“Touch!”
A gigantic impact rang out as Rune kicked Arik in the back.
‘No way I can do my week of purge now when I have this amazing new toy to play with!’
Pumping more cosmic mist every second, he engulfed a static sphere of 50 meters full of dense mist.
It also wasn’t normal cosmic mist as he created the blinding intent he was most proficient in to refine it.
With his perception specialty, he was still able to resist contrarily to his friends, who literally became blind to everything inside the gigantic sphere of mist present 10 kilometers in altitude.
Changing target, he focused on Gar, who had just forgone offensive and deployed a sphere of threads around him that tried to keep the mist away, but his bewildered expression could perfectly describe what he was feeling.
From the outside, Utopia was once again getting ready to take a plunge. His only target was reaching somebody.
With strange movement, he started to circle while remaining still, it was the late-stage proficiency of a momentum dance, the accumulation phase.
Adreana, standing next to him, whispered something and pointed towards Arik who was struggling to reorient himself.
Not even had she finished that Arik stopped moving and adopted a defensive posture as Utopia crashed on his side, sending him flying out of the sphere.
In the same instant, the sphere of mist being so small, Rune attacked from above Gar and he chaotically answered to what appeared to him as nothing hitting the energy threads protecting him from above.
He only clearly recognized his opponent when he observed the increase in the density of mist.
Smiling maniacally, he projected all his energy pool into one big thread cage and tried to trap Rune to expel him from the sphere.
His needling thread path was coming along together finely and he was starting to show supremacy when it was an extremely close distance exchange.
Without any subsequent moves from the opposite side, however, he quickly stopped his attack and returned to a standing defensive position.
The scary one wasn’t Rune, it was Utopia, ambushes were annoying, cannonballs were deadly, it was that simple.
When his spiritual perception suddenly blazed with light the next instant, he retracted all his threads to a more compact mode and awaited the follow-up.
But it only came 20 seconds later, in the form of cannonball-Utopia, and Rune welcoming him the moment he was pushed out of his position.
“Fuuuuu!”
And he plunged in again the moment he slowed down.
An environment where you could only accept having nearly all your senses cut off was so novel that everyone was having fun in their own way.
Rune would start his purge when he had had enough, but in the meantime, he wanted to make his no-perception fantasy come alive and leave his imagination.
Of course, everyone still had some degree of senses, his element was just born, he didn’t refine the intent behind it, and the conversion ratio wasn’t good at all.
But even then, as long as the density was enough, it was powerful enough to satisfy him.
After 5 intense hours of playing around, the sphere of mist dissipated and the group returned to their rented apartment, but with additional fervor.
“Utopia! You have to step up and rent this piece of land! I’ll need time to empty just the area Rune needs!” Adreana complained like a spoiled young girl on their descent.
“I already tried to contact Nelo and Astryde to add more merit and reduce the price, but they’re unreachable. If they weren’t sending regular survey data back to their supports, I would think they entered a trap zone or region,” keeping his friends actualized as to the progress, Utopia put all the blame on the absent shamelessly.
“And there’s a lot more to worry about after renting the land, I already prepared the necessary forms from advertisement to taxes, but they’ll take time to be accepted and enter the administrative system…” Gar, who was with Arik, responsible for the management, informed the group.
“It’s not possible to renegotiate later Utopia?” Rune asked that directly.
“Too many people are too smart for their own good, and while the lands cannot be bought, everything is changing every day, so if I renegotiate, it’s more likely for the price to increase. It’s managed by Kajos, you know?!”
“Ok.”
The subject was strong enough to bear the interest of the group for 5 minutes even after they landed before vanishing, they all wanted EP so they were confident Utopia was doing his best.
‘Think about the future Rune, not this disgusting nausea…’
The first few minutes of starting his purge were, as usual, the worst.
‘Uhhhhh…’
Keeping a poker face at the start of a purge was something of a joke among them, and Rune didn’t deviate from this joke.
He tried.
He failed.
That was it.
Not being able to do anything apart from entertaining himself, and sometimes learning new things, he entered this cycle that he knew so much and was dear to his heart.
‘I only have to know what effects my personality will give to my tier 2 cosmic mist before formulating my adventuring build, how exciting!’
Expectations high for the future, he happily used this happiness to generate more of it by watching funny news and videos.
168 hours weren’t that long when you didn’t feel thirsty, hungry, or tired, and had friends and infinite entertainment by your side.
…
*Ding* Energy: Specialized Mist Element has been purged
*Ding* Energy: Specialized Mystic Element has been purged
*Ding* Energy: Specialized Chaos Element has been purged
*Ding* Energy: Specialized Nebula Element has been purged
*Ding* Energy: Specialized Light Element has been purged
*Ding* Energy: Specialized Darkness Element has been purged
*Ding* Energy: Specialized Signal Element has been purged
*Ding* Energy: Specialized Nature Element has been purged
‘No, it’s a lie, I’m not that excited.’
Betrayed by his own body, Rune stood up and finished his uninterrupted week of abundant and utopic entertainment.
Making shortcuts in his thoughts, it had been nearly 9 months since he came back, it would really be 9 months a week from now on without shortcuts.
‘Let’s go back to my training cycle, 2 hours of reinforcement and awareness division, then finally....’
Cosmic mist elements condensed themselves into a pair of eye intent accessories, the simple circled cross variant.
Then he was gone to let off some steam. For the next hour, the whole one, he took the saying “Having a surplus of energy” very literally.
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As for his awareness division meditation, its calming effect only succeeded at subsiding a bit his excitement for what he was about to do.
Once he had trained as he should, despite not gaining any levels, he took up to the sky and went more than 10 kilometers high.
It was time to create his very own perception control training and challenge himself to reduce his senses so much he became blind to everything.
‘I have thought about this moment for… Years, that’s right, years, from the moment I had this idea to now, I’ve gone from a tier 2 to a tier 4.’
Invoking a bit of cosmic mist, he dreamed about all the intents he had to work on, his ultimate goal was to first create a complex intent linked to this precise element, incorporating more than 10 intents at least needed that.
‘From nearly dying in the white zone to escaping by luck from a peak tier 4 bird, I lived interesting and exciting experiences, but with that…’
Not remaining emotional long, he started his first steps on the intent path by creating the strongest blinding intent he could, followed by the obfuscating intent.
It was the first training he devised, hiding the blinding intent with another intent.
Naturally, his element was completely neutral when it was converted from his energy, it was made like this by concept,
With the slight training he got from creating intent accessories, he had already trained in the blinding, obfuscating, absorbing, isolating, interfering, and similar intent that his elements supported.
He had a whole list of dozens of intents he didn’t train yet like the chaotic intent he didn’t touch yet, but it wouldn’t be long before he gathered his own cocktail of intent he wanted to apply to his cosmic mist element.
With extensive knowledge on the subject, he acquired online and on the guide, Rune played around with these 2 intents and experienced for himself how they interacted.
After 4 hours, finally, his internalized burning passion was appeased and he began methodically approaching this new part of his life.
Still, when he kept feeling how he improved with each iteration of intents, he didn’t stop and continued advancing to where his… Talent led him.
Deeper and more intense, he found ways to diversify his application and gain more insights after each success.
‘The legendary snowball effect…’
He realized after 6 hours of non-stop work that what was happening was something of a dream of his, hidden deep inside from the time where the Ether Law first awoke.
“Cheating” through the use of the event's energy use reward? Gathering more and more ether resources with more speed and perception? He wanted to have something that demarcated him, making him feel unique, not too unique, just…
Just an independent entity.
With his own independent whims and talents.
‘It’s easier to remember the bad than it is to remember the good, I’m not part of the 0.001% so I should feel unhappy? It’s so wrong, I was happy before that, so now I’m happier, no need to go further. I have at least a slight talent for intent, so let me celebrate it my way.’
And Rune’s way was by keeping silent until he achieved something, silently practicing and enjoying his progress without feeling the need for recognition.
‘Yes, that’s the myself-way for me, and if I can gain more EP by- No! It’s for helping my friends! What am I doing… Is there a specialization allowing someone to read my thoughts? Please don’t bother with what you find in the cave next to…’
Back to letting his own thoughts guide themselves, he continued his enjoyable journey of exploring the use of intent and how it made his element more able to hide him and anything.
…
After discovering his maybe-slight talent in the field of intent, a really… Not-so-amazing-field once he really thought about it… He gained a new activity that stood between entertainment and training.
Same as the previous months, he planned a training schedule and followed it to the letter. The only disturbance came when Utopia successfully contacted Nelo and Astryde, who were really together, and got their names and contributions added to their land-renting form.
Following that, he informed the group that they were on their way back and successfully got their own rented land south of the capital.
The future developments planned by the IGS after the capital was complete were pretty clear: Thematically expand.
The capital would remain the capital, but the 4 cardinal directions would receive very heavy variants in terms of architecture and design that were still up to debate.
All in all, the land they rented for 10 years, the maximum allowed with the current stipulations, had cost them 200 000 000 EP per year, so 2 000 000 000 in total, and it was voted to pay everything from the get-go, so everyone had to contribute 285 714 286 EP.
Rune directly paid the sum and got rid of this debt the moment it was announced, he even proposed to pay for one of the absent, but Utopia had everything covered so he didn’t have to.
Adreana all but simply took residence in their new land, which was only located some hours away from the capital, the perfect distance to be sure they were left alone and to enjoy the tranquility of nature.
With the land finally rented, Arik and Gar used their netizen nationality to hype its opening in the near future, using an optimistic estimation of Rune’s refined cosmic mist development.
Utopia was doing a market study to understand the right prices and advise Gar and Arik depending on his results.
The only job Rune had was preparing a mind-blowing, figuratively, element to be used as a stopgap and attention-grabber while waiting for their training park to start generating EP and more attention by itself.
They had lots of other stopgap projects in case they flopped and no one wanted to come, like Utopia’s momentum dance parkour, Nelo’s single star environment, or Adreana’s empty zone, which was not that special, but some curious would inevitably want to experience it.
2 weeks after Adreana’s started to empty an area, she finally sent back the message that Rune could come to start filling it with his element.
So he followed through with it and departed from the apartment.
…
An hour and a half south at 330 meters per second allowed Rune to reach where he needed to be.
A roughly 5 kilometers by 5 kilometers delimited piece of forest, with lots of inner delimitations inside of it, and Adreana was in one of them.
In his perception, the circle of 500 meters in diameter didn’t appear to be any different from the rest, but he had long learned that perception wasn’t omnipotent.
A bunch of crates were piled in an area where the forest had been razed, and dirt paths had started to take shape, they just needed to be widened.
‘Fortunately, I don’t have to think about the logistics, it really seems like a hassle, too many people to socially interact with.’
Approaching Adreana, he faintly perceived her energy domain covering the entire circle area, but as for understanding what was happening, he was certain even Adreana herself was doing it more by automatism than by understanding.
‘Or maybe she also has a slight talent in the energy domain path? That would be a very strange coincidence, but now that I think about it she had always set her sight on it, and her energy regeneration soul specialty I think is-’
“Come here Rune, the center is the best place to propagate the new rules.”
Interrupted in his thoughts, he entered the area covered by her energy domain. It really felt like there was no difference, even when he arrived at the center he felt nothing.
“You have to keep releasing your cosmic mist element, then in maybe… One week and some days, I think, you’ll feel that your element will not dissipate anymore then and start to fill the area progressively,” she explained.
‘Like a purge but I can do things? Awesome’
“Ok, will it prevent every new version of my intent cocktail from propagating? I tested it and it worked fine when I continued creating new intent to replace the previous one.”
“I don’t know much about intent, but if it works normally, then it’ll work here,” she looked like she knew what she was talking about at least,
“But maybe worry about the volume and density your element will reach? The center will be especially intense, and I saw some examples of elements who change property when too much of it is present…”
Making a poker face, Rune didn’t even consider, “Then I’ll start now, you need to keep being there or it’s okay even if you’re gone?”
“I just need to be there for the start, I already emptied this area completely beforehand.”
As it concerned their way to gain EP and enter the market, their conversation went directly to the center, neither Rune nor Adreana wanted to ruin the perfect advertisement plan organized by their informant duo.
So they sat in a clearing that Adreana created and Rune started creating cosmic mist, the basic version.
And this time it was different from what was “normal”. Instead of dissipating around him and creating a sphere of mist, which was what happened when he released lots of his element without any purpose, it just instantly vanished into the air.
“Woah…”
He tried increasing his output to more than his 10 000 energy per minute by tapping into his pool, but there was no change, and every bit of cosmic mist element he released vanished beyond what he was able to see or understand.
“What would happen if I tried to attack you with a pure single star element beam?” His curiosity took over.
“Absorbed, like everything energy-based or ether-based the Endless can throw at me. The only reason I could create such an area is due to constantly, and when I say constantly, it’s really! Constantly! Being there and expelling all the ether currents that homogenize the world and the region's pressure that is really weak, so it’s not that relevant, and there’s nothing else to take into account. If you want to know its origin, then a parallel can be made with the region’s transition during a region solidification season, it was found that…”
Half-technical jargon came out of her mouth, so Rune only half-understood what she said based on his knowledge of the energy domain path.
“And what’s the catch? I didn’t read about that ability being the strong point of the energy domain path, I didn’t even know about it until Utopia brought it up, I only knew that energy domain users were able to empty an area.”
“The catch is that if you tried to attack me, I’d only be able to slowly lose grasp of this area and you’d, in turn, receive a big bonus to your element when you use it. So it’s never used alone, and there are options a lot safer than this one, so it’s classified as an artisanal use, and is often referred to as a way to survive in a hostile environment.”
“Oh.”
‘Well, am I the pro or is she? No way I can argue, and she probably summarized it for me.’
With nothing else he was curious about, he kept converting his energy into cosmic mist, and a few minutes later it was already able to exist around him and expand.
An hour later, a circle of 5 meters around him was occupied by basic cosmic mist, and it was at that stage that Adreana started “releasing”, as she put it, her energy domain to observe the stability of the new area.
Another hour later, she confirmed it was ok, bid goodbye, and departed in the direction of the capital.
Left alone, Rune felt more relaxed. He was in the middle of nowhere in a zone where the ether density was extremely disliked by monsters, he even had the cover of his monolith anti-perception element around him that kept growing.
What kept growing too, was his elemental mastery level.
*Ding* Energy: Specialized Cosmic Mist Element reached Tier 1 Level 31