“And that’s why!” A burning and passionate voice escaped Rune’s larynx energy construct as if he was making the speech of his life, “If we decide to clean Tolevia, we must take a crash course on the gardener path!”

Pointing his finger at Arik and Astryde in turn, he tried to push his determination through a flurry of ether colors he knew to have an affinity with such a concept.

“Astryde, knowing more about materials can only be for the best when you rewind! Arik, learning about this subject will help you create the most beautiful and intricate bottle for your weird liquid!” He had even thoughts of custom arguments to help his cause and didn’t hesitate to use them.

And it seemed to have some effects.

Astryde nodded wisely and seemed to contemplate seriously as his speech ended. Arik shrugged, implicitly admitting he had understood the necessity for what Rune wanted to do.

Or maybe it was just that after retelling how his scouting trip happened, the two felt that having this knowledge in their head might really be for the best. It only asked of them a bit of time after all.

“I think the presence of those possible tier 5 titans will attract a few prospects that wouldn’t have come otherwise. If we’re lucky it could even make some abnormals show up,” Arik deduced and scratched his chin in the most scheming way possible.

“Even from the reports I read on the time watcher association’s archives site, nothing was hinting at Tolevia having anything that could cause such a massive distance warping…” Astryde was lost in thought once she started to compute everything Rune said.

Trying to help her, the concerned reteller added some words, “My only conclusion back then was the presence of a dimension’s linking zone. But now that I personally experienced the chasing of a tier 5, the ether current and ether density theories are back on the table.”

“Though for them to be proven true, I’ll need to ascertain the fact that tier 5 bone golems are everywhere deeper. It’d be easier to just go around the city though, if I suddenly encounter tier 5 monsters it’ll instantly prove… Or maybe not?”

Stopping talking as he thought of doing just that, a few theories that included the presence of tier 5 monsters other than bone golems in tier 4 ether density appeared in his mind

“Forget what I said, too complicated for my exhausted mind. Anyway, here,” taking a camera out of his ether pocket dimension, he handed it to Arik, therefore completing the scouting trip’s main objective, “I’ll send you a readable summary of my trip later.”

On these words, he escaped from further communications and socialties as he felt just too tired to be polite.

‘Now… It’s safe to listen to some music, right?’

…

Feeling so damn tired when he went to sleep, Rune didn’t even think about potentially visiting the Dream. For him the consequences of being tired were a total lack of motivation to do anything, he knew that of himself, and accepted it wholeheartedly.

As his spirit completed its revitalization process, the time to wake up arrived all too early.

Not even 10 hours had passed from when he went to sleep and lost consciousness nearly instantly, and while he didn’t know he had slept less than 10 hours as he had erased all time indicators around him, if he knew he wouldn’t feel fully rested.

A sleep that lasted less than 10 hours wasn’t a true sleep in his book.

First, it was his perception that stopped being blurry, then it was his body that started moving a bit more here and there, and finally, a pair of awareness-made spiritual eyes appeared in his eye sockets.

‘The bone region is really something…’

Knowing that all the dots of colorful ether he was seeing as he looked towards the ceiling were in fact majorly energy signatures of monsters, and that the brightest were the collisions between said monsters… Rune found it more impactful and meaningful than an illusory starry sky.

Browsing through music playlists he had kept in his to-listen list, he selected one with a very long name including a few keywords that seemed appropriate for the situation, and played it.

(Mado Kara Mieru by Christopher Tin - https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=f4kiTQnhH4g&feature=share - Listen to all the music of Christopher Tin, he’s really amazing <3)

The opening music flowed softly through his perception, finding its origin in his chest, but he had long become used to being a walking speaker, so he just appreciated the music itself.

A sudden thought occurred to him in the middle of his silent contemplation.

Implementing this thought, he retracted a part of the awareness that composed his eyes, in turn guiding it towards another physical sense that could be considered useless without very extended specializations dedicated to it.

‘If I can do it, why not do it?’

The next second, a pair of illusory ears, the symbol of his sense of hearing came to existence.

And with a bit of focus, his perception stopped tracking the sound waves that escaped his chest, leaving this job to his newly reawakened sense.

‘Maybe it’s a bit of a placebo… But I certainly like it better this way.’

Enjoying himself by doing nothing but listening to music he had never heard before, time passed.

The music changed, pieces after pieces, and only once Rune felt awake and energized did he start to think about what he had to do.

‘Making a readable report about Tolevia, learning about the gardener path, oh that’s right, watching the tug of war too. When is it planned for?’

Turning his connected screen on, he went to his external feed wanting to browse the net but was surprised when he saw an important notification icon on his messaging app.

Opening it, Utopia’s icon was highlighted, so he clicked on it and read the “important message”.

[Utopia: Yo Rune, no it’s not that important, yes it’s been a long time, everything is going well, thank you.

Your twin little brothers just arrived in the Endless, and as you were unavailable, I, as the “leader” of our adventurer’s group, was the one who took care of receiving them and informing them that going to the prospect schools was useless.

However, what a surprise it was when your cute, naive, and innocent little brothers, newbies who didn’t know about the Endless, told me they didn’t even know the first thing about what happened to you in recent years!

As the leader, I took it upon myself to explain the situation, and while I’m sure you are actually shameless enough to not care about having forgotten about your family for a few years, and that threatening you with that fact will only make you laugh… I’ll still do it! You idiot! That’s not how a righteous hero should act!

Anyway, who knows when you’ll read this message? When you do, search in your unknown contacts list and send them a message. I’ll kick myself if you have a lot of unknown contacts.]

Bringing one of his bony hands to his chin, Rune started contemplating the deeper meaning of this kind of message.

‘Well… Now that I think about it…’

Denying the reality before his eyes, he temporarily allowed the timestamp to return, wanting to be sure about something as according to his memory, the last time he went online to check something that wasn’t readily accessible from his homepage was…

‘42 days ago… So my memory works correctly. What a relief.’

He nodded to himself, suddenly feeling proud of having such a wonderful long-term memory.

Then he checked his unknown contacts list and found two names he knew on it.

Miri Tudor and Miro Tudor, his twin little brothers that he hadn’t seen or heard for more than 7 years.

Rune wasn’t the emotional and family type though, so while he felt a sense of happiness at them being in this dimension and all the success and opportunities it entailed, it stopped there as he accepted their contact request.

‘Why do you say to little brothers you haven’t seen in years? They probably reached tier 2 now, so maybe a bit of guidance from someone they can trust?’

Starting to write a message he would send to the two, he immediately felt inspired the moment he started to think about it.

From where he was now, to what he was doing, to how it was true that he forgot about sending a message back, and once he was done with the family part, he got to the core of what he wanted to tell them: The infinite possibilities of the Ether Law.

It took him half an hour to properly put into writing the thoughts he had on the subjects, it would have been much more if he hadn’t already been experienced in writing.

Not thinking more about it, he sent it and got back to what he intended to do, meaning, getting some date or time for the very weird and interesting “tug of war” organized to promote a new rope material.

‘It's still 2 weeks away! How am I going to keep the hype for so long! Let me forget about it then, when videos get out on the subject I’ll remember it.’

Dissipating the cosmic mist bubble around him and reappearing into the world, he felt a bit of social motivation and wanted to understand a bit more about what his 2 friends were doing, so he locked onto them and decided that Astryde was the best target.

Walking the 50 meters separating them leisurely, he prepared his punchline.

“Good morning my good friend Astryde, may I inquire about the progress of our non-scam?” He asked with an ingratiating tone.

“It’s coming along, I sent a few reports not even a few hours ago about me having finished studying the whole perfect time segment I found back in Drunrith and finally finished writing it properly as we were traveling towards where we are now,” she answered with the calmest and the most innocent voice ever, but the content was anything but.

Lost for words for a few moments, Rune wondered what else needed to be asked in this situation.

Astryde nonetheless seemed to be aware of that and added a piece of info for him, “Arik decided that only using the guide to learn about the materials from the gardener path wouldn’t be enough, so he contacted Gar and miraculously found that the Undecided company’s investment fund has invested in a to-be expert of this path, and it’s one that’s even friends with Adreana.”

“With Adreana?” Surprise made its way to Rune’s reply, "friend" wasn’t a light term to be used when it came to a few people in the group, and Adrenana was part of said group.

“Go ask Arik if you want to know more,” she made it clear that she didn’t know more than the core part of what Arik was doing.

“You sounded just like an NPC when you said that, can you repeat it in the exact same way?” Bringing up the first thing that came to his mind after hearing her answer, he tried to push his luck.

“Yes I can,” she said, and then remained silent.

Rune also turned silent, glaring at her with a weird gaze as she proceeded to ignore him and returned to typing on her screen.

Surrendering before he entered whatever trap she had prepared, he made a 90 degrees rotation and looked at where Arik was.

Before leaving though, he bowed deeply, “Thank you for your guidance, Ma’am.”

A few quick steps brought him away from the quagmire that was working-state Astryde and into the much more comfortable and welcoming leave-me-alone asocial corner created by Arik.

“I heard Adreana got herself a friend? I think Astryde was a bit too stupid to believe such a thing, but you never know, I’m open to everything and anything,” sitting down almost immediately, Rune made himself comfortable as he engaged in active communication with someone of the same mentality as himself.

“Mmh,” classic grumbling answer, followed by the core news he was seeking, “She’s very different from Adreana from what Gar said, something about a hopelessly talkative and clumsy girl, she’s also a human woman if you’re wondering.”

Dismissing the useless details in his mind directly after hearing them, he skipped all the preliminaries and similarly went to the core of why he was here, “Did she already send a message about how to properly learn the material identification part of the gardener path?”

“Nope,” Arik shut him down without even thinking about it, “You know you went to sleep only a few hours ago, right? Go and prepare me a beautiful scouting report, tinker with your intent, punch some monsters, stop bothering me. I’ll send you a message when I get an answer back.”

“Is this the situation where I need to complete a quest perchance?” Rune tried not to think about it, but after he brought up the same thoughts with Astryde, he couldn’t hold himself back, “I need to do my report, tinker with my intent, and punch some monsters before being allowed to progress? Are there also secondary quests sir?”

“No, stop bothering me adventurer, I’m working on something very important and I cannot be interrupted,” great friendly chemistry was established instantly and an appropriate answer was given.

“You’re making me hesitate as to whether to talk to you again or not, I can smell an identical answer from a thousand kilometers away, even if I don’t have a nose… But should I still do it, just to prove my point? Will you try to upset my expectations, or will you be content with following the script?” Creating intrigue for nothing, Rune spoke in a serious tone as he asked himself if he should just leave now, in the middle of it.

“Ok, I made my decision,” he stood up as he said that, looked at Arik, then bowed deeply to him like he did to Astryde, “I’m also an NPC, sorry for trying to upset the script, please don’t report me. I'm just an ordinary scout that has to send a report to his superior, so I’ll do just that!”

After defusing the situation, he strangely felt motivated at the idea of actually doing his report. The wonders of a sapient's spirit really never ceased to make him marvel as he took a few steps and got a few tens of meters away from where Arik was.

‘Once I’m done with it… Why should I wait? I’ll just use the guide to learn more about the gardener path, if it’s a part that’s already been edited, then it’ll only be comfy.’

Setting a short-term schedule he wanted to follow at the moment, he sat down and opened his very rough semblance of a scouting report where he only got the most intense parts done.

‘I’ll be forced to use the scans I made as anchor points and natural timetables… So does it mean that Arik and Astryde have already made us reach here? But she said that we were actually running… Ah, yeah, of course, the report about the past said we’re running, such logic is too obvious, sorry.’

Concluding he didn’t need to hold back or try to confuse the reader on some points, Rune started writing a report in the rules of the art.

…

While the group of 3 hadn’t had a deep discussion about whether they would remain to clean the city or go to another with less risk involved, considering the effort each was doing on his side, they didn’t need to say it.

A few days after Rune came back from his scouting trip inside Tolevia, Astryde’s reports caught up with what she knew and what their group was doing, and sent a request for reinforcement with Rune’s report as an incentive for the eventually interested prospects.

In reply to this request, Astryde received an official announcement that an appraising patroller company would be deployed and arrive within a few weeks at worst considering the distance that needed to be traveled.

At the same time, she also received a complementary message informing the group that the location of the city and their camp had been published on the prospect network.

This message had hinted pretty strongly that they should keep an ether tower active permanently like they had been doing until now to ease the finding process for eventual newcomers and the future deployed appraising company.

After the group prepared a few additional signs pointing towards the camp, Arik had received a few courses prepared by Adreana’s friend and, unsurprisingly once they thought about it… They needed to go get some samples.

So Rune disappeared for half a day.

And reappeared alive and well, calling for Arik and Astryde.

“We’re rich, I never really saw how different each material was before. But now that I was looking to take samples of different ones. Woah!” Presenting excitedly what his short gathering journey got him, Rune started to take out samples after samples.

And he really had a lot, hundreds and hundreds of material samples to be non-exact. All taken from different buildings and rubbles.

“I don’t know how the ancient civilization even did it, but it must have been a complete chaos in the gardener department!”

His excited act was however ignored as, as if they had found something very interesting, Arik and Astryde opened their screen onto the appropriate courses and started talking about what each rock was.

Rune could nonetheless see that they were holding back a bit in their testing and they didn’t dare go punching a big chunk, believing it would crack.

“Ok, ok,” he decided to show them the true way by taking a brick-sized chunk of what he thought to be metal type material, “This is a tier 4 zone, the city was also built knowing this was a tier 4 zone, so do you think the materials used to build an expensive house are made to resist a tier 1’s strength?”

After saying that, he handed his brick-sized metal chunk to Arik, and waited silently.

Understanding his hint, Arik put down the deformed metal brick and tried to flatten it with a well-placed kick.

It remained whole and uncracked.