I look down on the clouds after flying nearly 25 thousand kilometers. Even a few kilometers away from both the ground and that place, I start to feel the restrictions. Our high altitude scouting efforts could barely feel that, but 5 kilometers were not 50. This place pushing back Pando wasn’t occupied as far as I knew and we had kept a close watch to avoid any surprises, but nobody managed to get a close look at it. The flavor I get from this space is different. The way it reacts to our expansion is closer to what I found on Everest, even if there is none of that old significance is present.

This seems a new creation by the system on a spot that might as well be random. I retract the air brakes after bleeding off most of my speed. A pulse of mana to the propulsion rune matrix nearly stops me in the air and a couple of seconds later, the craft slides inside the inner world as I drop to the ground and roll.

I start a light jog in a continuous movement on the short dry grass just before the edge of this forest.

A forest that is vehemently fighting Pando. It would be more appropriate to say that the system or something like it was more directly interfering with his expansion efforts.

I keep pace for another few minutes, but with decent ground ahead and no end in sight, I choose a pace that is still comfortable, but much faster. The ground is nearly giving way under my foot, much fluffier than in the instance and it comes without whatever magical protection we grew used to. But I’m barely hampered, as I’m not changing direction wildly, nor am I using more than a fraction of my power. I simply let the wind carry me.

Dozens of new plants enter my inner world being absorbed and studied by a myriad of my seeds, but besides that nothing else shows any promise.

So I keep going, with absolutely no idea of what to expect. Monsters, dungeons, maybe even a hidden place where the inner workings of the system were exposed for all to see, but probably something a lot less exciting.

Absolutely anything could happen and all I can do is keep going.

My surroundings are alien to me, the soil has the same characteristics I expected on Earth and the trees mostly conform to my expectations, but most of the smaller growths are alien. The system brought them from elsewhere.

That doesn’t just apply to the few plants with magical properties, which would be reasonable, nor are they just like on the rest of the planet with small changes to make local growth acquire magical characteristics. As my mind tries to make sense of my surroundings, I can see the hand of the system in everything. It pretty much copied and pasted wide swathes from another planet while adding a few local trees to blend in or something. There is a small chance that is was physically transported from another planet but more likely it just took a blueprint from its archives and recreated it here with minimal consideration for blending into the local environment.

My heart thumps disproportionally strong to my running pace, given all my stats, but there is nothing to it but to continue and hope that I come across whatever there is to be discovered under here. The longest extension of my perception field, now sitting nearly a kilometer and a half away, spins wildly in search of whatever is out of place.

The Faint echoes of Aether reverberate with a field of mana amplifying my own emotions. It is a subtle thing, like the wind battering against a bridge, but if it hits at just the right frequency each time, it slowly adds a little momentum until the structure shows itself too weak and it collapses.

“That is why the few scouts that had passed nearby didn’t dare to go more than a mile or two.”

Without a lot of control, perception and willpower this might have made even me turn around eventually and I’m only 2 kilometers past the boundary. But I noticed it, and I can deal with it.

A few minutes later in my straight line run one of the intertwined tendrils connecting me to civilization is severed. Although I can bridge the gap, anything more than text messages through my comm runes would be expensive in terms of mana. And if I needed to recharge my equipment or use it for a fight like most scouts had learned to do, I would be forced to regrow it.

Instantly my attention is on the spot that was attacked. My remote perception field instantly springs to life in a manner that I didn’t know I could do, always having to mentally travel through the roots before watching anything. It is only a difference of a fraction of a second nearby like this, but it still surprises me.

A creature ambles right beside the severed root, a small animal that almost seemed to have a type of camouflage on it with a basic perception filter. But instead of letting the effect invade my mind, of letting the desire to ignore this creature fade from my mind, I consciously pay attention to it breaking the effect’s grasp on my mind.

An animal that outwardly resembles a chimpanzee scuttles away, even as the cut roots feebly try to advance. This is different from how the system stopped Pando’s advances before, but it has some similarities. Mainly that after the tendrils were cut, the roots became nearly inert.

On the outer edges, as soon as the roots abandon their advance, full control returns, but deeper layers change those rules. That is the main reason that Pando failed to advance beyond this outer boundary.

I send a mental picture of the monkey to the automaton seed, with a few artistic liberties and guess given that I can’t visually see it. He instantly knows what I want, and so he sends it out to the network. Then my attention goes back as the main tendril is severed, this one much thicker than the first, but that doesn’t impede monkeys with their sharp claws. Sharper than an obsidian scalpel.

Then the third and last physical connection to the outside world is severed by another chimp. I have other tricks, such as the comm runes embedded along the roots that can overcome small obstacles like this, but it is still a limitation and another cut along the line would make any contact rely on the small mana batteries from each comm rune.

Even now, I need to power this half of the tendril from my internal mana stores and though that isn’t a problem for me, I’m not the only one on Earth that is going to enter this place. No one else had an inner world of the size and with as many years of growth and refinement on the part of its inhabitants as I did. For all intents and purposes, on a personal level, I have an unlimited supply of mana.

I keep pace even increasing it slightly until the chimps take exception to my invasion and come out of the woodworks to surround me.

They are hesitant at first, afraid of the giant predator entering their territory. Even their heaviest combatant is no match for me physically, with the heaviest one failing to reach ten kilograms.

Out of curiosity, I don’t just see their rough stats with my perception field, but I put my guesses to the test and analyze them.

Wartat Chimp. Level 31.

Wartat Chimp. Level 22.

Wartat Chimp. Level 27.

Wartat Chimp. Level 20.

…

“Yeah, half of my guesses were spot on. I’m making progress.”

Then their numbers swell past the hundreds and finally reach a thousand letting their confidence reach an all-time high.

They attack in mass. A mad scramble as they all sprint at me. My defenses slow them down.

The mana shields all around me are multi-layered, with different configurations and engravings made on silver and gold. They help me hold them back. I don’t even give a token effort to hide my inner world. That might prove to be a mistake if there is some kind of mastermind watching me from afar, but I just ignore the chance.

In the middle of the forest, hundreds of chimps slap against my defenses, like moths on a salt windshield. Sure it protects me just fine and each collision only bleeds a minute amount of my protection. If I wanted I could basically sit still and have a nice relaxing lunch. But however little, they still eat into my defenses slowly melting away my ‘windshield’.

I almost laugh at the days they would take to break through at this pace, but then one of them gets his claws into the shield and gauges a chunk out. Not deep enough that I have to immediately worry, but the hundreds of points of mana for upkeep that holding their tiny fists demanded swells to thousands and then tens of thousands of points. Their claws are sheathed in a strange grey energy that resembles what the HLZ beasts wielded. I grow thorny branches on the other side of the shield which stops most of their attacks from directly hitting my shield for a fraction of the mana cost, but that is not a long term solution.

Anyone else, even if they came in a large group would have trouble dealing with these little creatures, assuming that our levels were the low threshold expected of new system integrants. Our advantages would be simply body weight and equipment, but those claws could probably rend even solid steel plate armor. I pull sheets and blocks of several materials from my inner world and let them loose in it, even as my mind explores strategies to mitigate their damage.

With the feedback that the perception field gave me, I accurately measure the damage potential of their claws. And I even get a better understanding of that strange grayish energy that rends apart shields like they are slicing cheese. The youngest and lowest level could get through mild steel, only having trouble with carbon steel while the few ones over level 30 could even damage properly forged Deep Steel, though even their powerful claws can’t get through instantly. Luckily, any steel reinforced by even a trace of Mithil in the alloy became strong enough to shrug off their attacks all day long, while the hide from the Titan didn’t even get a scratch.

Powerful and as well constructed as my mana shields are, the mana cost is painful. I wasn’t going to become obsessed with mana economy, but even an hour here passively taking their attacks would consume more mana than a low-level village with 100 people regenerated in mana in an entire year.

So roots grow from my feet, extending my height and I use all of my agility to move between all of their little attacks. The large shields give way to smaller skintight shields and a second layer of armor. A few feet away, I form a relatively new design of brittle shields to take the brunt from flying monkeys that try to surprise me. Each dinner plate shield takes less than 10 mana points and behaves, unlike any other shield.

As the energized claws of the monkey move to take out the main obstacle between us. That very brittleness that would have made it inferior in other circumstances comes to my ‘rescue’. As the ‘ninja’ flying monkey hits his claws, they don’t slide throughout on the other side like it was taking a knife to a mylar sheet, but the entire thing shatters. The pieces explode and hit his body. He doesn’t get even bruises, but his momentum is entirely gone. Frozen mid air, I sidestep and let him helplessly fall waiting for gravity to take him near anything he can grab to or leap from.

“So not a true flying monkey after all…”

I grin at the slightly higher application of runic knowledge and more complex form of defense. Big stat numbers were not everything and skills that broke our carefully constructed defenses could be overcome. With careful application of force, I could become a force to be reckoned with. This is probably the largest difference, between experienced and new system users. Even these creatures could cut through our shields with greater ease than their level and stats would indicate. The only thing that I was slightly grateful for was that the Elves didn’t seem to have a dedicated shield cutting skill, though higher level troops might have something similar to the goblin’s version or even better tricks.

With a mana draw that’s only a fraction of what it was a minute ago, I race ahead growing used to the exercise. Instinctively defending from their attacks, I use small force punches that push away the little critters. Strong enough to impart momentum and stun, but not quite strong enough to break bones.

Some 30 kilometers into the run, more than halfway through this void in Pando’s territory, I nearly miss a cave opening pass heading underground over a kilometer to my left. I don’t sense a bifurcation of anything with my perception field. Instead of stopping and risking thousands of chimps surrounding me in short order, I just keep going to the other side trying to see any other indices of anything else interesting, but nothing manifests.

I circle around for a could minutes, waiting for the giant horde to catch up. As they close on the edge of the forest, I dive right in running straight to the entryway. For a second the chimps can almost stop me, but I blow right through them at a pace I can sustain for a whole day. After that, the few monkeys trying in my way seem like they aren’t even there from how little resistance they put me under.

With a little more breathing room, I sprint at nearly full speed. Fast enough to use all my muscles and strain my body, pushing my running skill to the limits, but not exploring new ground. At this pace I can just keep fueling my body with Vigor for an hour or two and the only thing holding me back would be my muscle fibers failing.

I fight the wind getting so low to counteract the parasail that my torso is, that I almost brush my hands against the ground. Still, I imagine each sweep of my shoulders letting the air slide off me making me ever so slightly more aerodynamic, even as my senses connect to the world and seek the ideal path.

Ten minutes after losing the chimps and 20 kilometers from the edge, I dive in the only opening in range, though I’m forced to slow my pace in the narrow passage.

As I run through the tunnel, I set small seeds in the soil behind me and sparks of Life and fueled by Qi explode into obstacles to the following enemy. That ought to delay and will definitely annoy them, though the former is just a side benefit.

As soon, as the path is closed behind me, I’m in total darkness that not even my sky high perception can pierce. But light is trivial to create and the perception field doesn’t need anything to run. I sprint as fast as I can on the narrow corridors, along the sloping path underground until I find the first intersection over a kilometer ahead.

“Well, I guess I have a decision to make now, don’t I?”