Shortly after reaching some kilometers away from the neon white wall, enough for his sphere to reach it, Rune got his mini ether tower out and activated it, but even after 5 minutes it didn’t stop working and sent the beeping alarm signifying it stopped working.

With his perception sphere, he could see beyond the wall and it perfectly replicated the scene before his eyes, neon white soil without anything on it, any greeneries or blackeries-whiteries stopped existing. Though there remained some odd lone trees, probably proof of it being a mixing zone.

Rune was searching the IGS guide for special situations, but even after finding some general peculiarities, not one of those he found and read corresponded to the situation.

It was only 15 minutes later that something happened, he received a call from Olivia.

“Yeah?” Uncertainty in his voice, Rune could only ask why he was being called.

“Hello Rune, how are you today? I just received a tier 4 ether density alert from your ether tower and it’s a procedure to call you now so that you can give more information on your travel."

"Furthermore, the IGS will deploy a patroller team to establish an advanced tier 4 outpost, so yeah, can you tell me if there are notable obstacles in the path you used?”

“Oh, if that’s all you need then it’s very simple. My trajectory was simply going to the straight cliff, you know the massive cliff or rift that cut the whole map, yup that’s the one? Then it’s just full north, by following it the only problem will be that you’ll enter the "permanent erosion of foreign lifeforms zone" mmh… Do you have something to note down what I’m going to say, I have the numbers in my head.”

“Go ahead.”

“Following purely the straight cliff, the increasing rate of erosion was 1 compressed energy every 50 kilometers, with a cohesion infusion into it at peak tier 2 it’s 1 every 70 kilometers and at peak tier 3 it’s 1 every 90 kilometers. Everything is linear from beginning to end.”

Having never forgotten them, he just said what he observed and concluded to Olivia.

“Something else? The density of monsters and difficulty of traveling?”

“Mmmh… No, for me everything was normal, maybe as a way to confirm everything is fine when the patroller team goes from the tier 3 jungle zone to the tier 3 erosion zone, or the black and white jungle zone as a visual representation, there’ll be a total absence of monsters. And also near the end, there is a complete absence of tier 4 monsters, only late and peak tier 3 ones, and that’s despite me literally being next to the zone border, which is a big neon white wall by the way if the data doesn’t show it.”

“Ok thank you, I’ll just transmit this conversation and a summary to the network, you’re free to do whatever you want now. Eventually, you can give intel support to the patroller team that’s coming but with the distance involved, they’ll only arrive in a few weeks if you cleared all the monsters on the way and others didn’t replace them. Do you have something you want me to answer now that we are in a direct line? Or do you want to continue your expedition?”

“Nothing, you can hang up I’ve got nothing more to say, goodbye it was a pleasure,” Rune felt that his first support really understood him, she already made the option of hanging up available immediately for him to choose.

“Good luck then, and have a good day,” hanging up the moment she finished, Rune was back to being by himself, facing the gate leading to the true Endless, the only multi-tiered dimension in existence.

‘Or at least the only one the board tells the existence of… Maybe the IGS already knows some other ones...’ Doubting everything was in Rune’s nature, and now wasn’t an exception.

‘The only reason the guide gives for a bordering zone or region not having life forms from the neighborhood is an environment so different they couldn’t survive in another one, so I cannot only expect an environment worthy of tales but also atypical logic-defying monsters…’

Once he finished reading the guide about possible tips, he decided to sleep here, because due to reason he knew partially, monsters from the 2 environments didn’t mix, so he was actually in a very safe zone.

“Ah… Ohhhh…”

Laying down near the straight cliff, Rune could admire in the distance that the white wall continued till his overloaded sight sense couldn’t see anymore.

In his mind, thinking about nothing and anything with mixed thoughts swirling about, he observed that in 2 months, less than 2 months even, he reached this new tier 4 zone.

And he was 100% sure it was impossible for him to solo kill a tier 4 monster, at least a normal one.

“That, dear, is the problem for future me, present me is just going to sleep while admiring this beautiful view, good luck future me,” smiling ear to ear at his own joke, Rune then let go of everything and only kept some of his awareness up for minor alertness.

If something could break his armor in one strike anyway, his only option to survive would be to jump off so he wasn’t really bothered.

…

The moment he passed through the wall, his vision went white.

Worse than looking directly at the sun or entering the holiest place of all dimensions, it was just white everywhere, his skin felt white, his eyes saw white, he tasted something white, everything white.

This was a new zone, not a new region, meaning that if everything wasn’t white he would see the same fist-sized sun high in the sky, the same as the one he saw in the tier 3 jungle.

In this new zone, the sense of sight as Rune knew and had didn’t exist. Every other sense he owned as a human were similarly overloaded by the very air, only his perception sphere could allow him to see when he approached his hand 2 centimeters away from his face. His proprioception too.

His sense of sight became useless, totally useless, so he adjusted the awareness allocation to only keep a minor amount of awareness in his sight sense while also reducing the other affected senses like touch and taste.

After reducing them until the feeling of neon white anything and everything white was gone, he tried other things like sound, which traveled normally, or high-speed punches and movements, which also weren’t affected.

“I’ll call it… Call it… Well… Oh yeah! I’ll call this zone ‘When someone tries to talk to me and I don't know them’, perfect to describe this absolute white everywhere! Abbreviated it gives me… Wsttttmaidkt… How did I get maid right?” Proud of the name he just found, Rune took a heroic pose and lifted his chin as high as he could.

And then after 10 seconds, he was back on earth, “Well, finding names is really hard you know? Even the IGS is struggling, you know? Let’s just go with white zone, not like I can confuse it with anything else…”

After naming the new tier 4 zone temporarily, he started running, because he loved running. He only did that and fought for 2 months after all.

Still, something he read about on the guide and onboard was soon to become reality, and it wasn’t something pleasant.

From tier 4 zones and onwards, simple concepts like distance could be warped without one even knowing he traveled only some kilometers in an hour at full speed. The only true reference was time, because warping time was a lot harder to do, even if the power warping it was natural.

1 meter per stride? Well, let’s just say that the first time was always surprising.

‘Am I really so slow?’

In 10 minutes, Rune was sure he didn’t travel more than 5 kilometers because his sphere could still see the other side of the white wall.

‘Nothing I can do about it, I’m not a momentum-based traveler.'

The only way to resist this natural long-distance distortion effect present in high ether density zones was to use the momentum ether stat. Fortunately, it was an accumulative thing, if not, movement during battle would similarly be warped and every non-momentum-based user would be like an immobile target.

Only after 5 minutes, Rune’s perception sphere lost the other side of the white wall, having completely entered the white zone. There was now only the straight cliff to guide him, but 15 minutes for 5 kilometers? And even more, as Rune was making his sphere rotate and distort horizontally?

‘That’s a very heavy distance distortion for just a tier 4, though it’s also good news because it probably means nothing else is warped… But when there are such heavy distortions, monsters should have adapted to it, right… Freak…’

The first 5 kilometers already presaged a possible and realistic pretty grim fate for his first tier 4 battle, one where a monster could fire energy spells from kilometers away, and of course, each one would be at more than 1 000% reality-breaking efficiency.

Amidst all this, there was also another thing, the radiation, the permanent erosion, because, after 4 hours and a half, the regular 300 armor per second erosion became 301 armor per second.

‘So it’s not the source, just another zone under the erosion anomaly. It seems that the previous density of radiation was the moment where it truly started to affect the environment by reducing everything to nothing, it would also correspond to the band of 90 kilometers I interpreted as the mixing zone, showing a total loss of any plant life.’

This reflection also brought back the fact that he had a theoretical limit to how deep he could go, so he decided to check his current limit.

Masteries

Tier 1 Masteries

Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement: Tier 3 Level 20

Physical Fundamental: Fighting Instinct: Tier 3 Level 48

Physical Fundamental: Body Control: Tier 3 Level 49

Energy Fundamental: Fine Manipulation: Tier 3 Level 12

Energy Fundamental: Grand Manipulation: Tier 3 Level 11

Energy Fundamental: Energy Compression: Tier 3 Level 47

Spiritual Fundamental: Perception Control: Tier 3 Level 13

Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division: Tier 3 Level 11

Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation: Tier 3 Level 14

Tier 2 Masteries

Energy Compression: Basic Energy Armor: Tier 3 Level 46

Energy Compression: Basic Defensive Energy: Tier 3 Level 46

Cohesion: Specialized Cohesion Infusion: Tier 2 Level 19

Tier 3 Masteries

Energy Compression: Basic Energy Structure: Tier 1 Level 63

Body Control: Basic Humanoid Body: Tier 1 Level 69

Body Control: Basic Prolonged Body Use: Tier 1 Level 69

‘It’s only been 10 days after all, what did I expect? I’m not even bothering, I’ll just go with my instinct and get my ass beat by the first tier 4 I encounter.'

The slow improvement of what was important was already evident, the tier 2 times where one battle allowed him to level 2 to 3 times were gone.

His only consolation was that his tier 1 masteries were improving fast, with all the peak tier 3 he fought and killed it was normal, but the rest was a long-time effort, so Rune just focused back on his sphere rotation training.

Extending his sphere was now more important than ever, due to a potential tier 4 spell bombardment that could come from more than 5 kilometers away.

As he was running at what he thought was 400 meters per second but ended up being a lot less considering the environmental effect, an hour passed, an hour that only increased the suspense of the first encounter.

And it came.

He suddenly heard something.

His eardrums were vibrating.

Vibrating harmoniously.

Immediately stopping, Rune instantly focused more on the sound.

It wasn’t something that could be found in nature, only artificial instruments should be able to make such a harmonious vibration, it was like a synthesizer on which you kept your finger pressed on one of its keys. Anyone hearing such a sound in the middle of nature would be confused.

‘That’s…’

The sound didn’t stop, it just decreased in intensity, and it repeated itself shortly after it stopped.

‘So freaking magical…’

His perception sphere couldn’t see the sound waves in the air but his sense told him it was coming from the front, simple spatialized sound localization, thanks brain.

And suddenly, a crystal clear sound added depth to an otherwise steady soundwave, like someone made a glass vibrate.

‘Well, if there was a chorus it would be like ‘Synapse No Sekai’ from the Sora no Otoshimono anime, right? Well, it transmits perfectly that the world still has many things for me to discover, and I’m soon going to find one… An unpleasant one I think.’

(Sora no Otoshimono forte Ost - Synapse no Sekai - https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=rtQIE9K7SVU&list=RDAMVMrtQIE9K7SVU)

When even after 10 minutes, nothing entered his sphere, Rune once again started to move, and as curiosity killed the cat, he also let his curiosity act and ran in the direction of the sound.

Ultimately, after a few minutes, he saw something, his perception sphere saw something.

Something moving on the endless flat neon white ground, something alive, but it was far from what he considered a “monster”, it was too different from what he encountered before. Far from the common sense of all the previous tier 3 to 1 zones.

The “monster”, if he could call it that, was approaching very, very slowly, only at a speed of some meters per second.

Its appearance was not “alive” at all, it was just neon white rock with geometric forms stacked on each other forming a sort of a body, a life form seemingly made of rocks.

‘That’s one scary anomalous monster… And probably one of the ideal forms of life which have all the advantages linked to living here.'

Some goosebumps spread thanks to his imagination, and only one thought came to his mind.

Improving wasn’t correlated to killing monsters.

That was what was on his mind, as long as he kept a certain amount of danger and fought to the best of his ability with dedication, time, and effort, then he’d reach higher.

‘If I approach and receive an energy laser that takes 5 000 armor from me… Well... We’ll see,’

The best news at the moment was that it was slow, the thing was slow, so escaping should be easy. The bad news was that for it to have such a speed, or it was a lot faster than it currently appeared to be and it was a trap.

‘Or it’s using provided masteries, a lot of them, more than any freshly tiered up personnel would ever take, god.'

What would happen if your efficiency at body control was 100% and you created provided masteries to keep extracting efficiency from it beyond your total efficiency?

No, you wouldn’t lose all your strength if you ended up at minus 100% efficiency in body control, but you would lose half of it.

A perfect move from you would only transmit half your strength stat and another 100%? Half of the remaining half, so a quarter of your true strength stat.

‘It doesn’t have legs or arms, so is it moving with the momentum stat?’

Rune started to reflect on the situation.

Also, the sounds didn’t stop, it, the monster, kept making the air vibrate harmoniously with some clear crystal sound dissimulated in it, an incomprehensible phenomenon.

‘Reasonably, the momentum debt it has should be around 500% or more for it to have that speed, but it would be strange for it to have filled all its 9 slots with only that…’

‘If it did, however, of course, all this efficiency would have been displaced to its damaging mastery or it wouldn’t be funny. Yet… It still didn’t attack me, so which mastery is concerned? Or more likely, which of the 3 energy masteries is concerned? If it has spiritual power I’m going to complain to the IGS…’

Excluding nothing, he stopped thinking and started to approach again, answers awaited him.

The fact that it was approaching meant it was probably hostile, at least Rune was basing his approach off of this conclusion.

After approaching it and entering its 500 meters range, it still didn’t attack.

‘Energy compression is only part of a few builds that monsters often use like the behemoth build, so there’s more chance it uses fine manipulation to deal damage. At worst I can expect thousands of energy threads, with even a special elemental effect or an infusion of something into them…’

At 200 meters, a reaction finally appeared, hundreds of energy filaments covered in bright green elements spread from the body of the monster, half of them created a defensive circle around the monster while the other half were sent to receive Rune.

‘Let’s go, first hopeless fight of my career, chance of winning, zero.’

Between a hopeless fight and a hopeless mentality, Rune completely accepted the first but wasn’t ready to surrender to the second. He was here to discover new things, so till his armor reached equal regeneration with the environment, he was ready to act like the most stubborn person he knew, Nelo, and charge forward.

The first contact with the filaments was just a brute force one, with them just rushing towards him and his reaction being to test their reactiveness by sidestepping and evading.

The reaction came in a tenth of a second, ‘A regular fine manipulation speed.' The filaments bent and started to pursue him and follow his tempo.

By confusing the hundreds of filaments, he advanced, that was the goal, after all, reaching the monster's main body.

The consequence of advancing showed immediately, with filaments coming from all sides, front, left, right, top, behind, it was forcing him to make a choice.

A choice he only ever made when he sparred with Gar, their group’s specialist of fine manipulation fighting, and it was a very outdated one.

It was rushing ahead.

If he couldn’t evade, he had to advance, and so the first contact between his armor and the tier 4 monster offensive was made, he lost 2 000 armor in exchange for advancing.

Canceling the pushing force from so many threads was harder than Rune expected and his armor could only help him not being pushed back, as a result, his advancing speed went from maximum to zero in an instant.

Seeing and sensing the energy filaments approaching from all sides, he immediately reacted by invoking an energy bomb which he made explode behind him.

The shock wave produced from it propelled him back to an acceptable speed while disturbing all the pursuing filaments.

Immediately changing his posture to accommodate a head-on charge with as little reduction of speed as possible. To further his goal, every time a filaments collision was ready to happen he made sure to have his 2 feet on the ground for maximum resistance.

It paid off as after 5 minutes, he breached through the “offensive zone” and arrived at where the other half of its filaments were ready to be unleashed to defend its true body.

Already, despite doing his best, he lost more than half of his armor which equaled more than 15 000 armor, meaning he lost half of his energy pool to arrive there. Alternatively, he lost more than a quarter of his total available defense.

In 5 minutes.

Just to go through half an inefficient long-range fine manipulation defense range at half potential.

Rune still decided to continue and confront the monster at his seemingly best, which probably wasn’t even that.

He stepped into its defensive 100 meters range.

All over the ground, some filaments tried to make him fall and drown him, and it pretty much slowed him down to nothing as the monster seemed to have the beginning of a sapient-quality strategy.

Because every time Rune sacrificed thousands of armor to advance, It retreated.

It retreated.

It…

Retreated?

‘???’