Taking everything in the room, Rune left it empty of anything, he didn’t know how the tower was brought here but he didn’t want to think more than that and departed.

Once outside he activated his temporal boost and entered the 100% increased time perception state, it was time to go back to the right exploration state of mind and body.

In those close to 3 weeks of vacations his masteries increased passively a little, but not his combat ones. That was normal as they were not only above in terms of levels, so harder to level further, but he also wouldn’t learn passive training for things that completely out-classed the majority of his other fundamental masteries.

‘I’m a little quicker than 1 level per week that the tier 3s should have, probably because I forgo passive training of the rest. 1 month per level at tier 4, 1 year per level at tier 5, how much can a genius reduce this time? Unless I go full biography-way and go from tier 4 to tier 6 in a few years because…’

Divagating again, Rune was left running at 500 meters per second 10 meters in the air above the highway, stepping on his moving platform spell, it was a staple of his style, and the spell that allowed him to move quicker in a complex environment than running on the ground.

Once he arrived at the sign indicating the exit from the current south capital sector, he stopped and confirmed with Olivia that everything worked fine, then he started to go southeast.

He hesitated a little about taking a detour to see things, but would you do that if you heard about a place where gravity was increasing as one entered deeper into it?

That was the concept of this anomaly, it was of the same type as the erosion anomaly, something permanent, the one with beyond horizon energy strikes was another type of anomaly.

He heard from Lounae that a lot of behemoth path prospects had been sent to those two anomalies, hundreds of them, to act in teams and explore them.

She knew only of the behemoth path prospects because she was one of them, the other path she only heard by names, but there were tens of divisions.

From the engineer division, easy at the start, impossible at the end, to the magia division, to unique specialized divisions using specialization like spiritual power or special stat effects.

Rune found some amateur websites of journalists who called themselves “Journalist Adventurer” and got to some of those teams present in tier 3 or tier 4 zones, interviewing them directly and writing an article about them.

The only problem being that lots of them didn’t have a camera, a way to register their voice or anything, so they had no choice but to write it down…

Not having a GPS that allowed him to be sure he was going in the right direction, he oriented himself north using a path that people like him and the Undecided made.

He just needed to make sure he found a path located on the IGS map that had been updated with all the different paths, and make sure the direction corresponded to what he wanted.

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Body Control reached Tier 3 Level 89

‘... Should be the accumulation from the last part of my 1-month long return trip and more than 2 weeks' worth of moving around.'

Rune looked at it and decided to check his current masteries.

Masteries

Tier 1 Masteries

Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement: Tier 3 Level 53

Physical Fundamental: Fighting Instinct: Tier 3 Level 88

Physical Fundamental: Body Control: Tier 3 Level 89

Energy Fundamental: Fine Manipulation: Tier 3 Level 46

Energy Fundamental: Grand Manipulation: Tier 3 Level 45

Energy Fundamental: Energy Compression: Tier 3 Level 92

Spiritual Fundamental: Perception Control: Tier 3 Level 43

Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division: Tier 3 Level 41

Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation: Tier 3 Level 44

Tier 2 Masteries

Energy Compression: Basic Energy Armor: Tier 3 Level 91

Energy Compression: Basic Defensive Energy: Tier 3 Level 91

Cohesion: Specialized Cohesion Infusion: Tier 3 Level 17

Tier 3 Masteries

Energy Compression: Basic Energy Structure: Tier 2 Level 89

Body Control: Basic Humanoid Body: Tier 2 Level 90

Body Control: Basic Prolonged Body Use: Tier 2 Level 90

‘A gap of more than two times the levels of my awareness mastery… Doesn’t bode well for the future.'

Already expecting that, he just passed over it, he didn’t even want to think about it in fact.

He had decided to do it like this after thinking things through for months at tier 1 when he gained access to the globalized information board, tier 2 when he farmed with the Undecided, and even tier 3 during his erosion anomaly adventure.

Once he ignored that thorny but inevitable subject and stopped thinking about it, he focused back on his planned itinerary and opened the map.

On it, the center looked like a potato, it was the central tier 1 zone shape, and in the current center of this zone was...Nothing. Except for some paths.

The capital wasn’t at the center, it was pushed towards the southwest, the time he needed to reach the tier 2 zones in any direction wasn’t equal due to this. North was a week of travel, no speed indicator, the south was 2 weeks, the west was blocked due to the straight cliff, and the east was between 1 and 2 weeks.

At Rune’s current speed, a steady 500 meters per second without using reinforcement, elevated to around 520 meters per second if he wanted to accelerate even more while remaining sustainable, he only needed some days to reach the correct path leading straight towards the gravity anomaly.

Some conspiracies want that on their way towards this anomaly, the prospects received the order to create the same path Rune planned to use, and far from complaining or rushing the job, they created a path of 100 meters of width to flex.

Rune half-believed it and half didn’t care. Once he arrived on the path, it was effectively a very big path, and as a surprise for him, there were also a lot of people on it, traveling towards the gravity anomaly.

‘The real question should be why isn’t everyone going there?’

Now that he was on the path and didn’t need to do anything till he reached the tier 3 border, Rune switched to observator mode.

There were others tier 3 on the way that he surpassed, some tried to keep up by entering in a negative energy balance state, but it did nothing.

‘They’re like me trying to keep up with Lounae… Accept reality young’uns, having an ego is useless here!’

He decided to accelerate even more at the price of his energy balance.

A few days after departing from the capital, Rune reached the tier 2 zone border, but even after days of additional travel, he never encountered one monster who entered his sphere, the clean-up of the path was probably so permanent that the moment one neared it, it was killed by a passer-by.

So without a single interruption or break, he went from the capital to a tier 3 zone, and by continuing southeast for 3 days he passed through a region transition.

‘The mountainous region, if I go east, close to all the trees will vanish, if I go south, I’ll progressively go back to the forest region and say goodbye to the mountains.'

With the map open in his field of view, Rune was perfectly sure of where he was.

He already passed through this region before, and it was a perfectly average region, normal star as a sun, no moon nor ether restriction, nothing of interest for his curiosity to be satiated.

‘The moment I hear something about a region with multiple stars or a super unique star or moon! Ooooh! You’ll see!’

Just thinking about it made the feeling of expectation rise up from the deepest part of his mind.

Fighting tier 3 monsters was useful to level up quicker, but the path was so clean he encountered nothing for a whole week. He passed by a lot of people and only when a gigantic sign made of rock and wood appeared in the distance did he realize he arrived.

It was the sign symbolizing it was the beginning of the gravity anomaly, and on it was written, “Welcome to Gravity Anomaly”. It put a smile on his face, quickly erased considering he finally arrived at his destination and now fighting would be very different.

‘The greater the gravity the stronger a downwards strike, resisting the gravity is easy as long as it doesn't involve going upwards, monsters with massive explosive strength make up for the majority of those found…’

Rune did his own research and prepared for the most critical point others had already discovered.

But unexpectedly, there were still no monsters…

‘It’s not that I’m itching for a fight… No… I’m not addicted to fighting… Just that if I could juggernaut a peak tier 3 monster right now I certainly wouldn’t say no.’

2 weeks of travel, not one fight, in this period of time his passive unused masteries gained more levels than his combat active ones.

‘As someone once said, pave your own path and make your own choice, I don’t think anyone famous ever said that but I decided to respect you.’

Stopping in the middle of the path, he changed direction from southeast to northeast, departing perpendicularly from the path.

The gravity anomaly wasn’t a point on the map, it was like the erosion anomaly, it was huge, it was gigantic, probably bigger than the current map of all explored lands in the Endless by the IGS.

So even if it was an anomaly in the form of a circle with a precise center, the supposed source of the anomaly, the size of the circle would be so huge that going on a perpendicular from the supposed radius of this circle, it would just be a flat band of land that only bent a little after hundreds or thousands of kilometers.

‘Not like I can feel the increased gravity like that, I should already feel it but… Yup.'

Jumping up and down a little, punching and kicking the air a little, he got the same feeling of gravity as everywhere else from the Endless.

‘I can just measure it...’

Getting a scale from his pocket dimension, he didn’t know if it was part of the new collection but maybe Olivia added it after she knew he wanted to go towards the gravity anomaly?

The moment it was out, a simple grey cube, the mechanical screen started to fluctuate as it wrote the current gravity, it gave him “1.356”. Compared to what the scale judged as normal, the current gravity increased the weight of anything by 35.6%.

‘Looks like there’s nothing wrong, I don’t even feel it… Yet.'

Seeing this number, Rune could feel something awakening in his mind, something he felt 2 times before, and of those 2 times, he failed one and succeeded the other.

From discovering and entering the erosion anomaly to reaching the limit of where he could go, it was a success.

In his last adventure, escaping from an anomalous event, he failed to reach his limit.

The desire to reach his limit, to feel his spirit and body creaking under the pressure of the Endless, losing all he thought he acquired, becoming a tier 1 again.

With this flame being lit inside him again, he continued to travel.

Once he reached the tier 4 zone, the warped distance would make it harder to find places with monsters, the proof was that even after an entire day of travel he didn’t encounter any monsters.

Only after 2 days, the first monster appeared in his sphere. In those 2 days, the environment changed from tree-covered mountains to steep mountains and sparse trees, the gravity also decreased a little, nearly nothing, in fact, just some percent if the gravity scale worked correctly.

Having kept a fire inside him for 2 days, he didn’t hesitate and bee-lined towards the 4 meters long grey lizards.

It didn’t see Rune when he entered within 5 kilometers so it was at most a middle tier 3. With this thought, he engaged in full juggernaut mode and collided straight with it.

With perfect leg support and posture, all his strength, which currently equaled more than 23 000 stat equivalent, allowed Rune to obliterate the resistance and take the fight however he wanted.

He chose to strike the head and render the lizard unable to react quickly, then he swept its 2 front legs, destabilizing it enough to then return it on its back.

Imitating Lounae when she demolished moving monoliths, he saddled above the lizard and increased his weight with momentum while only punching in the most efficient manner, everything else was ignored.

After a combo of 5 punches, it stopped struggling, and its body disappeared into Rune’s pocket dimension the next second.

“Boring and underwhelming at best,” concluding with those words, he took to the air again and decided to continue northeast a little before finally going straight towards the gravity anomaly which was southeast.

There was no level gain.

…

“Yeah, yeah, I can feel it a little! Hehehe! So weird!” Jumping multiple times in place, Rune couldn’t hold back and laughed like an innocent child amidst the simple light rain, not acid or liquid ether, just water.

It was just a simple rain.

It only started raining some hours ago, prompting him to slow down a bit and observe the environment for any consequences of such a weather change.

After his gravity scale indicated around 4 times the normal gravity, he had to stop more and more frequently to analyze, describe, take samples and make a hypothesis on what types of plants were before his eyes,

Gravity was a sure way of affecting trees and vegetation in general, to his greatest pleasure.

Learning to use all his new gadgets was more like a funny family activity than he wanted to admit, and after using each one more than 10 times he learned to use them enough to stop reading their guide.

“So… Nothing? No weirdo plants that like rain?” He muttered under his breath.

After 10 minutes of waiting under the light rain, despite giving all his attention to his sphere, he couldn’t see any plants or phenomenons reacting particularly.

Rune had of course already lost sense of time, but was it a surprise? The important part was that his observation diary already contained lots of theories. From gravity accelerated raindrops to water infiltration speed of the soil, he really wanted to solve some of them.

“Ok… So just nothing at…” Rune looked at the scale and his flat compass while noting some things in his diary at the same time as he said them, “5.421 gravity and flat compass coordinates are -924.865, 1235.542, 0.235. And… Done, now let’s find some monsters, no reason to only use this rain opportunity for flora studies!”

Using all his perception control fundamental mastery, he extended his perception sphere horizontally. He didn’t want to find monsters to kill but to observe.

The subsequent 2 hours were spent observing monsters and climbing high in the sky to use his camera for hard data once he found something interesting.

For the vast majority of monsters he observed, the rain did not affect their behavior, only species he suspected belonged to a nest or had the characteristic of not being mindless could sometimes do something stupid like opening their mouth to taste the rain.

‘Actually, I think I can understand why some people would just orbit a wild planet for months and observe the wildlife, there’s so much to understand about environment-life interactions…’

While observing 2 individual monsters closing in on each other, he was already trying to predict how it would go.

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Perception Control reached Tier 3 Level 50

When the short rain ended, Rune had gained a level in his perception control mastery due to his active efforts.

Ignoring, voluntarily, the fact that he attained the half point of this mastery leveling, he just continued to observe the monster who won the fight, and how it just found another monster to engage in another fight.

2 monsters fighting each other was as interesting of an event as watching other people having fun, and it took a special kind of person to like it, the kind that had always preferred to be on the side observing.

After the rain passed, he kept observing some monsters as he continued to advance.

The next monster he found, Rune decided to engage it despite the sudden tiredness he started to feel, and he slept not long ago. He also started to feel bored for no reason. It was a speedster goat and he played with it for 5 minutes before its body was sent into his pocket dimension.

Taking useless deep breaths to feel the change in his body, he only felt the remaining adrenaline quickly disappearing and his previous tiredness and apathy coming back.

‘If I were a tier 4… I would just go back and create my element, yeah but I already know that. Even if I’m the laziest human possible I need to reach tier 4 on my combat-dependent masteries before doing nothing…’

He rationalized his mind, tried to find what caused his current tiredness and apathy, but only crazy theories came up.

‘Maybe, I want to reach my gravity limit but I don’t want to follow in the footsteps of others? That’s completely stupid Rune, what’s wrong with you, is it because it’s too repetitive? Continue forward, observe flora and fauna, kill monsters, reach my limit, grind, repeat?’

He couldn’t focus, so he decided to force his mind to focus on something that he just thought of at the last second.

“Kitty, kitty, kitty! Come help me! I don’t know what’s going on in my mind! Yeah you just need to attack me and I’ll dodge, if you help me enough I’ll still kill you but I’ll remember you!”

The kitty monster he engaged was a 2 meters tall mountain cat, a grey and white puma.

The puma was astonishingly competent and Rune really had to focus to not be touched at all with the constraint of having to not retreat and not blocking.

With more than 23 000 strength and twice accelerated time perception, however, he succeeded at doing just that.

Complete domination.

‘Culture addiction? Nope, I didn’t even hesitate to go so unless I have mental problems it shouldn’t be that. Endless vertigo? I journeyed alone and I’m far from over in this department, so no. Physical problems? It’s possible, my body has become that of an ether life forms but it’s still not a…’

The kitty was really helping him this time, his thoughts were accelerated more than usual, probably because his fighting instinct mastery played a little.

When the puma achieved a strike, it forced him to focus more to not let it happen again.

‘Overwork? Too sudden to switch from leisure to active adventurer life? No expectation for this place? Spirit awareness problem? Social needs to be with others?’

‘Sigh… Why can’t I just hit this empty feeling? Maybe there’s a mastery to cure that? Do I really need to call a psychologist? Why am I even hesitating…’

‘Once it’s done… It’s done!’

Changing his posture, Rune used 3 000 energy to reinforce himself, and when the puma pounced on him once again, he confronted it directly, fracturing its skull, stunning it enough for it to stop moving.

He then climbed on top of its body and punched it till its health was emptied out.

After pocketing the body, he climbed to the top of the nearest mountain and got his ether tower out, deploying it and activating it.