It wasn’t the 8th month since he came back yet, and while Adreana had already fully formed her energy domain and was practicing her new ability, he wasn’t the last. Utopia and Gar were only in the middle to late stage of their specializations training.
‘Middle-of-the-pack, as expected of the great me, totally intentionally delaying my training to appear inconspicuous, you’re a genius past-self.’
Shamelessly changing his past actions as he ran, Rune was coming back from 2 hours of festival-doing.
The change in mentality he was undergoing was naturally-induced. His final choice of elements was done, it was like he finished redacting his report, the only step remaining was editing, or in his case, fusing.
It was like before that point he wasn’t restricted, he had so many choices that he could just repeatedly purge and test new elements for years, but he couldn’t anymore.
Now, his ingredients were defined, and he couldn’t change them anymore, so he had to adapt to them and find the meal he wanted to make.
Already, he had tens of different fusion and dissociations he wanted to try, but he refrained from doing it now and waited, the composite element research faculty was expecting him in half a week and he would oblige.
Coming back to the apartment, his 4 friends were already back and having a chill discussion on the balcony.
Freed from his crunch period, he happily joined them after the few seconds it took for him to reach them.
“... Joined the military as officially employed patrollers, so different expedition fronts are pushing a lot more than before.”
It was the piece Rune heard Arik say when his sphere reached there.
“I don’t think it’ll slow them down that much. I dare say that with the more frequent breaks, the regulars doing all the menial tasks, and only having to fight, they’ll show a slight increase in leveling speed,” Adrenana was also participating actively.
“I can’t think about how it couldn’t benefit us? If they explore more, when we plan our next expeditions, we’ll just have to go farther, that's all, and in a way, that’s better isn’t it?” Utopia gave his opinion.
“Rune is back, let’s ask him for his opinion.”
Being called by Gar like that was surprising but not uncomfortable, so he just waited for him to clarify his question.
Turning his bald head, Gar described what they were talking about as Rune sat in his corner again.
“Recently, more and more prospects are officially joining the expedition fronts, and we were comparing our plan compared to theirs, so for example, what’s your short-term plan? Then middle and long?”
“Composite element, probably finished in the week, purge, training park, gaining money, and finalizing my adventure build,” he started.
“For the medium-term, refining my element with intent training, being a spectator at the prospects finding event, finding out what the secret message at the end of the trailer means.”
“Long-term, finding floating islands, so lots of expeditions, and maybe… Starting experiments in the direction of growth mastery, it’s too far so I didn’t think about it except for that.”
The smile on Gar’s face kept growing as he talked, “Then you belong to my camp, help me convince them that planning our future expeditions now is inadequate.”
Blinking repeatedly, Rune turned to face his other friends, and said with all the intensity and seriosity he could gather, “What’re the benefits from your camp? I’m interested.”
Everyone, even Arik smiled at this.
As long as the Undecided were together, Rune would happily act the role of the person who served the interest of the group before his own.
“Well, everyone is pretty against the idea of going for the Arcadia, and for good reasons, so our plan was to…”
Abbreviated, the plan forwarded by Utopia and supported by Adreana consisted of pushing for more contribution and getting the benefits associated with it.
What surprised Rune was that the first steps were similar to his short-term plan, meaning they would get their training park running with the goal of maxing out their tier 4 stats, with everyone helping a bit when they could.
The divergence happened medium-term, where they became not participants, not spectators, but trouble-makers in the prospects finding event.
And from how Utopia was being vague about that step but still told of its existence with confidence and certainty, he probably had a lead on something.
Of course, his strong emphasis on the associated benefits provoked a snort from Gar’s side, as even for this part, Utopia remained vague about them.
Ultimately, the long-term seemed to be similar to anything he could imagine, it was too far and the benefits were uncertain, but there should still be some.
But once again, Utopia remained vague.
“And that’s pretty much it, so… You're in?”
“What if I say yes anyway? Like, I have to sign a confidentiality paper? If not, then there’s no use in deciding now, right?” Rune asked after Utopia finished explaining.
“Of course, I’m not asking for something that’ll happen tomorrow or in one week, but something that’ll happen much later, 4 months minimum and I’m not sure how it’ll go.”
“Then why is Gar in the opposite camp?”
He turned his head to look at Gar, Arik was in the middle camp from what he understood.
“I’m fine with letting Utopia prepare something in secret, but when it’s probably linked to what the IGS is doing in the shadows, then it should absolutely not have anything to do with us. That’s why I opened up the discussion to the prospects joining the military as of lately…”
Overall, the matter was not that serious. Rune had months before deciding whether to join Utopia in a secret plan, or stick with the training park and prepare his adventuring build.
In the next 5 minutes, the subject was jovially switched to the chance of encountering floating islands in the spiral ocean Arcadia, which were agreed to be 0.0000001% by everyone.
…
Half a week of leveling his 3 tier 1 elements specializations later, Rune departed from the apartment, knowing when he came back, his composite element would be complete and part of his masteries window.
In half an hour he reached the composite element research faculty and was welcomed by Star Head who allowed him entry and led him to a special room where Aleda and tens of assistants were waiting.
As soon as he arrived, she gave him the green light as she already made a speech to her assistants.
And so began his grueling but enjoyable journey towards creating and shaping his own element, and it wasn’t an average one.
With the amount of work done upstream, he wouldn’t settle for anything less than what he envisioned.
The mist, mystic, chaos, nebula, light, darkness, signal, and nature elements all had something to contribute that he wanted, but combining them was all on his part.
With passion fueling him, he tried everything, from all-elements foundations to unnatural links between natural and chaotic, the only thing that allowed him to be so efficient was that he had objectives that severely limited the number of combinations possible.
No offensive or defensive properties and no user protection properties were only the easiest properties to cut off, but Rune wanted to even limit what didn’t belong to those areas.
He didn’t need his element to be perfectly manipulable, he didn’t need it to have a preferred form, he didn’t need it to have a color, he didn’t need it to be remarkable now.
First adding all the perception-dampening and interfering properties, he already filled 70% of the property base, as for the remaining 30%, it was used to make up for the behavior and the degree of assimilation with nature he needed.
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Those were absolute measurements, over 2 days, or 48 hours, he optimized the property base as much as he could, and he was sure he god-damned reached the best optimization on this level possible.
The difficulties and the facilities he encountered were exactly what he expected.
The behavior for example was a part of the assimilation with nature area, but it still had an independent section he had to smooth over to make sure it naturally acted as he envisioned.
Hiding the most flagrant anti-perception effects like blinding or absolute darkness were things he had to include in how his assimilation with nature worked.
Making everything remain below imaginary borders that he used to make sure it still belonged to an uncleansable element was an always present thought.
Linking all the anti-perception properties to the uncleansable and assimilation with nature property was a true challenge.
But everything was possible.
And 9 days after he entered the room, he had finished creating his theoric element formation. From the beginning to the end, he had prepared every step and intrinsically felt he was ready.
After announcing he was starting his final attempt, or alternatively, that he had finished mapping what his elements looked like, he only had to begin.
To get the right mood, he first selected the right playlist of music, in which he included one specific music he wanted to play near the end.
With timestamp marked all the way across his plan, he knew when to play certain music to be sure everything was going like it should.
So he added “Unmei No Hi Tamashii VS Tamashii Variant” to the end.
(Unmei No Hi-Original is fine, but only the instrumental is really catchy. Try listening to the original, you should already know it. Though you shouldn’t know this variant)
The next instant, energy started flowing away from him and converted to every element, first a sphere of mist, then a sphere of mystic, then one of chaos, nebula, light, darkness, signal, and nature elements.
Once all the spheres had the right size and were totally stable, he could consider each of them as the representation of 1 elemental particle, so he started to cut properties away from his element of choice for his foundation.
With enough practice and focus, he remained steady all along as he executed the first step of fusing all the anti-perception properties into one sphere while filling what he extracted to the other spheres to keep every element satisfied and stable.
It was something he had to do as the thing he hated the most was the time limit that appeared when he reduced an element property base to less than full.
Interchanging properties here and there, he arrived at the end of the first step with all the perception-related properties in one sphere, the behavior properties in another one, and the nature assimilation properties in yet another one.
Dismissing 5 spheres, he was left with 3.
His ingredients were perfectly prepared, and he could retry if he failed, so he wasn’t feeling much pressure.
The second step started with organizing the perception sphere, preparing it to receive what Aleda and Star Head called “modifiers”, or properties that affected the whole element, so they needed to be fused with everything.
He also had to prepare auxiliary interaction platforms for when certain properties that originated from the same element came in contact again and tried to fuse without his consent.
With a prepared ground, Rune cut away the majorly chaotic and mist, and minorly mystic and nature behavior properties and fused them with his perception sphere.
Encompassing a big thing with a small thing wasn’t a challenge as long as the small thing was made from the start to encompass the big thing, so the behavior infusion passed just right and all the platforms he made interfered with what he didn’t want to happen.
Then came the most sensitive phase, hiding everything away and making the element uncleansable, or as uncleansable as it could get.
Fortunately, the element was stable as he took a bit less than an hour to prepare for all that was going to happen.
Because he knew that a lot was going to happen without him wanting it to, from instant reactions to delayed reactions, and passing by extremely silent reactions.
Certain that he had found out all the reactions in the dozens upon dozens of tests he did before that point, he finally cut away all the properties he didn’t want in the two spheres and fused the two together.
80% of his preparation erupted there, with some blocking precise properties, some acting as barriers between completely unrelated properties, and some making sure some properties interacted despite not wanting to.
A few minutes later, all the platforms were activated and doing their work, and nothing was escaping the focused scrutiny of Rune as he made sure everything worked.
At that time, Aleda advanced and helped him search for any impromptu properties that shouldn’t be there, it was the only thing she could do to help him.
10 minutes later, the resulting 50 centimeters wide sphere stabilized completely and silently announced that nothing else would happen.
“It seems… Right?” Rune gave his honest opinion.
“I didn’t observe anything going awry, so you just need to manipulate it and feel if everything is really right,” Aleda inputted from the side as she didn’t find anything wrong too.
“Anyone observed something strange that didn’t follow the theoric element formation?”
Damn his social awkwardness, Rune asked everyone present.
And some people really did step out to give possible things that had gone wrong.
“The different platforms around the mist foundation devised to protect it seemed really strained, maybe some bent a little at the end.”
“The silent reaction between the behavior properties and the mist foundation activated the corresponding platform really late, it didn’t happen like that the last few times.”
“I think I saw the start of an instability when…”
Irrelevant or not, Rune tested each of their observations, they were all advanced or expert level in the composite element associated fields, and nobody could be perfect.
An hour later, an issue really appeared after an intensive investigation, so to be on the safe side, he scrapped this sphere and restarted.
…
‘Was it… Fourth time’s the charm?’
No one observed something that had gone wrong, his element was finally birthed.
A sphere of grey-white mist with specks of shining white and empty-black swimming about.
“I’m taking it then,” he said as he thought of filling his only empty mastery slots.
*Ding* Do you want to fill one of your empty mastery slots with Energy: Specialized TBNE Element?
“It’ll be named… The cosmic mist element, and that’s only because I don’t want to go overboard.”
‘Yes. Show me.’
Nothing majestic happened, he could only access a precise window after confirming.
Energy: Specialized Cosmic Mist Element
Specialized Slotted Mastery (Tier 1)
A composite element created from different properties from the mist, mystic, chaos, light, darkness, nebula, signal, and nature elements. With no offensive or defensive properties, this element acts against everything, even its owner, and is catered to act like it belongs to nature.
Allows you to convert your energy into cosmic mist element energy at a practical rate, exchanging 10 energy to create 1 cosmic mist energy, doesn’t change the behavior of your energy.
Still in the middle of the special room, he used his newly acquired mastery to start pumping out cosmic mist.
He didn’t search to manipulate it, he just released it and left it to its own device, a device he created not even an hour ago.
Restraining himself, he stopped providing endless energy and cut it off completely.
‘It’s a new toy I’ll be able to enjoy for a long time to come, let’s not get carried away.’
“It’s all good, we can finish everything we have to.”
“Ok, ok,” the voice of Aleda was a little strange due to the faint layer of cosmic mist present in the room, but she could still be heard easily, “First, give me the description of the mastery, then, leave the rest to my team, we’ll do all the tests for you.”
What happened next could just be described as him playing with his new toy and jealous people observing him.
‘Bending reality to be what I want is one of my specialties, the doctors say.’
Containing his laugh as best as he could, even a tier 4 body control couldn’t make his smirk disappear.
And ultimately it came to an end.
“We have everything we wanted, come with me I’ll escort you to the exit, you serve us no purpose anymore!” Aleda boasted about how it was the end.
“Can’t we go to a last restaurant to bid our temporary collaboration goodbye?”
“Nope! No goodbye for me! But if you want to invite me, it’ll be between friends from now on!”
“Oh, then it’s a permanent farewell then! No way I’m inviting someone…”
“Then I’ll invite you, I’m not a poor rululu,” she instantly answered.
“If you want to invite me, make sure it's during a festival, this way you have 100% guarantee of me coming back from any lost corner in range of the capital,” Rune informed her of what she could expect in case she didn’t forget what she said.
And she was a rululu, so…
“You’ll be participating in the prospects finding? I tend to say no, knowing you a bit now, but if you show your element then I think some people will be interested enough to pay big money.”
“No interest at the moment. If I’m lucky I can probably get a place by virtue of being a tier 4 but money isn’t really my strongest subject.”
He thought about evoking a piece of Utopia’s trouble-makers plan, but he didn’t in the end, he was good at keeping secrets.
“You still have 3 months and a half so don’t feel rushed, even I will not participate, why would I want to become a prospect? Sounds so boring…”
“Imagine being restricted from doing what you want because you were too good at what you want to do… Too corpo!”
“Hahaha! Become a prospect and sell your soul to the evil IGS corporation, or become a savage adventurer! The choice is your own!”
“Some people are listening Ms. Research leader of the composite element faculty, stop praising the adventurer profession, I don’t want concurrence.”
Rune felt really at ease with her, dozens of weekly meetings in fantastic restaurants had boosted their friendship to a very comfortable level.
“Then join me here, lots of stupid and interesting forms to review every day, lots of free time when you work efficiently, and the other labs and faculties are good storytellers when you know where to look and what to ask.”
“I’m traumatized from my school days, back then I had to wake up after only 9 hours of sleep and work prevented me from entertaining myself, so now I’m a self-organized addict, no way I’m wasting my time with unprofitable ventures such as-”
“Don’t insult my researcher work! I know what you’re going to say! I dare you to finish!”
“Such as… Going to a restaurant with you, if I paid for you every time, you would eat my hundreds of millions of savings in a week…”
Lamenting as strongly as he could, his answer was only silence.
And the moment he exited, he began to run.
But without an adventuring build, he couldn’t escape her as she had masteries dedicated to boosting her tier 3 momentum.
Fortunately, his energy armor held strong.