‘100g… A bit high, but not overly so. Not perfect, not horrible, just a good old round number.’

Standing before the first exit to the gravity corridor he had come upon, Rune knew inside himself that he would exit here and start his endless adaptation’s second test battery here too.

The line before this exit was nonexistent, why would anyone want to exit here? But that was his case, and now that he had confirmed there were really exits, probably even one every 100g, he sighed in relief.

‘Yeah… When I think about it, why would anyone want to be exposed to higher gravity when there’s no need to? It’s not like everyone has a gravity adaptation to grow.’

Rationalizing his situation quickly, he wondered for a bit if he would have to pay for a ticket after every exit to re-enter, but there was no information on that subject, so he skipped through the hesitation phase and entered the…

‘What is it called? Decompression chamber? Airlock? Gravitylock?’

Anyway, he entered the gravitylock and the gate closed behind him as the miniature black hole maintaining normal gravity slowly turned off and allowed the natural gravity to take its place.

All over Rune, his armor started coloring itself in pure black with rare flashes of white. His endless adaptation was going to start its first intense workout until its creation.

‘Let’s call this color… White flashed black. It sounds cool and it's true and factual.’

After the overseer AI didn’t detect any abnormality like the being in the gravitylock having collapsed, the final gate separating him from the natural environment of the gravity anomaly started opening.

Clenching his two fists, Rune remembered the first time he intruded into the gravity anomaly, the waterfall covered in slimy algae, the moment he reached his limit…

‘I’m already at 100g, one-fifth of my 512.8g best records, and the end is located at 10 000g… It’s crazy how far I was from the center… And It’s similarly crazy how I dare come back without being a tier 5, hehe!’

Taking his first step outside, he looked over in all directions. Above, right, left, forward, everything was just gray mountains and more gray mountains. It was still day, but the star of the mountainous region couldn’t pierce through the current cloudy ether layer, resulting in bleary cloudy-ish weather.

*Ding* Cohesion: Specialized Endless Adaptation reached Tier 1 Level 11

Reminding him of the situation very cleverly, Rune confirmed once again that continued exposure to an environmental ether would still make his endless adaptation grow.

‘I’ll become unable to take notes very soon, but it doesn’t exempt me from taking some now.’

With all his training plan passing through his mind, he opened a dedicated document that would from now on remain permanently open, even if only in the background.

‘I should also be able to…’

Making a conscious effort, he tried to bring up a minimalist sentence from his endless adaptation’s detailed description window.

Gravity Ether Adaptation: 0%

‘Easy.’

This percentage indicator he had under his eyes would become his strongest weapon against what he would soon be faced with, and what he had understood from reading the archive request was that it should soon grow extremely quickly.

‘At best the contact stage will extend until 10%, if not it’ll be 5% before I transition to the rapid growth stage.’

Approaching the studies of his growth mastery from a very technical point of view, Rune hoped that he was part of the normality, he didn’t want to be part of something never created before.

He had nothing to gain from being unique after all, similar growth masteries to his referred to in the archive request had done their job perfectly from his point of view, as much as he wanted his to do. It would maybe be slightly slow once he really got going, but at least this way he would know why it was slow.

And between knowing what was happening and not knowing… His preferred choice was quickly made.

Skipping a bit in place to feel things out, Rune could feel that at 100g his body was already starting to malfunction and if he was to reactivate his sense of pain, he would relive an experience he had lived before that left bad memories behind.

‘Well… No more procrastinating.’

Applying a slight background momentum directed upward, going directly against the gravity, he let his previous awareness division passive training come to a stop as a new spiritual training took over. It was all a question of balance, and doing 2 spirit-intensive training at the same time was counterproductive.

Then he started running.

The music he had once heard over his adventure and loved so much flowed through his mind again, and as he accelerated following a parallel path to the gravity corridor, all genres and styles, from pop, electro, soul to rock, were heard at least once.

It was a chaotic gathering, but Rune loved it. It was a chaos he had created.

His momentum at 40% of its maximum potential, a comfortable spiritual stretching, was equal to a permanent push of 200 meters per second upward, it mitigated a bit more than 20g and allowed him to not yet feel like he was in the gravity anomaly.

Stride after stride, his full 78 400 strength stat equivalent allowed him to completely ignore the remaining 80g that tried to drag down his body.

‘If I was affected by so little, turning back now would be the best option.’

As much as he tried to casually relativize his current situation, he was now sure and certain that he had undertaken something greater than himself, but it was what he had desired.

So he continued accelerating.

He had a bit more than 5 million kilometers to travel until he arrived at his destination after all, and this distance wouldn’t be traveled by itself.

Unless he stopped midway and picked a ride on a shuttle…

…

A month quickly passed as Rune focused entirely on his conditioning for his entry into a dimension ruled by gravity.

As his spirit was quickly reaching its endurance limit and a day of sleep would become more than just an option very soon, he pushed himself to his limits by using 100% of his momentum, or the equivalent of a 32 900 momentum stat to resist the ever-increasing and restraining gravity.

‘The 1 000g exit shouldn’t be far by now… Let’s do a last sprint to celebrate it.’

Mobilizing his focus on his cohesion, he focused on activating a certain threshold burst switch.

Instantly, as the cohesion-infused energy compressed into his armor layer started burning as they released all their potential, Rune momentarily was released from all environmental restrictions and accelerated back to his maximum speed of a kilometer per second.

Rune didn’t bother trying to stop his threshold burst mode from moving on to his health 10 seconds later after all the cohesion contained in his armor layer had been used.

His current sprinting speed amidst the 999g gravity environment made him feel surreal, unrestricted, and drunk on his temporarily acquired power.

‘Not even a tier 5 would be able to catch up to me at this speed!’

The absence of leveling notifications was obviously due to him having hidden them all to not be interrupted. He was jubilantly awaiting the 1 000g exit to finally make his end-of-the-month summary because of that.

After slightly more than 20 seconds of threshold burst mode, the last freshly regenerated cohesion contained in similarly freshly regenerated health burst in a last show of potential and glory, symbolizing the end of this surreal mode.

As gravity reaffirmed its place and influence on his body, Rune’s speed dipped instantly from a kilometer per second to less than a hundred meters per second.

But this last sprint hadn’t been in vain, or maybe it was just happenstance, as something seemed to have changed in the new cohesion that automatically started replacing the defective health.

‘Is that…?’

It was nearly imperceptible, but his speed increased slightly, his body felt freer, and the impression of being crushed eased a bit…

Nearly instinctively, Rune brought up the only thing he knew that could have this type of universal effect.

Gravity Ether Adaptation: 1%

‘A whole month. A whole month for a single percent in the contact stage, the stage with the fastest theoretical growth…’

Thinking about this fact as he cycled the cohesion-deficient compressed energy making up his armor with new cohesion-rich ones, the full effect of this single percentage of adaptation showed itself as the gravity influencing him was approximately reduced by 10g.

‘I should need between 4 to 9 months to end the contact stage… Unless from the start my endless adaptation growth mastery works differently from all the others. Yeah, not gonna happen, right?’

Pulling him out of his thoughts was the apparition in his perception sphere of a gravity corridor’s exit.

He hadn't been able to see it with his eyes due to how seamlessly it was integrated, but now that his perception sphere reached it, he saw it in all its splendor.

‘The 1 000g exit. One-tenth of the way to the core area of the gravity anomaly. And I've already slowed down so much… Sigh…’

Smiling bitterly at the reality he was facing, Rune spent a minute and a half reaching the exit from 10 kilometers away. Once before it, he used his connected lenses to identify himself and sighed another time internally, this time in relief, at not having to pay for another ticket.

Passing through the gravitylock, the cohesion infused into his armor slowly stopped being colored in white flashes black, returning to its natural transparency that let his slightly tanned netizen-white skin shine through.

Combined with his easy-going adventurer vestimentary style consisting of a comfy t-shirt, shorts, and a solid belt keeping his one and only pocket dimension metal ball secured, he looked exactly like one of the numerous tourists wanting to see for themselves the end of the gravity corridor.

Being released from the tyrannical gravity outside and having released his own way of defending himself against it, the first thing he felt was how wonderful normal gravity felt.

As his spirit had nothing to do anymore and it wasn’t working anymore after the last intense sprint, it immediately began to let him know that it was time to have a recovery sleep. And he would have really gone to sleep now if there wasn’t something he needed to check before.

‘Hehehe! Let me see now the result of 1 month of fighting against the environment with not one bit of fighting involved!’

He willed all the leveling notifications he had kept hidden to show themselves.

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement reached Tier 4 Level 74

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement reached Tier 4 Level 75

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Body Control reached Tier 4 Level 81

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Body Control reached Tier 4 Level 82

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation reached Tier 4 Level 28

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation reached Tier 4 Level 29

*Ding* Cohesion: Specialized Endless Adaptation reached Tier 1 Level 12

…

*Ding* Cohesion: Specialized Endless Adaptation reached Tier 1 Level 41

*Ding* Cohesion: Specialized Threshold Burst Rejection reached Tier 1 Level 2

…

*Ding* Cohesion: Specialized Threshold Burst Rejection reached Tier 1 Level 16

*Ding* Body Control: Provided Humanoid Body reached Tier 4 Level 3

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

‘Huhu~ One tier 4 level every 2 weeks? That sounds about right for something I didn’t risk my life in at all. As for my endless adaptation and threshold burst, hehehe!’

Seeing with his own eyes the results of his moderately hard conditioning, Rune adopted an arrogant expression while scratching his chin excessively and making slight humming sounds.

His endless adaptation had gained 1 level every day while his threshold burst had gained a level every time he had used it, or once every 2 days. This announced extremely good news for when he ultimately reached the end of the gravity corridor.

‘Now that I reached 1% gravity adaptation, maybe I should start using a threshold burst every day? This way I’ll be finished with it in 3 months… Or can I? Why did I decide to limit myself to one use every 2 days, to begin with? You’re weird past me.’

With the last thing that kept him awake being done, he covered himself in cosmic mist and found himself an out-of-the-way path that no one would ever want to pass through as he started raving about how to better his carefully planned training plan.

The fact that despite all the difficulties he had encountered, progress had equally clearly appeared… This simple chain of events reinforced the idea in his mind that nothing could go wrong.

‘I’m so spiritually exhausted but I’m not even having any thoughts related to what I am doing being hopeless and insignificant. Is that the effect of being alone again? I just want to go at it again and reach the 1 100g exit!’

Laying down on his corner, Rune couldn’t erase the smile he had on his face as he thought about this month that symbolized his return to being a lone adventurer wanting to push himself to his limits with no regard for anything else.

‘Anyway… Dream or not? More no, right? I don’t need any restorative journey, I feel perfectly fine.’

Having not been swept by the exhaustion depression, he adopted the most comfortable position he could as cut off his perception sphere feedback, let his cosmic mist absorb all the other disturbances, and felt his eyelids become heavy.

‘I didn’t even think about it, but with the gravity corridor just next to me, I can pretty much sleep comfortably like this anytime I want. That’s amazing too…’

With an even more enthusiastic last thought, his spirit finally shut down to start repairing itself from all the strains it had been put under.

…

Oblivious to how fast or slow he was advancing, Rune entered a new routine that consisted of finally getting his endless adaptation to do what it was meant to do and to be.

Inconsequential bouts of hesitation and questioning still happened, and they became more frequent when he reached the 2 000g exit of the gravity corridor.

For him to reach an adequate traveling speed at this gravity, enabling his threshold burst mode had become an obligation.

Reaching his limits so fast, after only 2 months of conditioning, would have started eroding at anyone else’s resolve to continue, but not for Rune.

The entire concept and foundation of his exploration immortal path was to thrive in extreme environmental conditions.

That was why, even when taking a single additional step outside of the gravity corridor became so difficult that his 3% gravity adaptation couldn’t even make a difference anymore, he just switched his way of training to a new one, not even reconsidering why he was trying so hard.

‘I should be 30 by now… How strange and thrilling.’

Arriving with difficult, laboring, and heavy steps to the 2 400g corridor’s exit, Rune had already done everything he could to push himself further, but his situation was not a puzzle, it couldn’t be resolved by simply thinking about it.

As the gravitylock activated and equalized the gravity by creating intense gravity sources above him, his body which had weighed a bit more than 200 tons overall was quickly reduced back to a comfortable 70 kilograms.

‘I reached 3% gravity adaptation, I spent 3 months conditioning myself, and now I’m 30, I would really believe there’s something if I had reached the 3 300g exit by the time I couldn’t move anymore.’

Satisfying himself with a math coincidence, he allowed the leveling notifications of the last month to show themselves.

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement reached Tier 4 Level 78

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement reached Tier 4 Level 79

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Body Control reached Tier 4 Level 85

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Body Control reached Tier 4 Level 86

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation reached Tier 4 Level 32

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation reached Tier 4 Level 33

*Ding* Cohesion: Specialized Endless Adaptation reached Tier 1 Level 71

…

*Ding* Cohesion: Specialized Endless Adaptation reached Tier 1 Level 98

*Ding* Cohesion: Specialized Threshold Burst Rejection reached Tier 1 Level 37

…

*Ding* Cohesion: Specialized Threshold Burst Rejection reached Tier 1 Level 53

*Ding* Body Control: Provided Humanoid Body reached Tier 4 Level 7

*Ding* Body Control: Provided Humanoid Body reached Tier 4 Level 8

‘Hu… Getting my threshold burst to tier 2 before I reach the linking zone will be a bit hard…’

Thoughts of voluntarily exiting the protection of the gravity corridor to subject himself to a few dozen seconds of extreme gravity passed through his mind before hurling themselves at the hard reality that it was a totally sub-optimal training method.

‘Well, nothing else I can do anymore unless I decide to spend another month walking next to the corridor. But knowing I’ll have to progress for years through the Unending Mountain Dimension, why would I do it? I think I already reached my conditioning goal.’

With a slight mental push, he made a line appear before his eyes.

Gravity Ether Adaptation: 3%

‘This, combined with my half-leveled threshold burst, I don’t think I have to fear tier 5 monsters anymore. If I can’t even escape after 30 seconds of gravity-free speed, then there’s something I did wrong.’

Following his growing gravity adaptation, his threshold burst mode had gained between 8 to 9 seconds of duration, an increase of 50% if it was relativized.

Rune still didn’t know how the cohesion cost of this life-saving mode was calculated, but he was happy nonetheless that it had increased.

His worst fear had been that the very act of owning this capability was already the very best he could ask for, and that even reaching a 10% adaptation rate would have only given him a few more seconds of threshold burst.

Ultimately, the description of the cost had been very clear…

Cohesion: Specialized Threshold Burst Rejection

Specialized Slotted Mastery (Tier 1)

A tertiary specialization created with the single goal of connecting with one’s cohesion on an extremely deep and natural level. The only reason such a connection could have been successfully established was the initial acceptance of the inherent lack of control such a connection naturally comes with.

You can now force your own cohesion to adapt to its environment until it reaches its threshold limit, disregarding every natural limit such an act poses. A lower adaptation rate amplifies the cost of such an act by extreme amounts.

‘Anyway!’

Stretching himself, his body sent him waves of pleasure just short of making him immediately collapse in an improvised energy camping bed.

‘When I wake up, I’ll fetch a shuttle and finally see for myself the gravity waves making the gravity go as high as millions of g.’

Optimistic at what he had accomplished and enthusiastic at what he was about to pursue, he made sure no one could see him and once again decided to not make a trip to the Dream.