Chapter 106: Portal Express: Next Stop, Istanbul!

Eren didn’t use the Dungeon Heart Fragment.

He stood in the living room with both hands pressed against the air in front of him and pulled mana from his own pool. All 710 of it drained in two seconds and the familiar tingling started behind his ribs.

But this time he wasn’t thinking about his old bathroom or the cracked mirror or the door that started everything..

He was imagining the downstairs hallway. The wooden staircase with the creaky third step. The front door with three deadbolts his father installed after a break-in scare four years ago. The living room where his mother used to watch Turkish soap operas until midnight.

A different room. Same house. Different floor.

The portal flickered for a split second like it couldn’t decide what to show. Then the image locked and Eren saw his parents’ ground floor through the opening, dusty furniture and closed curtains and all.

[Door Master has advanced to Level 9]

[Portal Duration multiplier: x1.5]

[Estimated open time at current mana expenditure: 10 seconds]

From Level 7 to Level 9 in one shot? Just because I aimed at a different room?

Rosa was already moving before Eren could process the notification. She grabbed Mel’s arm with one hand and Nimbo’s collar with the other and shoved both of them toward the portal like a kindergarten teacher herding kids through a fire exit.

Mel’s eyes went wide as she stumbled through. Nimbo dropped his shield on this side and scrambled after his sister. Rabbu-i walked through last with a calm that didn’t match the situation at all, her leaf-outfit barely qualifying as clothing in any universe.

Eren counted the seconds in his head. Seven left. “Rosa, keep them inside. Teach them the basics before evening. Don’t let Mel touch anything electrical, don’t let Nimbo open the front door and for the love of God keep Rabbu-i from walking outside dressed like that.”

Rosa grabbed the edge of the portal frame like she could physically hold it open. “How many more are you sending tonight?”

“Ten. The oldest ones. Be ready.”

The portal snapped shut and his mana pool read zero.

Ten seconds. My 710 mana should’ve given seven or eight between universes but the 1.5 multiplier from Level 9 stretched it. Good to know..

..

The south barricade needed three more hours of work.

Eren hauled dark pinewood logs two at a time on his shoulders while Toris worked the rope bindings at the joints. The afternoon sun was hot enough to make his bare back sweat but his Endurance stat burned through the fatigue before it could build up.

Toris pulled a hand-rolled herbal cigarette from behind his ear and lit it with one of the Earth lighters he’d claimed the first day Eren brought them over. He took a long drag and offered it.

Eren took it. The smoke was earthy and sweet with a burn that sat in the back of his throat without hurting. He’d never smoked back on Earth but these herbal things weren’t tobacco, more like a medicinal tea leaf that Oldir’s crew had been rolling for decades.

“We’ve been trying to grow these closer to the village for years.” Toris leaned against a finished section of the wall. “Damn plant grows anywhere in the deep forest but the second you put it within five hundred meters of the totem it shrivels up and dies.”

Eren handed the cigarette back. “Temperature? Humidity?”

Toris shook his head and blew smoke through his nose. “Magical plants don’t care about that stuff. Their needs are connected to mana flow and whatever weird spiritual conditions they evolved with. Most of the rules are stupid.” He tapped the ash off the end. “You know the big fruit tree in the eastern orchard? The one with the red bark?”

“The mango-honey thing?”

“Yeah that one. The damn tree has its own mana cycle tied to sound vibrations. If nobody talks to it for two hours straight its mana circulation reverses and starts rotting the wood from inside out.” Toris looked genuinely annoyed about this. “Basically tries to kill itself if it gets lonely. And because that single old tree controls the mana distribution to the entire orchard, if it dies we lose every fruit-bearing plant in the east. So the old folk take shifts going out there every day to have conversations with a tree.”

He took another drag and shrugged. “Kelion brings wine and sits under it for hours. Pretty sure he’s been talking to that tree longer than he’s talked to any woman.”

A suicidal tree with depression and mana circulation problems. This world gets weirder every day.

“And the smoking plant?”

“Same category of nonsense but worse. We’ve tried every spot around the village, every soil type, every water schedule. Perfect conditions and the thing still dies within a week.” Toris sucked on the cigarette like it was personal. “If we could figure out what it wants we’d have the whole village supplied but right now Oldir has to hike three hours into the forest every month to harvest wild ones.”

Eren had zero useful ideas about magical plant psychology. His intelligence stat helped him think faster but it didn’t give him knowledge he never had. Magical botany wasn’t covered in his high school curriculum back in Istanbul.

They finished the last section of the south wall around four in the afternoon. Eren stepped back and looked at the full perimeter. Dark pinewood barricades on all four sides, each one chest-height for an average elf and reinforced with rope and packed dirt.

Wouldn’t stop an orc charge for more than ten seconds. But it’s better than nothing.

He walked toward the village center and pulled up his system panel.

SKILLS:

1- Door Master – Level 9 – First Evolution League

Portal duration now scaled at 1.5 times the base for inner-universe travel and 1.2 times for cross-universe trips. The 1.2 multiplier was new, which meant his 710 mana gave roughly 8.5 seconds to Earth instead of 7.

But the real discovery wasn’t the numbers. The skill had been stuck at Level 7 for over a week of daily use and one creative variation jumped it two levels in a single cast. The system didn’t just care about repetition. It cared about flexibility, about using skills in ways they hadn’t been used before.

If I opened a portal to a moving target or a place I could only imagine without having visited, would it jump again?

He filed that away for later. Door Master was at Level 9 out of 9 in the First Evolution League. One more push and it would evolve to Second League where the whole skill might transform.

If Second League doesn’t drain my entire mana pool I can finally travel without being stranded. That’s the dream.

..

Evening came and Eren’s mana pool was almost full again.

He activated Door Master and the portal opened. Rosa’s face appeared immediately, red-cheeked and stressed.

“Mel figured out the TV remote.” Rosa’s voice was the specific kind of controlled that meant things had gone sideways but not fatally. “She’s been watching a cooking show for three hours and won’t stop pointing at the screen asking why humans put cream on everything.”

“Is that a problem?”

“The problem is Rabbu-i found your father’s photo albums and she’s been comparing elf bodies to human bodies out loud. Your mother called twice.”

Before Eren could respond Rosa shoved a large cardboard box through the portal with both hands. Two smaller bags followed, kicked through with her foot.

“Walkie-talkies in the big box along with three flashlights and extra batteries.” She wiped her forehead. “And I bought a drone. Cheapest one with a decent camera I could find.”

Eren stared at the box. “You spent my sav-”

“You told me to buy one!”

“I told you to check prices!”

“I checked them and then I bought the cheapest option. You’re welcome.” Rosa pulled a small folded note from her pocket and flicked it through the portal. It landed on the box. “Read that later.”

The portal was losing stability. “The old ones are coming next portal,” Eren said. “Two minutes.”

He let the portal close, his mana hitting zero. He picked up Rosa’s note and unfolded it. Her handwriting was small and neat, squeezed onto a torn piece of notebook paper.

“Bana borçlusun, hesabına yazıyorum.. ;)”

“You owe me, putting it on your tab.. ;)”

He laughed because it worked on two levels and Rosa definitely meant both. The flirty wink and the money dig wrapped together in one sentence, that was peak Rosa. Three years of dating and she still made him grin like an idiot with a sticky note.

The Dungeon Heart Fragment was warm in his pocket. He pulled it out and channeled. Five minutes and his pool was back to functional levels.

He opened the portal again.

Ten elderly elves were lined up behind him in the village center. Walking sticks, torn robes showing way too much wrinkled elf skin, white and silver hair going in every direction. Kelion had personally selected them because they were either too frail to fight or too valuable to lose.

Eren spotted Mulan at the back of the line. Barely five feet tall with white hair knotted on top of her head and a walking staff taller than she was.

“Everyone through. Don’t stop walking until you’re on the other side.”

The first five shuffled across with the slow determination of old people crossing a busy street. The sixth and seventh went together holding each other’s arms. Eight seconds left. The eighth and ninth went through with Toris physically pushing the ninth one’s back.

Mulan was standing at the portal edge staring through at the Earth interior with her mouth open.

“Mulan, we don’t have time for-”

She turned to him with pure academic curiosity on her face. “Is that a different universe’s dwelling? The wall material is-”

Four seconds.

Eren grabbed the tiny old woman around the waist and lifted her off the ground. “Mel, catch!”

He threw Mulan through the portal like a very fragile and very angry basketball.

The last thing he heard before the portal snapped shut was Mel screaming, several old elves laughing and Mulan’s voice cutting through all of it with a curse so elaborate it would’ve made a sailor cry.

I think she called me something about my mother and a donkey. Didn’t catch the middle part.

Eren was proud to send real elves to Earth by the way. He chuckled for a few seconds.

Tolkien would be happy if he would know one day real elves was sent to Earth. Even if they can curse and quite nudity lovers…

Emily was waiting at the edge of the village with her katana on her back.

“You’re going to their camp.” Not a question.

“I need to find it first.” He picked up both kobold scimitars from the weapon rack and slung a bag over his shoulder. The drone box was inside along with the spare battery Rosa had packed.

Griks was sitting on the ground near the wolves with her bad leg stretched out. She looked up at Eren with those big reptilian eyes.

“You’re coming too. I need someone who knows their patrol patterns.”

Emily stepped forward and her hand caught the front of his shirt. She pulled him down and kissed him with her whole mouth, her free hand going to the back of his neck while her tongue pushed past his teeth. He let a tiny fraction of his charisma bleed through the Love Love Love passive and Emily’s pointed ears turned bright red as her knees went soft.

He caught her waist and whispered against her ear while his lips brushed the tip. “I’ll be back before midnight silly.”

Emily’s face was flushed from her cheeks to her collarbones. The murderous look she usually wore when he was about to do something dangerous had been completely replaced by something dazed and warm.

She tried to hand him her katana but Eren was already running with Griks tucked under his arm like a scaly football.

She looked so damn cute with red ears. I almost turned around and stayed home.

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