Those intrusions in his perception sphere of course woke up Rune, but finding another group of humans here apart from his 6 friends really was a strange situation, in addition to being unexpected.
Being asocial didn’t mean he couldn’t talk to people, but if he could avoid it then he would be more than happy about his accomplishment.
It was the moment he needed a hero, anyone would do, even Arik.
‘No, Arik would run away the moment he sees them to avoid talking to them…’
Rune had no choice but to at least tell them what this camp was about.
After they also saw him, the adventurer kept their pace and naturally reached the clearing of 200 meters.
Once they reached where Rune was, they hesitated about how they would go at it, from their angle they only saw a young human that just woke up from his sleep, who was looking at them like a dead fish, an unfriendly dead fish.
As guests, the newly arrived group had to take the first step, Rune wouldn’t do anything otherwise, fortunately for them, they had people knowing how to approach this situation.
“Hello, are you part of the group who created this path? If so, we’re sorry for using it without permission, but if you feel that we owe you then you can ask for a favor or a payment later.”
The one who talked was as tall as Gar and looked human enough to be one or be commonly associated with normal humans.
“Hello, that’s right I’m part of the group who created this path but you don’t owe us anything, you can do as you like as long as you don’t claim the merit of creating the path for yourselves, our group’s name is Undecided,” he paused here, expecting some sort of reaction.
Seeing a bit of confusion here and there he happily continued.
“The reason we created a camp here is that a hundred kilometers down the path you see continuing is a transition to a tier 3 zone, also a region transition, by the way, so we’re using the border as a training zone.”
It was simple to talk to strangers, right? Now that he exposed all the info on what’s going on, he only had to wait for eventual questions.
The other group assimilated what he said over the course of a few seconds before one of their members, a female rululu, said, “Is there a reason why you’re here alone?”
The unknown adventurer’s group had 9 people, and Rune couldn’t discern if there was a clear leader as he saw one rululu in the group, he was just prepared to be honest, not like he had any reason to not be.
Rululus were too high up the social hierarchy for him, they were overpowered too.
“I overexerted myself during spirit training so I had to sleep to repair the incurred damage. If you want to see the other members you’ll have to wait one more week before the first month since we began training here end.”
“Since when did you start creating this path? You’re on an area reclamation mission? Did you tell the IGS about the straight cliff yet?” Curiosity was shining in her eyes, she was seeking knowledge naturally.
He really had nothing to hide, if they tried to use it for themselves later then they’d have to face another rululu in the form of Utopia anyway, so having a little light conversation was truly only entertainment at the moment.
“We created the start of this path during our first area reclamation mission that we already reported back, now it’s the second time and we started it somewhere around… 2 months ago?”
Rune was completely dumped on the precise time.
“Not really sure, you should know why losing sense of time is easy now with all the monsters around here, so we didn’t report the cliff back to the IGS yet.”
It really was a bit hazy in his mind, even more so since he started training his spirit masteries harder than ever before.
“Are you near tier 3 then?” That was a sensitive question to ask a stranger, but she really gave the impression that she was completely innocent.
But Rune couldn’t just give that info like that.
“Well, I don’t think anyone should have been able to rush their masteries so fast as to be near tier 3 yet, maybe in 3 months it’s possible but not now.”
The whole time, he was speaking with a small smile plastered on his face, it was his social persona and he was used to smiling a little when talking to strangers so that he would come up as a friendly young human.
“Do you want to go back to sleep now?”
That was the first time he was asked this question by a stranger, but that was rululu’s education for you, optimised schooling for a species with a natural eidetic memory was something that was completely alien for those with normal memory ability.
“I think if you want more details or maybe ask questions about the zone or our group you should wait for Utopia, our group’s leader to come back, he’s a rululu like you, young and heroic too, you’ll find him delectable to your eyes,” Rune decided to set his nominal leader up.
“And yes I want to go back to sleep, you can use this zone as a camp if you want or create another one next to it or further away, do what you want,” it was a fact, every minute he talked was a minute he lost in training.
‘I really was like that before.’
Rune remembered his life as a student, when he had a little bit of free time he would try to read, watch or hear some form of entertainment, and he made this same reflection back then.
“Then we’ll leave you alone, have a good sleep, sorry for bothering you,” the woman rululu turned around and started to discuss with her own group, but Rune didn’t want to listen to them.
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
“No problem, it was nothing, be careful all of you, tier 3 monster squads numbering as high as 40 or 50 sometimes roam around, even if it’s just the border.”
Speaking about the only true danger around here as a precaution, he made sure they heard him before acting like a sack of potatoes and crashing back in his energy bed, a foamy energy cloud.
It was very comfortable.
…
His sphere never turned off but still, sleep had the effect of making anyone more unconscious than conscious.
When Rune woke up, it was night, the adventurer’s group had settled down on the other side of where he was, only 2 people were remaining from the prior 9, the others weren’t there anymore.
He vaguely remembered that when he was woken up it was also night so it meant that he slept for a pretty long time.
The difference was that he didn’t gather his dispersed awareness, in place, he started to apply a passive momentum towards the ground and used the rest of his spirit to bend his sphere, it was part of his training,
Spirit was the thing Rune was the most worried about, it was slow to train and was the only training that implicated sleeping after doing it for a long period of time.
Standing up, he just warmed himself up a little by making small jumps and punching the volatile ether.
After 2 minutes of it, he was ready to go, so he ignored the observing strangers and just started a light jog in the vaguely west direction, this time he wanted to reach the cliff without having to come back to sleep.
Coming back to sleep was a restriction he gave himself, like limiting his energy regeneration by providing a certain amount to his nurturing reinforcement form.
He had nothing precise in mind, it was just pure training, no goal, just fighting.
So near to a tier 3 zone, he had learned that against him, a specialization that allowed his opponent to sustain was the greatest counter he could find.
The reverse counter would be to find an ability to limit someone's health regeneration, but something like that could only be accomplished directly… By punching the opponent in the face.
He never saw a new ability that inspired him so much as to make his future build change, no law-breaking specializations nor overpowered stats applications, but while he didn’t find them interesting didn’t mean he won against them.
Elemental specializations were basic but powerful, causing him to be very careful against each of them and outright retreating when a poison or ice elemental specialized monster appeared.
He just didn’t have the tools necessary to resist, he would only be asking to die by going against them, if he didn’t get a mastery to balance things at tier 3, then he would have aberrant weaknesses.
Traveling alone allowed him to make his life different, first, he traveled by foot, meaning he rarely got annoyed by birds.
Except when he engaged with a big squad of monsters and those opportunists intervened in the middle of it to try and steal the little human that was going to die from the monsters. Spoiler, everyone often ended up dead in the end, except Rune.
Another thing was that a lone prey was alluring to a lone predator, so he found himself sensing a lone bear, wolf, mantis, spider, whatever, approaching to try their luck, he killed them easily before continuing his road.
The true fun began after 30 minutes of leisure jog, the monster squads, from tens to hundreds of individuals, and sometimes tier 3 leading them, and that was the case here.
Why fun? Because quantity without quality was useless against Rune.
It was something very basic every fighter learned, there was a limit to the number of individuals who could strike you at the same time, the basics of the basics when thinking about coordinated attacks.
‘I’m truly like a sith lord… Only defeated when confronted with a stronger opponent… Wait, it can also be a protagonist right?’
Rune couldn’t easily kill a tier 3, but did he need to fear them? Not at all.
Why? Because he had long understood why the board talked about tier 1 to tier 3 monsters being unimpressive, like babies that would die from a light fall.
Nelo or Arik should be able to kill a peak tier 3 when they reached late tier 2 because tier 3 monsters were weak, not weak compared to sapient entities, but weak compared to their tier 4 power spike.
When Rune and his group came back, Utopia heard the news about groups of adventurers being wiped by wandering tier 4.
If the Undecided had the bad luck of encountering one, they had better hope fate or peak tier 2 Rune was on their side to distract the monster for a few moves for those with minimal protection to not be wiped out in one move.
So yes, tier 3 monsters were trivial because like Rune now, their build wasn’t formed yet.
‘Purist or not, I like it.’
Engaging from the front, Rune adopted a perfect foot, back, arm, and hand alignment, and punched the first bear that charged over.
It was a tier 2 and its head exploded like a melon, no thick skull could change the force Rune transmitted through this punch.
It was something he discovered or re-discovered, not long ago, and it was something he liked beyond training, it was his perfectionist side.
He loved it when he did something he considered perfect, back when he fought the Deep Void monster, he also loved it but he didn’t overanalyze this feeling.
Combat was already overly enjoyable, but being one’s own definition of perfection during a fight? It was beyond enjoyable for Rune.
Repositioning his foot to make a rotation drawing a perfect circle on the ground, he once again punched and penetrated through another bear’s charge.
The big boss arrived with a big bang that Rune could only block with two hands, having his feet slide on the ground, a really typical and understood posture.
But having his feet keep flat on the ground for maximum adherence, not letting his arms or his torso flinch even the slightest, was what made this move perfect.
Then once he reduced the damages he took to the minimum, he sensed his surroundings.
No other bears were charging, so Rune kept one foot firmly on the ground and used his other foot to take optimal acceleration and hit the tier 3 bear in its underside, lifting it up for 1 second into the air.
As long as no other bears came to annoy him or the tier 3 monster mindlessly kept Rune two hands on its body, then he would be drained of his health in 3 minutes.
After suffering 6 kicks and noticing that it wasn’t going anywhere, it finally reacted differently and stood up.
Rune gave up on his grab and ran one foot after the other to a little out of the way tier 2 bear, then lowering his body, he propelled himself before the monster could react and did a textbook uppercut, not on his head, but at the area just below its neck.
Such a strike used more than just Rune’s strength, it used the ground as support and his whole body extension as a boost for delivering a powerful blow.
If the Ether Law was different, the bear would die from that, but in the end, it probably only lost somewhere around 500 health, already very extraordinary for Rune.
Hitting this part of the bear's body didn’t incapacitate it, it would stand up like nothing happened, so Rune used the opportunity to firmly prepare another punch, perfect posture, slow movement, and once the bear was going to touch the ground, he punched.
Another 500 health gone just like that, and where a normal fight would make this bear unable to come back, here, it only needed one minute before coming back like he was all new.
That’s why squads were so difficult, that’s why Rune was so hard to kill, that’s why every fight was so enjoyable.
The tier 3 bear arrived to intercept him and he could only answer by another blocking maneuver.
Then he kicked again 6 times before once more changing target, this time to the same bear that already lost 1 000 health 20 seconds ago, and this time he killed it with a third move.
Then the tier 3 came again, and Rune once again blocked, never swaying in his execution, never wavering in his response, never faltering when the unexpected happened.
He knew what bear monsters could do, he had a plan in mind, he enjoyed the process, that was how his maybe journey to the cliff started.