“Hello Mrs. Yurko, don’t hesitate to say when I forgot something or when I’m completely wrong in how I wrote it,” full-blown social persona back, a simple smile and relaxed posture, he could talk casually but someone else leading the conversation was always better for him in such a social environment.

Rune couldn’t recognize any characteristic making her part of the 5 dominant species, she had very light green skin and the same color eyes, only her hair was true green.

For her to have become a supervisor, Thyia must have proved her capabilities long ago, she was maybe even recruited directly from the native dimension.

However, it wasn’t the place nor the time to ask about her origin or anything close to the subject.

He already learned interesting things from having small talks with Olivia, like that, at the start, when the IGS announced the Endless was without danger through whatever means they had.

Probably simply by gathering sufficient funds to allow messengers to use the EP Market to reset their tier 1 dimension teleportation cooldown the moment they arrived back in the Universe, teleporting to the void or deep void, after all their native dimension couldn’t hold ether life forms yet.

They started mass recruitment of employees across the backbone of the IGS administration, making it so that at the start when the first massive wave of immigrants arrived, there were more IGS employees than people like Rune, people wanting to become adventurers or patrollers.

“So, first, I’m just going to say that your report is fine as it is,” she pulled him back from his thoughts.

“It seems that you’re even using the guide to identify flora and fauna, you only gave some glimpse of it in your report but I can tell you that if you make another report about what you found.”

“Be it a variant of a rainbow flower or the progressive change of pure jungle to black and white variants, you’ll gain some rare points as an amateur scholar.”

“If you’re really as much into it as your report tend to show it, then you’ll maybe even gain access to privileges granting you access to some tools normally not given to normal sponsored adventurers,” she engaged strongly from the start, saying all she had to say in the most concise manner, and Rune liked it.

“I kept an amateurish journal of everything, so I’ll write a report of everything I can remember on this subject, that’s a very pleasurable hobby once you get into it. I can tell a lot more details from memory alone, no problem,” as he liked it, Rune said that he would do it, it was time for some downtime anyway.

“Your report was comprehensible enough and using the report given by Lounae’s team to timestamp it is very ingenious, compared to a proper scientific report that you seems to have experience with, you’ve lost a bit of the necessary habits but compared to some others, you’re completely fine.”

“I’ll quickly go over some of the points you could use for your fauna and flora report, the more formatted it is the easier your entry in this circle will be,” at least she liked what she read.

On second thought she added, “Well, you don’t particularly need it now but… If you give a fact-supported report, it’ll be used massively by true researchers and scientists working on the subject, so you’ll be pretty much guaranteed to get some special privileges anyway.”

“Now, I hope you didn’t plan something for soon, I’ll correct you for maybe an hour or two and answer your questions as they come to your mind, Olivia you can go I’ll take care of him now,” Thyia finished the introduction, it was time for her to do her job.

“Can you give me your ether pocket dimension Rune? As your first support, I’ll have to transmit it under your name to the relevant company. You don’t know it yet but you already have a bank account, there’s only one bank currently, the IGS bank.”

“So just go to their website to access your bank account, an iris scan and voice identification are associated with it, have a good day then,” Olivia then left after saying her piece and taking the offered metal ball.

…

Rune spent the next 2 hours remembering pieces of knowledge he forgot from back during his exploration engineer curriculum, as well as learning new ones that weren’t relevant to this same curriculum.

Thyia was as professional as he expected, in fact, everyone he encountered till now was. Maybe he was just lucky or too oblivious to his surroundings for him to arrive at this conclusion, Utopia and Gar often said that about him, but as it didn’t hurt anyone he didn’t try to rectify it.

After the debrief and subsequent teaching session was done, he was accompanied back to the reception floor, where he bid goodbye to Thyia and got her contact.

Back on the highway, Rune wanted to go back to the rented apartment, maybe someone would be here and if not, it didn’t matter, he didn’t contact anyone and wanted to surprise himself by their presence or absence.

‘9 months… Nelo should have succeeded at making his single star element, as for the others I don’t know their short-term goals but they should not have encountered any problem… Maybe I should create an alarm function or ask Olivia to check if they end up missing for more than a year?’

Rune’s thought process was like that, the more he thought without a goal the more he divagated.

He enjoyed losing control of his mind, letting it come up with random suggestions, some stupid, some he forgot the next moment. That was one of them.

On the way he saw a thriving activity, tens of working cranes, hundreds of workers with flashy uniforms, hundreds of towers, in majority black, flashing with all sorts of neon lights and balconies protrusions, nothing could escape his perception sphere.

The majority were black buildings, but mixed with them were a minority of flashy white, red, green, cyan, or even purple standalone buildings, the whole capital was planned after all.

‘It’s missing so much neon, advertisement, and sound if they want to realize the different artist views they hinted at in the news.'

He wasn’t disappointed per se, he knew that creating a city with the objective of it hosting billions and billions of people wasn’t easy, it was even impossible for his mind to comprehend why the IGS decided to try.

But he wasn’t part of the team who decided nor the team who applied, he just enjoyed the fruits of their labor freely, so he didn’t have the complaining right.

Browsing the net, he found the culture department website.

‘Yup. Nothing. The previous announcements were made… 2 days prior? So I just need to check every 2 days and I’ll have my concert!’

‘Once I receive my EP I’ll have to contact…’

Searching on the net, he ended up finding a sponsored company named “Digital Ventures”, itself a subsidiary from “General Electronics And Connected Devices”, there was even a way to contact them on their website.

By the time he found the contact information, Rune arrived back at the temporary Undecided base, the moment it entered his sphere he was surprised, his perception sphere was blocked.

In the same residential park, he saw other rooms and entire apartments with anti-perception sphere measures. He didn’t expect to find one at their base, arriving 30 seconds later he jumped on the balcony, and seeing the door leading to it close, he unlocked it with energy lockpicking.

Once inside, he realized that there was no one inside, so he let the door open and created a deckchair on the balcony, installing himself in his comfy mode.

“Ahh… The less talk the better!” Releasing a breath signaling he was now free of worries, Rune just turned on chill music and looked at the sky.

He didn’t really think how long he wanted to wait before going back on another adventure, from his prevision, another 2 to 4 months of active fighting and he would be able to kill his first tier 4 monsters.

‘Only the one I counter but it’s better than nothing, I can’t go back to the erosion anomaly so I need to choose another target… Let’s check the real-time map.'

Turning on his connected lenses, he arrived at the official IGS government website, and from this point, he navigated till he found the map section.

Unveiled before his eyes were more than hundreds of millions of two-dimensional square kilometers, maybe even more than a billion square kilometers, a regular planet back in Rune’s native dimension had an undifferentiated surface area of around 500 000 000 square kilometers.

The exploration could only be considered quite slow if compared with special exploratory spaceships created only for this task, they only needed a month or two to completely map the surface and the first few kilometers under the surface of newly discovered planets.

‘They already mapped all the tier 1 and tier 2 zones? What if I activate the landmarks layer? Oh! The straight cliff!’

Exploring the functions of the map website, Rune tested all the layers available, environment, monster density, landmark, ether density, roads and paths, region transitions, zone borders… With every additional layer, there was a secondary information annex which he enjoyed reading.

Region transitions were pretty much fixed, but their inside could change a lot due to anomalies or massive zone border migrations or ether currents.

They even added an option allowing for someone to see the future ether density zone border migration as time passed, the warning about a possible massive information inaccuracy was funny though.

‘Hehe, maybe there’s a wave of tier 9 ether density currents coming towards us at 100 kilometers per second. That’s the only true way for the IGS to know which of us are true protagonists, as for me I’ll just go take some vacation in the Deep Void if it happens, still so many things to try, oh! There’s also the gravity planet! Really need to pay them a visit in the future.’

The only thing comforting him of this possibility not having a chance of happening was the record of Endless Hazards he browsed through not only on the board but also on the guide.

For something like an ether current of tier 9 to happen, it would have to find its origin in a class 1 disaster, which was by the definition given to it, “Impossible, only theoretical model available”, due to the amount of energy needed for them to happen.

‘It was something like a hundred regions collapsing together and having all their forces concentrated in a single point? I’ll already be happy if I can observe and survive a class 2 disaster, only equal to ten regions collapsing, much more reasonable… Right Ether law?’

Looking at the sky again, he once again let his thoughts wander, letting them take the path they desired.

After an intensive month of travels, Rune relaxed bit by bit, until the moment his spirit told him it was time, and he fell asleep on his deckchair.

The slight chill music playing in his mind truly gave him the impression that he was still the same as when he started.

…

A soft tune played in his ears.

Hearing again meant his spirit finished replenishing itself, allowing his awareness to connect his senses back with his consciousness, becoming whole and functioning again.

Lounging in his comfy deckchair, Rune didn’t want to move, not even to do those ultra-comfortable morning stretches. His body and mind were fully ready, but he didn’t want to move, he felt extremely comfortable for some reason.

Drifting between the realm of being awake and somnolent for half an hour, he only started to wake up when he couldn’t find sleep again.

In his mind, there were pictures, he felt like he had a bad dream, making him so lethargic, something having to do with someone dying or something.

‘Mmmh…’

Trying to recall only led to vagueness, but “death” was something that was very prominent, so his mind was put to work. The analysis of dreams was something taught in school, in philosophy, and from the moment he learned that dreams had meanings, he tried to interpret them.

And more often than not ended up with nothing, dreams weren’t meant to be recalled, and ever since the Ether law awakened, he dreamed even less than before. His spirit was often too exhausted to even allow him to wake up during a dream and link his consciousness to it.

‘Death… Death… Someone dying… Well, I don’t really need to think more, it’s obviously about Edouard.’

When the regular patroller he transported had his armor breached, Rune and the other guy nearly accepted that Edouard was soon going to die.

Edouard himself just waited for it to happen, but fate had its way and everything was only a premise to what would have been the death of everyone present. It wasn’t fortunate or unfortunate, it just happened, it was a fact.

‘I would have jumped before it reached this level of criticality, wouldn’t I? The past is the past, it never happened, so I can still confidently say I never witnessed a fellow intelligent being, a sapient, die before me.’

This dream reminded him that life wasn’t pink, the reason he was alive was that he never overdid dangerous things. Moving monolith training centers and ambushes from snake hunters were controlled and mastered risks.

Having enough of thinking about such a depressing subject, he turned on his connected lenses and entered the culture department's official website, where he saw an announcement for the next cultural event.

“They announced it yesterday, so tomorrow! Oh! I feel motivated! I’m pumped up!”

Doing bodybuilder pose to wake himself up, Rune then continued his prior works, he didn’t want to make his report about flora and fauna yet, he preferred looking at the map and establishing his plan for his second adventure.

‘Arbitrary west completely cut off by the straight cliff, arbitrary north I don’t want to nitpick the white wall border so no, arbitrary east and also where the IGS is concentrating its effort, rich in raw resources due to the mountainous environment, this tier 3 zone is so f*cking huge.'

Looking over at the map on the east side and putting on the ether density layer, there was a tier 4 zone straight east, just that there were millions of square meters the IGS had to survey for resources or possible dimensional linking zones before arriving there.

‘Arbitrary south, more forest, not even a region transition, just pure forest, tier 4 already found. Apart from the erosion anomaly, there are 2 other anomalous zone, southeast gravity anomaly, a mountains and forest mixed environment in which it’s very hard to progress, and finally the southwest forest plain nightmare, a lot less dense in terms of trees, a lot more dangerous due to the monsters having developed a transmitted build lineage letting them attack from tens of kilometers away…’

If he had to make a choice, the exploration of the cliff was his favorite destination, but even the IGS was slumped against it, it was at least tens of thousands of kilometers deep and the workforce had to prioritize something else than this uncertainty.

‘Gravity seems dope, maybe I’ll finally find a use for the flat compass. It's difficult to lose sight of where I want to go when I have the cliff as a guide…’

Not having an objective allowed him to be free, not having companions allowed him to be even freer, not having deadlines allowed him to be so free he didn’t want to go back anymore.

‘Yup, I’ll visit everything anyway, now now, do I bee-line the gravity anomaly or do something before that? Huuuuum...’

Having a revelation after 5 minutes of looking around the map, Rune concluded.

‘I’ll think about it later, never maybe, penguin it.’

“That’s all right? Cultural event, salary, music for my adventure…” After enumerating everything to the blue sky, once everything was said and done, it looked like he was… Done.

He only had to wait for things to play out.

“Ok! I changed my mind, I really feel like writing my flora and fauna report now!” He suddenly said.

Rune adjusted his chair and started saying the important pieces aloud, which the connected lenses wrote down. He did a major plan then filled every category by copy-pasting some parts of his personal observation journal.

No way he was rushing this report.

…

“2 hours! Only 2 hours before tonight’s show starts! Use this opportunity to try my tier 3 monster skewers!”

“Human chess tournament starts in 2 minutes! Everyone can try, don’t be ashamed!”

“Churros! 10 000 EP for a cone of 10 churros! Authentic recipe with replicated frying oil and flour! Sugar or chocolate sauce for an additional 5 000 EP!”

Turning his head immediately, Rune looked straight at the street stall selling churros, he approached and seeing no one he asked, “Can you give me like… 3 cones? 2 sugar and 1 chocolate?”

“Of course sir! Churros for you coming up in 2 minutes! The recipe of my ancestor! The most delicious!”

The saliva kept pouring in his mouth, unending, it was only 3 minutes later that he was served his first cone, giving 45 000 EP directly.

Soon after, ignoring the heat, sugar-covered churros entered his mouth.

“Humuuuuh!”

‘I love the IGS!’