Once they landed in the bright planet, Varian realized they were excited for nothing.
The sky was enveloped in mist. The frigid air he breathed in seemed like it was trying to pierce through his lungs.
The frozen landscape had nothing to offer at first glance. Right from his footstep to the edge of the horizon, Varian saw white. Not even a speck of dust to break this monotony.
'Then there's nothing alive on th—'
Varian was proven wrong before he could finish his thought as his lungs exploded without warning. Blood splattered on the ground, marking a spot of red in the ocean of white.
"Hey!" Maria was taken aback and hurriedly put out a protective barrier around her. She didn't attack but neither did she try to help.
After a second, Varian finally moved. He coated his body with aura to stop himself from being a blood fountain and hissed. "The cold hurts."
The big hole in his chest didn't help. Seeing bits of his blasted lungs scattered inside his own body and even on the ice outside only made his mood worse. To add to the woes, his liver and heart were pierced by purple-colored icicles.
"Wait, what is that?" Varian's thought that he was just unlucky halted as he noticed something.
A layer of purple-colored ice was quickly spreading into his blood, freezing it and draining his aura.
Varian tried to use his power to throw out the ice but it dodged expertly and started freezing him faster.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" There's no way he couldn't realize it by now.
Something mixed into the air he breathed in.
A gaseous lifeform! Its body was too bizarre and it worked on the same principle as the sun—undergoing fission and draining energy from the surroundings.
This creature weaponized the principle and used it to hunt.
Unfortunately for it, even with his lungs blown off and half of his heart frozen, Varian could still survive for days, if not weeks thanks to the monstrous vitality and life force control as a rank 3 famine.
But the creature didn't panic.
It had always picked up targets carefully. Varian was a Mystic. So, his attacks would be physical and Qi-based, both of which it had great resistance against. Even a peak rank 3 Mystic couldn't injure it.
The best they could do would be trapping but for how long? As challengers, they had to be mindful of their survival time as well as other challengers.
So, the creature waited patiently for him to leave so that it could mark its next prey. But what awaited it was a surprise that scared the hell out of it.
A spiritual attack stabbed it right in the soul. The confident creature shuddered violently and the somewhat cohesive gas began to swirl and disperse like a puff of smoke.
[W-Wait! D-Don't kill me!]
A voice sounded directly in Varian's mind, startling him.
'Give me a good reason.'
[I-I know where those gates people like you search for are. I've seen groups of you outsiders fight for it.]
Varian raised a brow. The gates would change randomly but maybe that gate was still active.
He raised his hand and understanding his intention, a cloud of purple gas formed over his palm. The cold in his body dissipated and he sighed at the comforting warmth.
"Maria, this thing can help us get to the next gate." He poked his finger through the cloud and said.
Maria's treasure could help them find the gate but it had its problems. One time, it led them straight into the middle of a seemingly normal but very unstable space.
If Varian didn't have the space powers he did, they'd have been swallowed by the explosion that enveloped that area shortly after they fled.
Maria knew the issues with her treasure too and turned to the faceless, expressionless gas cloud creature. "If you lie, I can not only kill you, but I can also torture you well."
Her killing intent caused the gas cloud to shrink and nod rapidly like a dog.
The two followed the gas cloud creature to one of those 'bright' spots on the planet he saw from space.
"Holy shit…"
Apparently, these bright, overly shiny, and glittery spots were the aura power plants of the planet.
Containers over containers load of metal were poured into these powerplants where they were crushed into powder and sprinkled over a special formation that would use their properties to create a massive amount of heat. This heat would then be transferred to the attached city.
Of course, over 90% of it would be absorbed by the host star, but the remaining 10% allowed the lives to keep going.
"Arrogant bitches! You can get into your gate for all I care, don't touch the power plant!" A four-foot humanoid's yell caused a small hurricane.
Unlike humanoids Varian had seen so far, this one had a transparent skin under which the flow of colored gases was visible.
If you looked at him on Earth, you'd think he was wearing a body suit to show himself made of tubes transporting fancy color gases. Thankfully, it was mostly visible only for the limbs and his face still looked normal.
'Do their brains have gas?' Varian couldn't help but be curious.
But the ones confronting the man weren't curious. They responded to the outburst of the man with contempt and ignored him thereafter.
"This gate will stay for at least three years. I don't think your team has the balls to maintain it for such duration."
"Oh, we sure do. It's you newcomers who shouldn't think of gatekeeping on this floor. Crawl back to the single digits."
"You're both too arrogant to ignore my team."
Three challenger groups faced off at the entrance of the powerplant while the hundred-odd staff of the plant, headed by their manager were confronting them with a bitter expression.
The gate appeared inside the plant and all the three teams wanted total control over it. A battle was bound to happen and it'd destroy the plant, cutting off the supply of a city.
In this world, the power plants weren't just comforts of life. They were a necessity. Without these powerplants, the city would have its heat sucked out by the star and all its residents would freeze to death.
It might take a bit longer since the plant was significantly far away from the sun compared to the asteroid, but it's only a matter of time.
"Excuse me, gentlemen." Varian didn't want to intervene in issues like this.
They had come across gatekeeping more than a few times already. Every single time, he paid, well, Maria paid and they moved without making any ruckus.
Sure, they killed some stray challengers and weak teams that were hostile to them, but they tried to hunt down challengers actively.
The irony, though, every team they came across tried to kill them and ended up getting killed.
The gatekeeping teams, however, always maintained neutrality.
First, they were very strong and few would dare to be mischievous with them. Second, they didn't want to earn a bad reputation and hurt their business.
Varian wouldn't have cared about the consequences of the power plant destruction but after experiencing it personally, he held a vendetta against it.
So, he just didn't like pushing someone through the same experience he hated.
"Hey, gatekeepers," Varian waved his hand and greeted the three teams.
The expression of the manager grew worse and the staff members began to cry in soft voices.
They could foresee it already. The slow and painful death of their city and their loved ones in it.
"You three can fight somewhere else. I won't gatekeep but I'll support anyone who abides by my condition." Varian unsheathed his sword and tapped the tip into the ice gently.
Kacha!
The ice cracked at the point of contact and then like an unending tsunami, the area around that spot began to crack and it expanded like a tsunami.
Under the feet of the three teams, under the manager and the employees, below the power plant, and everywhere in the surrounding five hundred miles, the cracks spread.
The teams that looked disdainful until now looked at him with solemn gazes. The cracks weren't normal as they initially thought.
The cracks formed patterns in concentric circles, each circle's cracks forming the same word in the lingua franca of the Alliance. "You can't find inside this line!"
Destroying a planet, unless its aura-enforced, wasn't an issue for a celestial ranker. Destroying everything in a thousand miles wasn't an issue even if it's an aura-enforced planet.
But what Varian did was something creepily difficult.
Unless one reached extreme control over their Qi, it's hard to use power to create cracks that delicate.
Since Varian intentionally masked his rank before pulling this off, they thought he was a strong rank 5 or even a rank 6.
Even though the teams were headed by rank 5s, they didn't want to risk it. A strong rank 5 could kill all of them without paying any major price. If he's a rank 6, that'd be using a military-grade truck to crush a bicycle.
A tense silence ensued in the field and after a strong stare contest, the three teams silently withdrew to exactly the 501st mile, just outside the cracks, and began fighting.
The defense barrier of the power plant operated, blocking any shockwaves and securing the supply.
Varian walked into the power plant under the reverent gazes of the natives.
"Didn't know you were a hero. You seemed too cold-hearted for this," Maria gave him a surprise look as they stepped into the circle.
"I'm not." Varian shook his head.
"Not a hero or not cold-hearted?"
Varian scoffed. "Both."
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