After somehow finding the place in his ether soul corresponding to sensitivity, and not the empathetic one, this one existed and was very strange, Rune was now confronted with the true problem of his solution.

He took 5 days to find the right place but his awareness manipulation mastery was nowhere near enough to shift 50% of his awareness to a single sense without using the “turning off other senses” method.

So he was doing a training he read on the board, by cutting all but 2 senses, his perception sphere and one of its senses, which he decided to be color, he could in real-time shift and observe what happened.

For this he created spheres of different colors and let them suspended near him, now with his sphere and color sense only, at an equal split of 50/50, he could see much more about the colors.

Trying to shift from his sphere to the color sense, that, however, demanded fineness.

Not cutting the other off was like when he tried not to activate the awareness switch back then with his avatar, but a million times more sensitive.

It demanded so much control that Rune couldn’t understand how awareness experts did it, those n*tjobs probably only did awareness since the beginning, and even when they explained it was like reading the Necronomicon.

‘If your control of awareness is too low and you want to quickly elevate your mastery in it, then an available shortcut is to form a net with awareness threads between all your senses to mitigate the ripples caused by directly controlling the awareness.’

‘Then use peaceful imagery to make sure your mind is completely empty, a simple thought, and all your work will stop.’

‘Once you obtain the ratio you want you can let your construct go and it will act like the senses you overloaded or diminished are still in their normal state… Yeah of course, completely logical.’

Rune knew how to form an energy thread, but an awareness thread? He felt like he just read an explanation on how to get rich quickly, a complete scam by people who didn’t understand what they were talking about.

Fortunately, he was saved by the gong or a notification from the Tireless forum.

[FriendlyLurker58: The primary ether sub-dimension is open, for all courageous true heroes, your path is all traced, good luck, I’ll support you from this forum. Fight!]

[FriendlyLurker6: Oh yeah, good luck heroes, you shoulder the hopes and dreams of the whole forum! Fight!]

The friendly jokes really helped Rune to get past his momentary frustration at those awareness experts.

But he also knew that he didn’t have anything to do with the opening of this dimension, the next one maybe, but not this one.

So he got back to making… trying to make awareness threads. And insulting experts behind their back.

…

The condition to enter the newly accessible dimension was stringent, but also fair, integrating with your avatar.

Only those who prepared at least one month in advance could enter, and it turned out they weren’t a minority to have prepared for it.

Companies, civilizations, groups, no one wanted to possibly miss the key to becoming a tier 2 and a way to know the advancement of one’s masteries.

A social environment like Rune’s one was not the rule, it was an exception, the Tireless forum and the Undecided group were special cases from the perspective of the IGS and the Adventurer’s Society.

Compared to them, so many trillions of avatars, commoners, heroes, and patrollers wanted to enter to unlock their masteries window as soon as possible.

Gaining their independence? It was secondary, the awakening of one’s soul? It was also secondary.

Everyone had different motivations to go there, Rune for example was disinterested in it because he was preparing for his soul specialty and he didn’t want to be a front-liner.

But what the world didn’t know was how short or how long the time where this dimension existed was.

And their concerns were right, the access to it was closed after 8 hours and it was at that moment that another truth was confirmed.

After the dimension collapsed, like expected, the ether density of the universe dimension exploded once more.

Universe Ether (Primary Ether Sub-Dimension Opening basis): +24%

The people that entered were ejected to the Universe dimension with the same sickness that everyone talked about, the dimensional sickness.

Like what Rune experienced, the effect of teleportation and moving between dimensions with one’s original body was an ignoble experience.

Nothing could prevent or treat it, and some even became traumatized by it, the sensation of their body warping and mixing needed to be treated afterward with the help of a psychologist.

But with this return also came information about what the masteries window looked like, the effect of soul specialty, and what independence meant, information that was fed to the board and the wiki.

And in turn, those information were taken by the Tireless forum and transmitted to the Undecided.

But as just a minority, they couldn’t affect the situation, they could only discuss it with excitement, knowing that the next time it opened, they could enter with peace of mind.

…

Rune paused to read all the new information, he used the Ether Wiki to only have objectively true sentences. It wasn’t some hours that would ruin his chance to create an awareness thread.

‘The masteries window can only be acquired after awakening one’s soul and gaining independence, the tier 1 masteries segment has 9 individual mastery sub-divided in 3 categories by groups of 3, physical fundamental, energy fundamental and spiritual fundamental.’

‘Having access to the masteries window and gaining a specialty is a sign of becoming an independent entity, where before your ether soul was too weak for the global system to recognize you as an entity by yourself.’

‘You’ll now be the master of your path, still being able to access some part of the global system such as the status window without being in the range of your native dimension.’

‘A soul specialty comes from the life lived, it’s defined by the major events of a person’s life, the best example are universe level high athletics, where their profession was marked on their soul.’

‘A runner will have more chance of developing a specialty linked to momentum or strength whereas, someone who miraculously survived an accident will have more chance to get a specialty linked to health, health regeneration, or maybe even cohesion.’

Surprised by how complete and simple everything appeared to be, he entered the Undecided forum and saw that Nelo posted what the masteries window looked like.

[Astryde: Nelo said he’s going to post a picture that he took slash stole from someone who opened his masteries window]

[Nelo: The masteries window will open and show you this screen from what I gathered]

[Nelo:

Masteries

Tier 1 Masteries

Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement: Tier 1 Level 0

Physical Fundamental: Fighting Instinct: Tier 1 Level 0

Physical Fundamental: Body Control: Tier 1 Level 0

Energy Fundamental: Fine Manipulation: Tier 1 Level 0

Energy Fundamental: Grand Manipulation: Tier 1 Level 0

Energy Fundamental: Energy Compression: Tier 1 Level 0

Spiritual Fundamental: Perception Control: Tier 1 Level 0

Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division: Tier 1 Level 0

Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation: Tier 1 Level 0]

[Nelo: And your specialized stat name will appear below your name, yes, your name, not avatar anymore, in your status, yes, status, not avatar window, along with the special effect associated with it if you focus on it, the IGS created a forum where everyone can share their specialty, it’s very various]

[Gar: Easy, I expected a lot more]

[Rune: And there’s no problem? No more info on independence? The wiki can describe what independence means but not the consequences of gaining independence]

[Arik: It’s only been a day since they came back, to be sure we would need to wait months maybe before understanding the effects]

[Utopia: No need to wait, the answer is already there, to gain independence means that you don’t need an avatar anymore to act in your place, the avatar window is just gone]

[Rune: So it really happened, then what’s the use of upgrading the rank of one’s avatar?]

[Utopia: Nothing, it was all the Compensation Law, it used quota to facilitate our entry into the Void dimension by bestowing us with an avatar to create if we didn’t create an avatar we would still have a status. It’s just that the Compensation Law “forced” us a bit to create an avatar and not go explore the Void with our only body]

[Astryde: So currently, Rune, Utopia, and I are doing what everyone will be forced to do in the future now that they’re independent?]

[Utopia: Let’s stop talking about this subject, a comparison isn’t something we need to be proven right, only by always improving ourselves will it show whether we’re right or not]

[Rune: Yes president of the league of heroes, master Utopia]

Rune got everything he wanted, now he could keep training on trying to overload his sphere’s sensitivity in hope of becoming able to react to the scorpion’s stinger strike.

…

The end of the 18th month was not the day where Rune succeeded in creating awareness threads.

A long time, that was the time he invested into trying to do it, he wasn’t archenemy with the scorpion monsters, but if he could have sensitivity in a permanent state of overload, it wouldn’t only benefit his fight against the scorpion monsters.

‘Sometimes, you have to take matters into your own hands.’

Rune had enough, it wasn’t like training his perception in the background, awareness training was something he could only do actively by itself.

So he decided to continue his adventure, he didn’t know if he was going to ignore the scorpion or take them on, but he certainly wasn’t going to wait anymore.

‘Ignoring them is best, but I’ll come back.’

Rune re-applied pressure on his sphere, trying to bend it, and used the galaxy wings to take another path.

As he couldn’t fight the scorpion yet, he couldn’t risk going on a straight line to the dimension’s boundary

A little detour in the grand scheme of things wouldn’t change anything, Rune was just taking his time traveling through the Deep Void dimensions.

The Deep Void map published by the IGS was only useful as an indication of his position, so he had nothing to do now except just moving and waiting till the following monster appeared.

‘That’s boring, but training my awareness is even more boring, no matter if I like training or not.’

30 minutes of travel later, he found a new target, it looked like a snail, but not the regular snail, and this one, Rune was certain it was a monster.

The shell it was wearing was full of spikes, and its jelly body showed signs of what he considered to be slime flesh and acid.

This slime acid was the ether, or energy, radiating from its body, dangerous once in contact.

He was here because he couldn’t fight the scorpions yet, so he approached, and as planned, breaking the common sense that nails were slow, it rushed towards him as fast as any other monster he encountered.

Rune adopted a defensive posture and prepared to react.

The snail had a body slightly different from that of a slime, it was ready to use its slimy antennas as weapons, whip-striking at Rune.

Striking at the coming antenna, he completely blocked the damage without suffering any energy loss, but the next move was confusing.

The snail charged at him and opened its mouth, and a mouth that nobody would expect from a snail was revealed.

It was full of needle-like transparent teeth. Rune didn’t know what a bite from this mouth would do to his body, so he evaded it by using a platform worth 10 energy.

With momentum manipulation making him turn suddenly, he delivered a simple punch, testing if its flesh was like that of a slime. It wasn’t.

Rune felt the sensation of hitting something between water and skin, and upon contact, his fist who was uncovered by energy armor started to be bloodied.

Backing from his position and cutting the contact time short, he saw that his fist was bloodied, uniformly.

‘An acid armor? No, it’s impossible, it should be energy erosion, like that of the slime when it tried to melt me.’

Testing his hypothesis, he once again used a 10 energy platform and used his whole 500 strength with the correct posture to propel himself to the back of the snail, between its exposed head and its shell.

He then executed a kick with his unarmored leg, and as he expected, his foot also was “burned”.

He evaluated the damage to be pretty efficient, for something a monster could do, it had to be a simple spell or energy manipulation, so the damage was corresponding to minimal energy use, in the order of 10 energy.

He estimated the damage per second to be 5 health, so he didn’t have to modify his fighting style, he could use his health as the price to damage the snail if it was what was needed.

After this kick, he chained with a strike at the snail’s shell, and it felt like striking spaceship alloy.

Not discouraged, he prepared a 100 energy reinforcement and kicked with a platform as support, using the body of the snail as support would be the worst idea as he would just slip.

He didn’t know how it worked, but all his energy was absorbed by the shell, the snail didn’t even react and was already on the verge of whipping him with its antennas.

Rune was taken by surprise and could only use his energy armor to block the strike.

Finishing the fight in 2 minutes, Rune didn’t encounter any surprises, no miraculous sonic bite ripping his body in two or a particular use of its incredibly sturdy shell.

‘This, this is what a monster should be like for my level, if I can kill one in half a minute purely by normal strikes, then I would judge my level to be sufficient to fight the scorpions.’

Deep inside, however, he knew he would have long cleaned their nest before attaining this level.

…

2 weeks later.

Facing against the 12 remaining snails, the situation was nearly the same as back during the slime nest cleaning.

At the end of his rope from exhaustion but not retreating, his fighting style only marginally changed, but it signified that he was on the right track.

If he had access to a martial supreme dojo, he would consider himself a peak proficient fighter in body control and close combat, or fighting instinct as it was called by the Ether Law, about to attain the minimum requirement for expert level.

Fighting the snail monsters was an exercise of repetition at this point, he saw a move, he evaded, he sensed his surroundings, he struck, he struck again, he evaded.

His fighting instinct was being honed by the perpetual fighting, his management of his health and energy balance became more and more exemplary.

A snail lunged here, a normal strike to deviate it and follow it with a combo of 3 kicks, interrupted by another snail, he jumped using a platform, and using momentum he put himself behind his target, blocking the coming snail.

Pure learning had a limit, practical learning had not, more situations, more angles from which to approach, more moves available, new moves you never realized existed.

One snail died and Rune provoked a mini energy explosion, to do this he didn’t even need a spell matrix, something much easier to practice than awareness threading.

He accounted for the fact that the majority of the monsters, maybe all, didn’t have their color sense activated, so his diversion explosion was white, and it had peculiarity.

It remained in his sphere for a good 20 seconds, but it was as far as he got to try to make a practical ether smoke.

If they knew how to attribute more of their awareness to their perception sphere sense, this amateurish ether smoke would be easily seen through. But they couldn’t.

In those 20 seconds, he successfully finished his target snail and regenerated a lot, so his two balances were in the positive by a large amount.

After assessing his situation, he decided to continue, he didn’t become a dare-devil, he just sometimes exchanged health for damage, as for his use of energy, he would never have enough to play around with.

Momentum was something he put a lot more importance on, it was free, it produced speed from nothing, but using it in battle was not just using the momentum stat and being done with it, it was putting all your mind aside and dedicating all you had to it.

That was the only weakness of the stat and the techniques related to it, for Rune it wasn’t acceptable, and that’s why his fighting style included platform as the vector of movement.

When a giant stinger was about to pierce him, the first thing he didn’t want to do was disconnect and focus only on momentum.

His use was optimal as long as he was concerned, momentum shouldn’t be used to propel, but to direct, to conduct the speed he already had or created through other means.

This realization led to a big argument within the Undecided, but he wasn’t the only one gaining game-changer insights, Rune didn't know why it marked his psyche, but one time Gar and Nelo were arguing like their life depended on it on something about close combat spellcaster theory.

Nobody participated except these two but they argued for 2 days, and even at the end they just stopped talking about it without a clear resolution.

It was the same for his use of momentum, Utopia, even understanding that his ease of momentum use for acceleration was maybe related to his soul specialty, clearly said that he dedicated every drop of energy to offense and major move, and Rune respected that.

The two went on different paths because they were unique.

Before he knew it, with exhaustion reaching a never before seen severity, Rune did something he wanted to try, something maybe only a few could do.

Making sure there wasn’t any remaining danger around, he entered meditation and effortlessly saw his ether soul.

Its current look was as expected, it wasn’t flowing anymore, the strain of constantly struggling against his own sphere led to mini sense failure, and observing carefully, he could “see” his will contesting against weariness, and he put all he had on observing the changes happening before his eyes.

Senses failure, black holes appearing in his perception sphere, hearing sounds that didn’t exist, he correlated everything his failing body was experiencing with what his ether soul reflected.

He knew the exhaustion was going to win, but he wanted to understand as much as he could before that, in what objectives? He didn’t know anymore, he only knew that looking at this never before seen state of his ether soul already gave him more than he wanted.

Without knowing when, his body stopped responding, and the last thing he saw but was branded into his mind, was his ether soul becoming still.

Then dissipating into nothing.

…

Tiredness filled his mind, but his body was reacting, he didn’t understand the situation, but he knew his energy armor was gone.

A fuzzy shape appeared in his sphere, a snail maybe, the big shell a criteria with weight.

He already knew how to fight them, reality or dream it didn’t matter, he knew, so he did.

Carefully evading the grey antennas and delivering a punch, dodging a bite and punching the opening, tanking an antenna hit because his health was full, trading it with a combo of kicks.

The snail stopped moving, and Rune slumbered again, like nothing happened.