Strange Device

"Let's gather some wood. Without our wristwatches, it will be too dark down there." Miles said and climbed up from the hole he dug. He walked one of the trees. He let the energy surround his body and punched the tree as hard as he could.

When the fist connected with the tree, he felt something was wrong, but it was too late. The fist he swung with all his power did nothing to the tree, instead, he felt his hand go numb. He took a step back in fear and realized there wasn't even a mark on the tree.

"How hard is this shit?" Miles asked with surprise.

"Makwa, can you feel your power?" Miles asked. Little bear walked to him and nodded his head. "Attack that tree with your wind power."

The little white bear rose on its hind legs and swung his front one. A sword appeared in the sky and flashed to the tree. The sword vanished and appeared in front of the tree, but wasn't able to penetrate it. Miles felt his back go cold. He saw Makwa killing a grown pinnacle-tier Grunt-Rank monster with one of these moves, but that sword failed to penetrate the tree?

Miles walked to the tree to see there was only a small dent on it. "These things are too hard."

"Probably trees are different from our worlds," Val said.

"Hmm, they are super light, yet hard." Miles nodded. He looked at the ground where trees had rooted. The soil was similarly soft, it only meant the tree wasn't applying too much pressure despite its hard texture.

"Keep attacking Makwa," Miles instructed and pulled out his dagger. The dagger was death elemental, so might be effective in chopping the tree. And as he expected the dagger was even more effective than Makwa's attacks. When the dagger hit the tree, it would wither the part it hit and make a scar on it.

Miles and Makwa worked more than 10 minutes to cut a single tree, and both looked tired. Miles walked to the tree and tried to carry it. It was lighter than it looked. The tree was at least 3 meters tall, but it weighed only 50 kilos. Miles calculated in his head and figured it would weigh 200 kilos on Earth at most.

"Let's unroot a few," Miles said and worked more than an hour with Makwa to dig 11 more trees. He put them all on the ground and carried one of them in his embrace before flying in the air.

"What are you planning to do?" Val asked.

"I will take them to Earth. They are great materials." Miles answered with a smile and flew to the portal in the air. When he passed through it, the weight of the tree and his multiplied, making him plummet a little, but he was able to stabilize himself before flying in the sky. He placed the tree on the cliff and returned to the portal.

Repeating the same thing ten times, Miles carried all the trees to Earth and returned to the strange planet. He used the dagger to split the tree into pieces and created twenty a meter long sticks. He removed a spare cloth from his bag, cut it into the pieces, then wrapped them around the sticks. When it was done, he dipped the sticks into the raisins from the tree he cut and made make-shift torches.

"How are we going to light them up?" Val asked.

"You don't carry matches with you?" Miles asked as he brought out a permanent match. He gave one of the torches to Val and held the other. "Ready?"

"Ready for what," Val asked while Miles grabbed lazing Makwa and placed him on his shoulder.

"For this." Miles walked to Val and grabbed her thin waist. He started to descend towards the hole with his wings.

The hole seemed endless, as Miles kept on descending. He knew it was deep, as the distance barrier was originating from whatever was down there, it reached all the way to the mist. Miles thought the linear distance from the center to mist was more than a kilometer, so if the same barrier still reached the sky over the portal, which was higher than 200 meters in the air, it was at least a kilometer down there.

Although Miles controlled the speed of fall, he still let gravity do its work. It took more than 30 seconds for their feet to kiss the ground again. Miles looked around but couldn't see anything as it was too dark. The limited light brightened only a small area, but it was enough.

Miles activated dark vision and looked around. The cave was reaching endlessly, and he couldn't see the end of it, but what he came for wasn't far from him.

Not far from where they landed, a small object was floating in the air. It was orbiting around itself without a stop. The speed wasn't fast. Miles looked at the item that looked like a door knob and pondered. He heard Evelyn talk about them before. Merlin too found something similar before, and Evelyn studied them. The information was sealed at the time, as this thing was too mysterious so even Miles didn't know much about it.

"The death zone Merlin entered was almost the same. I don't know what he found, but it should be something similar. I wonder if these things are valuable." Miles thought and walked to the device. He brought his hand near it, but there was no heat coming from it. After mustering up his courage, he covered his hand with energy and pressed the device.

He was expecting a volatile reaction, but to his surprise, the device slowed its rotation and stopped at his palm. Miles felt the ground shaking madly, and the earth started to fall from the top of the ceiling.

"Miles, let's run!" Val said and ran towards Miles with her full speed. Miles grabbed her and flew to the hole in the air while big masses of earth were falling on top of him. Miles felt like the whole world was about to crumble on itself.

"Faster Mil! They are coming." Val shouted. Miles looked at the ceiling and rushed with everything he had.

When he was out of the hole, he darted to the sky without dallying around. He looked around when he was in the air, and noticed the silent forest was now covered with monsters of all kinds.

Miles looked at the approaching aerial monsters in dread and kept on moving. Even the ground monsters were jumping to take a bite. There were thousands of them running after Miles like rabid dogs. Luckily the monsters were outside of the barrier thus was still too far away from the portal. So, despite the wasted time flying from the cave, he reached the portal first, but this wasn't the end. Portal was still active and monsters could follow him.

Miles looked at the portal in dread and saw five birds' heads reaching out from the portal. They were traveling towards him and were about to reach.

But something unexpected happened as soon as he flew out the portal. The device in his hand sucked his energy on its own and sent a beam to the portal. The portal slowed its swirling, and in a short second, it vanished into the thin air. The device fell into Miles's hand and lay there without any movement.

When the portal closed, the heads of the birds separated from their bodies and started to fall towards the abyss. "Miles, the heads!" Val shouted. Miles reached out his hand and energy darted to five heads to catch them in the air.

Miles flew to the cliff with Val and Makwa with questions in his head.