As I go through the stabilized portal, I can suddenly see so much more and with such clarity.

It lasts only a brief instant, even if it feels longer, but I can not only make out the shape of a dwelling from another village but all is revealed under my perception field.

The interior and even the opposite wall along with a couple of other parts of the neighboring buildings also intended for a single person are all in range.

For the next couple of hours, we all make full use of Merlin’s academy expertise along with the magic research institute, aka MRI. We try to understand the principles and improve on the runes and slowly aligning both sides as precisely as possible. Each trial teaches us a little more and we refine the models and strategies to minimize the mana consumption and unknown aspects of this transfer.

A third, a fourth, soon we only need a sixth of the mana to sustain the portal. After dozens of transitions and changes to the runic work, we start getting diminishing returns. The total mana needed to keep the portal going continues to slowly reduce, but the initial cost is almost constant. We all keep going as I try to find more about how the ‘dialing’ of these portals work and how to change it to a specific village that I can see with the perception field.

As far as I can tell during the 59 transitions I did, none were to the same village. What I’m seeing seems to be from random villages, probably just the ‘closest’ instance at a particular moment.

The one change is that each portal is always attuned to the same village as far as I can tell. It only changes after it is closed and a new one forms.

I pop back into my own instance after remaining on the other side a couple of seconds too long and as I scrutinize the new iteration of the stabilizer on the other side, I hear Merlin.

“Well, I hoped that you would come up with something revolutionary in a couple of hours, but it looks like today is not going to be the day.”

“Ohh,” I say. “You are leaving already?”

“Yeah, it was a nice distraction and contacting other instances will be very good, but we have more immediate concerns,” Merlin replies.

Taking a deep breath while looking at me Burges says: “Yeah me too, I wish I had more time, but my schedule is packed. With all the other research teams and more immediately useful lines of research in how to combat the HLZ beasts.”

I sigh and just reply: “I feel like what I’m doing here is helping me progress a few of my skills a lot faster than usual, so I’m going to keep at it. The change of pace is good for me and if I advance the contact with other villages even if only a by a little it will be worth it.”

“That is good, I just wish we didn’t have to worry about people stealing our mines.”

“Any news there?” I ask concerned.

“No, nothing for now, but I have a bad feeling and nobody knows what to make of it.”

“At least they are having trouble after Nash’s village attacked them.” Another of the mages says.

“Ohh, yeah.” Says Merlin, “I had forgotten that technically you have your own village.”

“With a population of one which only sees me for a couple of hours here and there.”

“And while dealing with the monthly attacks.” Says Merlin.

“What?!” I ask, “What you are talking about?”

“The single goblin that showed up for the attack last month. The operators were all bubbly from remotely fighting it. They didn’t mention anything to you?”

“No, they didn’t. I also didn’t see any corpses in my front lawn.”

“Well, it seems like you to miss something inconsequential like this.”

I just shrug and go back to the runes as I try to understand the logic behind the formation and addressing of the portals.

The stability of the portal was so great that I didn’t even was concerned about crossing even without Merlin’s and Burge’s help. Even the team of 5 researchers behind is only a precaution at this point.

I also didn’t need to cross over right away, not when there were other avenues open to me.

I look at the runic symbols that are supposed to be the key, the phone number, the elevator button indicating the portal destination and try to make sense of them.

As ‘complex’ as the five symbols are, it’s almost like they are just supposed to call for a ‘simpler’ method. Like pressing the hash key to talk with an operator or something, not a full phone number. Except that the ‘operator’ in this case is sending us straight to the netherworld attached to our instance. The modifications we had to do to the design along with all we had to learn about how these runes operate to even get the relatively easy process of transitioning to this other place is a world apart from accessing the other instances were looking to be much harder.

I feel a thread of pride in my perception field. The system’s version is useless for this and I hadn’t found any other way of perceiving the other instances just yet. It was letting me bridge an otherwise insurmountable gap, possibly to do something that was supposed to be absolutely impossible.

There were a few thousand Instances out there and I wanted to find a way to contact them.

Luckily, my perception field, notwithstanding the light headache I had formed is improving by leaps and bounds. In about 4 hours I had more progress than a day of training elsewhere and that didn’t even take into account the several simultaneously developing skills.

Runic writing, mana manipulation and my very understanding of magic were evolving at breakneck speed. It all came down to my excitement, the discovery of something new, something on the ‘cutting’ edge of magical development. Something beyond the days of important but monotonous work interrupted by the few hours going to hunt for the HLZ beasts.

It won’t remain so forever, but I could milk this situation for the time being for all that it was worth and keep pressing on.

Half an hour later I have yet another runic formation, this time much more refined and well thought out after I finish the modifications to the runes generating the portal on our side. Modifications which are quite a bit more extensive than anyone had attempted of the last couple hours, but a maniacal grin is firmly plastered on my face as I say:

“Open the portal.” Those words halt me for a moment, open…, no, turn on… or send mana? I try to find a concise and pointed word to represent what the portal is doing, but words fail me for the next few seconds before the portal comes into being, so I just take control of the root tendrils on the ground and pass one through the gate.

Even with only the barest smidges of mana inside, the runes interact with the portal and destabilize it momentarily, but it doesn’t collapse or destroy the formation which arrives on the other side intact.

Unfolding it and connecting it to the batteries on the other side, I barely tap into the mana and the portal completely destabilizes, as I pull the power directly from it, not even bothering to order it shut down.

“What happened?” Asks one of the researchers. To my left away from the monitoring panel for the comms and the portal.

“A feedback loop from the switch in stabilization protocols on the other side.” The portal operator says.

I walk through the last few seconds in my memory palace and try to find out as much as possible. Luckily I was fully connected with the root network and the runes that make the most of the portals I had in the back of my mind a lot more information than any other mage would have.

“Yes. There was some interference as the stabilizer on the other end was replaced with the new one. We know now that if we want to experiment like this, we will have to be more careful.”

“At least you managed to shut down in time, otherwise it wouldn’t just be a few droplets of roots juice being shot out of the portal at supersonic speeds.” I look at the few meters of roots on the ground. He was correct. If it had time to fully destabilize, it might have injured someone as the ‘surviving’ pieces of the mangle roots were shot out of the portal.

We didn’t have any reliable way of shooting anything approaching the speed of a bullet from a gun, but in the right circumstances, a portal could be extremely damaging. Too bad it would a cumbersome thing, otherwise using against the HLZ beasts would be a death sentence to them.

“Well, let me fix the runes,” I say as I reconnect the mana to the proper pathways and return the ability of the portal operator to control the mana send to the portal.

A minute later after thoroughly searching anything that was out of place I say:

“Everything is in order, you can turn it on again.”

I pay close attention to the flow of the mana.

A peak of 400 mana a second, only slightly lower than what we started the night with, flows into the portal runes. After about three seconds with the portal at full size and perfectly stabilized, I see the mana draw settle down to about 60 mana or so. That is 12 percent of the initial and an eightfold improvement in the mana consumption to sustain the portal.

Still expensive, but at least it wasn't quite as prohibitive.

This time I stop focusing on working with the portal and approach the small 5 foot smooth sphere. The glass/water like finish became even more impressive and sharper after all the experimentation today, but I don’t let that distract me from my goals.

As I prepare to jump to the other side, trusting the two mages in place to help stabilize the portal, now much more reliable, but then I stop myself.

I don’t truly need to jump to the other side, I can just… keep in the transition.

I put my finger inside. Extending my perception field I see the same noise as I expect from any spatial manipulation, but there is something more.

No other place makes itself known to me, so I keep extending the perception field from my finger.

One inch, two, three.

It tries to spread in all directions as I look for the spot that will show me what I’m looking for. I limit the sideways expansion to a small area straigh ahead of my finger until I reach to the other side of the portal still without finding anything. After a little testing, I realize that it didn’t actually go through. I can only perceive my own instance, not the netherworld.

Not like I hadn’t expected this.

I go back and forth getting used to extending a thin and long perception field ahead o my finger, as I explore the entire space inside the portal sphere.

A much different and more dangerous portal compared to the ones connecting to my inner world, but still just a portal. About four minutes later as the others are getting impatient and probably concerned about the mana usage and emptying battery, I find what I had been looking for.

Something ‘hidden’ right in the perfect center of the portal.

A dot is as small as a grain of dust, but as I stay focused on it for a moment, something happens and I can suddenly see… another place.

A pounding pain rocks my skull with pressure that I never expected, and I reflexively tumble back trying to get away. Cradling my head, expecting the bulk of the pain to catch up to me, it comes and pounds. Though with each heartbeat it halves, and after only a few moments later all I feel is the impression it left behind.

I am perhaps a little luckier than I gave myself credit for. As only the memory of pain remains behind, I take a deep breath and sit to meditate and try to remember everything. To extract every smidge of benefit from the price I paid.

I hear the popping of a forceful and quick disconnect of the portal as I walk yet again through my memory palace. I arrive at a corridor and find the right door.

The wooden door with the image of a portal in front and my finger, a reminder of the timeline the corridor follows. All the other doors behind me are filled with every moment that I ever experienced and can remember, the ones ahead just prepared to be filled in the future.

This place is nothing magical, just a technic that resembles something I had heard back on Earth, and I manage to find a few notes from another village. It was a tool that helped me extract every smidge of value from my stats and the new mental capabilities were starting to develop.

I grab the door handle pushing it down and the door forward in a single movement like I would have done at my house.

Instantly I’m experiencing it all over again. The pain, the instinct fear of looking at the sun and something more.

I see something through that hole in reality.

Instead of extending it a few millimeters off my skin, the perception field went much further and the strange interaction it had with space had me aware of nearly a hundred meters on the other side. Every single one of the houses was unmodified and this time for the first time something different comes to me.

People from another instance. Finally, some proof that my current course of action had at least a little merit.