Aumo and LisiA have been walking for a couple hours, and all they’ve seen was just the grassland, with some trees here and there. The forest was already out of view, and the only other thing they had seen were occasional wagons that were heading to Yuhsar. Not a single one was headed towards Breali, which made Aumo wonder if there was another road for that.

 

According to the map, there are several roads. This road is normally for heading from Breali to Yuhsar. The reason why we are taking this road may be due to the gates that were sighted near this road.

 

Ria sounded in Aumo’s head, and Aumo stopped wondering further. The next thing that came to mind was:

 

“How long is it going to take to get there?” asked Aumo, “We don’t get tired but it’s really far.”

 

Yuhsar was a newly built city, so it wasn’t that big, it would take around 5 hours to run a lap around the entire city. That said, it was still decently big, but it was really small on the map Guardon brought, with one side of the square being just the size of an average thumb. Breali was a lot bigger, but the space between Breali and Yuhsar was what covered most of the map. Some towns could be found here and there, but they were so small that they were the size of a fingernail or smaller.

 

“It should take about 7 days by horse, and that’s with rest,” replied LisiA, “If we continue at this pace, without any rest, it should take about 5 days or so.”

 

“5 days without rest as in continuously walking for 24 hours a day?” asked Aumo.

 

“Without rest, 24 hours of walking a day,” confirmed LisiA.

 

Aumo was glad that she was now an android, or rather is LisiA really planning to walk for 5 whole days without rest?

 

------------- 

 

3 days of non-stop walking later… They were walking at a really leisure pace.

 

The weather has been great; it was sunny out and there wasn’t any rain. In fact, Aumo and LisiA haven’t actually seen it rain at all since they got out of the ruins.

 

“It’s really cloudy today. It might rain,” said LisiA, “Finding shelter is advised, though we don’t actually need it.”

 

“You clearly have never felt how it feels to be soaked,” replied Aumo, “It isn’t a pleasant feeling.”

 

Well of course LisiA didn’t, she didn’t have the sense of touch back then. Even then, Androids were encouraged to find shelter or use an umbrella since drying out clothes is bothersome. Also, it was problematic if water were to get inside some of the lower quality Androids. The earlier Androids weren’t water resistant at all, and water leakage caused rusting, mana wiring damage, and all that great stuff. Of course, it became normal to waterproof Androids after they figured out how to do it, but nothing is built perfectly after all.

 

“We are now within the area where the Gates have started appearing. Please pay attention to the Gate Detector,” notified Ria. 

 

The gates marked on the map were all a bit over half way through the road, which is about where Aumo and LisiA got to after 3 days of walking. They were just half way there. 

 

Aumo brought out the map, which appeared in front of her and showed her her current location.

 

“We are still pretty far away from the closest gate,” said Aumo, “Maybe an hour more of walking?”

 

LisiA peeked over and said, “It will take us more than 5 days to get there if we need to check out the gates. Luckily they are near the road, so it won’t add that much time in.”

 

There have been no large scale monster attacks in the past days, but that's only because there are automatons guarding the road. It's pretty crazy how many there were, as throughout the 3 days, Aumo and LisiA had already counted a couple hundred. That didn't stop merchants from bringing escorts with them, since there still is a chance of unrecognized monsters attacking. The Automaton Defense databases are always being updated, but Automatons aren't given as great an AI as Androids. They use low quality cores, and are masses produced to have no free will. In fact, the cores in them are so low quality that it isn't possible. They just have very simple commands: Stand there, Recognize, Guard, Attack. They are armed with some pretty scary weapons though.

 

After a few minutes of walking, the Gate Detector started reacting to something.

 

It was a very faint dinging sound.

 

"I feel like I will get sick of this sound very soon," commented Aumo.

 

The dinging sound was coming from within her body, so it was louder to her than everyone around her.

 

The worst part was that it doesn't indicate where the nearby gate is, it just gets louder the closer the two get to the gate marked on the map.

 

"This is worse than the alarms, you can at least turn those off," said LisiA.

 

It didn't take long before there was only the sound of dinging.

 

DING DING DING DING DING DING DING.

 

It was nice that Androids didn't have eardrums to get ruptured, but even then this was annoying.

 

"CAN THIS THING STOP NOW?" complained Aumo over the loud dinging sound.

 

And the dinging stopped…

 

"Oh it stopped," said LisiA.

 

"My apologies, I forgot to configure the Gate Detector. It was still on default settings," Ria suddenly apologized, "I read further into the entry in the Gate Detector and found that the device was used as an alarm clock as a joke before. I have connected it to the map; it should now not ding anymore, but only vibrate slightly once and indicate the general direction on the map."

 

Ria pulled up the map, and it showed a faint arrow pointing towards the marked gate on the map.

 

The gate came into view soon after, and the two headed towards it.

 

It was just as it was described, a door frame in the middle of nowhere. This one was a white frame, and looked like one of those doorways you would find in a house. There was no door on it, it was just a doorway.

 

As the two got closer, Aumo felt a raindrop fall onto her face.

 

“It’s starting to rain,” said Aumo, “Ria, do your thing.”

 

“Affirmative,” said Ria, and Ria dove into her database to the entry about gates. Then, she proceeded to activate it.

 

Status:

 

-----------------------------

Name: Aumo

Core Level:8

XP: 5/300

Status: Normal

HP: 2200/2200

MP: 1200/1200 

MP Stored: 170

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Skills: Mana Manipulation, Mana Sight, Mana Sense, Mana Analysis, Mana Item Storage, Levitation, Mana Vibration, Small Fireball, Ice Throw, Air Slash, Body Reinforcement, Body Strengthening

 

Upgrades: Map, Gate Detector

 

Stored: Heater

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