“Nope I don’t see it like this, for my movement to be as fluid as possible I need to be able to do textbook momentum manipulation turn, but I can't forgo strength because even once I reach 2 000 momentum, I’ll only be able to go at the peak speed of someone with 500 strength,” casual conversation was hard to do once they exhausted everything possible.

“Just that while they’ll not be able to correct their trajectory instantly, you’ll be able to,” there only remained Ether Law matters, and how everything was not fair right now.

As they continued mapping the border of the tier 2 zone, attacks weren’t rare, they were common.

So common in fact that moving 20 minutes without a monster entering Rune’s perception sphere never happened.

The only reason they didn’t stop was that it wasn’t worth it, “A group of 2 monsters, doing nothing, no particular ether aura around them.”

Rune told what he saw, the two details he included of current activity and ether aura served as a reference to know if maybe it was an older monster or a monster guarding something.

“Ignore it,” Utopia wasn’t interested in a measly two tier 2 cores, if there was a group of tens of monsters, only then would it become worth their time.

“Then why don’t you fuse energy wings into your style? The greatest speedsters I read about used everything, strength or spells, to achieve the necessary speed in addition to mastery for energy wings and strength-based speed,” Nelo continued their little discussion about how Utopia intended to become a speedster with only momentum and strength.

“If you judge me based on how I fight now, then I’m truly a speedster, but like Rune is right now, don’t judge a book by its cover, he’s using reinforcement only because he has no choice, from his own words, by the way, I think what he did is beyond stupid, he should have gone directly for body control,” Utopia discredited his friend without any shame.

“I’m susceptible so don’t attack me, I have no repartee,” Rune interjected quietly.

“I intend to be a balanced fighter which excels in speed, not a fighter specialized in speed, anyways you’ll see the results later, it’s too early to say if anything everyone is doing is right at the moment,” Utopia ignored Rune and concluded their conversation on those words.

5 minutes later, Rune’s words once again sounded, “To our left, a monster’s group of 30 individuals, preparing to engage in battle against 20 other monsters from those I see, they’re all wolves, ether is fluctuating and birds are circling above.”

“We’re going, engage from the side and kill them all one by one, Nelo you make sure to block any diving birds that try to profit off our works,” Utopia decided.

Their group deviated from their forward path and reached a zone where multiple monster squads were fighting each other.

Birds were even assaulting those squads and fighting with their claws, there were 3 camps in this battle, and now the Undecided arrived, creating the 4th camp.

They didn’t use a sound bomb as it would provoke every monster, in place, Rune used a painful but useless energy bullet to fire into the eyes of the nearest wolf, making it turn and rush to him.

With Nelo in support and Utopia by the side, a simple technique would resolve everything, Rune waited for the wolf to pounce and then collided with it using a weak reinforcement, nullifying the damage for the two sides.

He then grabbed its neck and, like a wrestler, put his legs around the wolf stomach and completely blocked it by then flipping it and putting his hands on its back, serving the wolf on a silver platter to Utopia, which used a weak reinforcement on the immobilized wolf to explode its neck.

Rune stood up and rushed forward, letting Utopia empty the wolf’s health as Nelo engaged another wolf.

Behind him, Utopia and Nelo quickly killed the wolf and when he successfully controlled the second wolf, Utopia came to repeat the cycle.

After 40 wolves were killed, the monster's instinct finally reacted and told them to kill the group of 3 in priority, prompting them so they all rushed towards the group.

Nothing changed for Rune, he just had to serve as the center of attention while Utopia and Nelo took care of them.

Nelo blocked all the possible bird attacks and Rune blocked the wolves from interfering, it was a well-oiled slaughter machine for average tier 2 monsters.

Now that the situation changed, Rune had the choice of either running to distract them like Utopia did with the bear-like monsters, or he could use their own teamwork against them, they couldn’t all pounce at the same time, and he favored this outcome.

So he created a sound bomb and turned it on near him.

He didn’t have a warcry before punching the first wolf that pounced, he kept silent as he blocked and evaded everything the remaining tens of wolves did.

He used as many weak points as he could see, and by using weak reinforcement, he sent wolves flying without them being able to react.

Before long, the first wolf was killed silently by Utopia, then the second, then the third.

At some point, Nelo stopped blocking the bird and let them plunge towards the sound bomb, for it became pigeon shooting with energy lasers, making the birds fall like flies, still alive.

After eliminating the last wolf, Rune and Utopia took care of the downed birds and 10 minutes later there was nothing alive in the zone.

From this, Rune gained 2 312 550 EP and boosted his perception by yet another 47 stat points.

Checking his leveled masteries, it was as expected for a fight of this level.

*Ding* Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement reached Tier 2 Level 6

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Grand Manipulation reached Tier 2 Level 1

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

*Ding* Reinforcement: Basic Reinforced Armor reached Tier 1 Level 10

‘There’s really something magical about fighting.’

Gaining a level in momentum manipulation and grand manipulation despite their minimum usages was a telling that despite him not knowing, he learned how to use them more instinctively.

“Utopia? Did you read something talking about instinctively learning something without knowing it yourself?” Better be safe than sorry, this type of knowledge, Rune would never say no to it.

Thinking for a moment, Utopia answered, “Yeah, that’s why more than 99% of higher tiers are composed of people who battled to go where they are now, the reason we took only 2 years to arrive at the peak of tier 1 in masteries level from nothing is the same.”

Turning his head, Utopia said more seriously, “But compared to the most extreme type of training such as adventuring alone in a higher tier zone than your tier, our current leveling speed is nothing.”

“Ok,” now that was some statistics he didn’t know about, and he wasn’t going to complain that the way to acquire power relied more on battle than learning.

“I also read that as tier 2 have a lifespan of hundreds of years, the majority of deaths are due to monsters or dimensional exploration, just to say that tier 2 can completely be bypassed by pure rote learning, and same for tier 3 and 4, as for tier 5…” Nelo said and maintained a tense silence.

“I didn’t read anything about someone reaching it this way, but it should also be possible,” he was talking about something very common when you took into account millions of years old civilizations.

After millions of years, they established working societies in the Endless, and their prosperous population center was home to many different schools that could allow you to attain tier 3 after just some years of studies.

Learning from retired tier 5 or 6 adventurers, soldiers, or whatever they did in their life, was very efficient.

“For us, we have zero chance of reaching the end of our lifespan naturally, we’ll die fighting against a monster's wave, an ether hazard, during a dimension’s scouting or during an adventure alone,” hearing Utopia say this, Rune smiled slightly.

“The only chance we have to die naturally is to retire, let’s go, we still have 6 days before backtracking to our camp,” Utopia cut this subject short.

…

“A river, something very unusual if we deviate 200 meters towards the tier 1 zone, a vein of black mineral replaced the riverbed from the surface until it leaves my perception,” acting as a scout, Rune reported something that wasn’t about monsters.

This time Utopia seemed to hesitate, “Hu… Well, I didn’t receive education about advanced geology yet, but if it’s a mineral of something common like iron then I can probably recognize them, let me see first before judging.”

Going a little away from the border, not that much considering its size, they arrived at a river, and it was a major river, with at least 100 meters between the two banks, not like the little one they found before.

And as Rune observed, the riverbed at this place presented a massive black vein of something.

“I’m going in to take samples, if it's something common I recognize we’ll take more samples, if not we’ll just include it in our mission’s report as a major point of interest,” then Utopia dived into the river while Rune and Nelo waited in the air, one on a platform and the other with his wings.

Emerging 30 seconds later, Utopia had a smooth black mineral in his hand, once he was stable he observed it from a different angle, but only when he used energy to try things did he discover something.

“It’s affecting the magnetic field! 100% it’s magnetite!” Utopia seemed excited but Rune and Nelo didn’t know why until Utopia put his thoughts to words.

“Magnetite ore is an ore very rich in iron, and iron is probably needed a lot in the IGS currently, and with the amount under our feet that’s a big discovery, if they didn’t discover a nearer iron mine then we’ll be rich. But the chances are low, most probably the IGS already found all the mines they needed… But it’ll still be a great discovery!”

“Then it means that from the start we were on an area reclamation mission for the future of civilization? That’s a good story if we ignore reality,” Rune let his thoughts escape.

He was of course happy for their find, but now that they found this, someone would have to make the IGS aware of a magnetite ore vein, or veins considering what he was seeing, being here, and this implicated a return trip.

But even his sarcastic comment didn’t affect the atmosphere.

“Ok, let’s gather big chunks of it and bring them back to camp, we’ll take them back when we go,” Utopia had a plan and who were they to defy a rululu’s will?

As not even a day has passed, they came back to camp quickly with massive chunks of rocks they broke off after making a hole 5 meters into the ground, unveiling part of the vein previously hidden.

Once they stocked them in a pile, they departed again, rushing to where they discovered the river and the veins of ore, then continued, they still had 6 days of slaughtering to do.

…

Fighting never stopped, it was totally different from the Deep Void dimension, the Endless didn’t obey any law except the Ether Law and the law of the jungle.

“A bird covered in flames incoming, there’s only one!” Engaged with a giant snake, Rune alarmed the rest of what he saw with his sphere.

It was their 4th day of rampaging in the border of the flat forest, and it was the first time that Rune felt panic rising up.

Excluding the first day, they participated in 12 battles they judged worth the battle, and from those Rune gained 27 750 600 EP as well as lots of level up.

Rune Tudor (Tier 2)

Class: Frontline Pathfinder

Specialty: Shelled Dimensional Perception

EP: 1 004 675

Stats Total: 8 197

Health: 500

Health Regeneration: 500

Strength: 1 000

Cohesion: 500

Energy: 1 000

Energy Regeneration: 1 197

Purity: 500

Affinity: 500

Momentum: 500

Perception: 2 000

With his perception maxed, Rune's next focus was on energy regeneration as it added more survivability to his already defensive fighting style.

But it seemed that his survivability was finally going to be put to the test.

“We’re standing our ground! Flames mean tier 3 with a fire elemental mastery, we’re going to test ourselves! Rune you protect Nelo! Nelo you disrupt the bird's activity as much as possible! I’m taking every opportunity you give me to strike Rune!”

Utopia made the decision to engage with a tier 3, it wasn’t impossible as, after all, it was alone and birds were a special kind of monster who had obvious weakness and strength.

‘Birds are bad at exerting their strength, but tier 3 means stats between 2 000 and 5 000, so I have no chance in face to face, I can only count on Nelo and Utopia to do damage while I prioritize losing as little energy and health as possible.’

This time, he for sure wasn’t going to tempt fate by going juggernaut.

Barely had Rune prepared himself mentally that Nelo sent pulse spells in the direction of where the flaming bird was.

But it didn’t even take this into account as it just dived straight towards the snake Rune fought before it arrived.

A big tremor passed through the ground as the snake was splattered on the ground by the bird, then the bird tried to take flight again with his prey in his claw, but Nelo intervened and cast at the same time an energy laser on one of his wings and an energy bullet to its head.

Rune then launched a sound bomb, attracting all its attention with the obnoxious sound, it was time for him to test his survivability against a monster with true extraordinary power.

Tier 3 implied that any monster you found could have a basic efficient build made by its instinct, though it was still uncommon, it was only when compared to 100% of the monsters having an optimized build when they became tier 4, as well as the start of a specialization.

In a majority of cases, it was going to be an elemental specialization, but some would have variant specialization such as stealth or incredible tenacity.

Those special abilities could also be normally acquired by carefully doing minor stat manipulation or fundamental specialization, but they just had it, and they could be compared to peak tier 3 taking only this ability into account.

The first move by the bird was to peck at Rune, but he was prepared, he overloaded his sensitivity to as high as 95%, the world was only shades of black and white at this point and everything too far had a fuzzy appearance.

He had to control his energy balance at all costs, so he tried to evade it, but the peck was so fast that he had to block it, so he chose to sacrifice his health.

What felt like 300 health disappeared just like that, his arm also had a hole in it now, and the bird wasn’t finished.

With pure speed, one of its clawed paws reached for Rune and grabbed him, then the bird literally tried to use its mouth to rip his head off with a bite.

It took 400 armor to block that bite, but blocking it opened an opportunity to free himself by using an elbow strike.

Unexpectedly, it had so little effect that the bird didn’t even react and once again tried to bite his head off, but Utopia used a major reinforcement to impact the distracted bird in the side, stopping its bite.

Rune’s job was to keep its attention, so he created another sound bomb and blasted it in the face of the bird despite what just happened.

Maybe more than 2 000 cohesion had an uncalculated effect as it didn’t seem to care that much about the major punch from Utopia, it just tried to grab Rune again with its claws.

‘I already did everything in my power…’ With tier 2 energy you could boost your sense of time a little, that’s why superior tiers were so powerful, and now, what he used against Utopia back then, he was receiving himself.

‘How should I counter an opponent physically and mentally faster than me?’ He couldn’t give another opportunity, so he used a medium reinforcement and a feint to make the bird miss its grab.

Being seen as inferior didn’t give Rune an advantage as a wing strike finally achieved what Rune wanted to escape at all prices, he was sent flying.

He couldn’t react until half a second later where he used his movable platform and a weak reinforcement to jump toward the bird that maybe didn’t expect such a quick return.

Catching the bird by surprise finally made it take Rune seriously as flames sprouted from everywhere and rushed towards Rune.

Heat descended on him, his defensive masteries weren’t ready, he could only exchange 100 energy for 106 armor, far from what was required to face that level of threat.

But he wasn’t alone, with the flame rushing towards Rune, Utopia finally reacted, “Nelo! We’re killing it now!”

Rune heard it too and had to do his job, so he voluntarily ran into the flames and struck the bird in the chest, every second he lost 50 armor, and it was a passive loss.

Of course, he covered himself totally as his health, even though it had the cohesion stat behind it, would just be annihilated.

He couldn’t attack the flame or destroy them so he could only tank them.

Accounting for his energy compression efficiency bonus, coming only from his fundamental mastery, with his 1 200 energy regeneration stat, he regenerated the equivalent of 21 armor every second.

He couldn’t sustain indefinitely at this rate.

Even if he had 2 000 in his energy regeneration stat, he would only gain 35 armor per second, so the choice of Rune was to completely stop using reinforcement.

The true test started, he couldn’t evade the flame, but he could evade the bird’s strike, the bird pecked at his form, and Rune decided to block this one with a perfect punch, it had little effect with the difference in pure strength.

He couldn’t evade anyway for this one, it was too fast, only if Utopia or Nelo intervened would he have a chance at dodging.

The bird followed with another peck, but it received an energy bullet on the side, disrupting its second peck.

Using all the strength he could muster from his leg, he jumped to the side, successfully dodging this strike, saving potentially 400 armor, but it was only the start of the minute of hell.

Utopia started to punch its side like a berserker warrior and Nelo sent energy laser after energy laser, Rune only had to keep its attention.

A claw grab perturbed by one of Utopia’s punches was evaded, Rune didn’t even think of punching back, it wasn’t possible.

Managing the distance to always bother the 3 meters tall bird, he neared then distanced himself, evaded a peck, then neared again.

A wing sweep, Rune used his armor and firmly planted his feet into the earth to resist.

After successfully blocking the attack, it perturbed the posture of the bird, opening something that Rune instinctively punched perfectly before repositioning himself.

Another peck, but it never learned, Utopia made a punch that allowed Rune to evade once again, then another grab, which Nelo perturbed.

They weren’t fighting fair, but if they fought one versus one they would die, and the flames around were now starting to impact Rune’s health, now he only had under 30 seconds left to live before his health emptied, considering his health and energy regeneration buying him time.

He didn’t believe in chance so he said it clearly, “20 seconds before I disengage!”

And then continued evading everything the bird threw at him.

But in the end, he accomplished his job, after 5 seconds, in mid peck, the bird suddenly stopped moving.

The flames all extinguished.

“That was some crazily strong bird!” Rune was still alert but his thought existed from his mouth without him noticing.

Every second that passed, he pumped all his new energy into a quickly created energy armor spell matrix, he came so close to death that he wanted to return to minor security as soon as possible.

But he wasn’t the only one that suffered, Utopia also preferred having his skin burned from the flame attack aftermath on Rune than reducing his damage, so his skin was burned on one side.

Rune, was by far the worst, “Oh my lord imagine if my sense of pain was activated!” His mouth was really saying his every thought without control.

“Hahahaha! You’re just a charred mess of human skin! Hahaha!” For some reason, Nelo found the situation so funny that he couldn’t stop laughing.

“Hahaha!” But Utopia joined him soon after as he saw Rune's body with his own eyes.

Rune wasn’t laughing but his smile was showing all his teeth, how couldn’t he be happy, he just looked death in the eyes and slapped it.

“Hahaha! Let’s gather the cores, there’s still much to do before departing again, ha, haha,” Utopia looked out of breath, or maybe he was trying to restrain his laughter.

The group went to work, it was a satisfying battle.