Rune was in a black space, he didn’t know when he woke up but everything around him was black, the black of emptiness.

Except for one thing, a strange energy construct that was using his energy.

Then suddenly he remembered things, things that a human shouldn’t have experienced and still be alive

He remembered dying, his ether soul fading into silence and his body dissipating into nothing but ether.

‘How did I forget I was only an avatar?’

The situation was so confusing, it felt like he really died, and those who died with their avatar certainly didn’t experience what he did.

‘My ether soul did something, or something happened to it.’

He immediately entered meditation and waited for his ether soul to appear.

And here it was, the same mass of air as usual, but now all the previous white light was condensed in the center, also all the senses he cut were still cut, he was still in scorpion fighting state.

Restoring everything to normal before continuing his observation of the core, Rune didn’t know what it was, was it condensed awareness? A sign of becoming tier 2? He wouldn’t receive an answer anyway.

He tried to make awareness threads and he effortlessly could, but awareness wasn’t what made the white core in his ether soul, it never had.

Remembering bits and pieces of what he did during his battle against death, he left his inner space.

Opening his eyes again, he could now see millions of stars, that was the Universe dimension, and he was sure he was back in his original body.

From his ether soul, the white core finally reacted.

‘Here it is.’

Covering his hands, a white flowing something, it acted like energy, it was energy, but a lot stronger, a lot more personal, and only one thing came to Rune’s mind.

‘Tier 2? Or more like peak tier 1, but something is missing... Is that because I didn’t awaken my soul?’

Maybe he wasn’t right but he knew that he should have advanced at least one of the 3 fundamentals to tier 2, and it certainly wasn’t the energy path, so only the spirit and physical path remained.

‘And of course, I have no way to confirm, it wouldn't be fun otherwise hehehe.’

Rune leaned more towards the physical path attaining tier 2, the only training he did in the spiritual path was constant sphere bending, sense of self deactivation, and refined momentum battle applications.

Compared to a true genius or a passionate training fanatic, what he did was as much as a casual workout.

‘How much time was I unconscious?’ Opening the Undecided forum he found that his last message, or before he engaged in a battle to the death, dated back to 4 days.

‘Might as well tell them I’m dead.’

That was a good prospective joke, he wanted to do it.

[Rune: I passed away 4 days ago, like a hero, all my hopes and dreams I fought with only them in mind, till the end. I survived even when my ether soul couldn’t regenerate anymore, and till my physical path reached tier 2, then died using the forbidden tier 2 power, also called… Tier 2 energy]

[Nelo: That’s some b*llshit that you’re telling us there pal]

[Gar: Rest in peace Rune, I’ll carry your legacy, just not the asocial, indecisive, shy parts]

[Astryde: If only he was alive, he would be a true hero adventurer now]

[Rune: I’m advising you against trying to fight me now because I think I attained the top 0.1% from the top 10%, but I’ll confirm that when I awaken my soul and see my masteries window]

[Utopia: Happy to hear from you again disciple, now that your adventure is over, take a break and prepare for advancement to tier 2]

[Rune: Yes president, immediately]

Now that he was back to a training life, he could resume his constant sphere bending, and practice the new blackout awareness, this time correctly.

And once that was done he could continue with his fireworks magic training, the most entertaining training he ever imagined.

…

The principle behind artificial awareness blackout resided in the interaction between exhaustion and ether soul.

The awareness wasn’t infinite, it was also used up, but to recharge it you needed to sleep and let it regenerate naturally.

When everything was used up, but you still didn’t sleep, then faults would appear, failures would happen, and after observing them in detail, Rune successfully replicated what they looked like and the effect was that a sort of hole would appear in his ether soul.

This hole activated the surrounding awareness, making it try to fill the gap, to go back to its natural state, but in the end, it only made the awareness circulate around the hole, this circulation was a constant drainer for the awareness.

Making multiple holes in his ether soul with this method of artificial blackouts, he reached a balance where it was something he felt was draining his awareness but wasn't the violent expenditure of doing a general blackout.

After doing that, he was now free to do fireworks magic. He liked it so much he didn't even consider it training.

Rune still had 3 weeks and a half before his cooldown for dimension teleportation was over, and if he was unlucky, he wouldn’t be rescued in all this time.

‘Stop worrying about that, I have so much work to do on the energy path, I also want to find a way to make fireworks magic a part of my fighting style, so I need to learn how to create spells, and also…’

He was far from done, and even if he did attain tier 2 in the physical path, his training was far from over, tier 3 or whatever lay beyond was a part of his ambition.

…

Fate was on Rune’s side as a rescue ship appeared in his position and embarked him 5 days later, the rescue ship was a corvette class ship, merely a hundred meters long and forty meters high.

Onboard were already tens of rescued persons, so he just sat down in a corner after answering the questions about which administrative zone of which galaxy he belonged to.

It was obvious that even unknown civilizations people asked the IGS for help, they weren’t going to drift in space forever because they didn’t know this supposed super-power and didn’t trust it.

A week later he disembarked at the transport hub of his sector, his avatar regenerated at the price of 10 000 EP, and while he was at it, he remembered the debt of 1 000 000 EP he owned for creating his avatar, so he paid it off.

After he gained his independence, every notion of having an avatar would disappear, be it in the global system or in his status.

Rune could think of advantages and disadvantages to the situation, the first of which was a fact, the number of tier 2 would only be an infinitesimal proportion of all those who lost their avatar.

And unless it was possible to reach tier 2 by training without putting one’s life in danger even one time, he would be massively disappointed in the Ether Law if it wasn’t possible.

He wanted his parents to slowly train, not go full life and death training as he would do.

It was also a fact that Rune didn’t really need to think by himself, just checking the board for people who were really invested in this subject was better.

Here and there onboard, theories linked to the effect of losing access to one’s avatar increased, the reluctance to adventure in other dimensions, the future loss of research potential as tier 2…

Rune knew that soon the IGS would announce the truth about the Ether Law “awakening”, so he didn’t worry too much about the most alarmist conclusions reached by some.

Also, he forgot when he departed but he soon remembered it, it was the beginning of the 17th month, and now he was half into the 19th month.

‘It really wasn’t that long.’

The world was still talking about the closing of the Primary Ether sub-dimension and the list of soul specialties was growing by the minute.

If he were to place himself compared to the whole civilization known as the IGS, Rune, who was only a name in a file, was sure that now he took his first big step to achieve his ambitions.

Now that he arrived back in his home sector, he only had to reserve a ticket for where his family was.

He knew it was called X125-1C, a zone completely new, built with new ether technology and still in expansion, the giant honeycombed cube at the center was used as the education and secured growth center for the young.

Multiple of those centers were being built, his was only among the first, but he knew from the news that nearly all young sapients have been evacuated from the planets in the whole IGS, civilizations from tens of galaxies away had similarly evacuated their population.

Coming back home after 20 minutes, he entered the airlock, he had already seen his parents in the living room via his perception sphere.

Since the time they arrived, they already rearranged the whole cube house, its modular properties allowed for that so they fusionned their room, did size adjustments to some and here it was, a living room where they could relax as they wanted.

Their room was reduced but it seemed that his mom and dad were completely adapted to life in a small room, and Rune could perfectly understand why and how.

Maybe it was his continuous absence for months and his dedication since the global system arrived, but his arrival caused his mother to turn her head from her series.

Once he entered after passing through the airlock, his mother and father were ready to talk to him.

‘Of course, this moment would arrive, or maybe they already knew.’

“My big Ruru came back home, did you have a fruitful trip?” His mother asked with a simple smile, if he wasn’t already used to it, he would think she was still a teenager.

“Yeah, I planned all I had to do and did half of it, a normal trip,” Rune said with a happy voice, he wasn’t discontent with clearly saying that he found joy in the new era.

“Miri and Miro want to spare with you so don’t lock yourself up, with all the moving you’ve done recently, do you still plan to live here or will you move?”

“I’ve no reason to move, maybe I can give tips to Miri and Miro, I recently progressed a lot in the physical fundamentals,” Rune didn’t say more than needed, he had a lot to confirm before talking about it to his family.

“Then when they come back from school I’ll tell them, your room is untouched so you can go,” he knew that his mother was very talkative, but she also knew that Rune was not, even if he wanted to speak, sometimes he would refrain because he would think it was stupid.

“Ok.”

The hurdle passed, Rune entered his room, and turned on his computer, even attaining tier 2 in the physical path he discovered during his death that he wasn’t a machine, he was a human, certainly with his own unique points but even his battle veteran spirit couldn’t constantly battle for days on end, at least not yet.

Now that he constantly trained his perception control and awareness division, he could watch videos without remorse, he was still training after all.

‘I’ll go to the martial supreme dojo branch after that, I already slept a week ago so I’m all ok.’

It was the first thing Rune wanted to do, testing his physical masteries.

After having been entertained by new content for 2 days, filling his mind with serenity, he found a compilation of new era energy training newbie mistakes, resulting in a very good laugh.

For him, having such a good laugh was only reached when he watched his personal compilation of accumulated videos or jokes that really made him laugh out loud, the whole house back in X125 heard it.

Such a good laugh was something he didn’t have the joy to enjoy in a long time.

Going back to his roots was something he appreciated even more after dying and not watching anything for months.

Finally feeling like he had enough, Rune stood up and departed for the martial supreme dojo branch.

Passing through the airlock, he found himself back in space, where no gravity existed, but for him, it was so natural that it didn’t even register in his mind.

Following a map, he arrived at the branch and entered the body control path, the virtual assistant said he was at a competent level so he had to re-enter one of the hell’s rooms.

Before coming, he decided to leave his avatar behind, returning his stats to 50 in all stats. He didn’t know if it was possible for the room and the guardian to have 500 stat points everywhere.

‘I really wonder, I’ll keep my normal awareness state for the moment, I’ll try seriously when it’s necessary, I hope not before expert level.’

The martial supreme dojo was currently updating its classification system based on what the masteries window said, from the global system interpretation, for tier 1 there was 100 levels worth of expertise to acquire.

Their current system of using the beginner, amateur, competent, proficient, expert, and the master level was still fine, but levels would be attached to them once the organization confirmed that there was no difference between similarly leveled individuals.

Currently, the supreme dojo updated experimental results to their every branch, with every level being separated by 20 levels except the last two, expert and master, who only had 10 levels.

So being at body control competent level, his evaluated level at body control should be between 40 and 60.

In his not-awareness-boosted state, Rune entered the hell’s room of the competent level after specifying that all the needed stats were at 50.

Lasers rushing at him, gravity changing suddenly, bullets firing from all sides.

Rune only had to evade, and he even had a ground, he felt that it was right in his comfort zone, maybe the momentum stat in the Deep Void was inhibited by 50%, but once in close combat, it only made a difference against a slow opponent.

He could see the laser approach, completely different from when he left this room back in Utopia’s home planet supreme dojo branch.

It didn’t make sense, his reaction speed was the same, but everything was so clear and slow.

Of course, that was only from Rune’s perspective, from a spectator's point of view, Rune would be moving everywhere and sidestepping at an extremely fast speed.

After 15 minutes, the room stopped and he got out, receiving an approval screen and a vocal confirmation that he was authorized to go to the proficient body control hall.

Entering the proficient training hall, it was once again a place full of cubic rooms, just much larger than the competent hall.

Stepping inside one, he confirmed at the same time with his eyes and his sphere that it was a spacious room, similar to the precedent room he just completed.

Rune didn’t know what to expect, but there was a limit to what virtual training could do, so he concluded that what he was going to experience was the apex of what the IGS could produce.

As the room started, gravity began to change, it wasn’t just an alternance, it was a multidirectional gravity change.

With time, the gravity began to grow chaotic, like satellites orbiting around the room, repelling or attracting him.

After 30 seconds of that, the test truly began, with a similar difficulty to what he could expect from a Touhou game, “bullets” rained down like a true downpour.

The situation was so unexpected that Rune adjusted his awareness without realizing it.

The bullet's rain didn’t stop, large virtual pillars and shapes floating in the air began to approach at different rhythms, even he only evaded after using his maximum dexterity and momentum manipulation.

The room registered his moves and gave a score, but this room wasn’t made to be perfectible, once a certain score was reached, the testee was then authorized to go to the next level.

But the situation reminded Rune so much of his battle that he inadvertently reached his maximum state, manipulating his awareness to increase his sensitivity once he found it hard.

In the end, the room just increased the difficulty to the maximum, which was an unaVoidable level, a pillar as long as the room appeared before Rune.

Reacting like he was in battle, he could only do what he would have done, and punched the pillar, someone uninitiated to an Ether Law’s block wouldn’t have been able to realize what he had just done.

His fist phased through, and from that moment, the test continued for 5 minutes at the unaVoidable level.

Rune didn’t understand how he could evade those, but he tried, of course, he failed every time because he couldn’t bend spacetime as of yet.

Getting out of the “stay humble” room, he was authorized to go to the expert training hall.

As he expected, the Fighting Instinct, reinforcement, and body control hall fused from this point on, with just a giant hall hosting hundreds of rings.

Rune knew his only experience fighting humanoid intelligent enemies was back during Utopia’s camp, but he was confident enough to know that at minimum, he belonged to the expert level.

The system put in place, the one who governed the place, was that everyone who entered the hall had to enter the rings nearest to the entering side, and depending on winning or losing, they could go deeper in, one row by one row of rings.

Rune liked this system, it was direct, it was a ranking system depending on skill, true skill.

Maybe he was mistaken, but he also observed that with a ten billion population on X125, not that many experts should have been born here, so he asked the virtual assistant as to the reason explaining the presence of so many people here.

And it seemed that he was lucky, as X125-1C was chosen to host a branch and it simply wasn’t that easy, because the repartition and opening of martial supreme dojo’s branches depended on population.

And because this place was one of the first to begin its construction, it gained a branch that was designed to receive all the practitioners in the north side of this administrative sector.

So in fact, all the northern side of his administrative sector gathered here to exchange physical fundamentals knowledge.

Entering the first row of rings when his turn came, his opponent was a fellow human, but Rune observed that fights were fast-paced here, so after entering and standing on one of the 2 corners indicated, the signal was given.

It was time for Rune to fight.