Agatha woke up with a dry mouth, blurry vision, and tired legs, which was very curious as she had drunk a lot during the night. So much so that they had emptied the jar Christie had on her nightstand.

  “Ugh…” She grunted as she fought against her sleepiness. The dirty-blond gi… no, the blonde – that was the hair Christie liked, after all – traced her gums and palate with her tongue. Everything was unbearably dry. She wet her lips a bit with saliva and smacked them together, lest she might cut them too. “Notes for the future, more water.”

  The petite lithorist remained looking at the wall until her wakefulness finally kicked in and she realized the current state of her clothing. Namely, none at all.

  “Talk about unfair,” Agatha muttered under her breath while she looked at her still sleeping girlfriend who was placidly resting and wearing her nightgown. A figment of imagination on the redhead’s bare state infiltrated her mind. That only made her blush even more than she already was. Which was a lot.

  With a groan, the lithorist popped her agate out of her necklace’s socket to have it pick up her nightgown that was lying on the ground, but before she even had a chance to chuck it, she realized how heavy it was. She might be using Control Compact, but the Control command only reduced the weight of the agate if she willed it.

  “Huh,” she first snorted then promptly she laughed maniacally. “Was I that stressed, Terráquea?” Agatha murmured aloud. “Well, if anything, I guess last night removed any stress I might have had or will have in the near future. How queer.”

  Her hijinks woke up Christie, which – if anything – was good because the light coming from the window betrayed the sun’s position, and it was looking quite high up.

  “Mmm?” Christie yawned melodically as she stretched her arms and then rubbed her eyes. “I would say good morning, but I fear I must first ask why you are making so much noise, mock sapphire.”

  “Well, morning is not quite the time, so I saved you from that shameful slip,” the blonde giggled. “Nothing, really. I just woke up and realized that my sapphire increased in Stratum.”

  The redhead blinked several times, her drowsiness vanishing at the speed of sound. “That is marvelous, Agatha!” Christie hugged her, but that wasn’t enough for Agatha, so she kissed also her. Mm, still a bit salty. “That is the Sixth Stratum already when most of our classmates still are reaching the Fourth!”

  “The Sixth Stratum… yeah!” Agatha hesitated before responding, and she could only hope that Christie hadn’t noticed that pause. Oh, earth. Oh, earth! The petite lithorist mentally panicked. Why haven’t I told her that I’m on the Seventh Stratum already! Why in the depths am I such a fractured moron?

  She almost puked on the spot. It was hard knowing that she was hiding such an important thing to her girlfriend, especially when she wasn’t feeling any paranoia. Wait… Why am I not feeling paranoia? Is it because I progressed a lot… or because I was asleep when the increase in Stratum happened? The last one certainly hit me like a fucking behemoth.

  If anything, Agatha felt… normal. Not empty, not sad, not anxious, not pessimistic. Just… normal.

  Which some would say that it was relatively bad after having experienced such a… breathtaking night, but normal was more than good enough for her. Normal wasn’t bad at all. Perhaps it was a bit sad to love normally instead of superlatively, but it still was infinitely better than loving as a sulking mess of a woman.

  “So, how much does the big sapphire weighs now? Is big even appropriate now for its epithet?”

  “Uhm, I do not know.” She really didn’t. Since reaching the original Sixth Stratum, she had always used Duplicate as the changes in the proportion of volume between her original sapphire and glass ball were very noticeable, so she couldn’t Compact her lone agate lest others noticed. Duplicating it was the only way.

  First, she checked where the other half of her agate was, and after using a quick Watch command, she was satisfied to find it on the tree where she had chucked it on the first day she arrived at the state. Now she felt way less paranoid than a couple of weeks ago, but she still decided to leave it there. Not that anything would happen. It weighed too much for a crow to steal it, and even if it managed to do so, the limits of her recalling range was absolute.

  Wherever that limit currently was at.

  “It should weigh around four kilograms,” six if I removed Duplicate, she kept that part to herself.

  “More like three-point-seventy-six kilograms, but yes, around that,” Christie smiled at her dorkily.

  “Why do you even ask if you know the answer with more precision than me?” Agatha pouted.

  “Because I love hearing your voice.” That instantly got a blush out of the blonde. “But yes, I do like to have confirmation whenever I can get it. Now remove the Compact command, I want to see your agate’s true size!”

  Not quite true… The lithorist mentally sulked before removing the Duplicate command. She still kept Control though, for obvious reasons.

  “Oh! That is quite big!” The redhead exclaimed in surprise.

  “Yoursarebigger,” Agatha reflexively muttered under her breath.

  “What?” Christie looked at her innocently, not having understood anything.

  “Nothing, nothing.” As a matter of fact, no, they were not bigger.

  “Your sapphire is getting scarily big however.”

  “I mean, it is nothing compared to your sea of stones.”

  “I do not believe anything is comparable to it, mock sapphire,” the redhead giggled. “But how wide is it now?”

  Agatha rolled her eyes because her girlfriend knew the exact answer, but she still pleased her with one. “Seven centimeters in radius, fourteen in diameter.”

  “It certainly looks bigger than that,” Christie said while she caressed the floating agate as if it were a pondering orb.

  Yes, they definitely are, Agatha’s eyes were on another type of orb. You know, fourteen centimeters aren’t actually that much, they only add twenty-eight centimeters to the chest size when you think about it…

  Last night had definitely… restructured her priorities.

  But even then, as a seamstress, Agatha was well aware that fourteen centimeters were a lot to add to one’s chest size. Especially considering her bust size was around eighty centimeters. Christie’s was way higher, but she cheated by virtue of her massive build; her under bust was already greater than Agatha’s top bust, after all.

  Agatha quickly recalled her agate and summoned it already compacted on her necklace before Christie realized where she was actually looking at.

  “Ehem,” the petite lithorist cleared her throat, “we should rise from bed already. Whether to get a bath or have breakfast.”

  “Both look equally appetizing at this moment, truth be told,” the tall lapiloquist stretched her arms once more and then stood up.

  Agatha reciprocated and also stood up, but the moment she took a step forward, her equilibrium failed her and she nearly fell out of the atrium. Fortunately, her reflexes were well-beyond the average person now. That only meant that she was able to awkwardly flail back to the mattress. All of that still in her birthday suit.

  “Something wrong, mock sapphire?”

  “Uhm,” she nervously giggled as she felt her face starting to boil. “My legs are trembling.”

  “Oh!” The vulpine smile on Christie’s face sent shivers down Agatha spine, her thoughts instantly bringing back to the previous night. “Perhaps you should rest a bit more. Or do you want me to carry you to the bathroom?” The redhead curled the biceps on her right arm to show her strength and the worst best part was how that muscle was also nearly as big as Agatha’s sapphire.

  Oh, my… She blinked several times before getting reminded of her sense of shame and common decency. “I… can carry myself to the bathroom at any point, thank you very much.” She manifested her necklace agate next to the bed in the shape of a massive Speed Control Anchor platform.

  “Oh, what a shame then…” As Christie walked to the bathroom alone, Agatha realized that she had lost a great opportunity, but considering the sore state of her legs…

  Perhaps that was for the best.

  ***

  A warm bath and a hearty breakfast-lunch did wonders for one’s state. Not even an hour later and Agatha already felt like a wholly different and reinvigorated person. She actually had far more energy than she had originally expected, so she went for a bit of running.

  Unlike Christie, who was a lapiloquist and physical exercise was the description of her work, Agatha only participated in the mandatory soldier drills. That was to say that she wasn’t out of shape in the slightest, but that also didn’t mean that she was exactly toned either. Stamina and flexibility had been her strengths always anyways, not her strength or speed.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  After working up a bit of sweat, that exact amount that refreshed you without making you gross and urging you to shower, Hasel made his appearance. The fact that she hadn’t seen him coming meant he had teleported with a Gate, but it was also partially scary that she hadn’t seen that gate.

  “Increase of Strata?” That was the first thing he said.

  “You really only need a glance, huh,” Agatha murmured while stretching a bit before his lesson started.

  “Too many years on the job, what can I say,” he shrugged. “They always talk about the might of the miners, but survival and jewelcrafting skills are equally important.”

  “Jewelcrafting?” The blonde bemusedly squinted at the black-haired man. Though as of late it had gained a more distinctive salt and pepper look.

  “Gem appraisal skills,” the miner clarified. “Agate appraisal skills if you want to get even more pedantic, Miss Malachite.”

  Agatha snorted at the needless formality. This was the first time that the man had called her by the surname, and while that should have come as intimidating coming from a miner, it was only amusing to her.

  “So… Gate command classes?” She asked.

  “Gate command classes,” he nodded.

  “Do we need anything special for this class?”

  “Not at all. It is just a single command,” Hasel explained. “The reason why most people refer to it as the most difficult command is because not only it has significantly more requirements than any other command, but also because it is a severely draining command. Even a step beyond hyper-active. Two characteristics that do not exactly merge with the fast-paced nature of lithorica.”

  “So we will be done in an hour?”

  “Or even less. But that is if you only want to learn the command. Do you not want to learn more… interesting applications?”

  “I do, I do,” she responded with barely contained excitement.

  “For starters, let us go over the command’s requirements,” he softly clapped and a platform of stone raised behind him to create the perfect sit. It was a bit jarring for Agatha to see it, as normally it was the tap of a foot that accompanied such movements; but at the same time, neither of those were mandatory, just mental aids. “Can you tell them which are they?”

  As she was incapable of lapiloquia, Agatha popped her lone agate out of its socket and used it as a platform to sit on by substituting Compact for Anchor. No need for Speed in this case.

  “Most obvious is the fact that it is the only command that requires two agates,” she started. “Then we have the thing that the Gates need to be made out of perfect spheres. And… that is about it? Two requirements? That is not much truth be told.”

  “Not quite,” Hasel swayed his head. “Two requirements are infinitely more when most commands require nothing. And even then, there are arguably two more requirements that are more important.”

  “Which those might be?” Agatha asked, unable to recall such requirement from René Dago’s classes.

  “First, size.” The moment the word came out of his mouth, the miner summoned two agates. One at its normal pebble-like size and the other the size of a door. “The utility of a Gate command is severely limited over its surface area. A small Gate is borderline useless and a big one can offer you many opportunities.”

  Agatha almost said something stupid by saying ‘What about shooting an agate through a Gate?’ only to realize that it wouldn’t be practical in the slightest. Why do so? You were still limited by your recalling range. And if you wanted to preternaturally change the agate’s trajectory, Speed Control already did that at a far cheaper cost and with way less preparation.

  “There is a saving grace here, however. Because of how the Gate command works, meanwhile the surface is perfectly spherical, you can make the agate as thin as you want without worrying about getting it fractured.”

  “How come?” She was acquainted with making lithic structures absurdly thin, but there was a limit before things started to lose cohesion with the Shape command or the structure of the agate itself.

  “How do I explain this…?” Hasel scratched his bearded chin in thought. It was way darker than his hair for the time being. “Just like how the Control command might get the properties of the agate in some series, something similar happens here. The Gate command trumps over everything and there is no… agate any longer. Only space. And like trying to cut water pouring from a faucet, breaking space itself is a foolish matter. So yes, the trick is making an agate as thin as physically possible to maximize its area.”

  “Alright…?” Agatha understood what he meant, but she couldn’t deny that this talk about space was weird. Well, the whole Gate command was weird. “What about the second hidden requirement?”

  “It is equally as obvious but far more annoying,” he groaned. “Placement. Gate commands can only take you to places where an agate has been placed. I guess we could add Range as another requirement, but that just depends on how far you want to get.”

  “Well…” The blonde lithorist wobbled her head from side to side in thought. “I have estimated that my innate recalling range is around one kilometer, so who knows how much it would be with Amplify Range.”

  While she normally chose to ignore the fact that her passive recalling range wasn’t that useful as her commanding range was significantly shorter, it was true that Amplify Range removed that limitation by creating its own commanding range. And Gate could too remove the limitation on the summoning range by sending agates through it. Mhmm… Unlimited ranges~ She mentally yearned the same way a starved person might think of a feast.

  “Not that extreme of a range, I am afraid. Distance accrues way too fast for any real travel, but it is still quite a significant baseline range for an agate in the Seventh Stratum.”

  Agatha’s blood instantly petrified, her thoughts forgotten.

  “W-what?” She mouthed hesitantly.

  Hasel squinted at her in confusion. “What what?”

  “Uh…” The petite lithorist softly pinched her teeth dubiously before talking again. “How… do you know that I am on the Seventh Stratum?”

  “I have known all this time?” He looked at her as if she was crazy, and perhaps she was. “I think I have stated several times by now that I am proficient at knowing these kind of things.”

  “Right, right…” Agatha fiddled with her fingers and giggled gingerly. “Uhm, you have not told that to anyone, have you?”

  “I cannot say that the subject has come up in any conversation so far. Why do you ask?”

  “I might have… not told anyone when I originally made it to the Sixth Stratum…” Or more correctly, actively hidden it.

  Hasel squinted at her again. “I do not know why you have done so,” he relaxed into a shrug, “but you are free to do what you please with your agates. Unless a superior explicitly asks you for your Strata, you have no duty to inform anyone about it.”

  Agatha was thankful that the man still remained soldier-minded even after that many years. She sighed in comfort. “Could you… not tell anyone here?” The implicit message being ‘not tell Christie’.

  “I can definitely do it, but I still do not know why you have this sudden wish for privacy.”

  Neither do I, Agatha chastised herself. Neither do I… All of this stupidity was born in a moment of weakness, and it felt very wrong to correct it now after this long.

  “Can we… er… get back to the class?”

  “Sure,” Hasel clapped with his normal potency. “As you have seen, Gate has a handful of annoying requirements. Fortunately for you, however, one of them does not really affect you.”

  “The shape requirement?” She guessed.

  “The shape requirement,” he nodded. “Most people – myself included – need to make a lot of effort to get the initial perfect spherical shape. You, however, already have it by default. Perhaps it will not save that much time compared to a trained Gate command user, but you will have skipped that training in the first place, which is always a plus. Let us start trying to use the command so I can show you some interesting applications.”

  Hasel had her scale her ‘Sixth’ Stratum agate up to a decent size and then duplicated it. This had the advantage of only needing to perform one Shape command and not having to wonder if that size of both agates was equal.

  “I have constantly been told that the Duplicate command is useless, but why do no other lithorist use it for the Gate command?” She asked after having produced two identical floating orbs the size of a coffee table. Truth be told, she could have gone way bigger. “It seems like the smartest choice considering the command does not scale with quality, or any property for that scale.”

  “You obviate the important point that most people’s agates are rather small,” Hasel chuckled and summoned an agate the size of an apple. “This one is my biggest one and it is pathetic compared to yours. But even then, there is also the issue how agates scale themselves when they increase in Strata. They might increase in quality or in size. Perhaps both. I never liked the whole size is a quality aspect. So most people either have poor big agates or small nice agates. It is almost like yours was perfectly made to be used for the Gate command. But enough rambling, try using the command.”

  She had seen several people use the exotic command now and also had crossed those Gates herself, but Agatha found some difficulties giving the command to her agates. It was an… interesting development. It wasn’t like the command refused to stick to her enlarged sapphires, but rather, it was as if it needed more support points. Like a fabric that hadn’t been embroidered correctly and needed more stitches.

  Hmm, this is definitely a complex command. Agatha had not yet failed her first attempt, but it was very weird for her to take this much time and thought to need to succeed at one. She allowed herself to take a deep breath and give it the command to both agates again.

  Gate.

  And space was connected.

  Her Gates no different in any shape or manner to every other Gate she had seen. That’s what a buttload of requirements do to originality. They were the normal spherical windows to another place with light gently distorted on the surface. Though because they were placed next to one another, they did this weird thing that mirrors did when put before one another and infinitely reflected light.

  “Oof, that is definitely a punch to the head,” Agatha grabbed her head as she now felt as if someone had hit her with a glass bottle. If anything, that analogy was perfect because the shock certainly did more than the damage of the impact itself. After a moment it only felt like a very exhausting series, just that in a single command.

  “People do not maintain Gates opened for a reason,” Hasel grinned. “Remember to lock them too when you leave home.”

  The azure-eyed seamstress groaned at his dad humor. “So what about the tricks you told me?”

  “Truth be told,” the patriarch groaned and stood up from his lithic seat, “I only have one trick. It is quite useful, but unfortunately just that one. But I also have a party trick, which some would say it is even more interesting.”

  “I think I might regret asking, but… what is that party trick?”

  “Put the Gates on top of the other. Leave a good gap between them.”

  Agatha was actually surprised to find out that she could use Control on her agates after the Gate command was active. She had expected them to turn unresponsive as she had never seen anyone move them. That opened a lot of possibilities. Like throwing a massive Gate at someone with Speed and leaving them stranded in the middle of nowhere. But… I guess at that point you are just better shooting them. Tactical kidnapping sounds very funny though. Extremely funny, actually.

  “Nice,” Hasel added after she placed the decently-sized Gates atop of one another. One near to the ground and the other a meter away, the whole contraption taking almost three meters of height in total.

  “So why have you made me do this? I could already see the repeating light if that was the case,” Agatha crossed her arms. A bit of headache was mounting from having two Gates opened. The infinite light reflection like those of mirrors definitely didn’t help either.

  “That is an interesting fact, but not as much as… this,” the miner squatted and grabbed a pebble from the ground, then he placed it at the middle point between the two linked windows of space.

  And the pebble… stayed on place.

  The petite lithorist squinted. “What is happening?”

  “Well, space is special,” Hasel chuckled as if he had just said the world’s funniest joke. Some kind of dad humor too parental for Agatha to understand. “People expect that when you send something in free fall through a Gate and into another one that it will keep accelerating infinitely, or well, at least until it reaches its terminal velocity. But that thought is wrong! Gates do not just teleport people, air, and light, but everything. And guess what is included in that everything?”

  Agatha tried to give it a thought, but she was just perplexed by the floating pebble. Floating agates? Sure, average Monday. But floating pebbles? That was insanity.

  “Gravity, Agatha. Gravity,” the vulpine man grinned. “Normally people do not create Gates one next to the other, but if one were to do so, they would just find out like you that when you have two local sources of gravity, they tend attract each other and they create this point of mutual attraction where it looks like there is no gravity at all!”

  “Oh…” That was all she managed to say. Out of all the things she expected of the Gate command, that certainly wasn’t on the list. “Space is indeed special, huh.”

  Patreon to support me and read 20 chapters ahead of time!