2 weeks of amateur body control training later marked the end of the 9th month since the Ether Law awakening.
During this whole last month, Rune had farmed at 50% efficiency, with 30% of his awareness being permanently on the Void Dimension’s side.
In total he had absorbed 2 930 299 EP worth of regular resources, he had also found 8 special crystals worth 20 stat points each and 4 special stones worth 50 stat points each, excluding the first one he found.
Stats were stats, even if he didn’t control where they went. The consequences of getting stats previously a lot harder so easily however, was that he wasn’t alone in feeling that stats farming was in fact, very easy.
Too easy.
As such, theories couldn’t help but fly from every mind on the board.
‘Maybe at tier 2 you need 10 million of EP to increase your stats by 1 point? So scary! Who wrote this?!’
Like reading a spooky-scary story, Rune was scared away and stopped reading this particular forum.
He then opened his avatar status to comfort himself.
Avatar (Basic Rank) (Tier 1)
EP: 19 501
Stats Total: 2 069
Health: 200
Health Regeneration: 240
Strength: 100
Cohesion: 204
Energy: 80
Energy Regeneration: 135
Purity: 30
Affinity: 80
Momentum: 500
Perception: 500
Having discovered more than 10 special resources, he had also received a reward of 100 000 EP from the Void Initiation event, but his current status looked a bit in a mess due to them.
He was happy, of course, but his little bit of a perfectionist side was hurting, at least he could rationalize it and see it as preparing for his future energy training…
Though for now, he remained blocked at the amateur body control hall.
He could of course skip the body control training and go test his close combat talent, but it would be putting the cart before the horse, his training would be slow because he’d still have to properly learn how to move, and so, in the end, have to come back to learning the body control fundamental.
Rune had also kept updating his data every time his stats increased, if he had something to sell, it was honesty and integrity.
And going from 78% to 88% average strength exertion in a short time would also be too blatant. He was sure that his virtual assistant would have caught onto something if it hadn’t detected a major in his proficiency.
Apart from the slowness inherent to learning a totally new field, Rune really thought his life was as exhilarating as it could be.
Using his body at its maximum capabilities without breaking into heavy labored breath, reaching for every additional strength, tapping into forces he didn’t know he had, approaching perfection with every step…
He would have never done any of those things if not for how much effort he had put into his objective of continuing to be part of the top 10%.
But as he’d soon have to have his monthly sleep, he stopped his training and contacted Astryde and Utopia. They should also be in there somewhere from his understanding.
They had already planned a meet-up to discuss their training before going to sleep, and so half an hour later, at the entrance of the martial supreme dojo, they saw each other again after 2 months of individual training schedule.
They greeted each other like the old friends they were and went really deep into the subject of physical path training, what they felt was coming, and their expected timelines before switching to a different fundamental training.
It was just a typical talk in the new era, and they ended up separating after reaching the training building to go to sleep or chill.
…
At the beginning of the 10th month, after a normal monthly sleep followed by the activation of the revitalization spell to wake up properly, Rune was back to the martial supreme dojo branch in 20 minutes. And another 5 later, he was punching things and kicking. Literally.
After sleeping, he had to re-send his awareness back to his avatar side, and he was surprised by his own progress.
He was now using around 1 hour and ten minutes to send 1% of his awareness to the other side, a clear decrease compared to the 5 hours to send 4% he was at previously. Even if once it was compared it was only a 5 minutes gain per percent…
With a renewed and fresh spirit for the month, Rune was perplexed by thinking how gravity-restrained exercises would, and could, help him in Void Dimension and Deep Void Dimension’s fights. But if everyone was doing them, there was probably a reason he thought.
It would eventually become useful to learn to fight while subjected to gravity.
He wanted to be part of the top 10%, those who would eventually lead a deep exploration into newly opened dimensions, and maybe gravity expedition too.
He was starting to have defined ambitions.
Where before there was only “gathering resources to not be left behind”, the feeling of pushing his boundary ever beyond was something he could appreciate now more than he ever had.
From only seeking to keep with the changing era, farming for one month straight because he thought himself above average, to really understanding the consequences of the Ether Law awakening…
He couldn’t stay a passive spectator forever.
From forgotten memories of adventures and fantasies he had during his childhood, he awakened similar dreams of maybe one day, not as a citizen, but as Rune Tudor, becoming something that would mark him, define him, as someone special. Though he still didn’t want fame, that, he was certain.
It was like when he had freed his hidden frustration by punching endlessly.
He had the chance of being born and live through a never before seen event, he could do things that people dreamed about their entire life but never got to do.
And this precise thought helped him in solidifying his nascent ambition of not having a goal, but just going forward until he couldn’t anymore.
Anything else was just part of his life and journey to the unknown.
From that, Rune realized that this journey towards the unknown had already started back when he had created his avatar.
Overall, he still considered everything happening now as being just the starting line. Everyone could only observe the situation through a lense where everything was shown as blurry and cloudy. The only sure and certain thing that could elevate someone was hard work.
Talent and opportunities appeared more and more useless as time passed and the foundation of the Ether Law unveiled itself.
But then again, it was all just a guessing game.
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He hadn’t found his true talent, or even his calling, he also wasn’t strong enough to search for opportunity in the Deep Void Dimension. In the end, he only had one thing going for himself.
‘The only thing left is hard work. Always the same conclusion, but it’s different this time, the meaning and reasoning behind it changed.’
Reflecting a little more, he arrived at the conclusion that this part of his life looked a lot like the first steps of any stories.
‘I’m still in the tutorial, is that it? When the Ether Law ultimately gives us access to a true fantasy dimension, I want to be as ready as I possibly can be. Only then will I consider myself as having started my true journey.’
Deciding to not lose any second, Rune continued punching and kicking. If he wasn’t forbidden from using his momentum stat, he would have abused it as much as he could.
…
With his new determination to complete the tutorial part of his life as efficiently and quickly as he could, Rune only thought about 2 paths he’d end up taking in the future, and he couldn’t create a third path.
First, the path where he completed his tutorial, a path where he climbed to the top 1%, maybe even the top 0.1%, and had firmly stepped onto the path he wanted to take.
And second, the path where he didn’t put in enough hard work, leading him to be left behind by those who took the first path.
He had already completed the balance training, the impulse training, the punching and kicking training, everything he could do, he did. And he had only used 10 days to do it.
He had pushed his original body beyond what he did in the previous month, and comparing his result to that of Astryde, he took one less week.
Without relaxing, he directly switched to the competent body control hall and learned that from now on, alternating between the close combat mastery knowledge and competent level body control was the best way to progress quickly.
He also learned that if he wanted to train reinforcement at the same time, he would be eating more than he could digest as reinforcement wasn’t a simple spell, it was a true physical path mastery knowledge, one spell defining an entire fundamental.
Deciding to start with the competent body control exercises, he found himself in a hall with plenty of cubic individual rooms. Each room was an enclosed new generation holographic simulating room, designed specifically for pushing previously unknown boundaries of individual strength.
But more shocking than hundreds of cubes, was the sight of completely beaten up people with despair flowing out of their eyes getting out of those rooms, leaving behind a cloud of gloom sipping into everything.
Remembering the rumors he had heard his friends talk about, Rune was more curious than scared and decided to see it for himself immediately while ignoring what he was seeing through his perception sphere.
Entering into an empty room, the training started with minimalist instructions.
[Fight and Evade, score given at the end of every 15 minutes session.]
And on those words, the impossible competent body control level training started.
Astryde and the others hadn’t been joking.
He could be a supreme genius if anyone cared, that would have changed nothing.
The training simulation had perfectly adapted to his increased stats and ability, he was like an insect fighting a never-ending storm of obstacles and painful bullets.
It just never stopped and kept on going for 15 minutes uninterrupted, expecting him to measure up to an evolving custom-made storm that only targeted him.
The ground sometimes suddenly lost its grip, gravity changed in the middle of him evading. Additionally, there was of course no pattern like in video games, invisible threads that his sphere couldn’t even see inflicted pain that made his body react instinctively, leading to even more pain.
15 minutes later, he exited the room.
The virtual assistant advised him to take a 5 minutes of break after every session to properly reflect on the decisions made in it, it also advised to do 3 sessions before going to the close combat hall. So that’s what he did, supported by his still burning ambitions.
3 sessions of hell’s special later, he decided to follow what the assistant said and moved to the beginner close combat hall.
There was no clear benchmark for close combat, only fighting true intelligent opponents could allow you to go to the next level. Fighting AI-managed puppets didn’t count, he could only use these to gain basic experience.
That was the first thing Rune planned to do though.
AI could be as powerful as you wanted them to be, but their techniques depended a lot on what you gave them.
The martial supreme dojo gave their AI an absurd amount of ways to beat you in pure martial arts, it made sense in hindsight as the core goal of this training was to cultivate his fighting instinct.
Humanoid opponent would surely not be the majority of his future opponents, but his fighting instinct still needed to be cultivated, and using what was the most researched, humanoid body martial arts, was the best way to do it.
“Start,” Rune said the word and the AI-managed puppet obliged.
It started with a simple punch, a fast one, one with probably not that much strength behind it, but he never knew, evading was never a bad choice in this case from his knowledge.
Applying strength to his legs first, his whole body rotated seamlessly. Trying to follow it with a simple kick to engage the hostility, the puppet changed its punch to an impulse to his lower body, probably trying to strike with a low-kick.
With gravity being in his favor and helping him, Rune stood his ground and responded by taking a small step forward, and without gaining too much height, he encountered the AI body milliseconds after advancing.
They crashed and then tried to bring the other down, but their strength was the same.
Even when he tried to execute what he had learned in body control, the AI was designed to be at the same level, so they just continued exchanging moves and 20 minutes later, Rune was declared loser by time forfeit.
After that, he saw a replay of his match. On this replay, red illusions of himself appeared to show alternative moves he could have made to bring an end to the fight or gain a certain advantage.
‘I did my best. I only need to do it again and again, it’s even more of a tutorial than the rest.’
Once he fully watched the after-fight analysis proposed by the AI, he realized how much he sucked and was a bit disturbing by it.
Fortunately, it didn’t put a damper on his track, and after 20 minutes of analysis he fought again with the same opponent.
And he lost again by time forfeit.
He couldn’t learn patterns because they didn’t exist, the goal of this training was accumulation.
His assistant advised him to do 100 intermittent hours of simulated fights before challenging one of the beginner close combat hall guardians, those that decided whether you reached the necessary level to advance to the next hall or not.
Following 8 hours of close combat fighting training, he returned to the competent body control hall and did 3 sessions of hell’s room training.
If he said he had done better this time, he would be straight-up lying.
The reality was that he ended up as miserable as his first time, he got through a storm of pain, his instinctive reflexes took over, and only some shockingly lucid moment where he realized how much he couldn’t do anything happened. That was it.
But it was his level, and he didn’t reach a competent level by luck, so he persisted.
20 days later, Rune had already entered the amateur level close combat hall, and he progressed notably in the competent body control, successfully evading 4 out of 10 obstacles and punching or kicking correctly 3 out of 10 times. As for the fact that his jump impulsions nearly all failed, that was just a detail.
One month of farming at reduced efficiency gave him 2 941 586 EP to play around with. The red ether dangerous ground being a 200-kilometer wide sphere, at normal resources density, he expected millions of ether resources to be contained inside, so he didn’t worry one bit about running out of them.
More than not worrying, he even felt happy as the dangerous ground turned out to also be rich in special resources.
He had found an additional 7 crystals and 5 stones, truly making him understand how heroes had already reached the stats cap of tier 1 at 5 000 total stats.
His had increased, but the situation didn’t change that much. He was still a bit far.
Relatively.
Avatar (Basic Rank) (Tier 1)
EP: 11 087
Stats Total: 2 754
Health: 300
Health Regeneration: 299
Strength: 140
Cohesion: 500
Energy: 80
Energy Regeneration: 185
Purity: 100
Affinity: 150
Momentum: 500
Perception: 500
This time, he had focused on cohesion, investing 196 stat points worth of EP and officially reaching the half total stats cap of a peak tier 1 avatar.
Although his attribution of stats was not optimized, he knew that he wasn’t starting his energy training before reaching competent in close combat, so it didn’t bother him that much.
Energy training wasn’t really dependent on precise stats distribution anyway as it was hinted on the board. Even with 1 purity stat and 1 affinity stat, it was still possible to train. Only the energy pool could really block your training, so he just had to make sure to have enough energy regeneration when it eventually came to that.
And in all honesty, Rune felt confident in being able to remedy any stat-related problems that appeared in only a few days if it was urgent enough by farming with his full awareness.
‘Another month, just another month.’
Predicting he would be over with the basics of the body control and close combat physical fundamentals by next month, things kept progressing fast for everything and everyone around him.
To keep updated about the situation though, he just had to enter the Tireless forum for the now more than one hundred thousand members to inform him about the recent most important events by reading what they were discussing about.
As some were at the “full-farming” stage, they had too much free time. As much as Rune had when he was at that stage.
‘A city being built on the two sides of the first rift discovered, new rifts discovered, resources trading impossible to monopolize by anyone, another solar system discovered, monster nests destroyed, peaceful ether beasts encountered…’
Nothing could escape the scrutiny of the Tireless, and if he wanted more info on a particular event, he knew he could just ask Arik and Gar.
As the end of his month drew closer and closer, Rune decided to go back to his room and deactivated his revitalization energy loop as soon as he entered it.
The moment he laid down on his bed, he fully focused on manipulating his perception sphere.
It wasn’t training, he really tried. It was a one-try only true perception sphere manipulation in action, using all his spiritual strength to try and deform his sphere as much as he could within a very short period.
‘Push! Again! More! So freaking hard!’
And what followed was what he expected.
“Hu!” As if he had retained his breath until now, he exhaled brutally and before he knew it, he fell asleep.