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

'First the quests, now the stats…' I thought to myself in the short moment of break I allowed myself from the task of spotting the starlit zones. 'Just what the hell is going on with my system?!'

[Level: 250]

[Strength: 40]

[Agility: 40]

[Wisdom: 40]

[Intelligence: 40]

[Endurance: 40]

[Aura 258]

[Usable points: 0]

All the stats were exactly the same as when I brought them all the way up to the former maximum.

In other words, assuming the limit of my power grew exponentially with each rank as it happened so far, I boasted merely half of the strength that a supreme of my kind should be able to.

All my stats were capped at ten while I was a mere mortal. They went up to twenty when I became an ascender and then to forty upon becoming a promoted ascender.

'Assuming there's no step that everyone skips and the rate at which my limits grow remains the same, all my stats should be capped at eighty points each.'

I did the calculation for the unkempt time, making sure I didn't make some silly mistake somewhere along the line.

But the math was simple and straightforward.

Every realm that I've crossed would double my limits. And if such was the case for a supreme as well…n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Then why did my stats refuse to grow? Or what was even worse, the usable points that I could assign to my stats refused to grow too, as if their growth back when I first stepped into this mysterious place was but a memory implanted in my brain rather than what actually had happened.

'Hell, this really doesn't make any damn sense.'

I could feel the influence of the plain's pressure growing and affecting my aura weave. I could tell that I had grown stronger since the day I stepped into this accursed land, and yet…

'Maybe it's all but an illusion?' I instantaneously flared up so much Fay twitched, noticing it even while hyper-focused on driving us safely across the wilderness of the open plain.

After all, while it was pretty much flat… On a scale that applied to driveability, it wasn't all that flat whatsoever.

A huge boulder sitting atop the plain would mean nothing for the plain's general level of evenness but would be an obstacle Fay would have to actively avoid unless she wanted to roll the buggy over.

And as annoying as it could be, this rule applied to every unevenness of the ground, every hole, small hill, thicker bush, or literally any other potential obstacle.

With all of that in mind, it was no wonder Fay didn't dare to relax even for a second even when she was driving so relatively slow. And so, for her to notice my sudden upset…

"Don't worry, just a random thought," I spoke out before Fay could fully lose her focus, forcing her to bring the buggy to a stop.

Thankfully, thanks to my quick wit and noticing the change, I managed to calm Fay before she would slow down.

We had a lot of distance to cover in order to get to the left side of this overly massive spot of direct rays of starlight.

Yet, just like when I tried to leave the plains back during my first venture into it, the distance between us and the mountains in the distance didn't seem to shrink at all.

'Is it just an optical illusion of distant objects appearing to be much closer than they are in reality?' I considered the possibility, only for a long wrinkle to appear all over my forehead. 'Honestly, I wish that would be the case.'

If there was an opening between the massive mountains in the distance and the edge of the starlit zone, we could safely pass through. But if it was the plains confusing our perception of space or outright bending it…

'Yeah, there's no benefit to assuming either scenario,' I thought, giving Fay's stomach a quick rub before blinking my eyes a few times and giving our surroundings a quick, sweeping look.

Find your next read at empire

For now, no additional starlit zone blocked our path ahead. There were no other zones to our left, making the trip along the massive zone's edge pretty safe thus far.

And pretty safe it remained, all the way to the point where I finally realized that my earlier hopes were quite unfounded.

By the time we've reached the spot where the hills started to actually converge and turn into a singular row of ever-growing mountains, we have still yet to get past the starlit zone.

"Should we turn back?" Claudy suggested once Fay brought the buggy to a stop, all so I could share the news with everyone and receive their input on the situation without one hell of a danger of flipping the car we were in on some random, small obstacle Fay could miss when distracted.

"By now, there's no point. We are nearing the scheduled time for our return, so we would have to put it off for the next part of the trip," I quickly countered while shaking my head. Then, I took a quick glance at the clock on the buggy's dashboard before looking in the same direction we've traveled in for the last four hours.

'The space bending, the distances mismatching, the system not recognizing the influence of the light of stars upon my aura weave and core…'

I counted up just the most prominent of the inconsistencies that riddled this strange land. In reality, there were many more small points and issues that only arose when we entered into the plain but they didn't appear significant enough for me to even think about them.

"We still have two hours left, so how about we just keep going?" I suggested before looking out in the very direction I wanted us to go. "Who knows, maybe there will be a lucky pass through the mountains somewhere due west?"

As little as I trusted it, the onboard compass continued to claim that we were going west, even though it pretty much broke all the physics and math that I knew. For how else, if not by breaking the most basic rules of how maths worked, one could travel in a straight line while remaining parallel to the curvature of a massive circle?

In the end, given how little to no better choice we had, no voice of opposition arose to challenge my suggestion. And before we could even properly stretch our limbs out, we got ourselves back to our usual spots before resuming the travel…

Travel that only lasted for an additional hour, where one, extremely significant change forced us to tread a lot more carefully than before.

"Peter, can you see it?" Fay asked in what I could only consider as just another, extremely ordinary moment.

We weren't any closer to the actually massive mountains than we were before. And what was even worse, the edge of the starlit zone didn't seem to curve at all, turning into a straight line that barred us from using the easiest possible route for passing through this massive chain of oversized mountains.

"See what?" Weirded by how Fay would be the one to initiate a talk while driving, I looked out and stretched my vision as far as I could…

Only to fail to notice anything out of the ordinary.

"Don't look on the ground, look up," Fay suggested, even going as far as to lift one of her hands from the steering wheel and point out into the sky, pretty much in a line perfectly aligned with the direction we were going.

Following Fay's instructions, I looked up… Only to end up with the exact same result as before.

"What do your fox-like eyes see, Fay?" I asked, mimicking the legendary quote from a movie series that has long since earned the accolade of being the greatest movie ever filmed before the era of social unrest that brought an end to creativity and proved the author of the story behind the movie right in his quote of how evil cannot create anything, but only parody and destroy what good created.

"You seriously can't see it?" Fay, for the very first time since she first sat on my lap behind the wheel, turned her eyes away from the path without stopping the car.

"See what, dear?" More annoyed with myself than at Fay for her insistence, I tried again only to fail just as I did before.

There was nothing in this damn sky that was out of the ordinary!

"Look closer," Fay requested, fixing the position of her hand to point me out to what she was talking about again. "Just below the clouds."

Finally, with all the hints dropping and time passing, I managed to catch on to what Fay saw quite a while ago already. And it was also Fay to finally name her finding.

"It's smoke!"

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