Chris woke after his sleep and went straight to the top of his keep. He laid his hand upon the pedestal and checked his building options. He had no clue what to do with his Tower Seed, it sounded like a building, or maybe something that you had to plant in the ground.

There was nothing about Tower Seeds, or about the Tower of the Manifold Adept, in his building list. He was about to close the list down and try planting it, but he spotted something close by in the list. Thaumic Gate.

The Vendors had mentioned a similar word before. Thaumic Heart. Whatever it was, Chris was certain there was a connection between the two. Checking the information beside it proved him right.

The Thaumic Gate was a structure that would pierce into a volatile plane of wild magic and treasures, called the Thaumic Strata.

Unlike many of the other buildings, a Thaumic Gate had no rank, but relied on local ambient mana levels to facilitate its connection to the Thaumic Strata, with higher ambient mana levels allowing for the structure to pierce deeper into the Thaumic Strata, where magical energies were stronger.

It also came with a warning to place it outside the walls, since the inherently unstable plane had a tendency to overflow into areas where it was breached.

The building was 12,000 System Coins, along with a 100 System Coin activation cost, and an additional 100 System Coins per current area rank, up to F-9, where the price increased further. It seemed interesting, and something about what the Vendor back in Hartshire had said implied that Thaumic Hearts gave a considerable advantage.

Intrigued, Chris went to the General Supplies Vendor to check if they sold information on Thaumic Gates and the Thaumic Strata, but there was very little on them. The General Supplies Vendor appeared to be limited to basic information on various combat and crafting fields. Apparently there was more complex information out there, but what could be found in the tutorial was either limited or extremely expensive. A brief talk revealed that the tutorial was a closed economic ecosystem. Only the System and other tutorial takers could buy and sell within it. That meant that either everyone knew about Thaumic Strata—so much so that it wasn’t worth writing down—or very few people did. He suspect it was the former rather than the latter. And if everyone knew about it, then it would likely have some use.

Sighing, he returned to his keep and designated a small area outside the walls, then erected the Thaumic Gate there.

Chris was eager, of course, to try and raze the Tower of the Manifold Adept to rubble, after making off with as many of the most powerful skills as he could. However, if access to the Thaumic Strata was truly an advantage, then a little bit of exploration would be worthwhile.

The Thaumic Gate slowly assembled itself. After a brief pause it whirred to life. The ground around it hardened, glowing purple lines radiating out from around it, like the shattering fractures of clay in a dried-out riverbed. It reminded Chris of the obelisk, but without the symbols arranged in runic patterns.

He hadn’t seen magic, since. Could that be what the Thaumic Strata contained? Magical treasures.

The building completed and through the archway, Chris could see a colorful world. Close to the arch, the area was stable, if unnaturally bright and strange, populated with strange crystal growths, but farther away—he wasn’t entirely sure where—the boundaries of the Strata began to blur. The plane spun and blurred away at high speeds, turning into a hallucinogenic of shifting color and crystal.

From within the archway, strange sounds spilled out, like a mix of birdsong and falling water, but laced with a hair-raising resonance that tugged at him.

The bleary-eyed newcomers began to emerge from their houses, wondering what the new noise was. They couldn’t see anything over the walls, but they could still hear the Thaumic Gate in operation.

Chris looked down at them. “Stay inside. I’m testing something out, it might be dangerous.”

He dashed down from the tower and approached the magical gate. Soon he was standing right in front of it as indescribable smells wafted out of the archway toward him.

The image of the world inside seemed hazy, but still, there was an electrifying energy surrounding the gate, and he felt Sid, his Slime arm, perk up as power washed over them both.

He bent down and threw a clump of dirt through the gate. It disappeared, but didn’t land inside the Thaumic Strata. Chris leaned around and saw the dirt he had thrown on the other side, looking just as he had thrown it.

He took another step forward, bringing him closer. A screen popped up.

Activate the Thaumic Gate?

Chris shrugged and accepted. It was only 200 System Coins.

The hazy image inside suddenly snapped into focus, and like water flash-freezing, the blurring areas of color, beyond the island of stability that the Thaumic Gate created, suddenly slowed. Improperly joined terrain smashed up against the side of the island and adhered to it, extending the non-moving areas out, far into the distance.

He threw another clump of dirt through the gate, and this time it landed on the other side, before breaking apart into purple crystal beetles that scuttled between blades of brilliant green grass. Only the seeds and shoots of normal grass caught up in the dirt survived the landing.

A loose thread went in next. It became a sapphire snake moments after passing through. It slithered around the gate and out of sight.

Chris ran over to the nearby forest, snapping a branch off the tree, he jogged back and shoved it through the gate nothing happened.

He set the branch aside. Pulled off his gauntlets, then put the index fingertip of his right hand through. Sid shivered in happiness, and Chris felt a strange and volatile energy rush down his hand and into his veins. He pulled his finger back, staring at it intently.

The Thaumic Strata seemed safe for living things, just not for anything that wasn’t alive. What if something had once been alive?

He ran back through the gates of Kingscastle and retrieved a small pebble of charcoal that had once been part of Xys’ tree.

He threw it in. It landed on the ground, unaffected. A faint haze began to gather above it.

Chris watched for several minutes as nothing happened. Then the lump of charcoal sprouted legs, becoming a miniature, black house cat.

Its tail curled up above it like a question mark as it found its feet. The cat stared straight at Chris, walked up to the junction between the tutorial world and the Thaumic Strata, then peed on the ground in front of him. Chris jumped back as cat piss almost splattered his boots. The cat stared for a moment more, then meowed and strutted around the side of the Thaumic Gate and out of sight.

Chris walked around as well, but didn’t see the cat on the other side.

He walked back, and saw that the grass he’d thrown in with the dirt had gone missing.

He pushed the branch through again. This time he noticed the faint haze rising of the leaves and bark. Then, one of the leaves detached itself from the branch, folded itself up like a paper boat, and flew away on an invisible breeze, bobbing up and down.

Okay, so not just dead things. Living things too, just slower. He put his left hand through, and now he felt mana being drained from him in a slow trickle. That hadn’t happened when he’d done it with his other hand.

The Thaumic Strata must be draining mana, and when the mana drained it turned things into strange creatures and creations. And cats, apparently.

The question now, was what would happen if he was holding onto something while he went inside. He pulled up two handfuls of dirt, one in each hand and held them both inside the Thaumic Strata.

Mana drained from his left hand, while his right hand luxuriated in whatever composed the atmosphere inside. Nothing happened to either of the handfuls of dirt. That was good. So his gear was fine, as long as he didn’t lose it.

He almost poked his head through when he thought better of it.

He brought one of the new arrivals over. She’d been staring at the pit of Slimes, so Chris decided to give her a job. Thus Sarah had the illustrious task of pulling him to safety if the air turned out to be knockout poison or something. The cat pee that had crossed over seemed to be pretty innocuous, except for the smell, but it never hurt to be too careful.

Taking a deep breath, Chris crossed over.