A few days passed before Rune stopped clearing his mind, there was nothing to clear anymore, every bit of his mind’s juice had been used as ink and took form in his note documents.

With the most occupying project done, he became free-spirited again and started to wonder about what to do next.

His idea of personally going and gathering the latest news about the ancient civilization made less and less sense the more he thought about it. Astryde was much more involved in it and he would be involved whether he wanted or not when they exited known territory.

The key for that to happen was making sure Astryde remained unbothered during her week, maybe weeks, long dive, so it came back to tinkering with his cosmic mist intent, increasing its hiding power to make sure nobody knew she was even here.

‘Should I sleep? But I don’t feel like taking a break… Let’s do a bit of tinkering first and I’ll sleep if I want to later.’

…

Lying on a foamy energy mattress, Rune fell asleep in the middle of his intent tinkering without realizing it. Even without his sense of touch, the sensation of lying down on something bouncy that completely surrounded his bones was strangely comforting.

One of his arms suddenly moved slowly up, trying to grasp the sky, before plunging on his face and causing a weird solid sound he heard way too much when fighting with bone monsters.

‘Good morning myself.’

Having just woken up, it took a few minutes before his mind catched up with his situation.

‘A good morning is always dependent on good waking-up entertainment. Let’s see what’s new.’

Using his own favorite sources, he started to watch chill videos of people who did extraordinary things. He had no real focus on what he wanted to see, it was the point of having so many different types of entertainment.

Looking at a guy whose only objective in life was having the most explosive speed was entertaining.

Seeing entertaining people being awed or reacting funnily to other entertaining things was entertaining.

Watching an amateur competition of who can keep a poker face the longest after drinking the most burning energy taste drink was very entertaining.

Viewing clips from members of the Abnormal seemingly fighting for their life in high-definition slowed down more than a hundred times was extremely entertaining.

And there was so much more available, always reminding Rune that at any time, he could stop and start a life full of only entertainment and nothing else.

Contrary to the past, where he would have to have a source of money to live in the capitalistic IGS, now he not only had money in drove, he also didn’t need food and water anymore.

The door of evil temptation was literally at hand’s reach.

‘But no… I will not take a break before finding my very own floating island region, and not the fake ones in the sky, I want one on the ground, with a beautiful landmass below, and I want it to be purely magical and beautiful, I also… Sigh… This debauched life is really appalling and appealing at the same time…’

Lazily taking his time to wake up, it took him a few hours before he felt the sleeping lethargy go away, allowing him to recover a lively and ready-for-action mind.

‘I can’t wake up in the best way cause I can’t stretch up anymore, but I can live without it!’

Lying down on his back, he felt ready to start another month of anything.

‘Why not start it with something crazy?’

Going through all the crazy things he was able to do, he settled on one.

‘Oh, yeah, that one… It’s been a long time since I wanted to try it. I got all the tools I ever dreamed of but I always had something better to do, and there’s even a public!’

Without him moving a finger, energy started to coagulate above him, forming a sphere with complex and moving parts inside. Then, colors began to appear from thin air, coloring the different energy parts and drawing a rose pattern, before finally being encased in another layer of energy, sealing the resulting orb.

‘Just need to prepare a few hundred, select the right piece of music, and plan how it’ll all happen.’

With all his research on the subject, he considered himself able to organize a semi-pro show.

And if he added his very diverse skill panel, such as an intent-infused final bouquet, he thought it enough to depart from the normal and enter the pioneer domain.

‘Let’s do that! My first complex firework! At a completely random timing! In a completely random place! For completely random people! For absolutely no reason!’

On this thought, he stood up and did an externally silent celebration to hype himself up before starting the planning phase after hiding himself behind a bubble of cosmic mist.

…

With nothing to hold him back and nothing to push him forward, Rune acted like a worry-less artist and let his imagination run free.

He wanted it to be short but intense, so he only picked a single piece of music.

He wanted it to be a contemplative experience, so he made his fireworks silent.

He wanted it to have an amazing final, so he broke all his rules and created amazingly loud and colorful fireworks for the end.

He wanted it to be shocking, so he included ground fireworks and gigantic ones.

He wanted it to show everything that was possible and the culmination of his years of practice, so he made a few extremely complex ones, pushing his proficiency to its extreme limit in different ways, be it intensity or complexity.

He didn’t try to reach for the ultimate perfection, he followed his instinct and made a traditional crescendo in intensity.

He didn’t expect his silent explosions to be synchronized with the rhythm of the piece of music he chose, but it didn’t matter as doing that would be too much for such a random show.

Finally, he wrapped up all his preparation in a few days and was now only waiting for Astryde to finish her deep dive to use the gathering as an excuse for launching his show.

‘It promises to be extraordinary.’

…

With no desire to miss the right timing window, Rune didn’t start another project and decided to check the news for what major events happened recently.

‘Increased production of liquid ether, a military standardization put forward at the assembly, the tech-supported incursion into the gravity anomaly is picking up speed drastically, tier 4 weapon’s market: restricted but open…’

The majority of the news, he skipped. Their title gave away what he wanted to know so he didn’t bother trying to know more about it. Some however sparked some interest in him.

[AREC Adventurer Ranks, an inevitable reform leaked.]

Opening the corresponding article, he read through it quickly…

And couldn’t even think about how he should react after reading the introductory paragraph.

‘It’s so…’

[AREC stands for Activity, Result, Experience, Contribution, and is a future reform that will soon be applied to all the internal systems of the Adventurer’s Society. As of now, 9 ranks have been unveiled: Iron, Copper, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Amethyst, Ruby, Emerald, Diamond…]

‘So… I don’t have words… When was this posted? A few weeks ago?!’

Continuing to read, he was comforted to know that what had been “leaked” had no real massive data dump behind it. So while those who made the article were pretty sure the AREC ranks were real, the details behind it remained very vague.

‘Well, if it really happens… That will certainly be exciting.’

After a few hours of browsing through news, he had enough and went back to watching entertainment, before stopping again a few hours later to start tinkering with his intent.

He realized that waiting for a few days was much longer than he thought, or maybe he just wanted to tinker too much.

In the end, he decided that even if he missed the perfect timing, it wasn’t that important.

With more experience in how to make an actualization of his intent than at site 19, he relaxedly found the mutations and optimizations that took place during the last 3 weeks of intense fighting.

The only slight annoyance he felt during this period was that he needed to maintain energy links to all his prepared fireworks.

Even if they only contained inoffensive visual effects for the majority, which made it possible for them to exist with such a low constant expenditure of energy, they still needed to be maintained, or they would dissipate in a few hours at best.

Fortunately, it didn’t take long before the end of the time watchers’ deep dive sessions and they all started to gather to exchange about what they saw and thought.

‘It’s time!’

Stopping his tinkering activity, he checked his hundreds of firework orbs and made sure the special ones were still ok.

‘The color forcing ones seem okay, the links all seem correctly gathered… Now I only need to put down the speakers!’

While he had the crazy idea of doing a firework in the middle of site 41, he didn’t go full crazy mode and ignore the possible repercussions. He personally went to test the inner protection layer, the one that hides the true site, making sure the second layer wouldn’t be utilized.

‘Not like I’m certain I can overload the sound absorption properties of the inner layer, but now I don’t have to worry!’

He also hesitated about not announcing anything and doing it suddenly, but being so “savage” wasn’t how he learned to live, so he at least decided to tell the patroller leader of this site before starting his firework.

With all the conditions gathered, he made his way towards the patroller leader, or whatever his rank name was.

He knew where to find him as the size of site 41 was even smaller than site 19, meaning his perception took in everything that was available, only stopping at the inner protection layer that worked both ways.

He didn’t even need to use complex strategies like cosmic mist’s infiltration to talk to him as he pretty much was open to anything, anybody could go and talk to him as long as he wasn’t already doing something. It was really not the conventional image of a military leader Rune had in mind.

Openly approaching the place he was, he ended up closing in on the training ground, the place where anyone could come and spar, train, discuss or do pretty much anything they wanted.

The patroller leader was currently training in the most primitive but often most efficient way: A simple martial exchange.

He was standing against another patroller, restricted to a small area, and they tried to one-up each other with pure physical strength and fighting instinct.

There were no complex energy strikes, no weird elements’ effects, no specialized fighting styles, just straight up one versus one without any impressive visual effects.

The ground had been compressed so many times that nothing short of a massively reinforced strike would be able to create a crater, so the only indication that the 2 patrollers fighting were tier 4 entities was the fact that they were moving fast, were reacting fast and were hitting hard.

‘Not like I’ll get my wind-speed measuring tool out and do maths to try and calculate their strength…’

Having irrelevant thoughts as he came to a stop near the line demarcating the entrance to the training ground, he pushed them away to observe the patroller leader’s fight in more detail.

“Can’t do shit boss!”

And he was being used to sweep the floor.

Rune could see how hard he was trying to free himself from the grasp of his opponent without success.

He didn’t say anything even while he was being humiliated so overtly, he endured silently as he neared the solution he needed to overtake his more powerful strength-wise opponent.

And he found one an instant later, he used momentum to send his lower body up, then an energy platform to momentarily block his bony muscle-headed grabber.

It allowed him to take an advantageous position for a few seconds, the time it would take the other to turn and use his strength to subdue him again.

He was behind and out of reach of anything less than a headbutt, so he fully used this opportunity and used his 2 legs to make sure he wouldn’t be dragged against his will again as he used his remaining arm, the one that wasn’t grabbed, to start dealing damage against the energy armor of the other.

‘If it was me… I wouldn’t have done that? No way I’m risking so much just for this bit of control. What if the other has reinforcement as one of its main paths? I would much rather cut off my loss by cutting my forearm.’

The patroller leader didn’t do that and used the grab against his opponent as a form of restriction and control, it was extremely interesting for Rune to see something like that.

What was happening under his attention testified of someone with great proficiency at fighting against other humanoids.

‘Or maybe he uses a similar strategy against monsters? It’s the world of patrollers and teamwork, after all, I have no deep knowledge about it.’

The spar finished 5 minutes later in the most anticlimactic but logical way, the energy armor of his opponent broke, so they stopped.

‘And once again, being the one with the most strength doesn’t equal winning. If only all monsters had strength-focused builds, what a beautiful world it would be, though a bit bland for my taste…’

“Why are you always trying to capitalize on your strength, Jim? You grabbed me 5 times and not even once it ended in your favor!”

The usual winner’s humble speech began.

“I thought you would make a mistake as always boss,” the other guy didn’t seem to care though.

“Sigh… You should have tried something different at least.”

“Like using my speed? What can I do, I’m just made to be a punching ball, I’m used to it. One day you’ll not be able to break my armor alone anymore though.”

“Yeah, yeah, I hope this day comes sooner. Another one’s up for a bout?” The patroller leader turned and looked at the spectating crowd, making it clear he was talking to them, Rune included.

‘Well, misunderstanding aside, I need to prepare so… Or I can do a bout, can’t I? 5 minutes will not kill my plan, and on the off-chance he doesn’t want anything happening in this site, a bit of punching-logic… But I still don’t want to fight, or I can first request and then try and explain?’

He took a step forward, “Why not me?”

“I think you meant to say ‘I’ll beat your ass, sir!’ right?” Rune being the only one to react fast, easily became the next partner.

“I’m too polite to say something like that.”

“So you only thought about it internally but didn’t dare say it out loud?! You b*stard!” He took it in the funniest way Rune could have thought.

“I’ll have my ass beaten sir!”

“And now you’re provoking me! I’ve never seen one of my patrollers be so daring! If you were one of mine I would have you on! Oh! I won’t say it!”

“I can pay for my insolence by making a special show, sir!” Rune found his rhythm and started to follow it.

Only to have it broken the next second.

“Huhu. So now you’re being honest. Why would an introvert such as you come to fight with me otherwise?” The patroller leader’s personality changed in an instant.

“I’m taken aback, sir!” While he was confused by him probably knowing who he was, he still followed, “But if I don’t have to fight then I’ll add you to my list of distant friends! Sir!”

“O-Kay, so what do you want then?”

“I want to do something very visually impressive but that has no chance of compromising the site, can I do it knowing I’ll not be arrested once I start?” Rune said after reverting back to his usual self.

“I don’t think you even needed to come see me, you would have to do something very special to be arrested. If it’s really that visually impressive, then thank you for the hint, now unless you want to spar, please step back.”

“I’m a pacifist so I’ll step back, thank you for your understanding,” Rune made a head bow and stepped back under the eye sockets of the patrollers around, wondering who this weird skeleton was.

‘Is that how Gar makes new friends? Let’s see, site 41 patroller leader… Rowley Morrow, tier 4 patroller platoon leader, oh, so he’s a platoon leader? Hehe, I have no idea what this means!’

After ridiculing himself for his close to zero military knowledge, he knew a platoon wasn’t the lowest group, but that was it, he sent him a contact request before forgetting about it and focusing on the upcoming “visually very impressive show”.

The fact that this interaction ended up being so fast, so optimized, and so easy gave him a slight adrenaline boost, sometimes in life, things could simply go completely your way he learned again.

‘You made me feel good, so I’ll make you feel good too in exchange.’

The first thing after leaving the training ground was setting up 3 massive speakers he had in his pocket dimension in a triangle formation, then he went to fetch his stock of firework orbs hidden under a cosmic mist’s cover.

He made it float above him to try and keep the situation a secret and arrived near Arik who was doing a strange thing with his purity and affinity-infused strength.

“Arik! I need you for my latest crazy idea! I only need you to act as additional security in case nosy people want to stop me!”

“Hu?” Being interrupted in the middle of his session of… Something, he didn’t seem very happy, “How long?”

“4 minutes at minimum, 10 at maximum, and you’ll be interrupted anyway, so come! The window will be lost in a few hours if the time watchers are addicted!”

“What did you prepare?” He asked, curious about what made Rune the salted fish act so lively.

In answer, Rune remained silent, if he still had his face, he would be smiling.

“Something visually impressive. Prepare your camera.”