Stepping inside the shuttle that stopped at the 2 400g exit stop, Rune quickly found a seat in a corner unoccupied by all the people already there.

A few minutes later, the shuttle departed again. Its next stop would be the 2 500g exit stop.

‘I wonder how much time it would have taken me to travel all the way without taking a shuttle… A few years if I optimize the whole thing with an adaptation purge stop in the middle? But then again, if that’s what would be needed, then I better just go to the erosion anomaly to…’

Lost in thoughts at the endless possibilities that could have come to be if the IGS hadn’t done one thing, or if one of his random whims had erased his need to visit by himself this dimension at the core of the gravity anomaly, Rune observed the blurry external world his perception reflected.

Same as usual, the shuttle equipped with a momentum engine and a full 100 crew moved too fast for him to make anything outside of the shuttle itself, so he used the occasion to prepare himself mentally for what would happen very soon.

Of course, his melancholic mood ceased to be when he started emptying his personal pocket dimension.

Binge eating all his snacks and drinks, he didn’t hold back anything and even started complimenting them by rewatching all sorts of entertainment he had saved up due to his sensibilities finding them either too funny or too amazing to forget them.

From low-budget random jokes, entertainers' best-ofs, IRL amazing situations, variety shows… He had never been a picky eater and all the entertainment he had watched had always been due to one of his numerous whims.

“Hohoho! Hahaha!” Twisting in his own seat at yet another variety show precise segment that hit exactly his sense of humor, Rune let himself go.

Thanks to his cosmic mist hiding him and not allowing his bursts of laughter to be heard by others, even his shyness was fully satisfied and he felt at home.

With every shuttle stop lasting 5 minutes and the travel time between each stop also lasting 5 minutes by including the acceleration and deceleration periods, he knew that he had 750 minutes of time to fill, that was a whole 12 hours and a half, more than half a day!

Immersed in his own world at the same level of focus and intensity as he was used to, he didn’t take notice when someone who just entered the shuttle stopped next to his seat and looked at him weirdly, blinking his eyes repeatedly trying to understand what was happening.

He wondered to himself why no one was reacting to this guy laughing uproariously, so he went to ask another passenger sitting not far, “Can’t you see this guy?”

He pointed straight at Rune who was drinking a cup of weird scarlet neon liquid after his laughter stopped.

Having the same reaction he had just a moment before when he saw Rune, the guy completely didn’t understand the question and shook his head, “Probably someone hiding himself, the light above the seat is turned off so I only know it's occupied.”

Realizing he was the only one even caring about the strange situation, he ultimately became aware after a few more minutes of thinking that his all-in perception path was the reason that allowed him to see this guy.

“Sigh… I’m so stupid sometime…” Muttering to himself at the obvious realization, he found a seat for himself and ignored this guy living in his own world, seemingly not even aware that he had been seen by someone.

As for the person concerned, he gulped his whole energy-infused fruity juice cup and moved on to yet another video he didn’t remember ever watching: A try not to laugh format.

With no time indicator to tell him when he would arrive or how long had already passed, he had long stopped caring about when he would reach his destination.

And so the shuttle continued on its journey towards the linking zone of the Unending Mountain DImension…

…

10 000g. That was the stabilized gravity at the core of the gravity anomaly.

At 10 000g, anyone without ways to protect himself or cope with the gravity would see his very body start collapsing as it tried to defend itself against a natural force.

No matter how powerful an armor layer could be, it wouldn’t stop the gravity from passing through it and start affecting the body itself, as if the armor layer didn’t exist to begin with.

From there, not only would you be completely immobilized, but a relatively quick trip towards death would also start.

First, the cohesion making up your health would attempt to resist this intruder that was trying to “kill” its owner by crushing it against the ground, only to ultimately lose and end up earning its entity solely a few more minutes to find a way to… Do something.

Following your cohesion, it would be your health’s turn to be subjected to the emotionless full influence of the tyrannical gravity that didn’t care about how long you could survive or who you were.

Your entire being would try to defend itself, but 10 000g was a gravity intensity that couldn’t be ignored just due to the existence of a concept such as health.

It too would eventually start being used as fuel to maintain your life.

Except this time, the enemy was not some sort of monster chasing you or an environmental event you could flee from, it was a natural force that was specialized in restricting anything, even energy.

And so your body would slowly and inevitably… Collapse.

‘Of course there wouldn’t be any gore description… What was I hoping for? A video which clearly shows a material imitating tier 4 flesh being destroyed by gravity?’

Closing the article he had been reading due to his momentary curiosity on the subject, Rune walked away from the ultra fortified boundary of the Unending Mountain Dimension’s outpost base.

Patrollers were present everywhere below the gigantic dome surrounding a 10 square kilometers spire encompassing the whole linking zone from which deadly gravity waves originated.

As he walked away, his perception started telling him that the gigantic artificial black holes present everywhere above him were growing at a furious pace.

‘Again? It’s really hourly damn…’

The next moment, his whole body started feeling wobbly and fuzzy. His armor started being colored in white flashed white despite not feeling any increase in gravity, and his eyes saw a visible air deformation rushing towards him.

Stopping moving, he waited until the gravity wave passed him by to start moving towards the linking zone again.

Knowing he was in the middle of a safety bubble that was the only thing protecting him from an environment that would certainly kill him didn’t terrify Rune as much as it should have.

He had long known what he was embarking on: His destination was a tier 5 dimension, with its linking zone being in a zone with tier 5 ether density, with tier 5 monsters present at the outer edge, and gravity waves causing minutes-long increases of gravity to millions of g happened hourly there.

All these facts that should have been deadly to any tier 4 entity such as him had been tamed by using numbers and technology. Or, in other words, he had nothing to do with anything that was protecting him.

‘Is a million g enough for my cohesion to reach its natural threshold? If I’m set at 3%, then it would need to adapt to… 30 000g. Woah. If 2 000 cohesion can only neutralize 500g and if it's linear, then mine should only be able to neutralize 2 500g… Is it really a tier 5 dimension?’

Asking himself a useless question he couldn’t have an answer for, he slowly walked towards the center of the outpost until he reached a gate. One manned not by technology this time but by true people.

The line before this gate was very short, so when he joined it, he ended up before the guy in charge after only a few minutes, and received the ultimate question, “Reason for entry?”

“Entering the Unending Mountain Dimension,” Rune answered concisely.

“Confirm your identity please,” the guy before him explicitly indicated a transparent machine where he needed to put his hand into.

Wordlessly, Rune put his right hand into the machine and withdrew his armor at the same time, allowing the machine to take a bit of blood and identify his handprints without problems.

The gate guy looked at a screen that clearly displayed Rune’s identity as a gold adventurer with no criminal record, educated traditionally in the IGS, and having already done an IGS Xeno contact course.

That was all he needed it seemed as the gate opened a moment later, the guy a bit more respectful than before when he talked, “Thank you for your patience.”

“Thank you too,” Rune summarily replied, taking no heed to the slight respectful undertone, while nodding expressionlessly before passing the last obstacle separating him from the truest first step of his new adventure.

‘I still love technology!’

His inner feeling of relief at being so clearly known remained hidden as he browsed through the local network to know the correct process before being allowed to enter the linking zone itself.

‘Well, well… I just need to enter free from anything, right?’

Summarizing the process to its simplest, he started walking leisurely towards the place that was used to drop off everything you had before entering the Unending Mountain Dimension.

Same as all the other gates prior to the one he had just passed through, the process was completely automated and after enjoying a few more minutes of music and snacks, he separated himself from what he had become used to living with.

Untying his belt, he dropped it off into his assigned bow accompanied by the tied metallic ball pocket dimension. After it, he used fine energy manipulation to take off his connected lenses without problems.

‘That’s it. Now no one can contact me no matter how much they want to.’

Confirming his deposit, he confirmed his identity again before the box was closed and sent away to an underground stock area.

Not slowing down his steps, he followed a neon line until he arrived at a big hall with a gigantic timer being displayed. The timer was showing very directly the time that had passed since the last gravity wave.

‘And now I only need to wait until the next gravity wave happens.’

For security reasons, only during the first 20 minutes following a gravity wave would people be allowed into the linking zone. During the rest of the time, a special gravity sending everyone inside to the side would be turned on.

‘Better safe than sorry, I completely agree on that.’

A million g was completely different from 10 000g, so different in fact, that while one allowed for slight odds at survival, the other did not.

The big hall was made up of lots of seats, but the number of people inside couldn’t come close to filling it entirely. In total, Rune counted only 73, excluding himself, that seemed ready to enter.

Knowing that these people were in the same situation as him, meaning not tier 5, didn’t comfort or stress him. Those people had nothing to do with him, he didn’t know them, nor their motivations.

Better than starting comparing himself to those people, he began an introspection on what this adventure he was soon going to begin meant for him.

(Travelers - Outer Wilds OST - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z34enKCqRGk - Listen to the whole OST, it's that amazing. Also, watch a summary of the lore of this game <3)

‘In the end, I’m just too weak to start my grand adventure dream. Tier 5? It’s still one tier below the most common ether density of the Endless.’

With no music to occupy himself, not even anything to drink or eat, he could do nothing else but wait and think.

‘This dimension is just perfect. Remnants of a more advanced civilization? Lots of things to discover and learn? Warped gravity law? It’s as if it was made for me.’

Pictures of himself traveling to places subjected to a higher and higher gravity, bringing news to the natives that their dimension wasn’t locked anymore passed through his mind as he thought of what he would do very soon.

‘And by the time I come back, so many things will have changed. My home dimension will probably have become a fully-fledged tier 1 dimension, mom, dad, and my two little sisters will have probably migrated, a new ether season will have started, and lots of people I know will have forgotten me… Is that bad though? I’ll have changed too after all.’

Projecting himself in the future, he didn’t see himself as being fundamentally different from who he was now.

‘Maybe I’m a bit presumptuous but… This adventure is potentially the last one before I start my journey towards the Maze, that’s undeniable.’

Finding no hopeless future, the existence of the unsolvable disaster called Heaven’s Rift passed through his mind for an instant before vanishing, covered up by the fact that he didn’t need something like that to die, far from it even.

Interrupting him from his inner musing were the artificial black holes powering up in an instant, followed by an invisible wave passing through his body and the timer resetting.

At that moment, everyone inside the hall stood up, Rune included, as they made their way towards a big gate shining green light due to it now being open.

Like a religious procession, everyone silently passed through the gate, ultimately entering inside a massive spire that hosted their objective: A linking zone.

*Ding*

Accompanied by a single notification sound he had set up so long ago he couldn’t remember when he had set it up, he wordlessly and thoughtlessly opened his dimensions windows.

Dimensions

Unending Mountain

‘Hello, you.’

He willed the detailed window of this new dimension to open.

Dimensions

Unending Mountain

Tier 5 Dimension

Fully Stable. Dimensional Anomalies Impossible.

No restrictions on ether.

The Unending Mountain is a dimension that had its own law warped by natural aging. However, while this warping has only affected a single property amongst billions of others, the entire dimension ended up changing to accommodate this single warped gravity law to the extreme, eventually going as far as pushing the boundaries of tier 6’s law warping.

Enter?

Looking above at the open-sky spire, Rune found himself confronted with this choice he was the sole person able to accept or refuse.

‘I can’t think of any last cool punchline… Something about great people and their unpredictable journey to greatness? Penguin no, I’m not like that! Yes!’

The moment he agreed.

He vanished.

…

At the same time that Rune entered the Unending Mountain Dimension, at the border of the core area of the city of Tolevia in the bone region…

An entire regiment of patrollers supported by a bit more than a thousand prospects covering all sorts of builds and specializations reached a place from where the most competent tier 4 scouts were able to see the kilometer-high titanic bone golem.

This group wasn’t part of the front line that was still thousands of kilometers behind, they were a stand-alone force dispatched to gather data on the actual situation of Tolevia’s core.

Everyone part of this force had relatively superior capabilities. Even if the titanic bone golems were tier 5 and had beyond capabilities, they all believed they would be able to escape without suffering any losses.

And it was what started to take place when the force intruded into Tolevia’s core.

A titanic bone golem surrounded by a kilometers-wide dome of energy of unknown use rushed towards them. How it had detected them? This question was never asked as a bombardment of light-element beams stopped them from asking this question.

No one died from this bombardment, fortunately, but this bombardment never seemed to have an end and kept on continuing until the force was forced to turn back.

Deploying large massive crystal-type walls to protect themselves, the slow retreat started.

However, as they were inherently slow considering their size, the disco-ball of death bone golem quickly caught up with them, exiting Tolevia’s core on the same occasion.

It had clearly started chasing them.

Inevitably, the scouting force had no choice but to engage with the thing, but things didn’t happen as they would have liked as the moment they entered inside the weird energy dome, all their defense started melting like snow exposed to summer’s sun.

And as if it hadn’t been enough, after 10 minutes of intense exchange where the force just started organizing their retreat again, the most violent hail they had ever seen started at the same time that the scouts reported that a second titanic bone golem was approaching.

Faced with all those most anomalous events that everyone already suspected could only originate from monsters with beyond capabilities, the disco-ball of death finally seemed to have had enough and the first loss started to appear.

Its energy domain turned light domain blinded the perception of everyone and patrollers and prospects alike started urgently retreating… Only to be caught up by the newly arrived hail bone golem.

As it approached, the crazy hail weather started affecting everything, slowing and restricting their movement, allowing the hail bone golem to catch up even faster.

With no more choice and no miracle plans to escape this otherwise unpredictable and chaotic situation, the final order was sent.

“Full retreat!” A single order was propagated through the blinding domain, announcing that the situation had deteriorated too much for any other order to be given.

…

At the same time that Rune entered the Unending Mountain Dimension and Tolevia’s core started showing its might, in the beyond horizon strike monster anomaly…

Nelo Sirle, the most stubborn member of the Undecided adventurer’s group, was preparing himself for yet another deadly horizon exchange with unknown monsters.

This time though, his plan of continuing to bombard those monsters until either they died or he was completely spent was interrupted by a small group of life penetrating his extremely dilated perception.