After just over 5 days flying from my last mounting in Alaska, I set down at Everest’s Base camp. A much longer trip than the other short legs and it didn’t even reach reached 4 kilometers per second with the ever more stringent restrictions on my flight speed. I touch down on the real start of the climb to the summit.

Getting in contact with the cold and rocky soil threatens to freeze my toes off, but I effortlessly rely on my high stats to shrug it off.

With a breath in, I can’t ignore something in the air but I can’t quite figure out what it is. Then my musings are interrupted.

“Nash.”

Pando’s network seemed to have managed to get nearby in quite inhospitable conditions. With a quick glance at the comm amulet, though even that wasn’t strictly needed, I see who is calling me: someone I left behind with Pando.

Even though they weren’t strictly restricted to inside my Inner World, they needed to hide inside the faux Inner World pocket tied to Pando. one of the few additions saw fit to add before flying off as fast as I could

“I’m here.”

“We can see…. never mind. I have some important news.”

“What?”

“The system is acting up again and it has started to grow a village in the middle of the houses in Pando. I mean if you take all the former houses of the people near Pando plot their coordinates and give them weighted averages, the result is smack dab in the center of the little village that is growing. The process is really interesting. We are even learning a few new runes. Also, it’s hard to tell more precisely with our limited interfacing capabilities with the seeds and Pando at distance but the same seems happening all over Earth. Villages and cities are replacing what we used to have before integration.”

“Interesting. Still, if the system does a good job, it’s one less thing to worry about building ourselves. Now we can focus more fully on the defenses, food and a hundred other things.”

A squeakier voice originating from someone I’m not familiar with explains.

“Yeah, but you haven’t considered what that probably means. We think people will be returned from where they left from or to the village/city they ‘belong’ to… unless they are you of course messing the void and stuff.”

I just grin at that, which is wasted on a voice call and wait for her to continue.

“I mean, even Merlin would simply go fully asleep as soon as his resources run out in the void if he manages to remain awake.”

I considered that for a few moments, knowing that I should have seen the obvious, but worse yet, something obvious that we should do something about still escapes me.

Too much has happened and my mind wasn’t on it.

“If we screw this up, there will be a lot of people without protection. Even my book only gave a hint or two about how this will unfold.”

“Well, at least we have the network.”

“We do have the network. It won’t be perfect and we don’t know where the system will dump people, but with Pando reaching everywhere, we can concentrate on the villages and common tourist sites from all around the world.”

“That is the best we came with as well.” The first guy continues.

“Just polish up the plan and start implementing it. I will be on my way up if there isn’t anything else.”

They turn off my part of the connection but keep with the other people in the inner world. It won’t last long. But I will give them a few minutes.

With a deep breath in, the biting cold that stood a hair’s breadth away invades my lungs. A chilling wind trying to pierce my monstrous stats, but I would have to bathe in liquid nitrogen before I would be in any real danger.

Stretching my limbs my mind slowly settles as the question of what is happening around me tries to distract me with its screams.

I take a single step forward feeling that this moment isn’t like my other climbs. There is a hint of Aether in the air.

In ways, it’s masked by the very loose Aether on all of Earth, but this is tied to a single place with a single purpose in a very intentional way.

I take a second step forward and another breath.

The first steps on the tallest mountain.

I look at the top with eyes that pierce the sky and instead of 8 kilometers in a straight line, I feel the distance stretching, but the summit isn’t at a shallower angle.

It is still the same overall shape and from some 3 to five times the distance it still resembles the same old Everest, but a closer look reveals its greater height.

I take out my staff and twirl it with my fingers. The 5 and a half foot length of steel and wood whistles in the air blurring as I turn it faster than a professional pen spinner.

I explode in a run pulling on hints of my enormous Life reservoir that Pando helped to expand while I was asleep. He didn’t manage to discover much about the resource itself, but he kept gathering more and more while growing hundreds of containers for it and even my other resources, though I already had other options for both of them.

Sparking my Qi with hints of Life, roots explode from my feet while the air almost parts in my way and I reach nearly 100 kilometers an hour without plummeting my Stamina or rather Vigor pool.

The uneven terrain is a simple detail in my sprint that approaches a glide over the ground. Rocks give way to snow and eventually ice as the trek climbs ever upward.

Each of my steps accumulates the barest thread of Aether to me, but it is different from the clingy and dirty system’s Aether. But it also wasn’t the neutral reaction of pure Aether or the manic state reminiscent of drinking the “Koolaid” while snorting mushroom powder and suddenly becoming the next messiah.

I shiver at the thought of feeling like the one that speaks only absolute truth, the embodied word of god. It clings to my skin slowly perfusing me, but nothing to fear comes like most of my previous experiences while overusing Aether.

No… this is pure refined Aether with a hint of nature. This is true attuned Aether, though it isn’t attuned to me.

This is Everest’s Aether.

It is amazing to witness true and unbridled nature. I’m not repulsed even as I feel the effects of the system’s touch, that of a master craftsman, unleashing a statue from the confines of a block of stone. A living thing that doesn't come from corruption forced into it, but from the touches of a horde of master craftsmen that brought the system into reality. A visionary creation that had gone awry.

But this is not something the system screwed up. It simply propped up this Aether ‘Icon’ and allowed it to become MORE. It became our hopes and dreams, an ever growing and more powerful place to pursue the human meaning of climbing. Of growing and becoming better than you were even a single step before.

The infinite climb.

The joy in the climb.

Reaching the summit becomes almost secondary.

If Everest grew like this, what would Pando have become if it had been given the same opportunity?

I feel the empty and blank Aether hidden in my soul. The purest I ever encountered and I couldn’t even detect a hint of myself in and I let it flow out into the ground as I take each step.

I gift it freely.

In my mind, I stop cursing the system.

It’s not its fault. Not for everything.

The fault lies with the people and however minutely, me, in my limited power and reach. Even I contributed an iota to the current state of things.

Though the council sits squaredly at the top of the ‘blame’ list in this particular case.

The system is a tool and it is a tool that can magnify such beauty. But also came with limitations that I had to somehow shed.

Flakes of the Aether I send out are returned to me.

What returns to me is so much more because of it.

Hints of what they could be meld with my own understanding of the moment and a seed of Aether starts to grow in my soul.

Flakes of my being, being shed for centuries and growing thick in my soul, even if I didn’t consciously act meld with the Everest Aether to become more.

I had used the very last hint of the true atunned Aether that I had to stay awake for a few more seconds after running out of Vigor and now…. Even if it is not quite at the same level, I have Everest flavored attuned Aether. Even if I only used it like before, this is highly compatible with me and shouldn’t take me down the road to hell.

I slowly imbue more Life on the roots that complement my staff and they become things of beauty and flexibility. Reaching and finding every single crevice to allow me to climb the many faces of sheer rock and ice.

Every moment the staff in my hand morphs from a tool of war into what all that it needs to be right now.

Spikes drive into the ice, then tendrils shoot out like spider webs meters away and even grow the tips of my staff so that I can wedge it between obstacles.

Impossible maneuvers, fueled by a magically morphing staff with my insanely high physical capabilities. My mind turns to how high I could probably jump from solid ground and I know that I could do 10 meters tall without breaking a sweat. Hell, I could probably do half of that with just my arms.

Each meter upward, I learn what is more efficient. The ways to use up less stamina and move faster.

Slowly my stamina starts to dwindle as the air supply thins out and instead of asking for a few thousand points of Vigor from Aspen like usual, I chose to ride it out.

It probably wouldn’t have any tangible effect on the system reward in more concrete terms, but that amazing feeling permeating me in a careful balance was more fleeting than a butterfly that landed on my nose and I didn't want to send it fluttering away.

The sun goes down and up, but I barely notice the passage of time so engrossed I’m in reaching the peak. The climb seems infinite and something transcendental about that concept, but I know that there is an end.

Each time I look at the peak it seems closer, but when it looked to be a kilometer away, I climb one kilometer and it looks to be 900 meters away still. Then I climb those 900 meters and it feels that it is still over 800 meters away.

With each step forward I grow closer to my former before the system. My bare feet are on the ground and frostbite sets in. Each step strips away my stats by something I can’t comprehend but I just keep climbing and letting my body follow my goal.

My blood flow contracts, as oxygen is so rarified that I need to take ten breaths to get half lungful, but the physics don’t need to make sense right now in this new world.

I live and I climb. I climb like Edmund Hillary for the first time reaching beyond the human norm. Him in the physical realm and me with all my advantages stripped away until I’m barely a kitten taking that last step.

Then I take it again and again, not letting anything distract me. Frostbite fully sets in and my toes blacken. Less and less blood heads to my legs and I keep advancing on a treadmill forever a step away, but I will keep going until the treads fall off and the mechanisms locks in place to allow me to touch the actual summit.

Everything tells me that I’m never going to make it, Even my vision plays games and illusions, but one thing the system couldn’t fully strip out of me was my perception and I can feel the progress.

Ten thousand slow ponderous steps for an eighth of an inch, but it is progress nonetheless.

Slower and slower, driving myself to the literal bone as flesh can no longer hold together I advance and when I’m half a step away, I just lean my entire body forward stretching my hand to the limit and put my hand on the peak.

I arrived.

I ARRIVED.

“I ARRIIIIIIIIIVED.”