71. The 6th Gate

Already used to the way the teleportation worked, Mack removed his hand from the giant door and looked around.

As expected another plaque was a few steps of him.

But the odd part was the terrain, this time, was snow.

Mack had the battlesuit below his clothes so he didnt feel the low temperature to be straining, but the cold wind was still able to cut his skin when passing by his face.

Mack lowered the hood to protect his eyes and moved to the plaque.

#You may think that you are unique and special, but you are only a snowflake in the winter, and the sun can melt them all#

#become the sun#

Mack moved his gaze from the plaque and looked around, as far as he could see there was only snow.

"Indeed. Unique as a snowflake, but as them, I am just one in the middle of so many"

'become the sun'

Mack thoughts run wild thinking of what his ancestor wished for him to accomplish in this gate.

'I bet this entire gate is just a long stretch of snow'

[You guessed right, you will only find snow here, nothing else]

'What is the temperature now?'

[ Its -89.2°C (-128.6°F) ]

'Damm cold. It feels like my soul is leaving my body when I breathe in here.'

[It will only get worst. This gate is designed to test your will but also your body resistance and your creativity]

'Do I receive any tips? Or there is a time limit or something?'

[The next gate is straight ahead. But even for your maximum speed it would take weeks to get there]

'I see. So I need to become the sun itself. otherwise i would not survive in this climate until i get there'

Mack thought about the charade, but it seemed pretty clear to him. He needed to devise a way to emit enought heat to get there.

But thinking again, none of the gates until now were simple. All of them had some hidden agenda.

In the last gate Mack lost his mind and went rampage but he knew he would not do something like that in normal times. He guessed that the last gate had some kind of neurotoxin somewhere that made him lost the last straw on his mind.

~sigh~

Mack puffed the heavy air that seemed to burn his lungs, looked to the sky but didn't saw a sun.

But thanks to his innate warlock ability to see in the dark he could see some white clouds and the snow falling.

As far as the eye could see there was only snow, nothing else.

His clothes had some resistance to cold and heat, but if he trusted what the Arcane said it would be a matter of time until he became a popsicle.

Right now the wind cuting his almost non exposed skin and the difficulty to breathe was what concerned him more.

Mack had almost his entire body covered with only the part close to the eyes exposed, and yeat, he wished to not open his eyes anymore. The mask purified the air but did not changed the temperature.

Thinking of all this, Mack started to walk.

It was better to keep moving, no matter what.

A few miles later, Mack noticed that the terrain was not flat. It seemed to be slowly becoming uphill. Not only that, but Mack felt as if more snow was falling.

The next day, Mack stoped and melt some water using one of his runespells and drank. Looking behind the direction he came, Mack was sure now. He was indeed climbing a long mountain made of a snow.

With no sense of time because there was no sun nor day/night shifts Mack had to estimate the time spend. And that in the long run would br cumbersome, he would become anxious and stressed because time was the only thing a human dont have.

If someone would ask Mack what the precious thing for him, it would be time.

Time can fix everything. And time can make everything possible.

And humans had a very short time to live.

Mack stopped thinking of useless problems and focused on what he could do.

A new runespell, to track time. Just like a watch would do.

In those three years in the 4th gate, Mack didn't stop practing runes a single day.

It had become his routine, he would spend a few hours by morning every single day.

To tell the true, for Mack it was fun. He indeed liked the way runes worked and all the process in devising and researching runespells.

Mack took his cold freezing dagger and a few minues later he had a new runespell in his body.

But instead of tracking the time using seconds Mack made a different approach.

He would track time using heart beats.

It was a odd method. But mack once heard about a theory that explained how the average lifespan of humans and other animals could be measured in heart beats instead of years. It was a very 'unorthodox' thinking but made sense to Mack, because if time was relative and the body reacted differently to different situations just like being in a rollacoaster could feel lile a eternity and sleepeing could feel like a few minutes, than Mack believed that he could also measure time using his own body 'sense of time'.

And just as expected, once he activated the runespell, Mack noticed something he had not paid attention in a long time.

His heart.

It was not beating as he expected. Mack counted in his head to be sure he didn't messed the runespell.

'5'

His heart took 5 seconds to beat one time.

"How is that even possible?"

Mack knew for sure that in average the heart beat rate for humans was between 60 bpms and 100 bpms while resting.

'But one each 5 seconds? this is as if i have a 12bpm. Is this because of the cold?'

Mack pondered for a second but dismissed the idea. He was not hibernating. He was walking and moving and thinking and did a runespell.

'Dont tell me.....Arcane, is it what im thinking?'

[Correct, no know intelligent beings live forever. Mages and alike live for so many years because their bodies evolved and became more 'perfect' and in that sense the organs work less and get longer lifespans. Just like your heart that is working less now.]

'Is that due to Essence manipulation?I mean.. in the mages case not mine'

[Part because of that and part because of high advanced medicine. Your home planet is a desert when compared to a single planet in the mage alliance, they have plants and minerals that can do miracles in the eyes of Earthlings]