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

"We did it," Claudy muttered once we slid onto the ground, quickly reaching the precipice beyond which the slope of the mountain took a turn and started to move down.

"WE FUCKING DID IT!"

Hearing the powerful scream coming from the man, I nearly turned around to cast a look.

In fact, if not for Fay reaching out and tapping my hand, I might've fallen to this desire!

But Claudy's celebration came way too soon. And the focus-demanding tasks that were still ahead of us were the reason why I couldn't even waste time sparing the man a single damn glance.

"Wait, why are we not sto…"

The hovercraft reached the edge of the flat part of the mountain surrounding the hole… And dove straight down.

And now that we were down and close to the ground, the closeness of the usual frame of our reference only made us feel our speed more.

'How are the readings…?'

I raised my eyes to the display, confirming the flickering numbers.

We were already moving faster than right before jumping off the mountain on the other side. Only by a tiny margin, but still.

"We need to go faster," ignoring Claudy's obvious confusion and rekindling terror, I pressed the stick down.

To my side, Fay had no other choice but to follow up on my decision, even if she didn't really understand it. Claudy was too scared of the speed at which we were moving down the mountain to think.

And I did my very best to focus on nothing but the challenges of keeping the maglev afloat in the air.

Find adventures at empire

Bit by bit, the ground moved below the ship's bottom. Be it a stretch of relatively flat land, a field full of sharp rocks, or an outright hole in the ground just of smaller proportions than the one we finally managed to cross… The hovercraft slid right above them all, with enough speed to simply skip over any and all obstacles.

Or so it could for as long as it took us to reach one of the many, steep descends. Parts of the mountain that were too vertical for the Maglev's hypermagnets to catch a proper grip on it.

And so, just like we did several times by now, I pushed the stick as far away as I could, pushing the maglev to its speed limit. With my hand on the power lever and Fay focused on aligning the hypermagnets to make the most of what was bound to follow, we reached the edge of a relatively flat terrain…

Only for me to pull the lever as far up as I could, springboarding us into the air while maintaining and even adding up to the speed we already gathered.

"Let it be over, let it be over, let it be over…'

In his seat, Claudy lost his will to even protest or whine, resolving himself to just silently sob away.

"Good news, the hard part is over," I announced out loud, distracting myself with the sights in hopes that maybe, just maybe, doing so would prevent this damned barrier from reading my thoughts and figuring out the two secrets that I kept both Fay and Claudy in dark about.

"Bad news, all that's left for us is to fall down."

If my earlier statement breathed some hope into Claudy's face, the words that followed only served to stab those hopes and his heart at the same time.

"Not nice."

As it turned out, my slight tease turned brutal enough even for Fay to react!

Still, with our hovercraft still rising up in the air, there was pretty much nothing for us to do.

For a few more moments, we simply enjoyed the ride before the hovercraft reached the peak of its trajectory and started to slowly lose altitude. But as our fall continued and our descent accelerated more and more, rather than relaxing, we all had to start tensing up.

"Come on guys, just one last push," I called out, trying my best to uphold the morale in this simple yet also crucial point.

We fell closer and closer to the ground, reaching twice as far down as we did during our last jump off the mountain's side.

'Now.'

Once again, I surrendered my actions to my gut, pressing the power supply lever back up and cushioning our descent.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

With the hypermagnets working on overdrive, our fall slowed down, all the way to the point where we were about to reach the maximal possible cruising attitude.

Before that happened, though, I pulled the lever down, allowing the maglev to fall down several meters before the distance between the ground and the hypermagnets decreased to the point it balanced out the gravitational pull of our craft's weight with the increased repelling force of the hypermagnets.

"Just a little bit more…" I kept talking out, despite knowing no one was free enough to listen to me.

And just like that, I repeated the process over and over again, all the way to the point where we depleted most of our attitude and slowed down to a crawl before coming to a complete stop.

"There, we are down," I reported out loud, resting down in my chair while, at the same time, releasing the lock on my straps.

Freed from the safety confinement method, I pushed my chest out as I stretched my hands to the side while yawing so hard my jaws actually started to hurt.

"Damn, it feels weird to have all of this stress, anticipation, and expectation wash down your soul," I then muttered, more in a self-reflection than in an attempt to strike up a conversation.

"It really does…" To my side, Fay already freed herself from the straps and allowed her ass to slide down all the way to the edge of her seat while lowering the backrest as far down as the manufacturer allowed, turning it from a comfortable seat into a quasi-comfortable bed.

Finally free to turn my head, I looked over at Claudy…

Only to see him perfectly frozen in his seat, his hands gripping his knees to the point the white of his knuckles started to show underneath his skin.

"It's all over, we are safe, man," I spoke out loud, not seeing any point in teasing the imperial supreme any further for no apparent reason.

And, contrary to what the empty look in the man's eyes indicated, my words somehow made it through whatever walls and barriers he hastily constructed around his mind to combat the terror of our rapid fall.

"W-what?" Clearly not fully out of his shocked and terrified state, Claudy slowly raised his eyes and looked up at my face.

"Touchdown, brother," I allowed a small smile on my lips as I reached out and placed my hand on the man's shoulder. "We've officially crossed to the other side of that goddamn barrier!"

Before the man could react, I turned around and approached the maglev's display, only to cast aside all of the numbers, ignored several alerts going off on how some actually crucial parts of the vehicle didn't endure my taking it to the limits all that well...

And looked outside.

I put all of us, the vehicle, the mission, and even the colonization effort at risk, all in an attempt to defeat one thing that I couldn't even see.

As I reached out for the control stick, gently turned the ship around, and raised my eyes back to the window to take a look at both the mountain and the barrier of silvery light of stairs far off into the distance, I couldn't stop a proper, fully-fledged smile from forming on my lips.

"We did it..." I muttered, my hands opening up only to then squeeze down into fists as I struggled to find a proper way to let my excitement out.

This time, I didn't hold my voice back, opting to roar with all my might while sparing no mind to etiquette or societal norms.

"WE FUCKING DID IT!"