The magicarriage passed through a small village at half passed nine. The night was calm and there were no signs of any pursuers. Nevertheless, the tension remained. There was a high likelihood that the Lanthinus company would have powerful individuals to send after them. It would take a while for anybody to pick out the individual fate threads from the ‘Mystic soup’ of mana, but once they did, there would be nowhere for the group to hide.

Except for the Wandering Gate.

Fate anchors were extremely difficult to block and trying to remove a thorn would instantly kill its host. Their only option was to keep driving and put as much distance between them and the encampment as possible. Although, every kilometer they traveled would barely buy them a second against someone above level five hundred, but Allen hoped it wouldn’t be that bad.

Allen was sitting in the passenger seat of the magicarriage, looking out the window as the generic scenery rolled by no faster than sixty-five kilometers per hour (~40mph). Lucas had been sent to the back when the group had stopped in the village for a few minutes. At the moment, the others were doubtlessly happier to have him in the back rather than Allen. The Assassin had quickly filled Christopher in on his plan to find the Wandering Gate. Naturally, that involved telling the whole story.

“So, you’re a member in the Temple of the Spade?” Christopher said. His voice was relaxed as he casually held the steering wheel near the bottom. It was almost as if he had somehow expected Allen’s earlier admission, thought that would have been impossible.

Allen huffed. “Yes, but nobody calls it that anymore.”

“Call a spade a spade,” Christopher said, eliciting an actual chuckle from Allen.

“The standard deck of playing cards exists in this world just the same as it does on Earth, but the spade is more closely attributed to a spear than a shovel,” Allen began. He glanced over at the professor and smiled as the man looked back at him, his sight entirely unnecessary for driving straight. “And a spear is mainly associated with ideas of truth, retribution, and death.”

The professor set his eyes back on the road. “Logically, I agree with the Spades, even if their methods are somewhat morally grey, to say the least.”

Allen raised his eyebrows and leaned back in his seat. “Hmm, what makes you say that?”

Christopher grinned. “I am a Scholar; I seek only the truth,” he began, “I’ve seen enough truth to know what’s what.”

Allen considered Christopher’s words for a few moments before he grinned as well. The professor had a the same sagely vibe as many of the extremely high leveled near-monsters that Allen had met before, and yet he wasn’t even trying. “You’re a former level seven-hundred Scholar though. You have to be part of some clandestine research foundation, right? Golden Peak Society? Illuminate? Seventh Moon? Or maybe even the Castle of Glass?”

Christopher laughed. “Ah, no. I work alone. Sadly, nobody in this world is at my level of research,” the professor began.

“Well that’s a flex,” Allen thought.

“This world is barely scratching past the surface of algebra and trigonometry. I’ve discovered something akin to limit calculations, but that’s considered cutting edge.” Christopher scratched at his beard before continuing. “Though I suppose there is relatively little need for math when magic exists… Or so they say,” he smirked and turned back to Allen. “On a side note, were any of those actually real secret societies that you mentioned?”

“Seventh Moon is a coffee shop chain in Krëztland,” Allen began, laughing. “The others are real though. The Castle of Glass is the foundation that developed the slave thorns,” he added.

The professor huffed and returned his attention to driving. The cab grew silent after that, other than the sound of the engine churning like a jet powered microwave.

Sensing that their little chat had ended, Allen pulled out his throwing needles and began examining them again. He had yet to make any noticeable progress on unlocking the Identify skill, but there wasn’t any way to know his progress in the first place.

After an hour, using Expanded Awareness and his enhanced focus, Allen had managed to pick out every minor blemish and inconsistency that would allow him to consistently differentiate the nearly identical needles. He had only managed to unlock a splitting headache, however, so he switched to a new set items: a pack of oversalted pistachios, curtesy of Kenneth.

“Well, let’s get cracking,” Allen thought as he intensely examined his nuts.

It was half-past eleven when it finally happened. There was a greater variation between the pistachios, but there were more of them, so it was much easier to lose track of which one was which. It turned out that keeping track of all the individual items was what the Identify skill was looking for since it unlocked as soon as Allen had named every pistachio.

Nutter and Nutty looked very similar, so they were twins. Both had closed shells, so they were part of the closed shell family, which included Nutberg, Nutman, and Nutalia to name a few. The twins both had the hots for Nutella, given that they both thought she had a cute shell, but unfortunately she was already engaged to Jake, named after Allen had run out of name variations of the word ‘nut.’

The point was that Allen had put a substantial effort into unlocking Identify and it had paid off.

General Skill Unlocked.

Skill: Identify

Determine the characteristics of a target at a glance.

Category: General – Type: Active – Tier 1

Effects: Determine the quality, durability, material, and applied enchantments of any items, weapons or equipment with a concentrated evaluation. Intelligence increases your range of comprehension.

Cost: None

“There, I got it!” Allen announced.

“Identify?” Christopher asked. “That’s good. You got it very quickly, that’s actually fairly impressive.”

“Yeah, I’m just like that aren’t I?” Allen looked out ahead as the lights of the next city approached.

They had less than half an hour before midnight, according to the watch Christopher had bought in Hillford. The best-case scenario would involve an entrance to the Wandering Gate appearing somewhere not too strange, and everyone getting inside before any Lanthinus pursuers caught them.

Of course, Allen was already prepared for the worst-case, which fell somewhere between their pursuers catching up and there being no entrance in the town ahead of them. His only plan for that outcome was to abandon the magicarriage somewhere and hide in the town. He would have to kill Lucas in that scenario, the man would be a liability.

Lucas would respawn, even if he respawned in the captivity of slavers, he would still respawn. Allen and his group wouldn’t.

Without a task to keep his attention, Allen only had the risks to think about. If he died, he died and it would be unfortunate, but he would much rather die fighting some unfathomable monster than slaver scum.

They reached the town five minutes before midnight. Very few people were present in the streets, but the town was roughly a quarter the size of Hillford. Allen figured the group wouldn’t have too much trouble hiding if they needed to. He really didn’t want to have to kill Lucas in that situation but there really was no other option. There was no way to know that their pursuer wouldn’t have a way to read Lucas’s mind or blackmail him. Killing him would be the difficult but necessary choice.

Christopher had parked the magicarriage outside the town’s walls as they waited for the clock.

Allen sat in silence with Christopher as the last few minutes went by in the magicarriage. A bead of sweat formed on his forehead as he focused on the inexpiable knowledge of the Wandering Gate’s entrance locations.

His thoughts were scrambled those locations suddenly changed. It took Allen a moment to process the information before he sighed in relief.

“What is it?” Christopher asked steadily.

Allen looked over at the professor and grinned. “There’s an entrance inside a barn outside this town. That way, go,” he said, pointing off into the fields to the side of the road.

“Understood.” Christopher grabbed the steering wheel with both hands. Arcane energy surged forth around him and flowed into the magicarriage’s engine. It started a moment later and the vehicle jolted forward at a rate far faster than its normal acceleration.

Allen gripped the handle on cab door as the magicarriage jumped the ditch between the road and the crop field. The professor mowed his way through the field at full speed with Allen’s direction until the dark silhouette of a structure appeared against the stars in the night sky.

The structure revealed itself as the barn when the professor set the headlights on it. Allen was almost sure Christopher was about to ram though the barn doors before he slammed on the bakes and slid the magicarriage to a stop right in front of it.

Allen glanced over at the professor when the vehicle finally stopped moving. “I didn’t know you could powerslide a bus,” he thought with a small chuckle.

He didn’t spare another thought though. The professor looked back at him with a serious expression. “I’m sensing a large mana signature approaching,” he began, “We have less than a minute.”