Exploration (2)
Seon Yul and Cheon Li Yu continued moving further north.
During that time, they hunted another elite orc, bringing the total number of Return Stones the two possessed to five.
After crossing nearly 500 km from the original Wyvern Cliff, the two of them finally discovered the intelligent beings of this world that they had been hoping to find.
“Is that them?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Through Divine Eye [Vision Sharing], the two observed a group of people 9 km away.
Their clothing looked similar to what people in the medieval era wore in fantasy movies or dramas.
“They aren’t mana users from our side, right?”
“Definitely not. To begin with, I’ve never heard of mana users equipped with clothes and weapons like that. And most importantly, those strange animals they’re riding… those have to be creatures from this world.”
They were wearing armor made of leather and chainmail and were armed with weapons of varying lengths, such as swords, shields, and spears. They were riding animals that looked similar to horses but had six legs.
No matter how one looked at it, they couldn’t possibly be mana users from Earth-104.
At the moment, they were moving very cautiously along a path through the forest.
There were ten people in total.
Anyone could see from their tense expressions that they wanted to leave the forest as quickly as possible.
“What should we do?”
“Let’s follow them for now.”
Seon Yul had no intention of letting these people of this world, whom he had finally found with difficulty, slip away easily.
After deciding to follow them, the two used Absolute Space like stepping stones to quickly approach the group of otherworldly humans.
Using Divine Eye, they observed them from a suitable distance while maintaining that distance as they followed.
With the combination of their awakened abilities, the two could secretly follow anyone if they wanted.
In fact, following from about 5 km away meant there was essentially no possible way for them to notice.
Seon Yul and Cheon Li Yu followed them for nearly an entire day while observing the humans of this other world.
Through that observation, these were the things they discovered:
- Their appearance isn’t very different from humans on Earth-104.
- When they use weapons, they naturally strengthen their bodies with mana or release mana to hunt monsters, which suggests that several special methods of utilizing mana exist in this world.
- Although it’s only a guess, magic or martial arts like those imagined in fantasy novels, comics, or movies on Earth-104 might actually exist in this world.
- Since they also collect magic crystals and Soul Stones after killing monsters, those items appear to have some level of value in this world as well.
- The food they eat doesn’t seem very different from what we eat.
They had only observed them for about a day, so they hadn’t learned very many facts, but they were able to roughly understand what kind of beings the humans of this other world were.
And then, after about another day had passed…
The lights that Seon Yul and Cheon Li Yu had seen from space finally revealed their true form.
A massive tree fortress, almost 100 meters tall.
The group they had been following entered inside that fortress.
“A village?”
“A village? A city? Either way, it looks like a place where quite several people gather and live inside that fortress.”
The outer walls of the fortress looked as if they had been made by cutting down the enormous trees that grew densely throughout the Forest of Darkness.
Calling it majestic didn’t even seem enough.
It was easily 100 meters tall, and at a glance, it looked extremely sturdy.
It looked so sturdy that even the various artillery Seon Yul possessed might not be able to break through it easily.
“Let’s take a look inside first.”
Seon Yul and Cheon Li Yu moved about 3 km from the fortress and calmly observed the inside.
The fortress was quite large. It wasn’t quite the scale of a city on Earth-104, but it seemed roughly comparable to a district within a city.
Even though a district had a considerable area, that entire area was surrounded by the giant tree fortress walls.
While observing the inside, Seon Yul and Cheon Li Yu couldn’t help but feel extremely surprised.
When they had vaguely followed the humans of this other world earlier, they had thought the civilization would be roughly at the level typically seen in fantasy novels or movies.
…but that had been a complete misconception.
“Earth-104 developed its civilization through science, but here it seems like civilization developed through magitech?”
Inside the fortress were numerous things that appeared to have been created using magitech.
A small train that looked like a monorail was running along the roads, and anyone could tell it was powered by magic crystals as fuel.
Buildings rising over ten stories high clearly had a different feeling compared to the skyscrapers of Earth-104, but they unmistakably showed that construction technology here was highly advanced.
“All the buildings are made entirely of wood, but they look extremely sturdy… and somehow mysterious too.”
“The wood itself seems almost as hard as steel, and on top of that, it looks like it underwent some kind of special magitech processing.”
The two leisurely examined the town inside the fortress.
The more they looked, the more astonishing things they found.
The entire town had sewer systems and even streetlights powered by magic crystals installed throughout.
“It looks like this world has highly developed technology for extracting energy from magic crystals. If we figure out this technology and bring it back to our world, we could make an enormous amount of money.”
“So this is what highly advanced magitech looks like?”
“Judging by the location and scale of this village, we might actually just be looking at a rural village in this world. If that’s the case… we might not have even seen the true essence of magitech yet.”
“If that’s really the case… this world might start to feel pretty scary.”
“The System said there could also be intelligent beings that crossed over here from other dimensions. That means this world is large enough to withstand the arrival of intelligent species from many dimensions. So beyond being scary, it’s definitely a very special world.”
“So what should we do? Shouldn’t we try going in there?”
“I do want to go in…”
Seon Yul wanted to enter the village inside the fortress.
However, if they entered as they were now, it seemed obvious they would immediately be exposed as humans from another world, so he thought they needed to prepare first.
“Let’s observe the town as much as possible from here and find a way to enter secretly.”
Since he intended to do things properly, Seon Yul and Cheon Li Yu began quietly observing the village inside the fortress as if they were watching TV or YouTube.
***
For several days, Seon Yul and Cheon Li Yu examined various areas inside the fortress in detail.
They didn’t simply watch casually… they conducted every kind of investigation they could, including observing the movements and behavioral patterns of the people inside the fortress as well as the major facilities.
“If we’re going to do this properly, we should go back to our world once.”
It had already been over a month since the two of them crossed into Earth-001.
Originally, they had planned to stay here for four months, or even up to half a year, before returning, but now they felt they needed to change their schedule for several reasons.
“Isn’t it a bit of a waste to use the Return Stones?”
They had gathered five, and they could always collect more if they wanted, but Cheon Li Yu still felt it was a bit wasteful.
“We can obtain more Return Stones later, but we can’t get time back. Let’s go back first, prepare the things we need, and then return here.”
Seon Yul believed that if they wanted to infiltrate the village secretly, the first thing they needed to change was their clothing.
The clothes they were currently wearing were all combat suits made on Earth-104, so naturally, they looked out of place in this world.
“Wouldn’t it be better to just sneak in and steal some clothes?”
Cheon Li Yu’s suggestion certainly had merit.
However, Seon Yul shook his head.
“That was my first thought, too, but after observing closely, it looks like that village has a pretty solid security system. People wearing uniforms that look like police from our world patrol frequently… so stealing clothes might be risky.”
Seon Yul had carefully examined the inside of the fortress for several days and confirmed several risk factors.
That was why he suggested a safer method.
“Besides, we were already planning to return to Earth-104 soon because of the satellite issue. So we might as well go back while we’re at it.”
Currently, the low-orbit satellite project Seon Yul had planned was on hold.
There were several issues.
Because Earth-001 was a completely different size from Earth-104, the orbit needed to stabilize a satellite would inevitably be different. On top of that, Seon Yul couldn’t solve all the complicated settings and calculations by himself.
So he planned to bring back as much information from this world as possible, solve those problems on Earth-104, and then return.
Most importantly, Seon Yul judged that obtaining Return Stones wasn’t very difficult, so he felt the cost of returning to Earth-104 and then coming back to this world again wasn’t very high.
Instead, launching the satellite quickly and learning more about this world through it seemed far more beneficial.
“Alright, then let’s go back and return later.”
Hearing Seon Yul’s words, Cheon Li Yu readily nodded in agreement.
Once the decision to return had been made, Seon Yul first stepped outside briefly through the entrance to Absolute Space from the spot where they had been monitoring the fortress.
In Seon Yul’s hand was a steel door.
In case something unexpected happened, he planned to install another steel door here in advance before leaving.
Seon Yul quickly placed the steel door on the ground and finished setting it up.
When they returned to this world later, the entrances to Absolute Space they had opened beforehand might all disappear, so preparing this in advance was the right choice.
After finishing the preparations, Seon Yul returned to Absolute Space and spoke to Cheon Li Yu.
“Alright, let’s go back now.”
“Okay.”
Thus, through the emergency exit inside Absolute Space, the two of them returned to Earth-104 for the first time in nearly a month.
Ironically, although they were the first among the people who had crossed into Earth-001 to return, there was no one who could know that fact.
When the two used the emergency exit to return to Earth-104, two Return Stones were consumed, one from each of them.
Naturally, the place they arrived at was Seon Yul’s small apartment.
The very first thing Seon Yul did after returning was to reopen Absolute Space and go inside.
Inside, he confirmed that all the entrances to Absolute Space that had previously been open were now closed.
“As expected… every time you cross dimensions, all the Absolute Space entrances you had previously opened get reset.”
This was exactly what he had expected.
That meant the only thing left to check was the emergency exit.
Just in case, Seon Yul also inspected the emergency exit.
If there was any way to use it to go back to Earth-001 again, that would have been ideal.
“Ah… just as expected, it’s back to the original settings.”
But the emergency exit settings had returned to their original configuration from Earth-104.
In other words, it was possible to return to Earth-104 from Earth-001 using the emergency exit, but it was impossible to go from Earth-104 back to Earth-001 that way.
It was disappointing, but it was also exactly what he had anticipated.
“In that case, when we go back to Earth-001, we’ll have to use the Main Gate again.”
After confirming that the “backdoor” could only be used for escaping, Seon Yul felt slightly disappointed, but there was nothing he could do about it.
After checking everything he needed to check, Seon Yul returned to his apartment.
“Well? Can it be used?”
“No. Both results were exactly what we expected.”
“Ah… that’s a shame.”
“It’s a shame, but it’s what we expected. What about you? Did you check the time?”
While Seon Yul had been inside Absolute Space, he had asked Cheon Li Yu to check the difference in time flow between the two worlds.
“The flow of time is the same. The amount of time we spent over there passed the same way in this world.”
“That’s a bit disappointing, too. Since the planets are different in scale, I was hoping time would flow differently… like one month over there being about a week here.”
“That might actually be fortunate rather than unfortunate.”
“True. If one month over there turned into two months here, that would’ve been a real disaster.”
Seon Yul nodded as he muttered, acknowledging Cheon Li Yu’s point.
“So what do we do now?”
“Well… I think I should talk to the Management Bureau. You handle the clothing issue.”
Seon Yul decided to leave the clothing problem to Cheon Li Yu while he focused on solving the satellite problem.
The two intended to finish everything they needed to handle on Earth-104 as quickly as possible and then return to Earth-001.
With that, they split up to handle their respective tasks.
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