His body was being recreated, and he could see it.

Nothing could stop the ambient ether from eroding his body, it was the true ether erosion, something that didn’t start yet in the Universe despite the full activation of the Ether Law, and only with full tier 1 stats or being an ether lifeform could you resist it and keep your life.

Nothing would change, but everything was transformed, his eyes became able to see the ether, his nose became able to smell an ether odor, he would become able to feel the subtle touch of ether on his skin, and so much more.

Nothing new would appear, he would still be a human, his organs would still allow him to digest food even if he didn’t need it, he would only be able to condense an ether core to sustain himself if he wanted.

He of course planned to condense one, every minimal gain of energy over a very long period of time just for the price of an ether core in his body was the most worth it trade he could imagine.

As his body was changing, Rune could barely move, he only sensed people walking about without any problem as they inspected all the people being eroded by the ether, probably IGS people or those who completed their transformation.

He still felt a slight burning that his cut sense of pain couldn’t cancel, related to his ether soul and body that had to synchronize differently from before with the new manner in which his senses would soon work.

Of course, Rune tried to stand up, but he collapsed soon after, it was like having broken his legs but not knowing it as the shock was too much for the pain to appear.

It was really kind of funny to try and stand up, he had a smirk doing that as it was a really novel experience in a safe environment surrounded by people having the same condition.

“Comrade! I challenge you to who can keep standing the longest!”

Rune heard someone talk from behind, it was a human-looking male, and he immediately accepted.

“Bring it! I’m not missing this one-in-a-lifetime challenge!” It was time to prove that he could surpass his body condition with pure will.

The two failed miserably.

They just acted like drunkards that were too inebriated to stand up, in the end playing for who can stand for the shortest amount of time despite trying.

The transformation took around 2 hours or so, and his comrade finished first so he was already gone when Rune felt the slight burning cease, announcing the end of his transformation.

The first thing he did was looking around with his true eyes, not his sphere, and where he only got flashes before, he could now see white clouds appear in the air, smell totally unknown things, and feel something denser but similar to wind touch his skin.

He truly became like a newborn baby, everything was new, like air first touching his skin, like the smell of the air before it took on what everyone considered to be the “nothing” odor.

After enjoying this process for a few minutes, he felt repleted and decided to move.

‘Well, let’s go Rune, your friends are waiting.’

He followed the signs pointing to the 4 cardinal directions and went north, adopting a light jog rhythm aided by his momentum stat, he easily reached 10 meters per second.

It truly was a light jog as other people overtook him easily, but as he would arrive soon enough, he didn’t feel in a hurry.

Going through half of the landing zone, he saw thousands of people, with some spawning from the air and others leaving in a hurry.

The zone they landed on was a plain, a plain without grass, and as the world was flat now he could see a lot of things with only his eyes, and he observed they were surrounded by a forest.

He didn’t need to be a genius to know that their landing zone was a forest tier 1 zone, truly the windfall of their universe to have such a landing zone without any apparent problems that he could see.

Observing more with his eyes, he realized a flat world allowed him something he never dared to imagine, he could see the rise and fall of the topography.

He could for example see a mountain range in the distance, towards what the signs indicated to be east, he just couldn’t estimate how far it was just from this.

‘The board said that normal overloaded eyes could see a thousand kilometers, and if the ether mist didn’t exist, over-specialized masteries targeting pure vision would allow seeing millions of kilometers away…’

Exiting the landing zone, the IGS was fully at work razing the forest, and on his way, he already saw the beginning of lots of wood-based construction.

The trees were processed, then the ground was compressed using giant rocks to assure stable foundations.

The way they acted was like cavemen having received an architectural and an engineering tutorial, completely incomprehensible for intergalactic era citizens.

Very few buildings were standing, but he didn’t want to be too hasty in his conclusion, only when he could see the mission from the Adventurer’s Society would he judge.

5 kilometers of light jog later, he saw the “branch” of the Adventurer’s Society, which was in fact just an open-air square with a few hundreds of wooden desks with persons waiting behind them to issue missions.

Approaching till his sphere could scan for people, he found his group easily and joined them, he wasn’t late as he wasn’t the last.

Only Utopia, Arik, Nelo, and Astryde were there, with him joining, they were missing only Gar and Adreana.

“Did you check your system Rune? It’s another world here,” Utopia was really excited, he was smiling so much his cheeks muscles should hurt.

“Wait a moment,” he didn’t check till now, but he expected it to be largely reduced.

Dimensions

EP Market

Event (9 rewards pending)

Status

Gathering Log

Masteries

“Yup, and once our EP storage is upgraded the event window will also disappear, and with what the masteries will become, it’s going to be a true video game interface, so funny,” Rune was also excited, but he didn’t have a full-blown smile.

“I’m going to crunch numbers and break the system! Oh!”

The light mood was very suitable for light-hearted expectations of the future, and Utopia was the idealist here.

“We’re still missing an inventory and a map, for the inventory I heard the IGS is already cooperating with research institutes to create portable ether pocket dimension, but we still have time before it really happens…” Arik said, he was the same as usual.

He was really similar to Rune in that his emotion didn’t appear on his face, although he clearly followed the light mood and told of the good news he heard.

“Adreana is coming, Gar should also soon be coming, I’ll wait for them to arrive to tell you what we’re going to do,” Nelo had his simple smile on, he was just waiting for everyone to come from his posture.

“Did someone check with an employee what we can do? Like a long-term mission for us to become tier 2 quietly?” Rune asked the group.

“Once we register as a group we’ll get an intro speech, so just wait till then, but yes, there should be missions corresponding to what we want,” Astryde was surprisingly the one to respond.

After getting his answer Rune became taciturn again, he just wanted to go.

3 minutes later Gar appeared and without waiting, they all went to him, said quick greetings, and approached one of the desks.

Utopia was chosen to be the nominal Undecided group’s leader.

He was the youngest and even the Ether Law couldn’t take away his natural eidetic memory, his handsomeness as a young rululu was also the excuse used by the others to give him this responsibility.

Going for a desk with an exemplary rululu employee with the least amount of people waiting, Utopia entered the waiting line with everyone else.

“How many people did they receive in your opinion, thousands? Millions?” Adreana asked, she was by far the most baby-like among them with her curiosity, or maybe she just wanted to talk?

As long as she wanted to talk, the others weren’t going to ignore her.

“If every branch is like this one, then there are 2 000 desks for each one, assuming they all have a waiting line, then we are looking into the hundreds of thousands of people per hour, only the administrative buildings will have records on precisely how many people entered, however,” Utopia answered, he already thought about this question beforehand.

“When I just arrived and was walking here I saw a convoy of cut brick stones, so maybe there's a mission asking to go to a quarry and transport some stones, it’s a good idea for a mission isn’t it?” Gar exposed his thoughts.

“Yes, seems like a good idea, and after that, we’ll go explore the surroundings, a lot of raw materials are needed to remake the whole technology tree from the ground up, we can take a simple exploration mission” Nelo added a piece of info, he already discussed that with Utopia.

Just hearing with their sphere what the people already at the desks discussed, there was no “kill 10 wolves” mission, it was mostly exploration and materials gathering.

It was a totally new dimension after all, and not just any dimension, but the most important dimension ever, the one symbolizing their entry into the true interdimensional era, so the IGS wanted to quickly and efficiently reach a respectable level of technology.

For this objective, millions of people may not be enough to reach a modern stage of technology in a few months, but it should be a very fast progression all things considered.

As for reaching the AI cores and spaceships technologic stage, years of planning and massive supply chains had to be made first, too much had to be done before things like that could even be considered.

The current situation was a once-in-a-lifetime level one, and the IGS based everything on preparing for the worse, prevention was better than cure, so they wanted everyone to help them of their own accord.

20 minutes later, after 4 groups of people received their mission, with one not accepting anything and just leaving after asking for some info, it was Utopia’s group turn.

“Hello, do you want to register as a group and receive a mission?” Classic greeting smile, check.

“Yes for the 2, please,” Utopia, the young hero protagonist smiling back, check.

“Name of every member and the group’s name please,” the rululu employee took a piece of paper, it was freshly made.

Fortunately, they arrived in a forest environment, trees were useful for that and much more as some had also been transformed into charcoal, which would be useful to start industrialization, by the same occasion, it could temporarily be used to make charcoal pens.

The current situation after only one month with extremely reduced staff was totally unique. For everyone.

“The group’s name is the word Undecided, 7 members, Utopia, Nelo, Astryde, Rune, Arik, Gar, and Adreana.”

When Utopia said that, some members, Rune included, had a light rictus drawn on their mouth, he didn’t dare to say that their group name was Undecided directly…

What an intelligent and charming young man, maybe he didn’t want to put his fellow rululu in a tight spot on not getting the wordplay.

Writing the group’s name and member’s name on the blank piece of paper, she then continued to ask, “What type of mission do you want?”

“Long term mission, we want to quietly advance to tier 2, so a boring mission which does not involve massive involvement,” at least they were honest in what they wanted.

“We have two choices then, the first is area reclamation, which consists of clearing a path with no objective in mind till a point of interest is found, then you’ll report back and you’ll be paid 100 000 EP once a point of interest is found,” after she said that, she let the Undecided think a bit.

“The second is quarry exploitation, if you really just want to quietly advance then you’ll be given a quarry located 20 kilometers from here and you’ll have a quota to deliver each day in exchange for EP, you can also deliver more and you’ll receive additional compensation,” the employee raised her head and put two pieces of paper on her desk, then she waited for our deliberation.

But Utopia had full power, it was his duty as the nominal leader, “We’re taking the quarry exploitation one, thank you.”

“Here’s the quarry exploitation mission paper, sign with your group’s name here and follow the instruction written on it, take the paper with you, it’ll be used as a certification that you belong there, understand that the current situation is a little bit of a mess due to only primitive furniture being available, so help us accelerate it to at least reach the stage where we can have clothes.”

The group observed Utopia becoming purple, it was the color resulting from blushing and having blue skin, it was a critical hit that rendered their group’s leader unable to cope, and no one wanted to help him, only enjoy his “heroic” reactions.

Rune absolutely would never derogate to the ultimate rule of his being, he was an observer, and an observer's life was only lived to observe, he just grinned because he couldn’t help himself, it was really funny.

Once they received the mission’s paper, Utopia evacuated like nothing happened, he was still purple.

“We need to walk 5 kilometers to arrive at the north stone quarry, let’s rush there, let’s have a little competition, the winner is the first to arrive, ready… Go!” Utopia took off first, they had much to do, so it was justified to rush there.

Running meant something around 30 meters per second when it was done leisurely, it wasn’t the peak speed of 75 meters per second they could all reach, but it was still a very optimized cadence for non-combat use, they would only need 3 minutes to arrive.

Rune didn’t think it was foolish, he also didn’t want to lose time, he didn’t prepare for more than 2 years to be defeated at the first competition, so making sure his energy armor was on, he accelerated as fast as he could to beat Utopia, who was already tens of meters forward.

‘Wind.’

It had been a long time since he felt himself being restrained by the wind, or maybe the ether? It all came to the same thing, in the end, he was going so fast that he created air or ether current around him.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t a runner, and Utopia was the best runner in their group, he was the incarnation of momentum used finely and fused with strength-based speed.

Now that there was gravity involved, it was really different, all dimensions where they had fought before didn’t have gravity, so the key point to winning this race was adapting to a new environment.

“We’re there! Slow down!” A really short trip and Utopia won his own race, nobody catched up to him.

The north stone quarry, their mission location, and probably the place where they would all advance to tier 2

“The mission says that we have to deliver properly cut stone brick to the outpost which is accessible by following the road leading further north, we can deliver as much as we want, we’re being paid on delivery, 50 EP per stone brick, 100 bricks per day minimum, every stone brick is a block of stone with dimensions of 2 meters by 1 meter by 1 meter, it can be approximative to centimeters, Nelo said he saw a group deliver some to somewhere near the landing zone, that’s what we have to do but for the outpost.”

Finishing his explanation, Utopia descended the steps leading down to 10 meters below ground, it was something very recent, the soil occupied 3 meters and the untouched mother stone was simple granite, only being exploited because it was everywhere and was useful at the moment as a stop-gap.

The quarry was occupied by plenty of other groups, and their arrival wasn’t even close to filling the whole space of the quarry.

Soon after, what they assumed to be the quarry overseer came to instruct them on what to do, it wasn’t savage exploitation, it was organized and planned.

As it was an exploitation by hand, a large square of 300 meters by 300 meters was opened, and every 2 meters a step descending 1 meter was cut.

They simply had to respect those steps and they could exploit as they wanted.

Using energy compression to make a very sharp weapon was the best method they could think of and see in other groups, so that’s what the Undecided did.

“Let’s do our quota for 1 week, so 700 bricks, I’ll go prepare a camp for us near the road leading to the outpost, start to cut and gather the stone bricks,” just like this, Utopia was gone.

“That’s not what I had in mind when I said we had to help the IGS, that’s very crazy how much they have to do to recover to a modern technology level,” Gar was really stupefied by what they were doing.

“Yeah, in our home dimension you only need to bring a gigantic laser cutter and a whole telluric planet can be cut up in one month, now we’re back to using our hand, the new era is full of surprises,” Adreana said.

“It’s only a stop for us, we can reach tier 2 soon enough, after that I don’t know, depends on if I can create the slotted masteries I want, so it’s the only contribution we’ll make, after that, we’ll be gone,” Arik was matter-of-fact, so after saying that he got to work cutting bricks.

“If I didn’t want to explore the world and make my own journey, maybe I would help the IGS as much as I can, it’s a very noble goal to help civilization create a foothold in such an important and dangerous place,” Rune was simple-minded in this case.

He wanted to adventure in places unseen, discover new dimensions and pursue his dreams and ambitions.

It was so generic that it resonated with everyone, so they all got to work after some more casual exchanges.

‘Energy weapon, ultra-long longsword.’

That was what Rune considered to be the optimized way to cut bricks.

Using a 5 meters long blade, he cut horizontally parallel to the surface from the bottom of a step, then horizontally perpendicular to the corner of the step, and now he only had to make a cut to separate what he just cut into correctly dimensioned bricks.

“You’ll use one of your slots for an energy weapon mastery Rune?” Astryde who was exploiting in the same way as him asked.

“No, all my energy will be dedicated to my defense, my energy compression, in the future I plan to increase my second most important body control, but that’s a tier in the future,” he had nothing to hide, everyone knew his fighting style, as much as he knew theirs.

“So you plan to take 3 masteries upping your efficiency with your energy armor?” Astryde asked.

“No, I need to be able to deal damage, and I also have to take future potential into account, I don’t want to replace them down the line,” Rune said with a little argument.

“So you’re already forgoing reinforcement? Isn’t it too early to decide something like that?” Maybe she was also thinking about such drastic action, that’s why she asked.

“It’s too early to only use normal strikes as my source of damage, in the future maybe, but I’d need another 1 or 2 masteries to make normal strikes becomes worth it, so impossible for now, maybe tier 3 or 4,” Rune said that, but he was aware that he wouldn’t know what would happen.

He was still a newbie, so newbie mistakes, even when there were millions of guides, had a great chance of happening.

“Yeah I understand completely, 3 slots are really too little, anyways let’s cut, tier 2 is imminent hihi,” she really had this light mood completely different from someone who was exploiting a quarry, and that was interesting.

By the time Utopia came back, they had already accumulated tens of stone bricks, it really was easy for them, so Utopia organized himself, Astryde, and Gar to transport the bricks to their camp, while the other focused on cutting more.

2 hours later, they were done gathering 7 weeks' worth of stone bricks.

It was time to begin advancing to tier 2.