The wall he just discovered wasn’t even worth calling a “wall” as much as it could be called… A fence.

A 2-meters high fence.

Made of concrete.

But the foundation was clear, a 10-meter wide line of concrete went from the right to the left, coming from beyond his sphere and exiting beyond it.

‘Are they starting to wall off the zones? Maybe it’s just for the mountainous region.’

His previous melancholic mood evaporated, replaced by a curious and inquisitive look.

Purposely slowing down, he instinctively opened his connected lenses and knew before looking at it that his internet connection was back.

To satisfy his immediate curiosity, he connected to the special expedition news website and searched with a simple query “Tier 1 tier 2 wall”.

And it opened the most relevant article which informed him of everything he wanted.

From the finished territory survey to a multiple-planet-sized surface area of tier 1 zones, to a first set of walls longer than a million kilometers in length, to it being relevant only for the next 400 years before needing to be moved, to…

And then he realized it wasn’t just “An article”, it was “A government press release article”.

What he read at first was the introduction, and once he finished it, he stumbled upon a plan of dozens of major sections, hundreds of sub-sections, and thousands of sub-sub-sections.

So he closed the page, immediately trashed the idea that his reports were child-gibberishes next to it, and observed the construction team in action.

From his deep memories, he remembered one time he missed his tramway because there was a demolition happening next to his station.

And he even climbed on top of a public bench to see above the too-high wall that obstructed his view.

‘The good old time isn’t it, hehe.’

The nostalgia felt refreshing, but like everything else, it eventually went away and was replaced by just the present.

‘If I want to watch construction, I’ll be able to see as much as I want, and can, in the east or west capital sector.’

And like his nostalgia went away, he passed above the wall and got away from the wilderness, officially returning to the only colonized area of the IGS.

At least officially.

And from that point onward, he couldn’t focus on finishing his expedition report anymore.

…

There were crates everywhere, piles of ores so big they should have only been found on dead planets designated for complete mining exploitation, and people all around.

Rune could have expected that but he absent-mindedly forgot to think about the implication of “Tier 1 Mountainous Zone”, and its link to “Raw Resources”.

The only things missing were heavy transportation spaceships, or alternatively maglev transportation trains, and heavy explosions, that he learned in his exploration engineer curriculum, were very useful once controlled correctly.

But apart from those 2, everything was there.

And he passed by more than hundreds of such mining sites having everything except those 2.

Putting bits and pieces together, explosions were replaced by energy manipulation, and transportation was replaced by ether pocket dimensions.

Running alongside those charged with transportation duty, he was mind-blown by the fact that they didn’t transport “crates of ores”, they transported…

Tens of crates of hundreds of pocket dimensions containing ores.

Just thinking about the volume of ores they transported quintupled his mind-blown state, making him run with a blank mind, not knowing how to feel about that.

He knew that what he saw was only a small part of what was really happening, but he didn’t dwell on it too much.

Even when he saw the steel factories, the concrete centers, and the rare-earths treatment factories, he only observed them from a tourist’s point of view.

After reaching the region transition, what welcomed him wasn’t a luxuriant primitive forest anymore, it was thousands, if not tens of thousands of square kilometers of razed forest, with compressed earth making paths crisscrossing a large grassy plain.

It seemed that the IGS put a hard limit on where planetary-sized mining and industry could take place, and that limit was there.

Concepts such as pollution came to Rune’s mind, trying to explain this decision, but a few seconds later he stopped thinking due to not wanting to think anymore.

Having sensorily overloaded his sight, he could already see what he previously designated as a parking lot for immigrants.

‘Is my sense of time too f*cked to be salvaged? I wasn’t gone for more than… 6 months or something right? I was at 80 awareness and at 1 level every week due to the harder last levels, yup, 5 months, conservatively.’

Trying to rationalize this gigantic black, white, and grey building, with neon lights shining all over it with all the colors of the rainbow, and even forming motifs and animations, was the first time in his life that he felt left behind by time itself.

He was running on a compressed dirt path, with hundreds of people bringing back crates full of pocket dimensions, and a thousand kilometers from him, a building bigger than a space station was standing.

First from wilderness to massive industry, and now to…

To something, he couldn’t describe.

Because he lived his whole life on a rural planet, and he knew the building before him wasn’t like that, at all, last time he saw it.

If someone told him it was totally remade from the ground-up, he would believe him.

Alienated described his current mental state.

A thousand kilometers away, the flow of people was already insane.

And as he neared this shining beacon, this number reached another level he similarly, like this beacon, couldn’t describe any more.

“People Everywhere” was a fusion of words he would, from now on, only use to describe such a situation.

His whole perception sphere was filled.

5 kilometers, be it right, left, behind, ahead, or up.

The amount of information he received, doubled from his specialty, made him nauseous.

So many chaotic movements and so much life took a bit of time to get used to.

If a sociologist studying crowd movement was here, he could maybe explain how so many people didn’t collide everywhere.

Though the addition of superhuman reflexes and perception spheres probably changed their expertise a bit.

‘The only thing that didn’t change is the fact that it’s still a transit point, and maybe the biggest and most important one?’

A dozen seconds allowed him to calibrate his sphere sensitivity to a more acceptable level. It wasn’t a suitable mode for wilderness exploration, but for urban environments, it was the graal.

‘Guess that from here on its autopilot until the capital city…’

It was.

It didn’t change.

Crates everywhere.

A highway that’s been expanded to be a few kilometers wide.

Rune took a few dozens of crates, all containing pocket dimensions, and ran.

In a few minutes, he learned the law of traffic, the unofficial one, by observing around.

Faster people in altitude, slower people on the ground.

Using his strength-based speed, he got to the highest layer, a place where he only saw what were probably momentum specialists, tier 4 were probably still too rare to be seen everywhere, or coincidentally on the highway.

At 640 meters per second, those momentum specialists needed 38 400 effective momentum to keep up with him, which for a tier 3, with 5 000 base momentum, only asked for a 768% efficiency boost.

It wasn’t unattainable at all.

At 2 times the speed of sound, he reached the north capital sector in under half an hour, still a crazy distance no matter how he saw it.

Once there, he opted for directly going to the Adventurer’s Society headquarters and rushing his report’s conclusion. He had nothing but flowery words to add concerning this part of the expedition after all.

He called Olivia to announce his arrival in a maximum of 10 minutes, told her that he had a full sample box, and then transmitted his 3 reports over for her to send them to who was responsible.

True to his words, 8 minutes later, he arrived back at the HQ, which didn’t change that much.

If he excluded the much more important flow of people of course.

Those who said it was only a temporary HQ were true visionaries, and Rune once again realized he was underestimating what more than a million people immigrating per day meant.

As it didn’t yet reach the point where the waiting line, or lines, exited the building, he happily entered and only had to wait a bit before Olivia came to fetch him.

Seeing was believing, and seeing the “Tier 3” information zone now being called “Tier 3 And Above”, with enough people for 5 employees to not idle-by anymore was enough for him to realize time waited for no one.

He didn’t see Orobas, the male rululu receptionist who confirmed he was a tier 3 the first time, and with which he acquainted himself a bit.

Once past the “hustle-and-bustle” floor, he was led to an identical room to the one he used to pick up all his goodies.

Inside were also 2 other persons, one human, and one azoran.

And then Olivia started to explain, “This time you don’t have to drop everything on the communal table.”

“Those 2 are here to make sure all your data are properly extracted,” a slight smirk appeared on her face as she looked at Rune, “So release everything you have, sample box, flat compass, microscope, everything, it’s a hold-up, and they’ll not let you out without everything your report mentioned.”

“Now, I’m going to leave you to them, good luck,” faster than her shadow, she left him alone in a plain room.

With 2 strangers who had a smile on their faces.

And they didn’t offer greetings or even talk.

They just stood there.

Silently.

‘Well, well, well.’

Rune contemplated his own situation.

‘Looks like you freaked me up, Olivia.’

His social smile strained by the situation, he obliged and started to release everything.

The moment he released the sample box, they started to act silently and his sample box got…

Dismembered? Crucified?

They brought another box, one a lot more complex, and started to transfer the small sample box into it.

As they did that, Rune got all the tools he used, his flat compass included, out.

But clearly, their entire focus was on the sample box and making sure everything was transferred without problems.

And then another person entered the room.

‘I know her.’

“Hello, Mr. Tudor, I’m once again in charge of doing the debrief for your report,” she greeted him first.

Green hair, very light green skin, and same color eyes.

‘Unfortunately…’

He physically lifted his shin, assuming the confidence he needed to make his soon-to-be claim more real.

Then he looked her in the eyes.

“Hello, yes I remember everything you did for me last time and tried to apply your advice as best as I could, but it seems that while I took note of our short lesson, I…”

He looked at her intensely in the eyes.

“Forgot your name.”

The two supposed scientists stopped for a bit, then shortly restarted doing their things.

“Yes, I saw, you adequately applied what I taught you back then, it’s a lot cleaner this time, and in this case, let me re-introduce myself, I’m Thyia Yurko, I’ll probably be in charge of all your reports in the future too,” nonplussed, she naturally followed.

“Hehe, that was awkward, I’ll try and not forget it this time Ms. Yurko, so… Do we do it here, or do we change rooms? I already got everything they’ll need out.”

“We’ll just use this corner of the table,” she started to walk towards the opposite end of the table where he put all his goodies.

“It’ll not be long anyway, just about…”

“Half an hour?”

She didn’t seem to be joking as she maintained a straight face.

So Rune could only nod like the good boy he was.

But innerly.

‘Your definition of long doesn’t correlate with mine…’

He was a rebellious boy.

…

Stepping out of the HQ, he spread his arms like a bird getting ready to take flight and couldn’t help but exclaim, “It’s over! I’m free!” Without caring about the weird glances sent at him.

If people weren’t around, he would have done a celebration by using his average dancing skill.

From Thyia using not half an hour but 2 hours, then to the two scientists taking another hour for their stuff, and finally, Olivia that came to gather the true hard data of his flat compass and connected lenses travel log, it took him 3 hours from entering the HQ before being freed.

‘First, the apartment. Second, the bank. Third, contacting I don’t remember who but she’ll help me with my composite element theory, or maybe I should do a purge before that? Probably yeah. Fourth, exploring the city and finding the true unknown slots.’

After a bit of thinking, he added some steps in between.

‘That azoran bartender… Yeah, after the bank I’ll see.’

But they were only secondary, his hard plan was already planned, and he learned early on in his life that an organized schedule was much stronger than a random day led by random inspirations.

Having not received any message that their gathering slot had changed location, the apartment was his go-to place, once there, he would be able to truly relax without having to maintain his momentum up or anything.

Just awareness division and reinforcement passive training.

No headache, easy, and optimized.

…

“Ad-ad-ad-ad! Adreana!”

She turned her head, a slight smirk on her face, she proudly stated, “Why, hello Rune! I see you also used the quickest method to access our base.”

And she really seemed proud of what Rune just did.

Having used the thief's access by landing on the balcony and then opening the window door, he saw no one inside but it was open, so he entered.

And then his sphere informed him that there was someone alive and breathing in one of the rooms.

With a group of 7 people, with 6 independent agents, considering 2 of them acted together, Rune was certain that over his long stay he would see them pass by, but he hadn’t thought someone was already there.

“Huuu… I don’t know what to say, didn’t expect anyone to be honest, last time I got here I stayed like 3 weeks alone. Been there for a long time?”

“Came back to become tier 4 and start my true build. It’s been more than a month since I started training on the energy domain path, and like you, I saw no one until you suddenly… Intruded our base,” there was no alienation in her voice.

It was the same for Rune.

Having been separated for so long didn’t affect their friendship, the Undecided had decided long ago to not undertake actions to remain in contact on expeditions, and for good reasons.

One of the primary reasons was first seen by Utopia, who decided that being true adventurers meant complete independence, loneliness, and mental fortitude accompanying it.

The second was seen by no one but Adreana who was before Rune and nearly sealed the deal by itself.

Everyone had a path to follow, and for the majority of them, even with the globalized information board telling them everything happening from tier 1 to tier 6, with millions or billions of years of Ether Law uncovered secrets and specialized application, they were only children.

Rune suddenly uncovering in himself a need to hide with an element, then the discovery of composite elements… Nelo developing a supreme offensive composite element… Adreana entering the energy domain path…

Some of them were planned long ago, some not, but it was a confirmation of the act of separating and developing separately being right.

“If you only started a month ago, then we’ll be here together for a while hehe, unless I’m a genius, which is certainly a possibility,” feeling at home, he said what came to his asocial mind.

“What happened?” Puzzled, she asked.

“You weren’t here when one of my path developments gave me a surprise, it was already a miracle that everyone except you, Arik, and Gar weren’t there. I planned to make a trip to the bank but it can wait, let’s chill on the balcony?”

“After you, I’m far from being bothered by even an entire day of doing nothing at this point,” she showed a defeated look.

“Everyone has their own problems, but let’s start with mine. Do you have some energy-infused drinks in this fantastic personal pocket dimension that I see on your belt? I need to buy one too.”

“Ok, ok, let’s start with yours, and yes I still got a few barrels of infused fruit juice from the last cultural event.”

Rune suddenly looked at her seriously, “It’s not cultural event,” he maintained eye contact, “It’s festival.”

Thoughtfully, she remembered a bit, “Maybe, it’s strangely adequate.”

Rune acquiesced, “Of course it is.”

Settling down on the balcony, they made a table, chairs, and two glasses appear.

“Ah, that’s the true homecoming I dreamed about!” Serving himself a glass of infused fruit juice, he completely relaxed.

“Well, well, well, where to start? My exploration-survival behemoth-like path changed a bit since last time, and that’s because I had an enlightenment.”

He didn’t look at Adreana anymore, and she didn’t look at him anymore either.

“And that enlightenment… Involves a composite element.”

Clicking his tongue, he added, “A son-of-a-penguin level composite element, and the research leader of the composite element path of the IGS told me very clearly.”

“That for a tier 3 to create it, I could go freak myself…”

Adreana smirked.

Everything was as it should be.

As it should be.