Chapter 125 - Testing the Limits

“Mat…” one of the girls had to notice the change in Mathew as she called out before the young man had a chance to even say something.

“No,” Mathew was quick to cut the hopes of his companions. “I’m not done yet,” he said while shaking his head. He then reached out for the bundle of shadows of the merchant… Only to hold his hand back right as he was about to enter the shadowy subspace again.

“Actually,” Mathew said as he turned his head and took a quick glance at the girls. “Could you run around and test whether we have the energy, water, and heating back?”

‘I should’ve done it before I bought anything else,’ Mathew thought to himself, aware of his own mistakes.

At least, the gamble with this rejuvenating feature ended up paying off, something that Mathew had nothing but luck to thank for.

“I will check the water!” Nadia jumped up. “I will test the electricity,” Leila jumped second, ready to be of use.

“How exactly am I supposed to check the heating?” Nadia then asked while putting a troubled expression on her face.

“For now, it’s best to not delve too deep into it,” Mathew replied while putting a troubled smile on his own face. “Just check whether you can turn on the heaters in the classrooms,” he pointed out.

‘Because once we have the time to look into it more seriously, I would like to be the one checking the stove on the basement floor of the school.’

Mathew used merchant to restore the media to the school. Yet, for how convenient it would be to use them without much of a worry, the young man wasn’t all that sure that interfering with the inner workings of the altered systems wouldn’t fuck up the entire thing altogether.

After all, for heat to be in the heaters, the furnace had to be burning fuel. And if it could work without the furnace or fuel element…

Then just how would that heat come to be?

‘I guess this is just another element for me to add to the list of what I need to check and think about later,’ Mathew thought while waiting for the girls to finish their rounds.

“I checked the toilets. There is water in the tap and you can flush,” Nadia reported as soon as she returned to the common space on the top floor of the school.

“Did you stress-test it?” Mathew then asked.

There was the option of paying fifty stones to improve the media that Mathew already bought. And this implied that there was some sort of limitation to the use of those elements.

‘Maybe it’s a time, maybe it’s the throughput… Without testing, we won’t know,’ Mathew thought as he raised his eyes on the girl.

“I…” Nadia hesitated only to shake her head sideways and then hang her face low. “I didn’t,” she informed before raising her head and sending Mathew a quick glance. “I will be right back!” Nadia called before turning around on her feet and leaving once again.

“The heaters are all working,” Daria was the second to return to the common area. “I didn’t even need to change anything about them, they are actively heating up,” she added.

“And that opens a fresh lot of questionable things. Is it going to work only for some time? Or maybe only bring the temperature high enough?” Mathew muttered under his nose.

“What?” Daria asked, leaning her head to the side. Yet, from the relatively empty look on her face, she didn’t really hear Mathew’s complaints, only the distant muttering that alerted her in the first place.

“Nothing,” Mathew shook his head. “It’s nothing that we should bother ourselves with for now,” he added before turning his eyes back to the entry hole of the floor.

And soon enough, Leila crawled out of the shaft before raising her dirtied face at Mathew.

“I need to show you something,” the girl said instead of giving a full report.

She then took a single step to the side before changing the light switch for the main hall of the top floor.

But nothing happened.

‘A fluke?’ Mathew thought, gritting his teeth.

So far, all two reports of the other girls made him expect some net-positive results from Leila as well.

“Don’t worry, it’s not what I wanted to show,” Leila nodded her head before turning around and jumping right back into the hole.

“Hey!” she then shouted from within the shaft. “Try to light it up now!” she called.

“Sure?” Mathew mumbled under his nose as he approached the light switch. And by the time he reached the location, he could already tell what Leila was trying to showcase.

Because when Mathew’s pressed the switch, the light turned on and worked perfectly fine.

“If you lit it up, don’t change it yet!” Leila called out from the floor below. And a short moment later, the lights on the top floor all went out.

“It stopped,” Mathew muttered while raising his hand to slowly rub his chin.

A moment later, Leila crawled out from the hole for the last time before looking up at Mathew’s face.

“Do you get it?”

“Yeah,” Mathew nodded his head. “There is a limit to how much energy we can use. If we exceed the limit, the energy disappears and will only work under an acceptable load,” Mathew elaborated a little before raising his eyes at his whole group. “In other words, it works like some sort of a fuse,” Mathew continued to rub his chin as he walked around the place.

There were a lot of things to think about. But right now, Mathew knew exactly what to do.

“Okay then, I will be going back to the merchant,” Mathew informed before moving away and reaching for the shadowy realm once again.

A short moment of intermission later Mathew was back in the merchant’s realm with the same five pillars standing to his left. Five pillars, out of which, one was already locked.

“So we have improvements to the media and then the warehouse, huh?” Mathew muttered under his nose before grabbing the cores he left floating in the merchant’s space and stacking them orderly at the four remaining pillars.

“And I even have some left,” Mathew thought, looking down at roughly thirty cores left in his hand before placing the fiftieth core on the storage-marked pillar to the extreme left.

Mathew’s vision went out for but a brief moment. It felt as if the shadows that created this strange space suddenly intensified, stopping all the light from traveling across the distance. And once the shadows returned to their usual self, a new pillar appeared on each side of the row of pedestals.

“What’s next?” Mathew mumbled as he moved to one end of the colonnade before leaning over the markings.

“A hundred cores now, huh?” he let out a small comment as the cost of activating the pillar came into his eyes.

A quick glance to the side and Mathew confirmed that all the pillars now bore this increased price.

“But just what the hell does this pillar do?”

For the first time, Mathew was confused. He could see the picture on the leftmost pillar and he could vaguely understand what it was supposed to portray…

But the young man was simply unable to make any sense out of it.

“What, does this pillar let me restore the entire compound to how it looked before one of the wings collapsed?” the young man joked under his nose before standing up and moving to the other end of the line of pedestals.

This time, however, there mark slot on the pedestal… Was empty.

‘No, that’s not it,’ Mathew thought as he leaned over the pillar before bringing his thumb to the marking slot on it. He then wiped his finger against the small square only to stand back and shake his head.

‘To think that I would have to find a way to unlock the information about it first…’ he thought, shaking his head as he heaved a heavy sigh.

“But I guess I don’t really have a choice,” Mathew whispered under his nose before grabbing all the leftover cores and waving his hand. “I want to move back to the real world.”

A moment of strange feeling and Mathew reappeared back in reality with a small bundle of cores safely sitting in the same bag that the girls originally brought all the cores in.

“What the hell is this?” Daria shouted the very second Mathew moved back into reality.

“Huh?” the young man shrugged and looked at the girl, only to then move his eyes to the direction the girl was pointing at.

There was a small window, a square half a meter in size, that simply hung by the side of the merchant’s head.

“Wait,” Mathew trembled when a sudden feeling took over his mind. He then looked back at the girl with his eyes wide open. “You can actually see it?!”

Up until this point, the girls could only see the merchant. That was the limit of how much they could interact with it.

But to have one of the girls now be able to perceive an element of the merchant…

“Daria…” Mathew uttered the girl’s name as he sent an intense stare down her face.

“Yes, I’m Daria,” the girl said while holding a confused expression on her face.

“Would you mind trying to interact with the merchant?” Mathew asked before stepping aside to give the girl some space.

“Sure thing,” Daria shook her shoulders before approaching Mathew. Yet, before she could even get close, the young man turned his eyes toward Leila.

Amongst the three of his wives, she had the lowest arcane statistic, allowing the young man to instantly check one of his theories.

“Can you see anything weird near the merchant, Leila?”