Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

In just the few moments that I knew her, Selene already left a vivid impression. Her energy, although chaotic, couldn't be denied. Read new adventures at empire

And yet, from the moment we all stepped into the hangar, her demeanor changed.

At first, the change was subtle. A shift from confusion to curiosity. And then to focus and seriousness when she finally laid her eyes upon the details that surrounded her.

Obviously, without my approval, she could not see the gate. To a degree, she appeared to be blind to the people moving in or out of the gate. But she could perfectly see all of the things and manpower amassed in just this simple hangar. She could see all of the men rushing around, wasting not a second of their time.

A fear that could be accomplished only when the simple trooper truly believed in the campaign's cause.

"Stop playing," Makary scolded me as we crossed halfway across the hangar. "Just reveal it to her already."

It appeared that I wasn't the only one who noticed the change in Selene's attitude.

And so, with a sigh, I made a mental note of allowing Makary's wife to notice the gate embedded into the massive, steel frame right at the end of the building.

Strangely enough, the gate on this side was actually a fair bit bigger than the one in Fay's world. Thankfully, the mismatching areas appeared as fuzzy spots of the same, vibrant purple of an unopened portal, saving Makary's men the trouble of somehow marking it themselves.

And while those very men continued to work hard to move all sorts of equipment in preparation for taking in several hundred times more workers than their own number.

A truly massive undertaking, yet one that was bound to bring unimaginable benefits.

This could easily be the first day of a whole new age for humanity on both ends of the gate.

But just a bit ahead of us, Selene wasn't thinking about any of that.

"Wait, this is…"

Despite all of her former attitude, she now stood rooted in place, staring with a blank face at the lush greenery and all sorts of different… humans?

'I wonder how she sees the locals,' I thought, suddenly curious.

For me, by now, one's personal aura grew to be as big of a part of my impression as one's own looks. Those two aspects pretty much merged for me, making one's aura simply a part of their general looks.

This conditioned me to look at the Celestials and the Divines partially through the scope of their magnificent, refined auras.

But how did they appear to the eyes of a mere human? Someone who has yet to gain any blessings from Fay's world?

'I guess I can only guess,' I thought, shrugging my shoulders before giving Fay's hand a small tug and moving ahead.

Even if I was simply curious about Selene's reaction, I've spent more than enough time focused on a woman different than Fay already.

And in all honesty, after all the delays and the problems they were bound to create in the future, I just wanted to get this big event over and done with.

"Don't forget, we are on the clock," I reminded the couple behind me before tipping my head to Madam, seeing how she silently amused herself with Selene's shocks. Still, she kept up with us at all times, always merely a step behind, like some sort of a silent shadow.

'Oh, that reminds me…'

The good mood caused by the joy of letting someone in on the big secret vanished when I recalled one issue that I was still pretty damn far from solving.

'But what the heck am I even supposed to do with her?' I gritted my teeth, thinking back to the elusive figure of my ex's friend.

A girl that I saw nearly every day and yet, thinking back…

I could hardly recall actually seeing her.

'Wait, isn't my perception of her kind of skewed?' I thought, nearly uttering a moan when the pressure of this topic reappeared right over my shoulders.

And right as I was about to start one of the most tiring sequences of events that I could imagine…

"It will be fine," Fay whispered to my ear right as we crossed the gate, snuggling up my arm a bit as we stepped on the grass of the forest's clearing.

"I hope so, with all my heart," I sighed back, before shaking my head and wiping the exhaustion off my eyes with the thumb of my left hand.

Behind us, Makary and Selene crossed over as well, followed by Madam who closed our small entourage.

For a moment, Selene could just look around, dazed by the natural beauty of the world all around, with only some early marks that Makary's men left in their wake. A tranquil moment of experiencing another world for the very first time.

Then, the reality came knocking and this time, it took the form of one of the roughly two hundred of Makary's men who ended up stationed on this side.

"Sir, we won't be able to stall her for much longer, please, at least the radio," the soldier quickly spat out the report with a look of great anxiety on his face.

"Are things that bad?"

Charmed by his wife a second ago, Makary instantly shifted into his work mode upon encountering the trouble that we all knew had already brewing for some time.

"There's some unrest in the imperial ranks, but that's given with the situation as it is…" the soldier hesitated for a moment before averting his eyes and rubbing the back of his head. "The princess warned us that if we keep stalling, she might not be able to keep a firm grasp over her own people."

'That's…'

I squinted my eyes a little, only to blink them a few times and look back at Makary when I noticed his stare.

"You had some sort of plan to deal with it, didn't you?" the man suggested, the work mode of his face already creating some hints of exhaustion at the bottom of his eyes.

"Yeah, as long as you will get me those shovels and uniforms when and where I need them."

I took a step forward and looked at the soldier.

"Can I connect from here? And if not, where's the nearest…."

"Over here," the soldier instantly turned on his heel and pointed at a sizeable tent at the opposite end of the clearing with an impressively high metal tower rising up right by its side only to reach quite a bit above even the tallest trees.

'To think they've set this up in the short few hours we were away,' I thought, perfectly sure this antenna wasn't in there when we went through this place on our way back to Earth.

Still, wasting no time, I picked up the pace and pulled Fay along, only for the rest of our group to soon follow in our steps.

By the time we approached the tent, a soldier came from the inside and stood aside, holding the cloth of the tent's entrance to let us pass. Taking a step inside, I quickly scanned my surroundings before taking just three more steps and grabbing the nearest radio piece that I saw connected to the plethora of various electric devices filling the tent.

I looked at the radio in my hand before moving my eyes over to the other soldier stationed here, grabbing his attention only to point with my eyes at the piece in my hand…

"Ah, I'm sorry sir, right away, sir!"

The relatively young soldier worked fast, plugging some cables, flipping some switches, and stroking some buttons before raising his fist towards me and giving me a thumbs-up.

"One, two, one, two, can you hear me, princess?"

"FINALLY!"

It wouldn't take a sage to figure out Etaria's state of mind just from the intensity of her shout alone.

And although all of the devices around me looked quite archaic, the voice transmission was crystal clear.

"Where in all hells have you been? Are you not done humiliating the empire? Is this damned surrender not enough?!"

Etaria's rant quickly grew in intensity, only showing how annoyed she was with our lack of timely arrival.

"It's quite the opposite, actually," I smiled to my own thoughts only to then catch Makary's intense stare. "We are late because we were busy getting you one hell of a gift of good faith."