As the 12th month since the awakening of the Ether Law began, Rune continued his tutorial, more precisely, the part where he learned more about the new era and how to manipulate energy.
Months of learning without stopping to take a break should have put heavy pressure on his determination, but he didn’t even consider this learning to be annoying anymore. His pre-Interdimensional Era life allowed him to know that superpowers were not something he always had, and so he should enjoy them as what they were.
Recently, he even received a minor boost when he learned from Gar and Arik that reaching tier 2 meant he would become able to live to 500 years.
This changed nothing major for him as he had stopped going to the martial supreme dojo a bit less than a week ago, but from the return he got from Utopia, the dojo was now overcrowded with old and middle-aged people.
“I don’t care, let them do what they consider the best for themselves,” was Rune’s opinion of the current situation.
Concerning Utopia, he achieved competent level at close combat only some days after him and returned to the building to train in energy fundamentals like him.
As a result, they crossed often but never discussed, and the reason for that was the soon-to-happen fighting camp.
[Utopia: The true fighting camp will take place at the end of the 12th month to celebrate the new year according to the now official Interdimensional Era Calendar, I hope you’ll all come, right Arik and Adreana?]
Utopia and Rune were now training as much as they possibly could, the date wasn’t that meaningful, but the more time passed by, the more true fighting ability became important.
True heroes wiping entire monster nests in the Deep Void Dimension became more and more common, avatars reaching the tier 1 maximum stats became more and more common, cheap ether resources became more and more common, and in the middle of that, they were still training fundamentals.
‘Whatever my proficiency, after that camp, I’ll go to the Deep Void Dimension and fight until I die.’
In Rune’s mind, his optimized path of trying everything was starting to lose out to just going all-in and fighting until death.
‘Or maybe that’s why they’re called heroes? They’re both talented and hard-working at the same time… No! That’s only an excuse!’
Excuses were for the weak, Rune admitted that he had learned as hard as he could, but wasn’t ready to start fighting unless he considered punching with brute strength against ether monster and fleeing when things got bad as fighting ability.
Which some did. Obviously. But not him.
He didn’t know about others, but his energy training was going very smoothly, a linear increase in energy manipulation proficiency. From a clump to a sphere, from a sphere to a donut, from a donut to a flowing donut, interweaving energy threads was still hard, but not impossible if he put his mind to it.
‘Is it time to launch my first energy bullet?’
Focusing on his energy pool, he prepared the groundwork, gathered energy in a sphere in front of him, created a small opening in the front of it, and rotated his energy from this point.
After 5 minutes, the sphere had transformed into a bullet shape.
Rune couldn’t comprehend how it worked, but that was his first time, so he only looked at it and then launched it at a speed of 10 meters per second to a target. It struck right.
‘Easy.’
It was really easy. Not only for him but for everyone. He was the one who controlled the energy, and the energy belonged to him, so later it even became possible to change the trajectory mid-flight.
With a scientific institute working on the energy path, he just had to connect to their professional forum to know which training affected which fundamentals too, greatly helping him focus first on grand manipulation.
Fine manipulation was a relatively high-end fundamental all things considered, its figurehead spell was energy thread, a complex spell with endless applications, but the lack of direct firepower inevitably reduced its user base.
Grand manipulation was the most discussed energy fundamental, it served to establish any big spell groundworks, eject energy faster, manipulate it faster, keep a constant flow on it… It was really the widest energy fundamental in terms of application.
Energy compression was the most underrated energy fundamental in Rune’s opinion, it was used not only for its ability to create space-locked energy platforms that allowed anyone to transform their strength into speed, it could also be used to create weapons and armor.
And while the weapons didn’t present any special effect other than being sharp and being able to mutilate ether life forms or cut non-etherized matter like it was paper, he put much more thought on its ability to create an energy armor layer…
Every spell and technique trained a different energy fundamental. No spell ever used the 3 at the same time other than uselessly complicated ones. And it was sub-optimized to train in all fundamentals at the same time.
In the same way that the physical path worked, and more precisely the body control physical fundamental, energy had a conversion efficiency rate when it came to its fundamental uses.
The energy institute made a direct and simple judgment system, if in the energy compression fundamental 1 point of energy was compressed and transformed into armor that could block the equivalent of 1 health damage, then you probably reached tier 2.
Such concern however didn’t enter Rune’s eyes at all, he was too far from reaching such godly efficiency and he didn’t intend to make energy his main offensive way.
And his way of training reflected that fact as soon after touching a bit about every fundamental, he started to stop learning more about spells used for offensive purposes.
He decided to focus on his artist dream.
‘In the end, I’m training every category, that’s what counts right?’
Feeling like a mischievous child who disobeyed the rules set by his betters, he smiled every time he invoked a red-colored sphere, then a green-colored sphere, then a black-colored pole energy shape, and attached the two spheres to the extremity and made them rotate.
‘So freaking amazing, my dream is real!’
In his excitement, he just started creating different colors and different shapes, each energy color was like nothing he had seen before, they emitted something different from what neon lights or plasma lights did.
They were unique.
‘If I lose everything and I’m not able to fight anymore, that would be my second career choice by far and without hesitation…’
Mesmerized by what he was doing, he overlooked in a daze as different energy lights mixed and radiated, forms he only thought about became real, some were failed creations of course, but each failure gave him this little piece of additional proficiency for the following manipulation.
‘It’s still training, right? It feels like nothing I did before…’
He felt that he could continue training effortlessly, the joy of looking at this color and shape show surpassed the strained feelings in his mind due to intensely mobilizing every energy fundamentals.
On a whim, he decided something.
‘When I accumulate enough experience. Maybe at tier 2, maybe at tier 3, maybe tier 9, I don’t know, I’ll create my own magic that uses this as its foundation.’
This decision resonated deep inside him, but in the real world, no one was even aware that he made this promise.
Deciding to adapt his training was maybe his talent, spontaneously using energy compression to try and bring light to the visible world, grand manipulation to eject, shape, and control multiple colored spheres or poles, and fine manipulation, to try and create more details on his energy constructs, a spiral here, an edgy cube there.
Energy manipulation was fun.
…
‘What is he doing?’
Utopia, coming to train his energy, saw with his perception sphere that Rune was doing strange things, not unusual considering it was Rune though.
It was a very amateurish manipulation of colored spheres, they were rotating around his body and sometimes, a strange uncanny shape appeared before dissipating into nothing.
With his perception sphere, he could see that some spheres were further shaped by connected energy threads, adding details to their smooth exterior, only to then explode after suffering from too much rough carving.
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Lost in thought, Utopia didn’t realize he spent 5 minutes watching a light show.
‘Can I do it too?’
He succeeded in creating a sphere, but giving it a color was not part of his training.
‘Where did he find the method?’
Searching with the right keywords gave him the method, it was just primitive transformation research in a minor secluded forum. As it didn’t give any additional property useful for dealing damage like high temperature or lighting current, it was just posted and forgotten by its owner.
‘I remember him saying it was some sort of dream of his? Well, he succeeded, and I have to admit that’s pretty entertaining.’
Leaving Rune to his own training, he got back to his own, the orthodox optimized one.
…
‘The complexity attainable is infinite...’
Rune concluded after overseeing all the recent additions to the new energy institute’s spell catalog. His special training method was useful and entertaining, but while he didn’t want to fight with colored spheres, he wanted to at least learn a few supporting spells.
‘Energy wings alone is such a miraculous spell, but if all the future spells are only powerful at the expense of infinite interwoven threads and 50 minutes of shaping energy, then I’ll focus on reinforcement, energy platforms, and energy armor.’
His objective was clear, he didn’t hesitate before choosing a major path of his life. If he or any of his friends was to be a member of the Adventurer’s Society, then he would know that this train of thoughts had already been dissected to its molecules and was called a “build”.
‘I still have 1 week, I should go and learn the principle of reinforcement.’
Looking at Utopia training, he called out, “Utopia? There’s 1 week before starting the fighting camp, want to go with me and become a beginner in the reinforcement fundamental?”
Rune knew he would say yes, so it was just courtesy.
“Let’s go!” Jumping up from his seated position, the energy spheres around him dissipated in one second.
Smiling despite himself, the situation reminded him of taking his little brothers or sisters to an amusement park, and he absent mindedly took on the same persona as he had used back then, “Let’s go then!”
Rune and Utopia arrived at the martial supreme dojo and entered the reinforcement hallway, and this time they weren’t led to a test room.
As this technique involved energy manipulation, virtual technology could only show models, but the reason for having a real dojo was for doing a real demonstration and transmitting the necessary knowledge more effectively. Otherwise, why would they be one of the 3 path organizations?
They arrived in what looked like the courtyard of a dojo, one instructor with closed eyes stood upright on a podium at the center, waiting for the courtyard to be filled.
When no more people arrived, he started to give instructions, “Everyone has to have their perception sphere reach me. I’ll not move from this podium, so organize yourselves to let those with low reach be closer to me.”
Soon after the reorganization, Utopia and Rune ended up at the extremities of the circle surrounding the instructor, waiting for the demonstration to start.
“I’ll start now. First, some premises, reinforcement originates from the revitalization spell, using energy to modify the functioning of the body.”
“Did you know that you could create as many loops as you wanted? That’s the case because energy is automatically used to fill what your body lacks, so if you create hundreds of loops, it’ll still use as much energy as it can take from one loop.”
The instructor first started filling the possible gap in the knowledge of those who were listening.
“The foundational theory behind the reinforcement fundamental is to forcefully feed your physical body more energy to increase its limits. From that idea, the reinforcement technique was created. It has 2 modes: The shape mode, and the fighting mode. I’ll now show you how to do the 2 modes of the reinforcement technique.”
Maybe it was because he had done such a demonstration hundreds or even thousands of times, but his voice was something you didn’t want to disobey. When he said he was going to do it, then he was going to do it, that was a fact.
“The hardest part is submerging your entire body in energy. You have to shape an identical, adaptable and changeable replication of yourself, that will be the shape mode. In fact, the shape mode is more of a glorified revitalization than anything, except it's a lot more complicated.”
“The best way for beginners such as all of you to do it is to use your hand. Accumulate energy in your hand, with as much viscosity as you’re able to infuse in, then apply it to your entire body, only do a rough shape, then command your remaining energy to fill the gap.”
He then started doing exactly what he said, as was everyone, even if some had it very hard due to their energy manipulation proficiency being abysmal.
Rune covered himself in a layer of energy, and before long, he finished and started waiting for the rest of the instruction. And the instructor soon enough restarted giving instruction.
“Now you need to be completely swallowed up by energy, so use the shape you just created and fill it with energy, as much as your energy pool allows.”
“Later, you can try to infuse more energy into your shape form than your energy stat and see it fail automatically, you’ll feel a hot feeling then, but don’t panic, that’s perfectly normal, nobody ever died from that.”
After everyone who could do it did it, he ignored those who failed and continued, they just had to practice or listen and train by themselves later, they could even come back if they wanted.
“Congratulations to those who followed me until there, you just accomplished the most difficult first step. Now you have enough energy, but to increase your strength with it is where the marvel of the technique is, and the answer is vibration.”
The instructor started taking on a fighting-ready posture as he breached into the core flashy part of the most offensive fundamental discovered until now.
“For initiating this vibration, you have to will it. There’s no complicated tricks, just will, instinctively will it,” as soon as he said to will it, everyone saw through their perception sphere that something changed in the instructor.
“Once you succeed, your body will gain a single instance of explosive strength, so don’t make a fool of yourself by jumping. Try it first, this is not a difficult thing to do once you get the feel for it.”
Executing what he just heard, Rune willed his energy shape to start vibrating and observed and felt his entire body starting to vibrate as the instructor had said it would. He knew though that it wasn’t his body that started to vibrate, it was the perfect body-shaped energy surrounding it that started vibrating.
Once lots of people had successfully made their energy vibrate, the instructor hastily instructed, “This technique isn’t so forgiving that it’ll wait for you to punch something. This state, the fighting mode, consumes as much energy as you infuse into your shape, and it’s all a one-time use! So I repeat, be careful!”
“The most recent experiments have concluded that 1 point of energy used this way gives you an increase of 0.1% of your base strength stat, irrelevant of any training time. Only the proficiency at which you infuse energy into your shape form and the ease to make it vibrate becomes easier with training.”
The instructor finished on that as he punched the air in front of him, causing a big air wave that ruffled the hair and clothes of everyone standing in front of it.
Gasps were heard from the crowd, but not from Rune or Utopia. They were surprised, sure, but most of all, they were hyped by the infinite possibilities and potential of this technique.
After they began whispering to each other about their thoughts, they couldn’t stop.
“Imagine using all your avatar’s energy pool in one move! 50% more strength! That makes a super punch going way beyond the boundary of a tier 1 strength stat limit!”
“No, you forgot the basics of fighting. Clearly it’s best to use 10 instances of 5% boosts! you should already know how devastating a difference of a few strength points can make in a fight, and now imagine that difference when it's 500 against 525… Hu, wait…”
“Yeah, 5 instances of 10% boosts is clearly better if you go at it this way.”
“I don’t think it’s possible, but can’t we also just create multiple reinforcement shape mode pockets?”
“Ah~ I knew you would come up with that possibility naturally. But let’s wait a bit before making mind-blowing optimization suggestions, we’re only amateur.”
“Yeah, you’re right. The potential though, imagine using it with 10 000 base stren-”
“Silence!” The instructor clapped and shouted loudly to gather the attention of all the eager newly promoted reinforcement amateurs again.
“Now that you learned how to use reinforcement, you learned everything I had to teach you. Everything else depends on your proficiency and battle instinct.”
“I heard some of you think about creating multiple reinforcement shapes, and I won’t discourage you to try, but know that the reinforcement fundamental doesn’t disobey the rule of your energy pool defining the limit you can take.”
“Concerning your energy management, I also don’t have much to say, if you don’t move at all after entering fighting mode, you’ll see that even after activating all the energy contained in your shape, it’ll not just disappear after some time, it’s just going to sit there and wait for you to make the slightest move.”
“The rest, you’ll learn as you practice. Fighting is of course the best way, but pure training is also obligatory. To be considered true reinforcement users, you must at least be able to create your shape, infuse it with precisely the energy you want, and make it vibrate, all in less than a tenth or a hundredth of a second.”
A door opened on the opposite side from where they had entered after the instructor finished giving them food for thought. Everyone immediately got the idea that it was over, so they followed the directions of the newly opened door and ended in the beginner reinforcement hall.
“Well, let’s train. I really want to see the result of this,” Rune said, already starting to pump energy into a rough body shape.
The beginner reinforcement hall was just a big hall full of punching machines aligned in rows.
‘They really like punching machines, hehehe.’
On those thoughts, Rune started experimenting with this last fundamental technique.
His repertory was now complete. Every fundamental knowledge imaginable, even the Ether Law had not been able to pull a fast one on trillions and trillions of individual and unique brains all thinking differently.
As they started their training, Utopia started to speak, “Did you already decide on your fighting style? I’m nearly certain we’re going for the same one but let me confirm it: Full close combat, reinforcement, and minor energy spells as support, right?”
Not stopping his shape-making using his hand, Rune simply answered, “I don’t think anyone who wants to go explores the dimensions is ready to depend on others to come up with spells for them. Those who really think like that will see their path end before it even starts.”
“Yeah! Exactly! You can't use spells for everything, sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands and do it like a man!” With the excitement from his own statement fueling him, Utopia threw a reinforced punch.
But it was, of course, only followed by disappointment, “Of course it’s not that easy,” he murmured to himself.
The next seven days passed by in a blur.
Rune even saw Arik passing by on one occasion which they used to greet each other relaxingly before immediately getting back to their own respective training.
Opposing Gar his giant informant brother, Arik stood at only 1m40, a relatively short height all things considered. He was similarly not part of one of the 5 leading species of the IGS, but still remained a very normal humanoid.
He also appeared to be the same as he was on the board: Insufferable and sarcastic despite only spitting facts and sounding like the most rational of the whole group.
Adreana also arrived, but Rune didn’t have the chance to see her yet, and nobody he talked to took the initiative to talk about her.
It had really been a miracle for them to not cross each other despite each having a 100-meter wide perception sphere with their 50 perception.
Once he slept tonight though, he’d wake up to the start of the first anniversary year of the awakening of the Ether Law and also the official onset of the fighting camp.