Rune separated from the group and stopped demolishing trees.

The fighting environment was complex, it was unfortunate that he didn't have enough power to change it like an energy bomb to prepare a flat ground for him to fight.

The wolves should clearly love and be used to the forest, and because he couldn’t change this part, he kept to the ground and used his strength and energy armor to ignore everything and prepare for collision.

1 000 base strength, double what he had at tier 1, that was what his normal strike would be like, it was equal to infusing all his previous energy pool in one reinforcement.

Arik was not far from where he was and was the first to be assaulted, however, Rune had his own situation to worry about.

3 wolves had come for him, he had to take the lead and strike first from his experience, so he jumped using all his strength, and like a mirror, the opposite wolves scattered with one of them doing the same jump as him.

‘Middle tier 2.’

That was his conclusion from the speed they just showed, it didn’t discourage him, he trained for that.

This time he wasn’t here to train, he was here to level up and kill, it was an area reclamation.

As he was full of everything, his health and energy balance were fully positive, he took it this first exchange, he collided with the wolf with a 100 energy reinforcement, punching its head as hard as he could while lowering his legs to the ground to support all the strength he put in this punch.

The wolf was sent flying, and Rune pursued, the other 2 wolves tried to hinder him but he let them do what they wanted, he was only going to focus on that one wolf.

He prepared another 100 energy reinforcement, which he could qualify as a small reinforcement, due to giving him a strength boost of 10%, and used it to punch the wolf another time.

He wanted to continue but the other 2 wolves attacked simultaneously from his two sides, if he advanced again he would have his back facing them.

It was time to test his energy armor combined with his new energy regeneration, to be sure, he covered his uncovered arm and prepared for the imminent collision as he continued to advance toward his targeted wolf.

Two bites and some claws took 400 armor points, that was the price of wanting to prioritize killing one of the three, his usual fighting style was not there, he didn’t block, he didn’t evade.

He had gone full juggernaut fighting style, Rune wanted to test his own power, with a fully positive balance he could allow himself to do that against opponents he perceived as weak and unable to kill him in a short time.

Now that his energy armor was a bit less than half gone, he started to less aggressively go after his target wolf, but still advanced towards it.

And it wasn’t going to retreat it seemed, even when Rune started to counter every assault of the 3 wolves, they were in it together to the death, like any monster he ever encountered, they were mindlessly aggressive.

‘Less momentum manipulation, that’s what I’m going for.’

His choice to not make his momentum a high priority stat had solid theoretical reasoning behind it, applying it in reality, however, was another thing.

As he doubled his strength, his every strength impulse towards an opponent was accompanied by greatly augmented speed, and this speed was largely beyond what his momentum manipulation could handle.

As a wolf prepared to bite his leg, he evaded by using a little bit of strength, but the wolf used his own momentum to rectify, so Rune was forced to block by kicking faster than the wolf could react.

Another wolf attacked from behind, and he also had to kick it to reduce his loss.

Those wolves were experienced, their use of momentum made them balanced speedsters that harassed a prey together until its death, but in the same manner, he intended to bit by bit erode their health balance.

He only attacked seriously when his target attacked, for the rest of the time, he blocked their attacks when he could and reduced his loss as much as possible.

Tier 2 was different, and to make reality hit harder, the 3 wolves seemed to have superior stats, only his exemplary use of redirections and solid blocks were enough to push them away.

He didn’t know how his friends were doing, but now he had to become serious.

It wasn’t the landslide victory he expected against what the board qualified as “useless tier 2 monsters with nothing to really fight against a sapient entity”, only after 5 minutes of permanent harassment did he finally become able to evade again and counter-attack more efficiently.

Those were 5 minutes that were boosted by his tier 2 fighting instinct, and in those 5 minutes, he only eroded 30% of his target wolf health balance.

In his case, he lost 40% of his energy balance, his use of health as a damage dampener allowed him to be above.

As he stabilized the damage to his armor, his energy recovered, and he started to up the damage he dealt to his target with more daring moves.

Furthermore, his target had a weak point, maybe common to all the wolves, they weren’t good at blocking, so he didn’t need to use more than a weak reinforcement to inflict a significant amount of damage.

Kicking a wolf in the side to send it flying, his target approached, so he became ready for another serious strike.

A bite approached, he rotated, forcing the wolf to change trajectory, but a roundhouse kick reinforced with 400 energy crashed into his side and observed that the 3rd wolf didn’t initiate an attack, he chose to grab his target.

Crashing his target into the floor, he finally saw the 3rd wolf react, but the opportunity was too important for Rune to miss, so he went into punching combo mode and reduced his target into pulp.

‘One down.’

And now the fight would become even easier.

Seeing one of their comrades dead didn’t affect them, they were monsters, they didn’t reconsider.

Rune blocked perfectly the wolf that came and seeing the 2nd wolf coming back at bullet speed, he put the other wolf between himself and him.

It worked and the 3rd wolf slowed down to not collide with the 2nd wolf, it opened him to executing a reinforced kick to send the wolf into the background, then he rushed to the wolf that was stunned and tackled it.

Normal strikes were enough in this situation, disrupting everything the wolf tried to do to escape, it finally resigned to an empirical exchange, but Rune was prepared and pumped energy into his armor and sometimes even blocked an attack with an unarmored arm.

After punching 8 times and blocking 6 times, it finally stopped moving.

Just in time, the other wolf came back and crashed into Rune that just delivered the last punch.

As it was the only remaining wolf, Rune took his time, no unnecessary risks, the wolf attempted to bite him so he dodged.

As it prepared the following claw attack, he waited and didn’t counter now, once he did, however, he evaded and countered with a knee strike from below.

Jumping to not let the wolf get better and recover its spirit, he punched its stomach area and then used the platform beneath his feet to continue and combo it.

It was the same as the previous one, the wolf took so many strikes that it couldn’t retreat unless it opened too many weak points.

As a last gift before dying, the wolf attempted to bite Rune’s head, but he simply headbutted the wolf and finished it with a kick that projected the wolf toward the ground, creating a small dust cloud.

“Ouf… That was intense.”

He evaluated the fight to have taken 15 minutes, with a majority being used for taking out the first wolf, which unlocked the whole situation after its elimination.

Focusing on the other fights, 3 were still going on, the ones of Gar, Adreana, and Nelo.

Spellcasters needed time to develop their masteries before really becoming combat-able, it didn’t change from when they were tier 1, and all of the Undecided were freshly advanced tier 2, so in truth, they were just tier 1 with more stats.

But they had to do it, they chose their path and knew the consequences, maybe the group would change things if it really was that hard.

Anyway, he had 3 monster cores to gather, so he launched 3 energy threads to pull them out of the wolf’s body.

Those cores should be worth around 40 000 EP if they were newly formed, if not, they could go as high as 100 000 EP, but it shouldn’t happen unless the target was at the very peak of its tier.

If those only gave him 40 000 EP, then they were born at the middle tier 2 level, and so it meant that there was a nest not too far, probably, he wasn’t that knowledgeable.

Elevating himself above the forest canopy, he started to absorb them, putting 80% of his awareness into it, the rest kept watch around him using his sphere.

After absorbing them, he opened his gathering log.

Absorbed ‘Tier 2 monster core’, gained 52 421 EP

Absorbed ‘Tier 2 monster core’, gained 53 875 EP

Absorbed ‘Tier 2 monster core’, gained 52 985 EP

In total, he gained 159 281 EP from a 15 minutes fight, and if he was really hungry for EP, literally, he could also eat the monster flesh.

It wasn’t all his gain, he still had leveled masteries notifications, a lot.

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement reached Tier 2 Level 3

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement reached Tier 2 Level 4

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Fighting Instinct reached Tier 2 Level 5

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Energy Compression reached Tier 2 Level 2

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation reached Tier 2 Level 1

*Ding* Energy Compression: Basic Energy Armor reached Tier 1 Level 5

*Ding* Energy Compression: Basic Energy Armor reached Tier 1 Level 6

*Ding* Energy Compression: Basic Energy Armor reached Tier 1 Level 7

*Ding* Energy Compression: Basic Defensive Armor reached Tier 1 Level 6

*Ding* Energy Compression: Basic Defensive Armor reached Tier 1 Level 7

*Ding* Energy Compression: Basic Defensive Armor reached Tier 1 Level 8

*Ding* Reinforcement: Basic Reinforced Armor reached Tier 1 Level 4

*Ding* Reinforcement: Basic Reinforced Armor reached Tier 1 Level 5

*Ding* Reinforcement: Basic Reinforced Armor reached Tier 1 Level 6

‘That’s a hefty amount of level up, did my tier 1 masteries level up like that at the beginning? That’s surely enjoyable.’

If he leveled up at that rate, then a thousand fights would allow him to join the rank of tier 3.

‘That’s why we went to fight, right? Nothing better to progress quickly than walking shoulder to shoulder with death.’

His thoughts were dark, but Rune had a beaming smile, this simple fight was more enjoyable than creating colors or playing with energy fireworks.

He was back to where he wanted to be, in the middle of a place where he could fight to the death while discovering places no one else stepped on before.

For his spellcaster friends, the situation was finally clearing up a little, they didn’t need help, they just needed time.

With his sphere he could see that Gar used energy threads to act like a tentacle monster, the wolves could see them so they only did coordinated attacks against him.

He had a breakthrough once he stopped evading and sacrificed his health and energy to forcefully kill a wolf, then reducing his energy consumption, it allowed him to enter a situation where he had perfect control.

Nelo and Adreana were the same, it really surprised Rune that they all made the same mistakes of thinking themselves overpowered, he was also included in it, only now did he see that his masteries were truly fresh tier 1, only his stats increased, he was only equal to the weak disorganized monsters, not superior.

Joining the spectating group after seeing everyone's gathering around Utopia, they started to discuss things.

“It’s because you only got 2 wolves, we all got 3 you cheater,” Astryde was staring accusatively at Arik.

“It’s probably because they saw my dangerosity with their instinct,” Arik was the one who only had to fight 2 wolves, so he finished first.

Logical Arik had the advantage over outraged Astryde, so their barter was very funny to listen to.

Utopia was silent, he was waiting for the other 3 to come back, he was probably preparing the next step of their plan.

Now that they entered a tier 2 zone, they couldn’t act like they were kings, not yet, they had to be very careful.

It was the Endless, a multi-tiered dimension, the only one in existence, and there were no restrictions, zones and regions didn’t have a real impact when it came to the greatest of disturbances.

Stories about tier 5 monsters razing whole zones weren’t uncommon, even tier 1 zones weren’t invulnerable to the most mindless of monsters.

‘Probably just fighting on the border and mapping it? That’ll be worth a lot of EP once we give everything back with the info we gathered.’

Rune wasn’t crazy enough to go on an adventure alone this early, if he was at peak tier 2, then his build would allow it to some extent, but currently it was pure suicide.

“Even Utopia can’t run away from everything…” Thinking this out loud accidentally, Utopia heard it and turned his head, but Rune didn’t intend to discuss it as it was a fact for him.

What would have happened if he encountered this pack of wolves alone? Nothing, he would have retreated, ran for his life, but what if one of those wolves had a perception stat or bullsh*t mastery allowing it to sense him?

Maybe only awareness boosted smell or sight would have been enough for them to chase him.

“Adreana and Nelo finished,” Gar who joined them said, and using his sphere, Rune saw that the two were approaching.

Once they joined, Utopia started to talk, “It was a very surprising and informative battle for me, and my previous choice is now challenged, I’d prefer if from now on a warrior and a spellcaster formed a group, with always one person preparing to intervene and help do sneaky strikes.”

‘Yup, everyone really thought that tier 2 monsters should have been weaker than this, I’m not the only one.’

Rune felt a bit more comforted.

“Oh, my Ether Law, protagonist Utopia chose to prioritize efficiency over challenge!” Adreana exclaimed, she was still bloody in someplace but the blood was already starting to disintegrate.

“That’s right, I don’t think this fight was a mistake, but we need to gather EP more efficiently to max our stats and become equal or superior to average tier 2 monsters, this way we’ll even be able to train with individual tier 3 or go against a true swarm of tier 2 monsters, our masteries need fighting experiences, not life or death fights.”

“Reasonable,” Arik commented, he probably wanted to increase his stats rapidly too.

“In this case, we’ll go back to our path and raze a 100 meters circle around this part, that will be our camp, then we’ll decide how to best proceed.”

Now that Utopia changed their operating model, he probably had to think a bit more, and preparing a camp was a must in this case.

Before going back to their path, Rune looked around, then overloaded his sense of sight, but nothing could be seen.

Nothing as far as his human eyes could see, only light topographic change, no plain, no mountain, no hill, no landmark, only forest canopy.

‘I’ll propose the flat north forest as the provisional name for this flat forest, it’s going to be where we’ll fight from now on after all.’

He then joined the rest of the group.

…

“For me, the optimized battle group if we’re talking about splitting our group in 2 should be Nelo, Rune, and me on one side, and Adreana, Astryde, Gar, and Arik on the other, does anyone have an opinion?” Utopia finished explaining his plan for farming EP.

“Yeah!” But it seemed that Astryde had something to say.

“If we want to just farm EP then we could just pull every monster in a large zone and lead them to a trap can’t we?”

“Too risky idiot!” Nelo immediately shut her down on the spot.

“What if we can’t manage them? And that’s not because we’ll focus on gaining EP that we want to miss months of masteries training,” Nelo’s argument gained nods from the rest of the group, including Rune’s.

“But isn’t it a viable tactic for an emergency? Utopia distracts the monster and we prepare a trap?” Astryde insisted.

For a reason unknown to them, she really wanted this to be a plan, but the others didn’t seem to agree.

“We can’t predict monster’s behavior, that’s why they are so dangerous, even if we’re talking about a single overpowered monster, it could act illogically and go for me only because it’s aggressive mindless instinct want to kill me,” Adreana adopted her usual serious look and looked at Asryde before she said that, finally calming Astryde of her crazy idea.

Waiting for other objections, Utopia waited but no one wanted to speak so he continued.

“If we keep to the outskirts of the zone then we can split into 2 groups to explore the 2 sides while keeping safe, so that’s what we’ll do for now, go for approximately 100 kilometers first, it should be enough to find lots of monsters.”

“And if we are not the hunters but the preys, do we rush towards the other teams?” Arik asked.

“Use delay tactics as much as possible and send your fastest one to go fetch the other group, we’ll fight the threat together,” it was Utopia’s decision, so it was the group’s decision.

After he finished speaking, the Undecided separated into 2 groups as planned beforehand, Rune would be with Utopia and Nelo on one side, and the rest on the other side.