Early Morning - Mid Summer : Temple Space Rune, Eastern Oasis

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-Well, let's not waste any time then! Time to drop this dumbass off with Myles and go home!- *vwoop* Quickly injecting a decent bit of mana into the glowing dot next to 'Akri', a gate expanded out of the pedestal that immediately stopped once it encompassed the artifact and letting a second gate envelope us and our surroundings.

And as if that wasn't already enough to send me through a loop, the second gate didn't cut into the ground at all. -Wait, what?- It made sense but, at the same time, didn't. -How does that work? And how did the artifact create a gate inside a gate? Is that even possible?- A troubled look washed over my face immediately.

In an instant, I had gone from smiling, looking forward to getting home, to using every last drop of my mental energy to blast through theories.

But after a moment of several different trains of thought continually getting tripped over one another, I slowed down with a deep breath and focused on the one I thought I could explain first. -Okay.. first, the second gate not cutting into the ground...-

Although I, unfortunately, wasn't focusing on it when it surrounded us, after a bit of thought and reasoning, it did line up with a few of my more experimental theories.

From what I could tell, when the gate formed, instead of going through/around atoms to create a complete sphere, the gate formed a shape akin to a deflated ball on the ground or a water droplet on a flat surface to avoid any of the platform being sent into the void whenever someone used the rune.

Normally, something like this is impossible without external assistance, similar to creating a pentagonal gate or a gate in some other complex shape, but something I had lightly theorized about over recent years called 'space mana strengthening' was a possible explanation I had.

In short, space mana strengthening was the process of strengthening a material or object with space mana compared to unattributed mana.

But much like strengthening things with other attributes of mana, strengthening with space mana did, in fact, work, but it was sadly not as cut and dry as the other elements.

To keep it simple, strengthening something with space mana caused the item to interfere with the fabric of space, and that interaction would always lead to the space mana in the strengthened item completely disintegrating, which in almost all cases destroyed the item at the atomic level.

After discovering that reaction, I totally stopped messing with it. In my eyes back then, such a brutal after-effect made it completely useless, and I was better allocating my time to other theories, but now things made more sense. -If the platform was strengthened with space mana, wouldn't it be able to stop the expansion of a gate? It'd be tedious to strengthen it meticulously enough for that, but as long as the strengthening is more crystalline than the expanding gate, it'd be doable...-

It was undoubtedly a theory I couldn't guarantee without doing a few experiments, but it was plausible enough for me to at least believe it.

However, the other issue of the artifact forming a gate inside of another gate... That was something I was almost entirely in the dark about.

-If the platform doesn't get spared from the void because of space mana strengthening, how does the pedestal survive?-

It was a question I asked myself repeatedly because the pedestal surviving the gate couldn't be explained with anything else I could think of. No matter how I wanted to twist it, it itself was the epicenter of the gate.

Had the epicenter been just outside of the pedestal, I could have used the same theory as the platform, but at the same time, creating a gate outside the center of the runes with just an artifact would be unfathomably tricky, to the point I questioned if it was even possible.

"Haah..." -No, I must be overthinking things...- Deciding to take a few more steps back, I halted the theories I was formulating and tried to force more straightforward approaches. -Bahamut and the Ancient Fenrir definitely knew more about space mana than I do.. so there must be something I'm missing...-

But of course, those simple theories just spiraled out of control, like a derailed train that had to be repeatedly reset. Over.. and over again.

Things continued like that for what felt like days, but eventually, as we were finally getting close to the gate to Akri, I was once again reminded of one of the simplest mathematical theories in the book. -The negative of a negative is a positive...-

It was a theory I had thought about quite a bit since the discovery of space mana since it looked like a hand meant for a glove, but progress with it was extremely lacking.

The predicament was essentially this.

If I created a gate, then went to make a bigger one around it, I wouldn't be able to give the bigger gate an epicenter without taking away from the shell of the smaller gate (which would destroy it). And if I forced the gate to exist without an epicenter, it would dissipate the instant I released it. -The only way for that work would be if two gates could share the exact same epicenter...-

But that was a possibility I had ruled out many years prior. -Could I have really been wrong about that?-

My thoughts jumbled as I thought of the burden of scrapping and relearning most of my space magic, but then, seemingly out of the blue, an idle thought crossed my mind that made something click.

-Wait.. what if it isn't two gates at all?-

Although it sounded like a stretch at first, the more I thought about it, the more reasonable it sounded. -Would it not be possible to position the six mana particles from the epicenter of the gate in a fashion that could allow for a double-layered gate? [1] The 'second gate' wouldn't have any space in it initially, but from there, you could expand the outer layer independently and simply stack a column of space mana off the epicenter particles to make it technically remain a part of the main gate!-

Creating a gate in such a fashion would make it so that when the outer layer 'closes,' everything between the inner and outer layer would be sent into the void while keeping the inner gate intact so it could just dissipate afterward, leaving everything inside essentially untouched.

It simply clicked too well for me to have many doubts.

And, of course, it was that moment when I was most dumbfounded that we were finally released from the void. *vwoop*

-Holy shit, if I can do that with gates, I can... Huh?- My thoughts were promptly cut off by the bright morning sun that shined through the shell of the gate. -Oh, right, I was going to Akri...- I got so sidetracked that I nearly forgot what I was doing.

Quickly adjusting my eyes to the bright light as the gate dissipated, I found myself standing on a solid, half-kilometer-wide mythril platform completely surrounded by a 20-meter metal wall with three mid-size ancients laying on it.

It honestly looked like something akin to an execution circle. -Am I in the right place?- But my doubts were quickly destroyed upon seeing Akri's insignia on the bands around the horns and ankles of the ancients. [2] -Ah, they must be for security... Maybe they can point me toward Myles...-

As I walked over to one of the ancients, he picked his head up and gave me an unusual look before glancing at the other two.

I didn't really pay it mind at the time. "Sir, do you-" *vwWWWWOOOM* My voice was abruptly cut short by the three ancients promptly surrounding the entire area with silencing magic.

"I recommend you start explaining yourself." The ancient in front of me spoke with an extremely aggressive tone as the dome of silencing magic finished.

-Oi, what's up with these guys?- "Do you mean this guy?" I motioned back to the elder as Ilios picked him up in his mouth. "He's a traitorous dragon involved with the Holy-"

But I couldn't even finish speaking before one of the ancients behind me closed the distance between us and swung at Ilios.

It was the gesture that told me everything I needed to know.

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Additional Notes:

[1] - To visualize it, think of every particle of space mana being a Go piece (a squished sphere basically) with each end of each piece being connected to the end of another piece to form a circle/sphere. That is a gate. Now imagine shifting up the pieces on each axis up slightly so instead of the exact end of the pieces touching the rest, it is the underbelly of the piece, then created another circle/sphere touching the top side of the piece. That is the idea.

[2] - Being a military city, Akri's insignia was simply a rune that was the combination of a strengthening and elasticity rune. During the great war the rune was on everything, and over time, as it became outdated, people accepted it as Akri's insignia. It had become a symbol of strength.

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