Perplexed by this group of small life that could maybe be prospects, Nelo started doubting whether something was going on as it hadn’t been the first time he had seen such groups passing by in the last week.
And he was extremely deep inside the beyond horizon strike monster anomaly.
“Not that it really matters to me,” concluding the matter without his curiosity being aroused at all, he prepared to exit behind his cover.
But once again, before he could start, something huge entered his perception sphere, clearly chasing after the maybe group of prospects.
“Sigh…” Resigning himself, he didn’t exit his cover to resume his exchange with the far-away monster groups he had been exchanging deadly energy payload with for more than 1 month and turned in the direction of the new huge signal.
Mobilizing his entire energy pool in a few seconds, he transformed it all into single star element and stabilized the whole thing into a spear shape in the way he had learned from the native monsters of this anomaly, with fine manipulation thread, and sent it flying towards the horizon.
Reducing his perception dilation and shaping it to finally have a clear image of what the situation was about, he first swept his deformed perception over a duo of ragged humanoids, and then swept it over a 200-meter tall purple quadruped.
“...” Raising his eyebrows in surprise at the impossible situation, Nelo couldn’t count how much incoherence this situation had.
Then his single star spear hit its intended target.
Due to his purity soul specialization giving more punch to his energy the more of it was gathered together, the resulting explosion was massive, melting the very air and perception Nelo was using to observe the situation.
“Oh,” But then, the huge purple just continued on its way without caring.
“Oh…” And this, Nelo took it as a personal affront to his whole path.
Waiting for a minute without leaving the purple monster out of his perception, he started gathering his energy again, but this time he held it back in his hand as he waited for a second energy pool’s worth of energy to regenerate.
“So you’re a behemoth, hu?” Reaching critical energy mass, he started shaping the large energy sphere in his hand into a spiral of burning single star element that he sent towards his target the moment it was ready.
The instant he sent it, he mobilized all the energy contained in his body and created another projectile, this time in a funnel shape, and sent it to join the spiral he had just launched.
Having seen what had happened as a provocation, he waited a whole minute more as his spiral and funnel-shaped projectiles kept getting higher and completely off target before creating a new single star orb which kept rotating with fine energy threads.
And he sent this one in the direction of his prior 2 projectiles.
When this orb encountered them, it automatically linked to them and created a pseudo-fusion that could only exist thanks to his soul specialization as the whole new mutated single star element construct started descending towards the purple monster.
Distance didn’t matter.
Armor didn’t matter.
As the gigantic projectile hit the unsuspected huge purple monster, a blinding explosion followed by all the surrounding forest being razed took place.
And this time, the purple monster couldn’t shrug it off as it slowed down and more than 20% of its body mass evaporated with this explosion.
To add to its wounds, the 2 ragged humanoids that had been fleeing from it turned in but a moment and charged at it.
Focusing his mildly dilated deformed perception over this fight, Nelo frowned and started moving towards them.
The moment he escaped from behind his mountain cover, an apocalyptic bombardment of various plasma-like elements started. To protect himself, he used clever and timed single star explosions to destabilize them and make them explode before they rushed him, but even then his armor was strained.
Running for his life in a strangely familiar way, he approached the place where two very unique individuals were exchanging blows with a huge purple monster.
The extent of this fight far surpassed what Nelo could imagine normal people from the IGS should be capable of, but he didn’t think about indigenous people due to the fact that he knew who those 2 were.
One wielded a sword layered with energy of completely unique intensity that inflicted massive cuts to the purple monster, even extending beyond him and cutting the tier 4 grounds below it.
The second manipulated an element everyone knew, golden dust, and it kept trying to enter the monster through its wounds, aggravating everything that could be aggravated.
“Pinch me I’m dreaming…” Confirming those 2 ragged and nearly dying humanoids were who he thought them to be, and seeing how the fight was so hard that they were close to dying, Nelo made the decision to activate his energy regeneration boost.
He had a mastery slot dedicated to it, so apart from a minor malus at his energy regeneration for an hour after it ended, he wouldn’t keep any other sequella.
Starting an apocalyptic bombardment to support those 2 celebrities, he quickly arrived at the battlefield and admired with his own eyes the power belonging to 2 members of the Abnormal, 2 people who wielded offensive beyond capabilities.
One with beyond sword-wielding, a beyond that had no parallel in any specializations known that just allowed the entity to have massively increased damage with their sword for seemingly no reason.
The other with an understanding of his own element so deep that he didn’t have only 1 beyond capability, but multiple.
And those two were struggling so hard against the huge purple monster that even with Nelo’s support, they only focused on the fight itself, ignoring everything else.
“Hehe! Looks like I’m either going to die soon or make two new friends,” putting on a polite smile, Nelo started sweeping the perimeter around with his perception while bombarding the purple monster as much as he could.
It seemed that this fight was going to be a very long protracted fight.
…
At the same time that Rune entered the Unending Mountain Dimension, that Tolevia’s core started showing its might, and that Nelo encountered in the middle of nowhere an infamous duo, at the front line of the mountainous region's major expedition…
Recently, tier 5 monsters had started appearing and spreading chaos in their wake more often than ever, necessarily meaning for everyone that the major expedition would soon reach tier 5 ether density.
But while it would have meant the end of the expedition a few years ago, now it was different. Completely different.
People not part of the major expedition wouldn’t understand, but people part of it knew that their world was incomprehensible to most others, even those that tried to report truthfully how things really were.
How would people that had never participated in a war understand the importance of a single person reaching a beyond capability in his momentum manipulation, becoming able to reinforce any part of the gigantic front line in seconds?
Why would people care about this single woman who gained the beyond capability to boost the health regeneration of others without any consequences, earning the title of sole healer of the IGS?
Whatsmore, what does the presence of a single Abnormal member, an ancient IGS galaxy archery gold medaled, able to shoot from a thousand kilometers away a monster, matter in the grand scheme of things?
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
As much as videos circulated around showing amazing things, as much as fighters of the front line praised those impossible entities… If you weren’t concerned by what was happening there directly, who would really care?
Yet again, in the middle of a particularly intense part of the front line, unseen by anyone, unregistered by any electronics, unremembered by everyone around, a middle-aged avian humanoid flying around supporting the difficult fights by bombarding them to smother wished he was just a bit faster…
Different things passed through his mind as he thought that, all his understanding from years of seeking the peak of speed and how he could do it while remaining a heavy striker...
“Hu?” And he exclaimed in surprise as he really did.
But as it was in the middle of him wishing to save this person who was soon going to die facing this tier 5 monster, he didn’t question how he arrived so fast.
That was his life, and he would never be fast enough to help everyone… Or was he now?
…
At the same time that Rune entered the Unending Mountain Dimension, that Tolevia’s core started showing its might, that Nelo encountered in the middle of nowhere an infamous duo, and that the mountainous region's major expedition front line began boiling from what they were reaching into, at the recently finished port outpost of the spiral ocean Arcadia…
An alarm was triggered, it wasn’t a small alarm signifying a small wave was coming, no, it was the highest possible alarm signifying full retreat into bunkers prepared just in case this sole event that was happening came to happen.
As for what this event was and how an alarm level had been specially created for it? It all came from the question: How did the straight cliff surrounding the spiral ocean Arcadia come to exist?
From this problematic, only a single answer was found, and its implications brought changes to every subsequent project involving the spiral ocean imagined and acted upon.
Yet, while such an alarm level had been created, it didn’t mean everyone knew what it meant.
“What could possibly be happenni-” When they urgently retreated back to the port, they couldn’t help but look behind them, at the vast spiral ocean the IGS had only just started exploring.
And then they looked to their left, to the south.
“Oh my Ether… What is that?” From beyond the ether mist, a gigantic wall of water started appearing.
This wall of water didn’t seem to have an end, it extended from the base of the ocean to as far as everyone’s eyes could see.
And “as far as everyone’s eyes could see” couldn’t even come close to explaining the amplitude of this wave as even from 200 000 kilometers high, for those sitting on top of the straight cliff, this big wall of water was also visible.
Even if an Arcadia was millions and millions of years old, it remained an Arcadia.
And an Arcadia was the summit of all law warping in the Endless, implying things unimaginable until they really happened.
…
At the same time that… Lots of things were happening…
The world and all its parallel events had never been something that could be simply described or predicted through models, not even the IGS dared claim that their society had been perfected and nothing was wrong in it.
From a defective civilization to an Ether Law civilization, the transition had been so abrupt that many things could have gone better in hindsight, but what was done couldn’t be undone, so while some criticized, the majority just accepted and pursued their new life.
And this mindstate was also the one used by the relatively recently established IGS assembly headed by Inanna Seere, the previous IGs elected leader back when the defective law was still in power.
“The major front line is approaching tier 5 ether density much faster than predicted, the models concerning the size of the mountainous region and its dangerosity have been adjusted and new variables have been added,” an announcer reported the latest issue that needed addressing.
Knowing the process of how such an assembly should happen, none of the 2 000 assemblymen or the elected leader asked for the right to speak and waited until the issue was perfectly stated.
“Losses have increased, but for unknown reasons, an augmentation of 4800% in beyond capabilities acquisition has been reported, and it's probably higher as most people didn’t even try to report their newly acquired beyond capabilities before being told they had,” a second announcer finished complementing with more intel.
“All acquired beyond capabilities have to do with fighting-related goals, confirming a few information board legacies that were still on hold but have now been put forward to the Ether Labs,” a third announcer concluded the matter concisely.
“Does this matter need intervention?” A robotic voice filled the gigantic hall, symbolizing the end of the intel filling part and the beginning of the intervention part.
From there, no one tried to start a discussion or create a debate, they all just activated their isolation cabin and started individually giving their intervention schedule. And if they didn’t have one and didn’t think the situation needed to be drastically changed, then they reported as such too.
For half an hour, the 2 000 assemblymen and the elected leader said their own pieces, then when they were finished, started listening to the pieces of others, maybe changing their opinions or maybe not.
And then the intervention part was over just like that.
“The origin of the beyond horizon strike monster anomaly has been found, its exactitude is above 99%,” another issue was brought up smoothly by the experienced first announcer.
“A few million kilometers south of the horizon strike anomaly, a behemoth monster anomaly is proven to exist, and between those 2 anomalies exists a battlefield perpetually filled with monsters of the 2 sides,” the second announcer filled in the most important piece of information.
“The chance of the behemoth monster's side having natural beyond health due to their size is judged at 100%, and the horizon strike monsters are the only form of naturally occurring monsters capable of restraining them. A few abnormal members have already engaged with some of the behemoth's specimens and have shown extreme difficulty in bringing it down, even needing external help,” the third announcer concluded the matter once again.
“Does this matter need intervention?” The same robotic voice filled the gigantic hall again.
For half an hour, the hall plunged into silence once again as the brains of 2 000 assemblymen, mostly rululus, started burning, and the processing power of the pseudo-AI Core was profusely used to help make this burning more efficient.
After half an hour, however, the next issue wasn’t brought up as the robotic voice echoed again, “More than 50% of the assembly has proposed the opening of a second major expedition front, the deepening process is started.”
The next issue was delayed as another session of this time 1 hour started, with everyone sending their own opinion to each other on the best way to start this change, what benefits could be gained, what problems could be created…
And then the next issue was brought up with a wordless conclusion of the previous matter.
“The port outpost created at the coast of the spiral ocean Arcadia has been completely destroyed, the losses still remain to be determined but comparing the numbers present in the bunker are much less than it should be,” the first announcer started, emotionless.
“The existence of the spiral wave has been proven, and the Maze Path project has entered the rectification phase. The Stairway To The Arcadia project having been designed with this issue in mind, the data about the power of this spiral wave have been meticulously used to thicken the engineered wall protection area,” the second announcer said.
“The Rectified Port Outpost minor project has been created and only needs refinement before being announced,” the third announcer concluded.
“Does this matter need intervention?” The robotic voice echoed again.
Followed by 30 minutes of silence.
“The major issues have all been addressed. Minor issues will now be discussed,” the first announcer stated something that relatively decreased the pressuring atmosphere in the hall, “A city in the bone region…”
20 minutes of discussion.
“The private sector has been continually asking for the land prices of the public factories…”
20 minutes.
“The Unending Mountain Dimension has entered a low progress period due to…”
20 minutes.
“The crafting guild economic impact has entered class-7, a notice has been published to…”
20 minutes.
“The half-militarization of the dimension department’s patrollers rectification project is impacting the prospects' side, creating groundless rumors from seemingly nowhere. Someone is fanning the flame and…”
20 minutes.
“The entertainment industry has been in an explosion period for 3 years now and still hasn't shown signs of slowing down…”
20 minutes.
“The immigration flow is increasing due to the ether density on the other side nearing tier 1. It is estimated that in a few years at best the first signs of ether erosion will start and…”
20 minutes.
That was how the IGS worked.
That was how it resolved everything within a short time.
That was how it intended to expand and develop steadily.
…
His body felt warped, it was both an abominable and familiar feeling.
Even as a tier 4 entity, Rune felt no fundamental changes compared to what dimensional teleportation executed by the Ether Law at tier 1 was like. The only difference was an invisible one as he now understood what was taking place and how a dimension and the linking zone were related in more detail.
A dimension could be visualized as a planet, and the teleportation from the Endless linking zone was taking an asteroid to land on it. The process was simple, but the true complexity came from the fact that each planet, or dimension, in this case, wasn’t always a lifeless rock locked in place.
Every dimension was rotating and warping following their own law, so when someone landed on it using an asteroid, the place they ended up would change depending on the nanometers of differences they were located in the linking zone and the nanosecond of differences they decided to teleport.
All those factors, of course, only mattered for the initial descent trajectory, because the entry phase was yet another step with plenty of factors inherent to the target dimension itself.
For the Unending Mountain Dimension, its warped gravity law made it so that anyone entering through Ether Law’s teleportation would be stopped at the most shallow solid layer, only bypassing the gigantic atmosphere.
And in this case, this “most shallow solid layer” had another name: The end of the 1st circle.
Hence, at the boundary of this 1st circle characterized by its stable 10g gravity, a single human appeared out of thin air and was projected against the ground at more than a hundred meters per second, as if he had collided with an ethership.