Despite being caught by the track unit and losing his insignia, Rune didn’t change his plan of enjoying the crowded capital 1 week before the event started.
Unseen by all, he arrived at the west capital sector and went to see with his own eyes the grand stadium that he just had to lift his head to see. It was where the main activity of the event would take place.
The underground part was covered in perception-blockers so he couldn’t see it, but the above-ground structure was for all to see.
A circle of 3 kilometers in diameter demarcated the contestant's ground and the spectator area, only an overloaded sight and perception sphere could truly directly observe everything from the stands prepared, for others, they would have to be content with screens relegating what was happening.
The preparations were still ongoing, and the most obvious were the pre-marked stands, wide paths and small stalls were the success recipe of the cultural event, so of course, it would also be used at the event predicted to gather so many people.
In concentric circles, a wide area of more than 100 kilometers square was planned to host the event and give a chance for anyone to shine through and let the world know they had a talent and the determination to go further.
Unfortunately, Rune was too early and there was nothing interesting to do here other than observing the flow of similarly curious people, so he went on to explore the rest of the west capital sector.
…
A sun cycle went by and it was night again.
Rune had truly gone all-in on urban exploration, discovering strange gatherings of people, listening to weird people, seeing hopeful people who opened a temporary shop to sell unique artworks…
‘I don’t need to sleep, others also don’t need to sleep, so maybe I can continue wandering about until the event starts?’
He formulated plans he didn’t even really want to do as he didn’t know what to do anymore, at this point, it wasn’t enjoyable aimless wandering anymore, it was just pointlessly walking around without the desire to know more.
His initial excitement of getting out and seeing the current situation had quickly worn off and now he wanted to go back.
‘If I could teleport to the tier 4 zone of the mountainous region right now… Just myself on a peak at 40 kilometers from the ground…’
He started to think about the things limiting him, really the only things. And it wasn’t the first time he was doing that.
‘But I’m so weak, and my stats aren’t ready, and the expedition fronts are gone anyway… Maybe I can go back to the hole tunnel and just take the plunge? I can try to contact Olivia to get some info on the research advancement.’
Finding something to do, he decided to not call her but just send her a message, she was still in a crunch period, and it wasn’t like he would leave if the answer was positive that he could go.
And he got an immediate reply.
[Olivia: I’ll ask and send you what I get]
‘If I could do one thing, what would it be…’
Thinking about that, Rune contemplated all the things he planned to do.
‘Growth mastery cohesion second specialty, not possible. The firework path needs a purge. Intent tinkering, yes if I find nothing else. Adventuring, if only… Terror unit work would be fun. Dream unit thin-’
He stopped walking for a moment.
‘Dream unit…’
His eyes got sharp for a moment, before returning to normal.
‘That… Certainly sounds fun…’
Opening the guide, he searched for the only thing he could link to the dream unit, the Dream dimension.
‘Dream dimension, theorized to be overlapped with the fabric of the Ether Law, making it accessible from everywhere exactly like the Endless is. History has proven this dimension to have the power to interact with the real world through the existence of ‘Corruption’, see the ‘Dream Corruption’ section to know more…?’
Despite finding the introduction weird, Rune still continued until he found the crunchy and crispy parts.
‘No masteries related to the dream dimension have ever been observed. It’s also impossible to do anything other than going with the flow in it, slightly guiding the flow of where your awareness is taken is something that can only be acquired with experience…’
‘To access the Dream, you must free your awareness from its ether soul core, letting it take to the flow that is always present everywhere, this process can take between 1 hour and 8 hours. First-timers be warned, years are needed before becoming able to only slightly direct where you’ll end up, and more years are needed before becoming able to exit your own dream territory.’
After reading this, Rune decided that maybe he had just found a fabulous past-time, though he still had to try it for real and discover why the guide emphasized so much the fact that he would have no control.
Going back to the park in 1 hour and a half, he found a random bed in the living area and started the process of connecting with the Dream dimension.
Without him realizing after ten minutes of effort, he started to sleep with his awareness unlinked with his ether soul.
And he connected to the Dream 4 hours later.
It was that simple.
…
“Peeing from the top of a mountain! Life achievement done!”
“Maybe we can take a sample below? A simple scanner and we would find pee at the top.”
“The forest is too dense, and this area is full of thorny disgusting squirming things, so you’ll do it alone, I’m exhausted anyway…”
“Why is it so hot… I’m sure my pee has evaporated before landing!”
“Oh…”
“Oh…”
Jules and Romain were speechless at the thought process of Rune, how could they have been grouped with this n*tjob? Was it because they decided it to be so?
Anyway, this field stage was too hot to work fast, so they could only try to scan for a time as their legs were burning from too much ascending.
…
“It’s so late…”
“We left so early, how come we arrived so late?”
“The culprits are the coffee-addicted teachers, they like to take breaks too often, and why didn’t we just go to the mountain chain not far from here?”
“They wanted to flex for sure!”
On the way back from the field trip, it was like this that the end happened.
…
It wasn’t somewhere he knew this time.
It was in the middle of a vast desert, a place he was sure he had never gone to before.
From far away, he could see a wall of something dark approaching, but he couldn’t move, it wasn’t the real world.
The wall approached, and he started to feel something inside him, something he seldom felt in his real life, a mix of coldness, despair, and acceptance.
True coldness, something he hadn’t felt for… For so long he couldn’t remember when he got cold last.
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The sun was shining brightly on the desert, but he only felt cold, his whole body was paralyzed from this cold.
From his perception sphere, only very dizzy pictures entered his mind, and only when he turned his head did he see that similar humanoid shapes were standing near him.
Focusing as much as he could, he only heard incomprehensible words he couldn’t understand, so he stopped trying and only observed.
The dark wall was approaching fast, and with it, it seemed that the sun was darkening.
Rune’s awareness present here couldn’t even fathom the speed of this dark wall.
“What a miraculous coincidence.”
Reacting to this sentence, Rune tried to turn his head, but he couldn’t.
“I only tried to contact you cause I received the message, but for it to really succeed… Where are we anyway?”
“It looks like…”
“But did it connect with the central flux?”
Muttering reached his ears, but Rune stopped trying and only kept observing the dark wall.
The dark wall inspired him something.
And the darkening sun also inspired him something.
The desert in this context also inspired him something.
After making his conclusion, it was like the person who connected to him also received the information, but he could communicate it.
“The Eclypse Arcadia…”
Even his awareness reacted to this word despite already knowing what this dream was about.
“So you successfully connected to the Eclypse Arcadia main flux and were brought here, then are those the remaining memories of people who saw the Arcadia’s expansion in person? Or… Are they…”
As if to answer his question, the dark wall was soon going to reach their position, and on the bright sun shining upon the desert, it started to get tainted by complete darkness from the center.
“Maybe those are the memories of people who died to it. There’s a reason it’s classified as the number 1 unstoppable disaster. I read that even tier 7 died during its birth, it’s really an Arcadia we can only read in the most ancient, archaic, and lost forums of the board…”
The person was very talkative, keeping on talking as if to spread his knowledge and his ability to talk.
“Oh, mother! Why is it so cold! How come we haven't died yet? Are we impersonating tier 6 entities or what?”
Inescapably, the sun was completely tainted in black, and the dark wall was as if before them, extending towards the sky like the most impressive tsunami to have ever existed.
A blink of an eye later, the dark wall passed by them, and Rune’s awareness only felt cold, the legendary bent cold law of the Eclypse Arcadia was transmitted to his being as if he was really here.
The heat maintaining his life was escaping, and like the fact that the amount of health someone had was finite, his heat was the same.
A minute of coldness later, his awareness finally left, hearing only the sound of the sand itself frosting like water and cracking like blocks of glass crashing on hard floors.
The desert was transformed into something else.
It was being integrated into the Eclypse Arcadia, an unmoving world of ice and darkness.
…
With his awareness connecting back to his ether soul, Rune once again felt the very familiar sensation of being in control, the input of his different senses and his perception were established back to normal.
Then he opened his eyes and stood up.
Sleeping felt good, and the additional Dream journey added a good stimulating thing to it.
Being aware of how much time he thought he was under, he looked at a clock and observed he was completely wrong.
He thought he was under for 4 hours, but in truth, he slept for 8 hours, double what he thought.
‘Well… If those were true memories, then that was absolutely… Absolutely… I’ll not think that further.’
Having found a pass-time for the future, Rune happily decided to go back to tinkering.
He still had 2 stages to complete before getting to the problematic part of grinding himself against his own creation to improve it.
‘Maybe some already created their own version of perception training based on the existence of the mist dome? Do we have some sort of communal repository where everyone can share their training?’
Finding this thought to be very rational, he decided to send it to the Undecided discussion group, he would very much like having a few hundred people do his future work now, just having to adapt it to his own use.
Finished with sending the proposition, he even added some references to ideas he saw before but that to his knowledge weren’t acted upon, like an Undecided Request Box or the Undecided Investment Fund.
The names were fun, the ideas behind them weren’t so. The request box idea came from Utopia who wanted to have an access to communicate with the users and possibly step in if they had a problem, a perfectly righteous mindset.
The investment fund was the same idea as what the Undecided had decided to do with Adreana, if they could gain more money and efficiency in the short or long term, then they should keep an open mind.
Who knows? Maybe someone with a special element or specialization just needed a boost that they couldn’t find anywhere but if they requested it here, it could change?
Walking slowly towards the mist dome as he was pondering that, Rune took 10 minutes to reach the first established dome mist, first because there was a second one opened just a few days ago, except this one didn’t have the 2nd stage intent in it at all.
‘What about a complete cosmic mist dome? With chaos interference and signal cut-off? Sounds like a challenging dome to make once I finish the 5th stage.’
Entering, he had this thought, so he wrote it down in his personal notes. He didn’t know how powerful a 1st to 5th stage cosmic mist could be, so he wouldn’t make empty promises without proof.
…
On the eve of the prospects finding event opening, everyone had slowly started to gather.
In the living area, a gathering was observing Astryde being surrounded by a strange flow of energy that circled around her entire body, but more precisely around her head.
“Arik took 2, Gar took 8, Rune hid everything, Adreana took 4…” After 5 minutes, she reported what she could find with her newly acquired time watcher specialized mastery to her friends, and those listening by extension.
“Anything else? What did I do with my wooden blocks?” Gar asked, ascertaining her ability as she asked him to.
“You… Separated them and… Sent some to the right?”
It was visible she was having difficulties seeing consistent pictures, she was watching the same sequence again and again and filling the gaps with the context and some imagination.
“And how many blocks are still on the table when Arik took 2?”
She rewound to that time a few minutes earlier and observed once again, “Did Rune hide the table?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Then there’s a big hole there and I’m not leveled enough to see it.”
Time watchers were people who were often respected, not the amateur and apprentice like Astryde currently was, but the eminent one who could rewind to millions of years ago.
Those were able to see sceneries that didn't exist anymore, people that had ceased to be long ago, civilizations lost to disasters, and unmentionable secrets that should have been buried under the dust of history or the sands of time.
“What if I told you the table was moving? I made it move left and right repeatedly, does it make sense for you or am I lying?”
“It’s clearly a lie,” Astryde wasn’t gullible enough to take the first explanation given to her when she had the event happening under her eyes.
“What about up and down then?”
“The table didn’t move.”
“So the blocks moved everywhere? On their own?”
This time, she focused more, trying to see if energy threads could have done that, and then maybe she could find the culprit.
“There are multiple disturbances, but they’re coming from everywhere, completely untraceable, and they disappear when Arik puts down his 2 blocks, it’s possible someone moved the blocks on the table very quickly.”
“Yup,” Gar smiled as he put a hand on her shoulder, “That’s the answer, and the energy threads came from Arik himself if you want to try and see how you could have deduced that.”
Astryde didn’t even try and the flowing energy instantly quieted down to nothing, she was back to the present.
“Sigh… It’s so hard to keep the cycle steady, how could people without affinity specialty do that even after years of training? It’s so looped and warped when I just want to advance a few seconds!”
Frustration, the exact same one everyone suffered from and some were still suffering from was infused in her voice, externalizing the hard beginning was a good way to progress quicker.
“You’re last Gar… it’s pathetic… Stop thinking about money…” From behind, Arik disclosed the truth about Gar being the only one having not finished getting his path’s specialized mastery.
The smile on his face however didn’t betray anything, “I can get my path as long as I want to invest enough time. But I can’t get money in the quantity I want whenever I want, so it’s obvious what I need to focus on! It’s money!”
“He’s not wrong,” Rune approved of this and nodded solemnly like he was the incarnation of wisdom, it was sound reasoning for him.
“Oh! Utopia finally decided to end his romantic date, let’s welcome him with applause!” Astryde suddenly changed her behavior.
In his perception, Rune saw Utopia leave the fighting area after yet another beating by Lounae, who similarly joined them.
Nelo who was observing from the single star dome also stood up, there were only a few hours before the start of the event, and they didn’t want to miss it.
Once everyone was gathered, Utopia took the lead as he was used to, and no one tried to stop him.
“We’re going to watch from far-away, no one wants to go into the massive crowd, right? And I don’t want anyone to have to bend their sphere… Sigh… What a dilemma.”
Getting a weird introduction in, he immediately followed.
“So, who here doesn’t have 6 000 perception? Because it just so happens that I have the proceedings from all the 3 521 subscription fees we got so far, so don’t worry! It’s only 800 000 000 EP at a ratio of 1, and I know nobody got below ratio 1 for perception. I also know, Rune, me, and Astryde already are beyond 6 000!”
Disregarding the fact that they were in the middle of the living area with a few dozen people listening, the ones who still didn’t leave when the opening was dawning, Utopia calmly announced everything calmly and confidently.
Realizing it was the moment where he shared their earnings for a weird reason, four people reacted to this: Arik, Gar, Adreana, and Nelo.
Perception was important, but not the most important for them, so they didn’t invest in it.
Once they received what they needed, the group of 8 people departed, leaving the training park unsupervised.
Material damages were the only things that could happen realistically, and they didn’t care about those.
As for the situation where another energy domain path user decided to wreak havoc, they could just redo everything in a few weeks with Adreana now being able to empty a dome of 500 meters in diameter in 3 days.