Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!-Chapter 81: On the wrong side of the gate

Passing through the ancient gate of the civilization was… a weird experience.

On one hand, it was just a simple stroll through a dark, shadowy tunnel, one only made slightly weird by the knowledge that above everyone’s heads, there was pretty much as much stone, as much weight, as the modern people used to construct the kingdom’s capital in its entirety!

Then, every few steps or so, Callane couldn’t help but tense up when a cold shiver would move up her spine, with an overwhelming sense of foreignness, alienness filling her up to the brim.

Finally, there was the aspect of insignificance.

Who was she, even with her group of ten elite mercenaries, each a master of their craft, to challenge the lands that the ancients blocked so thoroughly with such a massive gate?

And finally, when the shadows of the tunnel finally started to dissipate under the light coming from the tunnel’s other end…

Darkness.

As soon as Callane stepped out into the light, contrary to what would normally happen, all the light disappeared from before her eyes, leaving her stranded in pitch-black darkness.

’Keep calm, you already knew to expect it…’

This wasn’t her eyes failing or her going blind.

It was merely the clash of her mana, sourced in the lands of the civilization, with the mana of the lands beyond the gate, too far removed from what she was used to for it to mix together well.

This discrepancy, difference, change…

Her body needed a few moments to compensate for it. A process that left Callane unnaturally tired for a few moments, making her feel like just falling down to her knees and focusing on nothing but breathing, all in a bid to weather through the torture.

And yet, even when feeling as if all the light, happiness, reason, and direction in her life vanished in this clash of mana… Callane persevered, gritting her teeth as she stood in place, holding on to the shoulder of the mercenary ahead with all her might.

’If that’s how bad it got me, just how much worse was it for him?’

Between herself and Theodore, her mana reserves were like a shallow pond when compared to a vast ocean. After all, as a fighter, she utilized her mana in a different way, hardly ever stepping into the realm of magic outside of some of the most convenient and simplest spells.

Theodore, on the other hand, was a genius mage, the prodigy of magic, the one to whom even the authority of the great towers didn’t appear all that enticing due to how much accepting it would restrict his freedom of movement and actions.

And if she, with just the bit of mana she needed to become the genius fighter she was known as, took the process of stepping into this land so heavily…

’Just how bad was it for him?’ Callane asked herself again, only to blink her eyes a few times as the veil of darkness started to slowly lift from her vision along with the unnatural exhaustion she suffered through.

A moment later, all of the side effects of crossing through the barrier were gone, as if they never struck her to begin with. And with them gone, Callane was finally free to look up into the vast, open wilderness stretching out from the base of the tower and into the distance where the open plain soon turned into a forest much denser than anything she had ever seen back on the right side of the gate.

’Oh right, the gate…!’

Turning her head on the spot, Callane looked back… only to see nothing but a perfectly uniform wall growing up into the sky as high as the two cliffs on which it was anchored.

’The tunnel…’

Callane gulped her saliva down, stunned when the path she just took to cross over… was now nowhere to be seen.

"We were told that this would happen," up ahead, the abyss mercenary called up, clearly sensing the need to offer some explanation. "This is the actual core of this barrier, rather than the massive block of magic stone that we can all see. A trapping illusion spell designed to confuse anyone…" he paused for a moment, "or anything trying to cross over."

"Isn’t just the gate enough to stop them?" one of the soldiers asked, finally breaking the formation as the mercenaries spread over from the single line they were in before, now moving to create a semi-circle with the gate to their backs and their faces looking out in search of any possible threats.

"Maybe it is, maybe it’s not," the abyss guide shrugged his shoulders as he took a long look at the forest ahead only to then throw away his heavy, steel-reinforced shield to the ground and arm his left hand with just a simple dagger instead.

"What are you doing?" one of the mercenaries asked. "If you don’t have your shield, then…" he started, ready to chastise the only man that didn’t come directly from the mercenary guild, only to then look up to the forest the abyss guide had looked at just before… and then cut his lecture short while dropping his own shield and arming his hand with a short hatchet instead.

But the abyss guide didn’t really seem to mind.

"In that forest ahead, there will be no use for shields, big swords, hammers, or pikes," he spoke, his eyes still locked on the woods ahead. "What worries me is not that forest, though," he then stated, only to reach out with his arm and point in a seemingly random direction. "But those ditches over there."

Stepping up to the front of the formation of her men, Callane squinted her eyes as she looked in the direction the man was pointing.

And indeed, while the distance made it slightly hard to see… there appeared to be some massive holes dug directly into the ground.

On one hand, those holes would normally be a natural feature of the wilderness untouched by a human hand, making this otherwise perfectly flat, open plain the weird anomaly…

But on the other hand, those holes didn’t appear normal at all.

After all, rarely would nature create something so geometrically perfect!

’Is that Theo’s work?’ Callane thought, a small spark of hope flaring up in her heart. ’Because who else would be able to create something like this?’ she thought, gritting her teeth as she ran down the list of all the people sentenced to exile in the relatively recent past.

Yet, as the group approached the spotted anomaly of the terrain, even those elite mercenaries started to shift uncomfortably.

And it wasn’t even because of just how massive this hole turned out to be, stretching for fifteen meters in every direction, making up a seemingly perfect square of hollowed-out terrain—with no dumping spot for all the dug-out dirt in sight.

The mercenaries stopped and then retreated a few steps away from the hole because of the intense mana radiation that came out from its bottom, where a small, dark-brown spot marked a place where something powerful died.

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’Judging by the radiation of the mana, it couldn’t be more than just a few days before it died,’ Callane quickly judged, using whatever little expertise in magic she had. ’But that thing…’ she then gritted her teeth as she peeked over the hole’s edge and locked her eyes on the source of this weird, unnatural mana radiation.

’Isn’t it already on the level of the lesser dragons?!’