This was now my third day in this new world. I was currently watching Suuru's work while thinking about the past two days. My first day was mostly spent brooding about the mystery of the situation. On the second one, I flooded my new roommate with so many questions that even her angelic smile faltered a little at the end. However, thanks to that, I now had a very basic understanding of this world.
Next to me, Suuru was manipulating sel to accomplish her job. Her task was simple and fit for her as a metal mage. She had a pile of scrap metal which she mixed and "sculpted" to create useful items. Those items would then be sold in the city. She told me she usually visited it once every few weeks. In exchange for the money from her sales, she would buy food and water, as well as another pile of scrap metal to work on.
Right in front of my eyes, a small amount of what I believed was copper was being transformed into a plate similar to the one we used to eat in the last two days. From my point of view, her skills were frustrating to see, but it couldn't be helped since she was only a rank 0 metal mage. Something as simple as molding metal took her tens of minutes, if not hours, even though this was considered the basics of basics of metal mages. She would have seen a significant increase in work speed if only she managed to become rank 1 but it seemed she was still far from crossing the threshold.
I stopped watching her and she immediately turned in my direction, a worried expression on her face.
"I'll get going now."
"Are you sure you'll be fine? I can come with you, you know."
This was already the third time she asked me this.
"Don't worry, I'll manage. I'm a lot better now, thanks to you. I can take care of myself without any problem. And you have your work to do."
"…You'll come back here when you're done, right?"
This was probably what she worried most about. She appreciated my presence so much that she was willing to share her already meager food and water resources with me. This said it all about how lonely she usually felt.
"Of course. I'll come back as soon as I'm done."
"Okay."
She sighed but tried her best to give me an encouraging smile, though her worry was still evident on her face.
"Have a nice trip."
"Thanks. See you later."
I quickly left to avoid her finding a reason to change her mind. My objective was the city that could be seen from our location, in the far distance. According to Suuru, it would take me about one hour and a half to reach it on foot. Speaking of which, I discovered that time measure wasn't that different from my world, which was a big help. It wasn't exactly the same but was close enough that I could ignore the decimal divergences. This allowed me to realize that the age of twenty-three Suuru claimed to be was almost similar to the same age back in my world.
While moving forward, I observed the dome that was surrounding us. This world was an interesting place. 837 years ago, humans found themselves close to extinction. In a desperate move, they decided to displace every remaining human inside their cities and initiated the "Protection" plan. The result was right in front of my eyes. They erected large domes of sel around all their cities, making them strong enough to be practically indestructible. Then, with the help of powerful spatial mages, they constructed a network of teleportation gates to link all of them. With this single history-changing move, they safeguarded the future of humanity, allowing it to prosper again.
Everything wasn't perfect, though. This new environment came with new limits and problems that didn't exist previously. Suuru's situation was partially due to these problems, even so long after the event, or maybe precisely because it was so long after.
Today, 837 years later, people seemed to have lost the knowledge of what pushed humans so close to extinction. Or at least, Suuru didn't know about it. There were many theories, like how the outside was filled with poisonous gases or monsters, or how simply stepping out would kill humans. No matter the truth, it was always associated with death, and Suuru looked scared when talking about it.
There were many reasons why I wanted to visit this dome's city. Even if I didn't have anything to do there today, it still wouldn't be a loss for me. As a rank 4 spatial mage, I mastered four spatial spells. One of them was called "dimensional matter relocation", more commonly known as teleportation, which allowed me to instantly move to any location I could see or any location I had visited before. When spatial mage apprentices hear about this rule for the first time, the question that immediately comes up is: "What sort of logic is that?". Yet, the answer is very convincing. It isn't related to the sight or a place previously visited. It's all about coordinates.
A trained spatial mage can extract spatial coordinates from any place they witnessed once. Even though planets were rotating, coordinates were stable since they were being calculated relative to one another. A place visited once could always be reached again in the future… unless the mage was sent to a different planet, of course.
This meant that by visiting this city today, I would be able to reach it instantly anytime I wanted in the future.
There were other reasons why I was making my way there, like how utterly curious I was about how a city in a different world looked, how its inhabitants would behave, and what sort of products they would have for sale. This last part in particular was one of my main goals.
As a spatial mage, I was destined to be a trader. This was common sense in my world. After all, who would make a better merchant than someone who could store and transport goods instantly all over the world? Even though not all spatial mages chose to become traders, the extreme majority of them did so.
The Trading Union was the most powerful organization in my previous world and was made of only spatial mages. Just by joining, I was guaranteed a future as one of the richest, most powerful, and most influential people on the planet.
Hence why my despair was so deep when I lost all of this. Right after graduating from training hell on top of that!