“It couldn’t have gone better… I think?” Muttering to himself about his weird arrival, Rune stood up and didn’t even dust himself as it just wasn’t necessary.

Looking above and around him, he finally sated his curiosity concerning the normal things of this dimension no one seemed to find interesting.

The sky wasn’t pure white ether mist as he had expected, it also wasn’t blue as he could have expected, it was azure. A radiant azure only highlighted by the presence of a pale azure-ish star high in the sky.

Surrounding him was a perfect example of what a primal forest should look like, reminding him exactly of how the forest region looked before the IGS colonized and modernized it.

Searching for ether clouds of different colors, he didn’t find any. Searching for monsters, he didn't find any. Searching for anything out of the ordinary… There was nothing…

‘Slightly anticlimactic, but it’s just the 1st circle, why would anything extraordinary be present?’

Taking a bit of altitude using his momentum still able to counter the 10g gravity easily, Rune started orientating himself. And it was easier than he had planned to do so.

‘Yeah… Unending “Mountain”, isn’t it? Can’t be clearer than that.’

It wasn’t a question of north, south, east, or west, it was just a question of one side making him climb higher and the other side making him descend.

Despite its moniker as a “mountain” dimension, Rune didn’t see any mountain around him and for the thousand kilometers his sight allowed him to see. And the reason for that was simple and anyone could guess it quickly.

The whole dimension was a mountain.

A mountain that could be ascended and with a gravity that kept increasing the higher it was climbed.

‘If I travel a few thousand kilometers up, I should enter the 1st ascension where gravity will start increasing. If I travel down, I’ll enter the true 1st circle where lots of natives can be found.’

Reminding himself of the bits and pieces of intel he had read before he began totally ignoring the new findings to keep the suspense, he didn’t even look behind him before starting to walk in the direction of the 1st ascension.

“Hehehe,” laughing weirdly as he started taking in the sight of a whole new dimension, the feeling of knowing only the outline of what he was doing was thrilling.

‘I don’t know how long the 1st ascension takes, I don’t know what I will encounter, I don’t know how I’ll be received by the natives, I don’t know anything except that I need to climb.’

With no precise goal in mind other than climbing and adventuring, combined with the fact that he was now liberated from every possible technological distraction, as well as the fact that even if he wanted, he could only go back in 1 month… It all amounted to him feeling that the situation was completely unique and new.

A gravity of 10g felt like nothing, and his endless adaptation removing 3% of the warped gravity ether affecting him also felt like nothing.

‘I wonder why there’s a difference between circle and ascension? Is it just due to the increasing gravity in one and the stable gravity in the other? Surely not, right?’

Expecting everything and nothing at the same time, Rune accelerated to his maximum speed while applying a slight momentum push upward to start his passive spiritual training again.

‘The next circle is my next short-term objective anyway, there I’ll try to find an ascender tribe and learn at least the basics concerning everything I’m curious about. I don’t need to think more than that.’

Not dwelling for much longer on his “schedule”, he turned his attention to the first forms of life other than plants that had just entered his perception.

‘And there’s a lot I’m curious about…’

What he saw in his perception was clearly a “squad of monsters”, it could even be qualified as an “army of monsters”, but the “monsters” were half a meter high, looked fluffy, looked like rabbits, and acted like tier 2, possibly tier 1, entities.

They were slow, they weren’t mindlessly fighting, and they didn’t particularly care about him when he approached within 50 meters of them.

‘Obviously domesticated animals… Except they are domesticated animals without supervision.’

Approaching the unique situation scientifically, he flew up for a bit, trying to look around for any other signs of life, notably intelligent signs.

‘This…’

Narrowing his eyes as he looked at a certain small dot area in the distance in the direction of the 1st ascension, the ether mist a thousand kilometers away at this precise dot seemed to be more radiant than the rest.

‘Something like a lighthouse?’

The more Rune focused on that dot, the more it seemed apparent that something was piercing through the ether mist, trying to either guide him somewhere or indicate something he didn’t know about.

‘It’s not like I need to drastically change direction to reach it…’

Making up his mind to reach this light for an unknown reason, he felt that this dot of light indicated something good, something safe.

He had seen proof of domestication just prior to it, so why not believe in more things that seem completely impossible like lighthouses established by a tier 5 dimension’s native civilization to guide people?

Moving on from the fluffy tamed animals, he realized only after he left for a few minutes that he had never seen such pacifist animals since he had entered the Endless.

And then he got a second chance a few more minutes later as another colony of fluffy rabbit-like half a meter tall animals entered his perception again.

Using his physics laws common sense without realizing it, he started approaching slowly to not scare them away, but his worries seemed to have been for nothing as even when he reached with his hand for the relatively massive rabbit-like animal, it didn’t care.

At all.

“You’re not an intelligent native, right?” Infusing intent into his voice to make sure he was understandable, he asked in case such a thing was possible.

Receiving no affirmative or negative answer, he allowed his smile to grow larger and show his inner self as he intensified his petting.

“So that’s what a domesticated dimension feels like… Fluffy. Hehehe,” continuing to pet the large rabbit-like animal while stating his thoughts aloud, he eventually had his fill of fluffiness and got back on the “road” again.

With a weak to absent gravity restraining him, a clear dot of light guiding him, no hostile life to slow him down, and a lot of new sights, Rune swiftly illuminated the ether mist before him.

The more he traveled, the steeper it became, until finally, it became so steep that the dot of light he saw a bit elevated before became aligned with the extension of the ground horizon.

And when it became that steep, another thing made its appearance.

‘The gravity has increased… I think. Meaning I finally entered the 1st ascension. Not that it really matters to me.’

Knowing the 2nd circle was characterized by a stable gravity of 100g and the existence of “ascender tribes” inhabiting it, he didn’t worry about anything and started climbing towards the dot of light piercing through the ether mist.

Until a few hours later where he stumbled upon the first true monster life, 2 of them even. And they were fighting.

Gone were the fluffy rabbit-like creatures, and what replaced them was first a 1-meter tall slick azure panther, and against it a two-third of a meter green-furred… Raptor?

‘Ah~ Finally, high gravity adapted life. Condensed to reduce their mass while remaining as deadly as possible. Now that’s more like what I had in mind when I heard about a gravity warped dimension.’

Observing their fight, he easily deduced they were not even at the lowest tier 3 level of power, so they were logically tier 2 monsters that couldn’t even threaten him if he let them do anything they wanted to him for days.

The deadly cat versus deadly chicken fight finished with the victory of the cat and the subsequent natural order of things that involved the winner “absorbing” the EP contained in their prey through their own means.

As he observed that, Rune was neither phased nor confused, he had seen it so many times that he had become used to it. Only in the bone region did the more animalistic part of absorbing EP from defeated prey cease to exist due to obvious natural reasons.

‘Congratulation little cat, thanks for showing me that this dimension is completely normal.’

With nothing to write on, Rune only verified that nothing out of the extraordinary happened. It has been his plan since he entered and he had no better option but to do it like that.

And until now, nothing had proven to him that this dimension was abnormal. The vegetation was normal if a little mutated due to the increased gravity, the ether mist was normal, the star cycle was normal, or it had been until now… And now the monsters had shown him totally normal behavior.

The fluffy rabbit-like animals and the light dot in the distance were the only exceptions to “normalcy” he had found, and that’s why he wanted to know more about them.

Wanting to finish his analysis of this first monster, he approached it as it was finishing absorbing its EP until he entered within its perception.

‘What are you gonna do? Mindlessly charge at me? Prove to me that in a tier 5 dimension, monsters can be spawned without being tier 5? Or will you…?’

And the answer he got was the one he had expected.

The azure big cat stopped eating instantly and started observing him silently without moving, probably already thinking about the 2 main fighting options of non-spawned life: Fighting or fleeing.

‘Looks like until I ascend enough, I’ll be fighting with cunning monsters born in nests and educated by their parents. Amazing.’

As the panther didn’t present any danger to him and wouldn’t even be a big workout, he passed by it without provoking it, and it also didn’t provoke or attack him.

‘Though I doubt every nest has an education that promotes such half-pacifist behavior…’

Keeping this thought in a corner of his head, he started to find his veteran adventurer and fauna and flora enthusiast bearings again.

The Unending Mountain Dimension didn’t look that different, it just had a tier 5 ether density and was domesticated.

With the first few hours of traveling, Rune had already confirmed his most shallow curiosities, and so, satisfied with the foundational settings he had observed, he started treating this 1st ascension as a free adaptation training period.

After all, what else could traveling through an area designed to help newly born tier 1 and 2 entities be used for at his level?

…

‘That’s a path or I've never seen one in my life.’

After pursuing the dot of light piercing through the ether mist for more than 4 days and becoming more and more used to this 1st ascension part of his travel, Rune ended up stumbling upon something that looked a lot like a compressed dirt path.

If it wasn’t for the absence of people using it, he would have confirmed without a doubt that he had found an official ascending path of the 1st ascension.

‘Whatever, there’s a path and it seems to lead straight towards where I want to go, so why not use it?’

Piercing through the dense primal forest he had been demolishing for more than a few hundred thousand kilometers now, he landed on the path unscathed in a light manner.

Even after traveling those few hundred thousand kilometers, probably a bit more than 300 000 kilometers if he considered all his slowing down and scenery admiration breaks, the gravity had only increased by a few g.

The absence of precise measurement tools made it so that he could only judge the increase with his feeling, so it wasn’t very precise.

‘I shouldn’t be far from the origin of the light dot by now… Only a few more hours or days? It’s so much brighter now compared to before.’

Looking towards the single cleared part of the forest he could see looking forward, the dot of light was brighter than ever, making him excited at finally figuring out what that was about.

And following his approximative feeling and a few more hours of following the path at a speed of a kilometer per second, the primal forest environment subtly started changing.

Where before it had been dense, it became less dense. Where before the trees had reached high, now they reached lower. Where before the path had been wide, it became wider.

All sorts of signs pointing towards the most logical conclusion of arriving upon something showed themselves.

Then, out of the ether mist a thousand kilometers away, the outline of a mountain with its peak being the origin of the light began distinguishing itself in Rune’s eyes.

It wasn’t that high compared to what anyone would expect from a tier 5 dimension, being only a few kilometers tall, but what surrounded it was the most interesting part.

There was nothing, there was movement.

As he approached closer and closer, he confirmed his hazy observations more and more.

The forest around the light mountain had been completely cleared, so there was nothing around it, and obvious swarming life was all over the mountain, so there was movement.

A few more minutes passed before he saw for the first time civilized life entering his perception.

And, from any point of view, taken under any angle, under any conditions imaginable…

‘Short, check. Humanoid, check. Looks like a strawweight, check. Wearing clothes, check. Congratulations to me, I just found my first Unending Mountain Dimension native.’

Having already prepared himself mentally for this inevitable encounter, all the differences in appearance and culture didn’t scare him. They weren’t a savage civilization with no knowledge of anything, they were just a different civilization that evolved following the most optimized path available to them.

And this most optimized path was the one where the Ether Law defined their life.

‘If there had been no need for food or water, no need to create tools to resist the wilderness, no need to control oneself because dying or killing is so hard, no need to transform one’s environment to be comfortable and free of diseases…’

Thinking about the hundreds of reasons that explained why this civilization had the lowest imaginable level of complex technology, at least in the 1st circle from what he had read, Rune didn’t look down on them.

‘Anyway, you’re the first native I saw, but you’ll not be my first conversation partner. Would I like someone starting to talk to me out of the wild, asking questions about my civilization as a whole? Yeah, exactly. I’m not a subtle guy.’

Bypassing the lone traveling native, Rune continued following the path.

As he imminently neared the light mountain, more and more natives started appearing around it. All traces of the forest had been removed, replaced by stone buildings occupied by people, all talking in a strange language he couldn’t understand.

Covering himself in cosmic mist, he slowed down and started observing this small town he had stumbled upon, asking himself where to start his investigation.

‘It’s still a tier 2 area all things considered, so while the chance of a passerby having not learned to use intent to speak is low, why take the chance? Better just go where I know for sure higher tier people will be.’

Lamenting the fact that he had no definitive way to confirm someone’s tier purely by observation, he made his way to the base of the mountain, and as nothing was blocking his way, he started climbing it.

Seeking someone who checked all the criteria he had arbitrarily established, he ended up finding one 10 minutes of slow search later.

His target was standing in the middle of an empty courtyard, looking like he was in his senescence stage with gray hair and a long beard, having quality time soaking in the sun seated on an energy chair, accompanied by one of those fluffy rabbit-like ether animals.

He was also drinking something out of a stone mug, had a weird familiar metallic ball attached to a belt next to him, and there was no one in the house that was linked to the courtyard.

‘Perfect.’

Approaching the symbolic-only fence separating the courtyard from a street, he lifted his cosmic mist cover and infused intent into his voice before saying, “Hello, do you know how to speak using intent?”

The target didn’t answer directly or even look at him, but Rune was ready to wait it out and let time show that he wasn’t in a hurry. If he was on the other side, it was how he wanted someone to “accost” him.

“Yes,” the short old-looking native answered after half a minute, “Who might you be? And what do you want? Can’t you see I’m better left alone?”

“I’m sorry for interrupting your quality time, but I’m wondering if someone on this mountain is specialized in helping lost people? The short version is that I’m lost and don’t speak the local language,” summarizing and omitting the sensitive parts, Rune adopted a laid-back tone as he described his situation.

Muttering to himself in the native language for a bit, the old native ultimately replied in the best way possible, “There are such people, but let’s not bother them, right? Why not accompany me for a bit? Only disobedient children learn to speak using intent, so finding one will be a bother for you.”

“Thank you,” smiling to show his appreciation, he remained polite all the way, “Can I enter your courtyard then? Or do you have another destination in mind?”

“Ah~ Aren’t you a polite youngun? A bit too tall and heavy for my taste, but for someone who seems to know nothing, what can I ask more of you? Yes, please, enter my humble courtyard,” the old native suddenly changed and acted a lot more enthusiastic and happy.

‘To think my first conversation with a native would be in such a way? I’m only missing some background music before believing to still be in the IGS.’

Jumping over the fence smoothly, he approached the stone table and created himself a comfy rustic chair before taking the lead, as he should as the guest, “Do I look strange?”

“For sure you are, your parents should be giants to engender someone like you. Or maybe they’re normal people but life decided otherwise for you,” he didn’t hesitate one bit before answering that he, in fact, looked strange.

“Can you tell me more about where I am in the 1st ascension? I am in the 1st ascension, right?” Starting from the beginning, Rune didn’t want to leave anything unturned.

“You currently are at the Grioss mountain sanctuary beacon, in the 1st ascension of course, where else would you find such a stupidly low gravity other than near the 1st circle?” The old native grumbled a bit at the stupid question, but he still answered it.

‘Mountain sanctuary beacon…’

Getting what he wanted so quickly and easily made Rune’s smile brighter, and the fact that the person he had found was so easygoing brightened it even more.

‘Is that how a master speaker feels? Getting what he wants without even trying? Am I a natural speaker? Why did I never realize that before?”