Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

"Is it over now?" I asked, raising my eyes from the half-finished scarf in my hands.

In the end, the task that I took on just to make my voice over the phone more believable proved to be quite interesting. And from the very moment, I imagined Fay wearing a scarf I made with my own, two eyes…

"I certainly hope so," Makary replied, casting a quick glance at the distant entrance to the hangar.

In theory, it was possible to make a call from Fay's world over to Earth.

But for it to happen, quite a lot of equipment had to be put in place, from the local relay tower to even pick up the call in the first place, through transfer stations on both sides of the gate along with a cable thick enough to convey the electric signal through while shielding the encoded information from the gate's interference…

Bridging the gap between the two worlds was certainly possible. It would offer some unique challenges and might take some time and effort to do so… But it certainly was going to happen.

Just… not yet.

As much as I wanted to pry deeper into the topic, there was hardly any point in doing so. With our trio located at the very end of the hangar, merely a few steps away from the gate, we were equally unable to see the situation outside. And while all it would take was a single drone to film the events and stream them to one of the computers within the hangar…

By now, all of the vital equipment that could help with the war effort on the other side was either already on the other side or in the process of being moved over there.

Thankfully, before our wait could stretch beyond the point we could handle, Madam appeared before our eyes, calmly walking back from where she stood guard by the hangar's gate.

"It's over," she announced, instantly bringing forth a wave of relief that washed through me and Makary while hardly affecting Fay at all.

Even though she made great advances on her path of becoming more and more like a modern person… Her common sense was still of her own world rather than of earth. And for her, this entire problem with protesters was too stupid to even worry about it.

After all, if they seriously could cause actual problems, didn't Makary have more than enough guns and men more than willing to pick them up to chase all those troublemakers away?

Still, Makary decided against the forceful methods, for reasons as plain as a day for a properly modern person like me. In Fay's eyes and perception, though, Makary holding back on how decisively he dealt with the protesters could only mean that they were never worthy of much of his attention, to begin with.

"Also," contrary to everyone else, Madam didn't show any signs of being happy or relieved. On the other hand, she appeared… worried?

"I saw that girl," Madam made another announcement before summing it up with a long, exhausted sigh followed by a quick glance up my face. "And it's not her."

There were many reasons why we had to take care of the issue of the protesters. And the protesters themselves were merely one of the troublesome issues we had to deal with, and quite frankly, one of the minor ones.

A thing to deal with for the sake of further convenience, not a proper reason to abandon the battlefield the very moment the battle concluded, giving our enemies more than ample amount of time to regroup and prepare.

But just like a massive army of people wielding cold weapons could hardly be a concern for a much smaller army wielding modern, hot weapons… A massive army armed with technology of the late medieval period was merely an afterthought when compared to the threat posed by the one existence that continued to slip out of my grasp.

The son of a whore who infused both my very own self and nearly all of my surroundings with this suffocating, dark aura. The bastard behind planting the seed of darkness in my soul, a seed that I only had my system to thank for reversing the order of who ended up eating who.

Without my system, rather than turning this seed of darkness into a useful if not slightly overpowered ability, that seed was likely to use my own power if not life to properly awaken.

"That means, the true culprit is still at large," I muttered with an ugly grimace forming on my lips. "Or so I would say if not…"

My face tensed up.

I saw nothing strange. There was no weird noise nor did the nearby equipment behave strangely.

I just… Didn't feel like finishing up my sentence would be the best of the ideas.

Taking a deep breath, I shook my head in resignation.

"If not for the fact that I don't have a damn fucking clue who else could it be!"

It was just a mere feeling. But after all the time I spent in Fay's world, I grew to put a lot more importance on my instincts. For what they were, if not the unconscious part of my body making some sort of observation or calculation that eluded my conscious side?

'And with my attributes as high as they are now, it's pretty much given that I have yet to fully master their use.'

Hearing my words, Fay gave me a short, strange look, before sensing the caution out in my soul and quickly peering through our bond to find its source. On the other hand, Makary didn't bother to pry any further, as his entire picture of the situation was crafted out of the limited information on the topic I shared with him.

In other words, contrary to Fay, he had no other choice but to believe the bullshit I came up with on the spot.

For by now, the identity of the culprit… was pretty much revealed.

'But knowing who it is, doesn't make it any easier to deal with them!' I groaned in my thoughts at the mere idea of facing someone capable of messing up with me to such a degree while hardly revealing their hand.

"Well, that was a dud, then," I summed the situation up.

The main reason why we removed ourselves from Fay's world was to deal with the protests on the surface, and hopefully flush out the culprit behind all of the dark aura that infested me and those directly around me. Yet, with the second and actually the primary goal of our mission seemingly failing, our reasons for staying back on earth pretty much dried out.

"That was kind of… anticlimactic?" Fay spoke out, only hesitating for a second when she came to picking up the right word to pass the meaning she had in her head.

"Yeah," I quickly and happily nodded my head before putting the nearly finished scarf aside and standing up. "Shall we go back, then?" I suggested before turning my eyes over to the stable gate. "We are not exactly in a situation where we can dawdle around…"

Letting my last comment make its way past his ears, Makary only rolled his eyes before waving his hand at the nearby soldiers as he started to walk towards and then through the gate.

"He doesn't feel like ordering us around, I guess?" I muttered, trying to find the reason behind Makary's silent attitude while grabbing Fay's hand and pulling her along toward the gate.

The experience of passing through the border between the worlds was quite different from what I could expect after all my experiences with my main portal.

Before the stable gate, every transfer would come at a price of a sense of falling into the endless void for a moment, before being spat out on the other side of the portal. On the other hand, when crossing through the stable gate… I could hardly feel a thing.

It was as if this bigger and more practical gate was several times more complex than its primitive cousin, allowing for features that my initial spell could never offer.

Still, as I approached the gate… I just couldn't help myself. And in spite of my former decision not to waste too much time thinking about the things that could wait, as I made the last step and pushed my foot through the gate…

I forced myself into a focus as deep as I was capable of, pretty much nearing the state I was in when I finally felt the extremely feeble, microscopic dark aura back in my confinement.

For a mere instant, my perception shot through the roof, exploiting all there was to my recently improved attributes.

And it was in this moment of crossing through the gate in a state of complete focus, all aimed to study the inner workings of the portal… When I saw her.

The likely culprit behind my darkness affliction. The main reason behind all the mystery I experienced before my alleged father's gift brought a change to my mindset and offered me the opportunity to change both myself and my fate.

And right now, she somehow managed to cross through the entire hangar choke-full filled with soldiers and scanning equipment without anyone or anything noticing her only to step through the gate right as all four of the faction's VIPs moved over to the other side.

For a second, the world around me collapsed, replaced with the strange dimension that connected the two points in two different spaces.

At first, the familiar mana of the portal surged forth to stabilize the passage. Yet, as I peered deeper and deeper into the fabric of the spell… I saw the one element that simply had no right to be there.

A near-endless source, a moving vein of darkness.

Darkness far finer than even the tiny presence I learned how to notice back during the imprisonment of my rebirth. And with darkness so overwhelming, all I could do was just sit down and observe in awe.

The passage collapsed. The single instant for which both words vanished from my eyes ended up being replaced by the picture of the opening in the forest that was as sunny as it was filled with corpses.

"Now then," I clasped my hands, causing Makary to turn round just like Madam and a few soldiers around. And with Fay being the only one who could tell the turmoil in my soul, all I could do…

All I could do was to gulp down my saliva, take a deep breath, and put a wide smile on my face.

"How about we get back to work?" I suggested while cheekily leaning my head over my left shoulder. "We still have a prideful princess and half of her army left to deal with!"