“The plan is to go back ten or twenty kilometers then walk northeast, we’ll not follow the cliff, in 1 week we should reach maximum tier 2 stats, and then, we’ll be ready to start individual training, let’s go.”

Utopia took to the air and, followed by the whole Undecided, got back using their own path.

Monsters didn’t fill the zone in one day so once they traveled 20 kilometers back, they stopped and oriented themselves northeast, perpendicular to their own northwest path’s orientation.

Repeatedly clearing a path in the primitive forest was becoming a boring albeit not frustrating activity.

Arik sometimes uprooted a tree and then used it to strike Rune, then Rune answered by uprooting another tree and jousting using them.

Rune was so bored out of his mind that he stopped announcing scouting reports, everyone has long reached 2 000 perception, though he still sometimes did it by habit.

The forest didn’t change, 80 meters high trees, thorny shrubs everywhere, only the monster army’s composition changed.

Sometimes a species they never saw before appeared, like moose, why would they exist is a question that everyone had the right to ask.

Some of those species didn’t have a jaw full of sharp teeth or claws attached to their limbs, so how did they survive so long amidst wolf squads of 50 individuals each roaming everywhere in this infinitely flat forest?

It was all because sharp teeth and claws only gave a minor advantage, ether stats and masteries levels ruled the world here, you just needed to coincidentally have a build that countered the other to win.

Sometimes a monster wave happened, sometimes thousands of birds flocked together, sometimes the Undecided were so overwhelmed that they thought it was their limit.

But after every fight, their slotted masteries would level up, giving them an additional percent of efficiency that allowed them to gradually near the ether path they wanted to take and the respective type of fighting style associated with it.

After three weeks, Rune absorbed the last fight’s cores and after investing it all, he reached peak tier 2 stats-wise.

Rune Tudor (Tier 2)

Class: Frontline Pathfinder

Specialty: Shelled Dimensional Perception

EP: 1 599 363

Stats Total: 20 000

Health: 2 000

Health Regeneration: 2 000

Strength: 2 000

Cohesion: 2 000

Energy: 2 000

Energy Regeneration: 2 000

Purity: 2 000

Affinity: 2 000

Momentum: 2 000

Perception: 2 000

‘Is that what pioneer work looks like? Paving a path in blood that will anyway never end?’

Stats weren’t a problem for him anymore, and at tier 2, compared to later, masteries weren’t that difficult to raise, so he didn't find a reason to complain about his situation.

Every time he faced a tier 3, he could not only take their hits like what he saw himself capable of doing at peak tier 2, but he could also sometimes glimpse into how they fought, what their next move was going to be, and lots of other details.

‘I should have fought by myself earlier, I lost maybe 1 week of masteries training.’

Working with Nelo was natural, but at this point, they were only passively slaying everything that approached them, nothing else.

But now it was over, now everyone was going to fight for themselves, death or life, attack or defense, evade or block, everything that a solo adventurer needed to do and had to learn.

‘I’m ready for it.’

Rune was far from reaching the end of tier 2, but he was going to enjoy himself a lot more soon.

Masteries

Tier 1 Masteries

Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement: Tier 2 Level 56

Physical Fundamental: Fighting Instinct: Tier 2 Level 54

Physical Fundamental: Body Control: Tier 2 Level 55

Energy Fundamental: Fine Manipulation: Tier 2 Level 27

Energy Fundamental: Grand Manipulation: Tier 2 Level 28

Energy Fundamental: Energy Compression: Tier 2 Level 61

Spiritual Fundamental: Perception Control: Tier 2 Level 31

Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division: Tier 2 Level 17

Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation: Tier 2 Level 32

Tier 2 Masteries

Energy Compression: Basic Energy Armor: Tier 2 Level 27

Energy Compression: Basic Defensive Energy: Tier 2 Level 27

Reinforcement: Basic Reinforced Armor: Tier 2 Level 26

‘115%... A third of the way.’

Till now, his fighting style was something he created based on his tier 1 fights, but after 3 months now passed in the Endless, he had to rethink how he wanted to approach the future.

If he shared his style, not only would his friends call him a purist, they would also say he didn’t change anything.

Because that was the truth.

He wanted to rely on a basic punch to do as much damage as a major reinforced punch.

He wanted to be able to control his own body using this strength like it was momentum.

He wanted every point of energy to become an unbreakable barrier between himself and death.

He wanted to continue on the behemoth path, but without its focus on brutality.

He wanted to be able to survive anything, explore any place, even the most hostile environment.

And he wasn’t the only purist in their group, Nelo was typically one, Arik was nearly one, they had their own vision of their future.

One wanted to have a spell strength so high that his every laser or bullet would reach further beyond what was possible.

The other wanted to become absolute, when something hit him, as long as he had enough energy, he wouldn’t be the one receiving damage, because his reinforcement would make him the incarnation of strength.

That’s why masteries existed, to break reality, to make it bend before your whim, as long as you had enough willpower, you could create miracles using your own strength.

“Has anyone not reached 20 000 total stats yet?” Utopia asked.

Rune had his daydreaming interrupted, but he was happy to be interrupted considering the question that was asked.

Utopia asking that was the sign that they would all be set free, free to deliver death all alone, with no regard to actually killing monsters.

No one said anything.

“Then we’ll all fight alone from now on, as I already know that everyone just wants to go crazy so I’ll say it now, if anyone is actually going to die then just take it like a champion and survive by yourself, if tier 3 comes then we’ll let them fight one of us individually and if that person loses then another will take the relay,” it seemed that even the “reasonable” Utopia wanted to go crazy.

Rune wasn’t the only one who had enough of planned farming, Utopia seemed really pumped up, he wanted to send some monsters flying in orbit by himself from his expression.

‘I can go back to challenging myself now.’

With their plan no longer being farming EP, he could now push himself to catch up on some of his masteries that were late.

As the group started to once again cut a path through the forest, everyone was preparing themselves, but 2 of them expressed it more than the others.

“Yup, I can feel my head spinning, I already dispersed my whole ether soul, what does your weak will have to do with me Arik?” Rune was taunting Arik that had a vein appearing on his forehead.

“I’ll only use one arm in the next fight, can you do this?” Arik was clearly overbidding but more challenge was always better.

“Of course I can, but I won’t, if I do it one day I’ll just straight away cut my own arm to make it more meaningful, maybe a leg or two with it,” arrogance was leaking from Rune’s answer.

It was clearly an act, but it looked as though he would do it for the heck of it.

“I’m not stupid like you, I use the situation as a challenge, once I kill a thousand monsters more than you you’ll see if you were right to cut your arm or not,” uprooting another tree he used it to try, and smash Rune.

Rune quickly uprooted a tree and blocked the strike, but Arik’s strength provoked his tree to flatten Rune’s one and explode on contact with the ground.

“You f*cker,” Rune uprooted another tree and smashed Arik but using one hand he stopped it.

The smug look on his dwarf-without-a-beard face was so frustrating that Rune just looked away and continued creating their path.

Having just won, Arik worked slowly and carefully as if he was savoring the instant.

10 minutes later, after advancing 3 kilometers, the first individual battle started, and the moment the first squad of spider-like monsters arrived, everyone just propelled themselves towards them.

The fight ended in 15 minutes.

…

“Does the Detail element exist?” Rune asked.

“Yes,” Utopia answered after 5 seconds.

“Then add it!” Finally finding another mastery to add to his fireworks mage’s build, Rune exclaimed.

“Yes,” The same answer, not a variation in it, like a fed-up secretary with a crazy boss.

The Undecided still didn’t reach a tier 3 zone, but this time they were sure they were approaching faster than they improved.

Only Utopia and Rune succeeded in fighting a tier 3 alone, it was the slowest and most anti-climactic fight of their entire group’s journey.

Utopia killed one in 25 minutes while Rune took 30 minutes, the others didn’t have the kit of masteries necessary to answer to the damage they took.

Some may think that learning to be absolutely alone and relying on nothing but oneself was a very extremist view, but the board had recorded histories dating back to millions of years.

At that time, the current peak civilizations, housing thousands of recorded tier 7, were only young nascent nations.

All this time nevertheless confirmed something, disaster could arrive in many forms.

It could come internally, from a conflict of interest for the monopoly of some dimensions, the ideological development of their own civilization, the mad design of a powerhouse…

But also externally, the Endless itself could decide that it was time for a major shift of region transitions or zone borders, transforming a tier 1 zone into a tier 8 zone, annihilating every lifeform, and blocking the normal way of leaving one’s native dimension.

And after all those eras of new conflicts as well as “archeology” into the information board, it was learned that the Ether Law’s precepts that could be exploited with masteries, obeyed fundamental laws.

You couldn’t resurrect a dead person, you couldn’t destroy an ether soul, you couldn’t exchange health or energy, all those types of basic things, only to say some.

Those limits were known to everyone, and after millions of years, some… Counter-intuitive solutions were found.

Health, for example, the value defining whether you were alive or dead, was something that couldn’t be touched by anything that made it surpass its original amount by external means.

In other terms, healing was impossible, negative damage also didn’t exist, the best imitations one could do was by boosting one’s health regeneration stat with a minor manipulation made consequential with a mastery.

In parallel, the supporting path, a domain that the IGS invested in before they connected to the generalized Information Board, was also subject to the same limit, and the supporting path, in particular, faced these limits earlier than any other path.

A point of health would only ever be one point of health, some thought the minor stat manipulation path was the key because, in the same manner as energy, health could be manipulated.

The difference was that from the start, health didn’t have any characteristic pointing to it being manipulable, it needed a dedicated mastery.

But even then, despite millions of years trying to circumvent the Ether Law, from genius to billions of years old board forum, it always came to the same answer.

There were no secrets, everything was possible, it was never hidden, as long as you used the rules, then you could do anything, even destroy the Ether Law itself.

Though you probably wouldn’t live long trying to destroy reality itself.

Rune, as a young human, was far from perfection, but he learned his lessons well.

He considered health as his last bulwark, something that should never be touched, all the research available on the board, he read, and during his latest and only whole fight alone against a tier 3, he didn’t let a single hit attain his health.

For him, it was the optimal fight, a fight where he never had to compensate for his lacking energy or speed by using his health as a shield.

And after reading the board and planning his path before, he knew it was exactly what he desired.

His plan involved having his health regeneration reach a balance of zero, not by using it as a shield, but by consuming it for a certain specialization that was pioneered using all those researches on health manipulation.

Health was the ultimate fuel, and he was interested in one of its properties, the property that allowed it to resist so much more damage than simple compressed energy.

The cohesion stat.

But he was still too far from tier 3, his plan was imperfect, he only had rough ideas, so it was still too far.

Or was it?

After traveling for another 10 kilometers, it was time again, hundreds of monsters were charging towards them, the intruders, to tear them apart.

But what they’d get was something else, they were charging towards entities who had big dreams.

The whole group split and charged individually at their first target, their friends didn’t exist, they were alone.

The proof of them approaching a tier 3 zone was so visible as 7 tier 3 were present in this wave, proving their proximity to a mixing zone between a tier 2 and a tier 3 zone.

Rune was assaulted by two tier 3 and tens of tier 2, all wolves monsters, there was no need to panic as he knew what they would do and how.

Rushing to a tier 2 wolf, he used pure strength to crush its head and then used its body to block its companions' charges.

Having nothing to worry about, he took his time, his sense of self was deactivated, his spirit was pushing at the same time his sphere and his momentum to beyond what he could handle.

He kicked another wolf, crushing its head against the ground then grabbed one who pounced on him and similarly crushed its head against the ground.

There was nothing like this move against the wolves.

They didn’t put enough point in cohesion for an unknown reason, there was no exception, so Rune pushing his strength to 154%, the equivalent to 3 080 strength, was enough to render them immobilized till their head regenerated.

This regeneration took a whole minute and could be interrupted easily with a few moves from his part, that’s why he didn’t worry, the true problem was the two tier 3.

But they were part of his goal, using his tier 2 abilities to kill them would be good training, even if it took one hour.

So he engaged them after taking care of all the tier 2 and delaying them with his own methodology, only strike when they strike you.

It was something he discovered during his first fight alone against a tier 3, weak points or openings he was sure were safe could only be created if his opponent moved, but for the fight to advance, the monster had to strike him, then why not strike precisely the strike itself?

If you try to bite me, I’ll punch your head, if you try to claw me, then I’ll kick your leg, if you charge at me, then I’ll make you eat dirt.

His current level could make tier 2 monsters feel like he was immortal and untouchable, but that was only because he set his sight to the next tier and never regressed.

Even if they had a regeneration of 5 000 health per minute, he only had to deal 5 001 damages per minute, that was the heart of his fighting style, that was the reason he was in for the long haul.

Of course, it was only theoretical at the moment.

Rune wasn’t etherly capable enough to deal 5 001 damage per minute, those tier 3 monsters the Undecided were fighting against were all newly ascended, so their health regeneration would never go beyond 3 000 health per minute.

But accounting for their cohesion and evasion, they were at the level of final bosses for them, for Rune, however, they were only weakened final bosses because his masteries permitted more damage.

All those fights refined his path, and now he was hesitating to transition to purely strength-based damage directly in tier 3 and gaining another slot by purging his Reinforced Armor Mastery, permanently quitting reinforcement in a true battle of life and death.

At first, he wanted to mix a bit of reinforcement and body control mastery in tier 3 before transitioning in tier 4 to only body control, but only idiots didn’t change their minds.

His mind wasn’t set, Rune already used the least amount of momentum he had to, and now he wanted to completely give up on using reinforcement, those were choices that would close some paths and open some.

A wolf assaulted him from behind, and he had no choice but to take it, as revenge he elbowed the side of the wolf as it retreated, taking maybe 200 health.

They were tier 3 but still didn’t use their specializations, so maybe they didn’t have one or it had something to do with a condition that would be fulfilled later.

Ultimately, they’d have to reveal it after their health continued falling without the miserable human before them dying.

For Rune, it was what true training should look like, his spirit was pushing boundaries, his ether soul was dispersed, he compressed energy every second, he reacted to every movement from the monsters, he punched and transmitted all his strength at every move.

It was long, intense, hard, and tedious, but he liked it.

He was one tier below, but his punch inflicted more pain than he received, he was alone against a lot, but he lived, and they all died.

After 20 minutes of his target wolf receiving punishment after punishment, it had no choice but to use its ability, and Rune immediately became interested.

A red fog started to emanate from the wolf-like monster, he didn’t know what it was, it didn’t look like poison, it didn’t even look like an element, it was only a sign that something was going on.

After the wolf continued attacking, the red fog acted like a simple red-colored energy mist and didn’t affect Rune in any way, it didn’t even penetrate through his armor.

But another 20 minutes later, Rune realized that the red fog was something that made it so that he was in the worst situation he could think of.

The wolf just wouldn’t die, his damages were too low.