“Having the option to retreat is already enough for me, and it’s also the only way that allowed the front-liners to come back and directly waive the teleportation cooldown to go to the Deep Void, if not they’d have all died because ether life forms can’t live in the Universe dimension anymore,” Adreana was discussing the EP Market.

“But the price is so ludicrous! 100 000 000 EP to reset a tier 1 dimensional teleportation cooldown? What is the Ether Law smoking to arrive at the conclusion that it’s worth this price?” Arik was the one complaining, but his frustration could be understood.

“At least there's a way to make the impossible possible, isn’t that amazing?” This time it was Gar who talked, and he seemed really excited about it.

“If I can give my opinion, I don’t think it’s really something made to be used by everyone, only overly rich people or organizations use it, it’s just the Ether Law exploiting the rich in exchange for minor services,” Nelo was also in this conversation, and his mind was pretty much set up on what the EP Market was.

Among them, Rune didn’t talk, he knew what the EP Market was used for, and he was similar to Nelo in his approach to it.

‘If I remember right, it’s 1 billion for a cooldown reset after teleporting for and from a tier 2 dimension isn’t it?’ Opening his system, the empty menu showed up.

Dimensions

EP Market

Status

Gathering Log

Masteries

Selecting the EP Market, another screen opened, and it was the barest screen he ever saw except for when his event window was empty when he opened it when he received access to the global system as a dependent entity.

EP Market

[Specify request]

And now Rune could ask for anything, so he thought “cooldown reset tier 2 dimension”.

EP Market

Tier 2 Dimension Teleportation 1-Month Cooldown Reset: 1 000 000 000 EP

‘Yup, I remembered right…’

Of course, the EP Market wasn’t a wish machine, everything that worked when you requested had to do with dimension teleportation cooldowns, nothing else, no magic teleportation or anything, only cooldowns.

It really was as Nelo said, the Ether Law exploiting the rich for minor services, nothing more, nothing less.

The only way someone was going to use 1 billion EP for that was if that person was supported by a large business or by a government.

‘Push! Punch! Kick! Relax…’

That was Rune's new routine, he punched and kicked trees, shoved them to the side, and then advanced, and all that at the fastest speed he could manage to do it.

The group was correctly coordinated, Rune and Arik were bulldozing a path of 4 meters even though it was a true primitive forest, all sorts of bushes, little trees, and thorny shrubs blocked their way.

Behind them, Nelo and Adreana used large energy blade spells to annihilate everything, then Gar pushed everything to the side.

And lastly were Utopia and Astryde, doing things that Rune didn’t know what to think about, Gar was very industrious so they only did details, sometimes they also corrected their trajectory so they still did something.

All in all, they were much faster than a modern bulldozer. When Rune saw special rocks beneath the surface with his one and a half kilometers deep perception sphere, he would tell them to mark this spot, when Astryde felt a large ether gathering, she also told of where she felt it and they marked it.

They started to make a path 4 days ago, and their advancing speed was very constant at around 5 meters per second, in one hour they lengthened their path by an additional 18 kilometers with nothing happening.

And as a fact, it was fun, destroying everything because you were paid to do so and were also actually contributing to civilization was a… Fine feeling.

“You’re slowing down Arik,” a major taunt was launched at Arik by his front-line companion, the lifeless tone only exacerbating it, and it pushed Arik to immediately surpass him.

“Faster slowpoke,” he didn’t express everything but the two of them had complicity only attainable by being asocial outside but friendly inside.

“You’re asking for it, bulldozing mode activated,” immediately Rune engaged in reinforced bulldozing, making a literal straight line into the forest, he put as much energy into his reinforcement as he regenerated.

It wasn’t something new, he was learning how to reinforce himself with his armor involved, every time he did it he gained a level in his reinforced armor mastery by correctly applying his reinforcement and punching without destroying the integrity of his armor.

Which was something he already knew how to do.

*Ding* Reinforcement: Basic Reinforced Armor reached Tier 1 Level 5

But this time Rune slowed down and looked out to the left, his sphere told him that the first major topographic change was there, a river.

“There’s a river to our left, it’ll cause a one and a half kilometer deviation from our path if we want to join it,” Utopia turned his head after hearing Rune’s words and responded immediately.

“Me and Astryde will go and see if something is interesting there, continue forward, we'll be back in 5 minutes if there’s no problem,” and then he departed with Astryde by flying above the forest.

The rest of the group continued to make their path, there was very little chance that they would actually deviate unless there was something worth a lot of EP like a crystal mine or an anomalous thing.

Ether crystal mine existed, but not in tier 1 zone, if you found one then it meant that it was a remnant from when the zone was tier 4 or above, so for Rune and others it was an infinitesimal happening.

They had only seen forest till now, forest and more forest, they all learned that the Endless was truly endless from the board, only counting defective dimensions with civilizations like their own, there were tens of thousands.

But even with so many civilizations, there were very, very few ways for them to find each other in the Endless.

When Utopia and Astryde were in the air scouting, they didn’t see anything past a certain distance, and that was normal.

The Endless was flat, at least there was no reason for it to not be, but ether was omnipresent, and the result was that as it accumulated over kilometers, it formed an ether mist that blocked all vision.

There were masteries to be able to see farther, through the ether mist, but only a militarized unit or society would specialize someone in something so “useless”, for adventurers, you just had to continue advancing till you found a sort of landmark like the dangerous ground in the Void dimension.

5 minutes later Utopia and Astryde came back, “There's nothing, it’s just a very little river, if it continues its way, it’ll end up in the west sector, and if we continue our route, then we’ll cross it further up,” Utopia commented on his finding but it was more of a mini interesting lore discovery than anything important.

“Do you think we can name the river the Undecided River?” Gar attempted a joke, and that was pretty good.

“You’ll say that to the cartographer of the IGS, but I’d prefer to name a mountain in a tier 9 zone after our name, maybe we’ll create the Undecided Sect on it, would be fun,” and Utopia responded in kind, his charisma and arrogance as a future sect leader overflowing.

“Yes sect master Utopia, for the day we’ll build the Undecided Sect on top of Utopia Mountain, Hourra!” Rune exclaimed, he wanted to participate in everything that could make Utopia more confident.

“You’re slowing down Rune,” a backstab from Arik made him activate his reinforced bulldozing mode, they still had an untold number of kilometers to advance.

…

2 weeks later, as the group continued on creating their own path through an endless forest, changes started to become visible.

Little animals, birds tweaks, they were still in a tier 1 zone, but all those signs pointed to the fact that the ether density was increasing, they were transitioning to a tier 2 zone.

‘Another green cloud.’

Rune observed everything with his sphere, and ether condensing into clouds was becoming more frequent in addition to them having a color.

Until finally, a big animal appeared in his sphere, and it looked like a wolf, “Contact with a wolf-like beast ahead.”

It was enough to awaken everyone, big beasts were the telltale signs of tier 2, it was only that as the ether density increased so slowly, it was very hard to know when it reached true tier 2 standard, but now this was a true sign.

“Oh finally! We traveled at least 6 000 kilometers to find it! That’s ridiculous!” Astryde exclaimed from behind, it seemed that she just wanted to fight things to release all her accumulated stress.

And Utopia concluded the same things, “Then if it’s aggressive you’ll take care of it Astryde, we’ll only be supports who do nothing.”

“No problem!” The enthusiasm in her voice was palpable, the poor wolf was going to suffer.

A tier 2 monster was like any other tier 2 entity, it was independent and had a power spike.

The only difference from a sapient entity was that it was its instinct that made choices, so they could be as difficult and sometimes more difficult to deal with than fellow sapient beings.

Though it was generally accepted that tier 2 monsters were weaker than their sapient counterpart due to their instinct not being refined enough, completely different from when they ultimately reached tier 3, where they became equal to sapient entities again.

“Correction, it has companions around, I count 20 wolves in total,” Rune observed as they approached, giving info that changed the situation as he got them.

“Then everyone will participate, we’re all testing our new ability to kill so the more the better,” Utopia gave the final command that they all had to follow, it was part of his role as nominal group leader.

“If it’s a pack of 20 then it's probably not a nest patrol, probably just a roaming pack searching to increase its power” Arik commented on what he thought was the truth.

The reason why this was important was that the Endless was a complex environment, monsters also wanted to grow in power, and they had multiple choices on how to do that.

They could “eat” other monster cores, they could be born with it if born from ether reproduction in higher tier zones, or they could search for opportunities to become something else through Endless anomalies.

The path of monsters to tiering up was the same as the sapient one, with no limits to growth or potential, only limited by their masteries and EP gathering.

Of course, “equal” was a term that could only be used if you ignored the fact that if a zone higher than tier 1 was empty of life for too long, then the ambient ether would birth life spontaneously according to the ether density.

This caused a never-ending number of monsters, killing and evolving, razing any tiered zone higher than tier 1 was impossible, in the end, only becoming more powerful was the answer to not dying.

“Everyone fights individually, we’ll only fight together if a peak tier 2 or tier 3 monster appears,” Utopia commented before separating.

The wolves had already found them and were charging over.