Rune didn’t choose Utopia’s ring, he wasn’t planning or anything, he just left him for later, so he entered another ring.

The 200 by 200 meters room was put to no gravity mode, the identical condition to the exploration of the current dimensions.

2 rings of 80 by 80 meters were delimited by the virtual projection system, as well as a 200 by 80 meters one.

The 200 meters long one was the one to try kiting and rushing techniques, and if within 200 meters you couldn’t keep your opponent from reaching you or reach him, then it meant your mastery was simply lacking or you were doing things wrong, be it as the pursuer or the pursued.

Rune’s first opponent was Arik, if he described the fighting style of everyone in the group, all were close combat and reinforcement enthusiasts except Gar, Adreana, and Nelo, who were energy enthusiasts.

Of course, Rune took the camp seriously and he wasn’t going to split his awareness for a real battle, so he didn’t split it for the camp, he was at 100% of his potential.

Everything was managed by the virtual assistant, they got to the 2 highlighted extremities of the ring, an 80 by 80 meters one, and waited for the signal to start.

But already, a body-shaped energy covering appeared on Rune, and Arik did the same, and when the signal was given, only fighting remained.

The two of them understood what needed to be done, so they accelerated with their own means, Arik with a body control application, Rune with momentum then followed with an explosive body control jump.

In only 2 seconds they arrived within close combat reach, not one of them used their precious energy for spells, but the reinforcement vibration was used as soon as they entered the kicking reach of each other.

For the most optimized fighter, a consequent reinforcement cost 10 energy, so Rune could only do it 2 times, he didn’t know for Arik but he was going to evade and favor opportunities more than skilled exchange.

The shorter reach of a shorter body didn’t seem to stop him from just going head-on with a sweeping kick.

Maybe evading with only body control would be cooler and everything he learned till now would finally be useful, but momentum at full power just rendered it pointless for this one.

Evading with momentum to the side, Rune then used a punch with the ground as support and his instantly activated reinforcement.

But before he knew it, Arik lowered his body and as Rune followed his evasion move, Arik put a hand on the floor and used it as support to fuse momentum and reinforcement to make a kick appear literally before the stomach of Rune.

Sent flying by the kick, he felt pain, he felt health damage, but there was no confusion, it wasn’t a question of faster reaction speed, it was Arik being intelligent, the factor that every opponent should fear when fighting a sapient opponent.

Pulling himself together after the kick, he used momentum and an energy-compressed platform, costing 2 energy, to start his riposte without any timeout.

Arik contorting his body reacted faster than his shadow and put his 2 feet on the ground with his momentum creating artificial gravity.

It was textbook use of momentum to become heavier, this way nothing short of transmission of 50 strength could move him.

‘I accept the challenge.’

Rune liked this one, he used momentum to rush towards Arik and started harassing him with feints while continuously circling around him slowly or quickly at a disturbing but steady rhythm.

Waiting for opportunities was his go-to strategy as he supposed Arik had more energy than him, their mastery level should be more or less equal.

Feint, feint, another feint, but Arik reacted to each one before stopping after seeing it was only a feint.

Rune decided that one of his feints would become real in the next exchange.

Preparing for a punch from 2 meters away and positioning his right foot like he was going to jump at the unprotected side of Arik when his prey reacted, Rune jumped to the side, to seemingly continue circling him, but in reality, he was going all in.

He prepared his energy for 2 consecutive uses of reinforcement, one in his first move that was a kick against the ground, while changing his momentum to artificial gravity.

The acceleration created by using a 10 energy reinforcement made Arik completely defenseless, even though the increase was theoretically only 1% of 50 strength, the speed was beyond what 50 perception allowed him to react to.

As Rune was prepared for this, he chained his kick by a punch, activating reinforcement again, and the punch connected, with all his acceleration and a proper punching form.

Arik was sent flying so hard it looked like an anime fighting scene, with the zone of impact bending the rest of his body.

He flew for tens of meters, only stabilizing at the border of the ring.

The match only started 20 seconds ago.

Now Rune had to use delaying tactics to let his energy regenerate, 30 seconds was one use of reinforcement for him.

5 seconds later Arik came back in full throttle, he seemed resolute to punch his face, so from now on Rune had to avoid direct exchanges like a plague, so he only used momentum and body control to delay and flee.

He didn’t forget to use close combat opportunities if Arik made a mistake, but that had more chance to be a feint, so even knowing that regenerating all his energy meant Arik regenerated all his health, he didn’t have a choice.

Every match ended after 15 minutes, with the winner being the one who did the most damage. It was not like winning was important, but it was an indicator of a relative fighting level.

Arik in full throttle was easy to read, his use of momentum seemed very untrained, so useless at the moment, but was going to rapidly become usable after days of battles.

After a whole minute of evading, Rune started another exchange, if Arik used reinforcement for one of his moves he could now respond in kind.

Arik started a sweeping kick, Rune found an opening and lowered his body before extending into it, it was the primary use of momentum, you could move with your mind, if you saw an opportunity, you could respond at the speed of your thought.

Meaning reality-defying speed.

So Arik took a punch on his side chest, but he didn’t back down, better, he grabbed Rune’s hand and with his sphere, Rune knew he was going for a phyrric exchange, so he responded in kind if he couldn’t free himself then evading would be hard, he had to block as much as he could.

So kick against kick, forearm against punch, but it really seemed that Arik had more energy, ‘I should have gone for energy and not affinity.’

The reason Rune had gone for affinity was for farming reasons, after all, it had already been proved that affinity allowed you to detect special resources better.

Affinity was also king for his training methods, he could already make elaborate spheres, and even compress them to make a shimmering appear in the real air.

But now it came back to bite him the a*s, Arik did 4 reinforcements before freeing him and the two retreated to analyze the situation.

‘Lesson learned in theory and in practice, don’t get caught in a pyrrhic exchange unless you have a reason.’

That was the goal of the camp, and Arik also learned things from this exchange, the importance of energy pool’s size.

As they continued to fight and were in the middle of an exchange, they felt an explosion from the ring where Nelo and Adreana were fighting.

Nelo did something and Adreana was now out of their assigned ring, with energy filaments flying to the zone of every other fighting ring, but Rune and Arik only tried to use it as a distraction to ditch a punch or a kick in the gut of their opponents.

15 minutes after they started fighting, the ring announced the end of their match.

“Good match,” Arik said before leaving without looking at the result.

‘So cool,’ so Rune did the same, he didn’t look at the result and left.

…

In the next fight, he waited it out, 7 people and 3 matches, one had to wait and observe.

Rune decided to observe Utopia versus Nelo’s match, he saw the name of certain spells on the energy institute forum and website, and if not for his lacking energy mastery, he would have tried some for fun.

But seeing them as they were intended to be used was impressive, matrices formed in seconds, different energy beams trapping Utopia in a never-ending cycle of doing his best to predict where Nelo would be taking him and doing his best to escape and rush towards him.

Like the rest of the group, the current Nelo wasn’t a master of his art, he said his energy to damage ratio was 7 for 1, Adreana and Gar were at 8 for 1, for the rest of them reinforcement focused ones, it would be a miracle to have a ratio of 10 for 1, a 10% energy efficiency, for spells.

Tier 2 was supposed to be 100% efficiency, 1 energy for 1 damage, and 1 energy to block 1 health damage, but like everything else, even more than the physical path, there were no experts, no guideline on how to achieve it, just experiments and more experiments.

For the majority, it was just grinding.

The spiritual path was the same, but there was no indicator, maybe unlimited manual awareness transmission and full control of how it was used? Perfect momentum with easy use to a specific place, maybe undiscovered uses?

So much remained to be found, they were only newbies in the grand scheme of things.

As predicted, Nelo’s energy being far from infinite, and his management being still lackluster, Utopia approached faster and faster as he retreated.

He used very amateurish tactics to try and stall Utopia for his energy to come back, but the result was just a combo of 10 punches and kicks and him losing the fight.

‘The learning curve of spells is more abrupt at the beginning, but even later on it doesn’t represent more potential than reinforcement.’

To each their own path, if Nelo became part of the energy branch, and that Adreana and Gar also choose this path, its redeeming qualities must make up for its disadvantages.

The fight ending in 6 minutes wasn’t Utopia winning by a landslide, it was just a bad matchup, but with everyone gaining insights into how to better themselves and their nascent fighting style.

Utopia really abused momentum swirl and complete control to make his way to Nelo.

Nelo used more beams than other spells, maybe he really saw potential in it or he had a trump spell reserved for soon, like the spell he used against Adreana, but it needed time.

Or maybe the other spells he practiced weren’t battle-ready, Rune himself could only use the energy platform spell for his feet, he rushed the learning process, so he could of course try to make a platform that could be gripped with his hands but it would be identical to the one used for his feet.

At the end of every match, the next rotation began, Adreana on the bench and Rune ended up versus Gar.

The start of a match against a spellcaster was really difficult, even if he used a reinforced jump to cover the maximum ground, he would only cover 50 meters in a second before encountering an emergency energy bullet in the face, stopping his plan, as he was too fast for his momentum to take over and make him evade an extremely fast spell.

And then the bombardment started, just enough to keep him occupied and not have the time to recuperate and prepare a rush, but the cadence necessary to keep him occupied used Gar's energy reserve extremely fast, but the two of them already knew it.

Simple maths told the answer, at 50 purity against 50 cohesion, 8 energy exchanged for 1 health, so 50 energy for 6 health.

If Rune had only 1 in his cohesion stat, it would be different, but it wasn’t the case, the difference in damage potential at the beginning between physical and energy path was abhorrent, just a no match.

So as Utopia did versus Nelo, Rune combined momentum, body control evasion, and block as Gar ran out of energy, the moment everything came together, he rushed while being wary of a trap.

And after entering the close combat zone, his reinforcement gave him an absolute advantage and he used that opportunity to try and win the match with the best combo he could do.

Normal jump acceleration, reinforced kick, momentum up, descending kick, artificial momentum gravity up, reinforced uppercut, using Gar body as a platform and delivering a double kick.

And then using his sphere he saw that Gar's body flew out of the ring.

He won.

The three spellcasters were all in difficulty, they couldn’t do enough damage to win no matter what as their efficiency was too low.

But Utopia didn’t change the rules, if they couldn’t do damage then they needed to find another way, ether monsters would hunt them down anyway.

The result was them frantically searching the board and the new energy institute for tips from the energy fighter geniuses.

The camp was really hardcore, for an entire week they didn’t stop one time, Rune thought Arik and Gar were a little less involved in the whole new era pioneer thing but their determination rivaled with even Rune.

The most shocking moment was when the three spellcasters found a stopgap spell for their problem, it was the pulse spell or shockwave spell, it used very little energy to produce a pretty powerful anti perimeter shockwave which dealt no damage.

They used it to increase the duration of their barrage bombardment of spells by alternating, one burst, delay with pulse, burst, delay with pulse.

This made Rune and the reinforcement users develop new ways to approach while being bombarded by spells that disrupted their movements.

The more time passed, the more this stopgap solution worked well, with the spellcasters side controlling for sometimes 10 minutes the entire tempo of the battle.

The new spell forced Rune to innovate, when a pulse approached it wasn’t something that could be evaded, it was a very large zone, so the possibilities weren’t endless.

Take a grip on the ground and brace yourselves by using momentum as gravity, make a platform appear and their immovability could serve as a grip in mid-air, use a reinforced jump and ignore the problem…

Those solutions had to be found, they weren’t readily available.

The delaying tactics of spellcasters proved to be an immense challenge, and sometimes to rile up the reinforcer, they made a point in not focusing on dealing damage, but just delaying the entire 15 minutes and winning with 1 point of damage dealt.

The opposite still happened, of course, pulse wasn’t a miracle spell, if they stopped innovating, they would be caught up to and receive a combo that made blood flow and pain have a new definition.

The first week concluded, hundreds of matches, very few breaks, just blood, and battle, everyone knew it was a true fighting camp, the camp that prepared them for their entry into the real new era, where individual power could perpetually increase.

Sometimes, Rune also took breaks, he accumulated so many insights that he had to write them down on board notes to not forget them.

As the first week of the camp came to an end, Utopia ordered the virtual assistant to not start the next round.

After everyone comprehended that the first part of the camp was finished, they gathered around Utopia to wait for his instructions.

“Is someone tired?” Asking this question was to be sure, hearing no answer he continued, “This camp could already be considered a success after those hundreds of battles, but we’re all smart here, if life was equal for everyone then we would stop here,”

“But we’re still months away from finishing the camp, that’s a fact, 6 against 1, 2 versus 2, complex environment simulation, I got you and you’ll help me, so let’s go!”

“First variation is 2 versus 2 and next to it 1 versus 2,” there was a special tone used by Utopia like he read about those situations and saw them happening before his own eyes.

But that was why they all came here, Utopia showed a rululu’s wisdom in arguing about his point of view, and the result was that the previously 3 absents came here to participate.

As Rune first fight in the new situation of 2 versus 2, he was allied with Adreana against Utopia and Nelo.

Purely from the mastery level, Rune and Adreana were the underdogs of this round, even more so when considering that Nelo and Utopia were very competitive.

“Adreana, I got a plan, you got one too or I just share mine?” Rune also became competitive the moment his dreams and ambitions were created.

“Nope, just don’t want to be too stomped, so say it,” Adreana was in.

“Ok, so my plan is something that doesn’t require cooperation but stubbornness, when I enter close combat with Utopia, I want you to bombard our position once you confirmed that Nelo is preparing a long spell, and just bombard us with pulse, I need chaos to quickly have a chance to take Utopia out, then we’ll just need to survive Nelo’s spell, you ok with that?”

With a smirk on her face, Adreana was in, “Let’s try it then,” and she prepared by positioning herself behind Rune.

Once the signal was given, Nelo and Adreana immediately began to try and get in the way of their warrior, bullets, beams, pulses, but after Rune and Utopia started fighting at short range they changed focus, Nelo started to prepare a spell to put Rune out of commission.

And Adreana faked doing the same till she confirmed that Nelo was preparing a long spell, maybe the one he used to win their first match.

She immediately started bombarding Rune’s fight with pulse spells and bullets that disrupted what Utopia was planning to do.

Rune used his 2 charges of reinforcement to destabilize Utopia, even more, so much happened that his human eyes became useless and only his perception sphere informed him of the situation.

From afar, the situation was complicated, but for Rune and Utopia, it was the same situation as beginning a match against a spellcaster.

Rune was expecting that, so he forced pyrrhic moves and hoped that the situation made it so that they became free exchange without retaliation.

But even winning the first few moves was difficult as Utopia used his momentum on another level, with his sphere he could see him make feints and appear on another side.

The plan failed.

He retreated to Adreana’s side, making her follow him and advancing towards Nelo while keeping Utopia close to them to force Nelo to damage his ally if he launched his super spell.

But the same as Rune, they probably established a rough plan and decided to follow it, so Utopia was trying to align the 2 in Nelo’s line of sight.

It was rough, the alignment was rough, but it worked, as Nelo decided to just launch his spell at Rune and be done with it.

The spell was a big sphere of flowing energy, only with complexity could he compensate for his lacking damage, that sphere should be able to deal 20 health damage, and with the following loss, Utopia would terminate him.

Rune tried to use a platform as a shield but the platform disintegrated upon contact with the orb, it wasn’t made for this, so Rune took the spell.

It was the first time, even across thousands of fights, that he received a true spell, and it was way worse than a punch.

The spell just wouldn’t stop, his entire body energy felt unstable, and he couldn’t use reinforcement again, so when Utopia arrived and did suicide strikes, he couldn’t respond, and the assistant told him he was eliminated.

Shortly followed by Adreana getting beaten up by Utopia without the need for assistance from Nelo.

As Nelo flew out he had a proud smile, “Spells forever Rune, it’s not that dangerous but I can finally train my true fighting style,” then he sat down with artificial momentum gravity and thought back to what he could have done better just now.

‘Everyone’s a newbie, well… An amateur now, so it’s still only the beginning.’

Rune was undisturbed, he had so much to learn, win or loss were all learning opportunities, he asked only to learn more.

“I think I can win a 1 against 2 if I play my cards right,” here comes Utopia ego, Rune didn’t know how he got this idea, but if he said it then he should have found a way.

‘That’s right, just need to eliminate one, then delay, then it’s a 1 versus 1.’

A perfect plan, but Utopia had more chance of being pulverized than winning.

“Then let’s try it,” said Adreana with a slight smile.

Utopia lost his 1 versus 2.