‘Spiritual powers, perception-based spiritual powers, spirit ripple!’

Using the guide and turning to the right page, he could finally start to unveil all his choices in depth.

With him was Nelo, who seemed to live on the balcony. Rune not having anything to train in but only having to read, also decided to take residence here.

‘A secondary specialization of spiritual power?’

He just started to understand what spirit ripple was and already, he was learning new things. The probability he ignored this subject during his initial board search was high, but this time he was personally involved so it was different.

Spirit ripples were a specific type of attack and its power depended on his perception control.

What was unique and worth it of being part of his specialty was the fact that to gain access to it, one needed 2 masteries, one to gain access to general perception spiritual power, the other to amplify the flowing aspect found in the perception stat’s spiritual power.

Like the elemental path, it followed the rule that you couldn’t discard the initial foundation as it was the primary layer of specialization.

Secondary meant that spirit ripples were a very specialized path, maybe too specialized, for a tier 3.

Its use was described as direct and violent, it wasn’t a long-term spirit enclave or anything like that, it was just causing ripples so strong with your spirit that the matter and ether started to respond to it.

It wasn’t a purely offensive spiritual power as it could be used to see everything approaching you, and that property wasn’t a joke as it was at equal with the offensive property Rune read about.

In sum, gaining influence over “basic spirit ripple creations” meant he got 2 specialized masteries directly.

With a bit of thinking, it meant he could change his build to directly have a thrice specialized mastery over one of the aspects of spirit ripples, most probably the offensive aspect, this way he could become so specialized that he would be accepted in any army as a tier 3 spirit strategic weapon.

‘What’s a little exhaustion when my will can reduce any monster to dust instantly?’

The prospect of this path could very well be extraordinary, and the more he read the more he branched off and understood that a fundamental 100% efficiency and a specialized 100% efficiency were like a star and a gas giant in comparison.

‘I’d easily breeze through the entire tier 3 if I choose this path, even tier 4 monsters should be sensible to a triple specialization, and the final blow would be that I still have 5 masteries dedicated to defending myself, plus my class bonus.’

Dreaming about a possible future whereas a peak tier 3, he reduced to dust a passing tier 4 monster without even looking at it was pretty exciting.

‘It checks all the points I need, I’m keeping an unbending sphere while getting a new way to attack and detect threats too fast for me,’ he concluded this path analysis and passed to the next.

‘The composite element path.’

The reason he planned to make a composite element was that his specialty was so powerful against perception disrupting effects that he would be able to create and train a disrupting element that would even render him, someone quasi immune to it, completely blind.

‘The path of effort and reward, the path I’ll create with my own hand, the most probable choice if I don't lie to myself.’

He didn’t have much to think about for this path, increased unbendingness was good if that’s what he wanted, even his awareness would become unbending, the result of persisting in one path and not changing.

‘Last one, the temporal path.’

Searching through the guide, Rune stumbled upon the time perception section.

Everything one’s specialty could do was more or less replicable by using masteries, just that the end result could be more disappointing than anything else compared to the true thing.

And it seemed that using masteries to change one’s time perception was such a path.

‘Time perception primary specialization at peak tier 2 allows you to extend your time perception by 20%, secondary specializations do the same…’

Simple maths told him something he liked.

‘Well, I’m getting what I ask for if I dedicate my whole specialty to time perception, 100% is equivalent to 5 peak tier 2 time perception masteries.’

It was clearly the most direct path, if you’re slower than your opponent but then enter another temporality where he is twice as slow, that’s it, problem solved!

Dreaming about taking it, imagining himself doing pranks with it, a whole new life it would be.

If only he didn’t already make his choice and was just delaying the inevitable.

‘The more I think about it, the more I realize how much I want to have my own composite element…’

Rune had to face reality, he couldn’t take everything, he couldn’t become a perfect being without weaknesses.

100% extended time came at the price of not creating a composite element, an efficient one, it wouldn’t become what it should have been if one half of his plan was missing.

The short-term end result would have been similar, he would become able to run away from tier 4 speedster monsters, but specialty was something that would continue to evolve, and Rune didn’t want to be locked in a path yet.

Now was the time to make a choice with consequences.

‘It’s not min-maxing, it’s just choosing, the path I choose now will have repercussions on how I fight, how I fight will have repercussions on my future path, and my future path… Sigh…’

Tired of even mentally thinking, he decided to go back to zero, the major points of his life.

‘Energy armor, I’ll never give up this layer of protection,’ steadiness was inscribed in his class, his mentality, his being, his future.

‘Survival, if I die it’s all useless,’ this point was rejecting the spirit ripple path.

A weakness such as his spirit shutting down from long engagements was a very big weakness, time perception also involved using his spirit but the description told of a very normal life with extended time perception.

‘Tier 4 provided masteries…’

When he eventually became tier 4, he would have to reset all his masteries to become provided ones, no way he was keeping a general approach to what determined his survival.

“Reset” was not exactly what would happen, but it represented what he would have to do.

A provided mastery was a completely new type of mastery that used one slot like the basic slotted masteries he used till now, the only difference being that their performance was double that of the general one, why?

Because you could now transfer efficiency between different fundamental masteries.

Rune didn’t use grand manipulation at all? He could create a provided mastery that would transfer its efficiency to energy compression. Same if he didn’t use reinforcement, he could transfer all its efficiency to his perception control fundamental.

All those provided masteries similarly started at tier 1 level 0, but the moment they became tier 2 every level would give 2% efficiency and minus 1% efficiency to their target. This process that the Ether Law opened at tier 4 explained why monsters and sapients alike stepped on the path to becoming a powerhouse.

9 slots for masteries and 9 fundamental masteries, play with them as you like, the possibilities are endless.

A completely specialized entity with an all-in build could allow anyone to have a perception sphere going for hundreds of kilometers or give someone a basic strength capable of ripping open mountains.

‘Anyway, exploration, the definition of what I want my life to be.’

Becoming sensible to time events could in part further that goal, but the other two could too, ripples from deep in the earth informing him of something happening, or his sphere unveiling hidden clues.

‘Indecision, hesitation, carefulness, never committing too much, not letting my emotions take over.’

His personality that he’d always have, he was himself, he liked to plan everything out like he was doing now.

Choose the spirit ripple path, dedicate 2 or maybe 3 slots to the offensive aspect of spirit ripples, become a death machine that kills with a thought while still keeping an unbending sphere, warp his fighting style to adapt to his new strength.

Choose the unbending path and pave a path that would continue to exist even if he lost his specialty, refining his own advantage with hard work, the original path his soul naturally decided for itself.

Choose the temporal path, fight, flee, explore and live in a reality that is 2 times slower, become a pure fundamental fighter, slowly control the flow of the fight and transcend mere time, distance, and reaction time to maybe even becoming a peak tier 3 that can fight to a standstill with peak tier 4.

‘No, not peak, excuse me for this affront Ether Law.’

He knew that the choice he had to make wasn’t permanent per se, his class could become a reinforcement one if he decided so next time, other paths would open for his specialty once it advanced to tier 4…

But once he chose to live in time extended by 2 times, would he ever want to go back? Once he learned to fight with spiritual power, would he still use the suboptimal choice of body control? When he refined his element to become the most powerful in its domain ever, could he still bear to stop its progress?

‘Seems there’s only a single option in the end…’

After thinking for what felt like his whole life, Rune got back to what defined himself.

“I’m reporting my choice! Hahaha! Let’s see… What does a composite element guide look like hohoho!”

The indecision hell won the battle but not the war, one day he had to do it, just… Not now.

…

‘It does work… Theoretically…’

On his way to theoretically create his own composite element, Rune had a lot of homework to do.

Every element had a so-called perception dampening property, but comparing darkness to light, the way they did it was so different that their fusion was a near certainty as there was no overlap at all.

He needed an element with all the right properties which he could work on and train by himself, later on, the blinding aspect of light, the cohesive aspect of the nebula, the shadowy aspect of darkness, the unsolvable aspect of mystic, the manifestation aspect of illusion, the environmental aspect of mist.

Those were beautiful words, but like science could be interpreted in different ways, he had to “calculate” and “interpret” what part of perception dampening was covered by each fusion.

In his vision, the guide was opened, and next to it was a secondary note app with the current ideal description of his perfect composite element.

[An element, preferably resembling the atmospheric ether present everywhere in the Endless, that has no offensive or defensive properties.

An element with the mystic aspect of it not being destroyable by other elements because it's all natural.

So overbearing that even the owner isn’t spared from its effect, this property should amplify the end result.

Cover every basic perception senses allowing one to locate himself or other, sound, sight, sphere, touch.

Everything should work in harmony and even amplify each other, the basic rule of a composite element all in all.]

Every time he thought about something, he added it to the massive description. The amount of concession he was ready to make was mind-blowing, but all successful composite elements used such a method at the start, he was following the exact plan told by the guide.

From searching for the composite element he wanted to realizing no one ever decided, published, or never succeeded to make what he wanted, Rune was now at the decisive step of theorizing it.

‘I think it’s time I call for help, the one who wrote the guide is really a genius to have thought about leaving contact information for every possible problem.’

The guide provided by the IGS was complete, very complete, even ancient questions and answers were put on it, and Rune, having read the whole section about composite elements, was now going to call the service which should have specialists on the subject available to help.

Going for the right contact at the right page, he called the service called “composite element complete theory confirmation” and waited.

10 seconds later, his call was answered, “Hello Mr. Tudor, you called for the IGS service used for receiving help for creating your own composite element, do you want to transmit a document that you prepared according to the form we made available, or do you want to make an appointment?”

“Hello, I completed the form and I can send it anytime you want, which address should I use?” Rune prepared everything of course.

“Just attach your name to the form and send it to the address written on the contact page of the composite element section.”

“Ok, I’m sending it now,” going back to the introductory chapter, Rune found the correct address and uploaded his form to the corresponding internet page, in 5 seconds, it was done.

“I just received it, you’ll be called back in a maximum of an hour after the responsible specialist analyses your form and suggests modifications, have a good day.”

“Thank you, goodbye,” and the call was hung up.

‘Now to send news back to my family,’ with just some web searches he found the correct IGS sponsored service, and they did everything he wanted, from sending a simple message to delivering EP. After reading their basic terms of service he ended up downloading a form that he had to fill.

‘Paperwork is the best! Filing paperwork with only your eyes movement is better!’

Writing his address, X125-1C, with the precise number of the cube he lived in, including complementary past information like the name of his home planet, X125.

Then the fact that last he knew, the Tudor household was still living there, and then writing all the names of the possible recipients, from his mother Florence Tudor to his most little sister Floria Tudor.

‘What was the storage limit of tier 1? 10 million? No, it was 100 million, I remember that the 10 million EP reward was a tenth of the max and I accepted that event reward without thinking about it… Let’s see, 6 people, to max tier 1 stats it would be… 500 times 10 times 10 000, so 50 million, so 300 million in total. Let’s send that to everyone.’

In his “letter” home, he described everything, pretty clumsily due to writing with his eyes, about how entering the Endless felt and what becoming an ether life form that couldn’t come back without using an ether market dimension cooldown reset because his native dimension couldn’t bear ether life form felt.

He also told of some of his adventures as shortly as he could, as well as how he became a tier 3.

Writing to his family felt very close to a therapeutic meditation session. He wanted to correctly transmit everything he felt during those months of fighting and perfecting himself through his art.

His life was really exciting and the only downtime was when he was confronted with the hard reality that he wasn’t strong enough to live a more exciting life.

He wrote that he was of course always careful and keeping his life had always been one of the points he kept close to his heart whenever he decided on something.

He finished by adding some blabla he spontaneously thought about.

‘Now I only have to go to their office and pay up, if I don’t lose myself I should only need 10 minutes…’

Standing up from his soft and bouncy leisure energy deckchair, he decided to go now, “Let’s go! Oh!”

5 minutes at 300 meters per second and lots of turns later, Rune arrived at the temporary office of the “Dimensional Correspondence” company, he didn’t exactly care about the name of the company behind it, maybe it was just a subsidiary and it would be called another thing later.

The same as everything else in the “capital”, it was still under construction. The business seemed pretty good and Rune had to wait 5 additional minutes before being received and paying up while transmitting his form.

The service cost for what he asked was 1.2 million EP, he didn’t have anything to compare it to so maybe it was a scam, or maybe it was fair, most probably the second, the economy department was pretty active from what he read on the web.

After his form was confirmed, he left, and 5 minutes later he was back in a deckchair made of energy on the balcony with Nelo.

Having nothing to do but wait, he started to surf the web, to see what he missed and to see if there were wonders he had missed or had to go to later.

20 minutes later, just as he started entering the netizen zone, his search was interrupted by the call he waited for.

“Hello? Are you Mr. Tudor, the one who wants the composite element with only perception dampening?” A distinct high-pitched voice that didn’t seem very used to talking with others was transmitted.

“Hello, yes it’s me,” Rune answered.

“Hum, I’m the one responsible for your composite element analysis and I’ve been working on your case as it was a very interesting and unique case… But hum… There's pretty bad news for you as it seems you missed some very... How to say that correctly…”

Hearing this voice was like hearing his little sisters, the legendary high-pitched natural voice.

But as much as the voice was unique and could only be found by chance, he could feel that something was coming and that he wasn't ready for it.

“Well… It involves a lot of knowledge about how to properly create a composite element and I’m of course not underestimating your intellect, but the majority of it, even I, I need tens of assistants to not neglect every aspect, this field is a very advanced field and the amount of hard data we got, as a result, is pretty huge, and…”

For some reason, he could feel the frustration his interlocutor had with the fact that she was judged to be competent enough to be a representative of this field while knowing full well she was far from the level she should have to be worthy of her position.

“I really hope you didn’t expect to have your composite element now because while all the constraints you decided to add allow your element to be theoretically possible, I really, and I say it again, I really! Think that unless you decide to become my assistant and work as a researcher in this field, the element you want to create should at least need 9 slots…”

“And 9 slots… Huuu… Well, you know that tier 3 don’t have 9 slots, so…”

‘...’

Rune only had a single thought that passed through his mind.

‘F*ck.’