After the prince finished the first “Welcome To The Black Parade”, he was joined by his wife and they did a more relaxing but still intense session of 3 different songs, all original ones.

Rune enjoyed it, their synchronization was unbelievable, their voice and intent complemented each other like they were one.

Until it was the turn for what Rune awaited.

The light all dimmed, taking on a dim blue light and casting the stage and its surrounding in an icy mood, then the prince retreated to another throne that appeared, it was in the background but it was hard to ignore, too imposing.

The same individual piano keys as the last one a dozen minutes ago, the calm before the storm.

(Welcome to the black parade, cover by Halocene and cover by Halflives. For better immersion)

“When I was... A young girl…

My father took me into the city…”

Like time stopped, an intent he never felt before came to him, it was something soft, complex, all-encompassing.

It was natural, like something was really happening.

“Sometimes I get the feelin',

She's watchin' over me.”

Even softer, Rune couldn’t resist and let this intent invade his spirit, it was like the tone used for a children's lullaby.

This intent was unique.

“To carry on, we'll carry on.”

The melody stopped being calm, but only for a while, her intent was perturbed only for an instant, before coming back to normal.

“A world that sends you reeling,

From decimated dreams,

Your misery and hate will kill us all.”

The contempt and revulsion in her intent were obvious, he didn’t know who she was targeting but if one day he came to have those feelings for someone he would just act on them, they were so heavy for his innocent mind.

“I'm just a girl, I'm not a hero,

Just a girl, who had to sing this song.”

It was the first time Rune felt something so realistic, like it wasn’t a song, she was telling a story.

“We'll carry on...” She maintained the last note for 10 seconds, and the same intent without any change kept being sent, he didn’t know the expense of energy, but he really suspected they were tier 3.

‘I’ll have my answer at the end…’

The conclusion of the second variant was that it didn’t have the powerful raw emotion that her husband had, but it was so much more real that it attracted and convinced you to immerse yourself fully.

The prince came back and they sang together another 5 original songs, showing their deep mastery over intent infusion and singing experience.

At the end of the fifth song, they stopped and the melody translated to a stationary sound, only some crystal clear sound rang out for 2 whole minutes.

In those 2 minutes, the couple was doing something, they had their two hands together and their foreheads touched.

The two were smiling and after 2 minutes, Rune’s mind could even see a veil of energy around them, the area around them was sacred, outsiders wouldn’t be able to trespass.

Then the first piano key rang, then the second one, the couple was immobile, and only started to sing when the time was right.

“When I was a young boy…” The prince said something nearly inaudible.

“When I was a young girl…” The princess answered softly.

And then they sang together.

“My father took me into the city,

To see a marching band…”

The mixed intent of those two, everyone here experienced it during their various songs, but now something else appeared.

Love.

Husband to wife, children to parent, grand-child to grand-parent, universal.

“And through it all, the rise and fall,

The bodies in the streets,

And when you're gone, we want you all to know...

We'll carry on... We'll carry on!”

From soft love to fiery love, the prince showed he could be soft, and now the princess showed she could be primal and raw.

The two separated, they started to move to throw a tantrum on the scene, kicking the stage and waving their arms.

“Defiant to the end, we hear the call,

To carry on!

We'll carry on!”

They started to fight, the two were fighting against each other, trying to impose their intent over the other.

And they didn’t release, they only pulled harder, which created a violent dissonance.

“I won't explain or say I'm sorry...

I'm unashamed, I'm gonna show my scars!

Give a cheer for all the broken...

Listen here, because it's who we are!”

The dissonance between the two caused not only nausea, but also a deeper feeling, something about life not being perfect, opinion varied, and it only made the intent stronger.

Maybe it was a special effect or something, but Rune could see things colliding in the air, he saw the intent colliding, creating new intent, rippling everywhere.

“Do or die, you'll never make me!

Because the world will never take my heart!

Go and try, you'll never break me!”

The two suddenly decided to come together again, embracing on the stage like it belonged to them, their intent fused again and Rune could feel everything in it like they became one.

Little by little the intensity was reduced, the battle was over, the end of the show was coming.

“We want it all, we wanna play this part,

We'll carry on!”

Rune felt reluctant, he didn’t want it to be over, but after maintaining the word for half a minute, they stopped, embracing again, before bowing deeply to the audience and leaving the stage.

If every singer had their level, he would never be able to go on another adventure...

He was sure they were tier 3.

He also felt he was about to pass out.

…

Time passed.

After what the culture department called the “Royal Night” happened, in which Leriel and Orielle made their debut, Rune used a whole day to recover. It was something that only happened when too many unknown emotions happened.

He was too young and inexperienced, he watched movies that showed fiery emotions, but did he live them? He knew about love, but did he ever experience the feeling of losing his love or losing a person dear to his heart?

His spirit couldn’t handle and shut down for a day to acclimate to those new things, after which he spent another 3 days creating new colors with those emotions.

The intensity was a factor he knew influenced this process, and now that he was high on them, it was the best time to use them.

Love, as he experienced it, and also as something he never lived personally, birthed a new effect, he didn’t really know how to describe it.

Whereas all the effects he created and imitated till now were visual, this one belonged to the domain of influencing feeling, a very weak intent was contained in it, and this intent changed with the color and effect.

Love was something that elevated all the previous characteristics of emotion he only felt really weakly back then, love was universal and could fuse with anything, it accepted everything.

‘The immensity of the Ether law…’

He couldn’t help but be impressed, fireworks were his hobby, a hobby he now had for more than 4 years, and color creation was something he picked up before that.

The problem wasn’t that he didn’t try to use love before that, but that he didn’t know what love really was, and now, along with lots of other emotions, he could truly use them, at least their minor effect, on creating ether colors.

Before throwing himself for an additional 4 days into it, he decided to visit Olivia, his first support, to get his custom pair of connected lenses, he of course announced his arrival.

He talked a little about the fact that he was planning on leaving after the next festival, and explained that for him a cultural event was equal to a festival, on which she agreed after a 5 minutes long argument, before receiving his custom pair and leaving.

The next 3 days were a mix of him downloading a sh*tty-freaky-ton of music on his new external memory, months, maybe years, of adventuring at least needed that much, and testing new colors in fireworks.

His neighbors sometimes even praised him through his sphere, to which he only responded by smiling and nodding, before continuing.

3 days was a short amount of time, not enough to do anything serious, only allowing him to start a massive series of experiments linked to color creation and pushing some effects deeper.

Strong and true emotion was only one of the ways. A color was a very careful mix of a lot of things, an effect was something that could fail if the balance wasn't right, and stronger emotions changed this previous balance he established.

Burning, neon, cracked, fractured, new colors, liquid, flowing, mixed, not uniform, and now intent. In 3 days his greatest success was creating an intented fractured flowing cyan.

2 effects at the same time were a hard limit he couldn’t overcome, probably not without taking a mastery, years of experience and experiments, or entering the beyond Ether law domain, which would also require countless years of experimentations.

It was a new color he never succeeded at creating before, and he even added the intent effect in it, it was universal but he still planned to search for its counter, what would counter love? He didn’t know, but it was a good research direction.

‘Well, time for my last festival before going on to my next…’

Rune stood up, he had a last show to watch.

…

He knew he could stop, he knew he could stay here, but he didn’t retract even now, he didn’t even feel stressed at the idea of going.

Advancing in tier and discovering new things were some of his fuels that made his being advance, it was not only his job, it was also his passion.

Not much advancing in tier, but to one day travel to a tier 5 or even tier 6 zones, he had to be able to survive one hit and escape from large area destruction, so advancing in tier became linked to his goal of adventuring, and his amateur behemoth path build also became linked to his survival.

The bartender he encountered didn’t receive a spot this time, but it didn’t affect him, they weren’t close enough to warrant any feeling except slight disappointment.

‘Maybe when I take a long vacation to create my composite element I’ll contact her?’

Renewing the street vendors allowed him to see new things, that was the important part.

Some disgusting in appearance but a banger on the inside, some appetizing on the outside but horrible once in the mouth, some just amazing in both or horrendous in both.

When the music started to play, it was once again a first-time sensation, Rune’s expectations weren’t unreasonable, just experienced tier 2 singers could satisfy him.

Same as the previous ones, the mood and light show were perfect, tonight was probably going to be a very chill and relaxing night looking at the general artificial mood and atmosphere.

Blue lights shone everywhere, with some band of purple moving slowly to make a serene scene appear.

Once the singer, a young human woman with brown hair and brown eyes with an average stature, appeared, she said nothing, and the melody just started.

(LEVV - Collateral Damage, original and Tritonal Remix)

“Collateral damage is that…

All, I am?”

After the show was over, Rune decided for sure to add this song and some of the others he heard through it to his external memory.

He couldn’t have thought of a better song to hear before departing, the lyrics were powerful and so had been the intent of the single singer, standing alone on the stage.

After the concert ended, Rune embarked on a last gustatory journey, before calling Olivia to announce to her he was coming.

In those 3 weeks, not one of the Undecided came back, and in a sense, it comforted him.

Utopia had his own road, Nelo reached for his dream, Astryde continued, Adreana advanced steadily, Gar and Arik he supposed were together and were the current highest strength of their group when united.

‘Or maybe Nelo can resist them with his single star element? Depending on his mastery of it, it wouldn’t surprise me if he decided to do a second specialization now, but it would reduce his available strength too much so he won’t do that right?’

Thinking about Nelo’s stubbornness, he hesitated on his answer.

Specialized mastery was something one would keep even when the provided masteries became available, so why not ignore the basic masteries and just go for 6 specialized masteries now? This way your tier 4 build transition wouldn’t even exist.

There was a definite answer to this question. If you’re poor go the basic masteries path, if you’re rich go the specialized masteries path, simple as that.

Except that in this case, rich or poor referred to one’s backing.

The IGS was poor, even their prospects had to go the basic masteries path, the specialized masteries path had a combat ability so low that you had to be supported by a team to make significant progress in it before reaching tier 4, so even in rich civilizations…

Rune arrived at the Adventurer’s Society Headquarters 10 minutes after the end of the festival, he entered and Olivia was there, waiting for him with Orobas.

As usual, the reception hall was full of people, at least a hundred, waiting to be received.

It was currently night in the region but he already became used to the fact that night and day had a very different meaning nowadays, not at all linked to circadian or sleeping cycles anymore.

He quickly approached them, grinning all the way and when he came to them Orobas took the initiative to extend his hand, which Rune gladly took.

“Hello Orobas, hello Olivia, a pleasure to meet you today, unfortunately, I didn’t bring any street food and ate it all by myself,” speaking by instinct, Rune did a little joke.

“Hehe, no need to be sorry, I already enjoyed tens of cultural events, you only just started to try things out compared to us working there,” Orobas had a social smile on, taking the joke lightly.

“Hello Rune, we only need to requisition a pocket dimension and you’re good to go. Your flora and fauna report also opened the door to getting additional tools that I requested personally and made sure will help you identify flora better than before. As long as you updated your guide to the latest version all their instructions will be there,” Olivia said what she had to, now Rune was responsible.

“No change to you being my first support? No change in procedure?” Rune asked to be sure.

“No, nothing, if you waited maybe for one to three months, then the first tier 4 patrollers, prospects and adventurers would appear, maybe there will be a change at that time, but now it’s exactly the same as previously,” the information was something Rune could accept, it was logic.

“Then let’s go, when I’m tier 4 I’ll have all the time of the world to deepen my friendship with this guy and transform him into one of my followers, sorry Orobas, it was brief but intense,” Rune decided to go immediately and chided Orobas on the way.

“Of course Mr. Tudor, goodbye then,” serious and professional, Orobas, despite being tier 3, kept those qualities and acted like any receptionist he saw till now.

“Follow me then,” Olivia departed with Rune in tow, leaving Orobas to return to the tier 3 information zone.

“So, did you like your vacations? If I were you I’d have…”

Their relationship was better than when they just became associated, Rune’s simple personality and Olivia’s professionalism complemented each other and they didn’t hesitate to breach topics that could be awkward for others.

“In fact, I don’t really know when the first tier 4 will appear… Some of my colleagues are pretty sure it already happened and the IGS is being pressed for time to update its infrastructure to support them…”

“40 000 000 000 EP isn’t a small sum… The difference between core EP value and EP needed will only become larger as the tier increases... We even received a survey to ask for our opinion…”

Rune liked those types of gossip, they reflected that the IGS was still stumbling around, acting like a baby and testing things out, he respected this governing entity that was so transparent.

‘Reminds me of the major culture section in the guide… Huhu! Give me the chills… Am I just not open-minded enough to accept that I can make babies with anyone as long as I want to?’

Between hundreds of news, the guide, and gossip, Rune tempered his opinion on things, some were still too difficult to accept but he was little by little adapting, being tainted by the common sense of the Ether law and the Endless, then he kept them all for himself.

‘No reason to start a debate on that… You’re a little too serious Olivia…’

And he kept a lot more for himself than he let on, he was the opposite of a confrontational person.

Arriving in a room, Olivia left Rune by himself while she took the metal ball, the ether pocket dimension, and went to activate it.

After nearly a year of development, the ether pocket dimension became more stable, something about people’s masteries leveling up and specialized infrastructures being finalized and refined.

“Yeah, that’s another fact I’ll keep to myself,” muttering after she was gone, Rune started to inspect his goodies, and by that, it meant ignoring those he knew and testing those he never saw before.

With the guide updated to its latest iteration, he only needed to look at some series of numbers to the side to know what to search for, and those were state-of-the-art research tools.

A massive box with hundreds of small boxes that could be used to take samples and keep them in specific conditions, some pistol-injector for complex chemicals that should be used to incite specific reactions depending on a list of hundreds of pages, a basic camera, something that only appeared recently on the market from what Rune reads on the news, a… Microscope?

‘Well… Why not, if you say it’s a microscope I’ll believe you no worry.'

It looked more like a CD player than anything else, but it wouldn’t be the first time he was surprised by the ingenuity behind some of those goodies.

Numerous small modules were also there, and maybe as a way of showing he was also some sort of great prospect, he received a higher level ether tower, one that was currently collapsed in a big tube of 15 meters of metal, and he knew it’s true appearance from Lounae’s team.

Once it was stabilized and the command was given, it would expand to be a 40 meters tall tower, a lot bigger than his last one.

Maybe Olivia took her time as she only came back 10 minutes later, handing the activated ether pocket dimension to Rune and telling the current specs, “Lifespan of 2 years and still 100 cubic meters, same method, any question from your inspection?”

“No, ma’am, anything else before I go? I have some serious distance to do,” with everything ready, he was happy to go like that.

“Ok then mister, take everything here and call me once you reach the exit of the south capital sector, I’ll do the last check for your flat compass,” she then backed and waited in the hallways, she still had to accompany him back to the first floor.

‘It’s a little like packing up and having your mother call you to make sure you didn’t forget your blablabla right? Disturbing…’