After having passed through a dozen other nearby peaks, all the messages are trying to tear my mind apart. Half of me is elated, the other disappointed.

You are the first to visit and reach the Gold Mountain’s summit: +1% to exploration.

You are the first to visit and reach the Hogback summit: +1% to exploration.

You are the first to visit and reach the Mountain Baldy summit: +1% to exploration.

You are the first to visit and reach the Little Shelly summit: +1% to exploration.

…

After fiddling around with the options a bit, I find a counter, but that doesn’t help me much.

Total exploration: 24%

I keep trying to figure out the specific rules for Earth’s human's first titles. After an hour and making my way to the third peak on a different mountain chain, I’m tart to form a hypothesis based on my observations, and the hint of a smile peaks through my face.

You are the first to visit Signal Peak. +1% to exploration.

You are the first to have climbed Signal Peak: +2% to exploration.

You are the first to reach Signal’s Peak summit: +5% to exploration.

So not all of the other peaks will be limited to the +1%. It seems to me that each chain would give me one chance for higher rewards either in the highest peak, or it could be the first one I land on with the rest being that 1%.

Though as I try to run the math on how many of these I can climb given how far apart they are how quickly I can fly and the time for each one and I will only be able to climb a fraction of a fraction of all the mountains around the globe. Even bere the Earth had gotten some 20 larger, or the new ones that popped up.

I need to develop a more selective approach choosing the ones with a greater reward and tracing a well thought out path.

As I fly away skipping a bunch of lower and likely less meaningful mountains in the way, I approach and surpass a kilometer per second and that same strain on my soul shows up.

Just like I expected, there are limits along this avenue.

If I keep to just this speed, a single roundtrip around Earth would take me …. some 880 hours, or thirty five days. If I stop every few dozen kilometers or so, no matter how brief the stops, I would never accelerate beyond that, but if I made longer trips and climbed clusters of more interesting mountains I could cut that time by a lot.

And as each second pass, I start to grow familiar with my limitations and even my more conservative number of mountains to visit shows itself more untenable without me even having to include other significant places.

My list which started with hundreds of thousands shrinks and shrinks until it seems more realistic. All throughout my planning, I keep visiting nearby peaks and different chains.

After getting the first one settled. I will head for the Sawatch Range and a couple of places in Colorado before aiming near Alaska. That way I could pass by California and Washinton where a few other of the highest mountains were.

Soon as I make another pair of stops on the way to get a better idea of the rewards that a title like this one could give me, a smile completely transforms my demeanor.

Total exploration: 1%

You have demonstrated that you are a true explorer. For your efforts you acquire the following title:

North America Explorer. (Tier 1 / Unknown)

All related skills are 1% easier to level.

+1% to all stats

+2% sense of direction while exploring

Those… weren’t bad rewards.

Depending on how broad exploration could be considered, even running and staff mastery could be considered related.

I can feel the Aether construct that the system sends within me perfectly sliding inside myself and taking root in the bottom of my soul.

I still eye it with distrust given how often it had bitten me in the ass. But as I grope for the changes, I’m pleasantly surprised that this other increase is multiplicative with everything else is and apparently not affected by injury in my soul that broke a few other Aether constructs from the system.

Too bad Pando’s fix couldn’t even last a few minutes outside his domain.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

As expected, I feel no changes in my soul stat given its special status. The ‘all stats’ designation should probably be ‘all common stats’ or something clearer.

With effortless ease, after half an hour flying without my flying bicycle, I stretch my limbs and the incredible strength I developed makes the air pushing me against my armor seem like no impediment at all.

I carefully calculate and balance the trust and vectors to not tumble in my flight, before settling in for another stretch flying high in the sky before going back to a more aerodynamic shell than my armor.

A couple of hours later, after accelerating as much as I could without splitting my soul in half, the 6000 kilometer trip comes to an end.

Now mount Elbert wasn’t the tallest at 4.4 km if that hadn’t changed as well, but it was already quite a bit taller than the others I had set foot on.

I land at a nearby road and start on the trail. Enough to still be considered climbing, but skipping all the bothersome the ‘driving’ distance.

Though even as I effortlessly make my way up the trail, a team inside the inner world works on how I’m going to climb harder places, where no amount of strength would surpass the small obstacles, and where there were no hand/foot holds, only sheer cliff faces, ice and snow.

Although I could probably handle solid stone with Qi or my roots and I doubt that snow would be too much of a problem, ice might be too hard to get through with just my roots and it was more fragile than stone. At least nothing tat would allow me to sprint up hill came to mind.

Rope was always an option, but it tended to be the slowest of options.

Though it was still a bit in the air, my preliminary tests returned to me that flying, even with just the repulsion against the ground would invalidate my run even for short spurts and I would only use it to prevent myself from catching a case of a cracked skull.

Then I climb yet again after having run all the experiments I wanted to get a few percent more points likely because of the higher climb, but I spend longer and tried different stuff that could have changed the equation. But as I head to my next few destinations I start to get a feel for the level of reward and limits on my actions.

Soon a full day has passed and I’m not even halfway through my list that reaches just the US, though the rewards are sweet.

North America Explorer. (Tier 2 / Unknown)

All related skills are 2% easier to level.

+2% to all stats

+5% sense of direction while exploring

And assuming that I can get the total to either 400 or 500 % I would then be in the 3rd tier even beyond this second increase.

From new information popping up and how the system seemed to consider these achievements, more and more I was considering how unlikely acquiring as many as I was planning would be.

The fact that the system divided the achievements into sections was probably intended exactly to keep the first level of these first titles available for people within certain regions in a reasonable time frame though most other people would take longer given how many others they would be competing with. Humanity would likely be severely limited in movement range and speed if I hadn’t come up with two flying vehicle types, though I doubted that someone like Merlin couldn't have pulled something out of the rabbit if push came to shove it would most likely have many of the same limitations as the basic flying vehicles that didn’t really on the inner world.

Though I wasn’t nearly as strong in a straightforward match as most Aether wielders my mind was good at breaking conventions and I doubted that most races would have flying vehicles half as good for the first century after integration. Both my book and the Automaton made clear that an Inner World was something for much, MUCH higher leveled people. And a pocket of space along with the skill to split it apart was essential to our better flying vehicles.

Even discovering the system interference runes and rebuilding equivalent vehicles to our old aircraft would be troublesome given the compromises to have them properly working.

Though as I fly from peak to peak those thoughts give way to the one mountain to rule them all:

Everest.

It doesn’t matter if you are you live under a rock or if climbing is your world, everyone knows the tallest mountain in the Himalayans.

I know that there are probably more efficient methods to cover a lot of ground, but something calls me to get used to my willpower honed for over 2 centuries nearly asleep. And I try to find the most important pieces to finish during these trips.

I had never been the most avid climber and I usually didn’t even look twice at obstacles that I needed a rope to get over choosing to fly or bypass them entirely, but each time Everest hits my ears, it is like music as I keep going as each of them grows taller and more challenging to climb.

I calculate and map my route, taking into account that I don’t know if I would have 2 weeks or a month before the others stepped out of the inner world.

Even before I decide anything, my hands are moving by themselves and the trusters aim at South America to get achievements from there, but my hands twitch involuntarily over and over again.

Instead of correcting my course, I keep climbing as steam shoots out and with each moment that passes elation overwhelms all of my limbs. Each meter forward just reinforces my behavior and a minute later I know that nothing would make me turn back as I sport the biggest grin I can muster on my way to the Himalayan mountain range.

South America can wait.

The significantly longer trip affords me a bit of real respite and I go back to the title I acquired.

North America Explorer. (Tier 3 / Unknown)

All related skills are 3% easier to level.

+3% to all stats

+10% sense of direction while exploring

Even going from tier 2 to 3 required 500 percent in the exploration counter. Assuming that things kept along this line, the fourth tier would require a thousand percent in ‘exploration’, and each percent point would take longer as the mountains would be lower giving a lesser percentage per mountain, while the clusters were further apart.

It might end up being worth it, I didn’t know. Maybe a single tier 5 title would skyrocket the stat gains or add unique effects to the title, but I don’t feel that is very likely. By all accounts, I would likely quadruple or even quintuple the effort to increase my stats gain from +3% to +5%. That didn’t sound like the best use of my time.

After over 2 full days getting interrupted every few minutes with only a few longer flights, the calm that the roughly 5 to 6 day trip allows stands in sharp contrast. With much more time on my hands, I reach with my nature Qi and connect to the roots that make most of this iteration of the flying bicycle. With surprising ease, my will infuses the wood and I mold it into a much more spacious vehicle so I can lay back and enjoy a reading session.

Then I pull out my book and the notes that the inner world inhabitants left for me and rifle through the denser sections trying to get used to the deep concepts developed in the centuries I was asleep.

Every other second I almost surprise myself with the sharpest and most precise mana shaping and manipulation that I ever managed. They form with so much power and precision that I cut reality and sometimes even fumble the very attempts because of that, but with my focus fully on it, I get used to wielding a knife like a pen so that I can draw and create art with every magma ball.