A week after the simultaneous announcements, the IGS government put onboard (The online word equivalent for the information board) a specialized forum dedicated to creating a Void Dimension map, with the reason of preparing the logistics for what was to come.
This week also gave enough time for the most reckless to enter the Deep Void Dimension and get exciting and horrific news out for every true explorer of the dimensions.
[RecklessGuy11: The beasts in the Deep Void Dimension can be killed, they should be of the same tier as us, tier 1, with a 500 individual stat limit. As long as you can overcome their health regeneration and their cohesion over 1 minute, they’ll die.]
With 6 months of preparation under its belt, the IGS dimensional sector had billions of avatars that had pushed their stats high enough to be considered as being ready to fight.
The fusion of the universe’s dimensional sectors by the Ether Law just made those billions become a bigger billions, the number remaining approximative.
This fusion done by the Ether Law’s increased power had gathered 5 different dimensional sectors into one in the case of the IGS’s dimensional sector.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, no major power similar to the IGS appeared to exist or showed signs of existing.
All integrated dimensional sectors’ civilizations communicated and shared intel, but without doing anything more. Even if they had wanted to do something, they just didn’t even have the interstellar scale travel technology available.
So for the IGS, it meant that their unknown civilizations contact and integration department, which had not been affected that much compared to some other departments like the internal stability department, became corked by demands for shared technologies and general help.
As the ancient Azoran Federation’s tradition of free sharing of technologies with no conditions attached, hadn’t changed even after hundreds of thousands of years, no one saw any problem in publicly sharing everything they knew.
Technology sharing was even considered one of the core contact and integration tenets, so the government just opened an only-view forum where they shared all the technology by writing it down.
It was greatly inefficient of course, but what else could they do when so many unknown civilizations were suffering from possible extinction-class cosmic events and only needed this bit of help?
One day maybe, the information board would allow for images and videos, but it would at least have to wait for the next Ether Law power-up.
Until then, civilizations too far to profit from personal help would have to be satisfied with the step-by-step guide to the galaxy made by the IGS.
The advertisement from the now recognized 3 path organizations had the expected effect of popularizing a platform accepted by everyone: It was an official place where fundamentals knowledge was shared freely despite their importance.
The increased ether density hadn’t made the Ether Wiki all-powerful, unfortunately, there were still no definitive and detailed answers concerning ether souls and tiers, so self-discovery was still the answer.
And amidst all this.
Rune, being only a human, from a simple background, wasn’t ready to fight at all.
His renewed plan included intruding and farming in dangerous grounds, participating in the dangerous grounds landmark IGS plan, as well as practicing bit by bit his fundamentals masteries and seeing if he had a particular talent in any fields. Nothing else.
After farming for a whole week, gathering 478 697 EP while primarily trying to manipulate slash deform his perfect perception sphere, he decided to stop and prepare his proof and civilian papers, as well as every document that he did or didn’t prepare for his previous professional life but will in the end, probably never get to use.
He packaged everything with an adhesion request paper and sent it to the 3 path organizations.
As the system was mostly automated, he received an account and was added as a member to different private forums onboard.
“Ah~ Finally sent everything, that was a pain in the a*s,” Rune complained good-naturedly after he finished candidating for the 3 path organizations: The Martial Supreme Dojo, the New Energy Institute, and the Psychic Union.
He just had to send proof that he was really involved in the whole dimensions exploring thing and confirm that he had never acted against the law and whatever. It was a typical IGS’s administration template where everything was managed more on the side of the organization than the side of the individual.
To Rune’s greatest pleasure, he just had to send a minimum of info, link his citizen ID, send an indication to his proof, and that was it. No massive paperwork was involved. No annoying physical tests.
After all that, he immediately accessed the psychic union’s website and downloaded the freely given prepared guide.
…
A few hours later, in Rune’s bedroom.
On a second open screen, this time not of the system type, more like the digital holographic type screen, the official advertisements for the Adventurer’s Society and the Dimensions Department’s Patrollers were playing. And they were catchy as heck.
Sentences like “It’s only the beginning of the journey to your dream” or “We will advance together and shine or fall together”, were mixed together in a 4-minute long video that was really optimized to make your hot-bloodedness take over.
It could even put shonen opening themes to shame, the themes of power, adventure, and friendship were put forward for the Adventurer’s Society, whereas righteousness, military order, and unbreakable principles were the central points of the new dimension department.
Why was he watching that? It was of course because he entered a period of discovery and needed some background noise to be at his best.
“Maybe I’m just doing it wrong?” He murmured to himself in doubt.
Rune was trying himself to the training that was given in the psychic union’s spiritual fundamentals guide, more precisely, he was trying the perception sphere manipulation segment.
However, despite having tried his best, he ended up in the same situation he found himself in when he had just started manipulating his awareness, except this time there was no excuse.
He had had his perception sphere active nearly permanently since 6 months ago, he had even started trying to manipulate it actively from the moment he finished with his awareness training.
And now that 6 entire months had passed, he had to face reality: He could do nothing with it.
His perception sphere’s boundaries were like concrete walls, not at all like imaginative walls that could be moved like the guide and all the people onboard said.
The fault of course didn’t lie in the guide. Sure, it was very worldly in its description of how to begin, focusing not on the whole but on only one direction, probably due to the big gap of real knowledge on the subjects discussed, but Rune completely understood what they wanted him to do with his perception.
He just couldn’t do it.
“The start should be an easy step! Why is my perception sphere so solid? Hell! Anyone with 500 stats like I do can do it! Why isn’t this working… That’s it! Penguin yourself! I’m out!” He eventually surrendered from annoyance.
Of course, even having attempted to be more proactive on his perception sphere manipulation training didn’t mean he had stopped his farming activity. The only reason he was even in his bedroom to begin with wasn’t because he wanted to train.
The reason was that Utopia and the brother-sister duo, Nelo and Astryde, had agreed to the get-together to train in the momentum technique together, encountering each other in real life while they were at it.
To join the place where they were going to do it though, Rune had to take a very special spaceship he had never taken before.
‘Ok, just find him on this app, and… Here it is.’
On a messaging app, Rune found Utopia and added him. From there, he then received a link to download a ticket for the place of their meeting, the capital system of the IGS 56th administrative sector of the Milky Way galaxy.
And that’s where there was a problem. Despite belonging to what he considered to be the “top 10%” of all dimensional explorers, he wasn’t rich.
He gained a little by contributing here and there, avatar private message confirmation between others, but he never thought, attempted, or even did a truly rewarding activity.
This led to him not being able to pay for an intergalactic trip from the X125 rural planet, part of the Andromeda galaxy, to the meeting planet located in the Milky Way galaxy.
It had in fact been a surprise that Utopia, Nelo, and Astryde all lived there, as the Andromeda galaxy had thousands of billions of stars and was the economical and cultural center of the IGS, having 5 times as many stars as that of the Milky Way galaxy, and multiple that of the other major galaxies discovered and colonized.
The only thing the Milky Way had for itself was being the birth galaxy of the IGS and its possession of the homeworlds of 3 of the 5 leading species and also of hundreds of major species.
Each of these places was so protected though, that it was only possible to visit them by reserving decades ahead of time.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
And concerning Rune’s intergalactic trip’s ticket, from his knowledge, such trips involved special spaceships, meaning they also involved special prices, for special people, with something special to their name…
For him, taking on such a luxurious trip was close to becoming a monumental event in his life. He was going to another galaxy, and with only an 8-hours expected arrival time from embarking, he for sure was going to enjoy the special treatment as much as he possibly could.
“Let’s just relax for today and ignore this stupid shi… Penguin sphere,” catching his words in the middle, he stopped thinking about training, farming, fighting, stats, and sphere….
Mainly his sphere.
…
The next day, he embarked on a shuttle that took him to the orbital space station. The only other time he had gotten to go there was during a school trip.
It was so long ago however that he didn’t really remember it anymore, so he acted like a tourist, carefully observing everything and everywhere upon arriving.
His family had shown a… Big disinterest in where he’s going.
He had talked to his mom before departing, but either she thought he was joking or she clearly understood what was taking place but the recent dimensional entertainment was too powerful so she stopped caring about her dear son’s life.
After 6 months locked up in his room, farming in the Void Dimension, and only sporadically coming back to drink… Maybe it was normal to feel a little alienated?
When his mom and dad sent him personally once the shuttle arrived though, he also stopped caring about his relationship to his family, they were his family and would forever be. Just this simple action of sending him had erased his inner alienation.
They were sending him as if he was a child leaving on his first long-term trip… As if he was a grown-up leaving the home for the first time to go to his first day of work after getting a job…
Whether they knew he would be gone for at least a month, maybe more, depending on the training time, Rune didn’t know, but worrying for nothing was not his style, so he stopped thinking about it.
His ticket was to be used at a capital-class space station, so he first had to transit at the transportation hub of his sector, then go to an IG dock.
Those docks were specially made to hold spaceships capable of abusing the laws of physics so much that they created the situation where 8 hours were enough to go from one galaxy to another.
If they hadn’t needed the support of the entire IGS to be built and maintained, the number of companies dealing in this type of business would have been more than the current maret where they could be counted on the fingers of two hands.
Nine companies officially dealt in intergalactic travel at a grand scale in the Andromeda galaxy: 3 semi-public one belonging to the government and military, 4 others half-belonging to the Kajos’ Investment Funds, and finally, 2 that dealt in extravagant space cruises.
In X125’s space station, after exiting his shuttle, Rune embarked on the hub road. This road took him to the dock area where lots of people were gathered and walked by like it was just another normal day of work.
Apart from being interested in the station itself and sending blatant inquisitive glances here and there, he ignored the people and tried to find his way to where hub dock 3 was, finding it 10 minutes later.
Using his ticket, Rune was allowed to pass the security barrier and, as it didn’t start an alarm, he continued on the path that ultimately led him to a gigantic cruiser-class commercial transport ship.
Corvette, destroyer, and cruiser were the spaceship classes authorized for civil usage. Above that were battleship-class and titan-class spaceships, controlled by the military or used as administrative sector projects for the economy, culture, or entertainment.
This cruiser-class transport ship was going to take Rune and the other passengers to the main sector transport hub, this trip would take him 20 minutes once they departed.
Embarking as part of the late ones, he searched, found, then sat on the designated place marked on his ticket, and 5 minutes later, the ship started to vibrate.
Rune could feel and see with his 50 perception that they had started moving. In a typical flight like this one, there was a 5 minutes acceleration and safety, followed by 10 minutes of actual travel, and finally, 5 minutes to anchor themselves to their reserved destination dock.
During the 20 minutes trip, he thought about something that perplexed him.
Rich people, and more widely, special people, wanted special things in their life. And the spaceship he was going to embark on was the epitome of specialness.
With its name being Duke of Andromeda, it was not only an intergalactic cruise ship, it was also one of the 5 000 active private transport cruisers with intergalactic reach explicitly designed for civilian use in the Andromeda Galaxy.
And following his increasing expectations and perplexion, when he finally reached the entrance to the IG dock, he finally got ousted from what he was familiar with.
Ornate fast walkways, bodyguards watching him with the corners of their eyes, celebrations going on, celebrating their return or their departures for another galaxy…
It wasn’t the place for an asocial person like him.
‘I’m not going to like this…’
Rune had never learned how to manage this type of stress. He had never stressed about anything involving not interacting with other people, to begin with.
He tried to use logic to control his reptilian brain and suppress his nonsensical thoughts, but so much activity around him made him feel like he intruded in the after-marriage party of people he didn’t know.
It was all just very uncomfortable.
[Rune: If I die, make Utopia join me in the Heaven Dimension.]
He didn’t even wait for an answer after sending this message as he acted following his spectator instinct and found a corner, then he put on his isolating headphone, and started blasting music into his ears.
‘Compensate me for this compensation law god! I’ve never sinned before, why inflict this divine punishment! Why can’t I just enter and visit the Duke of Andromeda’s inside now? I don’t care about what everyone thinks of me, just please don’t make a stranger come talk to me!’
Rune having a mental breakdown was maybe what the Ether Law used as a reason to ignore him, not bothering him at all.
Nobody sent more than a glance at his corner, and from that glance, they only saw a normal young man focused on reading air and listening to music.
40 minutes after Rune arrived, the Duke of Andromeda finally opened its door and the passengers entered.
The first thing he did after embarking was going to his cabin and drop off his travel gear as if he wanted to go to the toilet. Except he wanted to go on an adventure.
The plan of the ship he had seen was so exciting: A game room, a free bar, a 10 stars restaurant incorporating the new energy-infusion cooking technique in the drink and meal, a training room, a swimming pool room… He could find everything he wanted.
But he only had 8 hours.
‘The cruise ships nowadays… Really a bunch of business geniuses.’
Praising the Duke’s owner for his insight into the situation, or more likely the group of employed people that kept having ideas because it was their job, Rune started his adventure by first haphazardly walking everywhere.
His sphere of 50 meters in radius made him able to more easily find the most interesting corners.
He was far from a true country bumpkin, but his curious personality and the large difference between the chosen path of his rural planet, limiting large-scale modernization of a large majority of the planet to instead invest in the whole natural territory's beauty had impacted his life and outlook at its foundation.
If civilians from a true IGS industry center were to come to X125, they would be like Rune now, because vegetations and trees were all specially grown there, a whole continent of flowers and zoos? Unthinkable, too much space wasted.
…
Seven and a half hours later, Rune finished one of the best meals he had to date in his life.
After this delectable moment, he returned to his cabin to gather his gear while doing a last ship tour, taking pictures for his family “just in case”.
Pictures that, like every trip he ever did before, would likely be forgotten and erased.
Soon, the ship was going to exit hyperspace and arrive at the sector Rune wanted to descend at, the main transport hub of the 56th administrative sector.
He was, unfortunately, one of the first few stops, maybe the first actually when he thought about it. Others were going to continue profiting from the amenities available for hours, while he had to take a third ship and transit to his final destination: The capital system of the 56th Milky Way administrative sector.
Half an hour later, everything happened as he expected them to. He transited to another civilian cruiser-class transport ship, and went through a similar-looking main hub as the one he had seen at Andromeda, just the arts and style differed.
Following another 20 minutes trip, he had finally arrived at his destination.
Before his eyes, a planet worthy of being an administrative capital of an intergalactic civilization, the planet A56, extended until the horizon in all directions from the bay window of the orbital space station.
It was a completely artificially managed planet, with no ocean blue or vegetal green to be seen at all. It was completely optimized to allow perfect conditions for life. And just from the view he got, the planet was a mix of gray, white and black gravity-defying buildings.
Taking a shuttle going to the 5th district, he descended at the nearest spot to the meeting point Utopia had sent him.
‘It was enjoyable, but I just had a third of a day off, so it’s time to go back to training… And this stupid sphere training too.’
Looking all around him could at least make him forget the perception sphere manipulation training.
The most notable thing here were the people floating.
Having just arrived, Rune didn’t dare take off… But he could.
As 10% of his avatar's momentum stat was transmitted to him, he had the equivalent of 50 momentum stat, which equaled 0.8 meters per second. And the gravity of this planet was 0.7g, perfect for greater height buildings and easy space-air interface.
Every capital system was chosen from the most special planet of an entire sector. This planet, A56, for example, had an enormous size but kept an extremely weak gravity compared to general telluric planets. And it was all natural, no terraformation involved.
Rune didn’t bother searching for the explanation, he just knew it was a perfect planet even before it was massively changed and adapted to suit the role of capital planet.
[Rune: I just arrived at A56, I’m in front of the building indicated to be the meeting point. Do I fly to the top? There’s no door.]
[Nelo: It’s Utopia’s responsibility, me and Astryde are still 4 hours away.]
[Utopia: Only a true hero can fly, and only a true hero can enter this building, take the heroic path or take the path of shame and beg me to open the hidden door.]
[Rune: It’ll be my first time flying in the Universe Dimension, I think I’m a true hero inside by the way.]
[Astryde: I don’t have maxed out momentum, Nelo’s the same.]
[Utopia: As false heroes treading the path of the energy heretics, you’ll have to walk the path of shame.]
Rune closed the system and instantly started to float up from the ground with a slight spiritual effort.
‘Easier than I thought.’
With a difference of only 1 meter per minute in gravity-momentum equilibrium, he had to accelerate a bit and use his legs and hands to accelerate, but other than that… He could do the same movement he did in the Void Dimension,
The building in front of him was 500-meter high, and using his legs and hands to climb it, he surpassed the top a few minutes later and did an ungraceful twirl before landing.
‘I’m just born cool, nothing I can do.’
The feeling of flying by his own means made him extremely thrilled and completely over excited.
However, upon seeing a flat top with only a single door exposed on what appeared to be a 200 square meters of concrete gray surface without anything…
‘That was probably too unimpressive, let’s just train a lot after seeing if Utopia is a boy or a man.’
Walking to the door, it opened without a hitch, and inside was an elevator.
Stepping into the elevator, its door closed automatically and it started to descend without command, ultimately reopening 10 seconds later, to a simply furnished room.
In this room, there was only a single boy, a very short boy, looking about 9 years old if compared to a human’s size, but considering the light blue hair and white-blue skin, the perfect Rululu indicator, Rune could revise his judgment to 15 or maybe 16 years old, if this boy had had normal growth.
The boy was sitting perfectly still, so Rune, being a true friend, did the most responsible thing with his knowledge about this rululu he had known for months and discussed with daily.
[Rune: Want a hero meeting? A villain meeting maybe?]
Observing the boy twitch to reply, a smirk appeared on Rune’s face without his control.
[Utopia: Yes please, the hero one!]