I wake around midnight up feeling a lot more refreshed than I could have hoped for. I pushed myself to the edge with Merlin’s attack and my giant rock on the Titan.

The village is peaceful, as almost everyone is asleep and even the most avid partiers have either left or joined in the slumber.

I head out searching for Charlie with my perception field and I find him, with his back hunched holding thousands of lives in the balance. I head to his office atop the ever growing guild headquarters, though calling it a guild no longer seems to do it justice.

I walk past the pair of guards and after a brief climb, knock on his door. I could have just come through the balcony flying, but I was in no particular hurry.

He looks at me through the door, like he has a Perception field of his own.

“Come in Nash.” He says.

I open the door and walk into the room with my gaze focused on his form.

“Today could have gone very badly, but it didn’t,” I say cutting all the bullshit.

“Luck. Luck that you and Merlin both succeeded in your gambits and even your combined efforts only just managed to drag the enemy down to a level that mere physical fighters could tangibly touch the Titan. We can’t rely on luck every time.”

“The preparations next time will be better and more comprehensive... by a large margin.”

He looks at me sensing something behind my voice. The way his eyes reach deep within me and seemed to extract what I’m on the deepest level reminds me of myself. He drills down to find out what I mean and my intentions with just a gaze. I barely interacted with him any longer, but he s no longer the same.

It started when we discovered Max was flaunting the contract with the loopholes he put there. Eyes so intense, so deep that they put my own to shame when I was intent on driving my point home. Perhaps there is still something to be salvaged from those lessons.

“You chose to head the village and that responsibility grew, it grew even more as we seem to be one of the most advanced villages in all instances. But it will do you no good if you end up broken. If you can’t lead yourself, what business do you have leading others?”

“I know, I will get some rest tomorrow. But the world is not only about acceptance and forgiveness, and this… this is was not a success, it was just luck. But that is not why you came in, is it?”

“No, it is not.”

“You are leaving again?”

I nod silently.

“How is this time any different?”

“I’m going back to Earth.”

He stares at me like I just punched his gut.

“Why would you go back sooner when you can help so much here? Even if you only come back once or twice a month…you would. It can’t be about the money and you will barely get there sooner than if you continue over here as long as possible. I kinda understand you not wanting to be very last, but stay a couple of months short of that.”

“I won’t be returning at the end of the month. I’m trying to find my own way back.”

“Still, why…?”

“Pando.”

He stares at me as if I had told him my son was dying.

“I guess it is no use to try and convince you. And I would feel like shit if I even tried. Do you need any help?”

“I don’t have a way back yet, it might still take me a while. I don’t how long or abrupt my departure will be, but it shouldn’t take less than a couple of months. While I will probably be apart from the village most of the time, I will be part of the defense and a few projects that line up with my plans but after leaving the instance I don’t think there will be any way to come back. Especially after the long trip.”

“What happened to Pando?”

“Long answer short: he nearly died which in turn nearly split my soul in half. Now, I need to go and rescue him from whatever the system did.”

He grits his teeth. “The system is not pulling its punches against you lately, no reward from the Titan and then this…”

“You don’t know the half of it.” I grin sadly before turning around to leave.

I walk out, this time taking the faster path, and drop the few meters out of the window.

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Now I need to stop and plan out the future. I need to be ruthless and eliminate everything that doesn’t add to the single goal of returning to Pando.

A minute later, I pull out a large sheet and lay it out in my flying craft on the way back to my little hut.

Sketching out my needs, I split them into three main categories.

Resources, in both coins and metals.

Base personal capability, as in stats, system resources and my own.

And a mixture of general and applied knowledge to leverage the strength I do have into a useful form that will take me back to Earth.

I can’t become a machine and I won’t try to cut my sleep or rest. Decisions like that may help in punctual emergencies, but doing it even for days or weeks on end is absurdly short sighted and would just make the whole endeavor take longer while I felt like crap.

Perhaps I may not need to follow the same pace as back on Earth when my limits were so much lower, but sometimes pushing harder is counterproductive.

One final push will be dedicated to going back. I won’t be distracted by the hundreds of interesting and exciting projects happening and spend hours or days if they won’t help me go back.

Let the others figure it out on their own. Though I guess I could take a look for a minute here and there… occasionally.

The diagram grows even before I get my old mud hut and a faint picture of what it will look like forms in my mind. But I don’t want a half cocked plan that is only as sturdy as a sand castle. I want foundations of stone and sturdy walls.

I can’t plan for everything, but some time to analyze the problem before and break it down is well in order. Add to that the occasional breaks to reassess and it all sounds like the perfect balance.

I need to understand space better and the best way of doing that at the moment is to keep pushing the portal Idea forward.

The runes I craved on my soul while trying to keep the system out and the interesting side effects they can achieve should also be part of it of my exploration.

Training my stats, expanding the inner world and playing with the runes that interfere with the system.

There are a thousand details, some I can delegate, some I cannot. But this would slow the development to a crawl if I pawned it off to someone.

A sense of purpose takes hold as the major decisions are in place. Time seems to change over the next few days. The days stop becoming packed full of disparate and unconnected activities fit for a rat on cocaine and become more organized.

I can almost see the hour hand of the clock moving in real time as the days swallow each other advancing at an unprecedented rate. My focus takes my mind off how much I have to do. These regular breaks encompass from my daily activities and biological imperatives, past the sources of coins and metals all the way to my training and meditation to increase stats. Though half the training felt like maintenance so they wouldn’t atrophy.

I don’t take nearly enough time to fully explore some ideas or return to the absurd stat numbers I had before the system broke my soul. The malleable state of my soul was also completely gone. I had fundamentally changed it by combining it all, before adding layers and runes to defend me against the system and any other threats. At least that is one thing I started to learn in earnest, to push the system out. Usually not very effectively, given the fact that while meditating to increase my stats, I was distracted from defending against the Aether constructs the system at the bottom of my soul, but I had seen progress.

I look at the Titan’s Flesh. Most of it went to people that could make use of it, the skin for the tanner to make leather and sinew to make strings that not only surpassed the strongest synthetic fibers like Kevlar but felt closer to the nigh magical promises of carbon nanotubes by Earth’s scientists.

I analyze the otherwise useless flesh and it still doesn’t make any sense to me.

How could the titans be so… strong? More and more inconsistencies were showing up as I learned about the system. Especially as Aether constructs were bolted on top of my main construct housing class and subclasses are now in a visible part of my soul.

The chemistry inside my own body was changing. I was already way past what should have been possible if the universe was only as narrow as the view we had of reality back on Earth. A gram of sugar no longer produced a certain amount of heat, but a little bit more. A breath in of air didn't pull oxygen at the maximum rate as was predicted, but a little more and even a gram of oxygen seem to burn a little more fuel.

Our very understanding of entropy, energy and atomic bonds would have to change as we interacted more with the system, but while most of that is mere curiosity, more practical and immediate aspects come to the forefront such as how do I push to keep the system out, but more importantly, should I do that?

It is my impulse to keep it out, to reject its obviously unplanned addition to the Aether construct in my soul, but just because that is my gut reaction, doesn’t mean it can’t be biased.

Aether seems to be the cornerstone of what allows us to surpass the mortal realm.

Perhaps going from 10 to roughly 50 in base stats could be done only by training. Probably even beyond 100 for stats like intelligence if I had enough time to explore the limits of my former understanding of reality.

Still, I reach within myself.

I see no fear, no knee jerking reaction that put me off, all I sense is a measured portion of mistrust anything from the system should get.

I push down my impressions that I would need to change tactics, at least for now. Staring within my soul at today’s addition, one more perception point, I drag on the same feeling that prompted the stat increase, but that as always I lost.

I just try to bridge the gap and then it comes, with me fully prepared, I let go of the gains and throw myself fully outward against the system.

A new hut, this one just a couple of hundred meters off the new MRI satellite research center. Mana draws in from the batteries, powering the runes below and around my home to help ever so slightly to keep the system out, even as its attention arrives at my soul.

I pull on my Aether and instantly draw repeating patterns locking every corner of my soul in a 120 sided lattice. Not a perfect match for the spherical walls, but the closest my human mind could conjure up.

Right behind the defenses, I conjure the will from all my buddies in the inner world and each of them starts circling on their own, even as a few absorb a tiny amount of unattuned Aether.

Yep, eat it all, so you will grow strong and smart.

With a glance outward, I set out against the system when it is supposed to be helping me. Its ‘will’ batters my soul. A single strike and like always, it rebounds off it.

Its attention is drawn and still confused tries to find a crack to worm its way inside, but it is no matter.

“Even if you manage to worm your way inside today, eventually I will keep you out again and that will be another step toward my true self.”