Each second then becomes all about how to increase my exploration percentage. My mini avatars, grown on mass for a single purpose land all over the place and I taste the subtle differences during my brief stops to better determine how high each place should be on my list.

Though it did sound a bit stupid to do that for mountains given that I already had a pretty good idea of how they stacked, that wasn’t true for other types of significant places which were a lot more open to interpretation. Though even if mountains were more predictable, it wasn’t a perfect system.

After a few stops near the Himalayan range, I fly to a completely different place without sending anything beforehand to take a peek. But I’m fairly certain that in its own way was just as meaningful as Mount Everest. Sure it wouldn’t be the glorious climb and I would be shocked if it gave a title even half as good as the tallest mountain, but there is something about the deepest natural point on Earth.

On the way over I ready myself to dive deeper than any human has before down the Marianna trench. It takes tens of thousands of Qi points, but with the help of a few of my industrious seeds, we managed to painstakingly grow two meter thick solid shell of the strongest wood possible. A perfect sphere was the strongest shape we could make, though in the end, I added an overlayer forming a tail with a buoyance device to become a little more aerodynamic, or rather hydrodynamic. That tail, however, didn’t directly attach to anything and so it didn’t put any strain on the main shell.

After a moment admiring my new vehicle, my mind goes back to my last two titles.

Title: The highest peaks

You are the first to climb to the top of all 14 highest mountains on Earth in a feat that should be impossible.

+3% to all stats.

+5% easier time climbing mountains.

+1% to one class special effect

Asian Explorer. (Tier 1 / Unknown)

All related skills are 1% easier to level.

+1% to all stats

+2% sense of direction while exploring

The Asian explorer title did seem to require a little less time if I discount climbing Everest which by itself took about three days, but I don’t regret it. All that matters are the slowly increasing benefits that I could extract in an ever more efficient manner.

Sinking to the bottom of the sea, at first simply with my skin against the pressure of the water, but soon inside the protective shell another problem suddenly pops up in my mind.

I can’t touch the outside, so will the system consider it an achievement? If I slowly sink to the bottom of the ocean and waste all this time for nothing, I would get mad.

So I start to run through the scenarios in my head.

What I could do to approach the outside?

Mana shields, portals and allowing columns of the material to cross into my submarine all sounded barely possible, even if each was replete with problems of their own. Instead of studying and experimenting with the hundreds of discoveries that the people made in the inner world had worked hard on, I drive my focus on this.

Five kilometers down, I start to hear the groaning of the wood conforming to the much higher pressures and the first iterations that sprouted from my ideas start to run into problems. A single thin shield layer simply can’t hold on against the immense pressure difference and from how much deeper I would have to go, the obvious solutions run into problems of their own.

Like is the case with simply using thicker shields, which solved part of the problem while introducing other complications. I could easily implement a shield a few millimeters wide but that wouldn’t be strong enough and I doubt that anything less than a half-meter thick one would be enough and each kilometer deeper if my estimates were off, would require even more strength.

Combining two of my ideas, I carve out on the outside a snake-like column that is as long as myself and then start to engrave shields throughout the outside. The power density isn’t there without the will of a living being and I will need to infuse it with Qi for maximum power, but the base gold inlaid with my portal shenanigans is quickly in place and I start testing in such a way that even if it collapses, no water will bulldoze inside the craft which would expose me to a lot of danger considering the immense pressures.

Just 100 psi pushing water used to be enough to cut skin. But even if my skin was tougher than hardened leather, that was pressure equivalent to 70 meters in depth, not over a hundredfold deeper.

My first real test shows the bugs in the design, but soon, even with mana and a modicum of one of my seeds will the column of water reached an equilibrium let alone when I use Qi.

Still, I keep testing for another two minutes relying on prodigious willpower and precision making each rune stronger and more efficient to survive even my wildest expectations for the new depth of the Marianna trench.

Then I carefully carve out channels in the shell to allow that opening which is the only thing I manage to get working in such a rush, but it is also the thing that most seemed likely to work without me having to step outside.

With a shell of denser wood than ebony, I sink like a stone behind a two meter thick solid layer.

To go back up I can inflate a balloon, but I don’t need to slow down, o I just let the higher density of my ‘submarine’ pull me down.

If the Marianna Trench's deepest point even approached the more than doubling in depth I had seen on Everest I would be taking a craft that was undoubtedly going to be stretched to the limit and introduce another failure point, but even then I can’t just skip it, I to at least try. There was too much riding on me and my gut was quite insistent that if I didn't try anything I would be left sucking my thumb.

Even with my perception field, I can feel the lack of light, the true loneliness and that hint of fear of going deeper than anyone, or rather any human from Earth.

I reach further than even the deepest drill managed to make way, down where nothing human made belonged. Invading this place of darkness I let gravity drag me down. I half expect a giant squid to come out and attack me if not a full on sea monster. Probably not Godzilla, but maybe a distant cousin of the black thing that haunted the instances in the void. That given flesh to sustain itself on our realm.

Each second that I think about it doesn’t build my anxiety into a catatonic state but instead becomes almost a game reliving my tension.

Though even as I kinda know there isn’t anything within a good range given my perception field and Pando’s observations lend credit to the idea that there weren't any monsters hiding deep undersea. The system population of mobs through a region starts with the smallest creatures first, so maybe they hadn’t arrived yet. Even in regions where we expected to encounter a few larger ones, there wasn’t a single soul heavier than a bull, let alone a sea monster. Only the animals that managed to survive were large creatures.

Another pulse of data arrives from the people with Pando, but I just let it update the message buffer. I will eventually move out of easy contact range, but while I was nearby it was worth the expenditure of a thousand mana here and there just in case I needed the info while outside the range of contact.

There are hundreds of inhospitable places that Pando ‘couldn’t’ reach and even a few that the system seems to be purposefully fighting back against his encroachment. Everest, for example, had been both until recently.

Still, even if these places are the exception and I may be proven totally wrong and encounter hordes of monsters that would put even the Titan on his back feet. After all, he may be exceedingly strong for his level, but he is also without class and even with the higher cap before having to choose compared to us humans, he would forever be limited to 100 if he doesn’t change his mind.

I lean back and in the cramped corner of my tiny craft, straining against the outside and I start to see the real limits of wood, fraying not just in its capabilities of being a fully functioning and mobile thing if I infuse it with Nature mana. But it is beyond what it can handle as water tries and succeeds in seeping in on the outer layers showing a new phenomenon to me.

12 kilometers, 15, 18, 20 kilometers come and pass and the changes threaten to collapse the entire thing so that I will become either a mashed potato or potato puree dish and I don’t care for either of these results. I want to eat potatoes, not become them.

A splintering sound sends a jolt through my spine and I halt my descent. It only took an instant to get a sense of the changes on my sphere, and the strain is greater than I calculated. I can feel that the fibers aren’t yet at their breaking point, and this was only the wood setting in place, but even if I can dive deeper, my safety margin was now razor thin.

Danger surrounds me, but I can feel the Aether in the air. Nothing that rivals Everest, but my trip over wasn’t a waste. There was something interesting hiding below.

My mind swirls. If I keep going like this I will be crushed. I KNOW that the pressures will transform what was supposed to protect me into the instrument of my demise. But I can’t be TOO far away. I reach just over a kilometer with my perception field, but I can`t even sense the twirls in the water that would indicate I’m a few meters short.

I can’t just give up without going right to the edge of my capabilities.

My perception field perfuses everything and the only thing I can sense are the minuscule air bubbles and sediment floating in the water without any gradient that might indicate I’m just a hundred meters off the bottom of the ocean. I try to think of something, anything that would let me go even a little deeper. A look at the hole that should let me ‘touch’ the outside and hopefully get whatever achievement was available.

The only solution that comes to mind would have dangers, but I know that anything else would require me to go to the surface to make another stronger vehicle. So I lower the permeability of the shields. Water makes its way inside as I replaced solid barriers with mana powered coffee filters. Very thick filtering devices under immense pressure.

The water swirls with Aether and my heart starts to anticipate what I could gain from this trip.

My feet, torso and then head are covered in water and I carefully modulate how much pressure the outside seeps in. The equivalent of a kilometer then two and when I get to three and not even the pair of portals of pressurized oxygen is enough to fully equalize the inner world portals in my lungs with the outside pressure I stop and let it drop.

A quick message for everyone and they start to work on a solution as I’m being forged by reality and my mind whirls like house-sized boulders rubbing together for a final solution. A millstone that could feed the entire world starts and stops, grinding the problem down, and even if it was a diamond and I needed time I knew I could do it. Just 3 kilometers isn’t my limit.

I let my mind adopt the same outlook as the Titan, the being that let the world forge it in quite a literal sense. Though I didn’t share their biology, humans had some of that quality as I imagine all living beings did and I use that capability to adapt. Even before the system, with all my faults and inefficient outlook, I could run as fast as Usain Bolt, deadlift as much as athletes twice my weight, hold my breath for a few minutes beyond the old record and do feats of dexterity reliably that few ever manage. All that was encapsulated in a single body with a limited amount of training that I allowed myself beyond the grueling pace I kept on the grove.

I could have done so much more if I only had gotten out of my own head.

I start to feel the effects of the Aether in a way that is transformative, in ways the very opposite of the ‘easy’ gains to be made in the mountain, the climb, reaching into one sense to become more, to grow and climb, but being here, to have the courage to look within and see what I could let go, what I needed to let go and abandon, my habits, my crutches my failures. That was just as profound and even if ugly, it was just as essential.

I let the pressure forge me into a hint more than I was.

I let all that I’m flow in my veins. Streams of life flow from my stores as I let the outside equalize within myself,

Cognitively, I know that the pressure is increasing, 4 then 5 kilometers and my body is already at the limits of what should be possible even accounting for the increase in stats, but I don’t stop there. I let Qi and Vigor guide me, a hint of Pure Aether flow throughout myself and I even gift some to the depths along with the flakes that the system was so eager to steal from me.

This feels right.

Nearly by itself, a shield forms around me helping alleviate and equalize the pressure on my skin, so I start to guide more and more Qi in the precise runic shapes to support it.

I let the place that breeds reflection reforge me.

It was dark and damp. It is not the usual mental image of freedom, of the eternal climb, but I know that it is just as necessary. To see the dark the ugly and what deserves to be burned to a crisp. Expelled from my body, my mind and my soul even if it costs me. Things so fundamental that in many contexts it wouldn't even be questioned, the only question is if I’m strong enough to do it.

As I approach I think of going back and preparing more, but as soon as the idea crosses my mind, I know I can’t give up, the least of reasons because this is the only chance I’m going to get. I already crossed the critical height and I don’t want to lose this fleeting chance.

Each second my cells are overwhelmed, blood pools in the wrong place, and my bones creak, but I keep my lotus form and heal stronger than before as Life itself permeates each of my cells.

I’m healed again and again and again.

The Titan's words echo in my mind.

It is good for skin, it is good for bones, it is good…

He had complained that the waters were too shallow, even the deepest wells let alone the meter deep rivers. Each second something overcomes me as I become someone that can survive this depth and I just keep increasing the internal pressure, as the fraying of the wood outside gets worse and worse.

Twenty-one kilometers and nothing.

Twenty-two kilometers and nothing.

Twenty-three kilometers and nothing.

I assume nearly ten kilometers of pressure on my body to allow my protective shell to survive, but it is closing in on its limits in more ways than just the pressure threatening to break it, but I don’t hesitate, sinking as fast as possible.

My body simply goes beyond anything I ever imagined, the very pressure trying to change how the atoms attach to each other. Oxygen and nitrogen behave weirdly, my nervous system is overwhelmed. Even the tiny air pockets in my bones threaten to collapse before I drill down minuscule channels and let my blood completely fill each cavity.

Aspen reaches in to monitor what is happening and the same sharing cycle with his sap in my veins and blood helps to feed the stores of my resources outside my body.

My mind narrows and even simple decisions are instinctive.

When I reach 24 kilometers and well beyond the point where I could reason, I see the bottom of the Marianna trench at the edges of my perception field. The outer layers of my craft become toilet paper as I keep driving down and I’m forced to let more and more pressure surpass all rhyme and reason for my limits, but I don’t even slow down.

Each meter is like another hammer strike forging and shaping me, but all that passes right over my head, as all that I become: ‘the one that dives’. The world becomes unidirectional and nothing else exists. The craft completely disintegrates in such an unnatural way that for an instant even pierces my fogginess. But that only lasts an instant least I perish here.

All that is left helping to protect me, is the strongest mana shield covering my skin and my inner world, but I don’t halt. Still deeper I drive with Aether in the air as I feed my own understanding out and some of it is cycled back to me.

Stretching my whole body and putting my hand forward, I touch the ground. The loose sand puffs out.

I hit my limit, but instead of fear, I feel the embrace of my friends in the inner world taking care of me and the only thing that keeps me going is my Life resource. For even with all the help in the world I couldn't survive if I didn’t hold that.

And then blackness engulfs me.