Reidar sat back down inside the shelter. The ash storm outside continued to howl, but he wasn’t paying attention to it anymore.

<Focus on what you know.>

He pulled up the memory of Mara’s last known position, recalling the teleportation circle she had used, along with the chalk marks, the minerals, and the way the light had wrapped around her before she vanished.

Of course, that hadn’t been a world-opening portal since it was too small and simple; instead, it was merely a jump to move between locations on the same planet, which was useful for escaping Reidar’s surveillance but useless for getting home.

This meant Mara still needed to build the real thing—a portal capable of connecting two worlds—since that kind of magic did not run on mere wishes and willpower.

Reidar had seen enough magic circles to understand the basics, recalling the one in the valley outside Creamont, the one Silas had tried to activate with the Mana Siphoning circle in Creamont, and the one Mara herself had opened at the Church outpost to trap him here.

He realized they all had a common prerequisite: specific materials. Portals required pure and stable conductors that could channel and hold massive amounts of mana without melting or shattering. They needed catalysts, usually sourced from monster parts like hearts, cores, and bones, because the stronger the monster was, the better the catalyst would be.

Besides, they needed a power source that involved a ridiculous amount of mana being funneled into the circle all at once.

On Earth, the Church had used people and various materials to funnel that energy, but regardless of the method, the energy requirements were brutal.

As Reidar thought about the area, he realized there was nothing here that worked aside from monsters, and a cavern in the badlands wouldn’t offer what Mara needed either—just rock and more rock—which meant she had a problem.

Unlike on Earth, where the Church could have supplied her with everything she needed through their warehouses, hunter teams, and infrastructure, here Mara had nothing; she was alone, stranded on a hostile planet with no backup and no supply lines, just like him.

<So where does she get the materials?>

Reidar stood and began pacing inside the narrow shelter.

<Option one: hunt for them herself.>

Reidar almost laughed at the thought because, while Mara was at level 368 and considered strong by Earth standards, on this planet she was simply prey.

Since the weakest monsters here were in the 480s and the stronger ones pushed 600 or higher, she couldn’t hunt anything without getting killed unless she got lucky and found something injured or dying.

Even then, harvesting monster parts required time and tools, meaning that one mistake would attract every predator in the area.

<No, since hunting isn’t possible for her solo, we must go to option two and find materials that were already processed.>

Reidar stopped pacing as he realized that was the solution.

Because this planet had gone through an apocalypse, Reidar’s System interface lacked regional data—information he couldn’t even buy since there was no vendor around—which suggested that the Allied Worlds had either failed to save this place or never tried, but either way, the catastrophe had run its course here.

This meant there had been a civilization before the monsters came, made of cities, towns, and settlements where the inhabitants had built structures, forged metal, and created items.

<And if those places still exist, they must surely be ruins by now.>

For them, ruins meant salvage in the form of metal from buildings, tools, weapons, and perhaps even enchanted items or stored mana crystals if the civilization had been advanced enough.

Since ruins also meant monster lairs and old cities would be crawling with them, Mara would be able to find everything she needed.

Mara wouldn’t need to hunt because she only needed to scavenge, a realization that caused a spark of clarity to cut through the fog of exhaustion in Reidar’s mind.

<That is exactly what she is doing; she is looking for ruins, which explains why I couldn’t find her, as she wasn’t in the area to begin with.>

It made perfect sense because Mara was smart, and after spending a week on this planet just like him, she would have come to the same conclusions: that while she couldn’t hunt or call for help, she could search for the remnants of whatever came before.

If she found a ruin big enough to contain the materials she needed, she would hole up there and start building her portal.

Reidar turned to look at his Sky-Hunters, realizing that although they were spread across hundreds of miles, they were searching for the wrong thing since they were looking for a person instead of structures.

When he connected to the nearest Sky-Hunter, the view through its eyes revealed the badlands stretching without end, with natural formations everywhere. However, he didn’t need anything natural anymore; instead; he needed indicators like straight lines, right angles, and patterns that didn’t exist in nature.

Reidar pulled back from the connection and opened his mental link to all his active Sky-Hunters at once, finding that there were maybe three hundred of them still searching, scattered across the regions he’d already covered.

“I have new orders,” he said. “Start searching for structures and cleared areas.”

The Sky-Hunters responded with chirps and shifted their flight patterns, flying lower to focus on the terrain itself rather than searching for moving targets. Afterward, Reidar sat down and pulled up the mental map he’d been building, noting that although the fog of war covered most of the planet, he had a rough sense of the geography, at least for this area.

The map showed the volcanic region where he’d arrived, the badlands where he currently was, and darker smudges beyond that, which suggested different biomes like forests, plains, or something else entirely.

If a civilization had existed here, it would have needed a suitable place to build, and it wouldn’t have chosen the volcanic zone because it was too hot, unstable, and incapable of sustaining growth.

While the badlands were a possibility, they remained an unlikely choice due to low visibility, difficult terrain, and a lack of water, implying that the ruins were probably farther out in the regions he hadn’t explored yet.

<Or maybe the badlands weren’t badlands before…>

After checking his mana reserves and seeing they were still high, Reidar decided he could afford to push his scouts further out. Unfortunately, until the storm of ash subsided, he couldn’t send out more, so the ones he already summoned had to be careful.

Reidar leaned back against the rock wall and closed his eyes. His body screamed for sleep, but his mind was too active now. Finally, he had a clear target.

<I wonder how long will it take her to find ruins where all the materials she needs are there.>

Since she faced the same challenges he did, such as poor visibility, dangerous monsters, and a world that was too big to search easily, he doubted it would be soon.

However, Mara had a seven-day head start because she had been searching for ruins while Reidar had been wasting time trying to find her.

If she had already found a place, she might be building the portal right now. Reidar’s jaw tightened because he knew he couldn’t lose this race.

If Mara opened her portal and left before he reached her, he would die on this planet because he had no other way to get home.

He knew the environment would kill him eventually, whether from exhaustion, running out of food in a few years, or getting attacked by monsters while he slept.

He opened his eyes and looked at the ash storm outside, noticing that the wind was slowing down and the worst part of the storm had finally passed.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep