Seven days into his grinding session, while emptying his energy every ten seconds in the most efficient way he found, an announcement was made in the global system for a new progress bar that would track in real-time the progress of ether density in the universe.

But while some thought that once the bar attained +100% the situation would once again change and something would happen like a new dimension would become available, the true meaning behind this progress bar was revealed in the wiki.

It was actually a pretty meaningless bar, the percentage increase was linked to the last ether density that causes change to happen, and the next change could therefore occur as much at +5% as it could at +425%.

Universe Ether (Void Dimension Opening basis): +0%

Useless wasn’t it?

Rune didn’t find the grinding session to be difficult. With no biological needs annoying him from his original body side, his mind was always clear of any distractions.

As for boredom, after getting the gist of emptying his energy pool efficiently, the wiki and the board were much better entertainment than he could have asked for.

With nothing to worry about except repeatedly doing the same thing, he could passionately visit every new form of entertainment born from the fusion between already existing written entertainment culture and the forums of the information board.

Be it books, unusual news, funny news, fake news, or even conspiracy theory, everything was a form of entertainment if you wanted it, and Rune wasn’t a picky user, he could laugh creepily at a lot of things.

The only downside was the lack of music, the absolute silence of the Void was something heavy, worse than even an isolation room in making you feel isolated.

Rune, like everyone else, couldn’t split his awareness, activating only the sense of hearing of his original body was possible according to the wiki, but he couldn’t do it.

He of course tried, but he stopped when he successfully got to see his own ether soul, surrounded by a cloud of something, this cloud was his awareness, and he couldn’t get it to move.

At all.

If someone actually succeeded at manipulating theirs, even only in one body, that person didn’t announce it, and if some did, then it was or treated as fake or straight-up and simply ignored because it wasn’t conceivable for the majority.

Rune wasn’t left behind with all the news concerning the dangerous grounds, and after his planned ten days and a half that became more than eleven days of grinding, were over, he opened the global system.

Dimensions

Information Board

Ether Wiki

Event (1 reward pending)

Avatar

He knew he had just completed the key goal he had set for himself.

Throughout those eleven days, he already claimed 3 objectives, but he didn’t invest in anything, he just continued to use his energy, it took all his attention.

It took so much of it that he wouldn’t be able to gather resources while using his energy, he tried. And he failed. And he wasted time as a result.

Having completed the chore phase of his plan, he could now invest in perception and momentum, starting another type of grinding journey. But first, he had to claim his reward, so he opened the event window.

Event

Void Initiation

Gather a total of 100 ether-rich resources from the Void Dimension: 10 000 EP

Gather a total of 1 000 ether-rich resources from the Void Dimension: 100 000 EP

Gather a total of 10 000 ether-rich resources from the Void Dimension: 1 000 000 EP

Travel more than 100 kilometers in the Void Dimension: 10 000 EP

Travel more than 1 000 kilometers in the Void Dimension: 100 000 EP

Travel more than 10 000 kilometers in the Void Dimension: 1 000 000 EP

Survey the Void Dimension for 100 hours: 10 000 EP (COMPLETE)

Survey the Void Dimension for 1 000 hours: 100 000 EP

Survey the Void Dimension for 10 000 hours: 1 000 000 EP

Discover a special resource: 10 000 EP

Discover 10 different special resources: 100 000 EP

Discover 100 different special resources: 1 000 000 EP

Use 10 000 total energy in any way: 10 000 EP (COMPLETE)

Use 100 000 total energy in any way: 100 000 EP (COMPLETE)

Use 1 000 000 total energy in any way: 1 000 000 EP (COMPLETE) (Claim?)

Attain 100 in any individual stat: 100 000 EP

Attain 1 000 total stats: 1 000 000 EP

Completion Bonus: 10 000 000 EP

The 100 hours was the only objective different from the energy use objective he had completed, it represented only 4 days after all, not like 10 000 hours which equaled more than a year.

After claiming his relatively hard-earned Ether Points, he opened his avatar window.

Avatar (Basic Rank) (Tier 1)

EP: 1 161 410

Stats Total: 96

Health: 5

Health Regeneration: 1

Strength: 1

Cohesion: 1

Energy: 10

Energy Regeneration: 65

Purity: 10

Affinity: 1

Momentum: 1

Perception: 1

‘And now I can claim the 100 stat reward.’

Everything was logical and natural, step by step his plan was coming to life. He invested 990 000 EP into his perception.

And not having closed his event window, he could see one of the objective changes.

Attain 100 in any individual stat: 100 000 EP (COMPLETE) (Claim?)

However, it wasn’t the most shocking, because, in just a moment, he went from blind to becoming able to truly see.

Everything in a 100 meters radius from his avatar body, he knew it was now part of his perception, and for the first time, he saw floating rocks in the nothingness and silence of the Void dimension.

But the perception stat alone didn’t allow for his farming ether resources plan to come to life, the movement part was still missing.

So he invested every remaining EP except 10 000 EP, which he kept as a security amount in case of death, into his momentum stat.

Avatar (Basic Rank) (Tier 1)

EP: 11410

Stats Total: 221

Health: 5

Health regeneration: 1

Strength: 1

Cohesion: 1

Energy: 10

Energy regeneration: 65

Purity: 10

Affinity: 1

momentum: 27

Perception: 100

‘With this, I should be ahead by at least several months.’

Smiling without realizing it, Rune innerly felt very proud of what he achieved.

Following his train of thoughts, he remembered the rest of his plan, the farming plan, it was just gathering resources, he could effortlessly remember it as it was the primary reason why he did all this.

But executing it was a different thing.

With his previous 1 momentum, he just wasn’t able to move, even when he reached his maximum speed, it was only 1 meter per second, a derisory distance.

Now though, he could feel himself moving when he wanted to move.

On the board, it was mentioned that to move at your maximum speed, so your momentum stat per minute, you really needed to exert your mind.

Now that he had a momentum stat big enough, Rune finally understood why some people complained that moving beyond half of your maximum was too hard.

‘It’s like I’m pushing something heavy! On a slope!’ Was the spontaneous inner joke he made to feel better.

Moving with the momentum stat was like doing an intensive mental and physical exercise at the same time, it wasn’t like the perception sphere which was only acting in the background.

Rune could continue to use his perception sphere to see all the floating rocks he passed by while going at his maximum speed.

Before starting to gather resources, however, he withdrew his awareness from his avatar and returned to his original body.

Upon returning, the pure silence faded and was replaced with the constant background noise of life, the background noise of the world in general.

This noise was the sound of the wind, some far-away city noise, his family listening to things too loudly, the last was more likely to be Miro and Miri playing video games with bomb noise in it.

‘Does someone who became deaf and was then healed feel like that? It’s so strange…’ Rune nearly thought cringey stuff like “re-discovering my own world”, but he contained himself and just enjoyed the feeling of hearing things again.

Becoming used to his own body again, it was pretty intuitive considering he lived more than 20 years in it, he started to inspect it.

Before departing he left his body on his bed in the recovery position, maybe he was a little paranoid but choking himself wasn’t a part of his plan, not now and not in the future.

Ascertaining everything was fine, he decided to check the house, after all, 10 days was equal to an end of study trip, and coming back home after that long was one of the most pleasurable moments from his own experience.

Because coming back meant he would just be doing nothing for the better part of all incoming days…

Going down the stairs, his world-view changed in but a moment, he stopped in the middle, because he saw something amazing.

It wasn’t his twin little brothers that were playing, it was his twin little sisters. It was not often that he saw Victoria and Floria playing video games.

‘Were they enlightened by my little brothers?’ It was only an interlude in his coming-back house inspection, but unfortunately for his excited spirit, nothing else out of place appeared to exist.

Being the eldest and not a talkative one at that, he only observed for a moment before returning to his bedroom with a glass of very cold ice tea peach in hand.

‘Eleven days… I should at least see if something interesting has been released, then I’ll deactivate my energy revitalization and see what happens.’

Rune wanted to have some serious heavy-budget entertainment before turning off the energy loop that made him a god gamer or an ascetic.

Depends on your education.

…

After having his right dose of entertaining videos and even finding some very funny ones with the new trend of using the gained stats to make previously irrealist events happen in real life, Rune was so addicting that he couldn’t stop watching.

His jaw muscles were hurting as he couldn’t stop smiling and laughing.

Rushed professional productions like “IRL Blind Ninja”, “Arcade Rhythm'', “Breaking World Records With A Finger” were in top tendencies and kept getting more views for a good reason.

There was no end to innovative people that published their own version of eccentric use of their newly gained power, Rune saw no end to the number of things he had to watch.

That only stopped when he decided to stop the loop of energy that kept him from feeling his body needs.

5 minutes after stopping it, tiredness started to appear and accumulated like he pulled tens of all-nighters at once but his body ignored them because of ether-bullsh*t, but now that it was over, his body started to protest and send emergency signals.

For ten days, his human body had to adapt to something completely new, and it really tried its best.

But how could it manage energy that acted completely autonomously? Energy appeared in his blood and got where it should go, that was it.

Having just turned off the energy loop, he was not hungry or thirsty but his body felt light like it was floating, like having done a month-long fast.

As described in the wiki, energy revitalization didn’t do anything to transform the body or was a miraculous medicine.

Everyone was still a defective law life form, but what was common for everyone was that by using energy revitalization, you couldn’t keep being awake for more than a month, after which you would find yourself falling unconscious in but a moment.

The wiki explained that with something found in lots of other pieces of intel. The ether soul.

1 month was the limit an ether soul could keep a life awake continuously before needing to recover, or to strengthen more exactly, to recover from 1 month of high spiritual activity.

As he carefully experienced the change happening as much as he could, he started to wonder why he still didn’t test the application of using perception and momentum here, in the universe.

Rune willed his perception sphere to appear and instantly, he could see in a 10 meters sphere around him.

Does anyone really realize what 10 meters represent? It was huge.

It wasn’t interrupted by solid matter, or maybe it wasn’t interrupted because it was not matters that could resist a power coming from the Ether Law? Or the defective law was still in majority? Who knows…

In the same way, he tried to float by willing his body to move upwards but Rune only felt himself lightning a little, he didn’t move at all.

Checking the forum, he realized that lots of people tried to do the same, but as regular gravity was around 10g, you would need a momentum stat of 600 to attain theoretical balance and act like gravity didn’t exist anymore, countering 10g with 10 meters per second.

This little experiment meant that to escape gravity, everyone would still have to rely on spaceships for a long time, as for the gravity in the Void dimension…

Well, bad news never comes alone, you would be dead before realizing it anyways, there was still no explanation as to why gravity killed you.

After only 15 minutes, he decided that sleeping now just meant a more effective resource gathering later, so Rune decided to sleep now to then do a 1-month continuous resource gathering session.

So he just stripped down to his underpants and 5 minutes later, he was asleep.

…

Waking up after what felt like one month, which in reality was just over ten hours, he felt completely refreshed and full of motivation. Rune did his usual routine but this time he had his perception sphere showing him things across the whole house.

After having enough of it, he just cut it off, it was easy, “Work” was waiting, and it wasn’t going to do itself.

Once he was ready.

‘I’ll be able to browse the board and the wiki while I’m traveling so nothing’s stopping me.’

He decided it was time to go, so he remade an energy loop in his body.

He couldn’t judge its quality, but it probably wasn’t of the same quality as the previous one.

10 days of just emptying one’s energy pool as fast as possible was maybe an effective training in energy manipulation?

He then willed his awareness to go to his avatar side.

One moment he was in his bedroom, the other he was in the Void,

‘Welcomed by the sound of silence, the sound of silence! If only I could hear the song now… It would be so nice.’

Dreaming about a fantastic future thing to do, he focused on moving and he started to accelerate.

The more he focused, the faster and faster he moved, and as his perception sphere covered everything in a 100 meters radius of his body, he could retroactively calculate his approximate speed from the floating rocks he passed by.

By judging them to be immobile of course.

At some point, he felt his momentum speed reach its maximum, he knew he reached his momentum maximum speed, probably a newly born instinct.

Even increasing the mental effort did nothing from this point on, beyond was a wall he couldn’t push, a totally immovable wall called stat limit.

And while maintaining the level of focus necessary to keep his maximum speed was difficult, it wasn’t impossible, and even if he relaxed a little and lost a few meters per second, it wouldn’t be that relevant if a very long period of time wasn’t taken into account.

Now that he was launched, he only had to become used to going at his maximum speed.

Opening the system to “learn” things, maintaining his maximum speed, and paying attention to his perception sphere, the first was secondary but still important in the long run. Every fact had its utility, and combining a thousand facts could give Rune an inkling of something surprising.

Rune saw himself as a newbie dimensional explorer, and as such, he had to learn everything, he wouldn’t be surprised if the work needed to become a true dimensional explorer was more than what he did to get his exploration engineer diploma.

Having just started, however, he was still very unused to doing everything at the same time, so he didn’t open anything entertaining yet and first tried to get used to his new situation.

And he had an idea as to how to accelerate it…

‘In restless streams, I walked alone…’ Singing in his own mind!

It was impossible to talk in the Void, but at last, Rune heard a piece of sapient culture hummed by his own mind, alone in the middle of another dimension.

And the world continued on, stopping for no one.