“Look for more rabbit colonies. Long enough has passed.”

That is how I translate Aster’s images in my head. Sheepishly I look at the sun, trying to ascertain how long I have before nightfall.

The sun has started going down, but it’s still a good distance from the horizon. So, a little over 4 PM.

Close to two hours is plenty of time to go around and find at least one colony willing and eager to join the party that my inner world was becoming.

Already having dealt with everything I wanted in the village and without anyone that can see my actions at the back of the village, I open a portal to my inner world and move the portal over the flying bicycle. Pulling the vehicle is not quite as fast as if I could let the portal stationery and let momentum carry me through like on my encounter with the pack of the beast in my first trip around the HLZ, but I don’t need it to be that fast.

Climbing aboard, I send a steady stream of mana in the repulsion rune keeping me in the air. The feedback loop of repulsion gets bounced from the ground to the craft over and over again as I slowly gain altitude and the feeling of levitating above the ground is still a rush, though eventually it would become routine if a cool part of my routine.

With another stream to the propulsion runic formation, I start speeding up and soon I am over the east wall of the village, feeling the freefall from the drop in terrain and heading for the colony Aster indicated to me.

I try to not let what I felt in the last hour or so as I trained and meditated consume my attention. Even in flight, I need to pay attention to the ‘road’, but my thoughts keep returning there.

I now had found two ways of ‘easily’ increasing my stats. I stopped abusing the first because it felt like it would have unforeseen consequences, but my gut wasn’t warning me away from the second one. That meany it probably didn’t share this drawback and the only thing holding me back was that I needed to recover before going for another session.

But something screamed at me to be noticed. The catalyst, what took the result from my efforts and pushed it over the hill, was my meditation session. If I managed to keep the right mindset, I had just discovered the key to many more ‘free’ stats.

I had found 2 methods to do the ‘impossible’ early on. I wasn’t a genius with Aether, the only explanation on the table the first time around. The only theory based on the limited facts at hand before this new revelation but it seems there was is more to it. Something that prompted this change was myself, my mindset, my body, or something within me.

But without knowing more I didn't want to spend too long speculating so as I get over the halfway point to the first step I force myself to stop. Turning all my thoughts to what is to come, I ask Aster:

“How do you want to handle this?”

The image that returns is both complex and simple and like often happens that image is not static. My avatar is similar to the ones she used before with the backpack on his back a telltale sign. As this avatar of mine approaches a nest a few rabbits leave the inner world in the backpack and after talking with the colony outside, both groups enter the inner world.

“Are you certain it will that easy?”

She shakes her head and sends a negative to me, but then the distinct feeling of home she has whenever she talks about the inner world washes over me and that manages to convince me. If the little furry thing resting in my lap manages to convey that feeling rabbits will be lining up to join the inner world.

In just another few seconds, I stop the flying craft and lower it down to the ground. Opening a portal to the outside, I leave it open at Aster’s request and watch the interaction. A dozen of them leave the inner world and start interacting with the other rabbits.

I have no way of knowing what they are talking about, not without much higher telepathic skills. So far my range is still too short. To get anything useful I needed to be touching someone mentally open to me and those limitations may never change meaningfully, but I can always hope. Being able to glean even just a stray thought here or there would go a long way in the right circumstances.

After a few minutes, a pair of the local colony rabbits enter my domain and I suddenly feel there is something strange.

How do I know that?

Sure, Aster and a dozen others I can recognize, but no one else. But when Aster and the others crossed the portal something tells me they are not the ones I had grown used to.

Perhaps this is some system mechanic I wasn’t aware of. Maybe I could somehow feel the change because they were tied to me. Fear grips my heart as I wonder.

If I let even more of you come, will all of you be ‘tainted’ in the eyes of the system and forever not allowed back? Not even if you went with the entire colony?

I don’t have a good answer to that, but it is Aster who asked permission to invite more of them, I will let the rabbits decide what they wish to do. I’m not some superior being that will impose my will and understanding of reality on them. I have no right to decide for anyone else.

For as simple as their minds are, they are still sentient creatures and I should respect that. Hell, even if they weren’t I still should respect their rights.

Sitting on the ground I pull my book and start going over the new updates as Aster continues with the ‘negotiation’.

With ever more information being added to the data storage in the networks, though still bottlenecked by the storage problems, the book is having a grand time. More pages to read show up than ever before and I read them all with the reverence they deserve absorbing all the knowledge while fitting each new puzzle piece in its place.

Be it in the actual place they are supposed to fit, with other pieces with the same pattern or even just with similarly colored pieces. After all, it was not like I had the finished product and could just match where pieces are supposed to be from the picture on it the box. All I had were the small puzzle pieces and the information they provided as I compared each of them with the buckets we acquired since our arrival and the rough picture we are forming.

Minutes give way to almost an hour as more and more of the rabbits visit the inner world. Rabbits that I can only identify as belonging to the inner world or not. After I close the book, Aster stares at me.

“What is it?” I ask touching her head to get a clear picture instead of a barely fuzzy image, and her assertion is clear.

“So they have joined? Good, I will make the portal larger.”

True to my word, I enlarge it to about a meter wide as she shakes her head, and I pay close attention to the next image which takes a moment to become clear.

“You want me to bring the core of their nest inside?”

She sends an affirmation, and as I‘m about to break off contact she sends a feeling of confusion. She doesn’t know why they want to do that. She is just relaying the request.

Nodding I pull my hand and start the work.

I watch as the largest ones head in first, with smaller and smaller ones following, until the last one, though even the smallest is still bigger than the few newborns in the first few weeks.

Aster’s colony hadn't had a single new birth, the youngest ones in the colony being about 4 months old. Something she told me was the System’s doing.

At least I won’t have to worry about overpopulation in the inner world, or food, given their trips to the netherworld at night. At least while I was in the instance, afterward that may become a limitation.

As the last few enter the inner world, I close the portals and start mentally preparing to use a large portal to get their colony as I send mana underground. Lots and lots of mana. Before me, I grow large earth runes and after opening a portal at the surface of the ground, I push the mass of earth upward through it.

A ten-meter diameter circle with about 6 meters in depth follows into the inner world. I fight the enormous weight without the system gifted skills the Earthmover mages have, but my Earth manipulation is still good enough to finish in a couple of minutes.

Hundreds of tons of soil in a single push and my mind fragged from opening the huge portal, but for some reason, it was important for them and I didn't want to disappoint them. Without having to actually support the weight of the soil, melding the large disk with the rest of the soil in the inner world is easy work and the only leftover sign of what I just did is the shade of green of the grass being ever so slightly different.

When I’m about to withdrawal my perception field, I notice something I missed while outside the inner world.

The runes hiding the entryway are different from what I saw on Aster’s colony, as a matter of fact, they are not even in the same family. The only similarity is the final effect producing the illusion.

Well, I guess they aren’t all uniform.

Shugging, I move off and quickly climb on my flying bicycle heading for the next closest colony. They probably won’t join in a rush. We had only about 40 minutes before the sunset, but I was already speeding along and it would be a nice break from my current schedule.

Two kilometers away, I stop atop another colony with Aster and a few others following into it. There is something about two of the rabbits going out that call my attention and following them through the tunnels underneath the ground I don’t let my awareness fade until I notice a very slight shift in the very property that allows me to notice they were not part of the colony a little while ago.

There is no change on Aster and the others after so long, or at least not that I can notice.

But the ‘mark’ the system put on them, faint as it was after only a few minutes in my inner world is strong enough for me to tell them apart from the ones that never entered it. For now, they might still be able to join other colonies, but that feels it will change quickly.

Surrounded by small portals in my inner world, I wait around releasing my mental grip on my perception field. I push it lightly to the full range but without trying to make details. Enough resolution to notice the rabbits around me, though only as blobs of warm flesh.

With time in my hands, at least another half an hour until sunset and having already caught up with the reading from my book, I open a small portal 30 meters away and connect to the nearest root from the network.

I look at the output of the nearly completed detention ring around the HLZ. Three spots over the entire place are returning a sign that someone is near the HLZ. I send my awareness to one of them, the closest one with a turn of 60 degrees to the south or some 2 thousand miles in a straight line.

I feel them stepping on the roots of the network, and can make out their shapes. This group consists of three people standing a good fifty meters from the barrier.

With a little mana, I grow a few runes nearby, just enough that I can start listening to their conversation. Something that for as much detail as the perception field provided, it couldn't quite make out the vibrations traveling through the air. Even if it could, how would I interpret the vibrations as proper sound?

Their words are a little more encouraging than what I feared from people venturing near the HLZ. They are not looking to get too close, with two of them standing together fully clad in leather armor and the third one almost 50 meters to the left and a little further away from the HLZ.

Soon however my attention is dragged back as something happens and I hope they keep to their plans and don’t do anything stupid.

A mental image comes from Aster, who climbs the bicycle and squeezes in the small space between my chest and the windshield of the flying bicycle to furrow her head against my hand.

“They joined.” She sends over.

That was fast. Perhaps it wouldn't take days to fill the inner world if she managed to keep this pace.