The moment Rune willed all the leveling notifications he had held back from checking for 2 months and 3 weeks to finally be displayed, his vision became filled with more notifications than he had ever had to deal with before.

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement reached Tier 4 Level 71

…

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement reached Tier 4 Level 73

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Fighting Instinct reached Tier 4 Level 70

…

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Fighting Instinct reached Tier 4 Level 80

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Body Control reached Tier 4 Level 70

…

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Body Control reached Tier 4 Level 80

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Fine Manipulation reached Tier 4 Level 59

…

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Fine Manipulation reached Tier 4 Level 63

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Grand Manipulation reached Tier 4 Level 59

…

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Grand Manipulation reached Tier 4 Level 63

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Energy Compression reached Tier 4 Level 70

…

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Energy Compression reached Tier 4 Level 80

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Perception Control reached Tier 4 Level 9

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Perception Control reached Tier 4 Level 10

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division reached Tier 4 Level 66

…

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division reached Tier 4 Level 71

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation reached Tier 4 Level 26

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation reached Tier 4 Level 27

*Ding* Energy: Specialized Cosmic Mist Element reached Tier 4 Level 2

…

*Ding* Energy: Specialized Cosmic Mist Element reached Tier 4 Level 12

*Ding* Cohesion: Specialized Cohesion Infusion reached Tier 4 Level 83

…

*Ding* Cohesion: Specialized Cohesion Infusion reached Tier 4 Level 92

*Ding* Energy Compression: Provided Energy Defense reached Tier 3 Level 97

…

*Ding* Energy Compression: Provided Energy Defense reached Tier 4 Level 7

*Ding* Energy Compression: Provided Energy Structure reached Tier 3 Level 97

…

*Ding* Energy Compression: Provided Energy Structure reached Tier 4 Level 7

*Ding* Energy Compression: Provided Energy Armor reached Tier 3 Level 97

…

*Ding* Energy Compression: Provided Energy Armor reached Tier 4 Level 7

*Ding* Energy Compression: Provided Quick Compression reached Tier 3 Level 90

…

*Ding* Energy Compression: Provided Quick Compression reached Tier 4 Level 2

*Ding* Body Control: Provided Humanoid Body reached Tier 3 Level 91

…

*Ding* Body Control: Provided Humanoid Body reached Tier 4 Level 2

*Ding* Awareness Division: Specialized Sense Invocation reached Tier 2 Level 16

…

*Ding* Awareness Division: Specialized Sense Invocation reached Tier 2 Level 21

‘Oh, dear.’

Dealing with such a mass of notifications touching upon all his masteries except his endless adaptation, to his greatest dismay, was a challenge he had created for himself knowing it would happen, but when it actually happened, he was still a bit shocked.

‘Is that the translation of 2 months of intense training and 3 weeks of normal one? Is that really the leveling speed of every prospect? Why aren’t they all already tier 5 then?’

Analyzing his gains after he stopped to think about the tier 5 prospect conspiracy theory, he easily found common points between his level gains and the way he had trained.

‘Only 3 levels in reinforcement… That’s not a leveling speed worth of it being my main energy-consuming background training, that’s so low that it can only be compared to the saying “1 level per month”. But I shouldn’t be so surprised, I spent nearly all the time dedicating my energy to my armor.’

Starting from the most obvious, he slowly made his way to the less logical levels he got.

‘2 levels each in perception control and momentum manipulation… The momentum part can be explained by me using it sporadically while fighting bone golems, but the perception control levels… Does it come from me maintaining my sense invocation and keeping updated on everything happening around me?’

Upon finalizing his analysis of his massive leveling notification log, he opened his masteries to take a look at the final result.

Masteries

Tier 1 Masteries

Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement: Tier 4 Level 73

Physical Fundamental: Fighting Instinct: Tier 4 Level 80

Physical Fundamental: Body Control: Tier 4 Level 80

Energy Fundamental: Fine Manipulation: Tier 4 Level 63

Energy Fundamental: Grand Manipulation: Tier 4 Level 63

Energy Fundamental: Energy Compression: Tier 4 Level 80

Spiritual Fundamental: Perception Control: Tier 4 Level 11

Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division: Tier 4 Level 71

Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation: Tier 4 Level 27

Tier 2 Masteries

Energy: Specialized Cosmic Mist Element: Tier 4 Level 12

Cohesion: Specialized Cohesion Infusion: Tier 4 Level 92

Cohesion: Specialized Endless Adaptation: Tier 1 Level 8

Tier 3 Masteries

Energy Compression: Provided Energy Defense: Tier 4 Level 7

Energy Compression: Provided Energy Structure: Tier 4 Level 7

Energy Compression: Provided Energy Armor: Tier 4 Level 7

Tier 4 Masteries

Energy Compression: Provided Quick Compression: Tier 4 Level 2

Body Control: Provided Humanoid Body: Tier 4 Level 2

Awareness Division: Specialized Sense Invocation: Tier 2 Level 21

‘Hehe, if I erased my perception fundamental, my momentum fundamental, and all except my cohesion infusion slotted mastery, then I would think I’m close to reaching tier 5.’

Seeing all those tier 4 masteries really gave Rune a boost of motivation and self-fulfilled his hidden need to be proven that he wasn’t stalling.

‘684% body control efficiency, 2 126% energy compression efficiency… Well well well, would you look at that.’

The progress was plainly visible before his eyes, and even when he tried to focus on his perception control, he couldn’t find enough logic in himself to say he had slowed down.

Even the presence of a tier 1 mastery didn’t dampen his enthusiasm, it only further confirmed the fact that his next adventure could only happen in 2 places: Gravity anomaly or erosion anomaly.

‘And I made my choice.’

He didn’t need enlightenment or a revelation to know it was the right course of action for him.

Thinking about all the flaws Astryde and Arik found in his reasoning though, he had no choice but to admit that he could be wrong.

‘If it really comes to this… Then I’ll just change my destination to the erosion anomaly, but I think they’re biased too. Anyway, I just need to wait for the powerhouses of the native civilization to transmit their knowledge to the IGS and everything will become clear.’

Wrapping up his 3-month progress' shallow analysis, Rune created an energy mattress and laid down on it despite not being able to feel anything.

‘As for now, I’m sure visiting the Dream will truly allow me to start a new day with a clean slate.’

Disconnecting his awareness from his ether soul, his spirit lost its ability to perceive the outside world and started to drift in unknown directions.

Soon enough, or as soon as what his hazy consciousness told him was “soon”, the world took on new colors.

Then, a certain someone suddenly found himself walking out of a very familiar door window leading to a terrace with a peach ice tea in hand on a summer day.

The hot summer wind was blowing through the high trees the neighbors and his family had allowed to grow to tens of meters in all of their back garden, creating this characteristic sound of rustling leaves.

As it was a rural area, the sounds of the city and sapient activities were reduced to nothing, only leaving behind peace.

In this environment, this extremely familiar environment he had spent more than 20 years of his life in, his body felt comfortable, just right, as if he had just woken up, which was probably the case.

The fact that this certain someone wasn’t able to control his action or anything didn’t matter anymore.

It was a dream, after all.

A very comfy-looking one.

…

As the group of 3 had planned, once they concluded everything they could think of on their side, they departed from the front camp.

Coincidentally, the area Astryde knew a sapient tier 7 entity to have settled down made them pass next to the camp they established at first, the one with an open-air material museum that had maybe been used, or maybe not.

The return to a “normal” life of traveling through the chaotic and depressing rocky topography of the bone region wasn’t felt as much, considering the 3 of them knew their objective to be only a week away.

With such a “short” expected time and no reason to reach this expectation other than wanting to be done with it, it didn’t come as a surprise that the overall behavior of the group changed a bit compared to when they didn’t know where they would stop.

In terms of their ability to defend themselves, the group now only had to flee from extraordinary encounters with monsters at the peak of the ether food chain of the bone region, but apart from those? They knew they had firmly entered the upper-middle tier 4.

Arik in particular, with only 1 of his mastery slots dedicated to something unrelated to fighting, could even be said to belong to the upper tier 4. He was only dwarfed by peak tier 4 monsters or monsters with abnormal builds that countered his steady offensive-centric one.

A week of travel quickly came to pass, making the group arrive in a surprising topographical anomaly: A mountain range surrounded by plains. But they thought only such a unique environment was worth it of having a tier 7 settle here for a few years.

With their destination having been reached, Astryde started to shallowly dive in time for a few hours per area, with the objective of finding the right one by elimination as she didn’t have any other choice.

Or she did have better choices, but those relied more on luck, so she opted for the slow but sure one.

This grid search lasted 3 days and 24 areas, each covering a sphere of 20 kilometers of diameters, before she got a certain area that checked all the criteria she needed to be certain this was the right area.

Once she found the right area, the group’s dynamic changed with Arik stopping to act as a bodyguard with Rune and joining Astryde’s side to finish what he had to finish.

As for Rune, he once again became a protector, just that Arik was added to the mix.

Though, as he had already become used to it, it didn’t bother him more than that and other than a ‘Why didn’t I work on my 3rd stage more?’ internal self-critic, he didn’t utter a single complaint.

He at least tried to once again fuse the traditional way of erecting anti-perception energy barriers with his cosmic mist for the heck of it but was disappointed when the result ended up being a very, very visible hole in his perception that any monster would certainly want to investigate.

However, this result was the one that was bound to happen. So like a lot of things, he forgot about it and focused on fighting the monsters too curious for their own sake.

Once the 100 hours necessary for Astryde to enter deep dive passed and she didn’t wake up, Rune and Arik had the unsaid confirmation that she had found what she sought.

3 days later the energy circling around her slowly ground to a stop and once she became able to control her body once more, she only said one thing.

“He’s not only very talkative, he’s also very tightly bound with someone at tier 8. We hit the jackpot.”

With this one sentence, everything they had planned to do in the bone region came to an end, and the group of 3 embarked on a slow return trip towards Tolevia.

On the way, Astryde stayed away from most encounters and focused on openly writing about not only tier 7 pieces of information, but also tier 8 ones, and surprisingly… Even tier 6 ones, much to the interest of her 2 traveling companions.

‘Is something wrong with the knowledge about the tier 6 the IGS got?’

However, as she had much to write about she used her own way of quickly writing things, and despite being able to read everything she wrote, Arik and Rune would have to wait for the translated and edited version to not make a joke of themselves.

A bit more than a week of time passed before they arrived back at a camp that didn’t change that much, it could also be said that the difference in terms of people or surface area went in over their head as for them, they would leave this place very soon and maybe never come back if they forgot about it.

A community had even started to form, but this community wasn’t one any in the group wanted to be part of, so they only found an empty place and made it their own haven where they would be able to wrap everything they still wanted to do.

As a time watcher, Astryde took it upon herself to dedicate a few hours of her time to find when the next ethership would pass by for whatever reason.

For Rune, his mind had already left the bone region and its weird warped law.

For him the end of an adventure wasn’t when he came back home, but when he decided he wanted to stop.

And he wanted to stop. His next adventure was already calling to him much more strongly than anything he could think of could happen in the unique bone region.

With this mindset supporting him, he felt enormously inspired in properly wrapping his “Journey To The Bone Region” diary, objectively describing how his stop at Tolevia happened and how he felt that leaving before the stupid prospect engaged with the titanic bone golems was the best thing that could happen.

When Astryde informed him and Arik that the next ethership was planned to arrive in 4 days and would depart in 5, everyone stopped bothering each other as they all used their remaining time in their own way.

Eventually, the ethership arrived, their group successfully got on it after their identities were verified, and just like that, Rune, Arik, and Astryde began their final return trip with more than half of their wants list unfulfilled.

But they were still fulfilled.

…

Watching the landscape flashing by with his spiritual eyes, Rune couldn’t even begin to understand the speed at which the ethership was going with a momentum engine fueled by a dedicated crew made of 100 tier 4 all-in momentum users.

What he also couldn’t understand was how the bow of the ethership was able to utterly pulverize the monsters that had the misfortune of colliding with it. Was it just the material itself or was someone layering offensive energy on top of it?

‘What's for sure is that they’re at least a hundred times faster than me at my best…’

Officially, they were paid a very small, nearly negligible, amount of contribution for acting as protectors in case the worst came to happen. Unofficially though? They were simple passengers.

And as passengers, the only thing they could do was wait until they arrived at their destination.

Technology existed nonetheless to solve this wait, and as Rune was having flashes of the luxurious Duke Of Andromeda intergalactic transport ship, he profoundly felt the difference with his current transport ship.

It wasn’t the fact that it was unicolored, empty, or even silent that established the greatest difference for him though, it was the size.

The ethership the group of 3 had boarded took on the form of a tube, and the only thing it had for itself was its optimization.

The front part was filled with layers and layers of materials in case they collided with something too hard, the middle part was where they were, with everyone else too, including the crew, and the back part was for transporting pocket dimension crates.

There was nothing else, no second floor, no door, no chairs, it was the most spartan environment Rune had ever encountered in his life, and by far.

Looking up, the ceiling seemed extremely close, not even 10 kilometers away.

‘I wonder where the ship will stop. Just below the tunnel entrance? Maybe now that months have passed they have completely secured the area?’

As for the reason Rune was observing the surrounding world at all through the very small windows available?

It was because after 3 days of travel, an announcement had finally been made telling the passengers that they were very shortly arriving at their destination, which resulted in Rune closing his screen and preparing himself along with everyone else.

“I just received the latest report and it seems we are lucky,” the one who made the announcement spoke again after 5 minutes of silence, “Monster activity is at its lowest so we can directly go to the entrance of the tunnel gate. Same as boarding, everyone exits via the rear hatch, no need for pushing.”

With this announcement, Rune felt the speed of the ethership decrease, and once he looked through one of the windows again, what attracted his eyes was something that had clearly not been there when he first arrived.

‘Did they… Really?’

A gigantic metal pillar was linking the ground with the ceiling.

It wasn’t a copy of an underground pillar he had the chance to visit on 2 occasions, it would have been a perfectly spherical pillar from top to bottom if it wasn’t for the entrances every ten kilometers, all opening onto platforms allowing etherships and patrollers alike to circulate fluidly.

There were no monsters that he could see, meaning they had all been killed, there was no other explanation he could come up with after he remembered the fact that the area he was now seeing had once been a hotspot with chaotic ether due to intense fighting.

“I didn’t know they built something like that… When was it built?” He asked seemingly no one but knew that a certain short walking database was bound to answer him.

“It’s construction had already started when we landed more than a year ago, as for when it was built? Are you asking if it's finished? It’s not, only the exterior looks like it’s finished, the interior is probably filled with nothing but swarming workers,” as he expected Arik gave away his knowledge openly.

Seeing as Rune had really not been aware that it had been built however, Astryde shook her head helplessly before making fun of this paradox, “So you know what happens everywhere else but not in the region you’re in?”

Noting the absurdity of the situation, he chuckled, “Hehe, not my fault that the bone region news category has never made it to the homepage.”

In this friendly atmosphere composed of relieved jokes and relaxed jabs, the ethership slowed down even more as it approached one of the topmost platforms.

The dockage happened without problem, it wasn’t like the ship couldn’t be controlled perfectly by its captain, and the rear hatch opened the instant the ship came to a standstill.

Following the mass of more than 50 people out, the group of 3 entered the metallic pillar through a gate that had been called “tunnel gate” by the announcer.

With their perception encompassing more than the width of the pillar, it wasn’t difficult for the 3 of them to find their way to a proper vertical corridor leading exclusively up.

‘So the elevator can’t come down yet? It’s really not finished then.’

As they started using their momentum to reduce the 200 kilometers separating them from the front base, Astryde asked, “Do you want to stop at the front base?”

“No,” Arik didn’t hesitate even a little before answering.

“Nope,” Rune also answered negatively after a few seconds

‘I encountered a few interesting people but no, maybe we’ll see each other again in the future? What were their names again? Hazard? It’s the only one I can remember because we hit it off.’

“Then let’s just continue straight through the front base until we reach the elevator floor,” implying she also had nothing to do at the front base, she asserted their imminent objective before the group really entered the flow of people flying up.