Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

Chapter 394 First Imperial to step on Earth

Stay tuned to empire

"It's smoke!"

Those two simple words came bearing a heavy meaning.

Out in this empty plain devoid of anything but the most bare geological features, there were only a few ways for a fire to appear.

And every single one of them spelled trouble.

"Claudy," I stretched out my neck to look over.

"Yeah, I can see it too," Claudy replied while stretching his arms out.

Standing up from one of the chairs bolted to the back of the buggy's platform, he moved over to the front of the vehicle and looked out past the reinforced windshield.

"It's too small for a big fire," Fay noticed under her nose.

Pulling my head back to its place over Fay's shoulder I examined the smoke again.

"I guess we could slow down a bit?" I suggested, only to bite my lips as I hesitated. 'With the bending of the space, whether it is an illusion or not, it might be still quite far. And we don't really have the time to start an entirely new adventure…'

Taking a deep breath, I gritted my teeth before moving my hands from Fay's lap to her shoulders.

"No, we should stop right here and now."

A single look at the clock confirmed the necessity of this decision.

With barely thirty minutes till our scheduled return, we really didn't have the spare room to cram yet another activity in.

'It's not a big deal to return early. But with no communications and how vital the gate is to the logistics…'

"Sure."

Fay didn't protest, letting go of the gas and gently pressing down on the brakes.

The buggy soon rolled down to a crawl before coming to a full stop.

With the smoke in the distance exactly as far as it was when Fay first noticed it, who knew how long it would take us to reach the source of that smoke. And reach it we had to, for it lay directly on our path to the edge of the starlit zone.

"I will take care of the hydraulics," I called out, moving my hands down onto Fay's waist, only to lift her up and then stand up myself. "Can you lock the cargo bots?" I turned over to Claudy.

"Yeah, leave it to me."

The imperial supreme ran up to the left of the two massive openings in the Buggy's cage before somersaulting over the safety barrier and dropping down some distance to the ground.

"Wait, now that I think about it," I was ready to get down to lower the Buggy's elongated suspension systems when I cast another look towards the massive, burnout land under the scorching pressure of the direct ray of the light of the silvery light of the stars. "I think we should move the buggy just a little bit further away from it."

I couldn't see any fluctuations in the edge of this particular zone. Unlike the smaller ones, this barrier-like entity was simply way too massive to shift around. And yet…

"It will do us no good if we don't account for the movement of the light, or the bending of the space that sometimes occurs in this place."

Fay looked over before sitting back down and restarting the Buggy while I moved over to the cage to call Claudy back.

Right then and there, my worries about bending the space finally came true, for even after several minutes of driving away from the barrier… We simply couldn't gain any distance over it!

'Maybe that's how it works?' I thought, finally recognizing a pattern.

We could traverse as far down every direction as we wanted as long as it brought us closer to the barrier. And that had to be why, no matter how long we went in a straight line along the edge of what should be a curve, the reading on the Buggy's compass remained the same.

We kept driving east yet we somehow found ourselves nearing the point of pretty much traveling north, despite never turning away from the east.

"I guess there's no point trying if it's impossible," I summed up the ultimately futile endeavor before hurrying back to all the tasks we would've otherwise completed already.

Yet, while I was down by the Buggy's bottom, switching the buttons to lower its oversized suspension, I noticed something quite strange.

Controlled by a remote in Claudy's hand, the two cargo bots with our supplies drove forth and back freely. And in Claudy's attempt to properly park them by the buggy sides, those bots somehow went against the restraint that trapped us within the plain.

"Curious, isn't it?" Fay asked right as she dropped down and moments before the air started to hiss away from the buggy's system, lowering the pressure and thus allowing the weight of the vehicle's cabin to press the flexible suspension down.

In the end, this simple process reduced the frame of the vehicle against the backdrop to roughly a fourth of its original size, allowing it to somewhat blend into the surroundings thanks to the dimmer nature of the star-illuminated plain.

"I'm done!" Claudy called over, already walking back, carrying a small backpack in his hand with the few souvenirs he refused to part ways with.

"We are all good too," I called back before looking over at Fay.

"It truly is," I answered her question from before with a small smile. And with Claudy joining us, there was only one thing left for me to do.

'Time to go back home,' I thought, swinging my hand and summoning my personal portal like usual.

Internally already knowing that Claudy was going to pass through, I could now watch how the usually stoic man stumbled to the back when a flower of purple suddenly appeared right before us, blossoming into a sizeable hole in space.

"Let's go back," I called before grabbing Fay's hand and braving ahead, easily freeing us from the confines of the looped space of the starlight plain by just… going to another world.

Emerging from the portal, we stepped into a special room within Makary's compound where I'd last used my personal portal. A moment later, Claudy followed through, becoming the very first imperial of Fay's world to step upon Earth.