From Rune’s perspective, it was obvious that something was happening outside. Rei was stopping too often and asked to be covered in cosmic mist so frequently he only uncovered himself for a few seconds each time.

With evacuating the target being their main goal, limiting the discovery factors was their priority.

And the two knew that between remaining immobile and actively evacuating, the risk of being discovered was sensibly the same, after all, they never considered themselves infallible.

Once they passed through the door of the employees-only stairs, they reached the chaotic entrance, with the guard unit checking everything, and prospects happily joining in on this endeavor.

‘The diversion will start in 3 minutes…’

Doing nothing was the best action they could take, so they just covered themselves and started to wait, if waiting meant Rune preparing 30 000 energy worth of cosmic mist bombs.

Rei made sure Mr. Finley was completely immobilized and massaged his temples to make sure he understood the situation, no need to go too deep into the simulation.

3 minutes later, cosmic mist charges exploded on the 2nd floor and on the 1st floor, signaling the start of the diversion and evacuation phase.

Rhia activated everything she had prepared and made all the sensors around go wild.

Anyone that had been recruited to the terror unit before the event had been recruited due to their extraordinary qualification, so it was to be expected that she utterly pulverized the cyber-defense and activated all the alarms present in the HQ.

All the windows opened simultaneously, the lights flickered, the guard unit’s sensor team tried to send messages and commands, but the local network was disturbed.

The electronic doors all opened, the electricity supplies glitched, and from the outside, Arsen and Miki made EMP bombs go on, toasting all the weak electronic components.

Now, if the people weren’t sure, they couldn’t doubt anymore that things were going wrong.

And to make it worse, sensors, regulars, and prospects alike felt their perception sphere going through strange changes that they couldn’t understand. Those at the entrance had it the worst as for the first time in years, they lost all their senses.

Using the distraction, Rune and Rei passed by an opened window and reached the first meeting point, where they planned to wait a few minutes.

Arsen and Miki had to join them, which they did, it was one of the best scenarios where not one of them was discovered.

Not using momentum, they leisurely evacuated by foot and used the planned itinerary to return to their fake shop.

As a last security measure, Rune and Rei left together, leaving behind Arsen, Miki, and the target in plain sight, as they attracted potential ultra-discreet and powerful pursuers further.

Then, they split and went their own way, taking a 1-hour round-trip before arriving back at the fake shop.

“I’m back,” entering the fake back shop, a wave of relief overcame Rune as he let out a pressure he didn’t know he had.

What welcomed him was Mr. Finely drinking infused juice in a meeting room with Hosirha, with his 3 unit companions on the side.

‘So Rei is still not back.’

Entering the meeting room, he joined the table and served himself a glass of juice, Aengus didn’t seem more bothered than that with the fact that he had been kidnapped.

‘If his health got dangerously low, he probably had a minor regeneration boost in his hand to attempt an escape. And if he timed it to when we reached the chaotic entrance, it would have been really hard to contain, but not impossible…’

Absent-mindedly, he started to listen to what was being discussed between Hosirha and Aengus.

“They’ll eat their complaints now that I’ve stopped working and you caused such a mess so easily,” the ever-confident and kind Mr. Finley said.

“I didn’t do anything, I just made them aware of where to search for information. It’s really a heavy-hit for them to have done that as half-trained personnel,” in turn, the charismatic Hosirha calmly answered and took a sip of his glass.

A glass that contained juice.

“Sure, and maybe the cause is really the fact that we don’t have AI cores anymore. I dismissed this theory due to so many reasons, but while the arguments are still wrong, I can glimpse into something deeper…”

Tuning their conversation out, he focused back on his 4 quasi-friends.

‘I really want to go back to tinkering with my element, but I’m not above peer pressure, so I’ll just relax. Let’s consider it as preparation time for doing more tinkering.’

Keeping silent, he started to read about the latest news, and of course, there was one special news that could be seen everywhere.

‘Assault on the Adventurer’s Society Headquarter revealed to be the work of the newly created secret organization, further information will be released at the opening and ending of the prospects finding event…’

From reading about this actuality everywhere, even on the funny news site, where it was turned into an infinite number of memes and opinion battles, he felt one thing.

Excitement.

Being one of the authors behind this shocking event made him have a new appreciation about everything linked to it, from those that were indignant, to those that saluted the genius behind this operation.

Even those that kept excavating new intels, he thanked them, they allowed him to know that there was a prospect that trumped what he knew to be the guard unit, seeing through the assault and allowing the alert to be given.

‘I wonder if they already linked me to this assault… Probably, yes, how could Utopia not link everything the instant he saw that? I hope they prepare a feast for me, or at least a small surprise.’

“As our last friend is here, let’s start your reward meeting.”

Removed from his line of thought, he heard Mr. Finley say something, followed by Rei entering the meeting room and seating himself, similarly condensing himself a glass and starting to drink.

“First and foremost, congratulations on successfully accomplishing your first mission,” he clapped, accompanied by Hosirha, for 5 seconds with a kind elderly smile plastered on his face,

“Now, I will not comment on the way you accomplished, neither will I say it was bad, nor will I say it was good, deciding this is something you have to decide for yourself. What I will comment on, however…”

He maintained the silence.

“Is something that will be unveiled at the end of the event that will soon happen. This is your reward, so you have the right to share it with your friends, disseminate it on the internet, criticize the government for its choice of action, whatever…”

The old-fashioned way, a map of the explored area of the Endless was projected on one of the walls of the meeting room.

“This is the work resulting from years, 4 years to be exact, of intense exploration. And as you know, this work is inconsequential in comparison to something that happened recently.”

Zooming out, the explored area shrank and shrank, until it became only a point on the far east of a gigantic circle, with the name “Spiral Ocean” written in big.

“It has been ascertained that the map given to us by a friendly entity perfectly corresponds to the Arcadia we discovered, and while I won’t elaborate the good and the bad, I personally hold the judgment that the good overwhelms the bad by such a large margin that it can’t be explained even in a whole day.”

Then he took a deep breath.

“To name just a few, this Arcadia is very old, so it has an extremely slow progression speed, nearly halted.”

“We have the cliff path that one person here pioneered personally, who is now a file available on the IGS leader desk, with a potential for development too gigantic to explain.”

“We have a tier 6 road available, mapped, and relatively recent, towards a Maze.”

“We gained a safe harbor in the form of the sandbanks, where we’ll be protected by the Arcadia itself…”

“Do I need to say more than that, really?”

Even he seemed a little emotional at all those good points he just told.

“Recently, however, we gained enough goodwill from a benefactor to get information that… Changed our plans enough to quicken the formation of the Cell before the managing officer completely finished their training, like sir Hosirha present today.”

All the expectation build-up he had made was for giving context to this precise piece of information that he was going to share.

“And it all starts with the list of unsolvable disasters.”

The projected map switched to a gigantic list of more than a thousand names, with the few top ones being very known names, because they were all over the globalized information board.

One such example was the 7th unsolvable disaster, the “Eclipse Arcadia”, or the 4th one, the “Hole Dimension”.

And then it started to scroll down, from the first tens, it went to the hundreds, then to the thousands, then to the ten thousand, and stopped at the unsolvable disaster ranked 14 852, and it was named.

“Heaven’s Rift,” Aengus Finley’s intent-infused voice told the name of the highlighted number.

“A few tens of millions of kilometers away from us, the Heaven’s Rift is present, few of you should even know it because it's an already sealed disaster, but the term ‘sealed’ used in the context of an unsolvable disaster only means that it is ‘contained’.”

Then he started his explanation of what this Heaven’s Rift was.

“As for what it precisely is, I would describe it as a very small and localized anomaly who makes tier 9 monsters appear endlessly until there are precisely 999, and the specificity is that those 999 monsters are unkillable and will reappear the second they are killed.”

Rune blinked multiple times to express his shock.

“Fortunately, they don’t learn from their mistakes, but not learning from their mistakes doesn't mean they don’t learn, because yes. They learn. And to learn they need to kill, be it other monsters or sapients, they kill everything.”

“And the more they kill, the more their current iteration becomes stronger. But there’s an additional mechanic. The stronger their prey is, the stronger and stupider they become once they kill it, and similarly, the smarter their prey is, the smarter and weaker they become once they kill it…”

Rune had some difficulty understanding the implication behind this mechanic, so he waited for Mr. Finely to fill the gap for him.

“And lastly, they reach sapient-level intelligence when they weaken to tier 6, a stage at which they’re able to control their fellow. Any smarter and weaker than this and they become true strategists worthy of being talked about in history forums of the board.”

But he only received another worrying piece of intel.

“Now, you combine everything, and the result is a legion of 99% of gigantic monsters with beyond health size and beyond energy size, led by a few extremely intelligent monsters, true monsters who can’t be reasoned with.”

Mr. Finley clearly wasn’t mincing his words.

“So while this legion is currently restrained, it is as restrained as a legion of immortal monsters can get, and after hundreds of thousands of years, the first spark leading to know how to truly destroy this anomaly has yet to be born.”

“That’s one of the reasons that led to the IGS deciding to intensify the internal competition, starting with the formation of the Cell, to create a playground for a very special category of talents that aren’t meant for the adventurer, patroller, or prospect path.”

On a streak, he started to explain the latest happening under the scrutiny of an expert who knew about the direction the IGS would take in the near future.

“Then, companies will receive incentive the more proactive they are, entrepreneurs will get chances to trump over major companies with their ingenuity, the ether laboratories will receive more staff, the economy will grow, everyone will get more EP, the rewards will increase for everything, even the more menial tasks…”

“All in all, the IGS is just bringing forward everything that would have happened naturally as long as our society remained functional.”

This time, he really seemed to be over as the projection behind him faded to nothing, and he served himself a glass of juice.

“It’s my turn now,” Hosirha started to talk.

“I’ll make it quick as it doesn’t have anything to do with you anymore, but see this insignia?” He got a weird humanoid footprint with 9 toes insignia out of his pocket dimension.

“Now that you have done your job, take a rest until the start of the event 2 months from now, and while I didn’t ask, no one here wants to follow the prospect path, right?”

He observed the silence for 10 seconds before continuing.

“So, for the next 2 months, you’ll be chased down by the track unit, their mission is similar, they have one month to chase all 5 of you down and find this fake shop, if they succeed they’ll get the same reward you just received.”

He once again showed the insignia clearly to their eyes.

“If someone catches you and shows you this insignia, then you’ll be considered out, serve them a drink for their efforts and give them… This.”

He got 5 insignias with the noticeable Cell logo of the back of a normal humanoid on it, just with a gigantic “T” written on its back differentiating it, and gave one to each of them.

“You don’t have to actively defend it, if I were in your place, I would just live my life like I wasn’t concerned with the track unit searching me, that’s my personal advice, take it or leave it.”

At that, he stood up, and Mr. Finely also stood up with him.

“Now, I’m leaving you all together and accompanying our dear guest back to his work, they’re getting jittery with him not being there to resolve their sensitive administrative decision. Leave, do an after, go to a restaurant, or do nothing, the choice is yours,” leaving those words behind, the two left the meeting room and then the fake back shop altogether.

Taking the insignia in his hand, Rune really felt like it was a game. It was hide-and-seek, and from this perspective, it really looked frustrating from the track unit’s side.

‘Can they even track down Rhia? Not like my meager amount of knowledge on cyber will get me far down this path.’

“Considering we just became true friends after this operation, I’ll finally share my most important urban exploration restaurant list. I'm taking you all to a secret barbecue shop out in the south sector, and this is the reward I ask for, so everyone must come!”

A minute later, the group exited the fake back shop and, like the mission they did didn’t exist, they went to enjoy a good restaurant while paraphrasing how they could've done better.

…

‘Sigh… I thought it would only take me one day, but it ended up taking four.’

Arriving back at the training park, he was happy to see a few dozen people inside, not even using the dome mist but just discussing with each other.

What changed from when he departed was the person inside the new dome, it wasn’t Adreana anymore, it was Nelo. And around him, a large 10 meters wide circle of scintillating yellow flame was burning.

‘What was it…’

Rune searched on the web for the composition of the single star element.

‘Star element, light element, fire element, lightning element, and explosion element. I’ll test it later. Now, I just want to go back to tinkering with my intent, the 3rd stage is a divine feast of complexity, and I love it.’

On his way to returning to the mist dome, he stopped by where Utopia and Adreana were discussing something that concerned him a bit.

“Around 6 days? I gained a lot of experience in this, I even stopped growing the other aspects in favor of reducing the time needed.”

“Would it be faster if you had your energy stat maxed? They’re all at a ratio of 0.5 too?”

“It would, yes, but not as much as you think it might, maybe one day top? And maybe it’ll speed up my learning.”

At that time, Rune arrived near them and made his interest known honestly, “Yo, I’m back, what are you talking about?”

Utopia was deep in thoughts so he didn’t answer, Adreana did, “Establishing more domes, but I’m too slow due to me lacking experience in this, I don’t have a variant energy domain mastery, after all, I have the complete one, so I need to train everything.”

“Not like anyone in our group would choose to settle for something easier to train with but with less potential… Do we need money urgently?”

“It’s just that it’s not optimized, and it irks me, we need tens more domes, so letting her do that without paying her seems… It feels bad,” Utopia commented from the side.

“Then just do it, we’re the Undecided, not the Indecisive, and it’s even for Adreana, and they’re only 4 stats at 0.5 ratio, so the investment is only…” Rune started to do the maths.

“8 000 000 000 EP, I already calculated this so don’t force yourself Rune, energy isn’t absolutely essential, and she already got her affinity to 9 000 and her purity to 6 000, so it’s only 4 000 000 000 to max her regeneration and those two,” Utopia interrupted him as he was getting his calculator turned on.

‘I still have 600 000 000 right?’

Rune brought up his status.

Rune Tudor (Tier 4)

Class: Armored Pathfinder

Specialty: Innate Dimensional Perception

EP: 613 723 957

Stats Total: 57 779

Health: 5 000

Health Regeneration: 5 000

Strength: 5 001

Cohesion: 5 001

Energy: 5 000

Energy Regeneration: 10 000

Purity: 5 000

Affinity: 5 000

Momentum: 5 000

Perception: 7 777

“I can contribute 600 000 000 EP if you ask, I really like the idea of investing now in making more money. It’s not like I need it except when I buy food and drinks.”

“Adreana, your opinion?” Utopia looked at the investment target.

“If we’re doing it, then I’ll start now and get another dome ready for your obstacle course in 6 days, you’ll just have to get Rune to go tinker with his intent inside.”

“Then I’m launching a call, I don’t have much EP on me, so wait until I gather what I can,” the nominal leader of the Undecided finally decided to invest.

“Here, have this paltry sum of 600 000 000 EP,” Rune grabbed Utopia’s hand and transferred more than 95% of what he had on him.

*Ding* You transferred 600 000 000 EP to another entity

“Oh? You’re hiding your identity Utopia?”

“Hum? Oh sorry, I didn’t deactivate it, too much transfer lately, you should also will your identity protection to be turned on. This way, you don’t have to worry about people grabbing you to get your name in exchange for 1 EP, those who do that are really a bunch of weird people.”

‘I think it’s because we are weird people that they did that… Not gonna say that, gonna keep it for myself.’

“Well, I’m done, just tell me when you want me to create another mist dome, you don’t have to worry about the precise version you want, I can change it at will,” Rune departed after saying that.