‘8 400 meters… Is it the effect of gravity? But I didn't observe any decrease in height back when I went towards the greater gravity…’

Reading some notes he made in his diary, Rune was quasi sure something was going on.

A week ago, he was surprised when he found a very huge mountain on his path, not because it was exceptionally huge, but because he then saw similarly huge mountains later that day.

And that exceptionally huge mountain, which was standing at a height of around 3 000 meters, was then superseded by another bigger mountain, and it went on and on.

He had long stopped thinking about how mountains could form under this gravity or any such physics laws questions, he was an observator, and as such he observed, noted, and remembered that it was like this.

And would a relative decrease of 10 gravity allow a mountain to go only some hundreds of meters higher anyway? So on his way towards the north, or overall, towards the north northeast, he kept notes of the height of the bigger peaks he saw.

Without thinking much about it, he got the ether tower out and activated it as he was sorting all the data he collected.

‘I don’t freaking know man... Tectonic? Gravity? Another anomaly? Me finding correlations where there isn’t one? It’s still an increase of 5 000 meters in under a thousand kilometers…’

As he thought more about everything, some special observations he made, he tried to find something but nothing came up. The tier 4 monster species he fought and observed were the same, the grav-grass was apparently the same too.

15 minutes later, he stopped thinking and stopped noting things down and was preparing to get his ether tower back when he suddenly received a call.

‘???’

Receiving a call in the middle of nowhere made him confused for a bit.

‘Olivia?’

Accepting the call, he was left perplexed by the timing, he wondered if it was by happenstance that she called him right now, just before he became uncallable again.

‘Yeah, probably a coincidence, not the first time I encountered one, like back when I watched a prank video in the tram and the same situation happened next to me, or when I heard a word and read the same word the next instant, or when…’

“Hello Rune, I hope your adventure is going finely, just wondering if you’re already on your way back after reading the latest news or not, it’s already been one month and when I saw that you were transmitting I tidied up my work and called you,” Olivia announced something.

Something he didn't know.

“Wut? I don’t know what you’re talking about Olivia, what happened? I was in my own bubble for so long I only realized now that I didn’t check the news for god knows how much time,” Rune was surprised and now he wanted to know what happened.

“Oh really?!” Losing her professionalism for a bit, she quickly took hold of herself before continuing.

“A group of suicidal adventurers decided to jump into the abyss of the straight cliff, a group of stupid tier 2 who didn’t realize what they were doing. But when they got back up 2 months ago they reported crucial information to the IGS,” Olivia started to tell him the story of this group of people.

First, the ether density at the bottom was supposed to be the same as the “surface” one, but the group of adventurers told that after walking a bit on sandy ground, they penetrated into a new region.

In this new region, there was not only a gigantic still sun surrounded by 3 rotating moons but there was also a gigantic sandy beach before a sea appeared.

If it was only that, the IGS would have just announced it, but the next information made the wheels and cogs of the IGS start turning and burning. The sea wasn’t a normal sea, it was water, yes, but the waves it showed weren’t from front to back as any normal sea would be, it was from left to right.

The whole sea was rotating.

The group of adventurers reported that after taking to the air, they could see a thousand kilometers of spiraling sea, a monstrous corp of water that permanently eroded the sand from the bank.

And such a sea wasn’t something normal, oh no it wasn’t.

“The IGS found a map correspondence with a still alive civilization, and after announcing that they found a sea which corresponded with what that civilization called ‘The Spiral Ocean’, the hearsay is that the region truly has a correspondence.”

“So they were contacted and the IGS is pretty sure now that they found a contact point,” Olivia was summarizing as best as she could.

“Ok, and why should I come back now then? I could come back later, it’s not like I’m missing something?” Rune asked, confused and marveled at the same time.

“You just have to check the map website, see the spiral ocean layer, you’ll understand why. The IGS is recalling tier 2, 3, and 4 adventurers, even patrollers and prospects are being recalled, they didn’t announce why they’re doing it, but… You know!” Olivia was being more childish than ever.

“Ok, ok, I’ll check everything out, but I’m not really enthusiastic about going back now, I’m so freaking far. If you have my latest tower data you should know that” Rune let his thoughts out.

Rationally, he estimated his return trip to be months long, so he wasn’t enthusiastic at all about going back.

‘I’m not even tier 4 yet, and after that, I still have to create my composite element…’

The more he thought about it, the less he wanted to go back.

“Well… Maybe, but still, a big move like that, you really want to miss it? Anyway, do as you want, bye,” and then Olivia hung up.

It was much to take on at one time, so he decided to take it as if he never received this call and opened the news site dedicated to deep expedition connections.

‘Dimension expedition in progress, The spiral ocean pushed the IGS to adapt their plan, tier 4 militarized units, pure efficiency, and deadliness, still so much even when condensed.’

Not interested in the latest news, Rune used the search engine to search for the spiral ocean-related news.

He then scrolled through the dozens of articles, from interviews of the adventurer group who first discovered it, to the “recall” demand from the IGS, he briefly opened each one and read them diagonally.

After reading all the articles that seemed important, he opened the Endless map website, it was larger than when he departed that was for sure.

Searching through the layers available, he finally found one called “Spiral Ocean Hypothesis Layer”, so he selected it and the map underwent a huge change.

It was Bigger.

Not “bigger”, it was “Bigger”, in fact, from what Rune could see, the IGS map was too small to appear at this scale.

‘???’

Acting like an idiot helped him, not.

‘That’s the Spiral Ocean? What the freak is this size? Why is there so much unveiled suddenly? The Spiral Ocean is to the west right? Then Why is there only the north side that is unveiled?’

Zooming onto the north part, Rune could see a map he was sure he never saw before, and even when he scrolled north, again, and again, it was only a long hallway, a line hundreds of kilometers wide that continued on and on.

After zooming down and scrolling north for 2 minutes, Rune finally found a gigantic circle with the name “Crystal Forest” surrounding a central point that was highlighted and named differently “Endless Maze”.

‘Is that…’

‘That…’

‘A Maze?! The Maze?!’

‘The Endless best method to travel, the one I read so much about on the board, the infamous place with a tier 7 ether density that’s been completely cleansed of any monsters and link together with all the other similar places in the Endless by ultimate Ether law f*ckery and… And…’

‘...’

‘Ok, let’s go back to the spiral ocean, why is it so big? Everything the IGS discovered till now doesn’t even appear at this scale!’

Ignoring the fact that as long as the IGS confirmed this map was truly linked to the sea at the bottom of the straight cliff, they would have found a way to access an Endless Maze, Rune was more concerned by the size of this ocean.

‘If it’s truly so massive, it would explain why the cliff is so straight not only vertically but also horizontally. The spiral ocean is so big that what appears on the map as a circle of astronomical size, is for us only a straight line…’

Coming to terms with some argument the IGS probably used to confirm that there was not anything to counter all those proofs, Rune felt mind-blown.

‘One of the articles said the cliff was around 40 000 kilometers high, something about 5 days at terminal speed of 90 meters per second? I don’t know how old the cliff is but it should have billions of years under its mantle for it to still be here,’ quick maths told him as much.

For the next hour, he continued browsing the news and some other websites besides the official news site, and as Olivia said, the IGS just sent a recall order but without explaining anything, so they probably needed a massive workforce but with no particular needs.

Once everything was said and done, Rune just didn’t find a strong enough reason to go back immediately, so he resolved himself to continue what he planned to do.

‘First, tier 4, second, go back, third, composite element, fourth, too far.’

With simplicity coming back to his disturbed mind, he realized that the past hour had been a pretty entertaining break.

“Ah… Hu…” Taking a deep breath, he started to pack up.

And like nothing happened, he made a decision.

‘I could have thought about it earlier.’

Standing on the peak of the highest mountain in the surrounding area, Rune looked back towards the south.

‘I still didn’t have a journey without a goal… I drifted from my goal of adventure, why would I impose myself a schedule to follow? The IGS doesn’t need me, I only need to do what I want... Whimsical? Capricious? Thinking outside my own box is hard but if I’m not the one doing it, who will?’

Continuing his journey north. Rune ever so slightly followed his adventurous instinct and rotated a bit more than necessary towards the east.

…

Back at the capital, where the flow of arriving immigrants never stopped, and with now an additional recall order having been effective since two months ago, the cultural events and the various other activities were entering a golden age of prosperity.

The south capital sector was more than a quarter finished, cranes were still everywhere and manpower finally got an unending stream of building materials that they needed, and the next most developed sector was the central one.

Private companies started to bloom with the boom of population, with thousands of new services, some that could be found in the ancient era like mining companies, or totally new services like the new energy institute, that became the most popular of the 3 path organizations after gaining access to the globalized information board.

The economic blueprint imagined by the economics department had been solidified and already, some people were climbing the social ladder by virtue of their insights into the new era.

However, new and unexpected societal changes were inevitable, but the IGS accepted those in exchange for artists from all kinds and from all origins, professionals in all sorts of domains like entertainment or gastronomy, journalists who couldn’t help themselves, driven by their passion for knowing all the truth.

The symphony of civilization was bitter and sweet at the same time, ancient criminals who became the prospects of today, shouldering the responsibilities to be the strongest, people who saw death in the eye too much, driven to always search for a new high or retiring early to help guide the new generation.

Having the globalized information board to refer to had no effect on this part, the IGS did its best, but in contrast to those who will be born now and in the future, only those belonging to the current changing era knew of the world prior to the present.

In a world without any boundaries, everyone could at any time pack up and disappear. Anyone, even the old rululus, reputed for their wisdom, could transform into another person, dreams they never told to anyone surfaced from long-forgotten memories.

From the moment the capital had been designed, everyone knew it wouldn’t be able to host everyone, trillions of people were only a trickle compared to the number of people having migrated from their native dimension, the “Defective Physics Laws Dimension 527”.

Half a year after the recall order had been launched, a second titanic project was launched. The project was hyped up and under the expectations of millions of tier 3 and 2 sapients, the project “Stairways To The Arcadia” was announced.

A file containing huge amounts of data was released, introducing how the spiral ocean at the bottom of the straight cliff was already confirmed to be the one already discovered by another civilization’s lone traveler, and it belonged to a special category of region.

When a region was so big it could never be humanly explored in one life, this region would take on the name of the rank specially made for it, a rank transmitted since ancient time, “Arcadia”.

An arcadia was something that broke all the rules found in a regular region, even the most unique and abnormal, at first it could be assimilated to a normal, maybe unique region, but reality would soon show itself and lift the veil, uncovering the true rules of an arcadia region.

An arcadia region was the only place in the Endless that was ever found capable of warping the Ether law to the point where the time law was affected, breaking boundaries never thought possible.

And that was without mentioning the warped distances or the chaotic mix of ether density, only that point should inform an experienced traveler of the danger of such a region.

Like every region, an arcadia generally had an assigned environment, but the most obvious sign pointing towards an arcadia was that every neighboring region should show signs of being affected.

An arcadia wasn’t constrained to its region transition wall, and as such, when an apocalyptic event happened, the strength of something that couldn’t be perceived would be unleashed at the region transitions.

The project “Stairways To The Arcadia” was very simple in appearance, creating a gigantic slope from the surface to the bottom of the cliff.

The number of reasons given to explain why it was necessary was enormous, from using the arcadia’s currents to travel around to creating a sure way to ensure the continuity of civilization even in the event of a disaster.

In the list of rejected propositions, “Elevator To The Arcadia” had been a serious contender, but only till the mid-term time period, where the “Stairways” variant crushed the competition with the ease of use and the potential massive traffic usage.

Some seemed stupid, some too far-sighted or too long-term, but what was more interesting were the compensations given.

The IGS was ready to bleed, or maybe it was ready to give. From millions to billions of EP, the compensations were heavy, as was the work expected.

After the project was revealed, the IGS opened special missions via new support, the internet.

Having a low-budget pair of connected lenses was now seen as a must.

Their production and availability were the most important part of all the industry created to this day, and more than 5% of all raw materials gathered were used to ensure their continued production.

In the previous era, the IGS prospered because the bureaucracy and administration had always been placed on a pedestal, not a normal pedestal, but a divine pedestal, even when whole planets were erased by cosmic disaster, this administration would still be here and working normally.

The production of the first AI cores was still far but with enough manpower and redundant administrative loops, a basic structure had been made from the ground up, and now this structure was finally being put to the test.

Encouraging freedom and personal choices, the “Stairways To The Arcadia” website was the crash test of the first revolution of bureaucracy, from physical to immaterial.

For the IGS citizens, this change was accepted seamlessly, for them, having to do administrative procedures physically was equal to the IGS not doing its job correctly.

For the other unknown civilizations who didn’t know how simple and easy it was to just sign the citizenship contract with the IGS, they were in for a massive change.

Of course, it was only a test, with less than 3 years of accumulation, was it possible to handle trillions of people only with dematerialized procedures? Maybe, maybe not.

After the website was opened, millions of tier 3 and 2 signed up to become active participants. With the IGS behind to make sure nothing went wrong, the first month and then the second month, time passed and no problem popped up.

This invited more people to finally join after confirming the compensations given were really as heavy as expected.

In this manner, the IGS celebrated the third year of their presence here silently, anyone that paid attention to such detail could just go to one of the weekly cultural events. For the majority, however, those 3 years were just the precursors.

The precursors to yet another era.