It was a blessing to have a family, that’s what his return back home inspired in him. It had also been the opportunity to show-off his dream as an artist entertainer of shapes and colors, maybe creating new vocations.
He could always hope.
‘I really liked those mini explosions, maybe I’ll train to make them better.’
It was time though. He only had to sleep, and then his second step on his journey to accomplish his dreams and ambition would begin.
Universe Dimension Ether Density (Deep Void Dimension Opening Basis): +28%
As sleepiness invaded his mind, he made the ether density progress bar appear.
‘As everyone predicted, it accelerates with time…’
On these thoughts, Rune fell asleep and slept like a baby, and not without reason. Training had never stopped for him, spiritual training even more so, was the training that had literally never stopped.
The first step only took determination, the second step demanded the same determination but even more so, it asked for competencies.
And the further he would walk, the higher the competencies needed would be stringent.
…
Waking up, Rune felt strangely lethargic.
His mind was in disarray, as if he had woken up by interrupting a dream, that sort of feeling.
He remembered pieces of things, pieces of emotion, pieces of scenery, and one of his main motivations he kept firmly in mind whenever training became difficult.
‘An adventure without an end…’
It was more of an ideal than a concrete goal, but he still used those words to describe his core ambition.
Contrasting with the silent and relaxed atmosphere of the sunny day he saw outside with his sphere, it was time for Rune to go and fight for his avatar’s life.
Turning on his computer, he got down the stairs, drank a soft sugary drink, then he was back, putting on his music playlist that he hadn’t heard in months.
He then created a smooth energy loop inside his body that cycled through all his limbs from head to feet, and switched all his awareness to his avatar.
Then he opened the dimensions window to the Deep Void Dimension option.
Dimensions
Deep Void
Able to bear ether life forms, Can birth life.
Slightly unstable. Dimensional anomalies possible.
Tier 1 Perception: 50% restriction.
Tier 1 Momentum: 50% restriction.
The Deep Void Dimension was born soon after the Void Dimension. It is only a billionth of its size but has a dimensional link to the Void Dimension allowing ether density to come in but not out, greatly increasing its ether density, explaining its ability to produce ether life forms.
The ether life forms born in it ended up becoming ether monsters that propagated more aggressive behavior with every successive generation in search of dominance and power. Few ether life forms escaped this cycle.
Enter?
Different from last time, his gaze hovered over the enter option.
‘Yes.’
And the instant he confirmed, his avatar appeared in what looked exactly the same as the Void Dimension.
Choosing a random direction, he started focusing on moving at his maximum momentum speed.
The talked-about restrictions of the dimension appeared as soon as he began to move. He was limited to half his stat for momentum, but surprisingly enough, he quickly realized that… His perception sphere hadn’t lost half of its radius.
‘My ether soul specialty? Is that…’
That was the first thought that passed through Rune’s mind.
Until now, apart from making it abusively harder to manipulate and deform his perception sphere, it did nothing else. It neither increased the clarity, range, or any other things when he tried to compare with others.
‘So my specialty is to resist dimensional ether restriction on the perception sphere? Seems amazingly specialized… And also not something I’d have picked if I had the choice… But I need to compare it to other specialties first, and also ask if someone has the same specialty as me.’
After planning what to do and test, he continued on his first steps into the Deep Void Dimension.
His current perception radius went from 500 meters to 275 meters, he was resisting a relative 5% restriction to his perception, and it was with a supposed unactivated specialty.
His momentum, however, was suppressed as it should be. From 500 meters to 250 meters per minute maximum.
The greatest impact it brought was the use of the momentum manipulation technique becoming half as effective as he was used to on that side.
From the board, he had learned that the Deep Void Dimension aggressive monsters were similarly under the same restriction as they all were, from tier 1 stat limits to dimensional restrictions.
Only rare exceptions had shown themselves able to go slightly over the limit, but those monsters were kept under careful observation, as they already informed the rest of the world that it was possible to go beyond your maximum limit.
But even experts emitted only 2 hypotheses, either it was an ether soul case, or it was simply a short term explosion with major side-effects.
After those experts had looked into the subject deeper, they quickly contacted the psychic union and determined that there truly was a way to overuse momentum, but for a short period after that, the average speed was drastically reduced, so this case was then closed.
‘Another mystery unveiled, and another momentum technique to learn. Why didn’t Utopia tell us about it during the camp? I know it's relatively recent but even then… Anyway, it’s not like we could have found how to do it as nobody else succeeded yet.’
Concluding this matter, he tried to absorb a random ether crystal he found floating, to see their value. Once he was done absorbing one, he opened his gathering log.
Absorbed ‘Ether crystal’, gained 98 EP
‘An ether crystal is still worth around 100 EP, exactly as the board said, so it’s useless for me to farm here. A single monster core is worth 10 000 to 50 000 EP after all.’
Following 2 hours of travel, Rune encountered his first ether life form.
A whale-like beast.
He momentarily enhanced his senses of color, smell, and sound in his perception sphere, but there was nothing majestic.
It was pure white, a smooth skin glowing with energy, it didn’t smell anything and the only sound he heard was the friction between its muscles.
Deactivating his senses but letting the color one activated, he prepared for what was going to happen if he hadn’t stumbled upon a peaceful one by chance.
Approaching to see its reaction, upon entering within 150 meters, surely having finally detected him with its own perception sphere, it started rushing at him like a starved beast seeing a buffet.
‘I’ll follow the proper procedure first, it’s still my first time.’
It was now confirmed that it wasn’t a peaceful beast, it was a bloodthirsty monster.
‘First, its perception sphere, 150 meters, so about 300 perception reduced by 50%. Then it’s momentum, 3 meters per second... So 350 momentum? Around that? Now for judging its strength and cohesion.’
The first confrontation of Rune’s avatar adventure through the Deep Void Dimension debuted with a collision without any technique.
‘300 strength?’
And upon hitting back, he felt a large dampener on his transmitted strength.
‘500 cohesion?!’
Rune had stumbled upon a tank whale, not the worst, but far from the best first encounter. It could have been dangerous.
He immediately activated his reinforcement shape, and with a regeneration of 200 per minute, he could do the basic 10% strength reinforcements worth 100 energy each as much as 2 times.
Compared to his original body, he was literally swimming in energy.
Delivering punch after punch, the whale fought back but his own use of momentum was too exquisite and refined. He was limited to 4 meters per second, but he compensated by using the large whale body as support.
Its size was relatively large, as big as a true adult whale, so tens of meters for Rune to circle around and play with.
‘Delivering enough damage to overpower the health regeneration, the true problem of every adventurer… It makes me think that I forgot to send my admission file to the Adventurer’s Society… Ah~~ No worries.’
At some point, he started increasing his energy expenditure so that he was in negative energy regeneration as he used reinforced moves with a hundred energy behind in quick succession.
Rune could feel the counterforce of his own punch and kick sending him away from the whale. Even his maximum momentum wasn’t powerful enough to keep him motionless and transmit all his strength.
Once he made this observation, he reduced his average punch’s power while also sometimes creating a platform, using it to make hundreds of energy reinforced punches. Only then did he successfully transmit all his hit’s power.
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It was no wonder though as he invested tens of energy into each platform to make sure they held on.
The whale sometimes struggled and tried berserk suicide exchanges that Rune immediately accepted, he had full physical stats, and was confident in his close combat experience.
At some point, the whale suddenly stopped moving. To confirm that he hadn’t been trolled onboard, he took a small piece of ripped flesh and ate it.
He activated his sense of taste for a moment but it was just what it seemed to be, flesh, not something surprising, not something good.
After 10 minutes, the white whale-like monster started to disintegrate into nothing, but that was only with human eyes.
With his sphere he could see smoke emanating from the whale body, it was created from the ether, and it was returning to the ether.
‘The monster core.’
Only a simple round stone remained of the whale, but even it was disintegrating at a slow speed.
‘The concentrated essence of the refined ether by a life, once universe life form can transform into ether life form, they too will probably leave a core behind when they die…’
Looking at the core in his hand, he closed his eyes but he couldn’t cut all his perception as it would be too dangerous, so he focused at 90% on absorbing the core, and the remaining 10% on maintaining vigilance.
Absorbed ‘Monster flesh’, gained 7 EP
Absorbed ‘Monster core’, gained 11 516 EP
As a celebration, Rune invested those EP in energy regeneration.
Avatar (Basic Rank) (Tier 1)
EP: 13 308
Stats Total: 4 121
Health: 500
Health Regeneration: 500
Strength: 500
Cohesion: 500
Energy: 220
Energy Regeneration: 201
Purity: 200
Affinity: 500
Momentum: 500
Perception: 500
‘I think I read something about a way to evaluate the remaining health, but it’s been proven that it was a scam and the creator was disillusioned… Such a shame.’
There was no HP bar, no identity spell, or similarly useful spell yet for this problem. You could only fight and fight, no time limit, no signs that your opponent had only 1 health remaining too as no aggressive ether monsters ever fled.
Rune continued his journey by following the direction the whale had been moving towards.
30 minutes later, he encountered a similar-looking whale.
Of course, there weren’t only whale-looking monsters, there were serpents-looking ones, ball-shaped ones, humanoid-looking ones, 8-limbed ones… Biodiversity had proved itself to be enormous in the Deep Void Dimension.
Same as the previous one, as soon as Rune entered its perception range, it rushed to...
‘To do what? Eat me? Kill me for no reason? I’ll check that after this fight.’
Simple curiosity led to large amounts of knowledge, the wiki was full of answers just waiting for him, he just had to know what he was searching for.
Rune felt enamored with fighting in the way he had decided to do it. Using his own fighting experience, he could suppress the monster so much it couldn’t even express half of its potential.
‘I’ll never stop training so that it’ll never happen to me, and if it happens to me, I’ll be sure it’s against monsters who have minimum 2 times my total stats.’
The fighting camp had truly prepared him for what was to come. Monsters appeared controlled by their instinct, and this instinct was sometimes the instinct of a genius, answering his combo like it knew everything and everything was a staged play.
Kicking its large stomach area, it rotated and a big fin slapped Rune away.
Punching its head area, it expelled a beam of energy, and it truly did damage.
Rune hoped it was a fluke, but this whale clearly knew its way around grand energy manipulation’s beams.
However, if it was only energy beams, he could tank them and even evade some after what he was subjected to in the camp: The Nelo-sponsored energy beams version of the competent body control hall hell’s room.
Fighting under the Ether Law couldn’t be simply described and taught, It was neither a marathon nor a sprint, it also wasn’t only about dishing as much damage as possible in a short time, and taking less than what you inflicted.
Everyone had their own opinion, some liked fighting in a sprint-like way, Rune preferred to fight in a marathon-like way. It was only his preference though, he knew that he had to be flexible, so he had learned moves from various intensity fighting styles.
Sometimes, using hundreds of energy moves, like the platform and reinforced punch combo, was worth more than using the same amount of energy multiple times.
Sometimes, like how spellcasters compensated their lacking efficiency with a bombardment of small disrupting spells, quantity led to a forceful elevation in quality.
Punch after punch, the whale couldn’t repulse him, it didn’t have a spell for it, it didn’t have the technique for it.
The combat ended 5 minutes later, Rune overpowered its regeneration over 5 minutes, which was amazing compared to the average tens of minutes long fights told onboard.
‘I should start to use more energy in my reinforcement. I’ll do a 200 energy reinforcement next, it’ll both increase the training and challenge of the fight, perfect.’
Continuing on his path of killing monsters, he gained insight after insight on how to better himself,
‘I need to learn energy wings. Everything looks fine but my speed sucks. If I learn how to have them I’ll be able to boost my travel speed, which is useful for all the objectives and my own comfort.’
As he continued moving in the direction of the unknown while being forced into fighting every monster he encountered, he started using the travel time in between every encounter to progressively learn how to make energy wings.
The genius who had invented this spell was still optimizing it, and he had even received government help with a team of fellow researchers, as well as an official position in the new energy institute.
Rival groups had also appeared, but the new energy institute was very ferocious when it came to making certain you couldn’t just release a copy and be done with it. Those rival teams would only be given a spell patent if they created something revolutionary with their own version.
The result was that the spell for energy wings was changed each week, and multiple versions were released with different names to respond to different needs.
Rune opted to learn the battle version “Battle Wings”, which used up to 120 energy per minute, and the ultra boosted version “Galaxy Wings”, which used up to 300 energy per minute, it was the maximum spell power they could reach with the time and development time they had.
Transforming energy into acceleration wasn’t the same as transforming energy into damage, there were additional steps to follow, and not just anyone could simply come up with ways to share those steps through a spell matrix.
The galaxy wings spell itself was a witness to how much the ether spell field was only beginning to take off, inefficiencies everywhere, primitive making, incomplete theories…
The most optimized spell they had released until now was the basic version “Leisure Wings”, it used 40 energy per minute but was still half the maximum output of the battle wings. With a third of the cost.
Using the battle wings in battle led to additional damage overall, as fundamentally, energy wings was still a spell transforming energy into acceleration.
And adding 10 meters per second to a punch of course raised its impact.
The more he fought, the easier he found it to try things he had always wanted to try. He knew what a veteran monster whale would do, so it became just testing moves and optimizing every move after that.
Following the direction the whales were going was an inexact science, but it was still the best way to find their nest, and only after 3 days of battles did he finally arrive at the whale’s nest.
A nest was simply a dangerous ground, often with solid matter involved, where ether life form liberated their ether, making it a conducive place for others of the same species to spontaneously be birthed by the ether.
Otherly defined, nests were open-air reproduction places, with no sex involved.
‘Will humans be able to do that? That’s fascinating and disturbing at the same time this thing…’
There was no proof that humans and other species would be able to do that, but there was also no proof that they would not be able to.
‘I read somewhere that if you weren’t confident in taking on a nest you could gather 10 kilometers above it and see if people were waiting to group up… I wonder if this one…’
The Deep Void Dimension was only a billionth the size of its counterpart, the Void Dimension, and over time, more and more people entered it, from heroes to commoners.
Preemptively, the IGS had made a simple plan: If you couldn’t take on a nest alone, which was impossible in one time unless you harassed it for an entire month as there were hundreds of monsters ready to fight in them, then gather on “top” of it.
‘There really are people…’
Rune arrived above the nest by making a big detour, and with his sphere he detected a group of 6 people waiting or absorbing resources.
Coming close, he received a private board message to inform him of the forum used to communicate.
Once he entered, he assessed the situation before saying that he’d be engaging immediately as he was here to train, which got him some weird looks.
Rune then directly left to fight with the most faraway patrolling whales.
In 3 days, he absorbed on average 2.5 monster cores per hour, with 20 minutes between each encounter and some minutes to settle it and absorb the core.
This resulted in a gain of 2 002 648 EP, a consequent gain in his opinion in such a short period of time.
All those EP then helped him further his path of investing in energy regeneration after had discovered how much of it was used by the most powerful wings spell which he wanted to use to accelerate his travel.
Avatar (Basic Rank) (Tier 1)
EP: 15 956
Stats Total: 4 321
Health: 500
Health Regeneration: 500
Strength: 500
Cohesion: 500
Energy: 220
Energy Regeneration: 401
Purity: 200
Affinity: 500
Momentum: 500
Perception: 500
When he successfully cleared the lone whales, he was finally ready for his first serious battle. He didn’t forget to announce in the nest forum that he was going for the nest of course.
Those people had sometimes appeared to fight lone whales, so maybe this time some would also want to be in on the action?
Invoking the galaxy wings spell, he plunged towards the nest of the whale.
With his sphere, Rune could see that the whole ether of the zone was gray, a smoky gray, it didn’t have any effect on him, but thinking about what resulted from this smoky gray ether made his human brain think of strange things.
He was nonetheless pulled out from his over-imaginative thoughts as multiple whales rushed towards him as soon as he intruded, how could he dare intrude on their nest was probably what was on their animalistic mind.
Pushing his way through, he opened the hostilities first by using a reinforced punch on the first whale who wanted to show its power, making a dent in its health while sending it flying for tens of meters.
Not changing targets, he kept focusing on the same one, the parallel use of galaxy wings and reinforcement was taxing on his energy, but it was simply too worth it.
Like he had done during his trip here, particularly as of late after he really got started, he made short work of the first whale.
1 minute was enough to drain its health completely, followed by it stopping moving to prove what just happened.
Rune ignored the core and the corpse and continued on his rampage. After the first one though, he started temporizing to prepare for his next offensive.
A 200 energy reinforced perfectly transmitted strike was enough to take the majority of their health, Rune then just had to use his pure strength and body control fundamental to finish them all off and optimize his own energy expenditures.
There was no need to use a trump card like energy armor, they would only substitute for one strike with Rune’s efficiency in the energy compression fundamental anyways.
Additionally, compressed energy was less efficient to take hits than health was. It didn’t have a cohesion stat linked to it after all, and purity was very much an offensive stat.
After half an hour of battle, the majority of it delayed and temporized, he was joined by the 6 people who only peaked their heads to see how he was doing.
They used guerilla tactics to compensate for their lacking fundamentals training. The current era of energy spells of course wasn’t advanced enough to allow for buffing, support, or energy transmission spells.
If it was even possible to begin with.
A lot of challenges had to be overcome to acquire knowledge on how to even produce an effect typically found only in video games, and currently, not one person had even a usable version.
In all that, Rune’s place, or class, was a warrior. If the apocalypse was to come, he would fight it and buy time for the IGS to develop those spells and allow the new generation to grow.
‘Let’s try this.’
He wanted to test something he saw onboard.
He compressed his energy in a spear shape, a rough but very sharp spear shape. As it was just pure manipulation and no spell matrix was used, it was slow and inefficient.
‘If you send a strike deep enough to strike a critical area like the brain, though you’d not have killed the beast, its body would stop moving…’
So he did the test.
He used all he had, from the massively inefficient galaxy wings that added a massive acceleration compared to that of the battle wings, to creating an energy-compressed platform at the moment of impact to transmit everything he had without being bounced back, and to top it all, a 200 energy reinforcement.
Once the collision happened, the spear pierced through the skin easily, then Rune freed it and the spear pierced the entirety of the whale, from front to end.
‘Woah, energy compressed weapons are so dope…’
After suffering from this devastating strike, the whale altogether stopped moving. But it was still alive. No smoke was visible over its body, that was proof enough.
‘Well, I already threw my lot with my body, so no reason to be jealous, everything has its pros and cons.’
He then proceeded to kill it using normal punches and kicks.
Two hours later, the group of 7 had to retreat, Rune included. Their regeneration couldn’t sustain them from the continuous assault of what felt like, and probably was, hundreds of monsters equal to them in stats.
Of course, they were pursued, but Rune and some of the members knew how to escape: Be faster than them, get out of their range, then go out of their trajectories.
No intelligent monsters had been encountered until now, so no one expected them to be the first one to.
This day marked Rune’s first time having to retreat from a battle he couldn’t win, and it’d not be the last.
Far from it.