Token] had been made of. The base of the arch was set into the center of a stone platform, which held it erect. Intricate runes covered the entire surface of the metal, and a small area on the right-hand side looked to be some sort of control panel with a single knob, currently pointing to the word 'OFF'.

The only other option the knob could point to was the word 'CONNECTED'. The opening at the peak of the arch was close to eight feet in height, and the two sides were about four feet apart. Kiara was average sized, and the gate was absolutely enormous for her, but she imagined that some hulk of a man might appreciate the size of the opening. The archway and stone platform combined were incredibly heavy.

With her increased strength, she could slide it by pushing it, but was sure it would leave gouges in the floor, which she didn't want. Instead, she simply left it where it had materialized for now. She could re-position it later if she wanted to. She took an iron coin from her soul space and hesitantly tossed it through the opening of the arch. The coin sailed straight through, landing on the ground on the other side with a clink.

Since the gate was off, that result was expected, but Kiara had wanted to test it with an inanimate object first. She hesitantly reached over and turned the knob to the word 'CONNECTED'. The gate blazed to life, humming audibly, although very faintly. A mesmerizing deep blue something filled the entirety of the archway, shimmering and undulating slightly and incessantly, almost like the surface of a pond. She could no longer see her room behind the archway, only the deep blue surface of the warp gate.

Her jaw fell open as she watched it, completely losing herself in the pure magic on display before her. She sincerely hoped her [Personal Spell Negation] wouldn't limit her from using the warp gate. She tossed another iron coin toward the portal, but it bounced off the blue surface as if it had hit a wall. That result was not expected, although Kiara wasn't sure what she had expected to happen instead. She frowned, studying the gate. Perhaps I need to set up one of the other gates first.

She moved to the far side of the room, pulling another of the warp gates out of her soul space. She turned it on as well, and watched as it hummed to life. It was incredible to watch, even the second time seeing it. The second gate filled with the same deep blue shimmering portal. She once again tossed a coin at the gate, only for it to bounce off yet again. She furrowed her eyebrows, unsure what that meant. Was it only keyed to her, and only she could pass through the gates, but nothing inanimate could?

She remembered with frustration that her initial invisibility ability hadn't included her clothing, and how unusable that had made the ability. If she could only teleport naked, that would severely limit the use cases she would be able to use these for. She moved closer to one of the gates and hesitantly held her hand out toward it. Her danger sense, part of [Magical Sense 4] didn't trigger at all, but it never really had for an artifact before, only for people.

[Artifact Compass] highlighted both gates as if there was a blazing sun on either side of her room. [Artifact Sage 3] gave her absolutely nothing. The effectiveness of that skill was directly disproportionate to the skill with which an artifact was made, and these had been made by the World Engine itself, or so Kiara supposed. At any rate, the craftsmanship on the gates was so high that her rudimentary sense for how artifacts worked was completely out of its depth.

If not for the description the World Engine had given her, she would have no idea what the gates were for or how they worked. Emboldened by the fact that the World Engine had given these warp gates to her specifically, she reached out her hand and touched the surface of one of the portals. The portal surface itself remained blue, and was hard to the touch, much as it seemed would be the case when the coin bounced off it.

Rather, Kiara instantly had a vision in her mind of where she could warp to, as if she was looking out a window, and that window was the other warp gate on the far side of the room. She could see the stone platform on either side of the gate, and knew that if she willed it, she would instantly appear on that platform. It seemed she could choose which side of the destination warp gate she wanted to end up on, as the stone platform extended to both sides.

She pulled her hand away without warping, and moved to the other side of the same warp gate she had just been touching. She reached her hand back out, and the experience repeated itself. It seemed the process could be initiated from either side of the gate. This time, she willed herself to warp to the other gate, picking one side of the gate at random as her destination. She instantly felt the world fold around her, appearing as if someone had wadded the entire thing up like a piece of parchment.

When the parchment unfolded, it showed a different scene, as she was now standing on the platform of the other warp gate. The entire experience happened in the blink of an eye, but Kiara's enhanced mental processing speed, courtesy of her augmented Mind stat, allowed her to perceive the experience somewhat. The feeling accompanying the warp was that of someone squeezing her from all sides at once, compressing her down to the size of a mote, then immediately pulling her back out again to her normal size.

Afterward, she felt as if someone had lifted her off the ground and shaken her around for a few seconds. She felt slightly nauseous, and had to steady herself by reaching her hand out to lean on something. She ended up leaning on the portal itself, instantly being given the option to warp back to the other one. She quickly pulled her hand away, still recovering from the first warp. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

The feeling passed quickly, and a few seconds later she felt right as rain. She warped back and forth a few times, seeing if repeated exposure to the experience would help her develop a bit of a tolerance. While the oddity of the sensation never went away, she did eventually start to reel a bit less after each warp. It still left her feeling a bit shaken up, but she was able to deal with it better, not needing to rest immediately afterward.

Curious, she turned one of the gates off, then walked to the other one and touched the blue portal surface. She could feel the portal surface beneath her hand, but no destinations presented themselves for her to warp to. The sure knowledge of that fact filled her mind as well. She pulled out the final warp gate off to the side of the room, situating the three gates in a kind of triangle shape. With all three turned on, she touched the portal surface of one of them.

She was instantly presented with four destinations, one on each side of the other two warp gates. The gates seemed to be connected via some sort of warp network, and any gate could be connected or turned off without affecting the other ones. Each gate had a destination platform on either side of the archway, giving her six platforms in total. She could enter the warp network from either side of any gate that was connected to it, then warp to either side of any other gate currently connected to the network.

She tested going through while holding random items, and they all came through with her. It seemed that throwing a coin at the portal didn't work simply because the coin didn't have the autonomy to initiate a warp. Once she had tested the setup quite thoroughly, she smiled to herself. This was one of the coolest things she had ever done. She couldn't wait to get one of these to Portish. She needed to research how common teleportation was though.

She didn't know if this was no big deal for other people, or if it was some kind of world-altering artifact. Until she knew more, she decided to keep all three warp gates in her soul space. Zoey was still in Portish with Dustin, so Kiara went looking for Belliston. He was asleep, which she realized she shouldn't find surprising. She decided to attend his magic class that evening.

While Belliston had worked his way through doing private tutoring sessions with all of the estate staff, and was now working on helping House Yountal employees that lived off-site, he still held the general magic theory class every night, and it was well attended. It gave everyone a place to practice their magic and ask questions. With Easton still in a sort of lockdown, and so many temporary residents living in tents in the yard, it was even more packed than normal right now.

There was an hour break in between dinner and the class, giving the kitchen staff time to clean up, and giving others the chance to finish up whatever they were working on for the day. After dinner, Kiara stayed in the dining hall, claiming a seat near the front of the makeshift classroom before the seats were all taken. She waited the full hour without leaving her chair. Everyone else slowly returned to the dining hall, filling up the chairs then taking seats on the floor.

Belliston came in last, he liked to take a quick power nap after dinner before class started. After class he would spend some time with Ava and the other students he was tutoring, then head to bed for the night. He started off with a short history of the discovery of wind magic, as well as some short stories of some of the more fabled wind magic users throughout history.

He had been working his way through different aspects of magic each night in a similar fashion, giving a short history of their provenance, followed by stories of especially skilled users of the aspect. He told the story of Gale Westerlake, who used her wind magic to change the weather patterns in her duchy, saving everyone from a year-long drought. Johnson Johnson the fourth split a mountain in half with a wind blade spell.

He described the thought process that he used himself when forming his mana into wind magic, then had the students that were able practice controlling small portions of their own mana to the same effect. When he asked for questions, a few hands shot up. After answering a few of the other students' questions about wind magic, he finally called on Kiara so she could ask her question. She felt a bit awkward, since her question wasn't technically related to wind magic.

She thought for a quick second, trying to correlate it to the lesson somehow.

"Uh… has anyone ever used wind magic to teleport?" Belliston gave her a curious look, but shook his head.

"That's a practical impossibility, I think. The closest story I can think of is probably Wailerod the Swift, who learned to fly using wind magic, something practically unheard of since. Most mages need a gravity concept in order to fly, a concept that is extraordinarily difficult to obtain. Others mimic the effect by walking on mana constructs that they form in the air, but that's not really the same thing." Kiara nodded, not really satisfied, but not wanting to disrupt the actual lesson of the day.

Once a few other questions had been asked, she raised her hand again.

"What kind of magic can be used to teleport?" Belliston leveled a stare at her.

"Hmm. That's not very wind magic related, but I'll humor you, since I'm curious to see where this conversation is headed. Teleportation is not a common ability, and certainly not something anyone here will be capable of anytime soon.

"When I taught at the academy, one of my colleagues claimed that his great grandfather, who was a tier 6, could teleport, but I never saw it for myself. It is certainly not something that we covered in the basic curriculum of the academy." Kiara looked around for other raised hands, but everyone else seemed to be satisfied as far as wind magic went. She raised her hand again, and Belliston nodded for her to go ahead.

"Have you ever heard of an artifact that could transport people across vast distances, like a warp gate?" He wrinkled his nose at the name 'warp gate'.

"Of course not. Something like that would upend society as we know it. Imagine armies travelling thousands of miles in a single night. Or fugitives from the crown coming and going across kingdom borders without anyone being the wiser. Or if just anyone could move in and out of city walls or fortress fortifications without authorization." He shook his head.

"I've heard some pretty wild rumors about diamond-tier artifacts coming out of Singrasa, but never anything quite as fantastical as a teleportation artifact. Even if something of the kind was developed, I imagine the mana cost would scale with the distance travelled, making it effectively useless at long range. Mind you, this is all speculation on my part, though."

"Thanks!" Kiara nodded and smiled, happy with the information she'd gathered. It sounded like entire kingdoms would go to war over something like the warp gates she'd been given. She had to keep them hidden for now.