The game of cat is entertaining, but did you ever try a game of cat with 1 mouse and 6 cats?

‘Cosmic Jesus!’ Rune had the whole room to try and escape.

The fighting camp was celebrating its last day today, at the end of the 14th month, it has been 2 months since its start, and if regular people were to become part of it now, they would feel they were training together with a group of geniuses.

Rune displaced himself and evaded a hit from Astryde by a hair.

A two-way spell fired by Gar and Adreana forced him to use his trump card move reinforced jump.

But what awaited him after that was Arik, Utopia, and Nelo surrounding him.

Rune rushed for the closest opening, where Nelo was, but Nelo didn’t back down, he was a spellcaster so what?

He did a simple delay tactic, but after the first exchange Rune felt Astryde approaching like a cannonball, so he did all he could to bypass Nelo, but even after taking 4 successive kick combos he succeeded in creating an energy bomb and used it as a threat for if Rune still tried to pass him by, even if he had to lose his life.

Having no more choice, after this 5 seconds long exchange he could only engage with Arik and Utopia, then Astryde, and then the ring disqualified him.

“Someone tickle Nelo to death! I’ll owe you one!” Rune let his frustration take over.

His weakness of being susceptible to tickle was revealed by his sister when he enraged her so much she tickled him to the tears some weeks into the camp.

Astryde immediately grabbed her brother to prevent him from escaping, he was done in.

Utopia crashed into Nelo and started tickling him to death.

“Hahaha! No! Stop! Hahaha! I’ll stop that ok! No! Haha!”

“No excuse for the wicked!” Utopia successfully caught Rune, but only because Nelo literally died before his eyes, it was inexcusable, so he used his whole being to tickle the sinner.

With Nelo dying from laughter in the background, they gave the result of Rune’s escape, “You ran for 2 minutes and 42 seconds, very far from your best, but I’ve got no comments, the stubbornness of Nelo is entirely in cause, you could’ve burst his head with a custom reinforced punch at the end,” Adreana gave the score and that was it.

3 minutes later, Nelo stood up, he had been absolved by the decree of Rune.

“That was the last! I wanted to clearly show that sometimes a lunatic or a mindless monster will be in your way and you’ll not have the choice! I’m the reasonable one here!” Nelo defended himself with a dumb argument.

“I’ve long been ready for this, no need to show your will of steel to me! And it’s not because you can follow my moves now that you have to try and block me, only pulses would have disturbed me enough.”

“You still had a reinforced platform jump, so I brought you closer so that you couldn’t run away,” he was so sure that what he did was right that Rune stopped trying.

“So it’s over, go Utopia, do an ending speech,” Rune concluded the conversation.

“Hu-um”, clearing his throat he waited for everyone to tune to his voice, he then reactivated gravity, and even Rune felt strange.

During the monthly sleep and then every three days after Arik’s idea got support, they all did a practice of sleeping with no gravity.

Except, one of them stayed awake and launched an inoffensive but painful energy bullet at those who were peacefully sleeping, with of course no cheating allowed as it was the virtual assistant who said when someone was truly asleep.

“According to the timeline, we have reached the forefront of the pioneers, the time for a new announcement by the Ether Law should soon arrive, so I advise everyone to enter the Deep Void and do the event as fast as possible, then go back to the Void and finish their 10 000 hours.”

“For our 3 spellcasters, I hope this camp allowed you to diverge from pure scholarly spell research, and for the rest, I hope that like me, you learned that there is no absolute path, only a different path.”

“Even if in my own opinion, when the masteries window finally appears, I expect that all spell casters will come to learn from what we learned and we’ll do the same for what they learned.”

“Over! Your tickets back home have been sent to your bedroom, the next camp has no precise date, and maybe it’ll never happen, now literally every planet has a branch of the 3 path organizations.”

“I also have some plans for later concerning money but it’s still too early, I’ll post the idea on our group forum, it was my pleasure to train with all of you.”

On those words, they all started to say goodbye and best of luck before leaving for their room.

In the end, Rune wanted to go home, for so many months he prepared like his life depended on it, so he couldn’t be frustrated if he was too weak for something.

‘My twin brothers and twin sisters are in the new interdimensional curriculum of the IGS, I wonder if they still have time to play hehehe!’ As a big brother, he couldn’t help but rejoice in their misery, it’s been 1 month since the IGS reformed the whole education system.

He was too occupied with the situation of fighting for his life so he was in complete ignorance of how the world changed, apart from the Ether Law not doing a major announcement.

Another thing he missed was music, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that music as entertainment was something you didn’t need to listen to or focus on to enjoy.

‘Is it because I’m human that I’m so attached to music? Is it in my genes?’ The trip he had to take was the same one he used to come here, an intergalactic trip.

Time passed quickly after that, the only surprise was Arik taking the same spaceship as him and the two discussing how abused those companies were with all the things on board.

The whole trip, they passed it at the bar and restaurant, enjoying the food cooked with always progressing energy cooking techniques and cocktails with innovative energy infusion.

Rune was the first to descend, and 25 minutes later, he arrived back at his home rural planet, X125, its orbital space station to be precise.

Taking a shuttle to deposit him to the nearest deposit point to his home, he walked the rest of the way back.

Seeing his home again was a fine feeling, he entered and got up the stairs to put down his things, his bedroom was unchanged, ‘Why would it change anyway?’

Rune then used his sphere to find his mom and dad, the two were in their room, but after so long he did something he didn’t realize.

He simply waved his hand to where they were.

But most impressive was that his mom also waved her hand to welcome him back.

‘So f*cking awesome!’

The use of the perception sphere and resources was becoming mainstream, and it changed the world.

Now your old neighbor who had two feet in the grave was doing martial arts in his garden, if he had a rich pension he could farm with his original body, and if he had no money, well maybe he’d still be able to explode your home by mistake.

It should be a school day as he didn’t see his brothers and sisters in the house.

Thinking about his plan, he could think of few worth enough for him to stay in the Void, he’d max his stats very soon, and special resources last tier would come naturally later, but the Deep Void event seemed a lot more activity-demanding.

Event

Deep Void Initiation

Gather a total of 10 000 monster core: 1 000 000 EP

Clean 10 monster nests: 1 000 000 EP

Reach the dimension’s boundary: 1 000 000 EP

Find 10 rare resources: 1 000 000 EP

Successfully interact with a peaceful ether life form: 1 000 000 EP

Find living ether vegetation life: 1 000 000 EP

Completion Bonus: 10 000 000 EP

Fortunately, he could just search on the board and acquire intel able to reduce the time needed.

‘Some reached the Deep Void dimension’s boundary, it’s too obvious to miss, the perception sphere will detect fluctuations at a very large scale, waves of ether seemingly kilometers in length.’

‘If the event objective isn’t completed, go deeper, when your sphere stops sending any more information on what’s before you, just check the event and it should be claimable…’

And it was the same for the other objectives, rare resources were in monster nests, same for vegetation life.

‘Only peaceful ether life form is pretty random, the optimized thing to do is to kill things and absorb the monster cores if you’ve not reached maximum tier 1 stats, otherwise, just touch the core and it’ll count for the millstone of the event.’

‘The most time-consuming one is cleaning 10 monster nests as finding them implies a long period of following where the most monsters are going.’

Everything seemed logical, so he approved of everything he read and was ready to begin, but he still had something to do.

‘I didn’t lose the good habits.’

Rune instinctively turned on his computer upon arriving, so it was ready to use now.

And so Rune looked for what he missed, he wasn’t in a hurry to go, he still didn’t see Miro, Miri, Victoria, and Floria.

So he spent the next 4 hours catching up, 3 and a half watching entertainment and the rest watching condensed information summary.

Passionate entertainers with 24 hours per day were true monsters, they pumped out masterpiece after masterpiece.

He learned that the new education curriculum was an obligation for those below 18 years old, and it was very complete.

The new education system was designed to bring just enough competition for it to be healthy. Everyone wondered how the old advisors from the IGS could be so innovative on this subject.

‘Their entire file is followed by a newly created AI, this AI will still work even when the defective physics laws cease to exist, it's all-new famous education tech… They’re really going for it…’

Rune only realized now how much they invested in education, every inhabited planet had ten genius schools and depending on population, up to thousands of subsidiary schools to those ten.

Of course not everything changed, education still started at 6 years old, with the IGS principles and morality course, and was followed by all the normal schooling, from mathematics, science, language, all the way to history, those subjects could still be useful in the new era, and going all-in on something wasn't the IGS-way.

As soon as the students passed a test to prove that they didn’t have psychological pathologies or deficiencies, they were just ushered into a new additional dimensional adventurer curriculum, with courses consisting of mastery training and information board manipulation.

And that was for everyone, there was for example an absorption course, where the students had to absorb ether resources as fast as possible.

It was only possible to change curriculum at 12 years old, after passing another psychological test, they could choose to continue on pure adventurer education, or they could go to a more specialized and harder one like patroller curriculum or ether professions.

‘For the ether professions, also called energy professions, it depends on planet availability, if you have an energy cook ready to teach then he’ll offer his service to the planet’s education system and teach a batch.’

The IGS thought of everything for their entire society to continue and smoothly transition to an interdimensional society, which was impressive from the point of view of Rune, a common citizen.

‘Evacuating planet…’ Rune of course learned about this subtle subject, gravity was supposedly fatal, so the IGS was evacuating planets for them to migrate to newly created stations with full experimental ether tech.

The only reason no one called for the end of the world and chaos didn’t spread everywhere was that as long as everyone had an avatar, they were fundamentally impossible to kill.

So if suddenly a planet’s gravity killed every inhabitant, then the IGS would just send an order to accelerate the migration process.

As he continued to read, he perceived familiar people, and it seemed they perceived him too, his twin little brothers Miri and Miro, as well as his twin little sisters Victoria and Floria came back home together.

He simply waved at them and smiled, nothing changed, he was back home, no matter if the era changed.

After waving at him, surprisingly they rushed to his bedroom, ‘Do they need help with their homework?’, that was the only reason they dared to knock on his door before.

He was a silent big brother, he also proved that he never refused to help them, so in the end, he was a pushover big brother who loved his cute little brothers and sisters.

“Rune, come spar with us!”

“...”

Even with big dreams and ambitions, it seemed that his indecisive and shy side still existed, and the result of this was Miri and Miro waiting for his answer while Rune’s brain blacked out and answered in the best way possible.

“Ok.”

…

So here he was, with Miro preparing to rush against him while he could see with his perception sphere that all the family was watching.

‘I told you Ether, I don’t need fame, so leave me alone and just open your dimensions to me.’

Self-derision was his go-to in such an atypical situation.

It wasn’t overconfidence that he was feeling, but unless they learned for 24 hours each day and had masters teach them tricks on how to battle superior opponents, then they had no chance against him.

Even his stats were nearly maxed out, so sparring with him was literally a defective law version of adult versus children.

‘Restrain yourself, you are at competent body control, maybe even proficient, wait… I’m the big brother, right? So I can just ask right?’

“Want me to beat you as fast as I can or do you want to try and breach my defense?” Maybe he succeeded in correctly transmitting his confidence as Miro answered,

“Let me try your defense!”

“Then you can go when you like,” Rune’s placid tone signaled the beginning of the battle or show-match at this level.

Miro rushed to him, he didn’t use any momentum technique and engaged him in close combat, a simple punch, a combo with a kick, a momentum focus on his second leg, a rotation, and another kick.

Rune didn’t evade, he blocked. He wasn’t of a mind to flee, his little brother wanted to try himself, and he was here to help.

He blocked with his hands, sometimes he had to use momentum to correctly block a jumped kick or a sweeping kick.

Miro was really into it, as Rune couldn’t retaliate, he could just combo his moves and focus on creating opportunities, but he had started the new curriculum for only a month, so he simply was a beginner.

“Take this, super punch!” And his super punch was the proper form of a punch, his feet were correctly placed, his torso rotation was good, he even mixed in momentum at the start to accelerate the whole.

Rune estimated the punch to have 8 strength behind it, and that was the multiplied effect, Miro himself appeared to have 10 strength, so the power of this fist should primarily come from the momentum stat.

To test his expertise, Rune aligned his body to execute a perfect block, he even used artificial gravity momentum to increase his weight.

The result was the punch stopping after pushing Rune for a few centimeters, which was witness to the power behind this punch.

‘I didn’t take any health damage, I blocked it so easily?’

“My turn!” Miri exclaimed from the spectators' side and rushed at Rune

Without saying anything, Miro retreated and got back to the spectators' zone.

‘In a way, that’s a legendary family activity isn’t it?’ Rune then began to spar with Miri.

What surprised him was Victoria and Floria wanting to spar too, but as the big brother and having already sparred with Miro and Miri, how could he say no?

So he sparred with his two little sisters.

…

‘So he really went to a training camp…’

Florence Tudor was the name of Rune’s mother, her maiden name was Florence Atuvia, she was 39 years old according to the human calendar.

Her firstborn son was one of the seven mysteries of their household, he had a very peculiar mentality that he developed through watching different entertainment that he received from his father during his childhood.

Her husband was the silent type, explaining from where her son got his silent mentality, after all, children take after their parents.

She could still remember when Rune was only 5 years old and “secretly” intruded into his father's room every day to watch him play video games, when her husband conceded and allowed him to play he was like an angel.

They didn’t have experience raising children and Rune was a marvelous first-child, preparing them for the future double twins in short succession.

The endless nights with the impossible-to-calm-down double twins marked them as different from their already independent big brother.

And in the end, he became a model for his sisters and brothers, while they were scolded for their nonsense, he spent as much time as he wanted on his own computer.

While they were limited on the number of candy they could take, he could take as much as he wanted.

‘He always managed himself so that we never had anything to say.’

The best example was when he chose by himself the college and diploma he wanted, he did the automatic registration by himself and only asked for some documents.

After he tried to obtain them himself, of course, pity him that everything was digital in that era.

‘And now he’d gone to a training camp for 7 months, coming back stronger than his brothers and sisters who just started the new curriculum.’

She wasn’t only feeling a little weird, but also proud, he remained her son after all.

At the end of the spar, he showed his little brother and sisters a little bit of his personal energy training.

Floating energy shapes and intricate colored spheres rotated slowly, some bands of light appeared here and there, and in no time, dozens of spheres were rotating around Rune’s figure.

Colors that mixed and little explosions like miniature fireworks illuminated their perception sphere around the house’s backyard.

‘Didn’t he have a dream of becoming a fireworks maker when he was young?’ Rune probably didn’t remember but his mind and habits still existed.

When he was young and assisted at fireworks, a little dream was burned in his heart, but the only thing remaining after all those years was him going to the yearly civilization festival to feel the shockwaves of fireworks and the colorful explosion in the sky.

After he finished his demonstration and expended all his energy, he said goodbye and said that he was going to enter the Deep Void dimension so sparring would be difficult, but he always had his ears open so they could call him back if they wanted.

With this he was gone again, to follow his own path.

‘He’s old enough, he doesn't need advice.’

And internally, his mother was supporting him.