The Gate Traveler
B6 - Chapter 24: Apprentices Know Stuff

I strolled down the endless glass-front main thoroughfare of the mall, scanning signs while trying not to get distracted by glowing magical displays and bouncing enchanted advertisements. I needed a financier to exchange coins.

The deeper I went into the mall, the more I understood what Mahya had said—that advanced magical worlds weren’t behind tech worlds, just moving along a different developmental track.

The next section, right after the enormous metal one, was all about music. Instruments filled the space, including stringed ones that resembled Earth instruments but had different shapes or rune carvings, along with harps and drums the size of coffee tables. A piano-like contraption with shimmering strings inside caught my eye. One stall displayed a collection of flutes and strange reed instruments, some etched with runes.

I stopped in front of a central stall displaying a sleek black cube. A girl behind the counter spotted me looking and perked up.

“Looking for something to make your heart dance?” she asked, flashing a bright smile as she leaned forward across the counter.

“That depends. What does this thing do?”

She tapped the sleek black cube before her, her fingers brushing it like she was introducing a friend. “Plays music. From these.” She reached under the counter and pulled out a small, silvery disc with a faintly glowing mana crystal embedded in the center.

“Pop it in,” she said, sliding the disc toward me, “and it sings for you.”

“Sings for me?”

She nodded enthusiastically, holding up the disc between her fingers. “Yes! This plate holds recorded music. It plays just for you when you insert it into the Sound Prism.”

I whistled low. “That’s… actually kind of amazing.”

She looked thrilled with my assessment, judging by her ever-growing smile.

She explained it could either play the music out loud or privately, just for me. No headphones, earbuds, or wires. Just me and the music. I could attune the cube with a single drop of blood, and that was it. Only I could hear it. No one else could eavesdrop, even if they were standing right next to me. The sound simply didn’t exist for anyone else. With every part of the explanation, my eyebrows climbed higher on my forehead, and I was getting more and more impressed. That was one nifty gadget.

I leaned in and tapped the cube with a finger. “How do I charge it?”

She pointed at a rune I actually recognized. “Channel mana here.”

Damn.

Okay, Mahya, I see your point.

Maybe the world looked primitive if you were expecting smartphones and Spotify, but this? This was a whole different kind of smart.

I flipped the music disc over in my hand. “How much?”

“Sound Prism is ten mithril. Each disc is five gold.”

I froze. “Ten mithril?” My voice came out a little higher than I’d meant.

She nodded as if it were no big deal. “Yeah. Worth every coin.”

Right. Every coin. I handed the disc back with a tight smile and moved on, trying not to let my inner gadget squirrel scream too loudly.

Sure, I was loaded. No denying it. But Ten mithril? My brain ran the conversion before I could stop it. One mithril was a hundred gold, which put that sleek little cube at about a million dollars by Earth's gold prices. For a single music player.

That’s when Al’s comment finally made sense. Gold really was treated here more like silver. I understood the financial logic, I really did. But that didn’t stop the instinctive, full-body flinch.

I shook my head and kept walking. Nope. Still insane. Even with the privacy feature.

Music tech? Brilliant.

Prices? Completely unhinged.

The search for the financier continued, but I was already walking a little slower, chewing on the realization that Mahya had been completely right. These people weren’t backward. They’d just taken the scenic route.

The next two sections didn’t hold my interest. One was dedicated entirely to jewelry. Glittering displays of rings, necklaces, and accessories sparkled behind glass cases, some glowing faintly with embedded runes or mana crystals. Pretty to look at, sure, but not my thing. The other section was all about bags. Everything from delicate little purses barely big enough for a coin pouch to massive adventuring backpacks with reinforced straps. Some of them looked like they could carry half a campsite... assuming you were strong enough to lift them once they were full.

But the section after that? My personal slice of heaven—home appliances powered by mana.

Yes! Blender and food processor, here I come.

The prices were still crazy, but I powered through the angry, stingy squirrel. Some things were simply worth the price. I found a blender, a food processor, a meat grinder—so I wouldn’t have to chop everything by hand for burgers—and a juicer that looked like it could crush a whole fruit in one go, peel and all. They were clearly different from Earth’s appliances, with more parts, hidden enchantments, and the occasional levitating part, but close enough in function and design that I could recognize what they were and even figure out how to use them without a manual.

Beyond the basics, there were a bunch of other appliances I had no real use for, but they were fascinating all the same: a vegetable peeler that used a wind spell, a mana-powered griddle that cooked without heat, and something that might have been a self-cleaning soup pot... or possibly a foot bath. Hard to tell.

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I left that section over fifty thousand gold coins poorer, but with a smile wide enough to light up the universe.

The section after that was all about familiars. Saddles for lizards, toys and brushes for cats, different styles of perches for birds ... it was an entire ecosystem of pet gear. I wandered through several stores but found nothing that felt right for Rue. I considered a saddle for half a second, since Mahya sometimes rode him, but I dropped that thought fast. She had the flying sword now, and I had no interest in reopening the whole “Rue is no horse” argument. Besides, he’d shrunk a bit more over the last couple of days. His eyes were now almost leveled with mine.

I finally reached the financier and paused in front of the display playing across the shop’s front window. And no, I didn’t stop because it was a magical advertisement projected onto glass. I’d seen so many by now that I was completely immune to the novelty.

What made me freeze was the actual content of the ad.

The glass displayed what appeared to be a full-on, animated scene playing on a loop. A young boy stood over a chamber pot, mouth wide open as shimmering mithril coins fell into it from above. Then, with a big grin, he turned around and peed gold coins into the pot.

I blinked.

This has got to be a joke.

Regardless of the strange advertisement in the window, the money exchange went quickly and without fuss. I traded 10,000 gold coins for 100 mithril coins. With the prices in this world, I knew they would come in handy.

By then, after all my shopping, I’d already developed a system for handling the different coins. Not all of them had the same weight. The coins from Lumis were on the smaller side, about seventeen or eighteen grams each. The ones from Lis were larger, somewhere in the thirty-gram range, and Al’s coins were even bigger—hovering around forty grams.

What threw me was that no one seemed to care about the weight. The actual amount of metal didn’t matter. The coin itself held the value, which felt odd to me. But whatever. That was their system. So I adapted. From then on, I exchanged and spent only the smaller coins.

I was sure we’d eventually reach a world where coin value was tied to weight. And if not, I could always feed the larger coins to the house and have it reforge them into smaller ones. Yes, I had a lot of gold. No question. But that didn’t mean I was going to throw money around like an idiot.

The store was right before the seventh exit from the mall, and I’d had enough of shopping and advertisements. At that point, I actually appreciated how the mall entrances all led back to the beginning near the food court. It meant I could go explore and still have a quick way to get back to the hotel.

Maybe it wasn’t that stupid.

Although... if you needed one of the last sections of the mall, it was still stupid.

Yeah, whatever. I scratched my head, confused by my own thoughts, and stepped outside to explore the rest of the city.

The exit dumped me somewhere near the city limits. It wasn’t the direction we’d come from—I couldn’t see the train channel—but it was definitely the outskirts. Just two buildings stood nearby, and beyond them stretched the open, endless desert.

Both buildings had people coming and going, so I headed over to check them out.

I walked into the first one and stopped to stare with my mouth hanging open. From the outside, it appeared to be a regular mid-sized building. If the strange architecture here could be called regular. It was nothing fancy. A narrowing series of turned-over bowls stacked on top of each other, with a relatively short spire at the top, maybe three stories tall. But the moment I stepped inside, it was like the space had stretched out in every direction.

A wide paved path ran ahead, lined with trees and lampposts. On both sides, rows of houses and small apartment blocks stretched out as far as I could see. Kids ran past me, laughing. Someone was hanging laundry on a balcony. A vendor cart rolled by, attached to a tricycle, selling something that smelled like spices and fried dough.

How is this even possible?

I kept walking, half in a daze, and passed a grocery store, a bakery, a clinic… The air was much cooler here, with a pleasant breeze. After about ten minutes, the path opened into a massive park with grass, benches, and even a lake with little rowboats bobbing near the shore.

Apparently, this wasn’t just a building. It was an entire residential neighborhood packed into an expanded space. A proper one, too. Not just living quarters but everything you’d expect in a real city block—shops, schools, green areas, the works.

I scratched my head, still trying to wrap my brain around it. “Okay… that’s new.”

I cut through the park, which was honestly pretty nice. Shady trees lined the walking paths, and several picnic areas were scattered around, complete with stone tables and log benches. One section had a designated barbecue spot, where a group of young people were grilling, drinking, and singing loudly, very off-key.

Further in, I came across a massive play area for kids. It had every kind of playground contraption I could think of, and a bunch I couldn’t. Swings floated gently in the air, slides shimmered with faint mana trails, and seesaws adjusted their balance on their own. Most of it clearly ran on mana, and it all looked way fancier than anything I’d ever seen back on Earth.

Further in, there was a section with trampolines. Very impressive trampolines. The kids flew at least twenty meters into the air with every jump. It looked like so much fun that I almost went for it myself. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that, despite the large number of adults around, not a single one was jumping. I didn’t want to be that weirdo adult launching himself into the sky in the middle of a playground.

But in that moment, I understood Rue. I had the Jump skill, albeit at a low level, but the trampolines looked awesome. Yeah, I got it. I finally understood why he wanted the flying sword, even though he could already fly.

The other side of the park was another neighborhood, and it definitely looked poorer than the one I’d just come from. The houses were smaller and shabbier; the front yards looked as if no one had tended to them in a while, and the whole place carried a heavier, more oppressive air.

I cut straight through it, curious to see what followed, but all I reached was the border of the expanded space and an exit. I looked out, and here, there were no mall shenanigans. I could see the last building in the city and the desert beyond. So, I turned back and started heading toward the entrance I had come from.

After a couple of streets, I felt a very mild warning from my Luck. So mild it was almost imperceptible—like a polite tap on the shoulder instead of the usual mental warning. A second later, a hand shot out from the gap between two houses and dragged me into a narrow passage. A knife pressed against my neck, and a gruff male voice growled, “Give me your money.”

For a split second, I considered electrocuting him, but I wasn’t exactly eager to test how well he could hold a knife mid-spasm. Didn’t seem like a smart idea.

Instead, I took the opportunity to do a field test for a new spell I’d worked on with Rima. We’d developed quite a few offensive healer spells, but they never showed up on my Personal Information. I had a strong suspicion it was because I’d only used them during development and never in an actual fight. And now, this very thoughtful and accommodating gentleman had volunteered. That was incredibly kind of him and deeply appreciated.

I cast the spell.

He made a sound somewhere between a eep and a gulp, and immediately let go of me. I turned around to check, and there he was—folded in half, clutching his stomach like he’d just been hit by food poisoning, a bad life choice, and karma all at once.

I would’ve liked to stick around and observe the full range of effects, maybe take notes to see if I could improve the spell, but unfortunately, the stench was not conducive to scientific experimentation. I vacated the premises with due haste and a strong nose-wrinkle. On my way back to the exit, I sent Rima a thumbs-up and a heartfelt well done. Yeah, some situations definitely called for Explosive Diarrhea. And yes, after this little incident, it officially appeared on my Personal Information at level one.

Apprentices sure know stuff sometimes.