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

"Now that I think about it, I wonder if this dam has anything to do with the starlight plain."

There was no realistic answer for how the civilization that still utilized swords to construct a massive river damn like that.

The only explanation I initially came up with was how this damn used to be just a fraction of its size and whatever river it was supposed to stop simply dug the canyon in the mountain deeper than the foundations of the dam…

A conjecture that I rejected a moment later, with nothing more but a simple observation.
Your next chapter awaits on empire

The location of the sluice gates simply disproved that possibility.

On the side of the open plain, they started directly at ground level. It was on the side within the ravine where those massive tunnels within the dam would be above the ground… If not for one hell of a simple yet massive construction project that resulted in the fortifications the two forces were so desperately fighting for.

'Still, given the direction of the dam, wouldn't that make this entire, open area the insides of the water reservoir?' I thought, struggling to imagine any civilization creating something on that scale.

'But there are no mountains to the south. In fact, I can hardly imagine there being any to the west or the east either…' I thought, challenging my creativity to construct an explanation that would fit the criteria.

Yet, save for how this entire area, starting with the starlight plain's edge or even the starlight plain itself, could be depressing from every direction towards this exact entry-point into the mountains…

I couldn't come up with any other geographical explanation that would warrant the presence of a damn in this particular spot, especially with the direction it was aimed at.

"What if it's not a damn?" Fay suggested, perfectly aware of what I was thinking so hard about. "I mean, you are trying to force reality to explain questions that are only true within the range of assumptions you made," rather than scolding me, Fay pointed out a valid problem with my thinking.

She then shook her head and added, "How do you even know which direction is this dam aimed at?" Fay shook her head again. "I remember reading somewhere that the direction of the dam's curvature wasn't always the same…"

"The sedimentation problem, I've heard about it a bit but not enough to the point to even begin discerning whether it was a random load of bullshit or a real problem," I muttered in response, trying my best to recall whatever small bits of knowledge and hearsay I could remember.

The one thing I could tell for sure was that great modification to the naturally occurring forces always came at a cost of variables humanity failed to foresee.

The first dams humanity constructed faced the problem of sedimentation, the natural process of the river carrying over all sorts of dust and small particles… all of which would normally discharge at the sea or ocean outlet, creating the river deltas that humanity has long since learned to exploit the fertility off.

But what if someone smacked a massive, concrete barrier that obstructed the flow of water right in the middle of a powerful river?

With the slowing flow, the water loses its capability to carry stuff. As this process continues, the dust and sand that the river naturally carries to where the dam is suddenly can no longer ride the water and has to fall off somewhere.

That's why, the most efficient shapes of damn from an engineering point of view were often the best at not only withstanding the great pressure of the flowing water… But also accumulating all this sand and dust, turning it into the ever-growing issue of sediment backing up.

It was a problem that put all of the early human dams out of commission before they could live through a fraction of the time the materials they were made with were supposed to last.

But in this particular case?

The sluice gates were higher on the side of the open hills while lower on the side of the mountain's ravine. That alone implied which direction the water would flow. But, as if to mess with someone who has some but not all of the knowledge necessary, the dam's wall was directed in the opposite way to what I could expect.

Instead of curving out in the same direction the water would flow, it turned against this direction, creating several potential weak points, at its very middle starting where the pressure would be the greatest, to the corners where the walls of the dam merged into the mountain, with the steep angle of the connection making it extremely easy for that spot to erode.

'Looking at how the sluice gates are now at the ground level, this shape couldn't be designed to deal with the problem of sedimentation either.' I thought, before putting on a small smile. 'That, or whoever designed it fucked up, and the problem occurred anyway…'

"What are you guys even talking about?" Claudy called out all the way over from the other end of the ship, where he picked a spot between two of the warehousing, standing shelves to construct a temporary, private quarter for himself.

'Oh right, we were using our voices on and off, weren't we?'

With the most pressuring problems now out of the way, I just couldn't help but relax. Lowering my guard like that was the easiest recipe for me to switch between my voice and my bond with Fay as I talked with her.

"In short, it's a barrier that forces a flowing water to build up so that you can manage the rate of its flow or convert said flow into other forms of energy through the use of turbines," I gave the simplest and shortest explanation I could come up with.

Being no expert on the topic, this was pretty much the extent of my knowledge on it too, but it wasn't something I was going to happily advertise out to the world. In a sense, just like with most of the topics like that, I only knew enough to keep up a leisurely conversation.

"But what if it isn't?" Claudy replied too soon for him to properly understand my explanation.

Sure, it was nothing all that complicated… but Claudy, being the native of this world who has yet to visit mine, lacked the mental framework that allowed me to understand stuff like that with a few words.

He lacked the references, side knowledge, and general flow of modern logic to gain as much information from what I said as someone like me would.

Why did he decide to ignore my explanation, though? I couldn't really tell.

"What do you mean?"

Rather than raising up with my pride and assuming this imperial supreme had no first idea of what he was talking about, I decided to properly hear him out.

And it wasn't like during this period of idle wait, we had anything better to do than to freely converse like that.

"You said things hardly made sense. Or, at least, that's how you acted," Claudy mentioned, strangely calm for someone who appeared to have flying-related trauma while sitting in a hovercraft that rested only a few steps above the treetops of the small forest we found. "What if that's where you are right?"

Claudy shook his head.

"I can tell you assumed this thing to be the dam that you know the moment you've seen it, didn't you?" Claudy continued to dig upon this point, making it clear that he was going somewhere with it. "But what if this thing's purpose wasn't to… gain energy, as you mentioned, but to lose it instead?"

"But…"

"You asked how is that damn related to the starlight plain. Do you understand how that damned place works?" Claudy continued to increase pressure on me with his words.

Not that I minded it, given how he was clearly trying to lead me to something that I just couldn't grasp for now.

Still…

At Claudy's mention, I lazily summoned my system and took a sour look at my mission statement.

[Main mission: Starlight plain

- Easy route - Escape the Starlight plains //Completed//

- Advanced route - Survive on the Starlight plains

- Master route - Uncover the secret behind the Starlight plains

//Completing any route doesn't lock the ability to complete the others!//

//Rewards increase with the difficulty of the route//]

The last part before the comments on the mission stared me right in the face, proving Claudy's remark beyond any reasonable doubt.

If even my system was sure I had yet to understand the inner workings of the starlight plain, who was I to tell this divine work of aura art it was wrong?

"You don't understand how the starlight plain works," Claudy pretty much repeated his words, this time modulating his voice to turn them from a question into a statement. "You asked how those two might be related," Claudy continued to speak, dropping threads, trails for me to follow to arrive at the same conclusion he was harboring in his heart.

"So, if those two really are related, can you say with any degree of certainty you understand how the constituent parts of the starlight plains work?"

That…

I couldn't really agree with it.

I had no clue how to make a working nuclear device, but I knew enough trivia to try to understand the principles behind it. I was no nuclear or even rocket scientist, but I was more than capable of understanding separate bits of knowledge that made up the greater whole of nukes or rockets.

In simpler words, I couldn't make a firework, but I knew it would go boom when lit up.

"I see you still cannot agree with my point, so let me drive the last nail to the coffin of your confidence," Claudy sighed and shook his head, his exasperation turning into the medicine that allowed him to, at least temporarily, overcome his issue with flying.

"You said that those damns you were talking about were supposed to gather or store energy, right?"

Just like I didn't need to understand every last bit of nuclear science to get a gist of how nukes worked, Claudy didn't need to have the proper understanding of the dams if he heard enough to figure out their purpose.

Still…

I nodded my head to confirm Claudy's guess, growing ever more curious as to where his long rant-slash-lecture was aimed to land.

"Tell me, isn't the starlight plain a source of endless energy?"

I opened my mouth to reply, only I didn't really find the right words to reply.

Just the first thought about the question Claudy posed was enough to shut me up. And the more I leaned over it, the more correct and on-the-point it appeared to be.

Sure, I currently didn't have the means to manipulate massive amounts of aura at will or with the use of some autonomous technology… But without even a shred of doubt, while a different kind of energy to what I understood through this name, aura was, no matter how strange, still just a form of energy.

And from my own experiences I could tell this lethal and mind-damaging light of the stairs was a form of energy too, just much finer and harder to notice or grasp than aura.

'We might be lacking means to make use of that energy… but he is right, there's no damn point in building a massive water damn right next door to an equivalent to a whole damn array of nuclear plants.'

"Would you say this thing was aimed at exhausting the excessive energy, then?" I muttered, closing my eyes down and invoking the image of the massive piece of architecture that we kept talking about.

Thinking about it from this perspective allowed quite a lot more of the elements I had at hand to fit the greater picture.

It would explain the direction of the sluice gates, the reason why the dam was constructed to hold against the massive pressure of water from the wrong side…

And judging by the complete lack of water in the area or the obviously missing turbines from within the sluice gates that the locals simply would never spare, something went terribly wrong with this system. And it had to happen far enough in the past that there were no obvious, geological marks left out in the plain view.

"That…" I hesitated for a second, only to swallow my pride and nod my head. "That actually makes sense," I admitted before turning my head over and casting a short glance at the man before nodding my head to show proper respect. "Well thought."

Claudy's lips quivered a bit, showcasing me the mysterious, calm smile that managed to get me so curious about the man from when we met for the very first time.

'This is the Claudy I know,' I thought, somehow unable to push aside the memory of this serious and composed supremes shitting his mind's pants from the slight trill of speeding just a tiny little bit.'

"I know it's all but a conjecture that we construct out of guesses and guesses alone…" I muttered, turning my thoughts back to the topic, only to suddenly pull my eyebrows together. "Could those spots of the direct starlight be the result?"

Looking back, it was weird for this generally harsh place to be but a perfect one to train your mind to be littered with pretty much invisible spots capable of frying one's brain upon contact. It simply didn't add up, the same way it would make no sense to place lethal traps in the running course for the kids or put a generator smack-dab in the middle of a banquet hall.

But what if those weren't the features of the place designed by its creators, but the bugs caused by parts of the greater whole losing the battle against time?

This and all the other thoughts I had to cease, though, when a small ringing noise filled the insides of our hovercraft.

The time for small and pretty much random talk was over, for this call could only mean one thing on this side of the barrier, where no signals from the south could reach.

Isera was calling us back to the fortress.