Sure, Rune could now do a lot of things, and he knew for sure that he wasn’t going to retire, he was going to go on more than an expedition, he was going to embark on a real adventure, only coming back when he reached tier 3 to demand the loan from the IGS.
Be it a cave, an ocean, or a desert, he was going to go everywhere.
Maybe it wasn’t the optimized path, but from the moment he preferred manipulating his awareness to listen to music rather than optimizing his farm, or when he “wasted” his time creating color better than training his masteries, he stopped caring.
The path of optimization was for others.
The little issue of the current situation was that he couldn’t go without signaling it to his group, and nobody was there.
Not one of his slotted masteries reached tier 3, thus switching one of them for his specialization would be a little premature.
‘Yup, it all comes together…’
Training for the minor manipulation he wanted to learn was a good way to pass time, pass time for one of his friends to come back and then go.
No sooner thought than done, Rune made up his mind to wait till one of his friends came back and started something he should now be able to do a lot more easily than before, physical stats manipulation.
The particular manipulation he wanted to do was called an “infusion” by the board, it was the process of attributing an ether stat’s characteristics where they didn’t belong at all.
If he wanted, he could infuse perception into cohesion, he didn’t know what it would do and it would require tier 3 spiritual fundamental masteries that he didn’t have yet, but it was possible.
‘Truly madness,’ like everyone surfing on the internet, the board included knowledge he would have preferred ignoring, but having read them gave him an idea of how truly vast the Ether Law was.
Now, for the process of doing the infusion he wanted, it was literally taking some of his health, something that had a controllable component equal to the offensive ability of the perception stat, meaning it was also a minor manipulation, and make it enter his energy.
Once he could do that roughly, a specialized mastery could be created if he had an empty slot.
Cohesion had literally not a speck of existence, it only existed through his health, his life, so to infuse the cohesion ether stat into his energy, he had to use his own health as the medium of passage.
Being completely new to this, he only knew that his body control mastery was the key to that infusion, and from all the guides he read, health could never leave one’s body without vanishing in the process.
It meant he had to do everything inside his body.
So Rune first had to see his own health.
Meditation wouldn’t be any help here, it was something active, not subjective.
From the guides he read, the best way to do it was to constantly have his health regenerate, so Rune created a sort of energy drill and made it damage himself from the inside, not a speck of blood was shed.
Fortunately, his sense of pain was deactivated as it would be extremely painful otherwise, but now he could fully try this exercise of detecting his own health.
He adjusted the damage of the energy drill to be just above his regeneration, maybe it would help to have his total health decline rather than being capped at all times, and then it was time for a physical introspection.
The first thing was using his natural body activities as a guide, and there were 2 ways to ease everything, heartbeat and blood circulation.
For a normal animal lifeform to live it had to have those 2 elements. Of course, those elements became useless from the moment energy came to be, there was only one thing that energy couldn’t replace, the brain.
Until tier 3, a destroyed brain would end up with the inability to act, and after that, a minor health regeneration boost was enough to survive one time having one’s brain… Gone.
Rune was still passively training his spirit as he was used to, perception, awareness, and momentum strained his spirit a little but it was completely manageable, he even increased the intensity of what he did compared to last time.
But having dispersed his whole awareness meant he couldn’t strain it more, he would have to change his training methods in the future.
To more easily concentrate, he reduced his focus to just himself and some meters around him, the rest became hazy background noises that interfered only a little.
Concentrating on his heartbeat, Rune synchronized his mind to it and then willed it to slow down.
For that he had to control his heart, it was something he never did before and for good reasons, as it was useless for fighting or anything he was interested in.
But now that he did the most extreme control of his body, manipulating something that shouldn’t be manipulable, Rune easily did it.
Tier 3 of body control meant he already reached perfect control, so he decelerated his heartbeats to be synchronized with a long 20 seconds breathing cycle, beating only on every inhalation and exhalation.
Now he could take all the time he wanted.
Perceiving one’s own health was not a question of talent, speed, or opportunities, it was natural. He only had to take the time to make it happen, so he followed his blood, and how in 10 seconds it circulated everywhere in his body before gathering back in his heart.
The complexity involved in this cycle was superior to what Rune expected, different loops, capillaries, arteries, and veins, exchange with the energy he was sending them…
For months now his body had been sustained by only energy, so he found it everywhere, literally everywhere, in his cells, in his blood, in his brain, in his tissue, but it wasn’t what he was searching for so he stopped caring about it.
It was a very intimate moment for Rune, he was observing the inside of his body live, and what he only heard about on some educational videos was happening under his eyes, figuratively and literally.
So he just let time pass as he continued observing how his blood flowed and its interactions, from the huge blood vessels, he observed the path his blood took, and once he was done with it, he increased his resolution and took a look at where his blood flowed through smaller blood vessels.
Once he was done with it, he increased his resolution even more and started to see the capillaries, and now that really became a hurdle, but once he did it, he would nearly be finished and would find out what health looked like.
…
4 days later, Rune successfully touched upon the feeling of his health, something that was everywhere in his body but once the drill touched it, it stopped existing and adjacent health would take over the defense against damages.
Health came into existence through nothing, like energy, it just appeared and disappeared.
It wasn’t physical, it was ethereal, and now that he got the feeling down, he could finally stop the energy drill and try himself at making it interact with energy.
It was natural to have energy surrounding his body at all times with the nurturing form of reinforcement, but this time he needed only a speck of energy to be infused with health, and more precisely the cohesion stat linked to it.
Now that he could see his own health, his training was coming to an end.
Every entity did the same with their energy when the Ether Law just awakened. Once they passed the hurdle of feeling their own energy, then manipulating it was as easy as just trying different things and brute-forcing it, Rune did the same when he successfully felt his own energy the first time.
‘Now for an infusion, if I remember correctly I need to destroy my health without it dissipating, then have the cohesion components dissolve in my energy.’
He only had to destroy a single point of health and observe it, feeling what was the cohesion stat in all of it.
After some tries, he succeeded at making what he saw as a “point of health” stop being alive.
As it didn’t take damage but only stopped being “alive”, it only slowly disintegrated and doing that hundreds of times Rune saw the cohesion stat in them.
So he did a rough infusion in a spark of energy, the spark was only a ball of 1 centimeter of diameter, but it took 80 health to finally change its nature.
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Making the little spark exit his body, a not-white energy ball appeared before his eyes.
‘Yup, without a mastery that’s useless as hell,’ Rune took 10 minutes to form this useless ball.
‘Once I get a mastery I’ll be able to do a very large scale infusion with only a thought so I don’t need to train it more than that.’
None of his friends arrived in all his time passed training, but the more time passed, the higher the chance of one of them coming back.
‘I don’t have anything else to do… I don’t have any other mastery to train in within a short term… Maybe elemental mastery? No, my energy fundamentals didn’t reach tier 3 so I can't, but I can theorize for later.’
Deciding on what to do next, Rune ended his thoughts on theorizing creating elements with his energy for the future.
‘If I didn’t go on the infusion path I’d have taken… The metal element? The added weight would slow me down a bit but I would become even more of an unbreakable wall… Oh! I know! Maybe the air element, but it’d...’
Indecision resurfaced in Rune’s mind.
As the subject didn’t really impact his immediate path, he took his time to think about the infinite number of elements in existence, with all the different effects they had, if he had his way he would take tens of elements, but the Ether Law wouldn’t allow that.
What could always benefit him was something that he could use with his specialty, his shelled dimensional perception, and that was something he only thought about now that he was wandering in his dreams.
‘The evolution of my ether smoke spell, an element that could cut off the perception sphere? And if I can find a way to increase its power by making it affect even me… It’d be training to even make this element capable of affecting me with my specialty!’
Concluding his thought Rune stood up in celebration.
He was trying to calm himself, but his mind became super-active after he concluded that, ‘Do I change my plan now? Using one more slot to take a confusing element?’
Of course, he would have to first reach tier 3 with fine and grand manipulation, but if he felt it was something that would play a very big part in his style in the future, then he would have to be very considerate of this choice.
‘I can vaguely remember or think about elements that could have those effects but I don’t have an eidetic memory… So I need a rululu to help me, Utopia isn’t here so I can only…’
His gaze turned towards the rululu patroller, he was still here with the female kajo, Rune could end up thinking they really had nothing to do except supervising this camp.
‘No way I’m losing my current inspiration because Utopia’s not here.’
Rune then walked to the 2 officers currently doing nothing, not even discussing, they were only sitting silently.
He walked very normally like he was a normal human and once he was 3 meters away from the rululu he stopped and waited for him to open his eyes or ask what he was doing here.
“Hello, Mr. Tudor, What brings you here, and may I help you?” The rululu officer opened his eyes and glanced at Rune, he was completely unbothered by him approaching like that.
“Hello, do you have a large database of elements back from the board that I can ask for? I’m researching an element that has a disrupting power on perception, a very specialized one even if it has no other uses, but I only remember typical elements like cloud and mist, so if you checked the large elements forums back on the globalized information board, could you guide me a little please?”
A simple smile, a concise sentence, Rune was here for info and he didn’t hide it.
“It’s not my primary job, but I can surely help you a little for something that only asked for memorizing work back in our dimension. I assume you don’t need the speech about every element being able to do everything right?” The rululu officer questioned.
An affirmative answer boosted Rune’s social ability a little, he truly had a way.
“Yes, no need. I already read that any element, as long as you took a secondary specialization mastery later could have one of its minor characteristics boosted to the point of it becoming a new strength in exchange for one mastery slot,” Rune recited, it was part of the fundamental on elemental specialization.
If you so desired, a fire-related element could burn perception, but if your goal was to hide then using a big fire to burn the enemy’s perception was either a genius move or an idiot move.
Every element could have any effect, just following the fire element, you could boost the freezing capability of it if you so desired, you could boost its heat too but in this case, it’d be a little different.
All of those possibilities were considered secondary specializations, meaning that those choices didn’t exist without a prior first specialization.
Depth or width, an eternal debate. But like the Ether Law proved so many times, an innumerable number of paths existed, but there was no strongest path.
“Then, if you want elements that have the perception disruption property as one of its main foundations even without a secondary specialization, then mist, cloud, nebula, darkness, shadow, light, illusion, emptiness and mystic elements are the basic ones.”
“If you want a pure element that disrupts perception, then it depends on which type of perception you want to disrupt, there are also composite elements that can interest you, they’re part of a very advanced discipline though,” the officer appeared serious as he was speaking, and it made Rune believe that he came to the right person, maybe even better than Utopia.
He never heard about composite elements, but if it was what he needed then he would have no choice.
“Can I ask for your name?” Rune asked the officer.
“I’m Riker Emory, patroller squad leader under the 1st branch of wilderness front deployment, at your service young adventurer,” and Riker answered enthusiastically.
Resolving himself after 5 seconds, Rune made a choice.
“My specialization has to do with having my perception sphere being resistant to external force and abnormal changes, so I want an element that indiscriminately targets everyone, even myself, but packs a lot of punch, its goal will be to support me and I don’t mind if it has no offensive or defensive power, I’ll not be investing in energy purity anyway so it would just be lost on me,” he shared his inner thoughts.
“I just thought of using such an element but if I had it, I’d use it to make every fight as chaotic as possible, monsters that lose their perception sphere would also have glaring weaknesses that I could use, I think.”
Freeing all his thoughts, Rune said everything that led to his decision, if he asked for guidance and the other was willing to help, then withdrawing information would only hurt him.
“Ok, let me think for a moment I need to organize what I have in mind,” Riker stopped talking after saying that, leaving Rune standing, having nothing to do, but it was like any administrative job, in the end, let the employee write things down or fill a form.
“If I were you I would go for a composite element,” Rune’s attention was immediately caught once Riker started talking.
“Every element I can think of has multiple uses, a monolith element is precisely the subject to which composite elements are trying, and have, answered, can I assume you don’t know what a composite element is?”
“That’s right, I’ve never heard of composite elements. I only read about general tier 3 specializations like infusions and elements, even tier 4 provided masteries or beyond masteries I read about,” answering honestly, Rune was confident that it was maybe what he was researching.
“Then let me introduce this field properly… Hu-hum!” He seemed to have some acting blood flowing in his veins.
“From what I read, the first composite element was an element called heavy water, the basic principle behind it was that like everything in the Ether Law, even an element could be reduced to its most basic parts and manipulated to manufacture the same element.”
“But if some of those parts were changed then the element would become something else, and so, the first sapient who succeeded was someone who fused water with the weight component of the mountain element by replacing the fluidity innate to the water element.”
The tale that Riker was talking about even captured the attention of his companion, the female kajo.
“From this point on, the feasibility of composite elements being confirmed, people started to engineer all sorts of elements, but something limited their true utility, every engineered element has a reduced potential in terms of versatility.”
“You couldn’t regain what you lost, even with a secondary, a third or even a fourth specialization to try and correct it, so the heavy water would forever be an element that lacked fluidity, even with a perfect tier 3 control over it,” this time he stopped talking for a bit to let Rune digest everything.
“Now, you should be able to understand why a composite element should work for you, right?”
A rululu’s charisma was shining on Rune and he couldn’t resist, so he nearly acted like a fanboy and couldn’t stop his face from showing a slight smile, even body control at tier 3 was useless.
“If you had access to the board, you could search for the monolith composite elements, which are what you want, but their creation is a pretty long process because you have to do everything manually, you have to first create all the elements that you want properties of, then you’ve to carefully measure the limit of what your composite element will be, additionally…”
Riker went on to explain all the subtleties linked to how to create a composite element, and it turned out it was not creating one that posed a problem, it was creating the right one.
“If say, you only want perception disrupting component in your element then you’ll take mist as the foundation, by carefully analyzing it you’ll find that mist has tens of components, every element is fundamentally versatile, so you need to get all the components you don’t want to be excluded, then you’ll search the light element for its blinding component, then add it, then the darkness component for…”
‘Ok, that’s unexpected.’
The theory was fine, the example was not, only now did Rune realize what composite represented.
It was a very advanced energy manipulation, so much that he couldn’t hope to create one before becoming a tier 4 if he decided to do it only with experience, fortunately, there were shortcuts.
“If you want to more easily create your own element then take a very big holiday once you reach tier 3 or tier 4 and purge all your masteries to take elemental specialization masteries that you want to include in your element.”
“You can use quantity to easily analyze what part of the element you want, and once you successfully develop your composite element you can purge them, easy,” Riker finally finished all he had to say, and facing him was just a dazed Rune, a mind-blowed Rune.
‘Well… Not for now then!’
The ridiculous demand elicited a smile to appear on Rune’s face, “Not for now then!”
Getting this thought out was his answer to Riker who was waiting for an answer.
“Exactly, not for now!” Even though Riker knew that what Rune asked was something he wouldn’t get in the short term, Rune had to make a whole plan around when and how to create this element he wanted.
After saying goodbye, Rune returned to his spot and continued to absorb everything that he learned.
“I can’t believe I can take the firework element but not what I want, sigh…” He lamented.
Rune knew a firework element existed, but now that he thought about it, it was maybe a composite element? But he erased this possibility immediately, he knew the Ether Law was able to create a natural rope element, then why not a firework element?
If the element called “perception disruption only” existed, Riker would have said it, it simply meant that the firework element was a basic versatile element and that the Ether Law was truly infinite.
‘If even Riker hadn't heard of an element like that then it shouldn’t exist,’ Rune was really perplexed, he couldn’t stop thinking about the Ether Law and how it was at the same time awesome and ridiculous,
‘Even the book element should exist… I can think of so many stupid sh*t just like that, plastic element, glass element, flower element, computer element? What the hell Ether Law! What the hell…’
Even his thoughts became jaded thinking about all this, so he opted to continue on what he could do.
Waiting for his friends and doing nothing productive.