Delayed Transfer

Mark prepared dinner for everyone since Milena was surprisingly still with Hamil and the others conducting the meeting regarding the use of the warp gate. He couldn’t believe that it was actually taking several hours. He replicated a special dish that came from his mother’s homeland called “Nilagang Baka” which was a beef soup with vegetables and whole corn. He then prepared some special dipping sauce which was soy sauce with chili and calamansi juice which was a type of lime fruit.

He also prepared several dishes like bowls of steamed white rice, fried dried fish which was also another specialty from his mother’s homeland called “Tuyo”, marinated beef cooked in soy sauce, garlic, and onion called “Bistek”, which was a bastardized term for beef steak, and crispy fried pork called “lechon kawali” with its special liver sauce.

Mark didn’t know if the kids would like the dishes and if they didn’t, he would just replicate the ones they wanted to eat. It would not bother him since he knew that some of the dishes that came from his mother’s homeland were unique and they were only delicious to him because of his memories.

Once everything was served, they waited for Milena for a bit but when it seemed like it would take a while for the meeting to conclude, Mark decided to start dinner without her so he called everyone to eat.

While they were eating, the kids were curious about the food and Mark was a bit glad that they didn’t reject them. Nedertu liked the food but since it was meat and fish, Mark knew that as long as it was meat and fish, the catman would like it although the others did say they liked them as well.

After dinner, Milena still hadn’t arrived so everyone decided to do their own thing. Mark and the kids watched the Disney animated film “Frozen” and after the movie concluded, he was a bit horrified to hear the twins singing the song “Let It Go”, even Liriel was humming the song. He remembered the horror that parents experienced when Frozen came out. The song became like a virus that wouldn’t disappear.

The twins then asked Mark to play the movie again the next day and even Liriel was looking at him expectantly so he just nodded. After that he prepared the kids for sleep then when the children retired, he waited for the meeting’s conclusion while reading a web novel on his phone in the living room.

After a couple more hours, Milena finally entered the RV together with Hamil.

“What took the meeting so long to conclude? Have you eaten yet?” Mark asked Milena and Hamil and when he saw them shake their head he served them food that everyone ate during dinner.

Hamil and Milena were busy eating so he didn’t disturb them and waited for them to finish. He just went back to reading his novel.

“So this is our preliminary plan,” Hamil said after they ate, and then the circus leader continued.

“We will adhere to your idea of charging a mana stone per person if they want to travel to our circus using the portal. Sixty percent of the mana stone profit would be taken by you, twenty to the circus, and twenty as tax to the government of the city where we would establish the warp gate. This is subject to change since we would still need to negotiate with the government. We will also allow the government of the city to assign guards to both sides for safety reasons and to appease the local government where we will establish the gates,” Hamil said.

“You will need to create a schedule for when you will allow customers to use the warp gate like for example an hour before the circus opens and an hour after the circus closes or something like that since every time the warp gate is used, it would consume my mana and I haven’t researched yet how to use another source of power to power up the warp gate,” Mark said.

“I see. We will create a detailed plan for the use of the warp gate but tomorrow, we will need to use the warp gate to go to Narcone and talk to the government there to check if they would allow us to use the warp gate. I’m sure that they would allow us to do so since they would also earn a lot of mana stones. We decided that the ones who will go there would be me, you, the elven sisters, Lorendo the magician, Dozon, Zenethor, and Nilfur Forgehammer,” Hamil said.

“I don’t want to go,” Mark said resolutely.

Hamil sighed and said that he didn’t need to go but he would need to authorize all those who would go to be able to operate the portal.

“Okay, I’ll teach everyone how to operate it tomorrow when everyone is ready to go back to Narcone. By the way, why is my cut so large? Isn’t unfair to you guys?” Mark asked.

“Actually the cut was just for mana stones and the reason that the cut was huge is because I told them that you’re not interested in gold coins so any earnings in coins would all go to the circus and the government. Besides, we’re earning enough from our cut from the theater and Yoda roller coaster as well as the earnings from our stall,” Milena said and Mark nodded his agreement.

The next day, Mark, Hamil, the elven sisters, Lorendo, Dozon, Zenethor, and Nilfur went to the place where they decided the warp gate would be established which was an open field beside the circus.

Before Mark left the RV though, he dispelled the warp gate that he created located inside his bedroom since he didn’t want to include his bedroom in the warp gate network.

Everyone was waiting for Mark to cast the warp gate spell and when he did, two trees sprung from the ground and the warp gate was formed between the trees connected by a branch. If the warp gate weren’t active, the trees would just look like part of the open field.

“Once the warp gate is constructed, anyone authorized by me which is currently all of you would be able to access and control the panel that would activate the warp gate. Hamil go ahead and touch the side of the gate,” Mark said and Hamil went to the tree that formed the warp gate.

When Hamil touched the tree on the left side of the warp gate, a control panel appeared. In the control panel, two buttons on the left were labeled as “open” and “close”. On the right side, there were two choices inside a rectangle which were labeled, Narcone Warp Gate and the other one was Drovan Town Warp Gate.

“Once you select the option of the warp gate you want to go to which in this case, the only option is Narcone, you can then touch the “open” option and the warp gate would activate. Now if any of you want to close the warp gate immediately just go ahead and touch the option that says “close”. If you don’t close the warp gate, it will automatically close on its own after ten minutes. Now you don’t need to worry if the warp gate would hurt anyone since if somebody were using it when it automatically closed, the user will just be pushed out of the gate without harming him or her.”

Everyone was looking at the warp gate and Mark in awe since the spell construct was truly one of the most powerful anyone had seen.