A day and a half later, the night had fallen and the city transformed.
As they plotted, Rune and Adreana brought the up-to-date Utopia to the Secluded Corner, but to their greatest dismay, he took to the place like an experienced drunkard.
He found it more fascinating to talk about their economic model and whatnot than to watch the beautiful barmaid Angeni.
Nonetheless, like Rune, he had a special affinity he nurtured before the Ether Law awoke with music and ambiance, and the two ended up lethargically overlooking the bar sipping their drink from a corner while Adreana went to another table.
When it was time for closure, the 3 Undecided left and returned to their apartment. Upon returning, Utopia started his purge with gusto accompanied by Rune who gleefully watched him agonizing for the first few minutes of starting it.
For the next 7 days, he saw how Rune completely surrounded himself with light elements and tried to improve his elemental dissociation, he also saw how much he wrote on his holographic energy keyboard, something he hadn’t known was possible and swore to buy one too.
As Utopia had 7 days of free time where he couldn’t move much, he kept reporting everything he found interesting to his balcony companion, who was always here, and the room princess when she deigned to get out to externalize her frustration.
He learned that once he confirmed his tier 4 state administratively, he would get an assistant, probably a research faculty leader, to correctly approach his chosen path and that despite the difficulty, having help was the best thing he could ask for.
With internet broadband available and the EP to spare, he was really free to check everything out, and Rune didn’t hide what he found when it was during his free time.
After he finished his purge, he really felt a bit lost due to his speed now being more efficient when strength-based than momentum-based, but he could do nothing about it.
From that point on, he fully entered the urban cycle of going to the bar two times a week, plus a cultural event, and the rest he managed on his own.
…
“I don’t think it made it to the public news yet, it would make much more noise otherwise,” Rune mentioned.
“Elemental dimensions aren’t so rare as to make so much noise anyway,” a rululu lounging next to him commented back.
“But wouldn’t you want to just go there and see the endless expanse of elemental energy everywhere? With all the accompanying phenomenons?”
“I’d rather the IGS found a tier 4 apocalypse dimension,” dreamily, Utopia wistfully advocated a dream he wanted to be true, “A medium risk to our lives, a high reward for our EP.”
“It would certainly be fun, we would even receive a pay just to join the IGS on its colonization effort, maybe enough to max out our stats and only have to endlessly kill the monsters inside.”
“We need to do things anyway, no one will want to risk a multiple-years travel towards the Maze unless we reach tier 6 ourselves, even the IGS know there is tier 6 ether density zone to go through, so no escort mission for us…”
“I don’t want to approach the Arcadia too much, it would be best if we circled around it, just have to follow the cliff, just like old times, hehehe,” Rune jeered at this thought.
“The erosion anomaly is still too unknown and dangerous, and you know it. Also, planning for such a long time prior to actually doing it is bad, we can’t even begin to guess what will happen, maybe an extreme ether season will arrive and grind to dust all our plans…” Utopia explained seriously but with a slight smile.
“If we find an apocalypse dimension, and an extreme or medium dimensional disturbance season starts, that wouldn’t just be unlucky, it would mean one of us is a protagonist and we have to get away from him as early as possible. Who would be the protagonist of our group for you?”
“Nelo.”
“Yeah, Nelo, too stubborn for his own good,” Rune agreed immediately, before following with something that came to him and he asked before.
“Do you know if he successfully made his single star composite element before you departed? He told me one or two months before I was gone, but…”
“Don’t know, I think there’s a chance Nelo departed with Astryde, maybe forced? Not too sure about that but they talked about it a bit before I was gone towards the beyond-horizon laser monsters anomaly.”
Talking about everything during their free time had become something normal for them 2 weeks after Utopia returned.
*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division reached Tier 4 Level 17
“Oh! Level 17 on my awareness! To celebrate that, I’ll give you a demonstration for the heroic magical pale gold color once again, and with free explanation too,” Rune beamed as he said that and lifted his finger, making an energy sphere appear in mid-air.
Utopia immediately turned his head and watched like a rapture slotting a small and easy prey.
“First, you have to taint the color with dark feelings, not something like frustration or anger, they’re not inherently dark. I use corruption as it’s the darkest intent I have, and it can be simply synthesized with the ether colors emitted by mindless monster’s nests.”
The sphere changed to emerald green, the legendary shining emerald slime green that he imitated long ago. From it, the intent of melting and transforming aggressively emanated.
“You don’t need to create an intent, just an inkling is enough, and with it, I execute the color-within process, meaning I infuse a small particle of pure white ether, naturally infused with purity.”
On his other finger, a millimeter wide sphere of pure white ether condensed, then he fused it with the green sphere.
“All intents interact with each other, and from their collision, weird mixes happen, so you need to control it.”
The green sphere with a dot of white started to mix a bit, creating multiple colors at their borders.
“Now, you capture the pale gold bits and nurture them, they’re the parts of the purity intent that have become resistant to corruption, it’s really easy once you recognize it, here, take this ball.”
In an instant, Rune transformed the ball into a pale gold energy sphere and flung it above Utopia, who catched it like a monkey by jumping from his relaxed position.
“You’ll see soon…” Ominous messages escaped Utopia’s mouth, no doubt he was up to no good.
“Did you confirm the IGS-sponsored prospects finding event?”
Adreana’s voice interrupted their friendly exchange as she changed the subject abruptly.
“Nothing important, probably true but only at the conceptual stage I would say?” Utopia was the one who answered.
The next sentence however didn’t reach Rune as he turned his head towards the distance.
2 familiar signals had appeared.
Same as he did for Utopia, he condensed a table, larger than last time, and made a barrel of infused juice appear in his hand, which he then put down.
“Our informants' duo is back, they’ll be able to help us right?”
…
Beard.
Arik Tiddledom was 27 now, he didn’t grow taller and he had the start of a beard. A bushy one at that. He told years ago the tale of his family growing their beard at a precise age, and he reached it at 27 half a year ago.
His accomplice, Gar Jin the giant, was still bald and like Adreana, physically unchanged.
With 5 members gathered, the Undecided only missed the brother-sister duo to be complete, but with the majority being present, the plan they sketched before arriving in the Endless, and that they updated through their early tier 2 journey, could now start the conceptual application phase.
Meaning, they could seriously start to think about their money-making schemes seriously.
Similar to everyone, Arik and Gar also had to do a purge, even Arik who was firstly like Rune, and only wanted to switch to provided masteries, continuing a variant of the strength and reinforcement path, had changed his mind and decided to take a specialized path.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
The foldable strength path.
When he spoke of it, only Rune knew about it, it was an infusion path after all, it consisted of infusing the purity and affinity stat in one’s strength, making it become an immaterial sludge that could be…
Sort of manipulated.
He didn’t explain much about why he decided to pick this path and changed the subject to the first thing that he thought, nobody tried to pry the reason open.
As for Gar, everyone had known before he announced it that his fascination with energy and its fine manipulation into threads had made him susceptible to a specific style of paths.
Him unveiling his unchanged opinion on taking the needling thread path with a specialized lighting element made no wave in those listening, and everyone was listening.
The balcony was large enough to support everyone so they didn’t wish to change their temporary base even when the subject was brought up by Utopia, making him proud about his choice of taking the apartment early on.
Their purge started after they bought and actualized their hardware and administrative status, and it happened without a hitch.
Following it, 5 close friends were now members of the cycle of frustration, although with a very different scale in terms of frustration depending on their objective.
Group activities were now not always followed by everyone. They all moved to go to the cultural event, but they didn’t necessarily do everything together, their free-time period also became occupied by different ideas.
Urban exploration, for example, finding amazing corners, views, and establishments like the Secluded Corner, was something Arik often did after Rune made him realize it existed.
Supermarkets and shopping centers were also filled with new releases every day, the resulting work of millions of innovators and billions of workers building the economy up.
And like this, a month passed, and Rune finally started his first useless composite element creation.
…
‘That’s the solidification property, the impact properties, this one is the sticky contact part, and this is the…’
With his basic proficiency in elemental dissociation and repeated reading of the IGS guide about the composition of the darkness element, Rune was now able to see the major properties of basic elements.
‘Get your hands dirty, she said…’
With his indecisive and steady character, he would have never naturally attempted creating his own composite element so soon, but Aleda wasn’t of this opinion, and she strongly suggested repeatedly creating useless elements to boost his progression speed.
He could have said no, but he knew his place. He was a neophyte, she was a deity, or grandmaster if she wanted to be humble.
That’s how he ended up with a 30 centimeters ball of darkness element and another one of the light element.
Having only reached the threshold of necessary proficiency, he focused all his attention on identifying and cutting the easiest property he could, and for the darkness element, it was the solid property.
It defined how the element worked, and for darkness, it worked by being similar to water, not air, and it was called the solid property, the property that impacted the very fundamentals of how the darkness element acted.
Using unattuned energy, he cut off this property entirely.
Or he did as much as he could.
Removing this property impacted the whole darkness sphere and he saw how what he thought to be a careful cut turned into a savage butchering, bringing every surrounding property with it.
If he had to work with the amount of darkness 5 000 energy the minor manipulation allowed, he was sure it would have collapsed just now.
Trying his best, the darkness sphere faded away, returning to the ambient ether 10 or so cuts later.
‘Well, let’s start with a 5 000 energy worth of darkness element with a perfect conversion ratio…’
Going totally over the limit was the way. Rune knew 5 000 energy was completely overreacting and a sphere of this size would just have too many solid properties to cut off, but he wanted to have fun.
Descending to the park, he created a 5 meters wide sphere of darkness.
“You want to destroy the city now, Rune? I thought we said to wait until they release the next generation of connected lenses before doing it?”
“Yeah right, Rune! Stop immediately your black hole creation, or at least disguise yourself with your anti-life intent all-over, I don’t want to be implicated!”
Utopia and Gar jeered at him for his flashy action.
Other residents watched with interest. They all knew that in this common apartment, 5 tier 4 entities were residing, and they each had their own amazing things they showed during their training.
The barefooted brown-haired human with color-changing clothes popularized eye energy accessories, and though only some managed to imitate him, no one doubted he wouldn't try to destroy the city.
Ignoring them completely, he completely focused on his task once again, it was his training period, jokes could wait for later.
With enough focus and attention, he started to see the inherent properties of the darkness element floating here and there.
Keeping his steadiness, unattuned energy flowed out and began to cut, as precisely as he could, the solid property.
Not having to succeed and knowing he could endlessly retry again, he only sought to practice.
Cutting more precisely in 3 dimensions, identifying the problematic mixes of properties he had to untangle, keeping the sphere from becoming too chaotic…
With the knowledge and practice he gathered over more than 4 months and a half now, he knew what properties were present, how they looked, how they acted, and his elemental dissociation acted with all that in mind.
Little by little, the darkness transformed.
The solid property reduced so much, it stopped “flowing” and started “floating”, the change didn’t faze Rune, he already expected it.
As he continued cutting the solid property off, however, instabilities appeared.
The Ether Law was logical and everything could be explained rationally, instabilities were simply the result of the element trying to go back to a complete state, with 100% of its properties potential complete, not the 70% to 80% it was when the solid property was cut off.
Achieving this state already satisfied Rune fully, it meant he wasn’t missing something obvious and was correctly cutting and identifying things according to a proper elemental dissociation.
When the 5 meters wide sphere had too many instabilities, his experience in managing them turned the issue into something unavoidable as it started to disintegrate.
‘Unless I’m Aleda-level…’
Salvaging the situation was impossible at this point.
‘Looks like
When the sphere completely vanished, Rune was left with only a notification.
*Ding* Energy: Specialized Darkness Element reached Tier 2 Level 7
It was one he didn’t want and didn’t care about.
…
*Ding* Do you want to fill one of your empty mastery slots with Energy: Specialized Dim Light Element?
‘Nope,’ a simple thought, and the notification went away.
Before him stood a 5 centimeters wide sphere of a composite element.
The color had changed, but it wasn’t due to an artificial imitation process, it was all natural.
‘My color creation process is just so much easier… But I can recognize similarities here and there I think…’
Elements, as in converted energy, contained a theoretically unlimited number of affinity with intent, the artificial colors he created however only had one, and rarely multiple affinities for intents.
‘Capable of creating my own composite element. That’s at least half of the way towards creating a super complex monolith element which includes property warping, isn’t it?’
Pumping himself a little, he decided to change his eye accessories to the “3 circle point” variant, a complex pattern with 3 independent circles surrounding a central point anchored to the center of his iris.
Following the composite element goddess' advice had really boosted his efficiency on his path, getting his hands dirty had really been the best solution he could have asked for.
‘Now, it’s just rinse and repeat.’
Calmly, Rune dispersed the ball of composite element and opened his composite element note diary, on which he made a big separation appear at this date.
‘It took me 5 months to reach this point, so I should only need another few weeks to see what I need to see to start my property warping training, then another few weeks to reach advanced proficiency and become able to start my true theoric element formation.’
Not hesitating one bit, he continued with the next part.
‘Aleda, her main assistant Star Head, and what she called “newbies teams” have transmitted a list of elements I should take a look at, I still have 2 slots to fill and potentially more if one of the unorthodox elements really catches my eyes or answers last-minute problems I discovered…’
And the next one, until he wrote down everything he considered important.
In 5 months, his lonely wilderness adventures memories were only something he reminisced about when in a specific bar, brooding on his weird tasting drink.
Wrapping up this 12-hour long element creation training session, Rune returned to the balcony, and to his place on it.
At the corner.
*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division reached Tier 4 Level 21
Interrupted in his free time, he was more than happy about leveling from watching someone pranking others at the landing zone by switching their crates with visually impressive but harmless explosives.
And the subsequent chasing of some of the more susceptible victims, who sometimes also happened to be tier 3 taking the all-in momentum path.
‘Hehe, what can I do? Just so funny. How are my masteries after 5 months?’
Masteries
Tier 1 Masteries
Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement: Tier 4 Level 23
Physical Fundamental: Fighting Instinct: Tier 4 Level 8
Physical Fundamental: Body Control: Tier 4 Level 9
Energy Fundamental: Fine Manipulation: Tier 4 Level 19
Energy Fundamental: Grand Manipulation: Tier 4 Level 19
Energy Fundamental: Energy Compression: Tier 4 Level 8
Spiritual Fundamental: Perception Control: Tier 4 Level 2
Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division: Tier 4 Level 21
Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation: Tier 4 Level 5
Tier 2 Masteries
Energy: Specialized Mist Element: Tier 2 Level 8
Energy: Specialized Light Element: Tier 2 Level 18
Energy: Specialized Darkness Element: Tier 2 Level 10
Tier 3 Masteries
Energy: Specialized Nebula Element: Tier 2 Level 4
Energy: Specialized Mystic Element: Tier 2 Level 5
Energy: Specialized Illusion Element: Tier 2 Level 3
Tier 4 Masteries
[Empty]
[Empty]
[Empty]
Strangely, taking the opportunity to note down his leveling time in a dedicated diary and observing his masteries state, the idea of 10 years really seemed plausible.
‘Just missing 7 provided masteries and 2 specializations to send me back to reality…’
“It’s here!” A familiar voice exclaimed not far away from him.
Turning his head, he imitated Utopia and Adreana and looked placidly at Gar.
“1 year before the prospects finding event sponsored by the IGS! The official announcement should be for very very soon!” He read interesting news.