Chương 14: Planet 501 (1)

The next weekend. Saturday. I received an important message from Cayman on the group chat. It was probably the most important message I had ever received in my life. [Let's meet up in the portal room at 7 tonight.] I knew exactly what that meant. That meant we would be going on our first mission in only a few hours' time. It was finally time for me to leave this planet in search of rare, mystical items in the wider universe. It was finally time to become Night Hoppers. Why not do it on a school night, however?

Well, Ben had asked that question once, and Cayman gave quite the sophisticated response:"Ellie and I are trying to blend in. We've successfully infiltrated your school. We don't want to be gone for many days at a time, nor do we want you to be gone for that long as well. So, to blend in and to keep our disguise, we're only going planet hopping on weekends. Later, you might be able to go on weekdays, but that only depends on the circumstances."

So Cayman was basically playing the role of the good boy and what he said just meant 'I am not skipping school no matter the circumstances.' That did not fit with Cayman's personality in Night Hoppers. Why was Cayman so eager to stay in school? He wasn't even the same age as us. At around half past six that night, I left the house and started walking to the electric substation. My mother didn't care about what I did outside of school, nor did she care about my progress at school.

That was because on a typical day, she spent about ninety-five percent of her day at work, which was already taking a toll on her health. I was the one who lived the closest to the substation, and I arrived two minutes after I had left the house. I made sure there was no one looking at me, such as late shoppers or passengers looking out of car windows, and when I was sure the coast was clear, I opened the door to the substation and descended down the hatch.

The portal room was torch-lit and had a slight purple glow as usual, and when I reached it, I saw Maya and Ben staring at me as if I was an intruder and didn't know the meaning of this place. Maya's face was glowing like a lantern, whilst Ben had a faint smile imprinted onto his face.

"We're going," Maya said to me, unable to contain her excitement.

"We're actually going. We're going to be leaving this planet tonight!"

"Don't you have it the worst though?" Ben asked Maya, putting a hand on her shoulder.

"You have a brother at home, and I'm sure your parents are gonna be worried to some degree." Maya flicked her wrist.

"Don't worry, Ben. I know you're extremely concerned about non-skill users finding out, but I'll be fine. It should take just a few hours. They shouldn't suspect a thing." Ben sighed.

"Looks like everybody's here already." I heard Theo's deep voice and him climbing down the ladder.

"Looks like nobody's missing out on the fun then." I nodded. Theo looked at Maya's gleaming face. Maya's eyes were open wide and shining like there were bubbles in her eyes. He gave Maya a wry smile.

"I can see that you're all excited," Theo said.

"I am too. This is our first mission as new Hoppers. Let's just all take it easy and relax. You might feel the pressure and nervousness of starting your first mission, but that's normal."

"Well said, Theo." Who said that? I didn't say that, and neither did Ben. And it was definitely a male voice. Cayman. Maya shrieked.

"Where did you come from?" I knew exactly what was going on: Cayman had used a skill to conceal his presence. He wasn't invisible, but the skill ensured that nobody could hear his footsteps or his breathing. He was as silent as a ghost.

"You're all here, and that's good. You're early." Cayman smiled at all of us.

"Looks like you're all ready to be Hoppers." Maya nodded enthusiastically.

"I have one more thing to tell you about missions, and then we'll be going through that portal." Cayman pointed at the large circular portal which was glowing an ominous dark purple, which, from what I could recall from Night Hoppers, was one of the colours of pure, fresh mana.

"Go on, tell us quickly!" Ben pleaded.

"Maya looks like she will explode from excitement if we wait any longer!" Cayman nodded.

"The number of missions given to Hoppers on each planet differs. Some planets have more missions, and some have less. The portal will tell you which planets have less missions, which planets have more missions, and which planets have already been claimed. For this trip, I have specifically picked a planet with less missions since there will most likely be less beasts and easier beasts." You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Ellie, who emerged from behind Cayman's robust body, nodded in agreement.

"You are all entering at your own risk. Just remember that." Cayman's tone changed dramatically to become more stern, and I thought I could see dark clouds looming above his head as he got nearer to us.

"If anyone dies on this trip, I'm not responsible for it. But I don't think anyone will die on this trip anyways." Maya let out a loud, prolonged sigh.

"Ellie, do the system checks one last time," Cayman instructed.

"Everybody else, head to the middle of the portal." My heart was actively trying to escape from my body. My blood pressure skyrocketed. I felt a different mix of emotions; first, a wave of excitement hit me and I felt extremely giddy on the inside, but then, it shifted to nervousness and anxiety, and I couldn't stop shaking. I watched as Ellie fiddled with the system and typed what appeared to be a destination into the screen. Then, she and Cayman joined us in the middle of the portal.

"Planet 501, here we come!" Cayman bellowed. Those were his famous last words as we departed from Planet Earth. At exactly 7pm on the Saturday, just as Cayman had planned, we left Planet 500 for the mysterious, unknown Planet 501. For what felt like an eternity, my vision was just a large purple banner. All I could see was an opaque purple background with no sign of where we were going or when we were going to make it.

Unlike Cayman, my friends and I weren't used to this feeling, and it still felt unreal to experience this firsthand. Planet 501. We were really doing this. Cayman and Ellie's 501st planet, my second. We were not astronauts. We were Night Hoppers. We hop to different planets, collect mythical items, defeat mana beasts and gain new skills to bolster our collection. This was just the start.

"Looks like we're here," Cayman said after what felt like hours trapped in a purple box.

"We can leave the portal now." Taking a deep breath, I stuck out my right foot. I was trusting Cayman's words here; if I end up taking a step and falling into oblivion, it wasn't going to be my fault. Surprisingly, my right foot managed to touch something hard. It wasn't an endless void. It was a solid ground. We had made it. But then reality hit. Was Cayman playing a prank here? We were in a portal room which looked identical to the one underneath the electric substation in my neighbourhood.

Stone walls, stone floor, torches on the walls, purple glow. Were we still on Earth? Had we not travelled to another planet after all? That was when Cayman spoke up.

"I know you might all be disappointed, but to ease your suspicions and to confirm that I am not pranking you, this is not Planet 500 anymore. We are on a different planet."

"But this room is exactly the same as the one back home," Ben said.

"How do we know that this is a different planet?"

"That was what I was going to say next," Cayman replied. He pointed to the far side of the portal room.

"Look over there. There should be a ladder there, but there isn't one." I saw it too. In the portal room back home, there was a ladder at the far side of the room which led to the hatch and the electric substation. But in this portal room, there was no ladder.

"So we're trapped, basically," Ben said emotionlessly. Ellie nodded. Cayman, however, had a different response.

"This is nothing new to us. Sometimes, there isn't a way to get to the surface from here, and so we keep a few tools on ourselves in case this happens. It's always good to keep a few supplies in your inventory during missions." He reached into his system and grabbed something out. A few seconds later, we were looking at stainless steel pickaxes piled on the floor, which looked like mirrors since I could clearly see my reflection from it. Maya sighed.

"I know what's going on here," she said gloomily.

"We have to dig our way up to the surface." Cayman agreed.

"There's no other way up to the surface, or at least, not that we know of, and so the best option is to dig our way up to the surface. That's what we did on Earth, and it coincidentally led us up to an electric substation." It was then that Theo rolled up his sleeves and flexed his muscles.

"I can get used to this," he said proudly. Maya's head was in her hands. We all grabbed a pickaxe and headed over to the far side of the portal room, where Cayman pointed out an area where we would begin digging.

"From what the portal system told us, this planet has no human life, and there are no trees or bushes nearby, making this a good place to dig," Cayman told us.

"Whenever you're ready, start digging, and I'll lay down the ladder." Cayman laid down a few rungs which he fished out from his system, allowing me to step up and start the digging process. With my strength skill, I was able to penetrate through the stone with the pickaxe.

The pickaxes might have been imbued with mana in some way, since they were easy to swing even with the use of my basic strength skill, making the digging process effortless to even me, who was the weakest person in the group with the most slender arms. It might have adjusted to the strength level of the person digging using mana. That could mean that all the materials Cayman was using were imbued with mana in some way. Or was I simply overthinking things?

"Theo," I called out.

"I might need your help here." It still felt surreal that I was asking a bully for help.

"Right." However, Theo's response was different from his usual bully ways. With Theo's help, productivity increased, and the hole leading up to the surface was enlarged. Cayman continued to build the ladder, and eventually, the hole was large enough for Ben to help with the digging process. However, the digging process was tiring, and after around twenty minutes of continuous digging, I was panting and sweating.

Since I had used the strength skill for the whole twenty minutes, my mana was running low, and I had to stop digging. After all, I had only just unlocked the stamina trait and I only had ten stamina points, which was extremely low compared to other skill users. I had one advanced mana crystal left, and I was extremely reluctant to use it at that point. Luckily though, that was when Maya stepped in to fill my place. I watched as my friends continued to dig and build the ladder up to the surface.

It must have been tiring for Cayman and Ellie to build the ladder themselves and dig up to the surface while exploring 499 other planets. This was the content that never made it to Night Hoppers. It was like the behind the scenes content that gets released afterwards. After a while, Maya screamed, causing Ben to nearly drop his pickaxe and hit my head. Clumps of gravel began to fall into the hole. That could only mean one thing: we had hit the surface.

I got up from where I was sitting and hurriedly climbed up from the ladder. There was a grey light entering the tunnel from the sky, and it looked like it was cloudy outside. Maya, who was the closest to the surface, finished building the ladder and walked up to the surface.

"Wow! It's really different up here! Come up, everyone!" Maya called out. Then it was Ben's turn to reach the surface. He was also in awe at what he was seeing. One by one, everybody started climbing up the ladder and reaching the surface. And what we were looking at was something out of this world. Because we were out of our own world. Out of our comfort zone. I couldn't believe it. We had done it. We had successfully hopped to another planet.

"This is it," Cayman said to all of us.

"Welcome to Planet 501."