Only Wisdom Awakened - Chapter 140

Chapter 140: To understand the unknown
As the morning light began to rise on the horizon, barely visible because of the thick and violent everlasting blizzard, Hans got up from his sleeping bag, with a headache to solve.

He had decided to try and venture inside that gate alone, in the hope of finding some clues, but he had no idea about how he should’ve convinced the others to stay outside without following him.

He was really worried about their well-being, since in case of emergencies, he didn’t know if he would’ve been able to take care of dead weight.

Other than that, apart from Caleb, most of them wouldn’t even be able to cross the wind wall around the gate.

However, he had no power to decide, the final say was in the hands of Caleb, who was the acting leader of the operation.

‘I must show it to him, and after that, I just have to hope he will make the right choice’

…

In his tent, Caleb was eating some canned tuna with a couple of crackers, when he felt someone right outside the entrance.

“You can come in” he said, raising the voice just enough for the other person to hear him.

Hans opened the zipper to the tent and entered.

“Oh, it’s you!”

Said Caleb excited, Hans wasn’t asocial, but he was mostly on his own and didn’t often search the conversations with the other teachers.

He had better relationships with the students, well, that was probably because of his age.

However, Caleb had always seen him as a junior, even if he knew he was more powerful than any other teacher, and himself.

Seeing that he could be of help made him almost proud.

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m sorry to interrupt your breakfast, but do you have half an hour? I need to show you something”

“Half an hour? Mh… yeah sure why not, we will depart in forty minutes though, so you better be on time.”

‘Let’s hope you won’t’

Thought Hans, knowing that if they did they would’ve probably met their deaths.

Caleb left his almost finished can of tuna behind and followed Hans out of the tent.

After a couple of steps, the question came out spontaneously from Caleb’s mouth.

“Hans, where are we going? We’re already out of the camp”

“I know, trust and follow me, I have to show you something”

Hans ignored the Warning and continued walking forward.

‘That… is the direction to reach the middle of the blizzard.

Should I stop him?

…

Nah… he will be fine, and if he isn’t we won’t be able to get past that place even if we bring the whole American military.’

Without much worries, since with him and Hans in the same place even a world-level powerhouse wouldn’t have been able to stop them, he followed his dear junior towards the unknown.

In a couple of minutes, they reached the wind barrier Hans had crossed the previous night, and Caleb remained shocked in front of that sight.

It was unlike anything he had witnessed before, he could feel the pain of the little shards of ice and glass seeping through his skin even when only putting one hand inside that barrier.

“Come with me” said Hans, walking right into the wall.

“Wait, Hans! Don’t go like this it’s danger-”

Before he could finish what he wanted to say, he saw the mana barrier enveloping Hans’s body.

“What?”

“Nothing”

“Then come here, even if you have a tough body you probably won’t leave out of here unscathed, I’ll cover you with my spell”

Caleb did as told since he was curious about what lay behind that dangerous place.

When they entered the wind wall, their sight could only reach as far as the mana barrier extended.

The winds mixed with the ice and the snow made it impossible to distinguish anything from the white that surrounded them.

But the shock that came from the sight he witnessed after leaving the wind wall was even greater.

The majestic gate hovering over the lake, and the clear sky that he hadn’t seen in days, it all felt so unnatural and strange, that his mouth dropped open.

“It’s crazy right?”

Asked Hans.

Quickly regaining control of his emotions Caleb replied: “Y-yeah it is?”

“I guess this is what some might call the ‘eye of the typhoon'”

“Or so it seems… but what is that?”

Making the question this time was Caleb, who couldn’t understand what was in from of them.

“It’s exactly what you think it is: the gate that caused all of this.”

“I thought so, but why is it so….

“Beautiful?

That’s what I would like to know too.

And there are many other things I would like to know,

Like why did this gate produce monsters easily capable of killing S-ranks, and why did the mana tools only identify it as a B-rank.

But most of all, look around, what kind of gate creates such a natural phenomenon? It is completely abnormal.

I guess it does stand up to its reputation as the ‘improbable gate’.

What do you think is the only way to find all of that out?”

“Are you thinking of…”

“Yes, I need to enter the gate, and that may also be the only way to close this gate.”

“I will come with you!”

Immediately said Caleb.

“No! Stay here with the group, and if I don’t return take them back out, otherwise they will also perish here”

“But what if you die? We don’t know what is inside there!”

“I won’t die”

“There is no way of telling that!”

“Then what other way do we have?!”

Asked Hans raising his voice.

“What should we do? Go back out? Now that we’ve come this far, and that the whole world is watching us?”

“Does the academy matter that much to you?! I heard you will be leaving after the end of the expedition”

“It’s not the academy, it’s something else that I need to do”

“What is it? What is it that you need to do?!”

“I..”

“You can’t tell me right?”

“I’m sorry, I wouldn’t even be able to explain”

Caleb was angry, he knew that Hans had many secrets, and that was fine with him, but he didn’t want to be kept in the dark about everything that happened.

It was just so….

“Fuck!”

Screamed Caleb, punching the ground beneath his feet, erasing from the ground a bit of the only grass left in thousands of kilometers.

“Bam”

“Alright then, I will go back, just promise me you will stay alert, I have seen how you do things, and last time you almost died just to cast a spell.

I’ll see you in five days, that’s all I can hold the others outside for”

Caleb walked through the wind wall with his body exposed to the sharp winds, and Hans couldn’t even stop him in time.

What he had done was…

“It was the right choice” he murmured, turning his back to the point from which Caleb had just left.

“I will see you in five days.”

He entered the beautiful glowing white gate in a single jump, ready to face and understand the unknown.

“Puff”

Hans fell head-first into a pile of snow, making a strangely relaxing sound.

He immediately got up and brushed the remaining snow off his clothes, before watching his surroundings and trying to understand where he had been thrown to.

There were two things to take note of:

First of all, the gate remained in place even after he crossed it.

And second of all, he was now in another blizzard.

“Ugh, for god’s sake, couldn’t it be a nice warm jungle or something?

Well, I guess yetis lived here for a reason.”

He walked a few minutes forward, making sure to remember where he came from to avoid being stuck without a way out.

He was lost in thought, thinking about what his mystic insight meant when saying this was another world.

He could feel it, the mana in that place was really stable and not chaotic like one inside the gates.

It felt like staying on earth.

But what classified this as a world? Was it just the mana? Or was there something more to it?

‘Maybe this is another planet somewhere in the galaxy?

Now that I think about it… are the spaces inside the gates planets as well? Or is there something like the ‘end of the world’ in those?

Well, if I had to go around the entire planet it would take a long time, wouldn’t it? I’ll keep that task for the next gate, this time, my task is to clear this gate’s boss and return before the other teachers die.”

He encountered his first obstacle after walking for thirty minutes.

It was a lake with various floating little islands of ice, and because of the blizzard, he could not even see the other shore.

He had been walking in a precise direction, from which he had felt a strange feeling of familiarity and enmity at the same time, so he had no choice but to cross the lake.

Little did he know… something inside those deep dark waters had been eagerly waiting for a prey to pass by…