Rune was so confident that it bordered on arrogance and overconfidence, and his opponent felt it.

Having a fellow sapient as an opponent, Rune could also feel the relative skill difference between them, so he decided to engage first.

As the goal was to fight, everything was allowed except for offensive and defensive spells, all support spells were allowed, and even if one day those rules would change, it didn’t concern Rune now.

With a ground for support, he didn’t have to waste his energy on compressed energy platforms, except for when he had to move in the air.

Rune felt free, he was back in his element, a true fight, he just rushed toward his opponent mindlessly, and his first contact was a simple punch.

His punch was blocked, he didn’t know why his opponent just waited for his action, but he continued.

With a perfect posture, he transmitted all his strength to the ground and did a swirl before kicking his opponent hard in the stomach using focused momentum.

Maybe he was stronger than he thought as this microsecond move wasn’t blocked or evaded, so he lowered his body and jumped forward.

His opponent this time tried to react by doing an acrobatic kickback in anticipation of where he judged Rune would appear but was surprised when his sphere informed him that Rune already bypassed his defense and he felt another punch, this time reinforced with 10 energy, eject him from the ring.

“…?” Like Rune didn’t just win in some moves, he prepared to continue the fight, but was perplexed when the virtual assistant told him he won.

Walking down the ring puzzled, he entered the next row of rings, the second row.

‘I’ll just go for as long as I can.’

Rune was not someone who could feel arrogance, his education and social environment made him someone who liked to observe others, his silence was only because he truly liked to observe more than participate.

It meant that logic and optimization were often a central point in his mind, and now that he became a truly skilled fighter, his character helped him against other fellow sapients.

The signal was given, his opponent was someone with white skin and platinum blond hair, so probably a kajo, and this time his opponent acted like he should, with the two of them rushing at each other.

It was a hall for training, and as such it was a short but intense fight, Rune went on the defensive as his opponent reinforced himself and executed a sweeping kick.

Judging the situation, he concluded that exchanging health was a bad trade, in this case, so he did a fast jab and a reinforced jump, if the kajo didn’t stop his kick he would be hit first.

Maybe the kajo judged it to be a good trade, but as Rune jabbed his chest, he now had an optimal position to block the kick with a normal strike to the interior of the leg.

Destabilized, he tried to punch but the fight was in Rune’s hand now, the kajo tried to take the initiative back but Rune chained him with strikes.

After 3 punches and 2 kicks, Rune was declared the winner and immediately got out of the ring to continue.

…

The difference in terms of skills was consequent, so he arrived at the deeper part of the hall, where he only started to make suboptimal choices and sometimes lost an exchange or two due to something completely new to him, making his fighting instinct bug.

But overall, he reigned as a king, he never lost, even Rune accepted that everything he learned during his adventure was useful as much in higher than in lower-skilled battles.

Managing his balance of health was the central focus of his style, if the fights were more complex, it would involve his energy balance, but those he fought with were clearly inferior in terms of body control, Fighting Instinct, and reinforcement masteries.

The martial supreme dojo was impartial, Rune arriving here without a single loss meant nothing if he couldn’t fight against the peak expert levels that were before him.

Entering the next row of rings, he soon found an unoccupied one, and after entering, another fighter stepped in, a human.

After the signal was given, the two rushed at the other, Rune punched, the human blocked, it was a textbook opening exchange.

Having his first measure of his opponent, Rune chose to take the lead and use a 10 energy reinforcement, if the one fighting him was equally skilled in all mastery, then his sudden move would be countered by another reinforcement.

But he was simply more skilled, all he did was so fluid that before his opponent reacted, a knee from Rune was already in his stomach.

The martial supreme dojo already paid attention to Rune, and what they deducted from all the data they gathered was that every move of Rune surpassed 49 ether stat strength.

That was as simple as that, in the expert hall, people could use 80% to 90% of their strength skillfully, but equally as simple, Rune who attained full utilization of all his stats, was invincible.

The dojo was just waiting for him to reach the end of the hall.

It was as simple as that, this branch was used to people coming back from training after attaining master level, so it was a known situation, and it was the luck of those stumbling upon the already-master to be able to fight with them and hopefully learn something.

Once Rune used his knee to strike his opponent's stomach, he used his sphere to sense how he was going to react, he wanted to start an empirical exchange.

Rune accepted, he used 10 energy and hit again in the same place with another knee strike, the trade was taking a kick in his lower body, not even reinforced.

With an overwhelming advantage in health balance, he increased his own gravity to not be knocked back, and directly struck again.

It was purely about being Rune’s sandbag, the human was too overpowered, even if his Fighting Instinct attained the required mastery, which it did not, the gap in body control and reinforcement being used instantly was a substantial difference.

Taking a punch, but exchanging for 1 kick and 1 block, that was how Rune’s fight concluded, his health balance nearly untouched.

3 fights later, finally Rune received the authorization to enter the master hall, where the best of the best was, and also where he would be able to judge his own level.

Entering through the corridor from the expert hall, the master hall was of the same making as the previous ones, still, subtle white walls with grey bands to make it seem more like a practical painting than a stylish one.

The ambient mood was like entering a battlefield, it reminded Rune of a monster's nest, his sphere however didn’t sense anything, the ether was still weak and colorless.

His intrusion attracted some glances but they quickly turned away after seeing someone they didn’t know.

Rune’s glance was similarly directed towards the fights that were happening, and one in particular.

It was a match involving an azoran and a pachin, seeing an azoran was highly unusual in X125 because azorans didn’t have a high birth rate, and technology that could help the IGS founders in this objective was centralized on few planets per dozens of sectors.

The founders of the IGS, the Azoran, were one of the most beautiful species of humanoid that could possibly exist due to what could be compared to a chameleon skin.

Every Azoran could control the pigmentation of their skin like every skin cell were organic pixels, and when you thought about beauty, the most powerful compliment would be to compare someone’s beauty to an azoran.

In the history of the IGS, some azorans dedicated to always beautifying their appearance have set such an unreasonable deity-like and out-of-reality beauty standard, that the true definition of enamored would be given to all the unprepared people who saw them at their best.

The azoran that was fighting was using a very specific power, a white energy-like substance was covering his body, the same that Rune could use via his ether soul, the same he suspected was next-tier energy.

‘Getting my answer will be easier than expected.’

Approaching one of the observers, he put a smile on his face, he wanted to seem friendly, “Hello, I just arrived, do you know what's the white energy covering the azoran fighting there?”

The other turned his head to look at Rune, and upon not recognizing him he answered, “He attained tier 2 in the physical path, and after that, he could use that power, it’s still energy, but tier 2 energy, he didn’t become a complete tier 2 so he still has the 2 types of energy.”

“Thank you, and is it common to attain tier 2 that fast?” That was something he needed to know, he didn’t search for fame and if it was going to bring so much attention to him then he would reveal it at a later date.

“Not at all, lots of people are blocked at mastery level 100, it seems that a specific situation is needed to reach the next tier, some say battle, some say talent, some say simple accumulation, accumulation is more likely.”

“But that’s only because the physical path is forged through effort, I also know that no tier 2 of others' paths appeared yet,” finishing his piece of informing the newbie, he stopped talking and made Rune understand that he preferred to be left alone.

‘Ok, let’s keep that tier 2 energy a secret then, I’ll use it to battle against the Deep Void beasts to train, and I can voluntarily weaken myself to still be able to train myself here… Or just leave?’

His plan established, he still had to judge whether his tier 2 physical masteries meant that he could trash those at level 100 of tier 1.

But observing the azoran, it didn’t seem to be the case, just evaluating compared to what he would do, he saw himself at their level.

‘If I’m not even going to die from this, it’s all just training…’

Rune was modifying his plan as he discovered things, and in the same manner that the energy path was limited by the knowledge of how to continuously elevate the efficiency of the different energy applications, the physical path was blocked to regular martial knowledge.

‘So I’m at the peak of the current physical path… Then I don’t need to be here, tier 2 depends on the 3 paths, and my energy path is too much behind, it’s time to really stop training the fundamentals and understand it.’

Having made up his mind, Rune exited the master hall, there wasn’t anything remaining there worth using his time, time that he wanted to optimize.

As he walked out, he opened the board and then his personal notes, verifying all his insights on how to use his energy to add to his fighting style.

They were very meager but his multiple uses were very thoughtful, one of them was the energy smoke, a very primitive application of energy that he found at the same time by manipulation and as a spell on the board.

One of his ideas was the permanent energy platform, it was something he really wanted to develop, his base idea was to be able to create a compressed energy platform that he could lock or unlock depending on what he wanted.

If he could create such a technique, he could at any time use his strength to propel himself beyond what his momentum technique allowed without having to summon and lose a bit of energy every time.

His third idea was to appropriate to himself the energy compression spell creation, he didn’t want to bite off more than he could chew, so he only wanted to know how to modify the spells using only the energy compression mastery.

This way he could create his own energy armor spell customized for what he wanted.

While it all seemed a little scattered, he didn’t deviate from the energy path he had to train, as for the smoke spell and moving platform spell, he would have to contact his friends or the new energy institute to help him.

Once he read everything, it was easy to realize that he wanted to become a true energy compression expert, and the first step was learning how to make simple spell matrices.

A problem he would encounter was something he already knew, energy compression was not the best category to make spells, it was limited, what Rune wanted belonged more to the support spell category, so he would have to learn without a master’s tutorial in the domain.

‘I have to read everything anyway, it can’t be difficult to understand the theory behind an energy armor spell right?’

…

Before proceeding to his energy spell matrix creation learning, Rune fused back with his avatar, recovering his power.

‘The energy spell matrix.’

Rune was reading about the central point of any complex energy manipulation, its matrix.

A spell matrix could take any form, a circle, a cube, a hexahedron, what mattered was the content, because the content steered the energy on a predisposed path.

The reason the energy manipulation era changed so soon after the beginning of scientific research was because of the creation of spell matrices.

‘Simple spell matrix.’

Following an introduction, the new energy institute guide for beginners talked about all the profundities involved in spells.

The 3 energy fundamentals were the central point of any spells, but their presence in spells was so unequal it was aberrant.

For example, the energy bullet was a spell using the grand manipulation fundamental. The energy beam was also only grand manipulation, no fine manipulation or energy compression were involved, spells like energy wings were also only grand manipulation to transform energy into pushing power.

Energy threads, however, were fine manipulation only spells and energy armor was a spell using energy compression.

Every spell had its whole concept contained in only one of the 3 fundamentals, but past the basic, meaning past using energy with pure manipulation, it was possible to “fuse” properties from other fundamentals.

And the key to such a “fusion”, which involved creating hundreds of unusable spells, was the spell matrix.

Only your imagination limited the creation of spells, it wasn’t hard by itself to create a spell if you had a basic idea, but the 3 fundamentals needed different optimization.

But even after all this, the efficiency of your own energy masteries affected the result.

Rune being only an energy compression user, his efficiency for using energy beams or energy bullets was that of his grand manipulation, the mastery allowing for grand energy transformation and use, which made the spells theoretically possible, but practically useless concerning their damages.

‘Create your own spell matrix… What? Already?’ Surprised by what followed, Rune read the section again, confirming again that he should already be able to create a spell.

So he tried, and it was the simplest spell matrix he could think of, the goal was to condense a ball of energy, after that step he had to create the matrix, so he manipulated his energy and compressed it in the form of a ball and used the method to transform it into a matrix, imagination.

He concentrated but felt nothing even after 5 minutes, his sphere felt nothing coming from the compressed energy before him so he reopened his eyes.

Before him was a spheric compressed energy ball, but it wasn’t different from what he created with pure manipulation, frowning, Rune read the section about how to create a matrix again, but it should really be as simple as that.

‘So it’s a matrix?’ Trying his hypothesis he infused his energy into the ball.

And another ball started to form around the first, and it continued as he continued to infuse more energy, the ball started to grow without stopping, only stopping 20 seconds later when Rune infused a total of 500 energy.

The result was a ball of 1 meter of diameter, impressive but useless, it was energy without a goal, and the tutorial told that imagination and experience were what separated true spell creators from spell users.

So Rune once again created another energy sphere, then he infused the idea of defensive compressed energy inside, and thought of completing the matrix.

This time he clearly observed, and saw something change when he decided to transform the ball into a matrix, it was subtle but the energy lost a little of its radiance.

‘If only it was that simple.’

The guide told him exactly why it wasn't that easy, and that was because a spell matrix needed to be usable.

If Rune tried to use the energy bullet spell, he could immediately use it without even creating a matrix, but he could also create a matrix if he wanted to, creating it would just cost a single point of energy if he really understood what his energy had to do, everything was optimized.

But for what he just created, a matrix that compressed all the energy it received, not only was it useless, but it also needed a matrix of 20 energy.

‘That’s why I’ll only specialize in energy compression spells, and only that, never add a variable of another mastery knowledge.'

Rune wanted to let others do his smoke spell, he had the manipulation, but the creation was best left to the pros.

And Rune knew 3 pros personally, Nelo, Gar, and Adreana.