The waiting line reduced as quickly as people entered, 20 minutes later Rune had to end his awareness training because his turn was coming.

For the information zone, there were 5 employees in charge of everyone coming, the mission zone also had 5 and the same for the tier 3 zone. When it was his turn he arrived at one of the desks with a female rululu behind it.

“Hello, can you tell me your name and occupation please?” She asked, politely.

Rune could see a special little screen to the side, but connected lenses were probably involved in how she was answering everything for everyone.

“Hello, Rune Tudor, adventurer affiliated with the Undecided adventurer’s group,” he answered simply and concisely.

For them to need identification even in the headquarters meant the tech tree really wasn’t complete, lots of simple techs like face id were still missing to form an efficient and optimized process.

Lifting her head for a moment to probably use a simple facial comparison, she then replied, “What can I do for you?”

“I’m here to ask for some information about the other members of the Undecided group, did they reach tier 3 yet and everything,” for Rune, saying this was the most direct way to get access to the information he wanted.

If Utopia became a tier 3 or anyone else then he could ask if there was a way to contact any of them, the most simple would be a yes but he couldn’t contact them, in this case, he would just leave and come back in a week after reaching tier 3.

“Wait a moment,” the female rululu used the screen, which turned out to be a touch screen, and after some finger slides, Rune heard something.

“Hello Ms. Sirle, I’m contacting you because Mr. Tudor, a member of your group is asking for your information and that of your fellow group members, do you consent to this?”

Sirle was the family name of Nelo and Astryde.

“Rune isn’t tier 3? Just send him the coordinates to the Undecided rented apartment, we’ll manage it,” it was Astryde talking, and it was pretty clear she was already a tier 3.

“Thank you, I’ll send him there immediately,” the female rululu then hung up and continued her job.

“Mr. Tudor, to join the members of your group you have to take the highway back and go to the south capital sector, once there you’ll have to follow the signs indicating residential park 49, once there you must find the building 49-8, and by then your perception sphere should allow you to find your group members, anything else?”

“Nothing else, I’ll manage, thank you goodbye,” Rune said, everything became more simple with what just happened.

“Goodbye,” the female rululu answered as Rune evacuated the place to let the next person in.

Without much thinking, he left the Adventurer’s Society headquarters the same way he came in and took the highway once again.

‘49 and 49-8, 49 and 49-8.’

His worst enemy at the moment was his short-term memory. After 5 minutes he saw the panel indicating "south capital sector", and then he felt obligated to slow down, no way he was missing the right exit.

The number of signs literally exploded as he was in the “middle” of the future capital right now, but he didn’t see anything about residential park 49, so he continued till his sphere finally found the right panel and he adjusted his trajectory adequately.

The path, once he got out of the main highway, was as desolate as a rural road, even worse than the headquarters road, only a dozen people were on it.

A kilometer down the road, Rune arrived at the true residential park.

It was of course still under construction with holes, cranes, crates and for the first time visible in his sphere, workers, he didn’t know enough to judge their work, number, or anything so he just passed by and found the right building.

Once he found it, like domino’s pieces he also found his friends.

‘Nelo, Astryde, Adreana, and Utopia, just missing Gar and Arik.’

Taking to the air, he arrived from the balcony, no way he was going to enter and take the stairs when he could do that.

As an answer Utopia and Astryde who were on the balcony waited for him to arrive by looking at him with a slight smile, Rune too couldn’t help but smile, everyone did what they wanted to do and nobody died, so everything was fine.

Landing on the balcony, Rune knew that if he tried a punchline it would become an eternal shame in his life, so he didn’t do it.

“Hello, just hello, nothing else to say,” a little of his mindset transmitted through his greeting but it was already very restrained.

“Hello Rune, as you were the first to leave I thought you’d have become tier 3 a month ago but it seems you prefer adventure to optimization, I didn’t expect anything else from you as I’m sure you have a lot to say now,” Utopia pierced the veil of truth with a simple look, that was the leader for you.

“My plan is just so optimized that no mortals can understand it, not even myself,” Rune said, seemingly full of himself.

“You missed a lot Rune, from the first tier 4 zone border to a dimension link, you should take your time to browse the web once you get access to it, maybe you planned to go back to adventuring soon?” Astryde also had some things to add.

“Depends, but I’m probably here for at least a month. Once I get my tier 3 advancement I plan to create my own composite element, do you know what’s a composite element? I only discovered it by asking for some info from Riker, the squad leader back in our camp near the tier 3 jungle. Did you know it’s called Undecided Camp now? It’s really boosting my non-existent ego,” having a lot to say, Rune went on and on.

“I only discovered composite elements after browsing the tier 3 private network, the IGS left a huge organized guide there for everyone to peruse and learn more about all the possibilities and how to realize them. If you want to create one you’ll see that they left plenty of guidance from millions of years old legacies.”

“And yes, our camp was renamed but it’ll one day disappear, the reshuffling of wilderness camp was used to gather info about the surroundings after all,” Astryde comforted Rune by saying he wasn’t the only one who missed some important things during his preparations while adding some lore to the current situation.

“Did you pass through a camp, did you see the tower they installed underground? They are the reason the IGS only recently started to build things, they allow for long-term environment analysis so now the IGS pretty much know how every zone is evolving in real-time, and those data are available for everyone, it’s really interesting to know that the north tier 2 zone is advancing towards the south at a rhythm of 146 meters per year,” Utopia seemed invested in what he just said, maybe because those data had very-long term consequences?

“I read that tier 2 zones just need careful planning for colonization onboard, doesn’t really interest me anyway…” Rune replied but then brightened up immediately after.

“But I’ve got some amazing tales about what happens further north! The holy land of radiation and energy armor training! Oh, I’ve got so much to say, also about some amazing flowers…”

With friends, Rune could let himself go, he had nothing to hide and inversely, he had a lot to say.

…

“Of course I’m also going for a composite element, I’m Nelo! The future apocalypse-class spellcaster, my specialty is in energy purity, my class path is grand manipulation, and it’ll never change, I’ll only refine it! My build is all for reducing to nothing everyone and everything!”

“Be quiet! I was only asking Rune! It’s basic social interaction, you schmuck!” His sister chided him for interrupting her.

“If Nelo already started I’d very much like his input, I did some ground theory for mine but if he already started then it’d be helpful to know if what I want is even possible,” but Rune was interested in it now that he said that.

“Hear this fantastic combination, foundation is the star element! Then the light element! The fire element! The lightning element! And the final ingredient, the explosion element! It’s an already created composite element that is so offensive it has nothing remaining to defend because there is no need to!”

“That… Certainly sounds like a hell of an element, what’s the name given to it?” Rune asked.

“The Single Star element, not that impressive but it has lots of history behind it, it’s an element created only 8 000 years ago, but due to its creator being confirmed to have attained tier 7, it has gained traction in the board and nowaday it’s represented in every ranking of composite elements as a case of major success.”

“And with such a complete guide, how much time do you estimate you’ll need before successfully creating it?”

“Less than a month, if you couldn’t purge multiple masteries at the same time, I don’t know how I would even do it, I’d have to free all of my 6 slots one by one, fill 5 with the needed elements, use the last one for my composite element mastery then use 5 weeks to purge them all again,” Nelo replied, he had everything planned.

“Then I’ll shamelessly steal this plan, as for my composite element at the moment Astryde, it’s formed using 5 elements, the mist element as the foundation, then I mix in the light element, the darkness element, the nebula element, and the mystic element, it’s really, really not refined, I don’t even know precisely the properties of those elements in terms of perception dampening,” Rune finally gave his plan for his composite element.

“Then I’ll just drop the subject, once you read the guide, you’ll have a much more clearer picture of what you’ll find in each element, even Nelo only recently finalized his choice, I’m not concerned but composite elements are a domain so complex the introduction guide on it is a thousand pages long,” Astryde decided to not pursue the subject anymore, to the greatest pleasure of Rune.

For hours, Rune talked about all he lived and Utopia was his main partner, the behavior of monsters and flora was something he was interested in, the geography of the Endless was also something he wanted to hear about.

Adreana joined with Nelo soon after he began but they seldom talked, only when he arrived at all his reasons for taking a composite element in place of a regular element did Nelo and his sister started to question him.

In the end, the two had this in them to look out for the other, Astryde didn’t want her brother to make a mistake and Nelo wanted to confirm he had the same idea as Rune in general.

An hour later, Rune started to sense that the discussion was running out. He couldn’t think about anything else to say and having not yet reached tier 3 he had to do it soon. Once he did, he would discuss more in-depth about the recent happening.

“So… Is there a reason we rented an apartment? Tier 3 big boss reasons?”

“The south capital sector has the best internet coverage, at least 20% better than the other sectors, and the headquarters isn’t far so I decided to preemptively rent one large enough for everyone, only 1 million EP per month, just pick one of the rooms.”

Utopia did a melodramatic bow and a hand sweep over the inside of the apartment.

“As you can see, it’s all empty! But that’s normal, amenities and consumer goods are very late in the huge list of what the IGS has to do,” Utopia explained his actions like he knew everything before everyone else, but Rune was used to it, so he just left without saying anything.

‘Of course, it’s about internet coverage, not even a fantasy world could change this eternal fact.’

With his sphere, he found a room unused by anyone.

It was a very simple 10 square meters one with a large window opening the whole room to the exterior.

‘Seems that the walls can all be destroyed? A modular apartment that can be modified as I wish? And that’s something the IGS built in record time?’

Once he claimed the room and put his name on the door, he entered it and started to train his awareness division.

He also had to purge his infusion mastery, but the two couldn’t be done at the same time, unfortunately.

…

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division reached Tier 2 Level 100

‘Oh finally! Let’s do an intense workout and be done with it.’

Having reached this point, Rune stopped passively training his momentum and perception and prepared for an intense awareness manipulation.

Actively training one’s awareness could be done by just upgrading the intensity of the passive training or by adopting a new mindset, that of extremism.

He started to separate specks of his awareness from his ether soul, the exercise he was going to do used the ether division principle to an absurd degree.

Speck by speck, he created hundreds, and ultimately 10 minutes later, he reached a thousand specks of awareness.

But he continued, all his ether soul except its core had to be emptied of awareness, so from thousand, he went to thousands, until he reached his goal of emptying all the awareness surrounding his ether soul core after half an hour of work.

Tier 3 meant he gained complete control, so he was prepared to prove that he could control his awareness like his body. As much as he wanted.

Taking control of all the specks at the same time, he individually used them to create a perfect sphere around his original ether soul core, and then the attraction began, but he held on.

The first layer of specked awareness was like next to a black hole because this exercise used the principle of awareness attraction and complex condensation.

If correctly realized, it should only be realizable from tier 4 onwards, before that, it was impossible as one’s spirit couldn’t keep the first layer immovable for long.

Not only the ether soul core, but also all the hundred layers above it would little by little have their pressure increase, and as the goal was for nothing to touch each other, you had the perfect intense awareness division training that could use all your spirit in record time.

10 minutes after starting, his spirit was already pretty tired as he wanted to sleep during his purging time, meaning he didn’t sleep in a long time, it was only another challenge for him to overcome.

With all the conditions fulfilled, his awareness division mastery could only accept that Rune had what was required, he had the pure manipulation skill, the spirit’s strength, and the necessary experience accumulation.

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division reached Tier 3 Level 0

15 minutes after he received the level 100 notification, he advanced again, and now there was only one remaining thing to do.

‘Bye-bye infusion mastery, see you later, or maybe forever if my composite element is a son of a penguin.’

Rune started the purging process of this mastery.

And then it was time to sleep, not only was the purging really nauseating at the start, the exercise he just did took everything he had.