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

When I first heard Leon's suggestion for testing how both I would fare against his power armors and how his power armors would fare against someone on my level, I expected the entire thing to have some hiccups, but generally go quite smoothly and finish early.

In the first part, I was right on the money.

The small troubles started when Leon suddenly realized that those car-sized steel boxes were a bit too heavy for even all of his henchmen to move off the shelf. Still, with just the slight delay necessary for his men to rush around the warehouse to find a heavy-duty forklift, things continued quite smoothly.

Still, it was the second part of the entire event finishing quickly I couldn't be any further from the truth.

"Shit, this system is so ancient I can hardly make any sense of it!"

A man, halfway buried within the lower half of the suit continued to tap away on a small pad while making all sorts of faces.

If I didn't know what he was actually doing, I would be quite easy to convince it was either some sort of weird ritual or a kinky fetish only IT guys could comprehend.

"This is really taking a lot longer than I thought," Makary muttered with a dissatisfied grimace on his face.

"Would you rather have us fight for real?" Leon countered, equally as dissatisfied as Makary.

Makary opened up his mouth but never got to say anything to Leon's riposte.

After all, it was our shared decision not to make this into a real fight but merely a set of tests that would allow us to gauge just how good one would fare about the other.

And so, rather than just going at it as our ancestors would in our current situation, we had two of Leon's henchmen code away while they did their best to dissect and castrate the battle modules of the power suits code.

"I've got it!"

Only about an hour into the process, a man climbed up from the upper part of the suit suspended on the forklift's raised for and the edge of the steel box the suit originally came from.

"And that means…?" Hurrying to the man, I asked as soon as I reached close enough to see the details of his face.

"I've blocked the ammo feeds into the shoulder and waist guns. They will work as always, but with no ammo…" the middle-aged man grinned as he looked at me, "they won't shoot."

"That means we are ready?" I asked, eager to get this shit over with.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

Before going through the gate, I was already annoyed at how Fay's extremely hard work at creating a love nest for us to enjoy each other had to be put on the backburner. But with how things were going, by the time we would return, there would be hardly any time for us to do so before the new day would start and with it, a whole load of new duties and responsibilities.

"It won't shoot… but it can still crush stones with its grip," the man warned. "So, as long as you only fight at a distance, things should be alright."

Hearing those news, I turned over and looked at Leon and Makary.

Being the VIPs for life, they couldn't be bothered to run ahead as I did and only got the message once I waved at them.

"Peter," Fay's whisper reached my ear a mere moment before she appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, by my side.

"What's up?" I asked, turning to the girl and instinctively reaching out with my hand for her waist and pulling her closer.

"…" Fay snuggled up to my side for a bit, pressing her forehead against my shoulder.

"Just be careful, m'kay?" she pleaded in a whisper so faint I couldn't even be sure if I didn't just imagine her saying that.

"Having you worry about me feels great," I admitted while leaning my head down and to the side in an attempt to take a peek at her face. "But I will try to avoid doing anything that could actually make you worried."

For a moment, we simply enjoyed the closeness of each other.

"Everything ready?" Leon appeared by our side a mere moment later, with two more forklifts carrying the bottom part of the power suit behind him.

"Pretty much, yeah," I replied, dissatisfied with his unfortunate timing.

I knew our cooperation with Leon was necessary. But whenever his demands came at a cost of time, the one resource we so severely lacked, I couldn't help but keep recalculating whether his help was actually worth its cost.

"Good. Let's do this, then!"

Leon couldn't be bothered to run around the place. His standing in the city simply disallowed him from doing something so… peasant-like. And yet, when it came to him climbing into the bottom of his power suit, he appeared like an overly excited kid.

A moment later, all three forklifts that his men found within the warehouse worked together to bring the upper half of the suit up into the air before slowly, carefully lowering it onto Leon.

The latches clicked when the two parts connected. Yet, rather than moving right away, Leon obediently followed the procedure and gave his suit enough time for all the systems to properly connect.

The hydraulic flows of both halves of the suit soon united, spreading the power of the powerful engines mounted on the suit's back throughout the entire armor.

In the end, it took nearly ten minutes for the power-suit to fully power up.

'So it's not something we could use in an emergency,' I thought, already drafting plans for how this piece of equipment could be used on the other side of the gate.

Thankfully, with all the technology we were rushing to pump into the other world, there was little to no possibility for anyone taking our camp by surprise. And if we ever ventured outside of it… the fuel-hungry engines of the suit would make it into nothing more but extremely heavy and unhandy baggage.

A weapon to be used once and only once before we would be likely forced to discard it and accept the overwhelming loss of just how insanely expensive this piece of technology was.

'It was designed for modern wars, not for some squabbles with sword-wielding knights,' I thought, twitching slightly when Leon's suit finally completed the entire booting-up protocol.

The engines on the suit's back revved up, pumping the hydraulic fluid faster and faster throughout its movement systems. And when Leon took a first step…

It felt as if the entire underground warehouse shook in its foundations.

"Are you ready?" Leon's voice came out from a tiny speaker hidden somewhere within his bulky armor.

"What test do we start with?" I asked in a loud voice, worried this damn suit would make it hard for Leon to hear me.

"Let's see if I can track your movements," Leon suggested, raising the suit's arm the size of a tank's barrel.

There was a neu-machine gun mounted below each of the suit's arms. And the very moment Leon started to raise his hand towards me, the total of its eight barrels started to spin faster and faster.

'If this thing shoots, I might be in real danger,' I thought while gulping my saliva down and pushing Fay out of the way of a potential danger.

Sure, the ammo feeds might be jammed in the suit's OS… but who knew what kind of contingency the suit's designers made against someone meddling with its systems?

"Just in case, try not to shoot," I suggested out loud while stretching my hands out to the side and jumping in place to get my legs warmed up and ready for the rush. "It's better to be safe than sorry."

"Worry not," Leon's voice came out from the suit's speaker again. "I've already plugged my pad into it, so I will be able to track whether or not I can even align the sights with you."

I took a deep breath and looked around, scanning every last detail of my surroundings and committing it to my memory. With the layout firmly saved within my mind, I took several steps to distance myself from the suit before turning around and looking straight into the shaded vision of Leon's suit.

"A second of advantage should be enough," I shouted over, spinning my arms one last time before getting in position.

The barrels of both of Leon's mini-guns reached their optimal spin speed. The engines on his suit's back reached their maximum output.

For but a moment, we were both bristling, ready to shred the other into pieces.

It was only a test to see if Leon's suit could even keep up with my inhumane speed. Or rather, a test of whether I could replicate the movements Etaria implemented to avoid the barrage of the gunship back during the forest battle.

"Both ready?" Standing safely hidden behind the suit's steel box, Makary peeked out and shouted the question.

I nodded my head. Leon swung his right glove to the sides.

"On three!" Makary shouted, hiding back behind his cover.

"One!"

Even though Fay hid right by Makary's side, I could feel her anxiety rising.

"Two!"

I rushed forth, jumping as far as I could and watching with satisfaction how Leon's arms rose up to keep me within the electric scopes of his guns.

Before Makary could even give Leon the green light, I used the many shadows hidden from the warehouse's artificial lights to invoke my elemental darkness, turning it into tentacles that pulled me back down to the ground.

And before Leon could even bring his guns back to the former angle, I've already leaned down, nearly pressing myself against the ground, more sliding on the ground than actually running towards him.

"GO!"