Chapter 238: Mystic Structure (1/2)

Ogras hesitantly looked around for a bit, unsure what to do next. This wasn’t the direction of the Mystic Realm he’d expected. He had imagined either a wild environment where his skills were put to the test against an onslaught of beasts or an ancient ruin containing a Title-Awarding trial or something equally valuable.

But there was no danger and nothing to explore, only a forest and a wall. He tried climbing the wall to pass it, but he simply couldn’t get up. It was completely sheer, giving him no purchase. He tried stabbing the wall with knives in order to climb, but they only left a scratch-mark that immediately disappeared.

He did manage to use his spear to impale the wall, but his weapon was almost immediately pushed out and the wall repaired itself in an instant. Ogras looked up at the shimmering fractals above, realizing that at least part of their purpose was to maintain the enclosure. Out of better options, he started walking along the wall, hoping to find anything different about it.

Ogras wasn’t ready to head back just yet. He’d paid almost 50 million Nexus Coins to stabilize the rift for a week, and he refused to return empty-handed. He would rather spend a week to cut down these humongous trees and at least sell them as timber.

They didn’t seem to be E-Grade trees, but at least they didn’t seem to be mortal-graded since there was some spirituality in the huge things. And even if they were only F-Grade there was an enormous quantity, which would hopefully allow him to make a return on his investment.

But before he resigned to becoming a lumberjack he wanted to see if there was any exit in the wall. If someone created this area there should be a way to get in and out. Since he’d only spent an hour or so inside the Mystic Realm he had all the time in the world to check things out before he needed to get back.

The minutes passed as Ogras slogged along the wall, and his surroundings were so uniform that he started to wonder if he was stuck inside a loop of some illusion array. Half his field of view was the blank silver of the wall, and the other half was the lush green of the towering trees. The purple sky was barely visible through the thick canopy of the trees that stretched toward the wall.

But finally his stubbornness was rewarded, as he spotted a change in the wall in the distance. Ogras sped up with excitement, turning into a hazy blur as he melded with the shadows. Two minutes later he stood in front of a gate reaching roughly 6 meters into the air.

It was wrought of the same material as the wall itself and consisted of two doors. But there was no handle and no matter how hard he pushed or tried to separate the two doors he couldn’t budge them even the slightest. Ogras even jammed his spear into the slit between the doors to use as a crowbar, but it was for nothing.

He clearly had no way to brute force this thing open, which left only one more thing to try. To the right side of the door roughly three meters up was something that looked a bit like the so-called Tablets that the humans of Earth had invented. Either that or a small TV, since it was somewhere in between the two in size.

Ogras stabbed his spear into the ground and leaped up to stand on top of the hilt to get a better view of the thing. The square tablet was roughly as large as his torso, but there were no lights or inscriptions on it, making it almost seem like a non-functional decoration.

But there was nothing else sticking out around the gate, so Ogras hesitantly touched the screen to ‘wake it up’ in case it worked like the human tablets. To his shock, it worked, and a row of unfamiliar scripts appeared on the screen. Ogras was elated, but next a voice appeared out of nowhere, making Ogras quickly look around.

[Signature not recognized.]

Ogras brows rose in alarm, and he immediately pushed away from the door, gripping his spear as he looked around. Was there a tool spirit controlling this place? If so he might just have made a huge blunder and drawn its attention. It seemed he had been recognized as an intruder.

[Caretaker Signature added. Tier-3 Access Added.]

“Caretaker?” Ogras muttered in confusion. “Hello, who’s there?”

However, there was no response to his question, only silence. The screen up in the air had also dimmed down, returning to its passive state. Ogras hesitated what to do. Go back and get reinforcements or keep trying to open the door? Since this seemed like something technological in nature it was perhaps a better idea to go and get a few humans and a couple of craftsmen.

But curiosity pushed him forward, and he once again approached the door. But this time the doors soundlessly slid open, giving access to a large room on the other side. Ogras brows furrowed in confusion, and he hesitated whether he should go inside.

The voice said that his signature first wasn’t recognized, then it added a caretaker. Had the Tool Spirit for the door mistaken him for someone in charge of tending the trees? And what was Tier-3 Access? Would it let him return again if he walked inside the doorway and it closed shut?

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Ogras muttered as he tightened his grip on his spear, heading inside the door. ”Worst case scenario I will have to wait for Zac to come and smash through this thing.”

The other side of the wall didn’t lead to the outdoors, but he rather found himself inside a large room that seemed to be used for storage. Both the walls and roof were made of the silver metal as well, and there wasn’t much else of note inside. The same type of fractals also ran all across the upper walls as well, making a loop around the room.

The room itself was lit with crystals, indicating energy arrays were running through the walls. The crystals wouldn’t be able to work by themselves since there were clear signs no one had been here for a very long time. There were also a few crates that were falling apart in one corner, shrunken nuts having spilled out of them across the floor.

Ogras guessed the nuts were used to plant those huge trees outside, but the seeds seemed to have dried out long ago, and he doubted whether they would be able to be planted any more. Still, he had ample space in his Cosmos Sack so he put the crates inside as he looked around.

There was also a table and a chair, both made out of metal. The size of them were much too large for Ogras, just like the gate. Judging by how that tablet was placed and the size of the furniture Ogras estimated the creators of this place to reach roughly 4 to 5 meters into the air.

Not many species were that large, at least not amongst the more populous races. There were a few golem, demon, and beastmen species that were this tall, but Ogras saw nothing that indicated any specific species inside this thing.