Near the tier 3 jungle region transition, a hundred kilometers from its border, the Undecided camp had long reached its maximum capacity.

Everything was managed by the IGS administration, helped by the Adventurer’s Society and the patrollers, the only effective military force available to the government.

The whole zone surrounding the camp was clear of any monsters, not even birds could be seen passing by, and everyone currently resting or discussing was blatantly observing the large gathering of patrollers near the center of the camp.

A squad of 100 patrollers, headed by Riker, were currently making a deep hole in the ground and excavating nothing, just blasting the rocks into the surrounding.

Looking at something in the air, Riker kept repeating something to his squad, “They are coming in 5 minutes with the tower guys and girls! Speed up!”

The patrollers working on making the hole acted like nothing happened and continued making small talks, they knew there was no true urgency.

“If I get connected lenses then maybe I’ll work faster,” A giant of a man, higher than 2,5 meters complained about it.

“Then just become squad leader Holgar, just need to be from the military, have a military education, or reach tier 3 before the end of the year,” another relatively taller patroller answered while he was receiving large pieces of rocks and sending them into orbit.

“The current lenses are defective anyway, they’ll be replaced as soon as the first nanic prints are made,” a patroller waiting to the side added some info for his restless comrades.

“The tower is for the future internet, right? Did they really already cover the thousands of square kilometers of the tier 1 zone?” One of those restless patrollers, a pachin woman, asked about the cause of their sudden recall to the camp.

“You all don’t get it, it’s just prep work, the IGS needs to stick close to every ether density border to evaluate its evolution in the future, and maybe answer possible future problems tier 3 adventurer’s team who do deep expedition will experience, but I’m pretty sure colonizing tier 2 or tier 3 zones isn’t on the agenda yet, info leader?” Someone doing nothing but looking at the sky asked their squad leader for clarifications.

“At this stage of development you can find an explanation for everything because there's too much to do, but yeah, the ether density border movement should be a priority now that the whole tier 1 zone has been detoured,” Riker wasn’t that talkative when it came to spreading temporary truths.

More than half a year has passed since the IGS received millions of monstrous sapients capable of leveling mountains, and the influx of immigrants from their native dimension never stopped, it even increased beyond their calculated model because the IGS education reform was spreading everywhere on the other side.

While 12 years olds, except for the rululus, sapients couldn’t yet become part of the administration or assume positions and posts with consequent responsibilities, they were at the age when their blood was hot with recklessness and they had a little bit of monster’s mindlessness in their head.

The IGS recensed population didn’t yet reach the 10 billion individuals mark but they were still at a constant stream of millions of people per day.

With all sorts of innovations that the IGS found in legacy forums in the most hidden places of the globalized information board, they recently started to build a proper dimensional link receiver.

It was a construct making it so that people arriving from the other side of the link would be properly distributed to one of the tens of floors available instead of crashing to the ground, optimizing the incoming immigrant flow.

At this rate, the surrounding tier 2 zones would soon have to accept that sapient entities became a part of their natural cycle.

The first true city had also entered the planning stage, it was sponsored by nothing else than the Kajo’s Investment Funds, with the support of the IGS freely making available some legacies' innovations.

Designed to become by itself a symbol of culture and soft power, this first city was conceptualized from the start to be made by the greatest eccentrics of their entire native dimension, among them the humans Nicolio Lomour, Eliot Dupral, and Corentina Galiana, who were figureheads in the domain chosen by the culture department.

Nothing found in the board informed that tier 1 zone had problems, they were even the most primordial civilization’s cores in the Endless.

Finding a tier 1 zone often involved finding ancient remains from other civilizations, as for zones above that ether density… Knowing that building an outpost near tier 6 and plus zones was stupid, the IGS didn’t need those pieces of advice.

The slowest field to rebuild from the grounds up was the software domain, a huge allocation of resources and manpower was given to it but months of planning were the minimum necessary, and that was despite the fact that this domain received complete planning with adequate professional and the earliest electronics technologies produced.

Fortunately, being operational 24/24 and 7/7 for one whole month saved the day as recently, the IGS finally checked all the necessary requirements to start the first wave of technology dissemination.

Using months of accumulated and refined resources, going from reinforced steel to kilometers of high traffic information cables, even rare-earth of nearly all types necessary had been found and were used to create the first fusion reactors and batteries.

Their Defective Physic Laws Dimension 527 was becoming a households subject among the board as, despite every dimension believing that obviously their dimension couldn’t have lucked out and acquired all the basic matter laws, the fact that after some careful adjustment to the complete Ether Law they successfully built a fusion reactor proved that the newcomer dimension was rushing through the step like a cheater.

Everyone being so open about praising this achievement even helped the IGS to integrate the most far-away unknown civilizations of their own dimension.

And anyway, everyone believed once the capital city officially opened, the IGS wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.

The first step of the IGS’s expansion plan was coming to an end as it was soon going to acquire all sorts of hard data to correctly colonize the whole tier 1 zone.

The towers currently being sent to every tier 2 and even tier 3 zone borders and region transitions were evidence that it was one of the primary worries of the situation.

Riker received a notification, not from his system, but from his connected lenses, informing him of the imminent arrival of a certain group.

Turning from his squad finishing the hole’s excavation, he saw a group of flying patrollers arriving, with a whole lot of sounds behind them.

Everything was planned, from the position of this giant 100 meters tall communication tower, to the second group burying cables to link the tower.

As soon as the tower was online the area in a radius of 200 kilometers would be covered by it, and special scanners that ether researchers didn’t completely understand yet would start to take measures of everything permanently.

The sound everyone was hearing was just the assigned underground patroller squad that were tens of meters underground and laying kilometers and kilometers of cables.

The flying tower team arrived and first reported to Riker, “Squad Captain Riker!”

Then suddenly they put down a tower on the ground, it appeared in mid-air and started to communicate with the rest of their squad under the ground with simple hand signs, using perception sphere as the medium.

2 minutes later the underground squad made a hole linking their cable to the bottom of the hole excavated by Riker’s squad.

Then the tower was placed into the hole and linked to the cable, tools, and scanner were deployed in the air to verify that the tower was without damage and once everything was done, the other squad leader approached Riker.

“We need to both report the accomplishment of the tower implementation mission squad leader Riker.”

“Understood squad leader Enok,” Riker immediately replied respectfully, he was also a squad leader, but the one before him was what could be considered as an elite squad leader, why would the IGS give their squad ether pocket dimension otherwise?

They were precious strategic resources that were prepared for tier 3, but thousands of kilometers of cable couldn’t just be unrolled from a huge cable reel, even more, when it had to be done underground to aVoid future damage.

Riker and Enok both switched their connected lenses from HQ laser transmission mode, the only one available in the wilderness, to the general transmission mode, which used the recently placed tower.

They reported the accomplishment of the tower implementation, and seconds later, the tower, which had only a steel tip protruding from the ground, started to visibly vibrate, and everyone felt it in their body that the very ether around them had started to vibrate.

“Thank you for your work squad leader Enok, I already received the perimeter security mission so you can be on your way,” Riker announced.

He was now connected to the IGS’s database and was finally included in the military network, a true command structure that could answer any situation in seconds, and that included giving missions to patroller squads.

“It was our mission so it was only natural,” while doing something with his own connected lenses, Enok answered, but soon after he gave a glance at the patrollers belonging to Ryker’s squad.

“A last thing, the first tier 3s are predicted to start to appear in 2 months from the most extreme models and our own prospects, I hope you don’t forget to make your squad members remember that as patrollers our goal is to obey the government and never compromise our mission, whatever they are, I’ll be on my way then.”

Enok then gathered his squad and they all departed at a very fast speed, they probably already received their next deployment mission.

Once they left the perception sphere of Riker’s squad members, one of them wanted to say something about how they were treated.

“Do they take us for savages?”

“I don’t think it’s a question of trust or anything, it probably has more to do with patrollers retiring to follow different vocations.”

“I heard it was because the prospects are too strong that the other patrollers resigned, and also…”

“Silence.”

But Riker was someone who seemed to know more than he let on, so he interrupted the one talking before he finished and didn’t let anyone else have the time to say something about it.

“From now on and at every time, at least half of the squad has to be here to protect the tower, this distribution duration is for 1 week, after that, we’ll male a team of ten rotation to protect it for 3 additional weeks, then we’ll receive the following mission.”

While he explained their current mission and the plan accompanying it, he never commented on what the elite squad leader implied with his departing words.

This way, the whole squad similarly ignored the subject, they were true patrollers and that was of their own volition so they had nothing to fear, the IGS had plans and they were here for them.

Riker then stopped talking and went into deep thought after establishing the squad’s plan, but nobody here could know what he was reading from his connected lenses that led to him keeping silent about the situation.

On its way to be a firmly implanted colony, the IGS would soon have every information they needed for the second phase of their expansion to be refined, corrected, and started.

…

For Rune, the hardest thing wasn’t to deal with a constant stream of damage coming from the very air surrounding him, it was fighting a squad of monsters.

After entering the radiation zone and for at least one day cycle, he only found isolated monsters and killed them all without restraint in juggernaut mode.

And now, in the middle of the night, he was for the second time fighting alone against an entire group of tier 3 monsters.

Be it fortune or misfortune, he ended up stumbling upon a group of 15 late tier 3 toad-like monsters, which he judged to be perfect for a short but intense battle.

Having fought for 4 hours already, Rune knew that his slotted masteries were advancing to tier 3 quicker the more he pushed against the odds, and having experience for this type of only-surviving type battle, he felt completely in his element.

‘I’ll soon have to retreat…’

But the air around him was too damaging for him to continue indefinitely, to find this toad monster squad he had to go beyond 2 500 kilometers, and following the linear increase which he established and ended up being true as of now, converted to 50 armor being eroded each second.

Early tier 3 monsters would have been totally fine, medium tier 3 would have pushed him back soon enough, late tier 3 were too much.

Despite evading some toad’s tongue strikes and perfectly using the basic rules of alone against many fights, he still got touched, and every time he got hit he lost 700 armor for the lightest touches.

So in the end, Rune was reaching his limit after 4 hours, and that was taking into account that this was his optimal fighting condition, his personal fighting style was shining at his brightest in precisely this sort of situation.

Two toads launched their tongues at the same time, and like they were fired at blank-point, he could only choose to take one or both.

He didn’t cancel the subsequent strike force and was sent flying for tens of meters, it was one of the ways by which he could gain precious seconds, after all, every second meant 76 more armor.

Until finally the toad monsters started to go berserk, 4 hours of battle was too much for a monster squad, even more so when they were put against a single prey.

This time, however, there were no monsters to take some pressure off of Rune’s shoulders in contrast to the last time he did something like this.

The moment the first toad broke the rule of never attacking a fellow monster after it jumped at Rune and ended up colliding with another toad was the breaking point, and now Rune was suffering 15 berserk juggernaut mode toads, who knew he was weak and couldn’t respond.

From behind, from the front, from the air, from the sides, a toad monster was there and tongues were flying at him.

He chose the best among the worst and took only two hits worth 1 500 armor, but he was at the end of his rope after so much time fighting and juggling between all his precious resources, he literally reached 0 energy in his reserve multiple times, everything going to regenerate his armor which was now only at 4 000 armor.

The last time he experienced such a pattern of strikes was when he was with Nelo and Utopia and they were fighting against a squad of 4 tier 3 coming from nowhere, and he had to block them alone as it was at the end of a battle, so no monsters were present to divert them.

Directly after the tongue volley, 7 toads who were 5 meters away from him decided it wasn’t enough and some jumped, some ruched, some launched their tongue again.

Facing this, it was time to run for Rune, he didn’t have the power to do anything more than being a scarecrow.

‘9 or 10 strikes till both my armor and my health are both emptied, not enough time to accumulate a major reinforcement worth of energy, so I need to go on an uncontrolled sprint.’

Rune was equal to a normal peak tier 2 entity strength-wise, so he wouldn’t be able to just retreat as he wanted.

Observing which toad was going to send him in the right direction upon getting hit, he rushed towards it, and his escape started when he got hit by a berserk toad charge.

Using momentum he changed from his usual passive downward artificial gravity to a full power horizontal slightly inclined to the ground gravity.

Then with a compressed energy platform, he rotated mid-air and without having to touch the ground, he used all his strength to jump towards where the radioactive zone would lose its erosive power the fastest.

This optimized sequence of action gave him some seconds to widen the gap, and when the toads started to pursue him he was already beyond their range of attack.

With grand and fine manipulation, he used calculated pulse spells to delay their charge as best as he could, and after 5 minutes he reached beyond momentum-controllable speed, only able to stop himself by taking damage or slowing himself down over hundreds of meters.

After one hour of chasing Rune, the toad squad abandoned and returned to normal mindless roaming monsters state.

Multiple reasons were explaining their drop of this chase, but he could use his human mind to guess some of them.

The erosive power was diminishing, he was back to full armor and energy pool long ago, he didn’t want to turn back…

He determined long ago that mindless thirst for blood and instinct often battled and alternated inside a monster’s mind, like now, after doing nothing for one hour, instinct suddenly took over, and like a program, everything they were previously doing was canceled.

After 5 minutes, Rune used the volatile ether and reversed momentum to slow himself down to his cruise speed of 80 meters per second, and opened his masteries notifications.

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Body Control reached Tier 3 Level 5

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Energy Compression reached Tier 3 Level 4

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation reached Tier 2 Level 83

*Ding* Energy Compression: Basic Energy Armor reached Tier 3 Level 0

*Ding* Energy Compression: Basic Energy Armor reached Tier 3 Level 1

*Ding* Energy Compression: Basic Energy Defense reached Tier 3 Level 0

*Ding* Energy Compression: Basic Energy Defense reached Tier 3 Level 1

*Ding* Reinforcement: Basic Reinforced Armor reached Tier 3 Level 0

“My armor wasn’t even breached so it was really just a basic intense session, anybody can do it hehehe,” Rune bragged, he was of course proud of what he just accomplished, his own created masteries reached tier 3, they were masteries he would use to reach tier 3 in the future and even when he got better ones, he’d always have them.

Checking those tier 3 masteries was a must for him at the moment.

Energy Compression: Basic Energy Armor

Basic Slotted Mastery (Tier 3)

The basic spell of the defensive compressed energy school, only by understanding it can you comprehend all the intricacies and the potential hidden by this spell.

You perfectly mastered this spell and you pushed it even further than perfection, the efficiency of your energy compression is increased by an additional 100%. Increase efficiency of energy compression by 1% (1% per level).

‘One more tier… Then I’ll gain access to the provided masteries that will enhance my strength and my weaknesses at the same time, but it’s still too far for now, still have a hundred levels to go.’

Energy Compression: Basic Defensive Energy

Basic Slotted Mastery (Tier 3)

Using compressed energy as an additional defense, you want to master the mysteries behind this while also pushing its potential beyond what others thought to be its end.

There’s no more secret in this particular use for you, but you managed to uncover that there’s never an end, the efficiency of your energy compression is increased by an additional 100%. Increase efficiency of energy compression by 1% (1% per level).

It was a different mastery, but in the end, it was the same, so he just got to the last one.

Reinforcement: Basic Reinforced Armor

Basic Slotted Mastery (Tier 3)

Your armor is an extension of your body, it also amplifies your power if you know how to use it properly, you want to explore this potential and unearth all its possibilities.

With armor on, you learned how to perfectly adapt to it and discovered new ways of battling depending on this particular condition, increasing the efficiency of your reinforcement by an additional 100% (1% per level). Increase efficiency of reinforcement by 0% (1% per level).

‘Now I can purge this one to replace it, this way I’ll be able to go deeper into this radioactive land than any tier 2.’

Rune just had to purge this mastery to have access to his planned specialization, but to do that safely, he had to go back to the border first.