‘What a bunch of maniacs!’

Listening to the prospects and the patrollers talking about killing the tier 5 guardians as soon as he spread his focus to gather information, Rune couldn’t have any other thoughts.

‘Are they all so stupid?! Why would they try to intrude into the nest of obvious killing machines? Where’s Arik, I’m sure he knows what’s happening.’

As he was complaining internally and nobody could hear what he was “saying”, he didn't put any stop to how much he believed the officers that allowed everyone to have such thoughts to be stupid idiots.

And the more he listened, the more he understood that he hadn’t misunderstood. Lots of people were clearly talking about going to the city center of Tolevia and fighting with the kilometer-high tier 5 bone golems protecting it.

‘They’re crazy! Did I not write properly and in detail what I experienced when I was chased by only a single one?!’

Worrying about the sanity of everyone around him, his only hope for understanding if it was some sort of mass hypnosis was Arik.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t anywhere in his perception, so he was struggling internally in deciding whether to go to the front line to find him directly or wait here at the front camp and wait for him to come back after receiving Astryde’s message.

In the end, he felt that doing a last trip to sightsee the city of Tolevia wasn’t a bad end and went to fetch Arik as more of a secondary goal than a primary one.

Following a clean straight path while looking ahead, he reached the new location of the backline in 15 minutes, and after advancing a bit more amidst the city now almost fully made of standing buildings, reached the front line proper.

The sight of prospects fighting against dozens of meters high and dozens-limbed bone golems didn’t impact him as much as the close to an intact urban environment that was being used as the battlefield.

‘With or without me, it really doesn’t change anything. I’m merely a happy nobody.’

Creating an inspired punchline he didn't bother to write down on the fly, he easily found Arik fighting in the central front, still alone.

Firing an inoffensive energy beam at him to catch his attention, he ended up retreating a few minutes later after he killed his target, not even taking the time to pocket the massive corpse and core that was inside.

As he was the one who interrupted him, Rune took the conversation lead, “Astryde got our next destination, blabla, sleep, blabla, Unending Mountain news got her, blabla, why are the people talking about intruding into the supposed nest and killing the invincible tier 5 bone golems?”

“Mmh… Let’s go back then,” Arik narrowed his answer too much for his friend, or anyone else for that matter, to understand what he said.

“Don’t tell me you’ve also become crazy?” Rune asked to be sure as the two departed towards the front camp together.

“What if I have? Didn’t you survive an encounter with one? Just this single argument that ‘a lone scout escaped without dying’ alone is enough to sway a lot of people,” having found his tongue back, he surprisingly started to argue back from a point of view Rune had never thought he would take.

Not taking offense at that, Rune answered rationally, “Did the prospects really believe this piece of intel without verifying from where it came? What are the officers doing by letting it get to their heads? What if it goes out of control and they can’t control the prospects anymore when those ‘easy to escape from tier 5 bone golems’ are merely a few thousand kilometers away?”

Shrugging it off, a slight incredulity made its way to Arik’s voice as he finally reverted back to his perfectly logical and matter-of-fact self, “Just stop thinking about it, that’s what I did.”

Then he continued to elaborate under Rune’s insistent gaze, “We have our next destination, we’ll depart and leave it all behind, then we’ll see whether one day there’s a video entitled ‘Tolevia’s Massacre’ online and we’ll pray for the souls of the recently departed. What else do you want me to say?”

“Sigh…” With Arik having also failed in providing an answer, Rune could only accept the situation, “I don’t understand why the prospects here would even want to go against a tier 5 monster. Thrill? Battle addiction? This sort of ‘thrill to chance of death’ ratio is not for me. If I can avoid every confrontation with entities much too powerful for me, then I’ll happily do it, even if it’s going to make me somewhat of a coward.”

“There’s a reason everyone we see is where they are today. I’m not going to be the responsible guy and say everyone has their own path, but same as when the Ether Law awoke… Sometimes other people’s choices and ideas are too foreign to understand them,” going slightly philosophical, Arik didn’t try to hide his apprehension of the subject.

“It’s just that…” Losing his words as he tried to answer, Rune eventually lapsed into silence for a few seconds before following, “I can’t come up with a logical reason. They’re obviously not joking, so why? Is it to know what they are faced with? Do they want to know what is at the center? Do they want to see the nest?”

Like a fuse had been lit, a rare frustration made its way to his voice, a frustration born of having personally faced the thing everyone he saw would inevitably come to face if they really kept going.

“All those can be done by sending an ultra-specialized unit above, and it’s not like reaching the nest would give them anything. There is a limit to the leveling rate one can reach by intensely training with death by their side after all.”

“A few weeks ago when I started making a list for what to do with my cosmic mist intent, I came up with a reason that justified going to a nest: Getting an idea for my future 5th stage nature assimilation. But not even once! Not even once I ever considered observing ‘This’ nest!”

Getting worked up as his mind could come with literally tens of reasons why trying to observe this one was a super-bad idea, his voice soon decreased until he lapsed once again into silence.

“So you’re also following the news about the Unending Mountain Dimension?” Feeling like the timing was right, Arik changed the subject definitely.

“Yup,” all traces of his previous frustration at the situation had vanished, as if it had never existed to begin with, “I’ve been following it closely for 3 weeks and already decided to make it my next destination once we finish this one.”

“Weren’t you the one who just said you would try to ‘avoid every confrontation with entities much too powerful for yourself’, those exact same words? It’s a tier 5 dimension from what the net says, and I don’t think everyone is believing in a conspiracy theory, do you believe in it maybe?” Not hesitating to bring up his own words after he announced his decision, Arik eagerly awaited his justification.

“It’s different,” Rune started his justification with an all-round general answer before developing with an explanation he had long since prepared, “No monster can stand a gravity of 10 000 without dedicated masteries, and if they have such masteries, then they don’t have enough slots to take perception-boosting ones. So I’m safe.”

“What a half-assed reason…” Challenging Rune’s justification instantly, he didn’t even try to think about it, “Do you really believe in it? You’re just turning a blind eye cause you decided it's your next destination. Don’t try to fool me with your lies! Impulsive liar! Admit to your sins!”

Getting worked up over the nonsensical explanation he was given the more he thought about it, Arik used momentum to change his trajectory to a backward one and kicked at Rune who came from behind.

Admitting to the whole thing without admitting it, he allowed himself to be sent flying in punishment and repentance, rolling on the ground dramatically once he landed.

“Your alcoholic normie’s kick didn’t even scratch me!” Dusting his bones in provocation as he got up, he enunciated each word clearly.

None of the prospects passing by even sent a single glance at them or said a word about their antics, ignoring them as if they didn’t exist.

“I’ll wait until Astryde is next to you, we’ll see then if you’ll still be able to bullsh*t your way with nonsense,” turning back without looking, Arik seemed to have a lot to say but was holding himself back.

However, Rune caught up to him after 5 seconds of acceleration and started his brainwashing-slash-teaching again, “I read a lot about dimensions lately now that I decided a tier 5 dimension was my next destination, and from what I learned-”

“Hush! Talk to me when we reach Astryde.”

“Sigh… Ok,” he finally categorically said his opinion, “You’ll see the light once I lay out my thousands of arguments, and you’ll even become jealous.”

After Rune surrendered to the circumstances, the two focused on reaching the front camp and arrived approximately 10 minutes after departing the front line. The gain of 5 minutes came from Rune not sightseeing along the way.

There, they found Astryde and reunited for the first time in 3 weeks.

Though she seemed a bit confused as to why Rune brought back Arik when she said she would send a message later, she adapted swiftly and changed her schedule in an instant by starting to explain her finding in the most direct way.

Once she finished making the hype climb up by explaining all the hard work she got through and everything, she finally said the thing her two friends wanted to hear the most, “According to a fully verified piece of intel I got, a tier 7 entity, presumably retired for lack of a better term, settled around a certain area I know the approximate coordinates of between the years -1385 and -1382.”

And she wasn’t over, “That’s a short timeframe, so there’s a chance the whole time segment will be corrupted, but I’m sure it’s true. And isn’t that the best thing for us? So we’re going there! It’ll be a marvelous conclusion! Once we find the place and I extract everything I can, I think it’ll be time to go back.”

“I also give my vote in favor of concluding our bone region adventure once we do that. And as it’s now 2 votes, Arik’s opinion doesn’t matter and we can switch to a new subject,” Rune immediately agreed with her as it completely suited his agenda.

Then he felt a mosquito’s bite level of impact on his back right shin bone. It was Arik the mosquito striking back in annoyance.

“My ether drink making process is close to completion and I should soon get my specialization, so as long as you give me a few more weeks of time I can be ready to leave without regrets,” stating his own situation to his eager-to-leave friends, Arik knew that they would accommodate him even if they had to change their whole schedule.

“Don’t worry about it,” Astryde reassured him, “The area we need to reach is neither close nor far, it’s just… A week of travel from here? And it’s an area, not a precise set of coordinates. So the chance of me diving in exactly the right place on my first try is low.”

“A week? Doesn’t that mean we’ll be able to come back and use a convoy to go back?” Arik immediately brought up something Rune hadn’t thought of at all: The possibility to go back with minimal efforts.

She nodded at that assumption, “Unless something like very big and angry tier 5 monsters wiping everyone out happens, then we should effectively be able to fetch a ride and even be paid a little for it by acting as security.”

“Sounds like a plan, freak the few interesting points we found before, best let others figure them out for us,” completely convinced, Arik copied her nod as he fully approved of their future course of action.

Then he looked at Rune by turning his skull towards him very explicitly.

Before the target of his empty look could react to the slight chill he felt in reaction, he changed the subject by asking a question that seemed a bit too targeted, “What would you say to a fresh tier 4 who wants to enter a recently discovered tier 5 dimension?”

And Astryde immediately understood the situation and similarly looked at Rune who had idled by as the two of them had discussed the group plan, “By making a lot of assumption on the situation… I would say he has a death wish.”

‘Well, it’s time Rune. Time to convince them with your impeccable logic.’

Knowing it was his turn, he resolved himself and shamelessly opened his connected screen to look at a certain note document he had used to convince himself what he was doing was completely justified.

“Hu hum! So, let me start first with my understanding of what the tier 5 Unending Mountain Dimension will be like…”

…

Once Astryde and Arik truly tried to understand his point of view, they eventually stopped believing they needed to put Rune into a mental asylum and only believed he had become too arrogant and overconfident.

Even when he exposed all the issues he had already started to resolve and the tens he had already solved, they started to nitpick on the details.

“And you got something worth it?” Astryde asked after Rune claimed to have gotten a guidance package for his growth mastery from the research leader of the growth mastery research faculty.

“Yup, she even went beyond what I expected. From what I understood from her message, she had to make an archive request for me to get those pieces of information,” he replied with all the details he could, “If you don’t know what an archive request is, it’s just sending someone back to get the info you want from the globalized information board. That simple.”

Doing the math for a second, the two realized that an archive request with such a quick return didn’t just involve teleporting, it also involved resetting the tier 1 dimension teleportation through the EP Market not only once, but two times.

First teleporting from the Endless to the Universe, then paying 100 000 000 EP for teleporting from the Universe to the Deep Void, the only dimension allowing ether lifeforms to survive. And then paying 100 000 000 EP one more time for resetting the teleportation cooldown and going back to the Endless after getting all the information.

However, their incessant questions and nitpicking about the perfect explanation he had provided and more started to frustrate him, “Can we stop talking about that now? I need to… Hu… Check my leveling notifications I haven’t checked for 3 months. I need to do that.”

“You can postpone it for longer if you held back for 3 months,” Arik ridiculed him for his lame and vain attempt at making an excuse.

“He’s right, why don’t you explain to me once more in more detail how you came to the conclusion that a tier 5 environmental-type dimension was overall less deadly for you than for others? Skip the basics like ‘all monsters aren’t tier 5’ and things like that,” Astryde called his obviously most flawed theory not for the second time, not for the third time, but for the fourth time!

“Nope. I’m not doing it again, you heard everything right and I believe in most of what I said. Tier 5 have only a maximum boost of 50% in their stats compared to tier 4, 3 additional mastery slots, and a build that is allowing them to survive in their environment, that’s all.”

Calmly stating the main points of his argument for the fourth time in a row, Rune didn’t show any weaknesses even under the heavy assault that had already lasted more than an hour.

“Ok. You know what tier 5 entities are, then how did you deduce you would be able to survive if you entered?” Even after he repeated it 4 times, Astryde still didn’t understand how he made his shortcut to arrive at the conclusion that it was safe.

“Why not just wait for information to come up first, then? It seems that your current explanation relies on a few things like a lower monster density and activity than the bone region, a certain dimensional structure, and an already established hierarchy,” pitching in from the side, Arik finally allowed Rune to see the light by suggesting to take a step back.

“Yeah,” Astryde also agreed to stop arguing about a pointless debate with a result that could totally change depending on information they didn’t have, “I still need to learn about what happened in the last 3 weeks, I also need to sleep… Let’s say we depart in 2 days?”

Her two friends didn’t comment and just nodded, agreeing to go with her flow.

With the debate having come to a close, the three of them began to make their own preparations.

Arik sent a few messages and bid goodbye to a few people personally, it seemed that he had made a few, not a lot, friends despite his weird character.

Astryde did exactly as she planned. She actualized her knowledge of the current situation of the IGS and then went to sleep.

As for Rune, once he was left alone and knew he had to sleep sooner rather than later before his group departed for their last destination, he decided to make a clean sweep of his masteries’ leveling notifications.

‘2 months of fighting bone golems incessantly followed by 3 weeks of intermittent and balanced training… If all of them didn’t reach tier 4, then something is definitely wrong!’

A bit worried but still mainly content with what he had done over the course of those close to 3 months, he finally willed his independent ether soul to bring up the masteries he had kept hidden for maybe too long.