In a tiny wooden hut hastily constructed a couple of feet away from the tallest point in the world, I warm myself up from absolute cold and exhaustion. The deep bone deep sensations that I didn’t have a clue were on my path to the peak come to mind as my faculties slowly return.

A hint of pain hits me so I look down at my feet.

Blacked and missing toes stare back at me, but the panic that would have overcome me before the system doesn’t even last the blink of an eye. If I needed to rely just on my natural regen, regrowing the severed parts would take months but I didn't have to take the scenic route with access to my own resource: Life.

Shaking my head, I let the mechanics of my recovery fade away and just soak in the deep and completely unexpected transformation. If this was the price even just for the Aether I got, I would understand it. A lousy title or a few percent of ‘exploration’ progress might be slightly annoying, but it wouldn’t really bother me for more than a minute. Even then anticipation builds in my gut, so I open the system screen:

Exploration, the Highest Peaks: 20%

Exploration, Asia: 9%

Exploration, North America: 0%

Exploration, Wonders of the World: 5%

Title: The highest peak, climb to infinity

You are the first to climb to the top of Everest in a feat that should be impossible. Maximum reward doubled.

+5% to all stats. (x100% x2.00)

+10% to growth skill in your highest leveled one. (x100% x2.00)

+1% to one class special effect (x100% x2.00)

A quick peek at my stat screen shows me that the 5% is doubled afterward. That’s a full ten percent to all my stats. Even with the damage to the system’s Aether constructs I had, this kinda makes up for it for the time being. As I increased in level even if I kept pushing I would eventually be left behind unless I find other avenues, but with just a few more basic titles I would manage to keep up for a little longer. And that growth to my highest level skill could be a game changer.

As I get my bearings back and oxygen reenters my brain, I start to gather information.

I’m surprised when I look at the clock. This little climb took three nights, that is half the reason my toes fell off.

The distance I walked is not that far off from my estimates at some 100 kilometers or fivefold what this path used to be. But what blows my mind is the altitude. The measurements have huge margins of error, but the lowest bound in all my instruments measures 18 kilometers above sea level with the consensus being above 20 kilometers.

That’s supposed to be impossible. Twice as tall as any mountain would ever get on Earth while not crumbling under its own weight with gravity nearly three times as strong. That is in the neighborhood of the height of Mount Olympus which could only reach such heights because of mars much lower gravity.

Even if we actually tried to build a mountain that tall, instead of relying on natural phenomena, the unrelenting pull would have either crumbled the mountain or the molten mantle would simply sink deeper as the rocks and dirt making the ground overcame the buoyance available.

Also, the way that the mountain took every single stat gifted by the system away from me was… strange. There was something there and the fact that I succeeded was completely unplanned to the builder of this wonder, having stats that weren’t tied to the system. I didn’t have a lot, only a little more than what I achieved before the system, but that seemed to have been my only real strength. I had seen a smidge of progress in that front over time, but it was slow and ponderous, which was only complicated by the system’s interference. Help from the friendly neighborhood Titan however helped me push a little beyond what I had been stuck with after integration. Though even he didn’t fully escape the system’s clutches and given that the system was fully aware that his race developed outside of it, it did take that into account when calculating his challenges.

If I had properly prepared I might have had a relatively easy time, but I doubted anyone else even with proper clothing, footwear and physical training could repeat my feat.

I really doubt that he would be any better off climbing this mountain compared to me.

The entire exercise was strange, the fact that stats could be stripped away so easily was concerning, even if it is a highly restricted function, it could probably be abused and I don’t want to be at the mercy of the system.

The information I got, while from a trustworthy source, indicated that something like this should have been impossible. Or maybe I was working on erroneous assumptions. Maybe the mountain didn’t reach within me and turned off the Aether constructs, but just stopped something external from having an effect. After all, I still couldn’t understand how stats actually worked.

Just some five minutes later I look back down at my toes reinvigorated by the increase in my stats, regen and everything else. The constant stream of life started to grow my stubs back. It would take an inordinate amount of Life to finish the process, even more than I had naturally at my pool to fully get my toes in working order but it would be worth it for me. It is a shame I don’t have even rudimentary techniques, only raw and brutal resource usage. Even years after having witnessed the few healers in our instance, I still failed to learn anything. Even brute forcing the issue Life is a wonderful and very effective resource if expensive.

With a longing glance behind me, I walk to the next mountain: Lhotse.

It is the nearest peak and the less known twin brother of Everest. Just some 4 kilometers with most of it downhill on a relatively easy track.

That is the start of my new plan hatched from one of the less likely possibilities I studied in the last few days. I will visit each and every single one of the 14 highest peaks and then go from there.

Even while running and moving around with my feet touching the bare ground, my stats fully protect me and no transformation happens threatening to freeze my limbs again. Though, even if it not quite like Everest, its twin brother does have a very faint sense of Aether tied to it.

Nothing that coalesced and was sculpted like its big brother, but it is there a few hints here and there nonetheless.

Still, instead of gifting my valuable Pure Aether in the hopes that it will grow and potentially return some to me I just save it for when I might make a larger difference.

Soon my toes are fully back, except for the hair follicles and I stop the flow. I grow from my feet a mass of roots to replace my limbs and make my way at a much faster run over to this other peak.

Fifteen minutes after leaving Everest I get a few extra percent on the counter relative to the highest peaks and so I take off in flight to get the few mountains south taken care of before heading back to the North.

Exploration, the highest peaks: 26%

Whatever this would bring, I didn’t want to screw it up. Though the difference in progress from 20 percent for Everest and 6 percent for its little brother Lhotse showed that even while being part of the 14 highest mountains, not all of them were created equal.

I make for the peaks, climbing each of them slowly increasing the percentage of completion and all throughout with access to my stats for the full ascent. Even the longest tracks take less than an hour.

The growth in distance and altitude is milder, though all of them cross 10in height. The process goes smoothly until I come across K2, which used to be the second highest and the one considered by many the harder one to climb compared to Everest.

Reaching out to the Automaton seed in my inner world, I present the question.

“Can you calculate how tall that mountain is?”

With no direct response, the little seed exudes concentration and pictures through the mild link with his mind. Math that I thought was beyond the domain of geniuses and achievable only by machines run for a brief instant. Impressions of thousands of complex calculations double checking and finding statistical significance run through his mind. Work that I would take days to comprehend is done in a fraction of a second.

“15.2 kilometers, plus or minus 3 percent.”

Even before I thank him or ask him how he could calculate it with such precision, his mind is gone and he is working on something else.

What have I done? A seed that was so small and innocent and I expected to move slowly as plants were meant to, now has become a ‘workaholic’ high on adrenaline that doesn't stop for the time of day.

I look without distracting them and I see similarities to high stress environments with a few of the seeds becoming a hybrid between rats on cocaine and hummingbirds. I need to take care of this, but now is not the time to mess with what is working when I am on a time crunch.

Reaching at least some a few kilometers higher than the third tallest mountain, I make my track up it.

The climb is slower, especially on a few tricky spots but nothing is taking my strength and stamina away like Everest. With each step forward my surroundings become more familiar until the faint traces of Aether get to me. A hint of an atmosphere resembling Everest’s one surrounds me in a pale imitation, especially given that it hadn’t grown like the other mountain and it didn’t even reduce my stats.

I wonder at the possibility of another title specifically for climbing it and by the end I’m pleasantly surprised.

K2

+1% to all stats

Mountains are 1% easier to Climb.

The slight formulation doesn’t really detract from the double dipping, in that the counter advances a little bit more.

Exploration, the highest peaks: 93%

Exploration, Asia: 51%

Exploration, North America: 0%

Exploration, Wonders of the world: 19%

And although I would have to stick around a little more, I could likely get the first tier of my Asia title.

But as I stare at the last line in the counter window, I wonder how I would fill it all the way. Just getting to Everest and climbing it had taken me nearly 10 days since waking and with the days long climb that came out of nowhere instead of being a few hours disrupting my plans.

But if it was this hard for me with full access to the inner world and flying capabilities, maybe I could keep going even after people returned.

Sure, I would not have the advantage of allowing other people to get a few more first titles, but if I timed it well, it wouldn’t even be any great timesink and without my help, it wasn’t even something most people could accomplish.

Although I had hints that the Everest title wasn’t only for the first to climb, it should see a sharp decline in the power given that most people would get the first achievement and likely they couldn’t climb to the top.

I try to think of anything to do, to overcome this particular obstacle, but I can’t really move any faster and sending avatars of mine from a distance wouldn't work even if I could fully connect with them at such distances.

As I fly over to the last mountain after K2, to finish the 14 highest peaks list, I stop by a dozen other nearby peaks. With my gigantic inner world shenanigans, I easily connect with avatars a kilometer away. Their feet touching the ground are mostly ignored by the system, but I feel something faint. A buzzing, a hint of attention and anticipation that I would be rewarded if I went over with my physical body.

But even this discovery doesn’t change the fundamental math. Unless my actual feet touched the mountain I wouldn’t get anything.

Even if this particular loophole did exist once upon a time, it had been detected and closed but As I think about it, an idea starts to build in my mind.

Sure, I would never be able to avoid going places altogether and still get the title, but if I could form even a basic connection from far away and feel that same sense of reward, I wouldn’t be quite as limited to mountains as I was now and have my selection of interesting places to visit.

A dozen seeds take off inside small canister flying vehicles.

With plenty of space inside, but a vehicle that resembled a teardrop water bottle, they start taking off for all corners of the world.

A few head for the pyramids, others for canyons and caves.

A hundred different paths exploring from deserts and ice landscapes all the way to the deepest crevice of earth: The MariannaTrench.

That shouldn't kill me with all my vaunted stats, right?

Probably better not to risk going below a few kilometers without protection.