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

"How is it going?" Claudy asked while gripping with all his strength at the belts that secured him on his seat.

The traumatic experience of flying at great speeds, something that I hardly even noticed due to the advancement of my rank and the perks that came with it, was enough to fully break the man.

I could guess that back on the solid ground, he would be back to his full power of a supreme that went through the ordeals of the starlight plain. But up in the sky, with nothing but the thin floor of the Maglev separating him from said ground?

'Human fears are quite weird, aren't they?'

Just like Isera proved by jumping out of the moving Maglev and easily landing down without any issue, Claudy didn't really have anything to fear from falling from our current height. What's more, we weren't even moving right now, so there should be fewer reasons for him to act out the way he did…Nôv(el)B\\jnn

And yet, there he was, strapped as tightly and securely to his seat as possible and having to force himself just to keep up the conversation.

"It's still within the expected development," I replied after scanning the situation outside through the scopes of the outside cameras of the hovercraft.

But things being within expectations didn't mean they were going well.

In truth, it was pretty much impossible to say whether we were in the green or looming into the red, with how the initiative was currently on Isera's part. And from high up in the sky, even if we could easily see her talking to some man…

No microphone in production could cut through all the noise below and decipher what the two of them were talking about.

"Still, to think that guy would try to attack us right after we stopped the charge of his enemies…" Fay muttered unhappily from her seat, staring down at where the two stood with quite a glare.

"That was outside of my expectations too," I admitted, giving the man a stare as I spoke. "But to be honest, I can't tell whether it was stupidity, bravery, or just an extremely cold and calculated decision."

Attacking someone who just helped you was outright stupid. Attacking someone who just wiped out a few hundred if not thousands of men in a single attack was nothing short of bravery.

But attacking someone wielding the power to change the fate of entire nations who so conveniently happened to appear during the country's greatest time of need and offered a solution that went beyond one's means to understand… Was a perfectly calculated opinion.

For what reason did the locals have to believe that the force we just used against their enemies wouldn't be, one day, turned at them?

"We came here out of nowhere, brought someone deemed dead, and are a beacon of change that shall shatter the status quo everyone got used to," I muttered silently, not even aware I was speaking out loud before I heard my own voice.

"If you look at it from this way," I gave Fay a slightly amused stare, "doing something as stupid as it is brave might be just the desperate measure he could employ to ensure the threat to his way of life would be stopped right away before it could gain momentum."

It felt strange to discuss my presence from this kind of perspective, but it was something necessary. A trick I've learned when trying to figure out how to grow stronger. Putting all of the aura stuff aside, altering how I perceived the world around me also allowed me to put myself better in the shoes of those I was interacting with.

A matter of practice, one could say, a practice I gained by fundamentally changing from looking at people into looking through what I thought those people saw with their own eyes.

A sudden ringing put a stop to my train of thought, causing a short glance I shared with Fay before the two of us and Claudy all looked at the source of the noise at the same time.

"Well, back to the job, I guess?" I muttered, registering a slightly conflicted look on Claudy's face while picking up the radio and accepting the call.

"Peter to Isera," I called out before putting on a small grin and, just for safety's sake, grasping at the control shaft. "Have you decided whether we are going to go all out killing each other or not?"

Some might call it risky to put the situation in this way, especially when the very same man who almost caused his ragged army to throw all they had at the Maglev was standing well within hearing distance of the call.

"You really are frank, I will give you that," Isera's voice came out from the device, only to be caught by the maglev's microphones and retransmitted louder and with artificially enhanced quality.

As it turned out, electromagnetic waves the radio was using to allow wireless communication tended to go haywire and distort quite heavily in the presence of active hypermagnets.

"I'm just a simple man who doesn't have the time to waste on empty small talk," I replied, twisting my lips in a slight cringe when I realized that very sentence was the very small talk I just claimed to dislike. "So, to cut the chatter short, what is it going to be?"

Right now, the defenders of the fortress had to be mindful of not only a massive army that nearly managed to steamroll through them… but also an unknown factor, something they never accounted for and didn't really know how to deal with.

As such, I couldn't really blame their general for swiftly coming to terms with what had to be done and preparing to give an order to an attack, as desperate as it might be.

But now that Isera managed to have some words with that general down there, she allowed them to turn the unknown into something strange and foreign.

In other words, they were still going to be wary of us, but there would be some room to discuss terms of potential cooperation.

"We would very much like if you didn't try to kill us all just like you killed the imperial legion…"

Even with the AI enhancer on, Isera's voice suddenly cut short.

"But to talk terms, I will need more time. It's not a discussion we can have in the heat of the moment."

When Isera's voice returned, she was already concluding the long message that was lost to the electromagnetic turbulence of the hypermagnets.

Still, with only this last sentence, I could tell the conclusion of the current debate. Enjoy exclusive chapters from empire

"Then, we are going to retreat somewhere out of sight and give you a few hours to discuss everything, reinforce your defenses, or whatever you need to do the most right now,"

I didn't really mind the delay. In fact, those few hours would allow me to take the trip back to the other side of the supposedly impassable land of the starlight plain. But…

"Just keep in mind, our offer of cooperation only stands for as long as you control this pass," I added, suddenly turning on my narrative so far that was aimed to pretty much agree to most of the stuff. "If we will be called to seal this place once this fortress falls…"

I allowed a short moment of silence to build up some tension with my counterparts down at the ground level.

"Let's just say that our fees will be quite a lot higher, then."

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