“It feels so weird to strip off the belt… Like it has always been here,” Rune commented as he proceeded to unclip all the fasteners that allowed his bone region custom-made belt to remain solidly attached to his spine and rib cage.

“Wait until you unstick your connected screen,” Arik grumbled from next to him, having already unequipped everything before Rune even began, “I feel so empty having to use it as a tablet…”

“I’m getting there, I’m getting there…” Not really able to come up with the right joke or pun, Rune only immersed himself in the instant.

The elevator was departing in 10 minutes, and the fact that he would soon get his biological fleshy body back still hadn’t really made its way to his slow and dense non-existent brain.

‘I think I concluded my bone region diary a bit too fast.’

Thinking back to his short time as an ethership passenger, to his discovery that the IGS had built a gigantic artificial pillar, to the expanded front base and the massive flow of people, and now to his imminent return to “normality”, he felt that he had a lot more he needed to say.

‘What I’m experiencing right now is so… Weird. What will my body feel like now that I became used to being an entity made only of unfeeling bones? What does it feel like to talk with my own voice and not a construct that more often than not doesn’t transmit the tone you want to use correctly?’

Philosophically approaching the imminently approaching event of getting his body back, Rune couldn’t help but recognize that he had become used to living as a pure bone life and, accommodating all its associated pros and cons.

‘Recovering my massive biological brain weakness is clearly not something I look forward to. As are a lot of biological things, why would I want to be able to experience pain again? What about things like nausea or feeling hot or cold?’

As Rune was having his internal conflict concerning the obviously better bone lifeform compared to his traditional biological one, he finished stripping “naked”, or as naked as his bone form could be.

Accompanying it was the embankment announcement, prompting all the passengers, the group of 3 included, to step onto the elevator.

“How are you feeling my dear Arik?” Rune stopped pondering on the inevitable, deciding that he preferred to live the instant, “Ready to lose this marvelous weaknesses-free form?”

“I already did the math, and for me it seems more worth it to recover all the weaknesses as it also means nearly all the monsters I’ll fight with will also have them,” matter-of-factly replying, Arik acted as anyone would expect him to.

“That’s not the way of the Undecided,” Astryde commented from the side, “If it didn’t take multiple masteries to achieve the result of losing my biological failings I would do it every time.”

Echoing this exact sentiment and having even made some research on the subject, Rune asked, “What paths would you use to do that? From the few dozen I’ve learned about, the base energy lifeform transition one seems like the most general.”

“The base one? Not the pure variant or the elemental variant?” She questioned, seemingly astonished at his choice of taking the base variant as the general answer, “Are you really Rune Tudor? The guy who theorized his own path and who doesn't care about what the rest of the world thinks or does?”

Nodding a few times after crossing his arms, Rune admitted to it immediately, “Well, the boring guide says the base one is the most general, but why would I ever choose it if I had a choice. Of course I would go on the crazy-sounding elemental energy lifeform transition! Who do you take me for?! Cosmic mist element forever!”

“Yeah, exactly. But who really wants to use 3 slots for something that is really not that useful?” She relativized, “If you often get your brain down, just take a specialization for getting more health regeneration boost, why go to the extreme of permanently removing the weakness while weakening yourself in exchange?”

“It’s neither the first time a path sounds too good to pass up on nor the first time I had to forget about this same path. But anyway, if you really don’t want to have a brain anymore, just wish for it strongly enough and your soul specialty will do the work, right?” Ending on chicken soup for the soul, Rune knew they each knew the conclusion to such a debate.

Terminating their pre-launch checks, the momentum crew of the elevator started powering their momentum engine, causing the massive kilometers wide platform to slowly take off.

Everyone started becoming silent, knowing that for the majority of people here, they were indefinitely departing from the bone region and its unique warped law.

Perceiving the 100 momentum crew, Rune wondered how fast they would reach the deep research base.

‘If even a simple transport ethership had a crew of 100 tier 4, it probably means they’re all also tier 4 now… How fast will we go through the 400 000 kilometers? Half an hour? Less than that?’

“Arik? Did you do the math for the speed of an ethership with a full crew of all-in momentum?” Not wanting to do the math himself, he asked his friend who most probably did.

“The transition to provided masteries is a pain so I didn’t do the all-in all-in, but I did it for a reasonable 7 tier 3 provided momentum masteries, plus class and fundamental,” using his energy to browse through the connected screen he was holding in his hand, he quickly found what he wanted.

“The result is an additional momentum manipulation efficiency of 1 800%, base momentum stat of 10 000, and with 100 people, that’s 19 000 000 momentum-based speed equivalent, or 317 kilometers per second after conversion,” he gave away the number and let Rune process it.

Using his own connected screen, Rune opened a calculator and divided 400 000 by 317, “So a maximum of 20 minutes? Oh ether, I love civilization.”

“You can even expect 15 minutes, we’re talking about the elevator after all. It’s the only link between the surface and the bone region as long as we don’t have a tier 6 space beacon specialist that wants to waste his life in sustaining a teleportation node,” Arik elaborated further after hearing the number Rune said.

“I’m sure there’s a way to make everything work. I read a lot of economic articles while I was having my 2 months of focused training as well as when I protected Astryde, and the way EP economy works dictates that as long as you have enough EP, you can even make a tier 900 do anything.”

Wisely showing the result of his recent learning rush, Rune felt particularly good after Arik stopped looking at him and returned to his screen without saying a word.

‘Well, I won’t bother him anymore. My words of wisdom probably affected him and he must be meditating on them.’

The elevator continued to accelerate until it reached a point where he couldn’t evaluate their speed as it became too fast, and just like that, a quarter of an hour later, it happened silently and instantly.

‘At last…’

Intense tinglings spreading all over his body, he stood up from the ground instinctively.

The warped law of the bone region that made it so that nothing biological or alive could exist was stopping to affect him, and as a consequence, his body was regenerating everything it needed to maintain itself “alive”.

‘I forgot about it, but there’s also hunger, thirst, and aging… So many things that only biological entities feel…’

Over the course of a minute in which the remnants of the bone region’s warped law continuously weakened, his body and ether soul fought to go back to a state of normalcy. And as their opponent didn’t have a way to regenerate anymore, it was a lost fight and it ended as quickly as it had begun.

Health flowed out of his bones, disgusting-looking pieces of flesh growing everywhere, blood flowed out and stained the floor as his body wasn’t yet completely closed in some places…

His senses came back, sight, touch, smell, others much more subtle and much more debilitating…

He became able to feel the expansion of his muscles as he tried to keep standing…

He became able to feel his confused heartbeat that didn’t know what was going on…

He felt a chemical cocktail invading his brain in response…

His body acted like it had been turned off for a long time, which was factually true, and was now being primed for use again.

As he was reveling in the fact that all of his senses were still turned off so he wasn’t affected by the massive chaos that was taking place in his body and brain, the elevator had reached its first stop: The deep research base.

‘Thank ether my clothes are all energy-based.’

Not needing to give back the equipment they were given, the 3 didn’t leave the platform and waited for it to depart again as they got used again to their own body.

“If you want to grow your hair again, just feed more energy to your scalp while immobilizing it,” from the side, the bald Astryde was explaining something her two friends hadn’t really taken into consideration.

‘Of course, there would be a solution for that… Should I go bald for a time? For the heck of it?’

In the end deciding to just go back to his usual low ponytail hairstyle, he started following Astryde’s instructions to make his hair grow until half an hour later, the elevator platform once took off again.

And this time it was taking off towards the surface, the true surface.

As the distance between the deep research base and the surface was only 150 000 kilometers, it didn’t even take 10 minutes before 3 Undecided exited a gigantic dome structure populated with just as many people as the first time they entered it.

However, following more than a year of evolution, all the advancements the IGS had made as a civilization reflected themselves in some way in this base that was now named Bone Regions Surface Base. The name wasn’t imaginative, sure, but it was sufficient to know its importance for those who knew what it implied.

“Look, there’s a few ethership there, it must be the port,” pointing one of his now fleshy fingers towards a certain direction, Arik called for their attention as his two friends enjoyed the instant, “I already checked the schedules and we only have to wait around 4 hours before an ethership is planned to depart for the industrial zone.”

Halting his sunshine enjoyment activity, Rune guided his eyes in the direction of a few ethership standing still in the air before saying, “They look a lot more elaborate than the one we used in the bone region.”

“If you read the news of the ethership category you would know that those are just barebone. Try searching for ‘major expedition ethership’ or ‘experimental bunkership’, I’m sure it’ll satiate your hidden need of big manly ships,” with confidence infused in his voice, Arik was nearly boasting about knowing what he was talking about.

“Will I use one when I depart for the gravity anomaly corridor? Or are they-”

“Unless things changed then no, you should only be able to use them when you’re going to the major expedition’s front,” cutting him off without remorse, he added another layer of confidence that seemed to transform into arrogance in Rune’s ears.

“Are you maybe-”

“No, learning about ethership is just a slight hobby of mine. I think if you study more about them once you finish your current category, you’ll find that it’s a very exciting field, with a lot of fanatics backing it up,” cutting him off again and speaking faster than ever, it seemed for Rune that he had become one of those ethership fanatics.

“Let me talk!” Rune blurted out, before becoming silent and realizing that he had already forgotten what he wanted to say, “Hu… It seems that my fallible mind got me, I’ll take that for a sign of providence then. When did you start checking the ethership category?”

With the sun giving the group of 3 endless energy thanks to its novelty, they enthusiastically made their way to the port area of the base before settling down not far from it, in a green park exposed to the sun, waiting until their transport arrived.

“Do you think they’ll really try to intrude into the core of Tolevia?” Lying on the ground and absorbing the sunbeams like a plant, Rune asked something that passed through his mind.

“Not much we can do, and from what I heard before departing there’s a high chance they’ll at least taste the water,” Astryde didn’t hold back what she thought to be the truth.

“Sigh…” Arik sighed when the subject was brought up, probably because despite his hard and strong asociality, he had still made some acquaintances that would be impacted by the subject, “Let’s raise a toast to them, I have just the perfect toast material.”

Getting a special glassy container out of one of his pocket dimension metal balls, he personally condensed 3 intricate glasses and started filling them with a very strange-looking liquid.

“It’s the first time I’ll be able to taste the final result of my new specialization, now that I got it there’s nothing to hide anymore, right?” Saying so, he used his own hands to bring a filled glass to Rune and Astryde.

Going from a lying position to a sitting one, Rune stirred the liquid and observed how it affected the ambient ether by radiating faint wisps of various colors.

“The name of this specialization is ‘Chaotic Nature Condensation’, and it’s an extremely obscure one even among other extremely obscure ones,” after letting his two friends admire his works for a dozen seconds, he started to describe it in more detail.

“I think it has the potential to become a crafting path, but I would need maybe a secondary specialization or even a tertiary one. As of now, the only thing I can do is condense the ambient ether and all its properties, and I mean all of them, into a liquid,” he introduced the core principle of his only specialization as his eyes started to shine.

“But of course, you know what the ambient ether is like, right? It’s never the same, it’s always moving and shifting, remnants of doomsday-like elemental strikes fly about, weird ether mutations that spontaneously naturally happen… That’s why, even if it’s really subtle, each drop of this liquid tastes different and is a witness to the place it’s been condensed in.”

Speaking for over a minute in a monologue-like way, he finally finished emptying what he had kept close to his heart and raised his glass, “To everything that better remains unsaid in fear that they may come true.”

Raising her glass with a serious expression on her face, Astryde also raised her glass, “To our safe return and amazing completion of this journey in the bone region.”

Following suit, Rune similarly raised his glass before being honest with his current thoughts, “To our amazing progress that will allow me to take my future adventures further and allow us to bully our 3 friends who remained behind.”

Bringing the edge of the finely sculpted energy glass to his lips and feeling something extremely cold and refreshing enter his month, he wasn’t the one to revel in this sensation that only biological entities could revel in.

Drinking small sip after sip, a slight discordant wave of nostalgia invaded him.

He felt nostalgia from this lost sense of taste that he had used so much before, and that he would be able to use again from now on.

In parallel, this drink perfectly embodied the atmosphere of the bone region and made him feel like he was once again coming under its warped law.

From the darkness of the underground region to the violent and lawless monster activity… From the dreary and bleak rocky plains to the dreamy pillars… From the still unclear and hidden history to the now empty ruins…

“Ah… That’s good,” he simply commented after appreciating the whole glass over 10 minutes, making an innocent smile appear on Arik’s face.

…

“Where are we going?” Directly asking the most logical question concerning their current situation, Miri wasn’t intimidated at all by the fact that they had been kidnapped by Utopia.

“Where do you think we are going?” Wittily smiling at the two younger brothers of Rune, Utopia pulled a joke as it was obvious where they were going.

“I’ll correct Miri,” Miro said, “Why are we going to the teleportation node?”

“To welcome back a few Undecided that have been gone for 2 years, more or less;” being uselessly cryptic in his answer, he was nonetheless quickly decrypted by the two younger humans next to him.

“Rune?”

“Rune is back?”

“As long as you remember how I phrased it and the current state of the Undecided adventurer's group, then the answer is just too obvious for me to say it,” continuing with his wise and witty act, he didn’t give the direct answer but held it back, neither confirming nor denying anything.

Having confirmed for themselves what was happening, they didn’t show any signs of happiness, favoring another mood supported by a simple fact.

“He didn’t send any message!” Miri exclaimed in frustration.

“I said to him that he was dead to me before, and now he just died again,” Miro became scarily calm after understanding the situation.

“Hahaha! Imagine his surprise when he sees you welcoming him back like cute little brothers!” Exploding in laughter at the scene taking place before him, Utopia even continued further and added more oil to the fire, “Though I’m sure the end result is that he’ll ignore you like the two insignificant beings you are! I know him too well! Hahaha!”

Accentuating his mockery even more, he collapsed on the ground and rolled around in laughter, truly showing that he already knew what was going to happen.

Not going with his flow, Miri the more emotional one showed fake anger and started to kick Utopia who continued to laugh despite his murder attempt.

Their skit continued for a few more minutes before Utopia stood back up after he received a message, acting as if he was catching his breath, “Haha. Ha. Ha… Let’s go, they’re already at the node.”