The underground pillar linking the ground to the ceiling now looked half as majestic as the white wall leading to the white zone of the erosion anomaly.
Only by raising his head at a 90-degree angle could he see the pillar in its entirety.
The intensity and chaos had not diminished one bit compared to what he saw from far. The only reason he could take his time was that he was hidden, if he wasn’t, it was very simple: There was at minimum one fight per cubic 100 meters.
Staying at a relatively low altitude, he easily made the choice to not reach the pillar from its base. It really looked like an insect nest, just with 5 meters tall bone insects that all seemed berserk and out of their mind.
Monsters with spatial elements weren’t rare and he saw at least ten, those with spiritual powers weren’t special anymore, and he could distinguish all the hard counters to each path he knew by scanning one time.
Behemoths countering steady and balanced ones, ultra-aggressive reinforcement magias countering behemoths, speedster countering magias, spiritualists countering speedsters, unique elements interfering in the entire cycle, unique specializations breaking the balance.
‘That’s the beauty of the Ether Law… There’s no right or wrong.’
Avoiding the base of the pillar, diverting sly and cunning monsters that took him for a new prey, finding the monsters he had to flee from in priority, it was an experience much different from before he gained his cosmic mist.
It didn’t feel perfect yet, he could think of a few things that obviously needed some work, but it still felt right. What he was doing and the way he was doing it, he liked it, he felt excited doing it, he wanted to do it better.
Finally reaching the pillar, he was more than 5 kilometers from the ground.
Having found a cavity prior to arriving, he made sure no monsters were charging him and entered it.
‘I don’t know how this cavity formed, but my best guess would be a freaking cheating monster that isn’t tier 4.’
To ascertain his theory a bit, he tried to punch a somewhat exposed piece of rock with a thin connection to the larger pillar with all his strength, he used 100% of his momentum to ground himself and properly took on the best straight punch position.
A dull sound echoed, and his punch that delivered more than 66 000 strength was stopped short.
‘I’ve seen a lot of rock over my long life, but I can confidently say this. That’s no rock.’
After having fun over a simple thing, he got a cosmic mist bubble prepared before getting his ether tower out, activating it to have a true record of this pillar and what it was like.
For the 5 minutes it took for the scan to be completed and transmitted back to wherever it needed to be sent back, he was relieved that no monster took an interest in the weird vibrations spreading from this place.
Packing it up, he started to climb up the pillar manually like he did back in the tier 4 mountainous region.
Within his perception, dozens of fights were taking place simultaneously, and the thrill of going unnoticed by so many and being in the middle of it, literally, made him accelerate his ascension unconsciously.
Swinging from one rock protrusion to another, he climbed with proficiency infused in each movement while remaining aware of what was going on around him.
Sometimes monsters crashed not far from him. He ignored it.
Sometimes a monster decided to pick on him. If it was too far he ignored it, if it was near, he charged at it and made it change target voluntarily.
Sometimes a monster he absolutely didn’t want to fight made suspicious movement, and he reacted immediately to divert its attention somewhere else in case it had seen him.
The problem was that special and unique monsters weren’t really that rare, so his ascension became tenuously slow.
Yet, in his mind, it was clear that evading those possibly overpowered monsters in exchange for a few hours was an exchange he would make every time it was available.
…
Rune reached 400 kilometers from the ground after ten hours of slow, tenuous, intense, and mentally rewarding ascension.
‘Let’s stop here.’
It was the height he decided to stop at.
‘It’s not the top, but it’s close enough for me to see so much more.’
Finding large and flat rocky platforms, maybe yet another artifact of a confrontation between higher-tier monsters, he settled on the one he liked the most according to his dubious criteria and started to create a bubble of cosmic mist.
Once it was large enough, he got his ether tower out and did the scanning routine, except this time the break he wanted to take was one he was not used to.
‘Who knows when a monster will decide to target me? Now it’s out of my control cause I’m not moving from there until I empty my mind of everything I gained.’
Letting the tower do its thing in the background, he started to write any and all fragments of ideas that passed through his non-existent brain, and he continued even after the tower finished its scan.
‘Pillar ascension? Pillar journey? Pillar hotspot? It’s all at the same time…’
In less than a day, he went from the city ruins to where he was now, writing amidst a death-sponsored hotspot.
‘What’s the most shocking? The elemental beams hitting you randomly after they missed their intended target? The inexhaustible monsters that keep the hotspot burning hot? The few indescribable monsters I have before my eyes?’
Looking at a particular huge 20 meters wide bone sphere, Rune wondered how this monster even came to exist. Was there a monster inside it controlling it? Was it really its body? Questions he had already written kept making their presence known.
‘Or maybe the paradoxical fact that the area around the hotspot is nearly empty of monsters and so should be safer to travel? Should I even mention at what point the ether is disturbed around me? I’m sure only an apocalypse region can rival it.’
Flashes, beams, explosions, those were the most common things to see from where he stood. Collisions and monsters going from their normal dim state to burning bright minor boost state were the second most common. Third was the rest.
After cleaning his mind, he got his ether tower back in his ether pocket dimension and opted for going around the pillar.
‘This way I’ll be able to see so much more, maybe I should draw what I see while I’m at it? I need to practice my drawing anyway, so I should just do it, nothing to lose.’
Overlooking the landscape, he decided to leave the one he was currently seeing for last, it was the one containing the city ruins after all.
In the same way he climbed up, he once again chose to not use the easy way of creating an artificial gravity with his momentum and walk horizontally. He acted like a climber and only relied on his strength.
Sending occasional looks behind and around him to understand if the situation would change, he slowly began to circle the pillar.
‘Now that’s a good place to draw, let me do the first one here.’
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Finding a good rocky platform and an equally good scenery of jagged mountains with a few flat plains bringing a special disturbing sense to the general view, he began to draw on his connected screen.
Then promptly stopped.
‘Too small, Rune you idiot, and I don’t have anything like paper on me… Why didn’t I buy more things? Even a simple camera would have been fine.’
With his half-assed plan of drawing trashed, he settled for simply admiring the scenery as he had always done before.
‘And there’s too much anyway, my vision can’t even take everything in it.’
Getting over his small frustration, he calmed down and just stared.
Once he felt satisfied after an unknown amount of time, he resumed his circling of the pillar.
A new angle on things sometimes confused him, but simply being able to see in the bone region where he hadn’t been able to see for close to a year made him feel fulfilled.
Until at his 6th stop, where he judged he had come around more than half of the pillar from his first stop, somewhere below, something was happening.
Something brighter than all the bright explosions and intense flashes induced by all the fights appeared below.
Rune couldn’t help but lower his head to look at it, look at the brightest thing his vision had allowed him to see… Maybe in his entire life.
The event was taking place at the base of the pillar, 400 kilometers below where he stood and more, considering it wasn’t directly below him but slightly to the left.
‘What’s tha-’
Barely had Rune asked himself the question in his mind that his vision went white.
A fraction of a second later, he felt his body being violently and suddenly attracted by something under him.
He ended up flattened on his rocky platform, not able to move a bone from the strength of this attraction.
His perception sphere informed him that he wasn’t the only one subject to this force, monsters kept dropping from above, and they remained only a few seconds before passing him.
His survival instinct told him not to, but his curiosity drove him to use his hand to bring his head to the hedge of his platform.
He wanted to look below and he would be able to.
What he saw once he succeeded gave him the answer to what was taking place.
‘An environmental event…’
It was hard to describe. What he saw, he couldn’t explain logically, it was just something extremely bright that swallowed everything around it and more.
More than that, it was growing, but not growing normally, it was growing like a snowflake.
A complex web of branches and lattices that kept becoming bigger, multiplying, and fusing at a fabulous speed, it was mesmerizing.
It was like a high-tech holographic snow globe, and he couldn’t look away from it.
As randomly as it had started, the attraction force keeping him grounded stopped, and the gigantic bright snowflake below started to lose its luminescence.
The monsters ignored each other and prioritized fleeing from the bright monster, but it seemed that the environmental event was over. Rune used his perception to observe how the ether around him changed.
‘A second wave is possible but highly improbable from what the guide taught me. Nothing is fueling it, and I didn’t notice but the ether around me is back to a stable state, like the pillar is not a hotspot at all… That’s amazing.’
The environmental event didn’t only swallow monsters, it also swallowed the chaotic ether.
‘How much time passed? It can’t be more than 10 or 20 seconds. If it was really that much, there wouldn’t be monsters at 400 kilometers of altitude, the casualty number would have gone up to thousands, and I can still see lots of monsters so…’
Lost in thoughts, he continued to observe the bright snowflake that resulted from the event below. He had the thought of going down there and tasting it with his endless adaptation mastery, to know what it was about, but he held himself back.
‘I’m not like a moth to a fire. No way I’m endangering my life just to know what this environmental event is about, I’ll just go there later and hope some traces are enough.’
Once he decided to just do nothing, he felt freed and started to purely observe the amazing creation below him.
‘Complex repeating patterns, brighter than anything I can think of, mesmerizing… If I can make my bait reach this level, no monster will be able to ignore it anymore. It’s just missing the blinding pain and the sound part, but other than that, it’s so much beyond my ability that I must bow.’
The example of a much more perfected and advanced bait visible in plain sight made him relativize about things. He couldn’t help himself, it was just so pure and simple, it was a natural construct, and he couldn’t imagine reaching it in a short period of time.
‘It’s just another example that tells me I shouldn't be in a hurry to reach tier 5. There are just so many things I have to see and want to do that don’t depend on my tier ability directly.’
Thoughts of one day reaching beyond made their presence known, and although he had long come to reality, it remained one of his hidden ambitions. A hidden ambition he wasn’t ashamed about…
But reaching beyond was so meaningful that he didn’t dare say it out loud.
‘I should just take things as they come. Who knows if I’ll one day reach beyond in something or not? Maybe perception by trying to pierce my cosmic mist, maybe intent by continuously upgrading it, maybe a random one… I’m far from being hopeless.’
Listening to his music that kept playing, he eased himself into an adventuring mood and decided to descend slowly, making his safety his foremost priority.
He needed a platform to block the attraction force in case it started again, he also needed to be careful of unexpected turns. What if the bright snowflake suddenly exploded?
So he would take his time.
‘Well, sorry Arik and Astryde, maybe I’ll not be back as quickly as I said I would be. But there is nothing I can do about it! Ether is guiding me!’
…
The bright snowflake had completely scattered in bright dots that were becoming darker and darker as time passed by the time Rune reached the base of the pillar.
‘The environmental event truly happened like how the guide said it would, fast and intense. It came, it killed, it vanished. Now I just need to reach one of those specks and…’
The monsters were still avoiding the area due to those bright specks, so he didn't feel endangered more than he should be and made his way to a speck that seemed about to burn out not far from him with a few quick steps.
He touched it like he would a true slow-falling snowflake.
His armor didn’t take any damage and the speck didn’t explode, better, it instantly changed color, taking on a dim, nearly black shade of gray.
‘It works!’
Wanting to know what this event was about, he brought up his endless adaptation mastery window.
Cohesion: Specialized Endless Adaptation
Specialized Slotted Mastery (Tier 1)
A secondary specialization made from the fusion of the adaptation, self, isolation, and rejection effects. It has been specially designed to be able to grow as long as one’s cohesion fights against environments that restrict its user.
Based on a very precise set of rules, with time, this mastery can adapt one’s cohesion to resist any given environment, in any form.
Adaptations:
Erosion Ether Adaptation: 0%
Wind Ether Adaptation: 0%
Void Ether Adaptation: 0%
‘Void ether. It doesn’t explain the bright part and the crystal growth part, but it certainly explains the swallowing part.’
Having gained what he came here for, he took to the air and returned to the pillar.
He had half a round left to do. Though first, he needed to climb back up.
…
Beginning to see the first obvious traces of civilization below him and no monsters on the horizon everywhere he looked at, Rune decreed his pillar journey to be over and brought up all the leveling notifications he got.
*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Fighting Instinct reached Tier 4 Level 50
*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division reached Tier 4 Level 52
*Ding* Energy: Specialized Cosmic Mist Element reached Tier 3 Level 70
*Ding* Cohesion: Specialized Endless Adaptation reached Tier 1 Level 8
*Ding* Energy Compression: Provided Energy Defense reached Tier 3 Level 65
*Ding* Energy Compression: Provided Energy Structure reached Tier 3 Level 65
*Ding* Energy Compression: Provided Energy Armor reached Tier 3 Level 65
*Ding* Energy Compression: Provided Quick Compression reached Tier 3 Level 58
*Ding* Body Control: Provided Humanoid Body reached Tier 3 Level 59
*Ding* Awareness Division: Specialized Sense Invocation reached Tier 1 Level 5
‘Huhu, not a bad gain indeed!’
He didn’t know precisely the time he spent on this small journey, but it definitely wasn’t more than a week.
‘I even gained a level in my endless adaptation. I really need to go to an anomaly to discover the rules cause, for now, its leveling pattern seems at the same time obvious and weird. Does a new adaptation mean 1 level? Or maybe I was at a threshold?’
Questions filled once he saw he gained a level in his growth mastery. He really wanted to go back to the past and make a study in the erosion anomaly to confirm his theories.
On the other hand, apart from this level, he gained another level he didn’t expect.
‘Why did I gain a level in my sense invocation though? I didn’t repeat the operation to bring my awareness from my spirit to reality…’
And with questions came instinctual and seemingly logical theories.
‘Is there an active awareness maintenance cost involved in keeping my spiritual eyes always on? Well, good news if there really is one, even if it’ll not change my original practice plan for it.’
After being reminded of his grinding plan for his new mastery, he started to scatter his spiritual eyes. Once they were completely scattered and his awareness was back to full, he repeated the process of creating his eyes.
It was practice in its truest sense, and he couldn’t think of a better plan anyway. Even the guide didn’t have a more efficient training method, so he didn’t try and just proceeded with it.
‘It’s so strangely familiar… Maybe because it’s exactly how awareness should be trained at tier 1? Just movement, that’s it.’
Having lost his sight for at least 10 minutes didn’t bother him.
He was already back.