Chapter 18: Reason for the Gates

"…However—"

David waved his hands and activated wind magic to seal out the sound around them, preventing even those on the table right beside them from hearing his next words.

"—it's actually a ploy by the higher-ups of each race. The Supremacist Country leaders aren't racists like the rest of them, but pawns placed by the Race Lords to control those countries.

The existence of those countries keeps a delicate balance, accommodating the racists and keeping them in check."

"Some people have figured it out, but they can't do anything about it, considering the racists are in the minority, and especially considering that they can't band together and rebel because of their racist nature."

Davina spoke after her brother did, concluding the little explanation while dismissing the magic as the very presence of it was drawing attention from the other people in the restaurant.

As for Jamie, the man was fairly impressed at how the 'Lords' handled the situation with the racists, giving them an abode but also keeping them in check at the same time.

'Still, the system has some flaws considering these riots.'

He personally didn't have any plans on going to the aforementioned countries any time soon so he put that at the back of his mind and asked about something he noticed and considered more important.

"Mind explaining to me what that spatial distortion I'm sensing about 15km from our location is?"

Most of the people in the restaurant who overheard Jamie's question all gave him strange as they were aware of what he was asking about, and it was something considered common knowledge.

As such, they were quite surprised to see someone who looked to be a young adult that was unaware of it.

For David and Davina, however, they were not surprised about this question and answered him without making too much of a fuss.

"That's probably a Dimensional Rifts or you can call them Gates.

They're as their name implies, Rifts in space that connect our world to dungeons on other Planets."

"The heck? Why does something like that exist? Aren't the Dungeons on our planet dangerous enough?"

Their planet; Estea, was one that could be considered a Higher World, with higher ambient energy concentrations, which could accommodate more powerful existences, and in turn, more powerful monsters.

And then came Dungeons.

These places—mostly natural—were basically traps that lured in mindless monsters/energy beasts and trapped them within, preventing them from rampaging around.

Though most monsters gained sentience upon reaching certain stages, a lot of them found it extremely hard to resist the instinctual pull of the dungeon upon its creation and still end up getting trapped within.

Most dungeons had upper and/or lower-level limits to prevent just anyone from entering, but even for those who met these requirements, Dungeons still held perils aplenty.

Traps, nonstandard monsters, monster rooms, and many more dangers, made them places where survival was far from assured.

If so, why do people, hunters, adventurers and whatnot still go into these dungeons?

For starters, one levelled up 1.5 times faster within them.

And secondly, Dungeons had a capacity limit, one that could lead to a dungeon break—an incident when the monsters break out of the glorified trap and wreak havoc on anything in the surroundings.

With such a threat like that, the monster numbers in these dungeons had to be kept at a level that prevented such from happening.

"Now that the briefing's out of the way, can we get back to why we have portals connecting us to other planet's dungeons?"

"The real reason is not known, and I wasn't alive when they started showing up either.

But a popular theory is that it's apparently the Universe's way of reining us in by giving us a potential threat to keep us on our home world and reduce the focus we put into our Interstellar colonisations.

Basically telling us not to overdo it.

But that's just a theory."

Hearing David's answer, Jamie was momentarily dumbfounded as he knew that this 'theory' had a 90% chance of actually being true.

'The Universe has a consciousness, after all. It's capable of doing such a thing to make sure we don't over-colonize.

Especially after 'that guy' was here.'

"Hmm…how long were we supposed to be here?"

"Two days at most. Why ask?"

Davina had a bad premonition when Jamie asked the duration of their stay here, and the next question he asked only made that feeling intensify.

"Do the Gates have a Time Difference?"

"…depending on the ranks. The higher ones have higher chances of having time differences."

When Davina answered Jamie's question, the Hybrid nodded to himself and began rubbing his chin with a pensive look on his face.

Seeing this, she could not help but ask.

"You're not planning to enter one, are you?"

"Shouldn't my intention to do exactly that have been obvious by now?"

Jamie replied with a look of confusion on his face, one that made the Vampire twins sigh.

"Please don't, we have zero idea how long it's gonna take you to clear it. Especially if it's a gate that's a Dimensional Realm."

"Some are in Dimensional Realms? Wow. Come to think of it…"

The man suddenly had an idea and then rose his hand, condensing spatial law energy within it into a complex-looking 3D dual polyhedron.

The structure pulsed with radiant spatial law energy, revolving inwards and contorting at bewildering angles that defied conventional geometry

"Guess I can't access it now, huh?"

While he was muttering to himself, the other people in the restaurant who had long gone back to minding their business, suddenly had their attentions turned towards Jamie once more.

"The heck?!"

"What sort of Space Magic…?"

"Is he perhaps a Triple S rank adventurer?"

"No, that doesn't feel like pure magic, he's probably an X rank."

Hearing their mutters, Jamie rose a brow and turned towards Davina before asking.

"You guys just used the Stat Ranks?"

The girl nodded in affirmation as she sighed for the nth time today. The 'Gates' on Estea were ranked in the same manner the adventurers who delved into them were, and to not overly complicate things, the ranking was the same as the Stat Value ranking.

From F, down to X3.

"Lord Jamie.

Part of our reason for being here was to throw off any potential tails we might have had. You pulling stunts like this that overly attract attention, kinda defeat the whole point."

David spoke as he gestured towards the dozen-plus pairs of eyes that were now on them, prompting Jamie to dismiss the thing in his hands and look around a bit.

"Hmm… there's no one particularly powerful here. Guess I can use that."

When Jamie said that, the Adventurers in the restaurant who all heard him had expressions of displeasure adorn their faces, especially the SSS ranks who were on the verge of becoming Legendries.

"Oi! What do you mean by that?! Just because you can use some fancy ma-"

*SNAP!

*SNAP!!