Jin stood on the rough red bedrock of the platform. His head was still pounding from the violent spatial fold.
The local gate technician walked toward them. He wore a thick leather apron stained with red dust. He carried a heavy iron spear.
"I said clear the platform!" the technician barked loudly. He pointed his heavy spear toward the edge of the stone circle. "Incoming jump from Zenith City in twenty seconds! Move!"
Jin started to walk off the platform. But his brain caught a massive discrepancy in the data.
He stopped moving. He planted his heavy leather boots on the red stone. He turned around to face the angry technician.
"Wait," Jin said. His voice was flat, cutting through the noise of the transit hall.
The technician scowled. He gripped his iron spear tightly. He did not like travelers who asked questions. He liked travelers who moved fast and paid their tolls.
"What?" the technician snapped.
"You just said there is an incoming jump from Zenith City," Jin stated logically. He ignored the pointed spear. "The gate clerk in Iron-Spire told me that a direct spatial tear to Zenith City is physically impossible. She said the distance is too great. She said the atmospheric pressure would crush a mortal body. We had to buy a three-jump relay pass just to cross the distance."
Jin narrowed his dark eyes.
"If the distance is too great to survive," Jin asked coldly, "how can a traveler jump from Zenith City directly to this platform in a single bound?"
The technician stared at Jin. He looked at Jin's cheap brown cloak. Then he let out a harsh, dusty laugh.
"You are from the outer rim," the technician sneered. He lowered his spear slightly. He found the ignorance amusing. "You do not understand how the center of the board works."
Jin did not react to the insult. He just waited for the data.
"Zenith City is the absolute core of this continent," the technician explained proudly. "It does not use a standard, cheap commercial Aether-gate like Iron-Spire or Crimson-Rock. The main transit array in Zenith is an ancient, primordial relic. It is powered by the massive energy veins buried deep beneath the capital. It is a class-one heavy projector."
The technician pointed his thick finger up at the high, rocky ceiling of the cavern.
"That massive array can push a stable spatial fold to any single corner of the continent without crushing the passengers," the technician continued. "It has the raw density to force a tunnel through reality. But our cheap, regional gates? They do not have the power to push back. They can only receive. If you want to go to the capital, you must climb the ladder one short rung at a time."
Jin processed the information instantly.
He understood the concept perfectly. It was a completely asymmetric infrastructure. It was centralized power at its finest.
In the corporate world of Earth, massive global headquarters hoarded the best technology and the fastest network speeds. They could push massive amounts of data out to the small regional branches instantly. But if a small branch tried to send a massive file back, the weak local connection would choke and crash.
The Genesis Zenith Academy and the capital city held an absolute monopoly on rapid transit. It was a one-way superhighway. If you were wealthy and lived in the center, you could project your power anywhere in a single heartbeat. But if you were an outsider trying to get in, you were forced to pay heavy tolls and travel through slow, vulnerable bottlenecks.
It was brilliant. It was ruthless. Jin respected the efficiency of it.
"I understand," Jin said simply. He did not argue. The logic was sound.
He turned his back on the technician. He walked off the red stone platform just as the six massive pillars began to whine with a high-pitched, incoming frequency.
Luna followed him closely. She was still incredibly pale. She kept one hand firmly gripped on Nyx's dark grey cloak to keep herself upright. Her spatial sickness was severe, but she was forcing her small legs to move.
"Are you going to vomit again?" Jin asked her. He did not look back. He kept his eyes scanning the new environment.
"No," Luna whispered weakly. She swallowed hard. "My stomach is completely empty. There is nothing left."
"Good," Jin noted. "Keep walking. We need to secure the next jump."
They walked away from the receiving platforms and entered the main concourse of Crimson-Rock City.
The transit hall was completely different from Iron-Spire. Iron-Spire was a city of refined steel, glass, and polished merchants. Crimson-Rock was raw, brutal industry.
The air was hot and tasted like copper and sulfur. The walls of the massive cavern were unworked, jagged red stone. The people in the hall were massive, heavily muscled miners and rough mercenaries. They wore thick, scarred leather armor covered in red dust. They carried huge, heavy mining picks and wide iron axes.
Jin analyzed the local economy with a quick glance. Crimson-Rock was a resource extraction hub. Raw, heavy materials flowed out of this city. Wealth and cheap labor flowed in. It was a hard, violent place.
He did not want to stay here for even five minutes. A transit hub full of bored mercenaries was a high-risk environment for a man carrying a pouch full of pure wealth.
Jin scanned the massive red cavern. He looked past the loud, aggressive crowds of miners haggling with merchants. He found what he was looking for at the far end of the hall.
A row of long desks carved from dark, petrified wood sat against the back wall. Above the desks, a large banner read: Outgoing Spatial Transfers.
"This way," Jin ordered.
Nyx immediately stepped in front of him.
She became the point guard. Her dark cloak absorbed the dim light of the red cavern. She did not draw her curved dagger, but her posture shifted. She radiated a cold, heavy intent. As she walked forward, the rough mercenaries and massive miners instinctively stepped out of her path. They did not know she was a Divinity Realm expert, but their primal survival instincts told them to move away from the dark shadow.
Nyx carved a clear, straight path through the dense crowd. Jin and Luna followed in her wake.
They reached the transfer desks.
The lines for the standard commercial jumps were incredibly long. Hundreds of dusty miners stood in the heat, waiting to pay their tolls with heavy bags of low-tier cores. They looked angry and exhausted.
Jin ignored the long lines. He looked for the priority desk.
He found a single, small desk set apart from the others. It was blocked by a thick velvet rope. A single clerk sat behind it. The clerk wore a clean red tunic. He was leisurely reading a glowing crystal tablet, ignoring the massive, sweaty crowds just thirty feet away.
Jin walked directly past the velvet rope. He stepped up to the priority desk.
The clerk did not look up from his glowing tablet.
"Civilian routing is at the main desks, scavenger," the clerk said smoothly. He assumed Jin was just a lost miner who wandered into the VIP section. "Step back behind the rope before I call the hall guards to beat you."
Jin did not speak.
He reached into his heavy brown cloak. He pulled out the three thick, rectangular tokens made of glowing blue crystal. He placed them gently onto the dark wood of the desk.
Clack. The sound of the heavy crystals hitting the wood made the clerk pause. He slowly lowered his glowing tablet. He looked down at the desk.
He saw the three blue priority relay passes from Iron-Spire.
The clerk's bored, arrogant expression vanished instantly. His eyes widened. Priority passes that covered three full jumps were incredibly rare. They represented a massive, concentrated expenditure of high-tier wealth. A man in a dusty brown cloak carrying three of them was a glaring anomaly.
The clerk immediately sat up straight. He pushed the crystal tablet aside.
"My apologies, traveler," the clerk said quickly. His voice was suddenly incredibly polite and professional. He reached out and touched the glowing blue tokens to verify their authenticity.
The tokens pulsed with a steady, authorized light.
"The passes are fully verified," the clerk confirmed. He looked up at Jin with a nervous, respectful smile. He did not know who was hiding behind the brown hood, but he knew he could not afford to offend them. "Your routing sequence is perfectly logged. Priority transit has been paid in full."
"Where is the next node?" Jin asked coldly. He did not care about the apology. He only cared about the logistics.
"Your next scheduled destination is Silver-Gate City," the clerk said. He pointed a clean finger toward the far right side of the massive red cavern. "Please proceed directly to Platform Seven. I will signal the gate technicians to clear the ring for your immediate arrival. You will not have to wait."
Jin nodded once. He reached down and swept the three blue tokens off the desk. He slipped them back into his heavy cloak.
"Platform Seven," Jin repeated.
He turned away from the desk. He did not look at the massive crowds of angry miners waiting in the long, hot lines. He had paid for extreme efficiency, and the system was delivering.
"Keep moving, Luna," Jin ordered as he walked past her. "The next jump is ready. Prepare yourself. We are leaving this rock right now."