When earth is just a step away, the excitement building in my heart almost becomes too much, even if my advance has slowed. A fundamental change in space that is trying to exclude me, a weakening of the very forces that allowed me to grow as I approach the edge of system space. And it feels like the stronger I become within the system the more that would bother me. Could this be what stopped others from coming to newly integrated worlds?

A thousand questions play in my mind as I take down the thin layers bringing color to my life to get back a full view of the void.

I couldn’t have just remained for years on end with my sanity in check without a few modifications, but even as everything colored is not only retracted, it returns to the inner world the void itself brings a little variety to my eyes. The significantly improved sensor arrays made up of engraved wooden roots that reach 50 meters from my body aren’t like telescopes but are instead closer to radar which limits their range. Still, the improvements were in the order of 100 times farther range in brief pulses and dozens on continuous mode.

The last 5 years in the void were a huge opportunity for growth and my senses, especially as they pertained to the anomalies were so fine tuned that even with the very limited interfacing I could establish with a mathematical system to locate myself, I had in just about every conceivable way surpassed the original design. I had also started to learn the quirks of the system and many weren’t just limitations of the void.

And if I had grown, the ones starting even lower than me had seen a meteoric rise.

The one that really surprised me is the little automaton seed, who had chosen to take a chance. Sure, it had been extremely dangerous trying to absorb that Aether, but unlike myself that didn’t want to become something or someone else, my seeds were a lot younger and more malleable and this gambit paid off.

Other gambits were still in the air. I felt tentatively hopeful about a pair of my seeds, but the infinite echo of the rage from the Aether harvest from the HLZ beasts was a blight contaminating it in such a fundamental way after it had absorbed it, that cleansing for a while felt impossible.

Even now, the single avenue was ‘filtering’ it through a creature that absorbed it. Only two seeds had adventured in that particular direction and concrete benefits had yet to manifest, but I believe they would come.

After nearly a month of carefully aligning my trajectory and decelerating at a much faster rate than I could speed up, the end was within sight.

The warping of space that mass causes on the void doesn’t create any detectable light, but luckily vision wasn’t the sense I was relying upon.

Nor was it my significantly larger Inner World with the accompanying perception field.

I had grown a lot, maybe even enough to attempt a class trial, but for some reason, the option to enter the class trial was greyed out. Maybe just a quirk of the Void. I hadn’t even noticed it for the first 6 months, and without the advantages of more levels, it was growing harder and harder to get even one more stat point in stuff like strength and constitution. Those two in specific hadn’t increased in the last 8 months. Even endurance, the easiest fully physical stat to raise needed months for each hard won point.

I knew or rather I felt in my bones that this wasn’t the limit, because even if I could not grow by relying on old beliefs of how the world worked, I hadn’t hit the ceiling for now, but each small step took forever. Further growth required me to fundamentally change how I went about things and I didn't know which direction would be more fruitful just yet.

A thousand thoughts stream in my head as the anomaly approaches and even as I propel forward, a strange drag in the very space slows me down.

I approach the space anomaly, which is of comparable size to other star systems. As I grow closer and it subsumes my ‘field of view, it grows so much larger than the instance anomaly in the void that it isn’t even funny. While the instance was a sphere nearly a kilometer wide, this felt like a planet sized disk.

I carefully nudge my way forward.

The information in my book and witnessing similar places from a distance only prepared the logical part of my mind, but I hadn’t gotten a close enough look.

Around me, a rough disk slowly changing shape as the planets and other masses moved. I carefully and meticulously aim at a spot I feel all but certain is in the vacuum but close enough to the third planet to make my trip shorter, before I put on a wooden space suit.

Though the void seems to provide everything I need to live, I doubted the system would protect me from the harsh vacuum of space beyond what my stats could provide. Even if I could hold my breath for a lot longer than before, I am still human and subject to many limitations. Eventually, I would run out of air and few things beat the convenience of simply breathing.

The system pushes with some insistence, but the living wood and my will keep its grub little hands away avoiding the slow erosion of the material like what it did with my clothes and it tried to do with Aspen during my last trip, which only grows easier with much less gold and silver laced wood outside the inner world.

I can barely contain myself, as the minutes tick down. The instant that I cross over, I meld my will with the thousand more developed seeds in the inner world and the seamless connection is of a depth I wouldn’t have considered when I started on the journey.

Currents even stronger than my trips out of the void in the instance force a sense of ripping, trying to tear me into a thousand pieces, each of my bones flying off in a different direction, but I hold strong.

And with preparation and time to develop, this time enough of my mental faculties remain that I can observe and guide my descent with a little more precision. I get glimpses of blue and white, then green and brown before but most of the time it is a different kind of void… A twinkling color… no… not void: Blackness.

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With each glimpse and I twist like an eel trying to make my way over to the ground. My grasp on tenuous but I keep pushing.

The system reaches even in this transition and the pangs trying to get me to sleep don’t grow any stronger, maybe from fear that it will injure me if it hits any harder, but I have become tired beyond belief. But even if the attempts don’t become stronger, each of them happens quicker and quicker until I feel like an alarm clock bell ringing. So many hits that it blends into one thing.

Even as Aspen starts to pump me full of Vigor, I can already feel it. I’m spending the resource faster than I can take it in. Like an engine outpacing the fuel pump. It doesn’t matter if my tank is full if the gas doesn't get to where it is needed, soon the tiny reservoir in my carburetor will dry out, and then it’s game over. I try to relax to reduce my consumption even a smidge and I manage to stay just under what Aspen can recharge me with until I have to use all my strength again to simply survive.

Suddenly I get a glimpse that I could not miss.

The great salt lake.

A place within driving distance of Pando.

Everything I’m reaches out and something I didn’t know was possible happens: I fully guide my fall.

I almost let go in surprise, but I hold strong for a few seconds, but the turbulence grows stronger and stronger. Then everything goes out of wack and I’m thrown back in reality short of my goal.

I pop into space. Amidst the vacuum. Half is near pure backness with hints of the twinkling stars, but as momentum slowly spins me around the grandest sight I have witnessed in ages covers my view.

Green from light to dark and every shade of the forest in between. A few peaks with snow, water here and there and even bare dirt.

The edge of chaos and order that only unvarnished nature had. Even some hundreds of kilometers away, I know that the system didn’t meddle TOO much, otherwise, its handprints would be all over it as they were in the unnatural forests in the instance.

With great care, I slow my tumble until I can almost feel the earth pulling me.

I try to calculate my height, but even as I walk the memory palace, something seems wrong. I refine my approach to more universal things and the automaton seed calculated all the trigonometry faster than I could absorb the concepts. A few seconds later, he returns:

Height: 400 km plus or minus 20 percent.

Together with that piece of data, I realise what was bothering me. While the Great salt lake to my southwest seems to be the same size as before, the marks around it are so distorted that every calculation I tried to make is out of wack.

A smaller lake that I can’t recall the name of, which was less than an hour’s drive away through relatively slow roads, now seems to be about 3 or 4 times further at some 200 km away. That is all I can recognize from the satellite pictures I studied in my expansion of Pando, given that it was only a cursory examination for a few another dace of three down the line.

I look south and search for a grove, but it doesn’t show for a thousand miles nor does the lake just beside the original grove.

Not wasting a second of my precious time, I take off as fast as I can. I didn't know if I would be able to come up with a countermeasure for the system's insistence that I needed to sleep, so it's better to take care of the most important things first and anything else would be extra credit.

A thousand plans that I had to go out of the window, but their framework stays in place as I try to piece it together during my flight south following the markers I remember. The hundreds of people along with other creatures in the inner world try to help me even while I carpet ‘bomb’ the ground with seeds out. It wouldn’t hurt to guarantee a little more range for Pando in the future.

I slowly lower my altitude and try to gain speed in the near vacuum of space. But even when pushing my speed near a kilometer per second as I dive down, something starts to grate against my soul. I try to keep my speed around that mark, but eventually becomes too much and I slowly slow myself to slow even further after such an exhausting trip from the void down to real space.

I keep everything about myself under tight control, which is not an exercise to be taken lightly, but I’m not repressing myself chronically, that will be just for today.

Inside the inner world, the system keeps insisting that everyone else also should sleep, and not just the very faint sense that permeated it during the entire Void trip, but something quite strong that none would be able to ignore. Though everyone could receive vigor from Pando and the other seeds, they hadn’t made the full shift like myself so they aren’t able to replace stamina with vigor. Luckily the system couldn’t act unrestricted inside and they even had part of the regeneration so if they kept their pace slow they could still keep going for a good while.

Originally, I thought that I didn’t have to worry about the system's interference in the inner world, but clearly, I was mistaken.

Then I take another look as everyone gathers up and I realize that only humans and the goblins were affected. The wolves, rabbits and seeds seem to be exempt from the system’s interference.

With everyone in the same spot, I turn on the myriad of mana hungry enchantments to and push the system out with much greater strength than the passive push the edge of my inner world provided. My knowledge and experience engraving had grown a lot on the trip, but still nothing truly beyond Merlin. And though I had years to perfect some aspects f my skill, it took forever to level our skills outside the perfect environment of the instance.

Best as I could tell, we got about 2.8% of the exp for the same actions as in the instance. Though that evened out considering we also had roughly 35 times as much time compared to the instance.

As I approach a few more familiar grounds, something builds in my chest. The Fish Lake pops up on the horizon and then Dozens of miles closer I recognize the trees, Quaking Aspens. Instead of them consuming all the larger growth, they are few and relatively small. Few even reach 5 meters but the number and distance.

Pando has grown.

A small conflict ensues as I try to think of what I should do. Like I was trying to decide if I should get a lemon ball on the bottom or the top of an ice cream cone.

But I further lowered my altitude as I aim for the oldest trees in the middle of the grove.

However time is short and as I pass over the first few trees, a wrongness screams at me. Something that I should have noticed immediately, something I definitely should understand, so I immediately halt all my mental work turn downward to skim the trees.

With the inner world, I reach out to the tree with my portal shenanigans and touch one of Pando’s outer limbs.

All the anticipation and the years working to come back to an end as I have finally met him again.

My will spreads throughout, half of me feels the comfort, the way that even years after you enter your childhood home and you have the instinctive knowledge of where everything is. Back to my very first ‘magic’ skill I mentally map the changes as my will travels to the hearth tree. But my other half no longer screams at me from a distance, it hurts its throat just a few centimeters from my ears.

And the problem, something is missing.

This isn’t home. It isn’t a warm and inviting place… and there is nothing living remaining behind. No, the network is alive, in the same sense as any other tree is alive, but there is nothing beyond that.

I pass through the old grove and reach the other side spreading myself entirely to reach a hundred kilometers from tip to tip of Pando’s territory, but there is nothing. He is in corner of it.

I realize I stopped flying and I halt my fall just shot of slamming myself on the ground.

Everything I’m reaches out and I spare no expense as I deeply connect with everything that was Pando’s home.

Every nook and cranny, but all I find is an empty, dark and cold place.

“Pando.”

“PANDO.”

“PPaaNDDoOOOo.”

All I can hear in return are the echoes of my screams.