After finalizing his avatar, Rune’s awareness was abrubtly transported to a new place.

The suddenness was unexpected but thankfully, he was ready for this event to happen after reading from some forums on the information board that discussed this exact subject of entering the Void for the first time.

What was jarring, however, despite being expected, was the complete loss of his original body's senses.

One moment he was listening to a retrowave music mix, and the next moment, utter silence. Silence by its definition was not even a heartbeat or a breathing sound.

‘The Void, exactly like the description, is that my perception sphere?’ His inner thought didn’t betray any turmoil although even with his newly acquired sphere of perception of 1 meter of radius, nothing was there.

He was now on his lonesome in a different dimension.

Scientific questions such as how the avatar was surviving or how it was all even possible were lost on everyone who just took what was happening for what it was, the Ether Law doing things.

Trying a few times to send his awareness back, Rune easily reconnected to his original body, as explained in the forums of the board, doing that part was easy, but the more complex movements of having awareness at the same time in your original body and your avatar?

Splitting your awareness between the two was impossible at the moment, everyone had to be realistic.

It was like ambidexterity but in the end incomparable due to a complete block when you try to actually do it, even real ambidextrous people said in multiple discussion forums that it was completely different, that it wasn’t possible.

The wiki confirmed the fact that awareness was now connected to the famous “ether soul”, something that was now tangible and could be explored with simple introspection and meditation.

“Huuu… Gu,” nauseous and sick sounds emanated from Rune’s original body.

Disoriented and dizzy after trying in vain time and time again to split his awareness between his avatar and his original body, Rune just laid down on his bed trying to catch his breath and stabilize whatever was responsible for his dizziness.

“Huuuu… Huuuu…”

“It’s really impossible…”

After returning to a normal state, Rune resigned himself to the reality that he wasn’t a chosen one, if he wanted to hear music while traveling the Void, he had to solidify his determination to train this “awareness splitting” exercise.

‘Should I tell mom and dad before starting my plan? The revitalization with energy from the Wiki can replace food and water so I only need to come back when I feel like it after accessing and opening my energy pool.’

He had come to the point where it was time to start executing his perfect amateur plan.

Considering that he appeared at least once a day in the house, his parents would be dismayed if he suddenly became an inert body right?

…

“Mom! Dad! You there?” Walking down the stairs and entering the living room he called for his parents and seconds later,

“In the studio,” Rune heard his mother answer, and after walking to the studio, the place where his dad and mom had their hobbies like scrapbooking and computers, he could see his dad with his legs crossed, meditating?

‘What?’

Well, it was unexpected, but it wasn’t the time to be dazed. His mom was watching whatever series and not turning her head to look at him, she was just waiting for him to speak or ask what he wanted.

“Hum mom, had dad created his avatar and he’s traveling the Void?”

Two days prior, this question could have been an expression or a reference to certain pop culture, but now, it was literal.

“Yeah, he’s pretty hyped by the situation and he started gathering resources or whatever this morning after the announcement for the event, you already know your dad isn’t talkative,” while it was true, it wasn’t the point.

Rune, seeing that his father was already farming in the Void, quickly said his piece.

“Just here to tell you that I’ll be doing the same, so if you find my inert body it’s totally normal, same for dinner.”

“Ok, take care of those death asteroids they all talk about on the information board,” she simply answered without even turning her head.

It was a mom's superpower to be able to watch things and answer her son without even trying.

‘One day I’ll do the same!’

“Ok,” used to his apathetic or minimalistic answers, differing depending on the point of view, Rune returned to his bedroom.

In the Tudor family, he didn’t have to hide behind a social persona. His true personality was not only silent but also expressionless and distant.

He wasn’t really “expressionless and distant”, he was totally able to have a mad laugh and he did enough stupid things in his life to prove that it was only his external appearance that hide a mischievous and cunning character.

But it didn’t change the fact that anyone who interacted with him would say that he was more at ease while not being talked to when compared to others.

Once back in his bedroom, he checked that his computer was off, made sure he didn’t forget anything, then laid down in the recovery position on his bed, maybe he was a little paranoid too?

‘It’s time, goodbye universe, see you in 10 days.’

Willing himself to connect to his avatar, his awareness retracted and traveled through his own ether soul.

From what the wiki said, that was how an avatar was connected to one’s original body.

‘And hello Void.’

Rune appeared in the still unfamiliar Void dimension, with its literal silence and literal nothingness, praying for those who feared the dark and those who feared enclosed places… He also prayed for those who feared being alone… And also those who…

‘Good luck everyone with any related phobia or fears!’

After all, with a sphere of 1 meter of radius, he saw… Nothing.

‘Ok, it’s a must to perceive energy first before being able to start being able to revitalize my original body, so let’s do that.’

From what he read on the board, some said they couldn’t use energy at all.

There was no explanation as to why, but it was theorized that an elevated affinity and perception stats could help, though Rune called bullsh*t, energy was a stat so there was no way you couldn’t use it.

Even with one in each stat, you could still succeed after a few minutes of trying, it was that easy.

If it didn’t take 10 minutes maximum for nearly everyone to feel their energy, it would maybe be called talent? It was too early to tell if some sort of talent was involved in manipulating energy, at least for Rune he didn’t find it difficult so there was probably no talent involved.

‘Yeah, that’s it.’

He just had to try for two minutes, and here it was.

Something was contained in his avatar, more precisely, it was grossly gathered in the stomach area, or around that it.

After successfully catching it, he could now move it roughly from its current position to another.

It really was that easy.

‘Amazing, just this energy alone is enough to announce a new era.’

Rune was excited by the future prospect of using this energy, only his imagination limited him, and maybe his stats too.

He was enraptured by this new feeling of moving something like air with only his mind. It was slow, but it was real, as real as energy was real.

‘Yeah Rune, it’s not a dream, you’re just in another dimension, in another body, pull yourself together and start to farm that energy, the feeling will quickly become familiar and then become just another normal thing.’

Rationalizing the situation to calm himself had close to no effect though.

Before getting into it, he opened the notes he made after using the calculator of the global system, he then skipped a lot of mad raving and arrived at the energy use calculations he did.

At 65/min

Use 10 000 total energy in any way: 2.5 hours

Use 100 000 total energy in any way: 25.6 hours

Use 1 000 000 total energy in any way: 256.4 hours

‘I can’t regret anymore, now I only need to make energy revitalization permanent and then start the great chore slash meditation of energy farming.’

With a resolved spirit, Rune followed what he learned on the forum and experimented with his avatar energy pool.

Just wanting your energy to act as you wanted wasn’t the way, you had to guide it in a “flow” of energy at a pace depending on your experience, training time, and affinity stat.

For Rune, it translated to a snail’s pace.

Then, you had to make it take a path across the “entire” body before returning to the pool, resulting in a cycle where an energy regeneration of 1 per minute allowed it to be self-sustaining.

The only reason everyone could do it was the utter simplicity in just having it take a path in the body with little to no curvatures or precise angles, just a rough circle was enough to make it work.

‘It’s relatively easier with the avatar, but not that complicated once you get the gist of it.’

Having returned his awareness to his original body, he could now perceive the energy inside his body.

The fantastic situation stumped him for a moment, but he quickly refocused himself and made a rough energy circulation path circle inside his body, just a path to his heart from his stomach and back to his stomach.

And it worked.

“Woah…” Surprised by the sudden disappearance of the normally always present but minimized needs, he let out a little exclamation.

It was completely different from just waking up and feeling ready for an entire day, or having just eaten and feeling full.

Everything purely and simply vanished, tiredness didn’t exist anymore, same for hunger and thirst, his body was completely satisfied.

‘Just this is enough to enter the cheat category… Now I can go with a tranquil mind,’ leaving behind those thoughts, Rune returned to his avatar.

Using the same method of creating a path for the energy, he created a crooked and warped path, that way, every ten seconds all his energy was evacuated.

However as his method of manipulating this new energy was too rough, the path crumbled all too soon without even emptying his energy pool completely.

‘I’m regenerating too much? No… I’m just too clumsy, and I was right to increase my energy pool, well, I’ll just repeat it till I can evacuate all my energy in one time.’

He didn’t know how much time he took to make exhausting all his energy every 10 seconds a reality, but Rune was sure it was less than a day.

…

The government of the IGS, the Intergalactic Society, never answered to the situation no matter how much time passed.

One day, two days, five days passed, but there was still no official response, the information board, however, only had an increased activity as time advanced.

The misfortune of some was the delight of others.

Be it the story of a death asteroid passing by and pulverizing an avatar or someone having invested his entire million EP loan on stats useless for gathering ether resources or completing Void initiation objectives like affinity, as long as you searched for them, they existed.

The number of work leaves taken noticeably increased, but company owners weren’t really concerned as they, themselves, were also investing time in the Void via their avatar, gathering EP in their own clumsy way, temporarily dropping their responsibilities to a management AI.

Everyone has diverse objectives and goals, the desires and ambitions of people woke up with their newly acquired power, and for some, their desire and ambition was money.

Those types of people were snatched by the rich to conduct experiments with the stats, thousands sold their avatar creation right for money and were paid to try things.

Putting everything in strength to understand the effect of the stat compared to common sense? A very basic experiment.

The result would then be kept secret or sold to the government in exchange for a sum greater than the starting investment.

Some were paid to create an avatar specialized in the energy stats, the fascination for this invisible power only increased with time, and similarly, the result could then be kept a secret or be sold.

On the Information Board, some forums and groups distinguished themselves by being at the forefront of public experimentation.

A faction that everyone participating on the board heard about was the ‘Strategist Gamer Faction’, an assembly of like-minded people that gave advice and predictions confirming the possible future evolution of the situation.

They equated the new era to an era of optimization, where individuals would over time acquire sufficient power to compete with an entire defense fleet by their lonesome acquired power.

Predictions, as strange as it sounded, were one of the biggest topics talked about on the board, how the situation would evolve, when would fighting start, when would we encounter interdimensional life, would they be aggressive, would they be god-damn strong.

Everyone could make predictions with the knowledge they picked up from any sources currently available, and there would always be people to listen to them.

Because there was too much known and too much unknown.

There was a limit to how much the wiki could give, the Ether Law just recovered from a critically defective state after all. To compensate, some forums specialized in creating private discussion groups for making theories and feeding the wiki.

It was a new form of entertainment.

Those who succeeded celebrated on the main forum, spreading their name in an explosion of pride and glory, as from disconnected facts or pure imagination, they successfully contributed to something that would forever be inscribed.

The Ether Wiki was a vault of knowledge after all.

All sorts of news sites and news companies had created a forum with their brand name on it, they diffused the news of their coming transition to a new platform in search of touching a larger market, a market that wasn’t limited by any regulation except their ability to attract people.

Advertisement forums unfortunately weren’t that successful, but it was what made an era transition what it was, the need to adapt and change was present everywhere.

The initial shock about some news also just wouldn’t go away, and the awakening of a large number of comatose, vegetative, and near-death patients was such news.

Videos of true grandpas and grandmas lifting weights made the buzz while hospitals were emptying and no new sick people came to fill the Void, a joyous event wasn’t it?

Strangely, the number of crimes attained an all-time low, the calm before the storm or a lucky lull? Nobody knew, and to explain such a situation, every theory was as credible as any conspiracy equivalent.

In the IGS, every crime was more of an impulsive act than a premeditated one due to the planetary surveyor having records of everything that took place on a planet.

Seven days after the new era began, another compensation law quota announcement introduced a progress bar of the ether density, it was a relatively minor addition for the majority as interesting information concerning dangerous grounds was starting to circulate.

Ten days in, no announcement was made, but for the majority of the dimensional explorers, with or without announcement made no change.

Now, everyone who really wanted to be a part of the new era ultimately already created their own avatar, the estimated numbers were above 95% of the IGS citizens having already created their avatar, meaning that now hundreds of trillions of avatars were traveling through the Void.

This number included those who didn’t want to be part of it but said yes to the stats brought by having an avatar.

A change in quantity brought a change in quality, and that was what happened, the virtuous cycle of information sharing and gathering massively contributed to the Wiki, pioneering every new domain like energy manipulation or awareness manipulation.

The forums of the “IGS universe sector”, as it was temporarily called, were becoming so complete that guides to know in which forum you needed to go to seek what you wanted to make their appearance, forums that told you which forum you needed to go…

And it was around that time that Rune finished his grinding session, on the eleventh day since the Ether Law made its existence known.