‘What the penguin is that?!’

When he entered the 200 meters range it stopped moving, already arousing suspicion, and now that he was in its 100 meters range it retreated.

It retreated!

With a permanent erosion of 300 armor, Rune was down to only 150 armor per second, enough for just some filament contacts attacks and nothing else.

Because his energy was so important for him, he couldn’t waste it, but the only answer he had against the defensive circle was to create an energy bomb, the best spell he had because his fireworks practice also played in it.

But even this spell didn’t destroy the energy filaments covering the ground, only perturbing those in the air, which stabilized in seconds after the shock wave.

With only 500 energy left in his reserve, Rune decided to attempt a last massive explosion to test their resistance.

Creating a 500 energy bomb was pretty easy with his experience launching even single 5 000 energy fireworks in the sky, so he did it in the blink of an eye and adopted the maximum adhesion posture by crouching down and putting his two hands on the ground.

The subsequent explosion succeeded at razing a zone of 10 meters from any energy filaments, and soon after, as he retreated, hundreds of them came back to fill the empty zone in the defensive circle.

And it was faster than Rune could retreat, so he was slowed down enough for some filaments to catch up and annoy him.

After his armor reached half its maximum despite all his energy being sent to fill it, he escaped the attacking circle, which was followed by the monster re-engaging pursuit.

Continuing to retreat, he re-engaged his pre-battle thought process and made observations.

‘It’s too far from a regular monster, tactics, and approach should have been forged by it fighting against others of the same kind or really light variant of the same kind.'

Some monsters were true monsters, even tamed from youth or baby they would still carry this visceral thirst for destruction and devouring all other sources of ether and energy, but some were different.

Some were only imitating and adapting, and from those, the pacific ether beast branch came from, with the youth imitating the pacific behavior of their parents.

In the same vein, if you attacked a young monster or showed it aggressive behavior, with its imitating and adaptable behavior, you’d push it towards the monster side.

Clearly, the monster composed of neon white rocks belonged to the second category, and it learned from its better.

‘If I can find a nest and report it…’

Rune didn’t need to think a lot to know that this zone had some clear constraints accompanying its high potential.

‘With its speed, I can just make a detour and continue my exploration, this way I’ll know if every one of its kind is similar. What is my chance of being able to reach the source of the radiation anyway? 0? Yeah, sounds about right.’

The thrill of fighting against a tier 4 monster wasn’t his primary goal, it was fun but it wasn’t what he needed to do, he could do it anytime once he established a basic analysis of the white zone, so he decided to by-pass this one.

‘Nelo would have bombarded it for days and even when nothing happened he would still continue… A perfect training zone if you exclude the permanent 540 compressed energy erosion hehe.'

Knowing very few could even arrive here, Rune was happy to appropriate the zone and as he by-passed the…

‘I’ll call them the moving monoliths! No way I’m going for white golem or sh*t like that!’

On this thought, he created 2 spell matrices for his moving platform spell and took to the air like climbing stairs and only stopped when he was 2 kilometers high.

This way, his perception sphere was still touching the ground with a very large surface, as for the moving monoliths? Well, if they could only go at some meters per second on the ground there was a chance they couldn’t fly, a high chance.

And now he was standing still.

The sounds permeating the air and the endless white everywhere with only the cliff as an indicator he wasn’t lost, the sun so blurry with his underloaded sight that any ophthalmologist would judge his sight to be blind-like, worse than having a turbid layer of water covering them with crazy glasses on.

Immersing himself in this, Rune could appreciate the fine sounds behind the permanent harmonious vibration, if someone with faith was to come here, the allusion to heaven would be certain, and he enjoyed this atmosphere.

‘Very close to a pilgrimage… If this zone is tamed I wouldn’t say no to pass some weeks totally isolated here.’

After 5 minutes of listening, he started off again, he was too young to act older and listen to nature for hours.

*Ding* Cohesion: Specialized Cohesion Infusion reached Tier 2 Level 21

Ignoring the notification, Rune kept running like he had Hermes winged boots at a stabilized altitude of 2 kilometers off the ground.

After he passed above the first moving monolith, he realized that for some reason every one of this kind emitted sounds, so he overloaded his sense of hearing and used it to localize every monolith.

After 3 days of doing that, he fought 4 different moving monoliths, with two of them being the same fine manipulation kind as the first one and the two others being of the grand manipulation kind, which was arguably harder to fight considering its attacking range went from 200 meters to 1 kilometer.

And that was probably because beyond that range, it would need to spend too much energy to make sure its spells hit.

For every monolith he encountered, Rune tested a careful approach by sacrificing thousands of armor and penetrating into their personal space, the conclusion was that every single one of those he tested used the same retreat tactic. The exact same.

For the grand manipulation variant, it just had a 200 meters defensive circle instead of the 100 meters one of the fine manipulation variants.

He also tried plunging from above at the start, believing himself smart and unstoppable, only to make himself the target of an all-out burst, breaking all his armor in one swoop and seeing death in the eye before he used his whole pool of energy to re-establish a full armor and deviating his trajectory to escape.

It was one of the most miserable moments he had in a long time, also a reminder of his mortality and his desire to not take fighting tier 4s too far when he wasn’t ready.

Eventually, he confirmed that at an altitude of 2 kilometers, no moving monolith attacked him even if he flew above their “head” directly.

With all those observations, he decided to put his ether tower down and send all his intel back in the form of a written report.

[The White Zone, tier 4 ether density, by Rune Tudor, sponsored IGS adventurer.

The zone presents the same linear increase of erosion (I like to call it radiation) rate as the previous black and white jungle zone.

The visual identifier of this zone is that everything is flat and white, the air is white, the ground is white, even the cliff that goes through it shows that in-depth it’s also white, some of my human senses have been so overwhelmed that I decided to reduce my sight via awareness manipulation to be nearly off.

As the IGS guide said, monsters in this zone have completely adapted to it and as of now I only found one kind, a monster composed of rocks. Or at least that’s my first impression. I don't know what’s underneath, they all seem to be of the imitating and adaptable type as I fought more than 5 of them and they all had the same battle tactic which consisted of retreating when you approach too much.

Those monsters have variants, I didn’t see two of them fighting each other but they should be, or maybe not. This “species” of monster is constantly emitting sounds and I’m too much of an amateur to know if those sounds have deeper implications.

A strange reaction I got from them was by attacking from above, which caused an all-out attack on me breaking through more than 32 000 peak tier 3 cohesion-infused compressed energy, so maybe other types of monster caused this response to be engraved in them, I don’t know.

With my humble tier 3 level, I got no chance at pushing them to their berserk state or seeing their ultimate life and death battle tactics. As they are tier 4, I’m not risking it.]

Having sent back his search, Rune was now free and could now decide on his true schedule, which he pretty much finalized in his mind without thinking too much.

‘Continue on till my armor regeneration and the radiation… The erosion! The erosion comes to a perfect balance. And on the way, try fighting every moving monolith to observe their behavior while keeping an eye out for other more dangerous species of monsters… Perfect.’

Thinking this, he finalized his choice and did exactly the same thing he did till now, but now the objective changed.

So everything changed.

…

During this time, in a major network coordination building under the patroller department,

“Yes ma’am, an adventurer recently sponsored reached an anomalous tier 4 ether density zone and sent news back as to the situation inside, we already have basic intel according to the report given,” a male rululu was reporting the latest important situation to his superior.

“And what’s the anomaly of the concerned zone? The hundred times gravity one? The beyond horizon strikes one? The permanent erosion of foreign lifeforms one? A new one?” The superior was obviously a female azoran, her rainbow skin proof of her having the legendary organic pixels that could change color as the owner wished.

“The adventurer qualified his zone as the ‘radiation zone’ and confirmed the link with the erosion anomaly, peak damage evaluated at 540 compressed energy per second or 300 peak tier 3 health, his description and reported traveling coordinates match with the evaluated zone of the permanent erosion of foreign lifeforms one, which team should we prepare for departure?”

“Only send one with a support team of regulars, how many behemoth path prospects are available as of now?” Turning her head to one of her assistants, she asked this question.

“The majority have been sent to the beyond horizon strikes and the gravity tier 4 anomalous zones to act as defensive bulwarks, so out of 59 852 there are only 141 remainings awaiting deployment,” the concerned assistant, a rululu, immediately gave the statistic.

“So, we have 141 prospective behemoth path powerhouses so… But, no, we still have to… But now we have a tried and clear path…”

Debating with herself, the female azoran finally finished thinking, and while browsing some data on her pair of connected lenses and screen, she said, “Ask prospect Lounae to go, send a transfer request for a team of 5 additional regulars able to survive where she’ll be going, a simple scouting mission, regular rewards.”

“Yes ma’am!” The assistant immediately transmitted the decision to the network.

After the order was issued, the azoran asked an assistant to immediately upload the conversation on the archive and get back to his work. The messenger who personally delivered the report backed away and left, there was much to do for everyone.

What was sure was that no one could attain administrative power in the dimensional department with connections.

…

What’s a prospect? Prospect means a prospective powerhouse, someone who showed signs of going above and beyond, someone who stood out so much from the mass of regulars that they couldn’t be classified among them.

But with hundreds of trillions of people to choose from, were there precise criteria to become a prospective powerhouse of the IGS? Was there a specialized department to decide that? Or did it only rely on luck, the luck to be seen?

You could argue that some worked their whole life, but would never be seen, that some had so much potential they should be wholly supported by the IGS, but one truth remained true regardless of anything.

And this truth had been proved by millions of years old civilizations.

Everyone was unique.

…

At an official IGS patroller’s camp, a young girl, a rululu, was meditating and trying to progress her spirit masteries.

With only a glance, it was easy to tell she was young, very young. The teenage part of her life should have just started and she was in no way a woman, of course, she didn’t have a rare disease that provoked a permanent juvenile appearance.

She was just very young.

From the corner of the camp, someone received a direct transmission from the patroller network and directly approached the young girl to make her stop her training.

“Mrs. Mera, you received a new deployment order,” the careful approach of a grown man to a seemingly fragile and young girl should have only existed in very rich households or entertainment, was now happening in a military camp.

The moment his words finished, the surrounding air started to distort and as the messenger was still here, he could feel the air becoming a little more viscous than normal, slowing his movement a little but not anything more than that.

Expressionless, the young girl stood up and then started to look at the air, or more probably her pair of connected lenses.

Such a young girl with a militarized patroller uniform gave a really strange vibe to anyone looking at it, even more, when knowing the implication behind it.

“I’m going then, I’m not coming back for at least 4 months, probably more,” after she read the new deployment assignment she spoke about it with the squad leader before her.

“You’re on the behemoth path, right? Do they need reinforcement in the gravity or beyond horizon strikes anomalous zones?”

“A new one, there’s even a clear path to it via the infinite cliff by going north through the anomalous erosion tier 3 zone, I’m being deployed as a scout to assess it and survey the potential of it while training,” already the girl memorized everything and didn’t hide it.

“Good luck then,” as soon as the squad leader of this camp said that the young rululu girl, Lounae Mera, departed to follow the orders.

She had a team of 5 regular patrollers waiting as well as equipment to get.

…

For Rune, time was a little warped, not only his tier 3 soul specialty changed it directly, but his habits made it so that it was exacerbated to the extreme.

The permanent neon white light everywhere could confuse anyone as to if the sun was still here or not, making it impossible to know if it was day or night.

Although even without it, this region with a sun the size of his fist had a longer day duration than the IGS calendar, so he would be time-warped anyway.

All to say that now, Rune considered himself a veteran of the white zone.

Also, he created his own calendar, the “awareness leveling calendar”.

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division reached Tier 3 Level 29

He had this idea when he got to sleep by the straight cliff watching nothing for hours, and the result was that he lost sense of time even more. The only thing he was sure of was that it had been more than a year since he came to the Endless.

Living in a twice slowed down temporality also had this effect where he learned to accept that sometimes, he had to dedicate himself a lot more than he thought.

The sound waves emitted by the moving monoliths? In the end, he learned that it was a specialization they used to replace their perception sphere.

The only theory he came up with to explain why they did that was that for some reason, they used provided masteries to shift their efficiency at perception control for other things. But this theory had so many holes he would never use it to base a real-life judgment on it.

Knowing that when he heard the sound they produced, it meant he had been located was nonetheless very important for him because he linked it to another thing.

He learned that the reason they came up with that was due to another species of monster, a perpetually stealthed snake-like monster.

There was also a third species of monster he encountered but he only saw one, and by one he meant a whole pack of them. It was a whole pack of pig-like monsters, true pigs from his perspective except they were white from head to toes.

It was also soon after he discovered that pack that he entered a more lethargic approach to his exploration, while also encountering the team deployed by the IGS to deepen the analysis of this anomalous zone.

The one leading the team was a young rululu girl called Lounae, and her presence here was supported by a very sizable argument that she could demolish one on one a moving monolith.

And she did it before Rune’s eyes.

For her, there was no respite, the little bit of communication he had with the team told him as much.

From the moment the Ether law, even the defective one back in their native dimension, awakened, she also awakened to her current mental state and instantly belonged to what Rune and his group considered as the “brave ones”.

Meaning she rushed head-on better than a monster could, an avatar the first day, fighting Deep Void monsters without any info the first day, and entering the Endless the moment it became available.

Her fighting style, despite having a similar cohesion variant of the behemoth path, not the strength variant or the energy regeneration variant, was very dissimilar to Rune’s one.

“The simplest the greatest” saying corresponded a lot more to her than it did for him.

Her fighting style was exactly what he imagined a behemoth-class monster would fight like, juggernaut being a baby style next to it.

The air around her appeared to reject anything and her every punch were like 500 energy bombs.

From this single fight sample, Rune thought that if he never lost a single second, actively trained his spirit masteries while never purging anything, didn’t take any break, and had a more fighting-focused passion that wasn’t adventuring without dying, he would also be at this level.

She was already at least a late tier 3 or soon-to-be peak tier 3 masteries-wise, that was what a true IGS prospective powerhouse should look like.

In terms of communication and social skills though, she was approximately at the same level as him, and they only talked a bit with the majority of it being Rune giving every bit and piece of knowledge he had before he tried to leave.

But as this patroller team had the same objective as him, following the straight cliff till they couldn’t anymore and take measures, he ended up together with them.

He accompanied them for some time and they only divided up after their team decided to stop at 400 infused armor per second as some of the regulars couldn’t keep up, so their whole team stopped.

So here he was, with his awareness calendar signaling that he passed at least 3 months since he entered the white zone.

Though it wasn’t really reliable.