Another Stupid Isekai

- I\'m all ears - I responded.

- On our old planet there used to be us, the Uhm\'s and Bahumdabar\'s. The ancient past is unclear, but we were the ones working with Uhm\'s to make our races prosper. The Bahumdabar\'s on the other hand were like vermin. A race that only wanted to dominate others, but they couldn\'t win with physically stronger Uhm\'s, and soon we started to lead thanks to our technological progress. We created a peaceful world.

He paused for a moment, to check if I\'m listening. I was.

- That continued for many years, although now is erased from history. Among the race of troublemakers was one boy. Yashasvee\'mies, who suddenly disappeared, just to return with strange abilities, and quickly dominated our world. He opened the doors to new worlds and made us work for the benefit of his tyranny. We build ships capable of flying through the cosmos, and all other technology they had. We always struggled for freedom but kept losing.

He paused again for a moment.

- The empire grew, and a being calling himself The Great One appeared. He was the one behind the power of Yashasvee\'mies. And he demanded something for it, but we do not know what. We can only speculate. Yashasvee\'mies refused many times as we believe, and eventually, The Great One came to us, promising freedom if we do him a favor. If we help kill his champion. We did, but as I said before, he betrayed us. His plan was different.

- But he spared Uhm\'s.

- Some of them, yes.

- Why?

- We can only speculate. They are a peaceful race, and we believe he is in a need of an army. We believe he has enemies. We believe he used us to trick his champion because he refused to participate in the conflict, but he couldn\'t challenge Yashasvee\'mies himself, so he used us. This is only speculation though.

- Why he want you dead?

- Maybe because we know the history?

- You are suggesting that he doesn\'t want us, humans, to know about the past of this place?

- Yes. We believe he wants to create his army out of you.

I still wasn\'t buying all of what he was selling but was gonna pretend like I did, just to find out more.

- And you want me to help you get rid of him, yes?

- Yes. It will be a tough task because you are nowhere near the power of Yashasvee\'mies, but we are willing to support you if you ally yourself with us.

- What exactly do you mean by ally?

- We are in need of things you can provide to us, in exchange we can grant you few favors, and before mentioned support. Please come with me, I\'ll show you something - He stood up immediately after those words.

I did the same and grabbed my backpack. He then started walking towards the door, and I followed. I was lead outside, to the same platform as previously. I used this to look around a bit more, as before I got too absorbed by architecture. I wanted to ascertain at least partially how many of them live here, but the outside seemed completely empty. There were no windows for me to look inside the buildings, but I had something I could do.

I turned the \'Eyes of the Void\' on and scanned around for people. I caught a few, as we were descending towards the dome-shaped building in the middle. There were even more of them inside it.

- This is where we keep the seed - said Shu\'ah after a long silence.

I turned the skill of, to take a look with my own eyes.

- What do you mean by the seed?

- You know already about saplings, but as we discovered, there are also seeds. We don\'t know from where this one came exactly but we found it in the cargo that was brought here. We have our suspicions that it was stolen by another unit of the resistance. It was very hard to communicate back then, so not everybody knew exactly what others are up to.

- So... Wait... Is this seed like a smaller sapling, yes?

- Yes. It has a very limited range of influence and needs to grow, but we are preventing it from growing, and very carefully examining it. We did so for years, which allowed us to make few incredible discoveries.

The platform landed on the ground. Well... Almost. It ended up hovering just a tiny bit above it. Shu\'ah stepped down and approached the door leading to the building. They opened themselves before him.

- Follow me.

I did. The inside was big, and looked like an advanced lab, with a ball, just like ours, levitating inside of a box made out of metal, glass, and a bunch of electronics. I could see it slowly rotating inside, or at least it looked like its rotating.

A few of them worked then, and I quickly realized that they all look a bit different. As Shu\'ah entered they all stopped what they were doing. There was plenty of strange machinery and objects inside. Everything looked like from S-F movies.

I was led to one of the bigger constructions. It was a small archway, maybe the size of a regular dor, but all around it was a bunch of heavy machinery. Hundreds of wires, and tubes connecting many different parts. It looked very bizarre.

- This is one of our projects. It\'s based on observations made in Loistavadvaar, and our research of the seed. This is a temporary gate, that can open, for the lack of better translation, a portal back to your world. To your planet.

I was stunned by this information. I wanted to say something, but the words were just stuck in my throat.

- This, among many other things, is why we needed the crystals you provided. We want to gift you the possibility of visiting your own world. Are you interested?

I tried to squeeze something out of my throat, but the emotions, that just overwhelmed me, also prevented me from doing that. There were million different things going on in my head. Something that I thought was still years ahead of us, was happening right before me.

But it also could be a trap.