Hours pass, and we take a tour through the Ravine's newest discoveries. Luna and Monk are quite excited to show off the lists of new languages and extinct races they have discovered. Not only to us, but to the other commanders, admins, and generals that don't visit this place often.
Abby manifests a temporary fast travel route, allowing us to move throughout the Lower Realm and all of the Zones incognito and explore all of the new infrastructure we passed on the way down.
Maria and I have already scanned every particle of this new era, and even comprehended its evolution through time using the fluctuations of laws. However, the smiles on everyone's faces allow us to hold back our words and let them give us a tour.
Our conversations are wholesome, and bring a glimmer of the past with them. Though, instead of growing closer, I feel as though we're drifting apart even more.
The tiny droplets of Emperor's Essence that make up these avatars are such a miniscule fraction of our entire minds. While I can reminisce on the past, it truthfully has become as simple and dull as interacting with simple ants that cannot comprehend more complex levels of thinking.
A tinge of sadness begins to build up as I stare into the eyes of everyone and everything I ever knew in the Upper and Lower Realms becomes so foreign and simple. Yet, I hold Maria's Avatar's hand tight beside me. She is the only human left in this entire galaxy that truly understands what is going through my thoughts.
Wisps of silver-red metallic and icy blue, mirror-like threads of liquid separate from our bodies as the private gathering of people make their way with us up to the Purple Zone of the Upper Realm.
Abby hosts a gathering in her private domain atop the highest leaf on the Primordial Tree.
We attend and listen to the current state of events, and re-listen to the stories we have viewed in the saved spectate feeds. However, fragments of these avatars void step through space and return to the Lower Realm.
More specifically, our Avatars materialize back on the human world.
We disguise ourselves as unassuming low-level dungeon divers, and start walking the streets of a small city in the Vice Region.
There is a small apartment building standing right in front of us. It is the very one I rented when I first became a hunter, and the unit right next door was where Maria lived, and met me even before she awakened to the system.
After hundreds of years, it should not still be standing, and look so similar.
It has been renovated and rebuilt quite a few times, but I sense the presence of lingering high-quality ether arrays all over this town, and in fact, the entire 8 Great Regions and Dark Continent.
I even sense the presence of the old shopkeeper's stall that I sold my first mana crystal to.
The old Association Headquarters hardly look any different, and most of the dungeon placements all over the globe are still intact. The only difference is the people in charge.
When I send my senses far out into the Dark Continent, the Crimson City and the canyon of dungeons are still prospering.
Even the dark blackstone prison with a single soul trapped within, the Vice Region director that betrayed our party, it is still guarded and stands untouched deep within the desert.
Many mortals that do not ascend to the Upper Realm aren't capable of living more than 200 years or so.
All of the Hunters Association director positions have changed, and all of the city lords of the major cities and sectors in the Dark Continent have been cycled through by popular votes.
It appears even the technology in this world has hardly changed at all. There are strict arrays crafted with the Dryad's legacy to maintain this world's purity like a historical site.
The only exception is the island nation on the far side of the world.
It is where the central headquarters of the association was, where the secret organization known as the Order held control of the world and conspired with Demons, almost leading to the human race's downfall.
This massive high-tech city has changed a lot.
Here, the adoption of the Upper Realm's new dungeon systems has been implemented. The upper limit is no longer level 999 on mana construct simulations. The Warlords and Generals have helped to craft new training facilities that can safely reach the five digits.
There is a single ether stream port connected to this world, allowing for fast travel through the Central Capital upward to the Green Zone Port to the Mensa Citadel to commence. Yet, the application process to enter and exit this mega city is very strict. The world would not have maintained its status quo for hundreds of years as the exhibit it is if it wasn't.
After wandering around and taking in the sights, even this place I used to call home becomes dull, like a predictable painting trapped in time.
Still, it mends and refines a strand of my inner soul to return and admire it like this one more time.
I look upward, peering through all of the zones above and through the shielding array filled with laws that constrain the construct to the Origin Plane. I whisper to Maria as the sun starts to set slowly on this human world.
"I think it's time we get back to the Membrane. I've made my peace, now I'm prepared to see what is on the other side."
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Author's Note:
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