An hour later, the team was still walking as they talked.
"By the way, where are we going? It’s been almost an hour now," Selene asked, causing everyone to go silent and turn to look at Cipher.
Cipher scratched his head sheepishly. "Ah, we talked so much I forgot we were going to a gate," he said.
Of course, this was a lie. He had let them walk all this way as a team-building experience. That being said...
"Umm, where are we?" he asked.
"We’re about a mile from the Expo/Western station," Selene said, glancing around to orient herself. "I’m assuming the gate we’re going to is Santa Monica’s Resource Gate 2998? If that’s the case, we can catch the next train from the station up ahead."
"Yeah, that’s where we’re going," Cipher said.
"Then we should - " she began, but Cipher interjected.
"But I have an even better way of getting there," he said.
"Better way?" they asked.
"That’s right," he said.
He waved his hand and a sheet of metal appeared on the ground. He stepped on it, then gestured for them to get on.
They gave him strange looks.
"Ahem, it’s going to work. Just get on," he said, and they followed him onto the metal floor.
Cipher then turned on Flight Mode. Although Flight Mode just affected him, he could bring others with him like this. He used Mana Manipulation, lifting up the metal floor.
"It really worked," he thought. Although this wasn’t the main reason he’d gotten this, he was still impressed nonetheless. It seemed he’d have a new functionality for it.
"Whoah," the others exclaimed as they watched the metal floor rise - except for Selene, who was on her phone.
"What are you doing? Did something come up?" Cipher asked.
"No. I’m just contacting air traffic control so we don’t get shot down," she said.
"Ah, yeah. I didn’t think of that. Please do," Cipher said.
...
About an hour later, they arrived at the gate location.
Cipher stepped down and stored the metal floor into his inventory. Even though it looked cool, it was quite slow. They would’ve arrived three times as fast if they’d just used the metro. It wasn’t that his flying was slow - in fact, it was quite fast. At the moment, his max speed was about 125 miles per hour, give or take.
But he couldn’t move the metal at that speed while carrying the others. Specifically Maya, who was relatively weak. Of course, he could always set up walls to block the wind, but the others had insisted on being able to watch the scenery, so...
"Well, let’s go in," Cipher said, and the group stepped into the portal.
In the next moment, they felt the space shift around them and they were in the other world. Cipher looked around. It was the usual safe zone scene. He turned to Selene.
"Can you brief us on the situation?" he asked.
"Sure," she said, stepping forward.
"There are two main types of gates - exploration and farming. Though it’s actually more like three, since farming can be separated into two categories."
She gestured as she explained. "First, exploration. All gates initially start as exploration gates. Awakeners explore the gates and decide what to do with them. After the exploration, a gate goes one of two ways."
"The first option is being designated as an EXP farm gate, where people go to farm experience. The other option is if a gate is found to have some rare, useful resource. In such cases, it would be designated as a resource gate, or a resource farm."
"This one in particular, Gate 2998, is a resource farm. The name is actually because the gate is based on a futuristic world which Iris estimates our world will reach in the year 2998."
"That’s quite specific," Cipher thought. Then again, that was just like her.
Selene continued. "The main resource here is technology and magic stones that power said technology. Both are equally useful. Since this is a resource gate, our main duty is gathering resources, and we should focus on that."
When she was done, Cipher stepped up. "You’re right. But there’s one thing we’re changing," he said. "The purpose of coming here is not resource collection."
He paused, then clarified. "Well, it is, but that’s my reason for being here. Yours, however, is different. I’ll be helping you guys level up. As for the resources, just leave them to me and focus on leveling up."
After the recent events, he needed to strengthen his team.
"Alright, let’s go see what’s waiting for us out there," he said, and they walked over to the door.
Dante pushed the door open and instantly, something jumped toward them.
...
Selene extended her hand, grabbing a tiny robot that had jumped toward Dante. She then squeezed her hand, destroying it instantly. She extended her hand toward Cipher, dropping something into his palm.
"A magic stone?" Cipher thought as he inspected the stone from Selene’s hand.
"That surprised me. We’ve never been attacked the moment we leave the safe zone before," Dante said.
"That’s a lesson for you. You should be more careful from now on. Not everyone in the gates is so easygoing," Cipher said.
As they stepped out of the safe zone completely, they found themselves in a massive room surrounded by all sorts of robots. The room seemed like some sort of control center, and at the forefront, he could see corpses of people still in their chairs.
Cipher wondered if the robots had caused this. Was this what Iris predicted their world would be a thousand years from now? If she knew this would happen, then why would she still make those robots? He sighed.
"Everyone, have your guard up and get ready to engage," Cipher said.
At that moment, the robots all charged toward them in unison.
<Outsider!> they spoke in a screeching voice. <Must eliminate!>
Cipher dodged an attack from a robot and landed on the other side, outside the initial circle where they were surrounded. Since he needed them to level up, fighting alongside them would just rob them of EXP, so he let them fight by themselves.
As for him, he walked over to the place where the humans were. At that moment, a robot that had been hiding jumped toward him, but he easily dodged it, grabbing a human corpse and jumping to the ceiling. Now he stood upside down on the ceiling, inspecting the body he’d picked up.
There was a hole going through the man’s torso.
"Hmm, doesn’t look like a machine wound. The status also shows poisoned." He wondered if robots used poison. This was unlikely. He scanned all the robots in the room and didn’t see any with poison on them.
He looked to the ground where the man’s corpse had been and noticed something.
"Looks like the robots aren’t the only enemies here..."