Guide you to the end of this Boundless World [Global Examination]

Chapter 2: Only my echo

Lying on the bed and watching 154 tapping away on his phone, Wen Yuan reached up, grasping 154's arm firmly yet gently, before yanking down.

154 stiffened up, nearly dropping his phone in surprise at the sudden movement, as Wen Yuan wrapped his arms around his partner. Feeling Wen Yuan's arm brushing up against his own, 154 turned over slightly, golden eyes meeting brown, and he let out a small sigh, kicking off his own shoes and shuffling closer to Wen Yuan.

"Go get some rest." 154 relaxing, practically melting into Wen Yuan's arms, "Once the exam starts... you need to be at the top of your game."

"The same goes for you." Wen Yuan murmured, his breath warm on 154's cool skin, "You're an important part of the plan too, and we don't know how long the exam itself would take. We can still take shifts to rest while in the exam. With only you and Z on the outside..."

"Whatever happens to me doesn't matter-"

"Let me just... have this." Sensing that 154 was about to argue even more, Wen Yuan nuzzled the back of 154's neck, "One last time. Please."

...

"We should break it off. Whatever it is that's between us."

"Don't ever say something like that."

"Once the self-correcting program is merged with the System's nucleus, the System should be self-aware of its problems and destroy itself." 154's voice sounded tight, like he was doing his best to keep his bottled up emotions in check, "Once the System goes down, the power supply that's powering the System's G.A.T.E. would be cut off. With the G.A.T.E. being forced open for so long... it would probably close and disappear. It's practically unheard of for Closed G.A.T.E.s to be opened again."

And their two worlds, the System's dimension and the real world, will be forced apart.

"... Perhaps technology had advanced while we were trapped in here. I'm sure being able to reopen Closed G.A.T.E.s is in everyone's best interests... Especially for resources that are only found in rarely occurring G.A.T.E.s." Wen Yuan muttered, "Greed can be... a particularly strong motivator."

"Wen Yuan." 154 turned around in Wen Yuan's arms, his eyes gleaming like the purest of molten gold, "It's not simply a matter of having an energy supply. You know perfectly well why Closed G.A.T.E.s have never be reopened before."

Space warped as time flowed, and the flow of time can be affected by external spatial forces surrounding the area in question. Everything in the universe was moving, and depending on one's location in the ever-expanding universe, their perception of time could be vastly different from someone else's.

Someone could open a portal between two places, but that was the easy part; syncing the two dimensions up was a whole different can of worms altogether.

If time wasn't synced up, someone could enter and exit a G.A.T.E. almost immediately on one end, and have somehow aged by several decades.

If space wasn't synced up, one person could enter the dimension on the other side of the G.A.T.E., and another person could enter immediately after, only to find themselves floating in the deep emptiness of space, the planet that the dimension resided on having long since hurtled past.

G.A.T.E.s, short for General Asymmetric Terminal Entryways, were just as its name implied; a naturally occurring entryway that lined up two different locations, a rift in time and space between the two places in a fixed position relative to their world.