Side Story 8: Exploration
Mahya had a good seven years. After deciding to stop traveling through the Gates, she gave up all the Skills and Spells she could afford and bought engineering Skills relevant to her current world. She conjured all the needed documentation and spent 500 mana to be added to the world’s database as an engineer.
This world had zero mana, so she had to visit the closest Gate to regenerate discreetly.
She cast her net wide, applying to every opportunity related to space exploration that she could find. Then, after a nerve-wracking seven months, the moment she had been waiting for arrived—an offer to join an exploration mission as a maintenance engineer on an FTL ship. The thrill was palpable, and she accepted the offer without a moment's hesitation.
Despite being technologically advanced, her current world faced several serious problems. The pollution levels were very high, land degradation was affecting food prices, and overpopulation had been a significant issue for centuries. Additionally, they had too much garbage. Hence, their mission was two-fold:
Explore neighboring solar systems to find uninhabited planets for resource exploitation or garbage dumping.Find a planet with optimal conditions for colonization.They set out on their mission and spent five years in space. Mahya loved every moment of the journey, even more than traveling to new worlds. She spent every spare moment in front of a hatch, gazing at the mesmerizing beauty of space.
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After two and a half years, they completed their first mission objective and sent an uncrewed spacecraft back with the information.
A year and a half ago, they found a suitable planet for their second objective.
For the first year after finding the planet, the biological and medical teams visited it many times to collect samples and worked around the clock to create vaccinations against viruses and bacteria.
Finally, the day arrived for them to go down to the surface and start the second stage.
When she set foot on the world for the first time, she opened her Map and saw that the world was completely unexplored. The entire Map appeared greyed out. Since that day, Mahya has been stationed in a compound with the mission of assembling the power plant they brought with them, which was packed in crates. She liked this part much less since she preferred space over empty worlds.
One morning, Mahya woke up and felt something familiar. She froze.
Mahya stood there, trying to convince herself it was her imagination, but she was unsuccessful. She could feel it—like she could feel the cold in the air and the ground beneath her feet.
After her shift, she told her supervisor she was going for a walk to get out of the compound for a while and headed in that direction.
She arrived at an entrance into a ravine guarded by two cliffs. Those cliffs were the anchors. She touched one cliff.
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