It was a blessing to have a family, that’s what his return back home inspired in him.

He also began his dream as an artist entertainer of shapes and colors, ‘I really liked those mini explosions, maybe I’ll train to make them better.’

But it was time.

He only had to sleep and then his second step on his journey to accomplish his dreams and ambition would begin.

Universe Ether (Deep Void Dimension Opening basis): +28%

As sleepiness invaded his mind, he made the ether density progress bar appear.

‘As everyone predicted, it accelerates with time,’ and on those thoughts, Rune fell asleep and slept like a baby, and not without reason.

Training never stopped for him, spiritual training even more so was the training that literally never stopped.

The first step only takes determination, the second step demands the same determination but even more so, it asks for competencies.

And the further he’d walk, the higher the competencies asked will be stringent.

…

Waking up, Rune felt strangely lethargic.

His mind was in disarray like he just woke up and interrupted a dream, that sort of feeling.

He remembered pieces of things, pieces of emotion, and pieces of scenery, and one of his principal motivations he kept firmly in mind whenever training became difficult.

‘An adventure without an end…’

It was more of an ideal than a concrete goal, but he still used those words to describe his core ambition.

Contrasting with the silent and relaxed atmosphere of the day he felt with his sphere, it was time for Rune to go and fight for his life.

Rune turned on his computer, got down the stairs, and drank a soft drink, then he was back, activating his playlist that he hadn’t heard in months.

He then switched all his awareness to his avatar and opened the dimensions window to the Deep Void option.

Dimensions

Deep Void

Able to bear ether life forms

Slightly unstable, dimensional anomaly possible

Tier 1 Perception 50% restriction

Tier 1 Momentum 50% restriction

The Deep Void Dimension was birthed soon after the Void Dimension, it is only a billionth of its size but has a dimensional link to the Void Dimension allowing ether density to come in but not out, explaining its ability to produce ether life forms.

The ether life forms born in it ended up becoming ether beasts that lived off the ether density, but with every successive generation, aggressive instinct took over. This behavior ended up becoming the majority.

Enter?

But different from last time, he chose to enter.

‘Yes.’

And the next instant, appearing in what looked exactly the same as the Void dimension, Rune chose a random direction and focused on moving at his maximum speed.

The talked-about restrictions of the dimension appeared as soon as he began to move, he was limited at half his stat for momentum, but surprisingly, his sphere didn’t lose half of its radius.

‘My ether soul specialty?’

That was the first thought that passed through Rune’s mind, till now, apart from making it abusively harder to manipulate, it didn’t increase the clarity, range, or any other things when he tried to compare with others.

‘So my specialty is to resist dimensional ether restriction on the perception sphere? Seems amazingly specialized and not something I’d have picked if I had the choice…’

‘But I need to compare it to the other specialties first, and also ask if someone has the same specialty as me.’

After planning what to do and test, he just continued on his way.

His current radius went from 500 meters to 275 meters, he resisted a relative 5% restriction to his perception, and it was with a supposed unactivated specialty.

His momentum, however, was suppressed as it should, from 500 meters to 250 meters per minute maximum.

The greatest impact it brought was the use of the momentum technique becoming 50% slower.

From the board, he learned that the Deep Void aggressive beasts were similarly under the same restriction, and only some beasts could go slightly beyond the limit, but it was always due to careful and instinctual use of momentum.

Those beasts were under careful observation, as they already informed the rest of the world that it was possible to go beyond your maximum limit of momentum, but even experts emitted only 2 hypotheses, or it was an ether soul case, or it was abusing from a short term explosion.

After those experts looked into the subject, they quickly determined there was a way to overuse momentum, but for a short period after that, the average speed was drastically reduced, so this case was then closed.

‘Another mystery unveiled, and another momentum technique to learn, why didn’t Utopia tell us during the camp? Well, not like we could have found how as nobody succeeded yet.’

Concluding this subject, he tried to absorb a random ether crystal he found floating, to see their value.

Opening his gathering log after absorbing one.

Absorbed ‘Ether crystal’, gained 98 EP

‘An ether crystal is still worth around 100 EP, it’s the correct amount according to the forum, so it’s useless for me to farm here. A single monster core equals 10 000 EP minimum after all.’

Following 2 hours of travel, Rune encountered his first ether life form.

A whale-like beast.

He activated his senses of color, smell, and sound in his perception sphere for a moment, but there was nothing majestic.

It was pure white, a smooth skin glowing with energy, it didn’t smell anything and the only sound was the friction between its muscles.

Deactivating his senses but letting color activated, he prepared for what was going to happen if he didn’t stumble by chance upon a peaceful one.

Approaching to see its reaction, upon sensing him approaching within 150 meters, surely with its own perception sphere, it rushed to him like a starved beast seeing a buffet.

‘I’ll follow the proper procedure first, I’m still a noob now.’

It was now confirmed that it wasn’t a peaceful beast, it was a bloodthirsty monster.

‘First its perception sphere, 150 meters, so 300 perception, then it’s momentum, 3 meters per second, so 350 momentum, now for judging its strength and cohesion.’

The first confrontation of Rune debuted with a collision without any technique, ‘300 strength?’

And upon hitting back he felt a large dampener on his transmitted strength, ‘500 cohesion?!’

Rune stumbled upon a tank whale, not the worst but far from the best first encounter, it was dangerous.

He immediately activated his reinforcement, and with a regeneration of 200 per minute, he could do the basic vibration reinforcement as much as he wanted.

Delivering punch after punch, the whale fought back but his own use of momentum was too exquisite, he was limited to 4 meters per second but he compensated by using the large whale body as support.

Its size was relatively large, as big as a true adult whale, so tens of meters for Rune to circle around and play with.

‘Delivering enough damage to overpower regeneration, the true problem of every explorer, makes me think I forgot to send my admission file to the adventurer’s society, ah, no worries.’

At some point Rune increased his energy usage so that he was in negative regeneration, he used reinforcement with tens of energy behind each boost in quick succession.

Rune could feel the counterforce of his own punch and kick, his momentum wasn’t powerful enough to keep him motionless and transmit all his strength.

He reduced his average punch, but he also sometimes created a platform and used it to make a 40 energy reinforced punch, and he succeeded in transmitting everything.

It was no wonder as he invested 10 energy into each platform to make sure they held on.

The whale sometimes struggled and tried berserk suicide exchanges that Rune immediately accepted, he had full physical stats, so why not.

And at some point, the whale stopped moving, to confirm that he wasn’t trolled onboard, he took a small part of ripped flesh and ate it.

He activated his sense of taste for a moment but it was just what it seemed to be, flesh, not something surprising.

After 10 minutes, the whale-like monster started to disintegrate into nothing, but that was only with human eyes.

With his sphere he could see smoke emanating from the whale body, it was created from the ether, and it returned to the ether.

‘The monster core.’

Only a simple round stone remained of the whale, but even it was disintegrating at a slow speed.

‘The concentrated essence of the refined ether by a life, once universe life form can transform into ether life form they too will leave a core behind when they die…’

Looking at the core in his hand, he closed his eyes but he couldn’t cut all his perception as it would be too dangerous, so he focused at 90% on absorbing the core, and the remaining 10% on maintaining vigilance.

Absorbed ‘Monster flesh’, gained 7 EP

Absorbed ‘Monster core’, gained 11 516 EP

As a celebration, Rune invested those EP in energy regeneration.

Avatar (Basic Rank) (Tier 1)

EP: 13 308

Stats Total: 4 121

Health: 500

Health Regeneration: 500

Strength: 500

Cohesion: 500

Energy: 220

Energy Regeneration: 201

Purity: 200

Affinity: 500

Momentum: 500

Perception: 500

‘I think I read something about a way to evaluate the remaining health, but it’s been proven that it was a scam and the creator was disillusioned such a shame.’

There was no HP bar, no identity spell, or similarly useful spell yet for this problem, you could only fight and fight, no time limit, no signs that your opponent had only 1 health remaining, no aggressive ether beast ever fled.

Everything combined was why they were named monsters.

Rune continued his journey by following the direction the whale was moving towards.

30 minutes later, he encountered a similar-looking whale, of course, there weren’t only whale-looking monsters, there were serpents-looking ones, ball-shaped ones, one head four limbs looking ones, biodiversity was enormous in the Deep Void dimension.

Same as the previous one, as soon as Rune entered its perception range, it rushed to...

‘To do what? Eat me? Kill me for no reason? I’ll check that after this fight.’

Simple curiosity led to large knowledge, the wiki was full of answers just waiting for him, he just had to know what he was searching for.

Rune felt enamored with fighting in the way he decided to do it, using his own fighting experience, he could suppress the monster so much it couldn’t even express half of its potential.

‘I’ll never stop training so that it’ll never happen to me, and if it happens to me, I’ll be sure it’s against monsters who have minimum 2 times my total stats.’

The fighting camp truly prepared him for what was to come, monsters were controlled by their instinct, and this instinct was sometimes the instinct of a genius, answering his combo like it knew everything and everything was a staged play.

Kicking its stomach area, it rotated and a fin slapped Rune away. Punching its face, it expelled a beam of energy, and it truly did damage.

Rune hoped it was a fluke, but this whale clearly knew its way around energy beams.

However, if it was only energy beams, he could tank them and even evade some after what he was subjected to in the camp, the Nelo energy beams version of the competent hell’s room of body control.

It wasn't a marathon, it was a sprint, dish as much damage as possible in a short time, and take less than what you inflicted.

Using a 50 energy move, like platform and reinforced punch combo, was worth more than using the same amount of energy multiple times.

Like how Nelo compensated for his lacking efficiency with a condensed energy sphere, quantity led to a forcefully elevated quality.

Punch after punch, the whale couldn’t repulse him, it didn’t have a spell for it, it didn’t have the technique for it.

The combat ended 3 minutes later, Rune overpowered its regeneration over 3 minutes, which was amazing compared to the average tens of minutes long fights told on the board.

‘I should start to use more energy in my reinforcement.’

Checking the martial supreme dojo forum to be sure, he once again read that only your own mastery made a 500 energy reinforcement possible.

‘I’ll do a 150 energy reinforcement next, increase the training and challenge of the fight, perfect.’

Continuing on his path of killing monsters, he gained insight after insight on how to better himself,

‘I need to learn energy wings, everything is fine but my speed sucks, if I learn how to have them I’ll be able to boost my travel speed, which is useful for all the objectives and my own comfort.’

As he battled, he progressively learned how to make energy wings, the genius who invented it was still optimizing it, and he received government help with a team of fellow researchers and an official position in the new energy institute.

Rival groups also appeared, but the new energy institute was very ferocious when it came to making certain you couldn’t just release a copy and be done with it.

Those rival teams would only be given a patent if they did something game-changing.

The result was that the spell for energy wings was changed each week, and multiple versions were released with different names to respond to different needs.

Rune opted to learn the battle version “Battle Wings”, which used 120 energy per minute, and the ultra boosted version “Galaxy Wings”, which used 300 energy per minute, it was the maximum spell power they could reach with the time and development time they had.

They just found a way to throw as much energy as possible and ignore the complexities associated, and it worked.

The spell itself was a witness to how much the ether spell field was only beginning to take off, inefficiencies everywhere, primitive making, incomplete theories…

The most optimized spell they had was the basic version “Leisure Wings”, it used 40 energy per minute but was still half the power of the battle wings, but with a third of the cost.

Half! A third!

Using the battle wings in battle led to additional damage overall as fundamentally, energy wings was a spell transforming energy into acceleration.

And adding 10 meters per second to a punch of course raised its impact.

The more he fought, the easier he found it to try things he wanted to try, he knew what a veteran monster whale would do, so it became just testing moves and optimizing every move after that.

Following the direction the whales were going was an inexact science, only after 3 days of battles did he finally arrive at the whale nest.

A nest was simply a dangerous ground, often with solid matter involved, where ether life form liberated their ether, making it a conducive place for others of the same species to spontaneously be birthed by the ether.

Nests were open-air reproduction places, with no sex involved.

‘Will humans be able to do that? Fascinating and disturbing at the same time this thing…’

There was no proof that humans and other species would be able to do that, but there was also no proof that they’d not be able to.

‘The forum told every citizen of the IGS to gather 10 kilometers above the nest, and see if people were waiting to group up, let’s go and see.’

The Deep Void dimension was only a billionth the size of its counterpart, the Void dimension, and over time, more and more people entered it, from heroes to commoners.

Preemptively, the IGS made a simple plan, if you couldn’t take on a nest alone, which was impossible in one time unless you harassed it for an entire month as there were hundreds of monsters ready to fight in them, then gather on “top” of it.

‘There’s really people.’

Rune arrived and with his sphere he detected a group of 6 people waiting or absorbing resources.

Coming close he received a private message to inform him of the forum used to communicate.

Once he entered, he assessed the situation before saying that he’d be engaging immediately as he was here to train, which got him some weird looks.

Rune then directly engaged with the most faraway patrolling whales.

In 3 days, he absorbed on average 2.5 monster cores per hour, with 20 minutes between each encounter and some minutes to settle it and absorb the core.

This resulted in his gain of 2 002 648 EP, a consequent gain in his opinion in such a short period of time.

Rune continued on his path of investing in energy regeneration after discovering how much of it was used by the most powerful wings spell.

Avatar (Basic Rank) (Tier 1)

EP: 15 956

Stats Total: 4 321

Health: 500

Health Regeneration: 500

Strength: 500

Cohesion: 500

Energy: 220

Energy Regeneration: 401

Purity: 200

Affinity: 500

Momentum: 500

Perception: 500

When he successfully cleared the lone whales, he was finally ready for his first serious battle, he also told that he was going for the nest to the people who were around.

They also sometimes appeared to fight lone whales, but this time they tried to dissuade him, but he already made up his mind.

Invoking the galaxy wings variant, he plunged towards the nest of the whale.

With his sphere, he could see that the whole ether of the zone was grey, a smoky grey, it didn’t have any effect on him, but thinking about what resulted from this smoky grey ether made his human brain think of strange things.

Not at all involuntary see…

But he was pulled out from his over-imaginative thoughts as multiple whales rushed towards him, how could he dare intrude on their nest after all was probably on their mind.

He pushed his way through, using a reinforced punch on the first whale who wanted to show its power, making a dent in its health while sending it flying for tens of meters.

He didn’t change targets, he kept focusing on the same one, the parallel use of galaxy wings and reinforcement was taxing but worth it.

Like he did during his trip here, particularly as of late near the end, he made short work of the first whale.

1 minute was enough to drain its health completely, it stopped moving to prove what just happened.

Rune ignored the core and continued on his rampage, after the first one, he started to temporize to prepare for his next offensive.

A 150 energy strike was enough to take the majority of their health, Rune then just had to use reinforcement at the lowest intensity to finish them and optimize his own energy expenditures.

There was no need to use a trump card like energy armor, they would only substitute for one strike with Rune’s efficiency in their creation anyways.

Additionally, compressed energy was less efficient to take hits than health was. It didn’t have a cohesion stat linked to it, after all, purity was very much an offensive stat.

After half an hour of battle, the majority of it delayed and temporized, he was joined by the 6 people who only peaked their heads to see how he was doing.

They used guerilla tactics to compensate for their lacking mastery training, the current era of energy spells of course wasn’t advanced enough to allow for buffing, support, or energy transmission spells.

If it was even possible.

A lot of challenges had to be overcome to acquire knowledge on how to even produce an effect typically found only in video games, and currently, not one person had even a usable version.

In all that, Rune’s place, or class, was a warrior, if the apocalypse came, he would fight it and buy time for the IGS to develop those spells and allow the new generation to grow.

‘Let’s try this.’

He wanted to test something he saw on the board.

He compressed his energy in a spear, a rough but very sharp spear. As it was just pure manipulation and no spell matrix was used, it was slow and inefficient.

‘If you send a strike deep enough to strike a critical area like the brain, though you’d not have killed the beast, its body would stop moving.’

So he did the test.

He used all he had, from the massively inefficient galaxy wings that added a massive acceleration compared to that of the battle wings, to creating an energy-compressed platform at the moment of impact to transmit everything he had, and finally, a 150 energy reinforcement on his whole body.

The spear pierced through the skin easily, then Rune freed it and let the spear pierced the entirety of the whale, from front to end.

It stopped moving. It was still alive.

He then proceeded to kill it using normal punches and kicks.

Two hours later, the group had to retreat, Rune included, their regeneration couldn’t sustain them from the continuous assault of what felt like, and probably was, hundreds of monsters.

Of course, they were pursued, but Rune and some of the members knew how to escape, be faster than them, get out of their range, then go out of their trajectories.

This day marked Rune’s first time having to retreat, having to retreat from something he couldn’t win against, and it’d not be the last.

Far from it.