As the 12th month began, Rune continued his tutorial, the part where he learned more about the new era and how to manipulate energy.

Months of learning without stopping to take a break should have put heavy pressure on his determination, but he didn’t even consider this learning to be annoying, his pre-interdimensional era allowed him to know that superpowers were not something he always had.

He learned from Gar and Arik that a tier 2 ether soul allowed the body and spirit to live to 400 years.

This changed nothing for him, as he was only training in the building rented by Utopia and stopped going to the martial supreme dojo, but Utopia said it was now overcrowded with old and middle-aged people.

‘Don’t care, let them do what they consider the best for themselves,’ was Rune’s opinion of the current situation.

Utopia attained a competent level at close combat some days after Rune did and returned to the building to train in energy fundamentals like him.

As a result, they crossed often but never discussed, and the reason for that was the soon to happen fighting camp Utopia announced.

[Utopia: The true fighting camp will take place at the end of the 12th month to celebrate the new year according to the now official Inter-Dimensional Era calendar, I hope you’ll all come, right Arik and Adreana?]

He and Rune were training as much as possible, the date wasn’t that meaningful, but the more time passed by, the more true fighting ability became important.

True heroes wiping monster nests in the Deep Void dimension became more and more common, avatars reaching maximum stats of tier 1 became more and more common, cheap ether resources became more and more common, and Rune was still only training fundamentals.

‘Whatever my mastery, after that camp, I’ll go to the Deep Void and fight till I die.’

That was what was on Rune’s mind, his optimized path of trying everything was losing out to just going all-in and fighting till death.

‘Or maybe that’s why they’re called heroes, they’re truly talented and hard-working at the same time.’

Excuses were for the weak, Rune admitted that he learned as hard as he could, but wasn’t even ready to start fighting unless you considered punching with brute strength against ether monster and fleeing when things got bad as fighting ability.

Which some did obviously.

Rune didn’t know about others, but his energy training was going very smoothly, a linear increase in mastery, from a clump to a sphere, from a sphere to a donut, from a donut to a flowing donut, interweavings energy threads were still hard, but not impossible.

‘Is it time to launch my first energy bullet?’

Focusing on his energy pool, he prepared the groundwork, gathered energy in a sphere in front of him, created a small opening in the front of it, and rotated his energy from this point on.

After 5 minutes, the sphere transformed into a bullet shape.

Rune couldn’t comprehend how it worked but that was his first time, so he only looked at it and then sent it at a speed of 10 meters per second to a target, and it touched.

‘Easy.’

It was really easy, not only for him but for everyone, you were the one who controlled the energy so later it was even possible to change the trajectory mid-flight.

With a scientific institute working on the energy path, he just had to connect to their professional forum to know what training affected which mastery.

Fine manipulation, energy threads, controlling multiple spheres, what decided how much potential your energy spell matrices had, useless telekinesis.

Grand manipulation, spells groundwork, ejecting energy faster, manipulating it faster, keeping a constant flow, always having energy by managing it, regulating consumption.

Energy Compression, weapons creation, sword, knife, spear, anything imaginable, armor creation, see the most optimized model in new energy institute’s website, platform technique.

Every spell and technique trained an energy mastery, but not equally. Some were focused on 1 category like weapons and armors creation using only energy compression.

The energy institute made a direct and simple judgment system, if 1 point of energy could block 1 health damage, then you probably reached tier 2, congratulations.

What would raise an eyebrow about Rune’s energy training was his divergence, soon after touching a bit about every category, he started to stop learning more about spells used for offensive purposes.

He decided to focus on his artist dream, ‘In the end, I’m training every category, that’s what counts right?’

Feeling like a mischievous child, he smiled every time he invoked a red sphere, then a green sphere, then a black pole, and attached the two spheres to the extremity and made them rotate.

‘So f*cking amazing, my dream is real.’

In his excitement he just created different colors and different shapes, each energy color was like nothing he had seen before, they emitted something different from what neon lights or plasma lights did.

‘If I lose everything, not being able to fight anymore, that would be my second career choice by far and without hesitation…’

Rune was mesmerized by what he was doing, different lights mixed and radiated, forms he only thought about became real, some were failed creations of course, but each failure gave him this little piece of mastery for the following manipulation.

‘It’s still training, right? It feels like nothing I did before.’

Like he could continue effortlessly, the joy of looking at this show surpassed the strained feelings in his mind due to grinding energy mastery.

And on this day, he decided something, saying it out loud for the world to hear it, “When I accumulated enough experience, maybe at tier 2, maybe at tier 3, I don’t know, I’ll create my own magic that uses this as its foundation.”

This decision resonated deep inside him, but in the real world, the promise faded in the air.

Deciding to adapt his training was maybe his talent, spontaneously using energy compression to try and bring light to the visible world, grand manipulation to eject, shape, and control multiple colored spheres or poles, and fine manipulation, to try and detail his creations, a spiral here, a cube there.

Energy manipulation was fun.

…

‘What is he doing?’

Utopia, coming to train his energy, saw with his perception sphere that Rune was doing strange things, not unusual considering it was Rune though.

It was a very amateurish manipulation of colored spheres, they were rotating around his body and sometimes a strange uncanny shape appeared before dissipating into nothing.

With his sphere, he could see that some spheres were further shaped by connected energy threads, adding details to their smooth exterior, and they exploded after suffering too much carving.

Lost in his thought, Utopia didn’t realize he spent ten minutes watching a light show, ‘can I do it too?’

He succeeded in creating a sphere, but giving it a color was not part of his training, ‘where did he find the method?’

Searching with the right keywords gave him the method, it was just primitive transformation research, as it didn’t give any additional property useful for dealing damage like high temperature or lighting current, it was just posted and forgotten.

‘I remember him saying it was some sort of dream of his? Well, he succeeded, and that’s pretty entertaining.’

Finally leaving Rune to his own training, he got back to his own, the orthodox one.

…

‘The complexity attainable is infinite.’

It was what Rune concluded from all the new energy institute’s spell catalog. His special training method was useful and entertaining, but he couldn’t fight with colored spheres.

‘Energy wings alone is such a miraculous spell, but if all the future spells are only powerful at the expense of infinite interwoven threads and 50 minutes of shaping energy, then I’ll focus on reinforcement and basic strategic spells.’

His objective was clear, he didn’t hesitate before choosing a major path of his life, if he or any of his friends was to be a member of the Adventurer’s Society, then he would know that this train of thoughts had already been dissected to its molecules and was called a “build”.

‘I still have 1 week, I should go and learn the principle of reinforcement.’

“Utopia? There’s 1 week before starting the fighting camp, want to go with me and become a beginner of reinforcement?” Rune knew he'd say yes, so it was just courtesy.

“Let’s go!” Jumping up from his seated position, the sphere around him dissipated in one second.

Smiling despite himself like he was taking a kid to an amusement park, Rune responded in kind, “Let’s go then!”

Rune and Utopia arrived at the martial supreme dojo and entered the reinforcement hallway and this time they weren’t led to a test room.

As this technique involved energy manipulation, virtual technology could only show models, but the reason for having a real dojo was for doing a real demonstration and transmitting the necessary knowledge more effectively.

They arrived in what looked like the courtyard of a dojo, one instructor with closed eyes stood upright on a podium at the center, waiting for the courtyard to be filled.

When no more people arrived, he started to give instructions, “Everyone has to have their sphere reach me, I’ll not move from this podium, so organize yourselves to let those with low reach be closer to me.”

Soon after the reorganization, Utopia and Rune were at the extremities of the circle surrounding the instructor, waiting for the demonstration to start.

“I’ll start now. First, some premises, reinforcement originates from the revitalization spell, using energy to modify the functioning of the body.”

“Did you know that you could create as many loops as you wanted? That’s the case because energy is automatically used to fill what your body lacks, so if you create hundreds of loops, it’ll still use as much energy as one loop.”

“The foundation of reinforcement is making the body feel like it needs a lot more energy to function while feeding it more energy to forcefully increase its limits.”

“From that idea, the reinforcement technique was created, it has 2 modes, the nurturing mode, and the fighting mode. I’ll now show you how to do the 2 modes of the reinforcement technique.”

Maybe it was because he did such a demonstration hundreds or even thousands of times, but his voice was something you didn’t want to disobey, when he said he was going to do it, then he was going to do it, that was a fact.

“The hardest part is submerging your entire body in energy, you have to shape an identical, adaptable and changeable replication of yourself, that will be the nurturing mode.”

“Don’t confuse yourself that nurturing means a long time, only a few seconds of sending energy in, and your body will be so filled that it’ll just stop accepting more.”

“In fact, the nurturing mode is more of a glorified revitalization than anything, except it's a lot more complicated.”

“The best way for beginners such as you to do it is to use your hand and skin contact, accumulate liquid energy in your hand, with as much viscosity as you’re able to infuse in, then apply it to your entire body, only do a rough shape, then command your remaining energy to fill the gap.”

He did what he said, as was everyone, even if some had it very hard as their control of energy was abysmal.

Rune covered himself in a layer of energy, and before long he finished, waiting for the rest of the instruction.

“Now you need to be completely swallowed up by energy, so use the shape you just created and fill it with energy, as much as your base energy and regeneration allows.”

“Later you can try to infuse more energy into your nurturing form than your energy stat and see that it fails automatically, you’ll feel a hot feeling but that’s normal so don’t worry, nobody ever died from that.”

After everyone who could do it did it, he ignored those who failed and continued, they just had to practice or listen and train by themselves later, they could even come back if they wanted.

“This is the first step, now you have enough energy, but to increase your strength with it is where the marvel of the technique is, and the answer is vibration.”

“You have to use your intent and a bit of energy control to make this energy vibrate, then your body will see its strength increase explosively, you have to do it by instinct, try it first, this is very easy to practice.”

Executing what he just heard, Rune observed and felt his entire body starting to vibrate, but he knew it wasn’t his body, it was the perfect body-shaped energy surrounding it that vibrated.

“The technique isn’t so forgiving that it’ll wait for you to punch something. This state, the fighting mode, consumes as much energy as you infuse into your nurturing shape, and it’s all a one-time use, so be careful.”

“The most recent experiment shows that 1 point of energy gives you an increase of 0.1%, irrelevant of any mastery, only the proficiency at which you infuse energy into your nurturing form and the ease to make it vibrate becomes easier with training.”

Gasps were heard from the crowd, but not from Rune or Utopia, they were surprised, but most of all they were hyped by the infinite possibilities of this technique.

Whispering to each other they couldn’t stop.

“Maybe condensed only in one fist, that makes a super punch.”

“No you forgot the basics of fighting, the whole body is needed to transmit all the strength.”

“Then just create a special shape that reinforces only the used place, it’s not all or nothing, and as long as you know where each muscle is it’s not a problem.”

“You and your stupid ego, if it was that easy… Ok, maybe it’s possible, but it should have already been tried.”

“I knew you would understand if the complexity may be mind-blowing at maximum optimization.”

“Yeah, imagine using it with 10 000 base stren…”

*Clap*

The instructor clapped to gather the attention again.

“Depending on proficiency you’ll realize that the increased strength can be highly variable, it’s not just simple multiplication using your energy times 0.1%.”

“The reason why I said to make a replica shape of your body is that in the middle of a fight, at a high level, where one hit could symbolize your death, few would risk using custom shapes.”

“Even more when you’re suppressed by your opponent, you just wait for an opportunity and use all your energy when you feel death approaching.”

“And if you don’t move at all, you’ll see that even after activating all your infused energy, it’ll not just disappear, it’s just going to sit there and wait for you to make the slightest move.”

“The rest, you’ll learn as you practice, fighting is the best way but pure training is a must, you must be able to create your shape in a moment, pump it to the maximum in a moment and make it vibrate in a moment.”

“In the end, you’ll need only a second to go from nothing to full energy reinforcement, good luck, and have a good day.”

A door opened on the opposite side from where they entered, everyone got the idea that it was over so they followed the direction and ended in the beginner reinforcement hall.

“Well, let’s train, I really want to see the result of this,” it wasn’t Utopia but Rune who said that.

The hall was just punching machines put in a row, “They really like punching machines, hehe,” on those words he started experimenting with this last fundamental technique.

His repertory was now complete, every mastery knowledge imaginable, even the Ether Law was not able to pull a fast one on trillions and trillions of individual and unique brains all thinking differently.

As they started their training, Utopia, with his big brain, started to talk, “Did you decide on your playstyle? I’m nearly certain we’re going for the same one, full close combat, reinforcement, and minor energy spells as support right?”

Not stopping his body shape-making using his hand, Rune simply answered, “I don’t think anyone who wants to go explores the dimensions are ready to depend on others to come up with spells for them, those who do will see their path end before it starts.”

“Brrr, give me the chills, but yeah, can’t use spells for everything, sometimes you have to take it in your own hand and do it like a man!” With the excitement from his own statement, he threw a punch reinforced with vibrated energy.

But it was of course only followed by disappointment, “Of course it’s not that easy.”

The next seven days passed in a blur, he even saw Arik passing by, they introduced each other and then immediately got back on their own training.

Arik, opposite to Gar, his brother, was very short, he stood at only 1m40, he was also not part of one of the 5 leading species of the IGS, but still was a normal humanoid.

He was also the same as he was on the board, insufferable and sarcastic despite spitting facts and sounding like the most rational of the whole group.

Adreana also arrived but he didn’t see her yet, and nobody he talked to took the initiative to talk about her.

Once he slept tonight, he’d wake up to the start of the new year and the fighting camp.