Rune was in the zone and his own fighting style was no longer “slowly” coming together, though objectively, it was still easier to define it by decribing it than to do what he wanted with it.
He had to consider every future progression anyway, so for him, his fighting style would never stop “coming together”.
At some point maybe, his utterly simplistic juggernaut fighting style, the most direct style of fighting Rune could think of, would become better than the most complex style he wanted for himself, who knows?
Maybe, he would make something like an intrinsic symbiosis between the energy armor spell and reinforcement work? Two energy intensive fundamentals he wasn’t seeing working together anytime soon?
Or maybe the source wouldn’t even come from him? Maybe one day onboard someone would unveil a new spellcaster style that would allow anyone to destroy every opponent easily, forcing everyone, him included, to shift their way to incorporate some of the new spells and movements used?
Rune, like everyone, was pioneering his path. His path may seem similar to others, but every pioneer path was unique. And every pioneered path was currently subject to major change at any moment.
For example, Rune had just encountered an enemy that made him realize that normal strikes sometimes weren't enough.
The monster he was colliding with was what the information board had called with enthusiasm “slime monster”, they did have a core so common sense would tell you that physical strikes should be able to kill them.
But the core wasn’t the heart, it wasn’t synonymous with a critical hit or other gaming terms, and the “slime” wasn’t really slime, it was translucent and gelatinous flesh.
Like the ether soul Rune had, every monster had an ether soul as well. As for their core? It was only a result of being an ether life form, and according to biologists, such cores allowed them to sustain themselves at a reduced cost.
Once Universe life forms could remake their body to become ether life forms, they would also give birth to a core to automatically use the surrounding volatile ether and sustain a part of their body needs naturally.
Such cores were different from those you could absorb and gain ten thousands of EP from, they could be ripped out and nothing would happen, like it was only there for decoration.
To kill a slime monster, there was no best way found until now, it was a monster that embodied to perfection how fighting under the Ether Law differed from the previous era.
‘It’s not even trying but it’s more of a cockroach than me!’
Rune was trying using his own hand covered in his armor layer to rip out slime pieces, but once he freed them, they simply returned like magnets to their source body. And possibly, the health contained in those parts had only been marginally affected.
As the board had said, there was no best way to kill the slime, you could only continue hitting it, either getting to it via critical body mass loss or critical health loss.
Confronted with a monster that caused his prospective fighting style to half-fail didn’t shock Rune, it only added a note in his brain that he couldn’t be limited to one rule-defined fighting style, he also had to have “maybe less powerful but capable of answering specific situations like this one” variant fighting styles.
The best way to achieve this goal would of course be to create variants of his original fighting style. In this case, a simple adaptation was that after scooping slime mass from the monster, Rune used energy spells to burn it before continuing or retreating depending on his energy reserve.
The strike of a slime monster was fast, it deformed its body and tried to absorb you into it, then literally the slime monster could exchange 1 point of its energy for 1 point of his health, the theoretical apex of tier 1 efficiency.
Confronting multiple slimes could quickly lead to death, and Rune wasn’t a master in body control and evasion yet, so he already experienced the feeling of being swallowed and “digested”. It wasn’t a pleasant one.
To never be in that situation again, he decided to develop a variant style, especially for “physical destruction” immune monsters.
He had thought about trying himself to a weapon-dependent fighting style, but apart from sharpness and a few more meters of range… There really wasn’t much going on for him to consider it seriously yet.
He didn’t know if he would encounter more like this, but the board clearly hinted to that possibility. From energy only monsters, invisible monsters, and slime variant monsters… All sorts existed in all sorts of places.
Some monsters even mixed the 2, with sometimes a slime-like flesh and solid bones to support themselves, a true nightmare circus.
‘At least… They’re a bit predictable? Really perfect to refine my marathon fighting style in that aspect.’
As he continued trying to find the nest of the slime monsters and fighting them on the way, Utopia still hadn’t responded to his theory, leading to jokes about him being kidnapped by the IGS government to know where they had a leak.
As things were for him on this marvelous adventure though, he was slowly losing sense of time.
He could only distinguish between an instant, a moment, and a long time. Anything more precise than this was impossible for him.
And it didn’t surprise him, he knew long before it came to happen that he wasn’t someone who kept a rigid schedule. He didn’t care about that side of keeping his sanity that much..
He estimated that he had started to develop his variant fighting style 4 days ago, but he wasn’t sure.
The constant pressure he exerted on his sphere had become a habit at this point, and while he considered that he could awaken his soul whenever he wanted and not suffer any consequences, perception manipulation training was the only training that he could do passively… So…
From what he had learned, others' perception spheres also opposed their active deformation changes, the only difference was the strength of the resistance. If they stopped maintaining pressure on it, it would slowly go back in place, not snap back nearly instantly like his own perception sphere did.
So Rune was now 100% sure that his specialty was at least useful this way, so useful that maybe it would become a true talent of his after months of work. However, it was a talent that didn’t have any use as of now except facilitating his passive training.
Finding another slime monster, Rune approached and prepared to fight. He always hoped that maybe, just maybe, he would encounter a peaceful beast, but never put his expectations too high.
Because as usual, it was once more a mindlessly aggressive ether life form. A monster.
He waited for it to come, and like every slime monster he encountered before they did the same opening move instinctively: They tried to swallow him.
Rune was so sure it would happen that he already prepared a platform that he was going to use to escape, to attain the speed needed to not be bothered or escape by a hair, he just needed to do a 50 energy reinforced jump.
Like an experienced slime hunter, he jumped to the side, and using pure momentum after using another platform to stop himself, he reappeared to the “side” of the slime and used punches reinforced with 100 energy each to start his work on diminishing the slime’s health.
A dozen minutes later, the slime stopped moving and Rune decided to absorb this core.
Doing the same with 8 other slimes, he, at last, saw the slime’s nest, with squads of “guardians” patrolling around it.
His perception sphere could see that the ether around the nest had a dark green shine to it. It wasn't disgusting, ether colors were something Rune personally liked, and even more when it was an ether color, meaning a color that couldn’t be created with technology and could only be seen using a perception sphere.
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He didn’t want to admit it, but his special energy training had a very special place in his heart, and seeing such a special color, he became a bit entranced by how much depth it had.
And at that moment, a stupid idea dawned upon him.
‘If I can replicate the color perfectly, can I do an infiltration of the nest?’
His mind told him that it was stupid, that it wouldn’t work because a perception sphere didn’t stop when it enocuntered living matter… But he wanted to try, if only for the heck of it.
‘It’s an adventure goddamnit, if I want to do something, even if it’s stupid, I’ll do it! I’m the one controlling it!’
So he got to work. With his personal energy training as a foundation, he already had experience with coloring ether, it wasn’t part of the energy mastery path, just a minor manipulation trick.
Coloring ether meant tainting it with thoughts, Rune knew what red was so he could taint his ether, his energy, red if he wanted, it was almost instantaneous.
As he had never seen this dark green shine color before however, he had difficulty using his thoughts to define “it”.
Before, he had used the physics laws method of the 3 primary colors and light wavelength to define what the “red” color was, but now that he was faced with something alien, he couldn’t replicate the dark green he could clearly see at the border of his perception sphere.
He immediately knew why after delving into this problem for a bit. It wasn’t only one color. The dark green he saw was like his own skin, it wasn't pink, it was a pinkish-whitish-beige-ish combination, it had depth, intensity, and variation to it.
The same as looking at a gem, a certain translucence was here, and like light was coming from within, the intensity was different from point to point.
If he had to give a name to the color, it would be shining emerald slime green, and the more he observed it, the more he really wanted to be able to create such a color.
Like an artist, Rune started progressively mixing different basic ether colors, like he was using paints, in complete silence.
The colored ether that made up the nest was flowing, like a living thing, exposing more aspects of the emerald slime green to him, until finally… After an hour, he realized that simply tainting his energy with other colors would never give him what he wanted.
‘I need something more… Something new?’
Rune didn’t know what he needed to bring this whim project to conclusion. Should he infuse his feelings? His emotions? The slime monsters certainly wouldn’t have them, but art had always been used to represent nature through a different lens.
‘A happy green, a sad green, those were merely names before… But maybe for the ether colors, they can become real? Intent communication exists after all… So maybe?’
Deciding to take another path, Rune started to infuse his “intent” inside his energy. A living green, a windy green, as he kept infusing feelings and abstract notions into his own energy, the color began to subtly change.
The process was not unlike what it looked like with pure color tainting, it was just much more subdued, like using a drop of light green and carefully blending it in something pure white.
‘Of course it’s possible…’
Grinning foolishly at this subtle color, Rune knew he still had much to do before creating from his own hand a new ether color, but he considered what he was doing as training, a branch of his colors and shapes energy training.
His very own special energy training.
…
The psychic union was part of the 3 path organizations, such a fact was undeniable, but what was also undeniable was also the fact that it had always remained silent, like an unimportant supporting or secondary character.
Near the end of the 17th month however, this image was broken.
The psychic union published a research paper containing everything they knew about the momentum stat, the momentum manipulation fundamental, and all applied momentum science.
That paper included pure scientific contents for ether technologies and thousands of experiments led using the stat and its ability to be exploited in all fields, be it fighting, transport, or economy.
As one of the 3 path organizations of the IGS, the psychic union had duties to fulfill, and this paper was what it issued to explain things from their own point of view and diverge on a lot of new problems and opportunities that the Ether Law would bring.
The issue of why traveling in the Void Dimension compared to traveling in the Universe Dimension’s space always slowed you down or didn’t affect things at all was the opening experiment explained in the paper.
Ether was present everywhere, but it affected etherized matter, matter containing ether, differently from non-etherized matter, matter not containing any ether.
The moment etherized matter moved, so pretty much any sapient having created their avatar, it would provoke a reaction from the surrounding ether, as the object needed to “push” ether to move.
That was the reason as to why when you accelerated in the Void Dimension or Deep Void Dimension, this acceleration disappeared the moment you stopped using your momentum or whatever made you move, like a jump or a throw.
All in all, your biological matter acted like anywhere with enough ether density was filled with air.
This explanation was backed up by thousands of tests to prove their points, non-etherized matter versus etherized-matter spaceships, rocks catapulted with or without energy armor… They did so many tests that they successfully proved their own claim. Confidently and boldly.
While Rune wasn’t connected to the board at the moment due to his ether color experiment, his theory was a daily subject for his friends.
According to the date, Astryde and Utopia recalled their avatar 3 weeks ago, so in only a week, they would become able to enter the Deep Void Dimension to train with their one and only life in a progress-accelerating suicidal way.
Utopia sometimes appeared and told that he was still confirming Rune’s theory, he also said that he had involved his mother, the 5th district head of A56 and that she was seriously using her connection to the IGS administration to hint that she knew the theory of Rune and believed in it.
But with the new momentum research paper, Utopia ultimately left all the work to his mother.
He had to prepare as best as he could, Rune was 3 weeks ahead of him, but while he didn’t want to compare himself to his friend, he was just that confident in his own ability.
The same went for every member of their little group, Astryde was as confident as Utopia even if she didn’t show it.
As for the other members who didn’t follow through with the crazy choice of going in a suicidal adventure, it wasn't because they didn’t want to improve, but because they had other plans for their training.
…
‘A little more… Depth?’
After a long time, what for the rest of the world was 1 week, or 168 hours, Rune was still immersed in his color creation experiment.
Recently, he successfully made a flowing flamboyant red, a color that looked like it resulted from an explosion and was still continuing its course. But it hadn’t been voluntary.
It turned out that colors were capricious, even more so when they were created from feelings and artistic intent. It was like he couldn’t create something he didn’t believe existed, because his energy would then keep its “white” color or take on a color that was far from what he wanted, or even expected.
What he was attempting was only a color imitation, he even had a model before his eyes, but he couldn’t copy its appearance, and that was the only thing he cared about.
‘Maybe it’s just impossible at my level… It could explain a lot…’
The ether that Rune was sensing had this alien feeling, he came to create something that approached the color and the sensations he felt, but after so long of a time analyzing the same emerald green slime color, the thing he had maybe missed should be impossible for him to sense…
‘Time to stop, emerald slime explosion to celebrate.’
He infused his energy and made it take on a color that neared what he wanted to the closest he could.
By carefully compressing some parts and creating a second layer, the moment he released the intricate sphere, it exploded in a colorful blast, and after that, a second mini flare appeared thanks to the compressed piece he incorporated within.
‘Fireworks magic, it’s official from now on.’
His energy training gave birth to the beginning of something important for his artist-ish hobby. It was certainly amateurish, but it was also certainly completely magical fireworks.
If someone was here to see his face, that person would see that Rune’s eyes were glittering like he was realizing a long-held dream.
‘I hope this feeling never goes away.’
With what he had just created, he just wanted to continue, but at the same time he also knew that it was far from complete. It was like the color he had created, it had the appearance, but not the feel nor the function.
A firework without a shockwave and sound wasn’t his dream fireworks, and as for those 2 problems, Rune had no idea how to replicate them.
‘Let’s try this 0% chance of working infiltration and stretch those limbs stiffened from inactivity.’
Refocusing on reality, Rune looked towards the slime monster nest he needed to clean. His short-term schedule was full.
He first reapplied his energy armor, then covered himself in a veil of pseudo emerald slime green, his fine energy manipulation was strong enough to keep this veil around him as he approached the slime’s nest.
After he entered within one of the slime’s perception spheres, they didn’t appear to hesitate one bit and started to rush towards him.
‘Well, I didn’t expect anything else?’
Maybe feeling a little bit of frustration, he prepared a 50 energy platform beneath his feet and when the slime was 50 meters away from him, he used a 200 energy reinforcement and rushed in its direction.
The impact, Rune didn’t feel it, he only knew that the slime was quasi dead, and his core, which would soon transform into a true tier 1 monster’s core, was in his hand.
‘Let’s be a juggernaut for a bit, just for a bit.’
And so he started rampaging near the slime’s nest at his own unstoppable juggernaut rhythm for a whole week.