A ball of energy was coming straight at him, using only pure manipulation Rune sent it back to the sender.

At the same time he did that, he created another energy ball and sent it at the back of someone.

Then 2 balls approached at fast speed, separating his focus in two he sent the two back, and as a gift, he also prepared two additional balls.

The Undecided, only those with their energy masteries not maxed out, were playing balls, one of the exercises used in the new education reform by the IGS.

This exercise solicited grand and fine manipulation in a very unique way that’s not possible to easily learn with only spells, it was even purely inoffensive manipulations that didn’t have application in fighting.

“Cannonball!” Rune heard Utopia shout, and then saw him create an enormous ball that was coming towards him, it was a challenge.

Mobilizing all his energy, he made everything come out to create a mattress shaped out of energy to decelerate the ball. Doing that, he lost 30% of the energy he used, then when the ball impacted, his energy lost a lot of its cohesion, but it held up and stopped the ball.

Out of energy, he waited for it to come back then used the already present ball and propelled it with a simple heavyweight throw move, by attaching threads and rotating it before letting go.

Not letting the ball go took him 100 energy, but it was a cost that only diminished with time, it was only a fundamental after all.

Utopia answered in kind and stopped the ball before launching it again, the feeling of stopping a ball with such power was very enjoyable, explaining his full-blown smile.

After tens of such exchanges, the ball dissipated and they returned to exchanging less important energy balls with the other 2, Astryde and Arik.

The current plan adopted by the Undecided was to go to the boundary and clean every nest they passed through, they needed to finish the Deep Void initiation at the fastest speed.

By then, everyone should have reached peak tier 1 fundamentals masteries, and then if no news on how to reach tier 2 in the spirit and energy fundamentals was circulated, they’d go and complete their remaining Void initiation event objectives.

At a rate of 1 nest every week and an average of 500 monsters in each nest, they could complete the 10 000 cores event objective in 3 months, and that was with only the 3 spellcasters on the task.

Rune wasn’t a genius, but he was diligent, his friends also didn’t seem to be geniuses, so they were also diligent, not just the 3 “warriors”, Utopia, Astryde, and Arik, but also the 3 “spellcasters”, Nelo, Gar, and Adreana.

Their current energy ball training has been going on for 1 week, or simply from the moment they let the spellcasters go clean a nest.

And Rune just felt them coming back.

Stopping to send back the energy ball, he simply said, “They’re coming back, let’s gather the cores and finish the nest.”

That was their methodology, the spellcasters only focused on killing using their physical fundamentals and only left some, this way, the entire group could clean the nest for their Deep Void initiation.

Then they would sweep the space around the nest to gather the hundreds of cores, with the majority being at the end of their lifespan, on the verge of completely disintegrating.

Once they gathered all the cores, cleaned the nest, maybe found some rare resources, and exchanged them all to advance their event completion, they departed in the direction of the boundary.

After that week of energy ball training, Rune opened his system.

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Grand Manipulation reached Tier 1 Level 59

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Grand Manipulation reached Tier 1 Level 60

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Grand Manipulation reached Tier 1 Level 61

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Grand Manipulation reached Tier 1 Level 62

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Fine Manipulation reached Tier 1 Level 61

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Fine Manipulation reached Tier 1 Level 62

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Fine Manipulation reached Tier 1 Level 63

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Energy Compression reached Tier 1 Level 81

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Perception Control reached Tier 1 Level 86

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division reached Tier 1 Level 68

For 2 months of training now, he kept the steadiness he wanted, it was the first time they did such training, but they also did plenty of different ones before that.

In those 2 months, Utopia and Rune used a “stupid but it works” method to make Astryde and Arik reach tier 2 in the physical fundamentals.

What they concluded to be the things quickening an advancement to tier 2 were, a body struggling against death and the ether soul never stopping regenerating health and energy.

Rune wasn’t the planner, and in truth, the only thing he did was just casually talking about it, Utopia however identified the crux of the problem and proposed answers, and then started to rave madly.

When Utopia started to talk about subjects like the effect of reaching tier 2 and the possible social unrest thing, Rune just started to clap and hum to the spider dance rhythm, causing him to stop and watch him like an archenemy.

Utopia never complained about what Rune did to make him reach tier 2 without him knowing because the method Rune used was a lot more spiritually convincing.

Utopia found things inside himself he didn’t know he had, and so in the end he was more thankful than resentful.

Now that the Undecided were once again on the road, they kept silent and waited, they should reach the boundary soon.

‘It should be as magnificent as the Primary Ether sub-dimension, perhaps, even more, am I too hyped?’ Rune didn’t just want to complete the event objective, he was also doing it for himself.

Onboard, many said that the boundary was a place where everyone would feel like an ant, the ether acted totally different from anywhere else.

But none of them expected that signs of reaching the boundary would appear so soon.

As the Undecided continued to move, they started to feel waves passing through their sphere, and they were massive ones, gigantic pulses, moving the ether around them like it was water.

Those waves didn’t affect their movement, they just existed, and the more they advanced, the more the ether changed.

Where it once was majorly ether white, the color used to describe the color of natural ether, with only some colors appearing rarely, now the range of colors changed to something he had never seen before.

From pure white, an effect he would describe as “fractured” started to appear, a fractured red, a fractured purple, this fractured effect inspired pure chaos, everything mixing together like broken shards of stained glass.

For Rune, the previous 2 months of training and effort evaporated from his mind, he only observed.

There never was as much to see as now.

It was like the heaven of artists, just within his sphere, at hand’s reach.

Rune could see thousands of variations of color, effects he never dared imagine like a deep fractured flaming flowing red, he couldn’t even begin to think how he could realistically recreate them, only the name he gave it said all about it.

After 5 minutes, the situation took a turn, the surrounding ether attained a state that the board couldn’t keep hidden and already told, the liquid ether state.

A waterfall of ether, a gigantic thing appeared in the perception of Rune.

It was radiating ether light like he never saw before, random pulses moved the whole thing like it was alive and sometimes made drops of it separate from the massive mass, disintegrating in blinding ether fog.

‘That’s why I want to keep adventuring, if I knew it would be like that I would have aborted my plan to kill my avatar.’

Rune felt emotional, this spectacle was something he couldn’t hope to recreate, and even if he could, he couldn’t imagine a simulation transmitting the whole thing.

Only by observing it personally could one understand why his path was worth it, why exploring dimensions was worth it.

Utopia and the rest of the group were similarly in a daze, only observing and not saying anything.

To reach the boundary, they had to enter the giant mass of liquid ether, and normally, after 5 minutes the true boundary would appear.

The waterfalls were in the end, illusory, just current appearing in their perception sphere but having no effect on reality.

Passing next to it, Rune made a detour to touch with his hand the current of liquid ether.

His hand didn’t even cause a ripple, enveloping his hand in energy only washed his energy away without affecting the current,

‘The force of nature.’

Those were the words that appeared in Rune’s mind.

The unstoppable force of nature, something that would happen regardless of his existence or the intervention of other sapients, something that couldn’t be changed or even perturbed.

‘I can give it a last try at least,’ so Rune used all his 450 energy to apply a reinforcement, increasing his effective strength by 45%, and then he punched after injecting his remaining 50 energy into his movable platform to make sure he perfectly transmitted everything.

When his fist made contact with the current of liquid ether, which equaled a punch at more than 725 strength, it vanished, without causing a ripple.

His punch was non-existent.

Seeing him try to affect the current, Arik, Utopia, and Nelo also tried, but even the gigantic sphere of Nelo, with his 500 energy at 100% efficiency was useless, just dissolving and vanishing.

It was so stupid to see such an attack vanish just like that.

“Let’s go, maybe tier 9000 can affect this, I’m completely unbothered,” Utopia seemed a little pissed off, but he was young, so it was normal.

The scene was staler inside the liquid ether, only a blinding white everywhere, so blinding that the inner current became invisible.

Their energy wings dissipated as soon as they entered, so they had to rely on their momentum stat, but the layer of liquid ether was relatively thin, and finally, Rune felt his perception disappear in front of him.

“We are arriving in less than 2 minutes, that’s the end,” Rune transmitted the info and the Undecided finally reached the boundary soon after.

They all heard a notification, but the EP were useless, so at the advice of Utopia they didn’t claim any more reward, keeping them for later.

Before them was simply a “black wall”, their perception sphere couldn’t penetrate “it”, if they tried to approach they were rejected, if they tried to attack, nothing happened.

That was the boundary, the limit of the Deep Void dimension, and there was no knowledge about what was beyond a dimension’s boundary, maybe another dimension, maybe nothing, probably nothing.

“I see nothing worth learning here, I like the colors more,” Nelo expressed that he wanted to leave.

“Yup, we’re done here, we can go on the itinerary to encounter the peaceful beasts' nest, with 3 nests in between we have 1 month of travel to do,” Utopia said, reminding everyone that their path was all planned.

‘If only I could take samples of every color, but as soon as I try to manipulate them or stock them in my inner self they’re assimilated, sigh…’

And so the group began to retrace their steps, they had a lot more to do, but it was only simple repetitions and hard work for the majority, energy training for the warriors, and physical training for the spellcasters.

While not forgetting spiritual training for everyone at all times.

…

“Yeah, that’s the most surprising aspect, but experts have already emitted theories on why,” Utopia was suddenly very talkative, maybe them approaching the nest of the peaceful ether beasts had something to do with it.

“So it’s true that every peaceful beast looks like a war machine of absolute death?” Adreana also seemed to have an interest in the subject.

“To survive amongst so many aggressive and mindless monsters, they had to adapt, and this led to them being not the weakest herbivorous, but the strongest pacifist, and for those stupid enough to attack them only escape or death is a solution,” Utopia was a rululu after all, so lore trivia was his domain and strength.

“And they act like tamed beasts? I read that you could feed them some resources that…”

Rune was only waiting for the peaceful beast internally, he wasn’t excited, just happy to discover a new facet of reality.

Not every ether life forms without intelligence were mindlessly aggressive, and after discussion, it seemed that some of his friends didn’t have an opinion on how they would act in the future once they encounter those.

For Rune, killing monsters that wanted to kill him wasn’t a problem, and if one day he was asked to kill peaceful beasts or other sapient beings, then he would use the principle of the IGS to judge.

He realized he was pretty desensitized to killing now, but onboard guide helped every adventurer cope with their first killing of monsters, putting them at a completely different level from other beings.

He wasn’t naive, he knew that maybe one day he would be confronted with the choice to kill a fellow intelligent being, and he would have to judge by himself, and his genius first step would of course be to not kill at all.

‘Oh?’

Feeling life appear in his sphere, he stopped his inner monologue and focused on it, “A beast corresponding to the description, spikes everywhere and very big, always in groups of 2 or more, there’s a group of 4 in front.”

Once everyone saw them, they were also discovered by the 4 beasts, the 4 mastodons, and they weren’t trolled it seemed, they were truly peaceful.

They didn’t just charge at them mindlessly, they were only passively eating ether resources passing by, they were cute in a way.

“I want to try and pet them, that will count as an interaction right? Hihihi,” for some reason Adreana was salivating when she saw them, like seeing cute puppies she wanted to approach them, and no one in the group wanted to deny her so she just left the group.

Observing the situation, Rune wasn’t worried, like the rest of the group he knew that those beasts never opened the hostilities by themselves, they were just scary looking externally, but fluffy and tamed inside, it was the reason they were called peaceful ether beasts.

Adreana gathered some ether resources before approaching them and offering them.

After being looked at for some seconds, she passed the test and could finally offer her food and pet their shell.

To describe this nest’s natives more, they were turtle-like ether beasts, but with spikes everywhere and never alone, that was it, their size was impressive and they lazed about all day, that was it bis.

Once Rune confirmed for himself it was safe, he gathered some ether resources and approached them.

And those turtles were truly the biggest monsters he had ever seen, with their height of 10 meters, they correctly transmitted the fact that they were the owner of this nest and that messing with them was a bad idea.

‘The Ether Law didn’t completely destroy the previous concept of force equals mass plus acceleration, Utopia said that it was still true in some way, just that now with the addition of linear ether stats, it’s much more complicated.’

Rune was interested in knowing how the concept of mass could still be useful in a fight, maybe he could invent a spell to increase his if it was very useful?

Before he knew it, he was petting its, or maybe his? Shell, humanizing peaceful and “cute” gigantic spiked turtles was easier than bloodthirsty mindless things, that was for sure.

Petting them was just an impulse, Rune thought, it had nothing to do with them visibly reacting, and trivia Utopia said his piece.

“Turtle-like beasts even in our universe dimension have nerve endings allowing them to feel when someone touches their shell, it’s the case for the majority of…”

He cut Utopia’s voice from his mind, they were the first peaceful beast he encountered, but he certainly hoped not the last.

He didn’t know how the situation would develop soon, or maybe in some months or years, but life would always find a way for him.

That was why life was life.

…

With the Undecided, life passed quickly, 2 months after their visit to the peaceful Deep Void turtle nest, they continued on their training spree.

Gathering the cores necessary to complete the event objective of the Deep Void dimension was easy enough, but it wasn’t the goal of their collective adventure.

At the end of the 26th month since the Ether Law “awakened”, the whole Undecided completed their primary objectives, reaching tier 2 in the physical masteries for everyone, strangely, Nelo was the last one of the spellcasters to get it.

After that point, everyone decided on what they should do from now on.

In those 5 months of adventure, the ether density increased a lot more than they expected, but they were ready.

Universe Ether (Primary Ether Sub-Dimension Opening basis): +205%

Still, the Ether Law didn’t announce anything, neither did the IGS, so they separated, everyone knew what they had to do, reach peak tier 1 in spirit and energy masteries, complete the Void dimension’s event, and continue training.

As they all knew that sooner or later they’d get all the answers due to connecting with other dimensions, completing the Void initiation event was the most optimized choice.

The majority choose to teleport to the Void dimension, after all the only remaining objective was literally traveling to gain surveying hours, and for some like Rune, they still had special resources to gather.

…

‘And… that’s the last.’

In Rune’s hand was the last special resource he needed to complete his Void Initiation, the last of the last of what he had to do.