Standing more than 40 000 meters high, the highest mountain Rune ever saw was unveiled as he advanced and the ether mist retreated.

More than 6 months passed since Olivia called to inform him of the importance of the Spiral Ocean discovery, leading him to have small enlightenment.

Tier 4 was only a means, a natural evolution, something that was bound to happen someday, so why should he go back when he reached it? His composite element creation could wait, being some years late was completely acceptable.

In those months, Rune voluntarily let the world lead him, and from escaping the gravity anomaly to climbing the evermore steep environment, he found everything to be different from before.

A tier 4 ether density could warp the distances, but why should he care? If an anomalous event happened he just needed to run, as long as he didn’t die he would have seen more things than he would have if he didn’t pursue what he was now pursuing.

What was he pursuing currently?

Nothing.

It was his initial dream.

An adventure without a goal.

2 months after changing his mentality, while still in the gravity anomaly, his peak tier 3 masteries naturally advanced to tier 4 during a normal fight with a behemoth path bear, a monster he failed to kill.

As an independent entity, he was now recognized as a soon-to-be tier 4, what every civilization, from the most ancient to the relatively young ones called the first step to true individual strength.

But even 4 months after reaching that step, the last 10 to 20 levels of a tier mastery were always the hardest and longest to get.

Only his slotted masteries continued leveling at the same rate as they were only a way to deepen his already tier 4 fundamental masteries.

Or more probably because they were involved as part of his fighting style.

From 1 passive level every 5 days, it slowed down to 1 level every week, but even this speed was largely similar and even above the leveling speed of actively used tier 4 masteries, not to mention passive ones.

For more than half a year, he derived without a goal, only a direction, so he adapted to the steep environment surrounding him and even found every mountain climb to be meditative.

Horizontal speed didn’t equal vertical speed, and even if it did, after months of experiencing climbing mountains while listening to music he never heard before, it never became old.

‘Who’s the artist who created this one? Lena Raine? That’s some obscure inspiration I feel from it, does she have a lot of this genre?’ It was only a momentary thought.

When a slope wasn’t too steep, he used his hands, when it was mild, he simply walked with short but sure steps.

Climbing a mountain that appeared 30 kilometers high, and accounting for the possible warped distances, he stopped doing high speed climbs every time, he only did it when he felt like it.

“1 level every month… 8 years… More than all the time added up together since the Ether law awakened, though a defective one,” talking softly to himself, Rune effortlessly and leisurely climbed the highest mountain he ever saw till now.

“But with my active masteries leveling once every 2 weeks or so, it’ll not be a simple 4 months time lag that will happen,” putting his thoughts into words allowed him to clarify them.

“The problem is that training my spiritual masteries is… I just don’t want to do that… And I’ll have a whole new build with provided masteries to up anyways.”

The longer the climb went on, the more relaxed and clear-minded he felt.

“Hazmat suits and fireworks… No, it’s still too early…”

Inevitably, Rune came back to what he really wanted to think about, the reason why he climbed so slowly.

“From which source should I take the efficiency for all my provided masteries? The best scenario is one where I just pump everything from only one fundamental… Momentum Manipulation? Or maybe Awareness Division? No way I’m taking from perception control.”

With some prior thinking put into it, he had some clear conclusions he used as a basis.

“In an emergency, momentum and reinforcement are both able to further boost my speed or help me in this goal, but reducing awareness is straight up the worst option I could take, I’ll just end up blind and deaf without having the time to ask why.”

When he heard about provided masteries for the first time, Rune couldn’t understand why there was this war going on about “short-term balanced build” or “infinite source of efficiency for only 1 fundamental”. But now that he was confronting it, he understood a bit more.

At tier 4, without any specialized masteries, you could have up to 9 provided masteries, but you also only had 9 fundamentals from which to take efficiency from and shift it around.

Where before he wanted to keep a balanced build, he was now a fervent defender of the ‘sacrificing 1 fundamental’ camp.

“If I choose any of the 2 energy manipulation fundamentals… I’ll have to say goodbye to spells, only energy compression can be withdrawn from the equation, and even then…”

As always though, Rune already had a choice he made by instinct, something he had planned on doing for a long time, a fundamental that is known as the Ether law ultimate weapon, but also something that took his precious energy to trade for destruction instead of protection.

“But still! You know! Why make it so obvious! I don’t want to lose momentum manipulation! I don’t want to become blind and deaf with the efficiency penalty of awareness division! I need my perception control to work on my composite element! I also want to be able to launch spells!”

Doing bodybuilder poses to calm himself down, showing his non-existent muscles, Rune used momentum to create an artificial gravity that anchored his feet on the steep slope.

Doing that allowed him to walk vertically and satisfied his need to do weird but cool things.

Who could really say that once their mind was set they ever decided to change their opinion in under an hour of making the first choice? Only the incarnation of wisdom could find, without anyone else convincing him, that he was wrong all along!

“Try me ether! Try me! I’ll take you on any time! Your reinforcement is sh*t ether! You hear me! It’s useless!”

From denial to rage and ultimately to acceptance, Rune had a long way to go, because even though he knew reinforcement was a target for his provided masteries long ago. Only now, the time to make a decision was coming fast, he had to seal the deal, forever.

Or near forever, in fact, banning reinforcement from his style and life, it would become a phantom fundamental, one he would keep active to get levels but would never do anything with, only contributing some insights into how it worked without ever producing any visible effects.

“Sigh… Let’s continue,” sighing after throwing his fit, Rune started to climb again, he was more than two-thirds of the way towards the peak.

When he reached it, the astounding view didn’t stun him, he became used to this feeling of his view encompassing everything.

A flat world, but ginormous mountains strewed here and there, no vegetation, no clouds, more exactly, no true clouds.

*Ding* Momentum Manipulation reached Tier 4 Level 0

Glancing at this notification, the notification that signified he only needed 2 other tier 4 masteries before becoming a tier 4 entity, his mental preparation and changed mentality came into action.

‘I don’t care,’ he thought.

“I don’t care,” he said.

Mind and body agreed.

He then got the ether tower out of his pocket dimension, at this height, the data from a scan would only serve to know the progressive evolution of the different mountain’s height over his journey, it was too far above the ground to deeply scan it after all.

That’s why he did one scan at the top and one at the base, doing that would be bothersome only from the perspective of someone who didn’t care. Rune, he cared, he was even personally invested in it.

Lost in thought looking over the horizon, he simply stopped thinking and just contemplated.

When the tower beeped to signal the scan was over, he turned over and put it away, then checking his flat compass he roughly turned towards the north and rotated a bit according to his gut feeling.

Descending from a 30 kilometers high mountain was a pretty funny activity as dying from a fall was close to impossible.

‘All in all, only the mountains are interesting here, if I find nothing else soon, I’ll go back…’

Once the excitement from running down a mountain was over, Rune made this decision.

…

1 day later, his perception control mastery became a tier 4 mastery.

…

2 days later, Rune encountered what he supposed to be a middle tier 4 monster, it wasn’t the first time he encountered one but it was the first time he had to put his survivability to the test.

Monster’s builds were always aligned with a certain path that sapients could take, and his misfortune was for him to have encountered a specialized Nelo-like-path monster.

It even used confusion tactics to lower Rune’s guard and suddenly explode with a hyper-powerful element looking like light itself.

Every salve of attack erased tens of thousands of armor from him.

Fleeing was easier than he expected, but it also came down to why this monster was so powerful, it didn’t choose the path of boosting its fundamental, it decided to boost its element.

…

3 days later, Rune drastically changed direction, from north to southeast east.

He had underestimated how a tier 4 zone power scaling worked, 3 weeks ago he had already started to see a trend where he stopped being able to kill any monster, but his experience back at the white zone had influenced his judgment.

In his diary he put to words all he could remember about this power scaling, he realized it was a mistake to have ignored this part.

…

6 days later, his awareness division mastery reached tier 4, he received a notification informing him that he could become a tier 4 entity when he wanted.

He didn’t feel like it, he also insulted the Ether law for whatever reason, something about “Indecision hell return”.

…

14 days later, Rune had already widely started his return trip, he didn’t contact Olivia to know the numbers because he wanted to use his own estimate and feeling to estimate something that big.

Basing himself off of his previous adventure's return trip, he estimated he only needed 3 months to go back with a high chance of having overestimated the distance or time necessary.

…

29 days later, he admitted that he felt a little “fed-up” with the mountainous region, but his dream of adventure held strong.

…

38 days later.

Rune was running.

He encountered the most dangerous experience of his life.

He was running for his life.

He didn’t dare go too high, so he was running while trying to take cover amidst the rocks that protruded above the ground.

His sphere informed him that something just appeared behind him from high in the air, without hesitation he side-stepped and hid behind the nearest shelter, a rock.

His expression was serious, a bit of panic could be seen in his eyes, but the situation forced him to keep calm.

The shelter was useless, not even a second after hiding he was suddenly expulsed in a horrifyingly powerful manner by something.

More than half of his 51 000 point armor evaporated, returning to the ambient ether, but he could do nothing to compensate for this loss.

His energy pool was already empty and he was sending everything it regenerated to his armor matrix.

If the gigantic black bird that attacked him for the first time 5 minutes ago was intelligent enough, Rune would already be dead.

When a failed entry strike dealt 30 000 armor worth of damage, he knew that he was out of luck, but knowing it, living it, and experiencing it were different things.

‘0% chance… Even with 850 armor per second, it’s still 0% chance…’

With his mind going at full speed, he was already doing everything he could to escape the death monster that was chasing him down.

Every time the black bird struck, like a cat playing with its prey, it didn’t do any follow-up, it just took off again and escaped his perception sphere.

‘I can’t even do an emergency tier advancement, I’ve got no EP anyways! Why didn’t I withdraw everything before leaving!’

20 seconds later, something once again entered his perception, followed by another explosion that left him with close to no armor.

Despite that, Rune just stood up like nothing happened and continued to run as the bird escaped his perception again.

He remained calm, running with all the strength his body could muster.

He had thought that with death always by his side, he thought he would become used to it, and maybe it was true in some manner now that he realized he didn’t do anything that diminished his chance of surviving.

From digging to counter-attacking, he still tried to find something, he was sure that if he activated his sense of pain now, he would feel his legs burning and lungs melting, he was that confident about how much he acted.

In his mind, music was still playing, even in such a situation, he found a certain enjoyment in listening to something in complete disharmony with his situation.

20 seconds ago, after the last strike, he had already made a decision, and this decision could explain why his energy pool wasn’t sending everything to his armor.

‘It’s not a peak tier 4 monster that will make me lose my mind or my life…’

Rune was waiting, he had a move to try, something he had trained in for a long time but only recently, knowing he would soon have to create his own composite element, he had started to use.

After accumulating more than 500 energy, he started to eject and shape it in the form he knew the most, a firework, a simple orb with complex working.

Reinforcement was useless, he knew that because he tried, and after it failed, he thought he didn’t have anything else to try, but despair had its way of motivating life.

A lone firework would do nothing, but with the most experimental approach, he had of the light element, the only element he had ever tried to fuse to his fireworks prior to this moment…

‘Do or die, choose one and live by!’

Burning hundreds of energy to produce a single particle of light element, he prepared as much as possible, all his mind was preparing.

‘I don’t want damage. I don’t need defense. I need nothing. Just pure light, the one which blinds everything, the one I’ll use in the future.’

The music in his mind changed, a bleak and desolate piano song started playing, he knew this song.

‘Hehe, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen by Riverdale, really fitting to the situation, short and dramatic.’

Something penetrated his perception.

The orb hosting all his hope was becoming brighter, it didn’t reach what he expected it to, but it still had a minor effect on his perception.

Enough? Not enough? If he died, the answer would be clear.

Without a word, with a lifeless face, Rune jumped and rotated his body.

Living in a different temporality allowed him to be equal to a weak or even average middle tier 4 monster in terms of reaction speed, so he could see a shadowy thing approaching.

Approaching fast.

A black bird, maybe a raven, maybe an eagle, maybe a pigeon, using concepts from the ancient era was always funny, but now he couldn’t make a comparison.

It was just a mindless blood-thirsty monster.

All his energy, the last second before the strike happened, he used to add a last light particle, it was instant, and then, without even sending it flying, it exploded before him.

‘...’

‘Remember Christ our savior was born on Christmas day…’

Rune felt his leg touch the ground, prompting him to continue running.

Not far from him, he felt an explosion, shrapnel made of rocks inflicted some tens of damage on his flimsy and useless armor.

‘To save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray…’

He didn’t know why it worked even though he himself wasn’t that much blinded at all, he only had the processing power to know he needed to continue running, it wouldn’t work a second time, most probably.

After crashing down, the bird once again took flight, he missed killing the flimsy entity this time, but nothing changed really, it was all a game designed by its instinct to amuse itself.

Seconds later, it escaped Rune’s perception sphere.

With his current body control reality-breaking efficiency boost of 619%, he could transform the equivalent of 36 000 strength into speed, so his peak speed that he used since 5 minutes ago, which was 640 meters per second, brought him far.

Maybe because he had proven himself, his sphere, which had returned to its perfectly spherical form because he couldn’t continue training under these circumstances, saw salvation.

5 kilometers ahead, under a 30-meter layer of solid rock, a giant cavity opened, leading to beneath the earth deeper than he could currently see.

‘30 meters… Completely doable!’

Less than 10 seconds later, he arrived at what he evaluated to be the weakest point of the layer, the point where the 30-meter layer of rock was the farthest from any support.

Now that he was here, it looked more like a massive tunnel, but it was his salvation, so he didn’t hesitate.

Changing his momentum to keep him grounded, he punched the solid rock layer with the equivalent of 36 000 ether strength.

His punch provoked a deep tremor, and before the chasing bird even had a chance at killing him, the layer of rock underneath the human cracked.

It didn’t completely collapse yet, but the human punched again, and again, and again.

Ultimately, at the sixth punch, the layer of rock couldn’t handle it anymore, and cracks appeared everywhere, then under the futile nature’s attempts at stabilizing everything, it collapsed under its own weight.

Rune was even faster and when a hole opened up, he plunged into it, following after him was the whole layer that he destroyed, he could have done this cleanly and professionally but it wasn’t the time to have regret.

He even used moving platforms under his feet to accelerate his fall by jumping towards the depth, he wasn’t taking any chances after all those efforts.

Free-falling at more than 600 meters per second, Rune didn’t hesitate.

It was maybe time for an unexpected adventure.