[Rune: So what are their names?]

[Nelo: Seven Storms, Phantom Squad, Maniac Band, Mystical Company, among others]

[Gar: You forgot Rising Hope, Surge, Delirium, Training Lunatics, they all are very imaginative]

[Rune: And did we start to decide ours? A preliminary selection?]

[Utopia: The Beyonders! The Ascenders! The Dimensional Fellowship!]

[Adreana: I’d like our group’s name to be a little more inconspicuous, The Friends Symphony?]

[Astryde: To be more inconspicuous we should take a perfectly common name, like Enigma Company, or Unknown Soldiers]

[Arik: It would bring even more attention down the line…]

[Rune: We need to find a name that really suits us, something we could simply introduce ourselves with, I don’t want to be annoyed every time someone asks me what’s the name of my adventurer’s group]

[Rune: Hello, I’m from the Phantom Squad, please sleep on your two ears tonight]

[Rune: I’m vetoing every name with more than 1 word in it, good luck]

[Utopia: Don’t run like a coward! Take this! The Omega! The Rapture! The Armageddon!]

[Adreana: The Stars]

[Nelo: The Midnight]

[Rune: The Archaic, The Arcanic]

[Gar: The Prime, The Mysterious]

[Astryde: Those are just words that passed through your mind! You didn’t put any of your feelings in them!]

[Arik: To be to the point, we should create a name not part of the language, more like an intent, this way when we say our name in the future through an energy intended voice, the word will transform to be what we represent]

[Adreana: I concur, we should be prepared to be what we name ourselves with]

The current argument stemmed from some other adventurer’s group naming themselves, and some in the little group didn’t want to let their name be empty.

They wanted to have a sub-identity apart from being members of the Tireless.

[Utopia: Anyway I came because my mother told me Rune’s theory was correct]

[Rune: Sound effect, mouth open wide]

[Arik: Did you just drop the bombshell defining the new era like this?]

[Astryde: Oh my Cosmic Deity]

[Gar: Wut?]

[Utopia: So, firstly, the IGS is already prepared to announce the truth anytime, but they want to evacuate the planets first and also cement the authority of the Adventure’s Society, the 3 path organizations, and the patrollers.

You could say that they discovered the truth soon after the “awakening” of the Ether Law and the Ether Wiki became accessible, it seems that this theory appeared multiple times in the IGS’s leader office.

And following the saying, one time is pure happenstance, two times is a coincidence and three times is a pattern, it was accepted as truth after 10 previously eminent leaders contacted the IGS to say this theory.]

[Utopia: And now the crispy part like Rune said, it was likely omitted by the announcement that the Ether Law didn’t exactly “awaken”, and if you check the intent content of the first announcement, then it’s just perfect, do you want me to copy-paste the first intent sentence we received?

Fragmented Defective Ether Law successfully patched up, rebooting the dependent entity system to accommodate new changes.

Yup.

The IGS doesn’t have a special research zone that started studying the ether a thousand years ago or something like that, but the reasoning shown by Rune is exemplary from only one of the most important pieces he had found.

Essentially, yes, once the ether density is enough, our global system will connect with all other global systems born before, or it has a chance to happen, what will really happen remains a mystery.

What is confirmed is that there will be discrepancies appearing as we’ll make contact with intelligent life forms from other dimensions, be it from other Universe dimensions or natives from those dimensions.

And when that happens, either we’ll be lucky and the global system information board will have enough power to connect us to their information board, or there will be an empty period where our global system will not fuse with the greater world global system.

Also, it’s a nearly 100% chance that the global system will integrate the second contact is made, so the second option is pretty irrational, I was just trying to be a conspirationist]

[Arik: So our home Universe dimension had nothing special, and we can only wait, maybe all the spells we are researching are the most basic of the basics for those more advanced dimensions…]

[Utopia: Yeah, nothing changed, just that we don’t know when we’ll have access to their knowledge, and training is still the one thing that will never hurt you long term, it’s not the spell that you’re training, it’s your energy efficiency!]

[Gar: Oh I’m pumped up! When will the primary ether sub-dimension open? If it opened now I would choose to enter!]

[Nelo: We’re all indecisive in this group, so everyone knows we’ll all wait for the second opening, even if it’s in 2 years]

[Rune: Indecisive, maybe that’s a good start for our group’s name]

[Astryde: Maybe…]

[Adreana: It wouldn’t come out right, the Indecisive Group]

[Utopia: Why not use wordplay and settle for undecided?]

[Arik: I feel that it really transmits what this group is about, who are we? The Undecided Group]

[Gar: So funny! I agree!]

[Nelo: No complaint, I can identify myself in this]

[Rune: What’s your group name? It’s Undecided sir… Hehe, creepy awkward laugh sound effect]

On the day where the little group of friends learned about what the future reserved for them, they decided on their name.

The Undecided.

…

Exhaustion clouding his mind, Rune was fighting surrounded by slimes, his tired but determined face could serve to show what a true veteran should look like.

He wasn’t worried, they were the last, soon the nest would be cleaned and cleared.

Having recently finished his variant fighting style, he concluded that with his current capabilities he couldn’t refine it more than he already did.

He applied a new reinforcement technique he learned from the forum, it wasn’t largely used but still existed, and Rune found it to be the most appropriate for his variant fighting style.

He linked his nurturing reinforcement mantle to his energy pool, and using what he learned, he opened a hole of very little size and an annex pocket to contain what flowed out of his energy pool.

Now, according to the size of the hole, his nurturing reinforcement shape would always be filled to the number he chose.

Rune made a hole size and an intermediary pocket to accommodate 10 energy.

Now he didn’t have to manipulate his energy, he was always in the energy-intensive vibration reinforcement mode, so he rushed toward the closest slime, collision, punch, kick, punch, ripping out the core, evading, evading, evading again.

Evading a lot, waiting for his energy to regenerate, then using it to continue ripping the slime into pieces and burning them with the energy he constantly used.

After he used, he regenerated, after he killed, he didn’t back down, another slime died.

Only 6 remainings, they weren’t a challenge anymore, their attack method too predictable.

Another slime tried to swallow him, he evaded, then 15 strikes later it was dead.

2 slimes approached, he singled one out, and 14 strikes later it died.

He kept close to the remaining slime as he circled around it for 30 seconds, regenerating enough energy to deliver another slime-killing combo.

The slime reacted but Rune chose to deliver his strike and use one of his uncovered arms to mitigate the damage to his energy armor in exchange for health.

His perception sphere, fighting his permanent bending, made another exhaustion wave appear in his mind.

A 2-second absence and he found himself inside a slime, his body reacted and used 200 energy to reinforce a kick, it exploded the slime from the inside.

His energy armor totally dissipated, so he took the time to recreate it from the spell matrix up before engaging with slimes that he played with for a whole minute.

‘Time to end this.’

Rune killed one slime, then a second one, the 2 remaining were the last defenders of their nest.

Terminating their mindless life allowed Rune to finally land on the nest, nothing extraordinary, a regular lifeless large piece of rock, he didn’t even want to move anymore.

He simply created a foamy energy mattress and after using his momentum and stopping resisting the push of his sphere, his mind deactivated everything.

It was the end of the second period of Rune’s adventure.

…

Rune didn’t wake up for 3 days, like muscles after having done a marathon, his spirit was damaged from overexertion and needed time to heal and reinforce itself.

It was natural progress given as a reward for his hard work.

His spirit becoming stronger would of course have consequences for all other spiritual manipulation, but it wouldn’t cut the time needed to truly manipulate them, only replace a bit of expertise by pure force of spirit.

The good news was that when he searched for more info on the slime’s nest, he stumbled upon the still-being-completed Deep Void map released by the IGS government and the coordinates corresponding.

Since the time rifts leading to the Deep Void map appeared, the IGS didn’t need long to exploit it, the average value of ether resources in it was a little bit higher after all.

And anyways, every rift was systematically exploited with an outpost built on the 2 sides, maybe someday those rifts would be used as pure transportation portals.

He couldn’t locate himself before but now he could, it was really a miracle that he was only some millions of kilometers from a rift, and because good news never came alone, he wasn’t that far from the dimension’s boundary.

And because never 2 without 3, he could also use the board to locate where a nest of peaceful ether beasts was, so he could now prepare his plan in further detail and even prepare an itinerary if everything was clear and precise.

Rune also checked his dimension cooldown, it was gone, if he so wanted or desired, he could return home and take a break for a month.

‘I’m far from done yet, I didn’t observe the boundary, didn’t raze 7 more nests, didn’t attain 10 000 monster cores, and didn’t gather 8 more rare resources.’

All in all, his adventure only just began, so he used the galaxy wings and rushed to the nearest monster’s nest according to the IGS map, and he truly positioned himself correctly.

He started to encounter scorpion-like monsters, and they were aggressive.

Just by observation alone, Rune could feel excitement rushing in, the complexity of their attacks would push new boundaries on his own fighting style.

He simply rushed in after making sure his energy armor was full, without knowing, he reached 60% efficiency on energy compression, now his armor protected him from 300 damages if he used all his 500 energy to create it.

The lone scorpion in question he targeted could scare every child in existence.

Its exoskeleton and menacing segmented tail ending in a stinger made him be an unstoppable segmented tank, a pair of grasping pincers and 3 other pairs of legs truly made it to be a dangerous monster.

The scorpion monster rushing towards him put Rune on the defensive, he was in for the long run, so he should prepare to confront it at their best while being alone against many.

From the way the scorpion was circling around Rune, it could be concluded that it wasn’t a stupid slime intelligence level, using always the same opening move.

Obviously, it was still a stupid monster, Rune being ready to defend, he only had to wait for it to come and be his training dummy and unveil all its species secrets.

After circling around Rune for a good 20 seconds, it moved forward and tightened the circle, and after another 20, it did its first attack.

Giant, from his perspective, pincers approached and they were screaming that blocking them directly was a bad idea, so he could only evade them.

The more he practiced with momentum, the more he realized that he only scratched the surface of its potential, he would need months more of experience before becoming able to control 500 momentum stat points, and every additional point in the future will expand its possibilities.

In the Undecided Group, Utopia was the expert in momentum manipulation, Rune viewed himself as more and more of an energy compression expert as time went by.

He didn’t choose, but platforms and energy armor, the support pillars of his fighting style made him practice this discipline a lot more than his other friends.

He didn’t know if his reports influenced the fighting style of other members, but he was sure that his emphasis on energy armor was correctly transmitted.

In a blink of an eye and Rune was 2 meters away from his previous position, and the next moment, he was punching the underside of the scorpion.

The scorpion reacted by contracting its 3 remaining pairs of legs, but Rune kicked and escaped their grasp.

Engaging again with a pincer attack, Rune evaded by the topside this time, wanting to see the scorpion use its tail.

But as his sphere reacted.

Something unbelievable happened.

Rune found the tail stinger piercing his unarmored leg.

‘!!!’

So surprised by the turning of the event, he directly tried to escape, but the pincers from the scorpion were already there.

Having no choice left, he could only use a 300 energy reinforced punch, and with a 50 energy platform, he punched the hell out of the scorpion.

What he didn’t expect to happen happened, it seemed that the scorpion tail stinger had reverse spikes on it, and they adhered to the interior of his body very hard.

So he was also sent flying by his own strike.

He didn’t know his remaining health but Rune wasn’t going to risk it, so he used his remaining 100 energy for yet another reinforcement and another platform, but in the opposite direction of where he punched.

The scorpion was again sent flying, but using the platform he just created, he could feel his body being pulled by the stinger grip on his body as he resisted with all his strength.

Finally, it exploded with muscles and blood as it was forcefully pulled out by force, the state of Rune’s leg was miserable.

Rune never thought the situation would degenerate so fast, and to be sure, also to recover from the mental shock, he kept away for 30 seconds.

With his health and energy regenerated by half their maximum amount, he neared the disintegrating scorpion monster body, taking the core.

‘Yup, I’ll absorb this one, also stinger equal apocalypse okay.’

Rune was still in a state of shock so his emotions were muted by pumping adrenaline, but after half an hour of non-stop thinking about what he just got through, he finally decided to take a break and practice his energy fireworks magic.

…

[Rune: That was clearly the most traumatic experience I had till now, for all my life, if you ever encounter scorpion monsters, prepare yourself to enter in a horror movie if their stinger pierce into your body]

[Gar: Our lives aren’t at stake like you, so our reaction would be different]

[Nelo: Use only spells, from what you’re saying they attack faster with their stinger than you can react]

[Rune: I tried to search for a bullet-time awareness manipulation but I found nothing, I don’t know how to respond]

[Utopia: I only recently started my own adventure, but if I were to encounter them I would try and surpass my past self, and only stop when I succeed!]

[Rune: No momentum tips?]

[Utopia: No, but maybe this determination is the key to progress your awareness, if you push your sensitiveness beyond the limit of 100% awareness focus, or anything imitating it, it would become easy, and you’d acquire a new heroic technique]

‘Well, that’s better than going spellcaster or feeling sorry for myself and playing with energy fireworks for days, let’s get to work.’

Making a last 2 layers fireworks explode in an explosion of vibrant red with neon green mini projectiles, he stopped everything and focused on his ether soul, the center of his awareness.

The idea of overloading one’s senses was not new, it could be naturally done after cutting every other sense, this way the remaining awareness would only have one sense for all its power.

For the pre-Ether Law era, the idea of souls and awareness was alien, but now you only had to empty your mind and focus on seeing your inner-self, and your ether soul would point the tip of its nose from where it was hidden.

The soul, from Rune’s perspective, was a mass of air, but the air had a very obtuse white color to it, the color of his energy when it was just produced.

He knew it was only his own perspective, others said they looked different, but was it related to one’s specialty? No answer was given by the Ether Wiki.

The awareness was also the same air that constituted his ether soul, and even now, watching carefully, Rune was able to see the places he changed.

He activated the color sense of his perception sphere, he deactivated his sense of pain, he also deactivated his body’s hearing sense, taste sense, smell sense, even his sight was deactivated.

The current state he was in was optimized for a long period of immersion in a dimension where those senses were useless.

He wasn’t an ether life form, so they didn’t do anything except being activated and consuming awareness.

His current problem was a double issue, he first had to find the part of his ether soul that corresponded to sensitivity as the reaction speed sense simply didn’t exist, it was directly linked to his perception stat.

And he also had to find a way to overload it without deactivating his other primordial senses like simply his whole perception sphere. Because the perception sphere also had a part of the soul responsible for it.

Till now he had always found other things to do besides manipulating and training his awareness, he wasn’t purposely delaying, he was setting his priorities right.

He recalled when he wanted to hear music so much that he chose awareness manipulation in place of farming optimization, which was also setting his priorities right.

‘Back to basics then, let’s observe this empty mass of air for hours while I make changes to it, I’m so lucky I’ll probably be able to directly do what I want.’