“Rune.”
From the deep and comforting darkness of slumber, Rune’s spirit reacted to his own name.
After sleeping for 30 hours, cracks that formed due to the constant pressure he applied upon his perception sphere became only faint lines without effects.
His ether soul had completely dispersed, even if he wanted to he wouldn’t be able to influence it, he was in a deep sleep state and only his name finally convinced his spirit to awaken.
As a first act of waking up, he verified his energy armor integrity, then he forced his dispersed awareness to condense back, forcefully terminating the artificial general blackout.
*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Perception Control reached Tier 2 Level 8
*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division reached Tier 2 Level 4
Welcoming his awakening were notifications informing him that his training never stopped, only slowed down.
His perception of 2 kilometers around him was the first thing on which he focused, he saw the forms of his friends and a group of 20 people rushing here.
Probably the group they had to escort, Utopia was ready to receive them, so he probably was the one to wake him up.
He wasn’t the only one who had gone to sleep, he could see Nelo, Astryde, Adreana, and Arik also waking up from foamy and comfortable-looking energy mattresses.
Everyone was emerging from a relaxing sleep and they were ready for another month of work, another month of fighting against death and pioneering a new world, a new dimension.
As the IGS group was approaching rapidly, Rune stood up and started to apply slight pressure on his perception sphere, causing small ripples, but it perfectly balanced with how much his own sphere resisted changes, so nothing happened.
‘Yup, that’s the correct amount.’
Finally, he re-established a perfect balance.
Sleeping after 3 weeks of work was really extraordinary, maybe his spirit had now grown enough so that he could start another passive training?
Thinking for a moment, awareness division was the go-to training he had to take care of.
Momentum manipulation still had a very active use in combat, even if it was only a minor one, awareness however was just left alone and didn’t move at all apart from some seldom change he did when he thought about it.
Creating 3 minor blackouts on some auxiliary senses, he felt his spirit reaching minor effort, so he stopped, that was how he decided he was going to live until his next sleep.
By the time he did all that, Utopia already started to discuss with the leader of the IGS group, they seemed to be professional surveyors, geologists, biologists, and hydrogeologists among others, who had their important stats sponsored by the IGS in exchange for their services.
It was a good deal from Rune’s point of view, but as their masteries would advance slowly while under employment, they lost in the long term… If their objective even had something to do with advancing their tier…
Finishing their discussion, Utopia turned around and spoke to his own group, “We’re going now, pace of 40 meters per second, we’re stopping at every point of interest for as long as they need, once we arrive at the magnetite ore mine our mission will be over, let’s go.”
The 2 groups, accounting for 27 people in total, used the path the Undecided created to advance as the IGS employees used their perception and knowledge to carefully analyze everything to find every possible use any rocks or trees could have.
Hundreds of such paths had been made and compared to the millions of people of manpower it was very few.
As such, the IGS intended to use each of those paths to dispatch all future manpower and expand their reach and control the whole tier 1 flat forest before stopping short of the tier 2 zones.
Their objective was to colonize the tier 1 zone, but to cover those thousands or even tens of thousands of square kilometers, they would need years of people immigrating from their native dimensions and deciding to inhabit there and have children.
At the moment, however, everything the IGS was doing was more in line with an aggressive expansion in the objectives of sending their precious prospects to battle for them, to fight and progress.
As they advanced, the surveyors marked their every finding on paper, be it new plants, a minor variation of topography, minor changes of mother stone’s depth, it was a true survey of everything.
At the first point of interest, the underground had a change, but after 5 minutes they continued, “An ancient lake, nothing but sandstone.”
The second point of interest, “A river once passed here.”
And another, “Another riverbed.”
Magic couldn’t explain everything, and their dimension was expert on everything that wasn’t linked to ether magic.
The Ether Law affected matter and changed it a bit, but it didn’t change phenomenons such as rains, storms, rivers, oceans, volcanic eruptions, and matter itself.
It was only that the Ether Law allowed for new variations in all their processes, a storm could raze a mountain in minutes where before, only millions of years of rain erosion could.
The IGS was far from sloppy, they already made holes going as far as 40 kilometers down into the earth, verifying if their knowledge was still relevant, and it was… Pretty much.
The board already told of the existence of underground regions and worlds, so the increasing temperature the deeper they got, while logical, didn’t account for what really was millions of kilometers beneath the ground.
Or millions of kilometers above ground for that matter.
Once they reached the river, the surveyors made notes about it for 15 minutes, its orientation, its flowing direction, the level of the surrounding water table, it was all important data they couldn’t miss.
Then they arrived at the Undecided camp, a clearing amidst a full forest.
It was a tier 2 zone from now on, as planned they went right, following a non-cleared path towards the magnetite ore veins.
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Monsters didn’t have time to come back as they were only absent for 3 days, so they got to the exposed veins quickly and the surveyors took all forms of data.
Every vein had a particular set of data, their concentration in magnetite, their width, their depth, their increasing or decreasing concentration, how much was eroded by the river, the difficulty of exploitation…
As a graduated exploration engineering student, Rune understood that they were professional.
He still remembered some modest knowledge on how many tools and data were required to truly estimate the yield expected from a mine, but they were doing everything by hand using paper and their eyes.
2 hours later, the IGS group confirmed the escort mission completion.
“You can now do whatever you want, we don’t need an escort back, go to the northern outpost in maximum one month to receive your compensation, I can assure you it’s going to be a great one, thank you for your hard work!”
Their leader was a kind and serious middle-aged man, though nowadays appearances were only a trap, if you saw an old man then this old man probably still had 200 years left to live, and once he broke his biological limit he would recover his prime appearance, so he was old only temporarily.
The IGS group was, in fact, mostly composed of middle-aged men and women, but they didn’t act like it at all, they were active and took the initiative to explode part of the veins to take samples, a pretty disturbing sight all things considered.
“Thank you for your hard work too! We’ll return to our camp before entering the depth of this zone, you can cut through the forest directly now that you know where the path is, it was a pleasure, goodbye!” Utopia replied enthusiastically.
He really was a sociable young hero, every time the group advanced just a little during those 3 days, he tried to discuss with the members of the IGS group, so his good impression level was probably sky high at this point.
In the end, they decided to return to the Undecided camp, or clearing to be more exact, with Utopia and then split after that.
They had a lot to do with all the data they gathered, reconstitution of past events, and potential mine yield among others.
After they truly departed, Utopia turned toward his group.
“We’re going to do a deep expedition in the tier 2 zone, we’ll act as duos, the best ones I came up with were Rune Nelo, Astryde Adreana, and Arik Gar, with me as a moving piece, the goal is to max our stats so no purposed handicap, we’ll efficiently slaughter every monster that attacks us.”
Rune went to Nelo's side, for this expedition they had to never separate.
His role was to make sure he could bombard the monsters without being interrupted, allowing for perfect management of his energy by not using it to block approaching monsters.
After the duos formed, Utopia established the general schedule and response.
“From our group, only Rune is specialized in survival so if a tier 3 comes, lead it to Rune, he’ll temporize it. Never leave the monster alone with him though, and disturb it as much as you can because he cannot evade an unperturbed tier 3 speed. We’ll only retreat if tens of tier 3 arrive, no other circumstances.”
‘It does flatter my ego a bit.’
At the same time, Rune knew that he was the one who had 2 defensive masteries to level up so he wasn’t going to complain.
“If we see a major topographic change we’ll go towards it and if we have to retreat or we are separated then we’ll establish meeting points as we go, now that I’ve said everything we can go, we’re prolonging our path straight and using the same method as the previous time, Rune and Arik forward, me and Astryde behind.”
Having finished his briefing, Utopia got to work and launched a cutting spell in direction of where they had to go.
Rune and Arik immediately got to work and destroyed the forest before them.
After clearing a 50 meters long and 20 meters wide path, Utopia took a big rock from somewhere and put it at the entrance of this path then graved on it “Tier 2 zone”.
It was procedure, and it was cool.
…
“A group of 10 big things is approaching, looks like… Giant mantis?” Rune reported what he saw, and the new monster, he never saw before.
“Clear the surroundings!”
Utopia was prepared, this time they weren’t like prowlers, waiting for opportunities, they were razing the forest as they advanced, so of course, it was going to attract lots of monsters, be it individual or whole squads.
Everyone took a side and sent a giant cutting spell followed by a pushing spell, this way they created an environment advantageous for them and maybe unfamiliar for the monsters and waited for them to arrive.
Mindlessly approaching, the mantis-like monsters just charged, believing their front sharp limbs made them the ones to be evaded.
But once they arrived, Rune, Arik, and Astryde waited like a wall and blocked the whole group while Nelo, Gar, Utopia, and Adreana sent a wave of spells killing a mantis in one shot.
“Next one is the leftmost one, now!” Utopia was leading the damage unit, killing one by one the mantises.
Rune blocked 3 mantes by himself with a sound bomb attracting their attention, Arik and Astryde were doing the same and blocking the rest.
As they were tier 2 monsters, he was confident in blocking perfectly all they tried to do or evade, it was his usual style, he didn’t search to create openings or counter-attacking, he just blocked everything while keeping himself alive.
Every wave of spells killed a mantis, but they just continued trying to destroy the wall, with no purchase on it their number was reduced at lighting speed, 10 minutes later they all died and the cores were absorbed.
Mixing battle tactics and mindless monsters gave this result.
Now that they were totally used to fighting in the Endless, they controlled the flow of battle, did their jobs steadily, and learned minor lessons with different monsters, unveiling their peculiarities and weaknesses as their death approached.
After advancing 30 kilometers, the forest finally reacted, birds were accumulating, a sign that other monsters would come soon because there was a highly prized prey there.
“Clean the surroundings 200 meters, act in duo, I’ll be in charge of blocking the sky!”
From what they could see, a flock of birds was gathering above and would soon dive on them, but birds also attracted all sorts of monsters because of the cacophony they caused and the obvious signs they created.
“Rune, I’ll focus on any monster that passes by your side, so don’t care about those who’ll try to get around you,” Nelo created a quick strategy.
The goal they had to use to base their plan on was killing monsters as fast as possible, Rune had to make it so that Nelo could use his 2 000 energy regeneration to deal enough damage to kill one monster each time.
‘Oh, dear… So exciting, thank you for this gift Ether.’
“Big lizards incoming! A group of 50!” Rune exclaimed.
It was the premise to a bloodbath, the Undecided couldn’t ask for a better situation, danger was the fuel to level up and lots of monsters were the fuel for stat points, so they were going to receive everything.
At the same time.
The birds waiting for an opening instinctively felt it and dived, this opening was when the Undecided engaged with the lizard-like monster squad, but in the end, it was only the start of their demise.
Utopia sent 5 pulses in the air to disturb the air then made the diving birds go down by personally plucking them to be killed by the efficient slaughter machine at the same time as the lizards.
Rune blocked 3 lizards by himself and engaged in counter-attacks actively, punching with weak reinforcement at every opening he saw while Nelo bombarded every monster trying to pass by him.
He was readying himself for hours of fighting, so he made sure to sacrifice health and energy in equal amounts while blocking the lizards from advancing.
Some tried to bite him, some used all their strength to force him to back down, but for the first, he evaded and for the second he increased his own gravity and didn’t move an inch.
Even better, those that tried to dislodge him, he could easily hammer with normal kicks without perturbing his wall stance.
Nelo bombarded, Rune blocked, and this happened at 3 different places at the same time, the 50 lizards were completely blocked, the birds kept falling, disturbing the mindless monsters enough for them to start killing each other.
As the first lizard fell and stopped moving, Rune and the 2 other blockers had to increase the intensity of their sound bomb, making the lizards completely mad as if they were injected with stimulants, the spellcasters however remained undisturbed, killing a lizard every few minutes.
It was just like peasants fighting against knights, the Ether Law was a way of living, a way of fighting.
Every minute, all of one’s resources would come back, and Rune was learning from every fight how to better evade, how to break reality even more, how to abuse the monster's own inner stupidity.
As he was fighting, he was grinning, fluids splashed everywhere when he exploded a lizard’s eyes, it was only the first fight on a journey to attain a tier 3 zone, it was easy.