In terms of tier 3 levels, Rune confidently put himself at least at middle-of-the-pack in terms of fighting ability, even late if nothing countered him and he didn’t have a deadline involved.

He was of course still far from peak, that level was completely another thing altogether after all, but going back to beating peak tier 3 was much easier than what he remembered it to be like.

He even successfully killed a squad of 12 peak tier 3 monsters and told himself that he accomplished that in only 3 hours, ignoring some parts where he struggled.

He was long past the possibility of his arrogance affecting him… Right?

Contrary to when he first departed for this expedition, his 2 basic slotted body control masteries were coming together, allowing him to increase his speed as well as his steady offensive ability.

Added to his defensive energy compression reaching the minimum threshold of a late tier 3 entity focused on that, he could go with fewer worries, not full behemoth style, but the battles became faster and more permissive.

This time, Rune went out of his way to catch as many tier 3 monsters as he could, he had a 100 cubic meters pocket dimension to fill, and preferably with cores and not corpses.

All said and done, he was happy with this return trip.

Where before, the more he traveled, the stronger the monsters, now it was reversed, and the more he advanced, the weaker the monsters.

Where before fighting late or peak tier 3 monster armies was long and hard, now he enjoyed it, because he was at their level.

1 week into his return journey, he started using the very satisfying behemoth style to deal with the individual late tier 3 and middle tier 3 monsters, it was always nice to use this style, just that those monsters weren’t really as enduring and resistant as someone specialized in taking a massive beating like Lounae or himself.

And for those with the same build, meaning a behemoth-like build, approximately, he bullied them with his reaction speed due to living in a different temporality.

Do monsters have a soul specialty? The board said yes and the guide said yes, but a specialty was often something invisible, only having an effect that the user knew.

So all those monsters had a specialty, but as tier 3 with a chaotic and mindless instinct, all sorts of combinations with their not-yet-perfected build happened, and the result was that most often, it ended up more supportive than anything else.

Even for Rune, it was the case, having a synergistic specialty and build was a very intelligent being sort of path, to make it happen you had to plan a future road where the two paths crossed and used one another. Or you needed a lot of luck.

Of course… Some monsters got lucky… And then they became worthy of entering the biography of a powerhouse’s journey as a big bad monster who inadvertently razed a city or something like that…

Regular Endless tales everyone heard or read once.

His regular speed based on his body control maximum strength was now 480 meters per second, corresponding to 20 000 strength, with an efficiency of 292%. This amount corresponded to the maximum strength stat of a tier 6 entity, but then it was only a comparison he could make to comfort himself.

3 weeks later, Rune came back to a path, maybe the path he created with the Undecided or a new one, not like he could recognize it, they all looked alike in the jungle zone. Anyway, the result was that in one month he came back.

This month ended up being more about filling his ether pocket dimension and shared training between the masteries he didn’t use as much as he would like to, his grand and fine energy manipulation, everything else he trained more or less passively.

As he was in a tier 2 zone, he ignored every monster by being much faster than them, he also encountered a lot more people in his sphere than before, and it was the wilderness, or it should be the wilderness.

‘Yes, it’s the wilderness!’

Ultimately, after one month and some days, Rune arrived back at the transit point.

The landing zone structure was a lot more complete than the last time he saw it, with the same infinite stream of people transporting crates and things around.

Knowing what to do, Rune took 30 crates and flew above the others on the highway using 2 moving platform spells, he was flexing a bit, yes.

At this speed, he arrived in less than an hour at the capital construction site, which wasn’t just razed forest anymore but was a place where even the north capital sector was starting to be drawn on the ground.

Seeing a sign “Crates Dropping Point” on the transition between central capital sector and north capital sector, Rune dropped off what he brought, and 5 minutes later, having slowed down a little from his maximum 500 meters per second, he arrived back at the headquarters.

For everything to go smoothly, he decided to call his first support.

The waiting between the moment he called and she picked up the call was only 5 seconds, “Yes Rune?”

‘Maybe I could have informed her before that I was coming back…’ Rune thought before describing his situation.

“Are you at the headquarters now? I just came back, sorry for not calling you to say that before arriving, I only just thought about it.”

“Oh! Eh… Yeah! Wait I’m coming down, just wait for me at the entrance hall,” and she hung up.

Looking at the whole headquarters, Rune saw the same black monolith as before, except that now his sphere was blocked everywhere, even at the entrance.

He didn’t know if it was the final form of the headquarters but the most probable answer was no, it was just temporary, or maybe one even larger was under construction somewhere.

‘Anyways…’

Rune started moving towards the entrance, when he passed through the door he saw the same floor as before, 3 zones with 2 of them more occupied than the last one, the tier 3 zone was still pretty empty, with only 1 person there.

‘Don’t care.'

He just stopped at the entrance, the moment he entered his sphere covered all of the first floors and the exterior was now completely hidden, making him add another question to his list after a little brainstorming.

He didn’t know if it was possible to create a sphere disruption energy wall that only worked one way.

He got some glances, but even Orobas, the tier 3 who helped and guided him last time wasn’t there, and his memory didn’t allow him to remember all the faces of the employees, so he waited.

Some minutes later, Rune perceived Olivia entering his perception sphere from the staircase, she also saw him and she directly approached him.

“Oh! You could have called, I had to interrupt my sorting session!” She was the same as he remembered, serious, and looked organized.

Making a fish-face to show that he was too dumb to argue, Rune waited for her to finish.

“Ok, follow me, we first need to secure your pocket dimension and extract all the hard data you gathered, you of course used the appropriate tools for each job, right?” With a professional smile on, she asked a question that would greatly simplify her task.

“Yes, irreproachable for that,” of course he used all the goodies, they were goodies for a reason.

“Oh, really? My colleagues aren’t saying that about their assigned sponsored adventurer… Well, we’ll see!” Arriving back at the stairs she invited him to follow.

“So the procedure for returning sponsored adventurers is to first drop everything and let us extract all the hard data you gathered, then we’ll process all the monster bodies you gathered and give all the cores you gathered to a private company.”

“You’ll receive 95% of the gathered EP equivalent in under a month via the IGS bank, there should also be a notification to warn you, so let’s go and drop everything you have, after that will be the debriefing, you, of course, wrote a report right?” Like a machine gun, she kept informing him of what he had to do.

Rune blinked repeatedly and then flashed a smile, “Yes.”

Turning her head, distrust was flashing in the depth of her eyes, maybe she was corrupted by her colleagues who got dumb and lazy adventurers?

“Well, we’ll see… Someone will be here to complete your ‘report’ of anything missing,” now that was a little diminishing.

“Ok,” but Rune was Rune.

‘I don’t have any ego, and I still have a scientific background so making reports is in my blood, hehehe.'

He of course kept everything to himself, he didn’t want to risk complimenting himself and then someone saying it’s missing half of the important content.

Arriving at the general room full of Adventurer’s Society employees doing things, Olivia just led him to a corner of the room and looked at numbered tables that were full of similar gadgets as Rune had in his pocket dimension.

Making it to an empty table, she informed Rune, “Put everything having to do with exploration here, ether tower, flat compass, if you had to change their memory put all the hardware here too, everything, your ether pocket dimension needs to be empty of everything apart from monster bodies and cores, you can keep the clothing.”

Doing as asked, Rune started emptying his pocket dimension, he didn’t lose a single thing.

During his travels and even before the awakening of the Ether law, Rune knew himself to be very organized, his bedroom was cleaned monthly of useless things and he learned from youth that when he used something, he had to tidy everything up after usage.

The erosion didn’t affect dead things as he used a lot of those tools during his travels in the black and white jungle and they were as good as new when he put them on the table.

“That’s everything, where do I transmit my report? You?”

“Put it in portable document format and send it to me yeah, you can also send it later if you’re not sure it’s complete…”

Rune didn’t even hesitate and directly sent it.

Receiving it, Olivia could only resign, “Sigh… In this case, we’ll do the debriefing now, come with me, I’ll call a supervisor.”

Bringing him back to the hallway of the floor, she led him to a smaller room. Once inside, she left the door open and started to talk, “We’re going to wait here, the supervisor is coming in 5 minutes, the time to read your report and prepare some elementary questions or more if your report isn’t complete.”

“Ok,” Rune understood that he just needed to wait so he turned his connected lenses on and went on to search for some music.

He reactivated the hit playlist he found the moment he had access to the high-speed internet, if it wasn’t a sensitive moment he would have kept it active till now.

With music playing in his brain, he continued his research for upcoming cultural events, he wanted a concert or something.

Absent-mindedly he even asked the question to Olivia without even looking at her, “Is there any upcoming concert from the singers sponsored by the culture department? How much time was I even gone?”

“They did a good job at making sure there’s always a cultural event per week, but they always keep the suspense up for what it is! Very, very frustrating. That’s why you can only find info on what already happened but not what’s coming,” Olivia informed him of a crucial intel, making him look up.

“So devious…” Rune didn’t answer more, prompting Olivia to answer the second part of the question.

“You were gone for more than 9 months in total, your data don’t present a massive hole in the middle so compared to other sponsored adventurers, you’re very easy on my mind,” a slight smile was the reward he got for being himself, Rune would take it.

Smiling as an answer to what she said seemed to be enough, so he didn’t bother to answer with more words.

He gave pretty much all his attention to the music playing, having already found 4 pieces of music he really liked since he came back, he was having the time of his life. The only point of contention in his mind was that there still wasn’t any AI to help him find all the best music for his taste…

‘Can’t ask for the bright sun when it’s only dawn Rune.'

Having his answer, he diverted his internet search for more precise things. And when he got a glimpse of the true things, music being a very important hobby for him, his mind went into overdrive.

“Did you assist at one of those cultural events? Where’s the announcement made? Everyone can just go? Do you need to pay for a place? Are there groups of singers or is it still too early for full-blown production of instrumentalists? I’m hearing drums and bass right now, also artificial instruments, are they pre-prod? Did the culture department support every singer to be assisted by energy boosted drummers and guitarists? Energy pianists?“ He asked his source of insider intel that was standing next to him.

“You… You’re really… Into it right?” Being asked all those specific questions all of a sudden confused her not a little bit.

“Yes, yes,” nodding repeatedly, he waited for the answers.

As the sphere isolation wasn’t completely done, he could see some people turning their heads to look at him, maybe seeing a culture enthusiast like him among the tier 3 was rare?

But before Olivia could start to answer, someone else from a distant room interrupted her, asking for Rune’s attention, “Seems you’re a little overwhelmed Olivia, let me answer everything, your supervisor will have to wait! Hehehe!”

From another room, Rune perceived someone addressing them directly, looking at that person, he immediately recognized him.

“Mr. Finley, hello,” it was the old rululu who did his introduction into the IGS principles, he even had his contact.

“For such an enthusiastic and fine young adventurer like you, I can at least take some time out of my busy schedule to answer those, that’s entertaining! Hehe!” Clearly, he already prepared what he was going to say, and his joking tone intuited some shocking insider info.

“Please,” Rune eagerly waited.

“For the cultural events, just go on the official website and you’ll get all you need, it’s, of course, free, but for the second part, oh oh oh! The second part is, in fact, objectively funny!”

“The culture department first started their planning with only singers, easier to train and maintain, the build they used, they found it in multiple legacies, and I personally assisted at one of their training sessions and oh dear! That’s downright ridiculous how amazing it is!”

Aengus then left Rune some time to understand, he was smiling so foolishly it was funny.

“They planned to do the concert with minimal assistants, you don’t know of course but it’s not just a question of having the right masteries! The reason is that the true way paved by prior civilizations is the path of intent idols and musicians, where the language is only a support and the core is the intent. If one day you can assist in a training session of one of their singers you’ll see that it’s a path that can be weaponized the moment the person wants, though it’s certainly not a very appropriate path…”

Suddenly he started to have a smile even wider than before.

“And then? And then? Guess what happens when you mix professional singers, geniuses recruited due to stellar record or extreme potential, with massive budgets in the background, and you consider that amidst the millions, oh excuse me…”

He cleared his throat.

“Hundreds of millions of civilizations we encountered back in our native, at least a thousand of them are a copy of the first time human civilization was encountered? With culture having taken over the place of apex power and ruling power above that of government? Hehehe…”

“Like… A bunch of ultra-talented and ultra-passionate music groups who took the matter into their own hand and didn't submit to the culture department? Protagonist materials? Something like that?” Rune relied on his instinct, so he hesitated a bit.

“Hehe! Respect yourself, Mr. Tudor! Don’t say that you hesitate on your prior statement! Have more confidence in your own brain!” A little rebuke to make clear that he was too young and didn’t know how to talk yet, always happy to know that.

“Because… That’s exactly what happened! A bunch of nutjobs became tier 3 six months ago, and from the start, they planned to come back and become a music group, so they contacted the culture department and received a meeting after their status as tier 3 got confirmed.”

“Whereas the culture department planned to have normal instrumentalists accompanying their singers, this group was complete from the start and was a major group even before the awakening of the Ether law…”

Looking at the air, Aengus was making the suspense climb using his tone, not only Rune was listening to him, others on the floor listened as well, interrupting their work.

Unknown when, someone entered and sat in the room Rune was in, but she clearly knew that it wasn’t the moment to disturb them so she only listened.

“Having found a treasure, I really should have been here to see the face of our culture department head when he received the news, the culture department confirmed their addition to an emergency training program to make sure they understood all their new power and all the tips the IGS gathered regarding the music group’s path.”

“And now come the answers to your question about energy instrumentalists,” only now Rune remembered that he wasn’t listening to a tale but that he wanted answers to questions he asked.

But Mr. Finley was too charismatic and the tale itself interested him… What could he do against such a pincer ambush?

“The path divergence between using one’s own voice and using an external instrument is visually like day and night, one internal, the other external, but the build doesn’t change a lot, though some instruments need special mastery addition and lots of energy, the piano for example, if you want to do a live performance? Then forget it before tier 4!”

“The amount of energy needed to cover one and make the ether vibrate to your will is too huge for civilians like us, so yes, the energy instrumentalist path exists, it can also be weaponized, it also means that the culture department also planned in the future for a solo pianist concert. But first, that person will need to reach tier 4, so we can only wait and be content with solo guitarists, bassists, or drummers, not that they are ready till tier 3 themselves…”

He was nearly musing in his short blue beard by himself at this point.

“I digress, the point is, energy instrumentalists need a separate training and tier 3 minimum to be possible, explaining why they didn’t enter the consideration of the culture department for the first cultural development stage.

“They had some plans but otherwise primarily planned to wait it out till tier 3s became more common and dreamy young or old music enthusiasts desired to take this step, in which case they’ll gladly help, saturating the market as fast as they could to generate competition…” Now Mr. Finley finished answering all of Rune’s questions, only the end of the tale remained.

“Coming back to the first group to come back from slaying tier 3 monsters, the group is called Starrysky, a regular music group with every position covered. After they agreed to a preparatory session, they showed passion, hard work, and talent.”

“I didn’t have the opportunity to go to one of their training sessions but the result is what everyone here knows as the “God Only Knows” concert event. They came back 6 months ago and they were on stage 5 months ago, with an explosive advertising campaign from the nascent musical industry.”

“As you can guess, it’s not really possible to register intent into a file and listen to it when you want, so even I had to move my old ass for this historical moment, the majority of those here also came as a break day, the stage place was central capital sector,” now that he was part of the event he gave a lot more details.

Rune also saw that the people listening pretty much knew what happened next, with even some joking about their friends for missing it and regret showing on the face of those.

“It was a concert airing multiple strong songs with daring messages, but also one which needed much more than a regular tier 3 group to play. I can only tell you that because I read an interview by an amateur journalist who had behind-the-stage information.”

“If I didn’t know, I would only tell you it was all planned, but the end result was that this concert not only caused lots of new and old aspiring singers and instrumentalists to go their own way, to not only become tier 3 but also and more importantly, to signal that culture is still up to the duty the IGS always gave it till now, the role of being a pylon and that of uniting the power of a whole civilization.”

Having finished the grand line, he then proceeded to give the last nugget of gold.

“The song that gave the concert’s complete name is “A Whole New World God Only Knows”, it’s pleasurable to hear the registered studio version, but you can also search for the true version which was hastily put together by artificial means.”

“Everyone has his opinion so I’m not giving mine, and the last thing, the workforce assignment to the culture department has more than doubled since this concert, you should have found the face of every government-sponsored enterprise, even the Adventurer’s Society was hit by the domino effect, so the true headquarters will have its construction finished later than planned, hehehe, did I satisfy your curiosity about this subject Mr. Tudor?”

Aengus finished his tale and people finally started to talk again. It was very entertaining for everyone so they thanked Aengus and returned to work after that.

“It’s a pure pleasure to know that the Ether law allows something like that. I never stopped thinking about listening to music when I was traveling through the erosion anomalous zone, but I could only resign myself to wait till I came back or the next generation of connected lenses with enough memory came about… Sigh… Which hasn’t even been announced…” Rune told of his greatest regret, the lack of music to listen to.

“I don’t know when this problem will be solved, but if you pay enough, maybe some tens of millions of EP, to the company producing them, you can ask for a hastily built version with an external memory and a connection between the two, that would solve your problem till the next proper generation,” Aengus just told the answer like that, taking Rune by surprise.

He could only keep silent, reveling in being told the answer straight like that, “Ok, I’ll do that, thank you.”

“You have a debrief to do, so I’m leaving you to it, till next time Mr. Tudor,” and then he started to play with the screens surrounding him.

Rune didn’t know his position but he had an entire room for himself, and an old rululu couldn’t be mixed with regular employees. Often, only the hardest administrative tasks normally needing an AI core needed them as replacements to come up with answers.

“Well, looks like it’s my turn, Mr. Tudor, I’m Thyia Yurko, let’s have a productive debrief,” full-blown social persona on Rune’s face.