Among the 3 Undecided who reached site 19, 2 completely lost themselves in their own activity, leaving behind only Arik who had a dream he wanted to do.

His dream wasn’t something at the level of a lifelong dream that he absolutely had to do before dying or something like that.

It was a petty dream born from frustration.

With Gar, the two formed a duo of informants that acted as the heart of the information gathering activity of the Undecided, it had always been what they had done, and it was something they wanted to continue.

They took pride in their ability to discern truth from hearsay and their ability to find unique people. The two were nearly on opposite sides of the social spectrum.

Gar pushed for physical encounters and was open to even scams and losing lots of money to open the hearts of new people, Arik pushed for a healthy distance and refused everything in a straight manner while gaining the trust of hesitant people over time.

Years of dedicated adventuring and becoming tier 4 hadn’t changed the way they proceeded, but the aspirations behind… They had diverged a bit.

There was a reason Rune and Arik became very close from the moment they reached the Endless. They each had a spark of passion for adventuring and discovering new things in them.

They weren’t exactly similar, but still similar enough to recognize a few things when they looked at each other’s eyes.

But while Rune’s adventuring spark was nearly incomprehensible due to its perfectly literal sense, execution purity, and lack of any sort of objective that could be clearly told to the other Undecided, Arik’s one was a lot closer to what could be transmitted with words.

He wanted something concrete to bring back from his adventures, he wanted things only he could create and get something out of them, he wanted to share them and show who he was without saying anything.

As for how he ended up deciding to go the “make drinks” path, it had a lot to do with something he lived with Gar when they reached tier 4.

He had gone through something like enlightenment, it wasn’t enlightenment leading him to become a believer, finding his faith in a hard time or something like that, he was enlightened about the path he had decided to take.

Strength and reinforcement. The path he wanted to take included those 2 as the core. It was of course a lone adventurer variant, but still, he never thought one night he would live a life-changing thought process.

At first, it was just a weird feeling, and the more he thought about it, the more uncomfortable he felt.

So he discussed with Gar, his intimate brother with whom he had shared all his life story, and they searched together for an answer.

It was a very muddled period for him as he felt he couldn’t think straight, like he was going to fail all his life if he couldn’t find what he needed.

For weeks he lost his desire to progress, only continuing to advance by forcing himself.

Then one day Gar showed him an archive of the globalized board the IGS copy-pasted into their guide, it was a record of amazing stats infusion effects.

And that’s when he felt the answer he wanted was finally reachable.

To this day, this episode of his life had been kept secret and nobody knew it apart from the informant duo.

The conclusion of this episode was a total reset of his ambition. His adventuring style didn’t change much, still focusing on strength with a usable reinforcement, but he started something new with his foldable strength path.

That’s why for him, what he was doing, starting with creating an artificial taste construct, was all to satisfy a petty dream of his.

The petty dream of creating and bringing back drinks that could only be made in a precise environment and that completely allowed someone to feel as if they were sent to this environment when they drank one.

It was still a very sketchy plan, not at all something anyone would expect from Arik, the matter-of-fact and sarcastic shorty, but he felt that if he didn’t at least try, he would regret it for the rest of his life.

And regretting for millennia was certainly not part of his plan.

…

Rune didn’t know.

Well… He knew.

He knew creating intent wasn’t a universal solution to strengthen everything, but even then, the fact still remained that intent allowed anyone to create additional power from… Nothing. Literally nothing. It was and wasn’t like speculation at the same time.

It didn’t consume mental strength when one got used to it, it could be created fast enough that even time couldn't be included in the cost, and with a bit of imagination, it would be applied everywhere.

‘Or maybe I just have too much affinity with intent, so not only talent but also the right mindset? I should really check the crafting guild when I have time, maybe I’ll really learn useful bits? There was something about a rank too if I remember right…’

Thinking about doing something was one thing, acting on it was another. That’s what he instinctively used to not have to do things he didn’t want to, that’s why he didn’t contact the crafting guild now or even make a quick search on it after thinking about it.

He was only taking a small break, he wasn’t even close to losing interest in this session of intent tinkering.

From getting his hand on a true tangled intent node to trying to apply it everywhere and learning even more, he still hadn’t started working on truly increasing his 1st stage intent power.

After letting his mind refresh for a few minutes, he suddenly felt like tinkering again, and he didn’t need more before plunging again into this second passion of his.

Not feeling the time pass, he only took a second break after his perception sent him sufficiently weird feedback to make him stop.

‘Rain? Underground?’

It was raining.

It was a normal rain which didn’t seem to have any effect on anything. It wasn’t melting anything, it wasn’t acting like unstable explosive liquids that exploded at the slightest touch, and it wasn’t piercing through the ground like needles through a cloth.

‘Well, with a few hundred kilometers to the ceiling, a water source somewhere, and something giving heat and movement… It’s a pity it’s not acidic or explosive, if it was I would be able to gain some levels in my endless adaptation.’

Feeling inspired by this oddity, he dismissed his cosmic mist’s orbs and opened a note document entitled “Journey Through The Bone Region”, the most basic draft he created to be used as his diary during this adventure.

‘The first rain. It sounds catchy enough, I feel like using it in my introduction…’

Following his whim, he started writing a semi-serious attempt at an introductory paragraph for his future official “report”.

He wrote about how he was writing while the first rain was happening, how nobody else seemed to be affected, how site 19 remained as it has always been since he arrived, how his chill music remained relevant even after listening to it dozens of times…

As he put all his thoughts into this introduction, he ended up writing about why this adventure started, and what he hoped to get out of it.

Writing for the better part of half an hour, he only momentarily stopped when he saw Arik coming to visit him.

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“Whatcha doing?” Arik asked something general, meaning he didn’t come here with a clear goal.

“I’m relativizing…”

“About what? About how great your talent in intent creation is?”

“Nope,” he didn’t even try to answer the sarcasm, it was Arik’s nature to talk like that, “I’m currently relativizing about how reaching tier 5 is easy compared to tier 6, and about how reaching tier 6 is easy compared to reaching tier 7.”

“That’s one heck of a relativization you’re doing here…” He seemed a bit confused but didn’t show it too much, “Astryde just finished her first and maybe last deep dive in this site, want to come?”

Rune remained silent as he thought about all the implications.

‘It’ll only be a few hours… And a few hours will not really impact my chance of surviving if I spend them tinkering with my cosmic mist’s intent.’

“Let’s go,” he concluded by standing up and starting to move in the direction of where Astryde was.

Arik overtook him as he used more strength than Rune deemed necessary for such a small distance to quickly join the gathering where Astryde was, creating himself a chair and seamlessly integrating with the mood in an instant.

‘Is it his first time doing that? If so he has serious learning to do to join the rank of the true asocials.’

Innerly joking, he soon reached the gathering and copied how Arik joined.

The gathering was an exact copy of what Rune saw when he first entered the site: People talking while sitting around a big table with most of the people taking notes and one doing the speaking.

“At 4856-214, I once again found officials talking about the establishment of another outpost, same as usual. No signs of panic or urgency. From 4856-215 to 4856-245, I continuously followed their reports but again, they just didn’t care and nothing noteworthy happened. Maybe a slight suspicion of elevated military activity if I was to report a far-fetched theory? No proof, just a suspicion.”

The terminology used by the guy talking, Rune could understand, it was the official terminology used in all the reports about the ancient civilization after all.

‘So on the 214th day of the year minus 4856, this happened… Huhu…’

But while he comprehended what was being said, the content was neither interesting nor important-sounding, only those really involved, the historians, would ever find a use for the report about a new outpost. Maybe one day they would succeed at finding a general evolution that took place over a long period of time that pointed to something much grander.

At least that was the dream situation Rune could think of off the top of his empty skull. For all he read until now, nearly all the major events were directly observed and not deducted.

“At 4656-246, a weird group of people arrived and went directly to the highest official to ask for details about an event that happened at 4856-107, they were investigating…”

Listening to the tale of something so detailed that really happened, even when it wasn’t really interesting, really made him feel like being a time watcher was something nobody should ignore in their career choice.

“For the rest of 4856, nothing noteworthy occurred, only the slight elevation in military activity, but again, no proof, and years 4880 and 4820 didn’t note a real difference in military activity so… That’s it, yup.”

As soon as he said that, he sat down and didn’t say anything else. It seemed his role as speaker was over.

‘So they're sharing the work by going over 1 year each? That’s optimized, I like it. And he said the years 4820 and 4880 for reference? So they already mapped the general trend and are filling the gaps?’

With no indication whatsoever that he could see, another stood up as if it was planned and began to talk, “At 4521-18, I found the first signs of the monster wave that hit a few weeks later. I have clear visual proof that the information was concealed by a certain guard squad, they then proceeded to escape just before it hit, their deeds were never found to my knowledge, I added their names to the list of potential leads. Their supposed city of origin still hasn’t been found and…”

‘Monster wave? I read more than ten summaries about different monster waves with lasting impact, was it one of them? Year minus 4521?’

Quickly bringing up the gigantic list of events by year that was publicly available, he found the year minus 4521 but the monster wave was only added as a green event. It meant it was to the knowledge of the list creator an event without more to it.

‘Will it be changed to yellow now?’

For him, the fact that a group of people concealed and succeeded at hiding all the precursor signs of a whole monster wave... That was a terror unit’s level of operation.

The rest of the year was essentially bland, and this time it was Astryde that stood up and began to talk, “At 4985-1, I started a tech report that oversaw all the different techniques the builders used, I also noted down the traffic of comings and goings to try and use it to deduct if the outpost at its initial state was important or not. At 4985-174, there was military movement, but the orders didn’t pass through the outpost and went directly to the officers, it was unnatural enough for a few officials to go ask what was going on, to which the military said nothing and vacated the nascent outpost leaving behind only a weak presence…”

Rune listened without getting his hope up high. The chance of her finding a secret gathering of a super-secret organization or finding the precise day a leader of the ancient civilization visited weren’t zero, but close enough to it for it to be 0 on his sheet.

“At 4985-342, the military that departed came back, there was no loss of units or anything, they didn’t unveil why they went away and that concludes everything important,” she naturally finished her speaking turn, it seemed she was the last one as no one took after her and some even stood up.

“Nothing important again…”

“Just as usual.”

“We can still hope.”

Rune heard people muttering that nothing noteworthy happened, and he linked that to the fact that people were leaving the gathering without making a definitive conclusion.

Arik beside him stood up and joined Astryde who had sat down again and was doing something with her connected screen.

‘Oh, that’s just like when the classroom is over!’

Standing up too, he followed Arik, curious about what he was going to do or ask as he personally didn’t have anything to say.

“We leaving now or you need another turn?” He asked like he was obliged to but didn’t care about the final answer.

“Since when did you start speaking like that? It’s weird. And we’re leaving now. I pretty much got everything I could get here, next destination is site 41, I already reported everything so we can leave now,” still typing on her screen, she replied.

‘41… 41…’

Rune brought up the public map he downloaded back at the front base and didn’t bother updating since then.

The map of the bone region could not be simpler than it already was, the center was the extension of the hole tunnel to the ground, then the cardinal directions were added to it. Site 19 was located east of the center and, as the group planned to quickly exit explored grounds, they needed to continue going east.

Although they still had a few sites to pass through as they were conveniently on their way, their ultimate goal was to discover things they could call completely their own. They remained adventurers in the end, they were completely free to go kill themselves if they wanted.

Upon finding site 41, Rune didn’t find any problem and accepted they were going there next.

Five minutes later Astryde stood up, announcing she was finished and they could depart now. Rune didn’t veto the decision, Arik didn’t either, so they simply departed without announcing their departure.

They simply left.

The situation of leaving without telling anyone was so much to his liking and so abrupt that he felt like he was back to adventuring alone, acting completely on his whims alone, giving him a bit of an adrenaline boost.

Once they exited the site properly, he couldn’t help but take the lead position again, explaining why he wasn’t going to activate his bubble now.

“Welcome again to Rune’s Airlines, the expected travel time is 3 to 4 weeks at best, 100 years at worst, as we are still in the security perimeter of site 19, the cosmic mist bubble will not be activated now. It’ll only be activated once 4 or more monsters have decided we need to go to the Afterlife. Hope we blabla, good luck!”

“What is needed for the worst-case travel time captain?” Astryde entered his play.

“Huhu!” Rune cleared his throat, ready to tell a story he once found onboard that had marked him, “Once upon a time, a cute little spatial rift and a cute little monster born just next to it, do you know about this story that really happened?”

“Nope,” Astryde shook her head, and Arik didn’t say anything.

“Perfect. So it all began when the cute little monster that should have started roaming and fighting didn’t do what it should have, maybe due to the presence of the cute little rift, it didn’t act as mindless…”

Stories about unique monsters devastating entire regions or dimensions weren’t in the minority, but those where the monster ultimately never sought to fight after being spawned by the ether itself were rare enough for Rune to remember all of them pretty easily.

And this one where the monster ended up becoming half-sapient after getting itself more than enough masteries and becoming the companion friend of a passing tier 6 entity had particularly engraved itself in his mind.

It was a real story that proved everything was possible as long as someone or even something was determined enough.

“Oh,” two monsters appeared in his perception before he could finish his story, “The ending next time if I’m still alive.”

Cosmic mist started being ejected as it created a bubble around him. Ten seconds later the two monsters that had clearly formed a squad reached them and they engaged Arik and Astryde who went forward to receive them.

Rune steadily got his cosmic mist bubble done and then joined Astryde in her fight against a monster that overpowered her.

The idea of killing the monsters wasn’t in any of their minds, they each came up with their own theoretical and practical reasons over two weeks that explained why forcing one on one fights wasn’t rational at their current states.

When Rune’s cosmic mist bubble arrived near the battlefield, Astryde didn’t hesitate one bit and dived into it, spurring Rune into turning on his bait.

Arik similarly neared the bubble, ready to retreat and hide the moment something got too problematic or his energy got too low for him to safely continue blocking the bone monster’s strikes.

With the set-up completed, the group of 3 would continue fighting until more than 3 monsters faced them actively.

In not even an hour, they went from laid-back life to dangerous adventuring life, and while the absence of face skin and muscle didn’t allow them to know how they felt about it, Rune was clearly smiling inside.

The situation was totally to his liking.