The hazy space of torpor, something Rune didn’t see a lot, but every time he did, it was a good time.
His spirit healed, the combination of time, healing and sleep, made his spirit lethargic, but he could still feel it.
His sleep quality wasn’t disturbed by the numerous noises around, he was used to noise when he got to sleep due to living in a big family, like his young brothers not correctly adjusting their sound, which in the end often made his mother come up the stairs to their chambers to… Annihilate them.
He was aware that the next time he woke up, he would be going for very big battles, not the kind he could encounter by walking around, but the kind he could only artificially create.
Like when he got in the middle of the scorpion monsters, his objective wasn’t to kill them but to use them, to test what death was like.
The experience was hazy when he just came back from it, but now he remembered everything he did so clearly that it was like a video stocked in his mind that he could watch anytime.
Preparing himself was a euphemism, he couldn’t prepare himself to face death.
Once again, he wouldn’t know how he would act until he faced 10 tier 3, his energy armor was gone, his health was nine-tenths gone and he couldn’t avoid the blow that was coming.
If he said he knew how he would act, and actually believed it, then he would be like the sect leaders that ended up believing they were the reincarnation of some god or their divine messengers.
What Rune could do was just go into battle and survive, it was the point of his fighting style, he would survive 5 hours against a squad of tier 3, then he would persist for 10 hours, then 20 hours.
It’d only end when he died, killed everything, or couldn’t fight anymore.
‘There's truly two ideologies in my mind, one just wanting to fight to the death with a complete disregard for consequences, and the other wanting to attain perfection through complete control.’
In Rune’s mind, one part didn’t care about his masteries advancing, the other wanted them advancing be the objectives, they weren’t opposed, but were different enough to warrant introspection.
‘When I’m lost like this, I only need to go back to the basics, if I want to one day visit a tier 6 zone by myself… What’s the most important? First is of course to live my life to the fullest…’
Everything he was thinking about felt like a dream, like when he read too much before going to sleep.
There was no logical answer to find, but you would still try because you weren’t lucid enough to know that it was all only vague ramblings of the mind.
And that there wasn’t any answer.
…
Waking up, Rune took his time, what he thought about before going to sleep was long gone, only a sense of having to do what he had to do.
‘It’s only advancing to tier 3 bro, why all the stress?’
As a naturally unstressed person, he knew how to rationalize the situation. If it was advancing to tier 4 then maybe he could let the worry act on his mind, but tier 3 was too simple for that.
Even once he reached peak tier 3, he would only scratch the strength of a true tier 4, that was a reason to worry.
But against basic masteries and basic specializations? The stress just evaporated, letting him enjoy his peaceful morning.
The camp was still full of people, 56 including the 2 patrollers.
Rune really wondered what those people were doing, the 2 patrollers probably had a job of supervision and management, but what about the rest, were they enjoying camping near a tier 3 zone? The view was pretty common and unattractive for him so probably not.
In the end, it was none of his business, so he stopped thinking about them, Nelo was already gone, and none of the Undecided were here, he had nothing to worry about.
Standing up, he started to warm up, going against whole squads of tier 3 wasn’t an excuse to not continue exercising his spirit, so he adjusted his senses to a massive overload of sensitivity, then, he cut off his sense of self.
He applied pressure to his sphere to the limit of what it could support before bending, and the rest was used to apply an artificial momentum gravity, increasing his weight and influencing a little all punches he did.
Once he was ready, he started jogging toward the path leading to the tier 3 zone, the path he participated in creating more than… 2 months ago.
Rune finally started his expedition with the objective to advance some of his masteries to tier 3 without having to go through the accumulation phase.
He quit his auto-pilot mode from the moment he woke up, now he had to check, check and recheck every decision he made.
His mind was far from infallible and he knew it, but once he succeeded he would be one step closer to becoming infallible.
The regular primitive forest composed of thorny shrubs and straight trees was gradually replaced by something darker, or greener, depending on if the sun shined on the place.
Trees transformed into twisted woods and every inch of sunlight became blocked by greeneries.
Deadwoods littered the ground, submerged in moss and more vegetation, the twisted trees looked like they all belonged to one gigantic tree reaching up to 200 meters from the ground in certain places.
The more he neared the tier 3 zone and the region transition, the more he became careful.
Apart from very distant beast roars and cries, nothing alive was present in his perception sphere.
As he advanced, he finally saw his first monster on this expedition, a camouflaged chameleon, which ironically didn’t have the ability of stealth but that of shadow.
It was pretty rare to see this element for Rune, as of now he only found 1 other monster who used it before.
Its basic effect was to confuse the senses in addition to having an offensive component to it, the expedition's goal wasn’t to kill every monster he passed next to, but if he was attacked, then he would retaliate.
And of course, he would provoke the monster by passing next to it.
He never met a tier 3 who showed signs of being a pacifist, some exhibited obvious cunning, but as long as he approached, bloodlust would appear and they would jump at the opportunity to rip him into pieces.
The chameleon wasn’t an exception, once he passed next to the tree it was standing on, it plunged on him.
‘That’s just a second warm-up.’
Preparing an uppercut, he lowered his body, and once the chameleon thought it caught him, it received a punch keeping it some more seconds in the air.
The impact of the punch didn’t destabilize Rune, seeing the chameleon flying, he followed it from the ground.
Unless it used momentum, Rune would just continue to combo it with an uppercut, keeping it to the air. It was the fastest and least costly method, an optimized one he did before.
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The chameleon just wouldn’t learn, maybe for it, he was taking more damage than he inflicted, after all, he only punched the body and not a critical spot like the head, but his instinct reacted after 4 uppercuts, its health was more than half gone.
It wanted to land on the ground so he used momentum to this time increase his weight, when Rune’s punch collided with the chameleon this time, it was him who had to back off.
Once the chameleon landed, it used beastly moves and charged at Rune, wanting to bite him, its mouth opened and little pointy teeth were exposed to the air.
For such a charge, he couldn’t evade, the monster was determined to hit him so he would use momentum correction to make sure it happened.
Between blocking or responding, Rune had long stopped blocking when he had a better option before his eyes, in this case, the first was to lower his body very close to the ground like he was sitting.
This forced the monster to lower its head a little, then with a hand as support, he executed an acrobatic return and his right foot crashed in the head of the charging monster, flattening it against the ground.
With the kick as support, Rune corrected his posture and ended up behind the monster.
It was still a little stunned after the kick to its head so he used the moment to deliver a sweeping kick to its two back legs, making it fall.
Then he started to punch the back of the chameleon while it tried to turn itself, but its legs had a downtime so it allowed him to deliver 2 simple punches before backing down.
A tail swipe passed and hit the end of his right arm, he only evaded this strike because he knew what was going to happen, and such a strike couldn’t be rectified during its execution.
Rune was sure that he could just go in and finish the chameleon now, but if it retreated or something he didn’t think possible, then he would spare it, but as a true monster, even with death so near it charged at Rune again.
So he blocked it in the same way but didn’t do a complex move, he switched to juggernaut style and just kicked its underside repeatedly.
And after 3 kicks, the force it created to push Rune vanished, prompting him to take the tier 3 core contained inside its corpse.
Such cores were worth at least 100 000 EP, so as it was just here and there weren't any monsters nearby, he absorbed it.
Rune didn’t even open his gathering log, it didn’t matter because he couldn't use EP for anything in a medium-long period of time.
On a whim, he decided to check his EP accumulated till now.
Rune Tudor (Tier 2)
Class: Frontline Pathfinder
Specialty: Shelled Dimensional Perception
EP: 423 152 896
Stats Total: 20 000
Health: 2 000
Health Regeneration: 2 000
Strength: 2 000
Cohesion: 2 000
Energy: 2 000
Energy Regeneration: 2 000
Purity: 2 000
Affinity: 2 000
Momentum: 2 000
Perception: 2 000
‘And I didn’t even try…’
With a storage limit of 1 billion, he only absorbed the cores of tier 3 monsters he slew and sometimes tier 2 cores because he wanted to, but he would soon reach 50% of his maximum storage of EP at tier 2.
Continuing on his expedition, he finally reached the transition, a true transition, one between different Endless regions.
When they arrived as a group and crossed it, the Undecided couldn’t see more than the fact that there was a very very big sun in the sky, explaining why it was hotter and why vegetation thrived, disregarding the need for water of course.
They only needed ether, like independent entities only needing energy, it was all coherent.
Passing through, his body felt a sort of water film, immediately followed by a feeling of being lighter, an increased ether density allowed his body to use less energy to sustain itself.
The ether core he created in his heart also had its work all designed, it passively absorbed ether so its job was facilitated a lot with this tier 3 ether density.
This higher sustain allowed some monster species to grow to huge size, but the natural selection still existed so when a monster was just too big it was naturally eliminated by quick and small monsters with hundreds of hits emptying its health.
Though this natural selection only happened till a “certain” size.
From what the board said back in his native defective dimension, the smallest monsters ever found were species living in tier 2 zones the size of small dogs, a chihuahua bred would be a good comparison.
The biggest monsters, however, those that remained in the natural selection cycle often were reported from tier 6 zones, big hill-sized monsters that were quickly eliminated once they were discovered.
Beyond tier 6 zones were places where intel wasn’t readily available on the board, only snippets of truths and major lies could be found once it was the keyword used to search.
As for what happened “beyond” the natural selection cycle… Well, it had everything to do with the fact that when a creature became so big, too big even, it gained a certain “advantage” that made it so they became able to, from birth, reach some “beyond” Ether Law domains.
What does “beyond” Ether Law mean? It’s… exactly what the word is designed to describe, that’s it.
As Rune progressed past the transition border, he arrived at a place that few ever reached.
Only recently did sapient entities even come close to it, it was a completely new environment, tier 3 was too early for major ether weathers or special events popping off, but it was a good beginning for Rune’s expedition.
‘Take a deep breath… Nothing will happen, just walk till you find a squad of tier 3, then survive, nothing difficult for me…’
Once again calming his mind, Rune advanced into the jungle, passing by 10 meters high bushes, collapsed tree trunks, every step he took his leg sank some centimeters into the ground, just another variable he had to manage in a new environment.
‘I’m just going to raze the immediate surrounding jungle… Or the monsters will do it in my place if I don't…’
Just some minutes allowed Rune to make a comprehensive assessment of this new battleground, and after entering 30 kilometers in, his fate was already rushing towards him at full speed.
A squad of 30 rhinoceros was charging at him, all tier 3, and probably not newly born.
You couldn’t spontaneously have a squad of monsters form naturally, you needed leaders and time for them to appear naturally unless they originated from a nest, in which case squads were effectively naturally formed.
Just with his sphere, Rune could see lots of different elements, fire, earth, air, water, light, shadow, all sorts, and even his major counter poison and ice, but it was why he came here for.
Once he was engaged, tier 3 bird flocks would arrive, then once he survived multiple hours, other squads of monsters would come, it was how it went.
It was a challenge.
During his last 2 weeks, he pushed his 2 defensive slotted masteries to level 75, giving him a total efficiency bonus of 250% for energy compression.
Now, every second he regenerated the equivalent of 116 armor, every 20 seconds his energy regeneration could compare to his full health stat.
‘It was really stupid to take a reinforcement mastery, I think I was lobotomized by reinforcement being called the greatest offensive method of the Ether Law.’
But Rune didn’t have any regret, what was done couldn’t be undone, sure he would purge it, but purging one’s masteries wasn’t a permanent action.
A purge needed 7 days to happen and empty one or multiple mastery slots, then you could fill them again with the same masteries you just purged, you wouldn’t have lost your levels in them.
With an energy armor spell matrix built using 2 000 energy, Rune could only have his 2 000 energy boosted by his 250% efficiency, so 5 000 armor maximum, a safety that would quickly disappear if he wasn’t careful.
If he had surplus energy then he wouldn’t hesitate to use reinforcement, but he knew it was going to be hard.
To make a symbolic effort, he put aside 120 energy per minute to his nurturing reinforcement form, with a permanent boost of 2 energy the mastery would also be trained.
As soon as energy arrived in his nurturing form, it vibrated and was used for whatever Rune was doing, which often was taking a step, taking all the energy he infused at all time.
The ground was shaking and Rune prepared himself, it was better to do a similar charge if his goal was to kill.
But with so many tier 3, he had no hope of doing it, so he prepared for contact with a simple defensive stance, he would deflect as best as he could, and then it would start.
‘My passport for going on a true adventure alone is here.’
First contact, one rhinoceros that he deflected with a quick jab to the side, making it miss him, the second, he used the empty space behind the first rhino to evade without doing anything.
It was all a question of knowing how to respond to a situation, like a chess match, if you knew everything then only your reasoning, or in this case, your fighting instinct would change the issue.
And Rune was in this case, his fighting instinct was at peak tier 2, and by surviving against an army of tier 3 he would discover new ways of battling.
Although he was first going to use all the tricks he already learned.
The first rhino already slowed down and was backtracking, so Rune kept his body face-first against the still charging rhino and evaded some while still receiving inevitable damage, but his armor remained full.
After reaching the first rhino, he stood in front of it, prompting the remaining charging monsters to avoid him as their instinct told them to not hurt their fellow companions.
Such behavior could only happen when they became berserk, and they would only reach such a state after a “long” time spent fighting without results.
The first stage was a success, and now he just had to survive.
The situation would evolve faster and faster, he already expected the whole squad to go berserk once he survived 30 minutes, but it would only be the start of their misery.
“I’m ready! Come!” Pumping himself, Rune was at his peak state, he was going to punch every weak point that appeared, berserk or not.