To get the sense invocation awareness division specialization, normally, one would have to make a few preparations to make sure one of their biological senses couldn’t be healed.
It could really be anything from sight, to taste, to hearing, to touch, to anything, but some could be used much more easily than others obviously. Hearing being the most advised, with using a solid blocker to stop its regeneration as the easiest method.
The bone region's very special warping had allowed Rune to go for anything, and he had chosen sight.
*Ding* Do you want to fill one of your empty mastery slots with Awareness Division: Specialized Sense Invocation?
‘Yes.’
The moment he acquired this specialization, his awareness gained enough power to affect reality, truly becoming a spiritual power. It was Rune’s first-ever spiritual power.
His sight instantly came back.
At the same time he felt a new sensation, one different from trying to exert his immovable perception, creating momentum, or training his awareness, it was a new one that felt completely alien.
It was the sensation associated with his awareness exiting his self, exiting his spirit, exiting a place it shouldn’t exit.
The sight he recovered wasn’t yet at the level of his previous one, his natural one, but the more awareness escaped through a newly created “sense of sight hole” in his spirit, the clearer he saw.
It was a gradual process and he only had to wait for it to be complete. So he decided to do something else in the meantime, he wanted to check a certain description of a certain mastery, so he first brought up his masteries.
Masteries
Tier 1 Masteries
Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement: Tier 4 Level 59
Physical Fundamental: Fighting Instinct: Tier 4 Level 49
Physical Fundamental: Body Control: Tier 4 Level 50
Energy Fundamental: Fine Manipulation: Tier 4 Level 49
Energy Fundamental: Grand Manipulation: Tier 4 Level 49
Energy Fundamental: Energy Compression: Tier 4 Level 50
Spiritual Fundamental: Perception Control: Tier 4 Level 8
Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division: Tier 4 Level 51
Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation: Tier 4 Level 22
Tier 2 Masteries
Energy: Specialized Cosmic Mist Element: Tier 3 Level 69
Cohesion: Specialized Cohesion Infusion: Tier 4 Level 64
Cohesion: Specialized Endless Adaptation: Tier 1 Level 7
Tier 3 Masteries
Energy Compression: Provided Energy Defense: Tier 3 Level 64
Energy Compression: Provided Energy Structure: Tier 3 Level 64
Energy Compression: Provided Energy Armor: Tier 3 Level 64
Tier 4 Masteries
Energy Compression: Provided Quick Compression: Tier 3 Level 57
Body Control: Provided Humanoid Body: Tier 3 Level 58
Awareness Division: Specialized Sense Invocation: Tier 1 Level 0
And then he focused on his newly acquired awareness division specialization, bringing up its own window.
Awareness Division: Specialized Sense Invocation
Specialized Slotted Mastery (Tier 1)
Using your awareness as more than it should be, you decided that being limited by your biological limits wasn’t something you wanted to accept. To break this limit, you decided to keep your natural senses, but changed their foundation to a new one, a spiritual one whose limits are only defined by yourself.
‘That’s spiritual power specialization for you, no number, just you and a power defying a lot of understanding.’
His choice of sacrificing one of his body control provided mastery and not one of his energy compression ones had been easy, he hadn’t even hesitated for more than 1 minute. His survival was his priority, not killing monsters, not earning EP.
Now looking at his build, he had 4 specializations, 4 energy compressions ones, and a lone body control one. Two of his specializations had no combat applications, one had a purely defensive application, and one was his element, so it depended only on himself.
*Ding* Awareness Division: Specialized Sense Invocation reached Tier 1 Level 1
‘Yup, that’s a legendary tier 1 mastery. Confirmed.’
It hadn’t even been 5 minutes and he gained his first level in his new specialization, the first of 100 that would one day add up, leading to all his awareness being able to exit his spirit in an instant.
Though for now, this single level hardly made his awareness exit his spirit faster than it was before.
With now a mastery dedicated to making it possible, he allowed a part of his awareness to flow back to his sphere, reactivating it.
‘Ah that’s right, that’s what my perception sphere is like when it’s not overloaded. What a strange feeling.’
Appreciating the change compared to his awareness’s state in the last year, he didn’t have time to truly reflect on it as his new vision, one based on spiritual eyes, was starting to give him something comparable to what he remembered to be true sight.
A vision that didn’t depend on perception.
Taking to the air slowly with momentum, it didn’t take more than 10 seconds before he reached a kilometer high, and started to observe the world.
Because his world wasn’t limited to 10 kilometers around him anymore.
Still blurry, his sight had a hard time focusing on things too far, but it was already beyond his perception.
White mist, ether mist, something he hadn’t seen since he lost his sight started to appear at the hedge of what his new spiritual eyes were able to see, but it still kept expanding.
*Ding* Awareness Division: Specialized Sense Invocation reached Tier 1 Level 2
Once again, it didn’t change the intensity of his awareness flow much.
Anyway, Rune was too absorbed by the new world that was being unveiled in his eyes to give attention to the awareness flow that was slowing down due to the hugely diminished mass of awareness that had pressured it before.
His sight had changed a bit, there wasn’t any light in the underground bone region after all, so he only saw the ether.
Solid matter still looked like solid matter, and air still looked like air. One blocked what was behind it, the other didn’t. One was completely motionless, the other wasn’t.
Once he got used to it again, he started to analyze what he was seeing.
The city ruins, the dreary bleak steep world, the few monsters fighting, and looking above… A dark ceiling, a still unexplored world with more monsters fighting, and the 500 kilometers of air in between, with more monsters fighting…
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Turning around, he saw ever more. He couldn’t help but tell himself that his horizon just kept getting farther and farther the more awareness he used, so he continued to look and focus on getting more of his awareness in his spiritual eyes.
*Ding* Awareness Division: Specialized Sense Invocation reached Tier 1 Level 3
*Ding* Awareness Division: Specialized Sense Invocation reached Tier 1 Level 4
Ten minutes.
That was the time necessary for Rune to send as much awareness as he wanted into the physical world. What was left in his spirit was only enough to keep a normal working perception sphere and nothing else.
And with the resulting eyes, which could be said to be the most optimized version he could use when he wanted to see and scout while keeping his perception active, he saw something that he had wanted to see from the moment he had heard of them.
‘A pillar, just a few hundred kilometers away. Or is it thousands? Not sure but I don’t want to take a break anymore.’
Climbing a pillar hadn’t been on his list of things prior to discovering they existed, but seeing one now, his mind and body agreed that it was just one of the most majestic he had ever seen in his life.
The ceiling was grey, the ground was grey, a few variations of course existed here and there, but compared to the pillar, it was like they didn’t exist.
The pillar he was seeing was simply and purely a beacon in this underground region. The ether activity there was as if there was a typhoon undergoing, an absolute chaos of colors and what he concluded to be elements.
This pillar was clearly a gathering hotspot of the bone region, and it reflected in his eyes.
That’s why he made a decision.
‘I think I need an adventure alone.’
…
“Yup, I’m going now. I prepared the cosmic mist generator so that it should make the bubble protecting Astryde last for an additional 2 to 3 days, not sure, very approximate.”
Arik looked and acted dazed by what Rune said to him, it was just so sudden.
“I don’t think Astryde will finish her dive anytime soon, but I’ll make sure to come back before she does. I updated the map with the pillar coordinates I saw in case you ask, I'm going now.”
Immediately after saying that, Rune took off in the direction of the pillar he was able to see in the distance.
He didn’t let Arik try to convince him that what he was doing was too impulsive. It was maybe impulsive in appearance, but he thought about it a bit and couldn’t find any way in which it could bring about a very bad result. Just that conclusion was enough for him.
‘It’s just a few days at worst.’
Free of worry, he flew up until he was 5 kilometers high and started to plan his itinerary. Not only did he have his cosmic mist to remain hidden, he could now also see where the monsters were, meaning he could dodge them.
A slight adjustment to the 2nd stage part of his intent made it so that his newly acquired sight remained unbothered by the compressed layer of it surrounding his body.
At the same time, he noted that his 2nd stage still worked perfectly fine and even interfered with his enhanced vision to the point where more than 80% of the information was lost.
‘Yet another lot of experiments to do. Though, this one checks the interest box of not only my cosmic mist and intent tinkering, but also the one about adventuring safely. It feels good.’
With the loss of one of his body control provided mastery, his efficiency in it had decreased to 566%, which translated to a maximum strength exertion of 66 600.
Following the law of every point of strength after 2 000, or 300 meters per second, giving one an additional 0.01 meter per second speed, his maximum speed had become 946 meters per second.
Being this close to the speed of a kilometer per second, him having the ability to hide all signs of him going at this speed with his cosmic mist, and the fact that he was alone allowed Rune to let his whims take over his rationality.
‘Just a kick. I promise. Just one. Then I’ll go on my way.’
He could see a monster moving in a direction that would make it cross his itinerary, and he didn’t feel like changing direction himself.
So when the inevitable moment took place, he “accidentally” dropped from the sky and made an earth-shattering-level kick that didn’t shatter the earth because it was completely absorbed by an energy armor.
Then he used the interrupted monster as a platform to propel himself towards the pillar.
‘I’ll note that as a thrilling experience! Definitely something to do again!’
Left behind him was a monster that had lost thousands of armor for seemingly no reason, putting it in a very alert state, but nothing came after the sudden loss as the culprit was already flying away.
Happy, satisfied, and excited at the prank he had done, Rune continued on his way to the pillar.
Ten minutes passed quickly, and he started to think that he had maybe overestimated his capacity to judge distance based on his sight and underestimated the size of a pillar.
At least one was true, he realized, another 5 minutes later.
The pillar kept getting bigger and clearer. What he was starting to see was exactly what the chaotic state of the ether hinted at from far away: Lots and lots of monsters.
The pillar joined 3 different environments together, the ceiling, the air, and the ground monsters all used it as a platform and climbed up or down based on their berserk instinct.
Around those, swarms of air-based monsters added another layer that sealed the simple act of jumping off and escaping from this madness, forcing everything to fight between each other to keep themselves alive.
The diversity was mind-blowing, energy lives were clearly visible as bright spots in Rune’s vision, and they weren’t any different than the most common bone monsters, their behavior could even be said to be identical.
This scene was what he was starting to see as he neared the pillar.
When he entered the area of what he judged to be less than 100 kilometers from the pillar from the ground, signs of closing in on a hotspot became clear in his perception: More monsters, unreadable ground vibrations, abundant berserk state monsters.
He didn’t take serious notes of the landing zone hotspot below the tunnel, but he was sure this pillar hotspot was extremely similar, maybe identical.
‘Now I need to prepare for the ones that will be able to see me. I must also keep looking around, it’s pretty much proven that zones with such chaotic and disturbed ether flow are more opportune for environmental events to happen.’
Looking left, right, below, and above in quick succession, he entered the range where elemental beams flew by and aerial monsters dived trying to pick weakened targets.
Mixing short-term perception sphere optimization and medium-term sight path planning, he devised paths to near the pillar without having to fight.
Then the inevitable happened, be it by coincidence or not, an elemental beam hit him, he shrugged it off.
He looked at the one who did it, and it sent another one precisely at his position. Exactly the same fire-like one, maybe fire, maybe not, he didn’t feel any special or abnormal effects so he didn’t care.
This monster was able to see him or at least track him.
Experience taking over, he copied the aerial monsters and dived at it. Leaving behind and fleeing from a monster able to see him was very bad business manners.
He needed to send it to another monster where it would have no choice but to forget about him and fight for its life, so using a behemoth approach, he suicide-dived at it completely ignoring what it was sending at his armor.
Losing more than 50 000 armor despite having dodged some of its attacks, he successfully entered close range and, not creating a cosmic mist bubble, he started to pummel it.
‘That’s what a reality-breaking efficiency of 1 748% in energy compression does.’
Rune even had time to think as his 184 800 armor didn’t even lose a third of the protection it gave him after taking on the sustained sniping of a monster specialized in energy attacks with an element.
Compared to before reaching the city ruins, his perception sphere had lost a bit of its sensitivity and his vision couldn’t make up for it, so he had to get used to it for a few minutes.
Grabbing a limb, he kept it in lock and used the proximity to dodge even more energy attacks. He wanted to include momentum in his evasions as it had become his new go-to spiritual fundamentals to train, but force of habits, it was hard.
He was so used to purely strength-based dodges that even using momentum to just accompany his fighting instinct’s reactions was hard.
A few minutes into the fight where Rune slowed down his aggression to regenerate his armor while slowly eroding his opponent’s energy pool. It had clearly become more defensive as it had to use energy to sustain its armor, but it hadn’t become helpless.
The fight had to be cut short the next instant however as a monster entered his perception from behind him. Controlling the monster and rotating around it, he was able to see it approaching visually, so he prepared a gift.
The monster he was fighting instinctively knew what was happening and tried to free itself to no avail as a third party finally entered within 100 meters and collided with Rune and the other.
Allowing the impact to take him, he was happy to be ignored as the new third party seemed to have struck him by accident.
Checking the sky and around him in an instant, he confirmed had passed the first hurdle and wasn’t being chased or targetted anymore.
Once that was done, he resumed his travel towards the pillar again.
A new monster saw him a few minutes later, this one he evaded thanks to an ongoing fight not far.
He looked above, an aerial monster was diving towards him. His fighting instinct and monster behavior’s knowledge told him It seemed very targeted.
Taking no risk, he landed on the ground and closed in on a big fight happening a few kilometers away, one involving more than 10 entities fighting each other without any considerations for anything other than themselves.
The diving monster didn’t seem to care, prompting Rune to enter the intense fight a couple of seconds before it reached him at the speed it was going, wanting to use the other monsters that couldn’t see him as cover.
‘Aerial monster, has multiple grabbing limbs, doesn't care about my situation, my location, or anything, so it’s probably a normal one with a speed boost specialization.’
Letting his instinct, his experience, his knowledge, and what he saw speak, the conclusion he came up with became the basis from which he planned his defense.
And it really happened.
The diving bone monster that didn’t look like a bird but more like an armored whale with 6 limbs and spikes everywhere accelerated suddenly, crashing on Rune’s position without him having the possibility to react.
The monster covers he used were only mildly useful as they only slowed it a bit, but not enough for it to fly up and try again later.
Seeing 2 momentum-boosted limbs grab him, he did the best thing he could and grabbed 2 bone monsters before being pulled up with them in tow.
It was clearly a momentum boost as he didn’t feel anything and he suddenly appeared a few kilometers above ground. It was when the two monsters he dragged with him started to struggle and attack the big bone whale that his occasion arrived.
Starting with the bone limbs restricting him, he kicked them as much as he could while continuing to grab onto the 2 monsters that still didn’t realize it was him who was grabbing them.
With 3 entities attacking it, the bone whale had no choice but to release him, and in turn, he released his 2 hostages.
When he confirmed they continued to attack the whale, he observed the ground situation and created a new itinerary while taking into consideration the possibility that the bone whale might come knocking again.
‘Hotspots are a bit more fun than expected!’
As for his mental situation, he was having the time of his life.