Vision was useless, the white everywhere couldn’t help to see anything, a sphere of 5 kilometers was in fact short compared to what the group awaited.

The whole group lost 3 000 armor suddenly. Their perception sphere perceived nothing, no waves, they felt nothing, no sounds, they heard nothing, not even the harmonious sound waves of the moving monoliths, the ground wasn’t trembling.

It was an invisible wave that just did enough damage to kill any tier 2 entities without an energy armor.

“Continue to run! Don’t stop! Don’t use your energy! There’s nothing we can do to protect ourselves but to run and keep our energy armor on!” Rune directly informed the group after the wave.

Only 1 wave for such a colossal wind event? No way, it was just a second preamble.

An hour later, a second wave passed, this one erased 5 000 of Rune’s armor.

Half an hour later a wave at 8 000 passed by, and 10 minutes after this one, a wave at 12 000 arrived.

For all of them, there were no signs, just their armor losing a large amount of their defensive power just like that.

Making the link between those waves and the regular occurrence of similar events but much more benign was made by everyone here. Maybe this event had a preamble dating back to months before they arrived, but they couldn’t be sure.

The erosion rate increased from the previous 325 to 360, and for the next hour, the waves kept getting closer and more dangerous.

“Who are the 2 here with the least amount of efficiency at energy compression?! Say it fast!” Rune had to plan for the worst, and so he planned to counter the worst.

It was Lounae who answered, “Edouard and Nori,” the two reacted by looking at Rune.

Rune acted and talked calmly, his personality and upbringing told him from a very young age that talking louder or faster generally didn’t have the intended effects.

“I’ll take Edouard while you take Nori, we need to get them further ahead in case the waves reach or too-high damage or too-short frequency, the 3 others, well, maybe I can take 2 people with me? I don’t know! It’s an emergency measure, who here can go at 500 meters per second beside Lounae?”

No one said anything…

‘Freak!’

A wave just passed, dealing 16 000 damage, it had been 2 minutes since the last one.

“I’m neither a leader nor a rululu! Help me Lounae! Do you have a way, even completely stupid like… The ropes!”

Getting the ropes out of his ether pocket dimension, he hastily gave 3 to Lounae, “Wrap them around your arms, 3 of the regulars will be driven by your speed so make sure they are firmly attached, I’ll take 2 to lighten the burden!”

Getting 2 ropes firmly wrapped around each of his arms, he then approached the 2 nearest regulars and told them to also wrap the rope around them firmly.

Lounae and the other 3 also realized what he was planning and did the same thing hastily. Even though it was going to become a dark history.

By the time Rune finished his group’s one, he directly started to accelerate, Lounae should be faster than him anyway.

With two people dragged behind him and brought by the created acceleration, even when they didn’t resist and even assisted by reducing the friction by using momentum purely towards the front, Rune still had some difficulty accelerating.

He only reached 500 meters per second using reinforcement boost, which he then stopped using to transit to a permanent reinforcement.

5 minutes later Lounae appeared again in his sphere, dragging 3 regulars like potato sacks.

“Hahaha! That’s so fucking stupid!” A regular he was dragging couldn’t help but mock the situation.

“That’s why you’re a regular and I’m an adventurer! Hehe!” Rune participated and laughed, he didn’t want Lounae to catch up, even if it was inevitable.

Higher body control masteries and probably also higher reinforcement efficiency, what could he do against that?

Another wave passed, 18 000 armor melted and joined the air.

Before Lounae even caught up, another wave passed, just shy of under a minute between this one and the previous one.

“I think the event is just starting, in any case, it’s not at the peak, and I think that maybe we’re all going to die… Not really an epic way to go.”

Rune’s thoughts escaped his mouth, but he didn’t lose hope or decelerate, he even drew upon his energy pool to accelerate half-sutainingly to 550 meters per second, a modest but important increase.

In such dire circumstances, speed took another meaning, time too, where before time passed slowly and Rune considered his speed as fast, now it was just insufficient and insignificant.

50 seconds later, another wave passed, 20 000 armor gone.

40 seconds later, another one, 24 000 armor gone, a little bit of despair crept up the face of the 2 patrollers he was dragging.

“Don’t do anything drastic! Keep your energy! Send everything to your armor! Even make a permanent passage between the two if you know how!” Rune did everything he could, now only fate could decide their fates.

Lounae finally catched up 30 seconds later, she also accelerated and overtook Rune slowly.

*Ding* Energy Compression: Basic Energy Structure reached Tier 2 Level 60

‘It’s not exactly the moment ether…’

After 3 waves back to back, another came after 45 seconds, dealing 26 000 armor worth of damage to Rune, the armor of Edouard that he was dragging broke, exposing his body to the erosive air.

The next second, a flimsy energy armor appeared back.

The next wave would be fatal.

And Rune didn’t have any support mastery allowing him to create a sphere of protection using compressed energy, nor did anyone here.

Edouard said nothing, he just waited…

Rune and the other one also kept silent…

After one minute, the three let out a breath, they, or more precisely Edouard, gained another lease on life.

For the next 20 hours Rune and Lounae kept running, the breeze didn’t reappear, the monolith they passed by didn’t move, it wasn’t over.

Rune optimized his reinforcement boost to keep his highest possible speed, not just sending everything as a permanent reinforcement but using a method to go beyond that, less friction, more momentum, every step more important.

He had the life of someone on his shoulder.

Clearly, Lounae did the same and even beyond, she left some heavy craters behind her after all.

Fate seemed to shine on them as Rune’s perception sphere finally saw the border after an additional 20 hours, the moment he passed through the border, the erosion rate went from 412 to 300, announcing they successfully escaped, probably.

Lounae was also here, having stopped.

“Let’s keep the rope on and wait, the waves shouldn’t reach here but maybe it’s just our senses confusing us…” On the side of security was Rune, and nobody dared question him, he had the rightful place of emergency leader in their heart.

“So can we enter again? With some on this side and some on the other?” Edouard asked, he was all smiles as he just survived certain death.

As they began to talk, Lounae got her ether tower out and called the patroller network to report the events.

Rune agreed with Edouard and entered the white zone again, he had nothing to fear, but just in case, he moved his energy armor matrix to be in his energy pool, as long as it was here, his armor would be full, he just couldn’t control it anymore.

An operation like that only had downsides in general as sending energy into one’s spell was as easy as breathing, and Rune didn’t even know if moving it there would change something, it was a sudden wave that acted instantly after all.

After reporting everything, Lounae just left the tower there, maybe receiving the order to keep the tower active to observe the effects of this anomalous event.

For 10 hours, nothing happened, but after those 10 hours, a second period started. Rune, who was inside, felt himself losing more than half of his energy suddenly, which translated to more than 20 000 damage.

The others also awoke and began to talk.

“It’s starting, is there anything passing through to the other side?” a regular asked.

“My sphere doesn’t perceive anything abnormal about the wall,” came the answer from the other side.

“Nothing, just wait for the next one. I'm giving more attention this time,” another answered.

“Ok, then I’ll just…”

20 seconds after the first wave, the second arrived, emptying Rune’s energy pool. 2 regulars on the white zone side also felt that, prompting them to retreat behind the white wall, returning to the tier 3 zone.

Rune also retreated, no need to take needless risks, he would return a minute later.

“Oh sh*t! That surprised me,” a regular who retreated exclaimed.

Rune didn’t answer and just changed his awareness distribution by overloading his sight, sphere’s sensitivity, and touch as much as he could, then he lifted his head to observe the white wall, he also plunged his whole left arm in the wall.

Another 20 seconds later, his armor took a massive hit, prompting his sense to observe everything even more, but the white wall was immobile like the wave didn’t exist.

20 seconds later, again, the same, followed by another wave 20 seconds later.

Rune had already withdrawn his hand from the wall, but the situation was even more shocking than his worst nightmare.

‘Oh dear, I’m dead… If I was still inside I would be dead… No, I’d have probably already jumped…’

Just like that, less than 1 minute and a half and he would have died, the others realized what was happening and looked at the wall protecting them from certain death with serious expressions.

Lounae looked at it with defiance, Rune looked at it with fascination, Edouard looked at it with dread, Nori with acceptance. They were all just tier 3, for the old established civilizations they weren’t even qualified for becoming footmen or anything having to do with combat, they were civilians.

The first set of waves truly were nothing compared to what was happening, every 20 seconds a wave able to destroy 20 000 peak tier 3 health was passing.

An hour later, Rune made his hand pass through and the result was that his energy pool volatilized, the current waves were dealing more than his current maximum of 40 000 armor.

“So it works… If an attack is going to take more than my maximum armor and health combined I can just move my energy armor spell matrix to the inside of my energy pool…” Rune voluntarily said that this way the group was informed that doing that could one day help them.

Or help him.

…

“No, the only way for the IGS to make a permanent base here would be to have jupiter engineer variant build users to always be here and ready to protect the settlement… And the permanent erosion is hostile to everything anyways.”

One of the regulars turned out to be a lot more talkative after surviving the abnormal event, and Rune could satisfy his desire to speak about all the magnificence and possibilities of the Ether law with him.

In some ways, he really took after Utopia when it came to being a dreamer and idealist in some cases, always thinking about the best like back when Utopia dreamed of gathering millions of EP per day just by farming in the Void dimension.

“The… Jupiter engineer… Which variant of the engineer path is it? The defensive one?” Rune asked, he was a little confused as he never heard of this variant.

“No it’s the neutralization one, an ultra-complex projectile to cancel much more energy-intensive spells, or in this case, much more radiation-intensive natural phenomenons, but it’s really far-fetched to do something like that, maybe for a secret settlement?! That would be amazing!” The regular was like a fan-boy, a fan-boy of the engineer path.

“Humph! I never read anything about a jupiter-system making it to high tier, and I can confidently say I got some reading on the engineer path, so it’s probably too specialized, the uranus variant, however! Hehe!” Rune used reasoning to shut down the subject.

“Yeah… But the uranus variant is so rare, you only read about this system when reading about legendary tales, so it doesn’t really count,” his argument also made sense. Rune couldn’t think of a counter.

What was the engineer path? Well, it was the summit of the combined 3 energy fundamentals, and its associated variant came from stats specialization. The goal was to push the limit of what energy engineering could do, and the dream result was called “Uranus Variant”.

It was created by someone, he didn’t leave his name in history, but historians have confirmed his story through an untold number of texts and records.

And now, when someone asks about the engineer path, everyone thinks about the uranus variant, the apex of all energy engineering ever created, energy purity and affinity specialized with certain effects, the 3 energy fundamentals specialized to allow for massive armaments…

It was the system with the most powerful offense, defense, and adaptability at the same time, but the amount of knowledge and experience one needed to reach this apex wasn’t something anyone could reach, centuries could allow you to reach a high knowledge in one of those fields, but the 3 at the same time?

So nowadays, if you saw someone making cannons with a diameter of 2 meters accompanied with a cubic and complex body full of moving parts, as well as a gigantic energy field, then you’re pretty much f*cked if you didn’t prepare beforehand.

“And what about the neptune variant! Do you think it could…”

The only reason Rune was still here was that he wanted to see the end of the event, by now the individual wave damage was down to 4 000, with one every 30 seconds.

When he tried to see the erosion rate, he ended up with 506 armor per second, the difference between the two sides was so high it was ridiculous.

Rune couldn’t read the data the patroller’s ether tower was reading, but the most likely case was that during the following period, the white wall would let some of the radiation escape, therefore perpetuating the cycle of radiation in the black and white jungle.

After finishing a fruitful discussion with the regular and even sharing contact information for the heck of it, Rune once again put his arm through the white wall.

‘My exploration of this place is over anyway… I’ll leave as soon as I can confirm there’s no danger for them or anything interesting happening after that…’

He used this occasion to train his spiritual fundamentals and beat up, or more like being beaten up, by Lounae.

The mood was very cordial and hearty in the little community of 7 people, his heart was at peace. Back when the situation became critical, Rune once again looked at death and his principles in the eyes and said that till he died, he wouldn’t stop.

Looking over towards the infinitely expanding white wall, he knew he would remember and come back to this place in the future, but when he came back, the IGS would have juicy intel about the entire zone and he would just come here to satisfy his petty desire of showing he progressed.

“Maybe I’ll only come back when I want to develop my hazmat suit build? Would be funny, hehe…” He let a hollow laugh escape him.

Thinking of this future, Rune couldn’t think of a date, it just became part of his numerous long-term plans like the fireworks build and the perception disruptor element build.

‘The majority of the paths I want to walk on are better off if I directly build them using the provided masteries, but with the rate at which I’m going…’

Rune opened his masteries.

Masteries

Tier 1 Masteries

Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement: Tier 3 Level 47

Physical Fundamental: Fighting Instinct: Tier 3 Level 78

Physical Fundamental: Body Control: Tier 3 Level 79

Energy Fundamental: Fine Manipulation: Tier 3 Level 38

Energy Fundamental: Grand Manipulation: Tier 3 Level 37

Energy Fundamental: Energy Compression: Tier 3 Level 82

Spiritual Fundamental: Perception Control: Tier 3 Level 35

Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division: Tier 3 Level 33

Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation: Tier 3 Level 36

Tier 2 Masteries

Energy Compression: Basic Energy Armor: Tier 3 Level 81

Energy Compression: Basic Defensive Energy: Tier 3 Level 81

Cohesion: Specialized Cohesion Infusion: Tier 3 Level 7

Tier 3 Masteries

Energy Compression: Basic Energy Structure: Tier 2 Level 59

Body Control: Basic Humanoid Body: Tier 2 Level 57

Body Control: Basic Prolonged Body Use: Tier 2 Level 57

‘Hehe, always a pleasure to see things leveling up, even if I don’t really know what’s leveling up.'

Making new calculations to occupy himself, Rune created all sorts of theories that would anyway change in 2 weeks.

‘If there’s a concert when I pass by the capital I want to go! Wasn’t there a mention of the cultural events having started? Something like that?’

Suddenly thinking about music for some reason, Rune made up his mind to maybe even wait if a big concert was planned in some weeks.

With the connection enabled by the patroller’s ether tower, he couldn’t help himself and read a lot, the news site was even updated due to the start of what he referred to as the “F*cking massive amounts of new things”.

The Pachin’s Exploratory Front wasn’t the only one who discovered at least one thing every day, and exploration wasn’t the only massive subject anymore.

Everything combined and optimized ended up in the most minimalistic news site with tens of different categories, going from pure exploration update to native dimension news, without ignoring the various cultural and economical happenings in the capital. Even the IGS government published news, some articles were even just hidden advertisements.

Rune was happy to be part of such a society, it was so chaotic and interesting, full of life and ambition, even old news were still of actuality.

Like ‘the incessant flow of immigrants never stopped increasing’, and the IGS was battling against this issue so hard that they feared they would soon discover what happened when you emptied a tier 2 zone a hundred times within a short period.

‘The most interesting section would be the prospects section. I really want to know if we have some protagonist material… A military build section would also be interesting… Or a...’

“Ah! I don’t know!” Acting like he suddenly remembered his most shameful memories, Rune struggled against nothing but the air, waving his arms rapidly to evacuate his inner shame.

‘Stop it, stop it! Let’s train a little.'

Entering spiritual meditation, Rune started some active training of the 3 spiritual fundamentals.

A week later, he concluded that the event had no chance of affecting the outside and that nothing new would happen, so he bade farewell to Lounae’s team and initiated his trip back home.