Who hadn’t, at one point or another, dreamed of visiting the moon? Or maybe Jake was just weird, but he sure had wanted to at least try going there at least once. To see the world from an entirely new perspective, and, more important of all, finally confirm that Earth wasn’t flat like a pancake.

Setting off from Skyggen with Sandy, Jake was naturally eaten and entered one of the space worm’s many stomachs. At this point, Jake had no idea how many Sandy had, but he was sure he would figure that out eventually, as he expected the two of them to spend quite a lot of time traveling together over the next months.

Looking around the stomach he had entered, it was more just one large room. The floors were rock-like, with the walls also reminiscent of being inside of a cave, and the rectangular shape made it hard to imagine he was currently inside of a creature.

Inside this room, he spotted a bunch of furniture as the place was set up like an apartment, and when he looked toward the end of the rectangle, he even saw a sealed-off glass cube with a lot of familiar instruments and tools within.

“Is… this an alchemy lab?” Jake said with raised eyebrows.

“Yep, had some people from the Order set it up,” Sandy responded quickly. “Plus, even if you do poison stuff, it won’t be annoying anymore as it’s sealed within the cube, and I added special ventilation!”

“Do I want to know how you exhaust these toxic fumes?” Jake joked.

“Why would I exhaust them? I put them in another stomach where the fumes are absorbed by some toxin-absorbant materials to help them grow,” Sandy responded as if Jake was being an idiot.

“I see,” Jake muttered, sad his fart joke had failed, as he instead turned his attention elsewhere.

One of the walls of the room displayed not just a wall but was entirely see-through so Jake could observe the outside world. Sandy had even placed windows elsewhere, making it seem as if Jake was flying within a big worm-shaped plane. Of course, Jake knew it wasn’t as if these were actually windows. They were more just screens displaying the outside.

As he looked out, he saw they quickly flew into the sky with speed surpassing anything Jake could do. It actually wasn’t that much faster than he was if he continually used One Step, though, but he knew this was far from Sandy’s top speed. Just going by how fast the worm had traveled from Haven to Skyggen, he knew the worm’s top speed was absolutely insane.

The reason Sandy didn’t go full throttle right now was likely due to the way the sky worked. The atmosphere around Earth, and the sky in general, had several layers to it, and traveling through them haphazardly could get quite dangerous. Especially the outer layers of the atmosphere.

B-grade was recognized as the grade in which one could begin to explore space, and that wasn’t only because that was when one rarely could find worthy foes on their home planets, but because that was often when one became able to even enter other planets safely.

Surviving in space wasn’t that hard at all, and even D-grades could exist there. Sure, they would have to exhaust energy to protect themselves from the cold and the semi-vacuum of space, but it wasn’t that bad at all. It was more akin to just being pretty deep underwater. Granted, there were a lot of threats that could kill one out there, such as rampant blasts of energy just flying across the cosmos or small meteors striking you, but technically, one could live in space. It wasn’t recommended, but theoretically possible.

Thing is… you would be kind of stuck there unless someone helped you get back to a planet or you chose to settle down on a large space rock without any proper atmosphere. Going to a place like Earth was out of the question, and Earth wasn’t even a massive planet by multiversal standards.

Jake, even with his current level of power, would have to go all-out if he wanted to reenter Earth again without the assistance of Sandy, with the atmosphere effectively creating a natural barrier protecting the planet from threats. Exiting was quite a lot easier than entering, but even that was pretty hard. Arnold had only managed to send out satellites and whatnot by coating them in special metals with high resistance to the concepts in the atmosphere, something Jake’s body was definitely not made of.

Sandy was made of this kind of resistant material, though.

The space worm’s thick skin seemed nearly unaffected, even as they entered the outer layers of the atmosphere. The dense energies and concepts that sought to tear apart anything they encountered washed over Sandy without any issues, and from inside the worm, Jake saw the grand vista that was Earth’s atmosphere.

From below, it wasn’t visible, but once inside, it was as if he was standing inside the northern lights. Waves of energy crashed everywhere, and whatever small rocks entered it were instantly torn apart. It was entirely different forces than before the system that protected planets now, and Jake could only imagine how much stronger the natural defenses of a planet could get if one added their own barriers on top. If the core of the planet was used as a medium, one could perhaps even enhance certain concepts of this natural atmosphere…

Soon, Jake saw as they passed the final layer. The waves of energy dispersed, and all became still as there was nothing but the emptiness of space all around them. Jake couldn’t feel the concepts outside, but he got the impression that there wasn’t much to feel for either. Space was called a vacuum for a reason, and while there certainly still was a lot of mana, the density was incredibly unvaried. The further they got away from any celestial objects, the less mana there would also be, with certain sectors of space nearly entirely empty of anything at all, save for the bare minimum of space energy required to hold reality together.

“So, are you ready? I will have to turn the lookout holes off when I jump into Sandy’s Sand World,” Sandy asked him.

“It isn’t like I’ll have to do anything, so sure, I’m ready,” Jake smiled. “How long do you reckon it’ll take to get there?”

Jake already had an estimate in mind. It had taken them over an hour to reach space, as Sandy couldn’t go as fast in the upper layers as they wanted. Plus, Sandy had also clearly slowed down a lot and absorbed some energy here and there, while allowing Jake to take in the atmosphere. Traveling through empty space would definitely be faster, especially if Sandy’s Sand World, as the big worm called it, was used.

Considering the distance from Earth to the moon was approximately thirty times the diameter of Earth and that proportions had been kept roughly the same, Jake reckoned it would take less than a week to get there, maybe even five or six days only if-

“Like half a day at most?” Sandy responded.

“What?” Jake exclaimed. “Did you just say half a day?”

“Oh, here we go, making fun of the worm for not being fast enough. I’m trying here, and before I reach B-grade, I can’t go really fast, so it’s kind of rude to bully me like this. Actually, maybe I should just spit you out here and now, and you can just fly yourself. Yeah, let’s do that; let’s see who’s faster!”

Jake allowed the worm to vent their frustrations until it reached a point where he was afraid of getting tossed out before he responded.

“No… I meant that it’s faster than I expected,” Jake said in a calming tone. “From speaking to Arnold, the changes in space have resulted in pre-system space travel no longer being viable, as it’s no longer considered a complete vacuum, making the constant accelerations not a thing anymore.”

At least, that was how Jake had understood what Arnold said. He didn’t really know overly much about space travel, but he was pretty sure that traveling to the moon hadn’t even taken a week before the system, despite the long distance. Jake would have been impressed if Sandy, as a barely mid-tier C-grade, could rival that with the changes to space travel.

So, seeing Sandy not just match it but be a lot faster was great. It boded well for what the giant space worm would be capable of in the future when it was time to truly explore space in B-grade.

“Oh, you were praising me? In that case, ignore everything I just said and keep recognizing my awesomeness,” Sandy said. “Now get ready; we’re about to enter the sand world.”

“Ready,” Jake nodded. He wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be ready for, though.

In the next instance, the windows to the outside world disappeared, and Jake felt the shift. Through his sphere that extended outside of Sandy, he saw everything warp. It was as if space contracted around Sandy before suddenly everything broke apart.

A headache instantly assaulted Jake as he took in the environment of the subspace. He saw reality itself stretch and contract in impossible ways as concepts such as distance became nothing more than relative terms. Despite the headache, Jake held on as he vaguely felt himself and Sandy move. Despite the odd changed space, Sandy still managed to wiggle forward, as if swimming through a world that simply didn’t make any sense from Jake’s perspective.

For a moment, Jake considered releasing a Pulse of Perception but thought twice about doing that unless he wanted to knock himself out. He was curious, true, but not curious enough to potentially deal soul damage to himself by overloading his brain. The chances of it happening were low but still too high to entertain his vanity.

Instead, he contracted his sphere to relieve his headache, pulled out his cauldron, and went into the alchemy bubble Sandy had created for him. Well, alright, that Sandy had people from the Order create for Jake, but it was the thought that counts.

Jake had a lot of profession levels to go before he would catch up to his class, and while half a day, or even half a year, wouldn’t do much to close the gap, every little bit counted. Seeing as he was good on potions, Jake worked a bit on poisons, and the hours quickly passed as the trip to the moon, which Jake had expected to be a long endeavor was over before it had barely begun.

“Alright, we’re pretty close now,” Sandy said after what had only been ten and a half hours.

“How do you even know we’re close?” Jake questioned, as the outside world still didn’t make any sense to him as he expanded his sphere back out a bit.

“Because I’m smart.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t really answer anything… like, what’s the tell?” Jake kept pressing.

“Alright, alright. You know how when you’re swimming through the sand, all the sand looks identical, but if you get really close, no two pieces of sand are the same, and sometimes there’s even other stuff mixed in, like small bones, stones, and whatnot?”

“Sure, let’s say I do,” Jake just agreed.

“Well, it’s a bit like that. Big stuff is like bones and stuff within the sand, while space itself is like every little sand grain. It varies a bit, and when close to bigger stuff, like planets or the moon in this case, every grain is also a bit different. So, it’s just about feeling for that. When I then know I’m close to where I wanna go, I wiggle out, and boom, I’m right at where I wanna be,” Sandy explained in a very sandy way.

“I see,” Jake nodded, as he was pretty sure he got it, at least partly, even if it still didn’t make that much sense. It was honestly interesting how stuff like this worked. Sandy legitimately saw the world as filled with sand everywhere, and going into subspace like this was just diving into dense sand. Others could see the subspace entirely differently, maybe like being underwater, a dark void, a beam of light, or nearly anything else.

The result was the same, though. This conceptual understanding also explained how Sandy would get faster and better at locating stuff in the real world with time and levels. Speed would simply be how fast Sandy could swim through the sand, while the worm naturally also got better at sensing their environment, same as when they were a sand worm.

“Alright, here we go…” Sandy said as the world shifted once more, and Jake instantly knew they had returned to regular space. Expanding his sphere fully, he quickly confirmed this was indeed the case. A few moments later, the windows also reappeared as Jake looked outside.

Jake had to admit… space was pretty. It didn’t interest him as much as the celestial object below him, though. They were still floating a good distance above it, outside of the thin atmosphere of the moon. Or, wait, what had Arnold called it… an exosphere? Not quite an atmosphere, but something that strived to be one.

“Can you let me out?” Jake asked. “I assume whatever natural barrier protects the moon won’t pose a problem.”

“Yeah, it’s super weak,” Sandy agreed as Jake felt himself be sucked out of the stomach and he appeared in space.

The shock of the sudden transition was a bit disorientating, especially as he went from somewhere with a nice environment to the cold emptiness of space. However, he quickly adapted, his body more than powerful enough to float in space without any issues.

Being outside, he would also finally make full use of his Perception as he laid eyes on the moon below, and, from the get-go things were looking pretty positive as he spotted a creature shuffling around on the surface.

[Lunar Elemental - 258]

Jake reckoned this elemental was some variant of earth elementals infused with lunar energies. Not lucenti energies, mind you. The lucenti affinity was moonlight, a mix between the moon – or lunar – affinity, as well as the light affinity. Meanwhile, this elemental was just pure moon rock.

“You feel any natural treasures?” Jake asked. Should he be surprised he could speak normally in space? Maybe, but he really wasn’t.

“Hm, a few, but nothing major. At least not on the surface. I do get some responses from inside, though, but they’re oddly hard to sense. Oh, and on the other side of this thing, I also feel a higher energy level there,” Sandy answered, making Jake smile.

“It’s only fitting the dark side of the moon is the most dangerous and interesting part of it.”

In reality, it shouldn’t really be called the dark side, though. Arnold had referred to it as the far side of the moon, as while only one face of the moon ever pointed toward Earth, due to its orbit, the moon did have a day and night cycle, and all parts of the celestial object received sunlight at one point or another during its orbit around Earth.

This remained true even after the system arrived, though it did look like the far side had a higher energy density than Earth. Why this was, Jake naturally wasn’t sure, but he looked forward to finding out as he and Sandy quickly reached an agreement.

“Only losers stay on the light side of the moon,” the space worm said.

“Well, I sure ain’t a loser,” Jake smirked. He and Sandy began flying above the moon as they headed for the big space rock’s dark – or far – side, Jake hoping to find something worth hunting, while Sandy wanted to find something worth eating. Below, he kept an eye on everything that moved but, so far, had only spotted elementals, which was a bit of a bummer.

However, soon something changed.

Jake felt a shiver run down his back as he rapidly shifted his gaze and peered over the horizon. He felt something staring back at him, but it disappeared before he could see what it was. Nevertheless, his eyes opened wide as he felt the unquestionable presence of something he had never expected to feel so soon after returning to Earth.

B-grade.