Rune never did drugs, but if he ever did in the future, and he for sure didn't think he ever would, he was sure he would wake up feeling like that day, now.

‘What’s this cucumber mother in hell my spirit is doing… What?’

Like he was in heaven, no worry existed, purely a feeling of everything being fine, like gravity didn’t exist, but he could still feel it, while still feeling everything was wrong.

Rune scoured the snail’s nest and found 3 rare resources while feeling like this. He didn’t know why he felt like this, so he tried to focus on other things, but it failed.

Thinking about what could have led to this state, he insulted his past self very much in a hurtful, personal way.

Only after trying to recall what he did, he vaguely saw his ether soul dissipating, or maybe not, he didn’t exactly remember.

Landing on the nest, he sat legs crossed and entered his inner self.

Expecting to see his ether soul, Rune felt his mind going bad when all he saw was a vast nothing, he could feel his ether soul, he could feel his awareness moving for unknown reason, but it wasn’t here. He couldn’t see it.

The stress stroke he took upon realizing this situation made him remember what he did before going into a deep sleep.

He did something with his soul, or his awareness to be more precise, something that should have helped him train.

‘Yes, I remember, I wanted…’

It came back, fragmented.

He wanted his awareness to shift by itself, to flow as time passed, but the problem was that now, Rune didn’t know how he had succeeded and what he did.

He started to remember that the exhaustion of his spirit guided him, but all he remembered was his ether soul having some sorts of “ripples” when his senses blacked out from strain and exhaustion.

‘Then, I saw what problem appeared and? Tried to replicate it? Yeah, I tried to purposely create a blackout to force my awareness to move, to fill the gap, but as it was artificial… There was no problem to resolve?’

Piecing things together didn’t matter, the end result was his ether soul’s awareness not being where it should be.

‘Then where is it?’

His inner self was not a physical space, it wasn’t the interior of his body or brain, it was a mental image, only accessible by emptying one’s thoughts.

Using logic wasn’t the right answer, he didn’t have a common sense adapted for Ether Law’s use. Preparing himself mentally, he did an action that would maybe help him.

‘Avatar separation.’

The next moment, he felt his original body separate from what gave him his strength. But the reason he did that was to use the avatar’s awareness switch to detect where his ether soul was.

Willing himself to become his avatar, the switching process began.

He could feel all his awareness gathering… In front of him, where his ether soul usually was, but he didn’t see anything.

‘Did I turn off my sense of self? Does it even exist?’

He couldn’t arrive at another answer, like when he deactivated his sense of sight back home to try, once deactivated, the sense simply didn’t exist anymore for his brain and spirit. Such a comparison could perfectly answer why he couldn't see his ether soul anymore.

As for what his body was feeling, feeling everything and nothing at all, it was maybe part of his sense of self, something very important, being deactivated?

‘But how to reactivate it?’

That was a conundrum, he needed access to his ether soul to… Or did he really? Maybe his past self wasn’t stupid, what does deactivating his sense of self brought to him?

Rune was sure it was all artificial, so he wasn’t in immediate danger, but the fact that his memories were fragmented meant something happened and it probably had something to do with the artificial blackout.

‘The goal is to train, will the situation… Sense of self?’

He knew that when something approached what you wanted to be real, it wouldn’t be difficult to believe in it.

‘The sense of self is the soul itself, isn’t it? Not the ether part but the awareness itself, did I make a general blackout to train myself by forcing my awareness to reform my ether soul? Just so I can concentrate on training other things…’

Rune wasn’t sure, but he wanted to believe. If it was true, then he was a genius, his exhaustion had made him a genius.

‘I’ll accept that for now and continue my adventure, if I can’t fight at all then I’ll resolve the situation early. Brute forcing the end of the blackout shouldn’t be difficult with a few hundred avatar switches.’

Fixing his thoughts, he fused with his avatar again and decided to absorb those 3 rare resources, then he would continue his travel to the boundary.

Avatar (Basic Rank) (Tier 1)

EP: 12 562 552

Stats Total: 5 000

Health: 500

Health Regeneration: 500

Strength: 500

Cohesion: 500

Energy: 500

Energy Regeneration: 500

Purity: 500

Affinity: 500

Momentum: 500

Perception: 500

The rare resources he had found were respectively worth 160, 180, and 240 stat points, tier 1 stat points of course, with what he considered a consequent quantity of cores he absorbed, it ended up filling his reserve to more than 10% of its maximum.

‘Slowly but surely… Yeah… It’s like I’m in a depression spike?’

Rune couldn’t express what he was experiencing with words or thoughts alone, only focusing on creating the galaxy wings spell matrix made him want to vomit, then moving put him in ecstasy. Thinking about what was happening to his soul, he became a bit perplexed.

His primitive instinct mixed with all that made him, himself, and the result was Rune not flying straight.

After a moment of flying with difficulties, in the direction he supposed to be right, he encountered his first opponent, an octopus monster.

If he was in his normal state he would be happy to encounter a monster with such complex appendages and the complex fighting it would involve.

But he realized that maybe, standing before him was an obstacle only slightly below evading the scorpion monster stinger, it was going to be an arduous task.

However, maybe such difficulty was what he needed? Not the unavoidable stinger, just a very complex fight in a drunken state? Because only with more challenges could it be worth the effort.

‘Let’s go, maybe I’ll develop the variant fighting style which I’ll name the drunken fist fighting style.’

On these thoughts, he approached the octopus.

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As he entered within a range of 200 meters, it started to approach him too, and its tentacles were already tensing and wiggling.

‘Well, that’s another dud.’

Rune had never lost the hope that he may encounter a peaceful beast by happenstance, even if the probability were thin.

Even before starting to fight, he encountered difficulties taking on the correct defensive stance, not only was his body fighting against him, he also didn’t know what to expect from an octopus monster. The world was against him in this fight.

Unlike him, the octopus monster didn’t show any hesitation or weirdness, it approached and used one of its tentacles to try and grab him.

Rune evaded using a 10 energy platform, feeling like his legs were jelly when he used them.

Trying one of his usual moves, he used momentum to circle around the octopus, but there always was a tentacle in the way, it literally was a 360-degree top and below included total protection sphere.

Coming up with a plan in a few seconds, what he was going to do reminded him of the time before he began his adventure, the time where he voluntarily did pummeling training.

Because approaching from the strong side of the enemy was one of the first lessons everyone learned not to do.

‘Not like I have a choice.’

The moment he entered its reach, one tentacle tried to grab him again, another 2 were coming fast.

Laughing without a voice, while not knowing why, Rune grabbed the tentacle and pulled, another limit of his fighting style appeared, his lack of direct confrontation moves. He was too used to involving weak points to have his way.

Confused, he did what he knew the most, keeping his health and energy balance in check, then starting to strike.

As long as his health balance was positive and his opponent's was in the negative, he would win. His marathon fighting style was that simple.

The feeling on hit felt like that of the snail’s flesh, a spongy one, but this time there was no automatic acid energy ripost, though he found what the specialty of the octopus was soon enough.

Being grabbed by one of the tentacles, he felt a pull that shouldn’t be possible, and his sphere informed him that clearly, the octopus was using energy vibration, it was using reinforcement.

As he didn’t react, he couldn’t escape, so he was pulled and collided with another reinforced tentacle, and that hit like a truck in his armor layer.

Not even letting him go, the octopus wanted to make him have a second turn, but Rune used a platform and jumped with a reinforcement of 100 energy, forcing the tentacle to follow him or release him.

Maybe because it couldn’t disobey its own instinct, it didn’t release, so he stopped himself using another platform and collided violently with the monster that was forcefully accelerated against its will.

Having evaluated the monster’s fighting complexity to be just below the scorpion’s one, the octopus proved his judgment to be right and didn’t let its head be hit.

With 7 other tentacles, it had all he needed to react, launching 4 tentacles to counter the miserable fist that tried to hit him.

Then going all in, it prepared its remaining 3 tentacles with a basic reinforcement, hitting Rune as the octopus didn’t release its previous tentacle.

For Rune, all was tentacle, so many moves he could do, so many moves he dismissed by instinct, his flaring instinct guided him at the same time his fighting instinct did. He lunged against expectation and used the regular 50 energy platform and 100 energy reinforcement propelling.

Maybe not expecting Rune to even be able to do that, the octopus couldn’t block and took a normal very reinforced strike.

‘What’s happening?’

He wanted to continue, but at this moment he became dizzy, and black spots appeared all over his sphere.

Reacting as best as he could, he kicked the octopus’s “head” and retreated from the fight, but the tentacle was still attached to his leg, it was really the most obstinate monster he ever encountered. Even above the scorpion on that front.

He didn’t know how to escape from this tentacle, he tried to simply strike but it seemed that a concussion attack was useless.

‘I never tried before but I thought up a solution for not using a sharp weapon.’

Concentrating on creating a weapon, he used the energy compression fundamental and started compressing energy with pure manipulation into a pair of gauntlets with blades sticking out from the top.

Like creating armor, it wasn’t only experience but also desire that shaped a pure manipulation spell, he wanted his punch to be able to cut, and he thought of blades, so sharp blades appeared on top of gauntlets.

He had no experience wielding any other kind of weapon, so he went with the easiest solution.

As they appeared directly on his forearms, he immediately punched, and a cut appeared on the tentacle.

Not wanting to be distracted, he once again used a 50 energy platform and a 150 energy reinforced jump.

Turning around mid-jump, he “punched” the most obstinate tentacle ever until it was finally cut.

Freed from the hindrance that had retained him, Rune retreated, it was the first time in his life that he could clearly “see” black spots appearing in his perception sphere, and it was scary.

It really seemed like he was dying, his perception fading and along with it, everything else.

If he not only could perfectly control his body, and his inspection reassured him that it wasn’t the last moment of lucidity before death, then he would have thought his health was emptying for no reason.

Insights flooded his mind, but it wasn’t the moment to reflect on them, he had an octopus to kill.

Retreating for 2 whole minutes before coming back, everything he had done was undone, all health and energy he had shaved came back. Everything had also grown back.

‘That’s the essence of fighting in the Ether Law, isn’t it?’

With his new stupidly-designed bladed gauntlets, he could effectively do mutilating damages in addition to taking health while striking, he wasn’t well versed in how energy weapons worked but it worked fine for him.

By extension, after fighting for 30 seconds exchanging punches and tentacles, Rune decided to create another weapon, a bladed front leg piece, the one he created was a pair of high military-looking boots with blades on the side and under them.

With all his four main means of attack ready for jelly flesh cutting, the battle accelerated.

He didn’t fear the tentacles as much, he could cut them if needed, but once they were reinforced he still did all he could to evade them, otherwise, it would be like blocking a whip, it would end up badly for the blocker.

Vacillating mid-fight really complicated the battle, even if overall it didn’t affect the end result.

His fighting style was essentially him delivering continuous damage while keeping his health in check, so even a moderate slip could be rectified.

But now it was the end, Rune cut 3 tentacles, and the others were also badly damaged, using a simple 10 energy platform and rushing to the octopus head, he kicked it, and while it tried to react, it failed.

And it stopped moving at that moment of impact.

The current Rune didn’t feel a sense of accomplishment though, he felt more like he stood up from his chair too fast and was having vertigoes.

‘I really hope it’s training my awareness because that’s above what an actual masochist would be able to support.’

Octopus monsters weren’t impossible, their dangerosity level largely diminished after he used a 65% efficiency energy compression weapon able to cut.

And now he had to do a post-battle analysis, concerning in particular one idea he had mid-fight.

‘Should I try dying with my avatar? In the middle of an epic fight? While listening to epic music?’

That was his insight, he had multiple reasons for believing there was more to gain than to lose. Once he gained his independence, his avatar wouldn’t exist anymore.

From his perspective, the avatar was made completely by the Compensation Law, and if the result of their initially critically defective law had been different...

There should be dimensions where the compensation was different, dimensions where nobody ever had access to avatars.

That was also linked to Rune’s theory on why avatars had a rank, if their initial scan result had shown something worse than “critically defective”, then forget the basic or advanced rank, they would have maybe gotten a 100% transmitted capacity avatar.

The existence of rank upgrading a rare resource, however, he didn’t know what to do with, because soon nobody would have access to an avatar anymore if they followed the path made by the Ether Law.

Unless they become available again later it wouldn’t make sense.

‘I just need to continue, probably another dimension will have the answer, they’ve been at it for maybe billions of years after all.’

Rune made a note of his crazy idea of dying before gaining independence, and then wrote the rest of what he had gained in this fight.

After doing his usual post-fight summary, he did the first thing he wanted to, search the Wiki for information on how energy weapons worked in detail.

Some searching later, he understood why they were different.

In contrast to energy armors, energy weapons didn’t have a defensive value, they had a compressed offensive energy value, this energy of course had a moment when it was used up, but it was midway between a true weapon and a spell.

Spell because it used energy, and weapon because all offensive properties needed another source of strength to be used.

In the opposite way that people couldn’t overlap multiple armor layers or multiple reinforcement shapes however, there seemed to be no limit on the number of energy weapons one could create.

The only common limit was one’s energy pool. In the same way that for the grand and fine energy manipulation fundamentals, you couldn’t prepare more than your energy pool worth of energy in advance. Meaning everyone was still limited to creating a 500 energy weapon in the end.

As for the ratio between energy and compressed offensive energy…

It was calculated to be 1 point of compressed offensive energy used up for every 10 compressed defensive energy at 100% efficiency, an absolute ridiculous ratio if it wasn’t for the fact that there was no inherent offensive property to energy weapons other than sharpness.

If he compressed his 500 energy into a weapon with his 65% energy compression fundamental efficiency, it would only be used up after reducing his armor by 3 250…

‘If only it was the same for energy armor. I wonder if it’s possible to overlap a compressed weapon with a true weapon?’

It was the idle thought that ran through Rune's mind, and despite feeling like vomiting, he still searched up for the possibility onboard to satisfy his curiosity.

‘Ah… Yeah, of course. Why would steel that became etherized and became 5 times more resistant be relevant in a fight that involves 200 times stronger sapients and monsters? Sorry for the stupid question.’

In the end, he had already known it was easier to damage than to protect, he had known it since the beginning when he used a 200 energy punch to one-shot a monster.

‘Anyway, I have more octopus to kill, let’s get going.’

Rune could feel his fighting style improving, not the moves, but his foundation.