Unbothered by danger, Rune started to release cosmic mist and gather it around him.

He didn’t think clearly about what he was doing and what he really wanted out of this light fight that couldn’t have consequences even if he wanted.

The moment he saw a squad of 5 quadrupeds furred monsters, he approached them, and when they sensed him they charged over.

By the time they reached his position, he had already disappeared from their perception and wasn’t even preparing to strike, he just stood still surrounded by his own cosmic mist to which he felt connected.

It wasn’t just the connection between his own converted energy and himself, it was like being in a true fight for the first time made him push everything further than during practice.

Aside from his perception sphere, Rune felt nothing, and with how the 5 monsters inside his 50 meters wide bubble of cosmic mist acted, he could judge that his complete 4th stage intent cosmic mist was working wonderfully.

Complete sensory deprivation, be it physical or spiritual, and chaos interference providing completely warped sensory feedback.

‘I need… A way to make them rush at something…’

Having lost sight of their prey, and the bubble of cosmic mist being so “small” made it easy for the 5 monsters to escape its confinement.

Thinking for a bit, Rune went from uni-directional perception sphere absorption ideas, showing himself at the center but not allowing the monsters to sense the outside, making him the only things their perception could see, to creating a source of massive noise.

And he opted for this solution.

Creating a sound bomb, he activated it as he reduced the sound absorption power of his intent to allow the strident and annoying sound to attract the 5 monsters.

‘Like moths… Oh! Maybe I can use a source of blinding light too? I can maybe use only the physical blinding property of my cosmic mist with a different intent, but this one only focused on making sure everyone can see it exist?’

Ideas he never had before rushed into his mind, and the only thing he wanted to do was put them into his cosmic mist note document.

‘And for sounds… As well as light! It all comes back to sound and light show! The thing that makes the foundation of my fireworks hobby!’

Finding an extraordinary insight at the first step out of civilization made Rune really sure that his place was outside, adventuring.

‘It’s so freaking awesome how everything seems logical now, but I know I didn’t make any connection before a few seconds ago…’

Deciding to do the two solutions he came up with together, he surrounded his sound bomb with a layer of cosmic mist on which he only focused on physical brightness.

10 seconds later, the update of his cosmic mist intent was done and a strident sound accompanied by a blinding light exited the bubble, and the two led close to the center, a few meters away from where Rune was standing.

The 5 monsters subject to such a sensory assault didn’t even hesitate and charged straight at the center, only to pass through nothing and charge once again towards an energy construct that could be maintained for close to no upkeep.

‘For a solution made in a few seconds, I think it’s pretty efficient. Now I’m sorry but I need to finish that quickly to write things down.’

Compared to the first time he went against tier 3 monsters, when he was only a tier 2 with 2 000 strength and with close to no additional efficiency, he currently stood at 5 001 strength with 209% additional efficiency.

All to say, he was naturally at the level of a late tier 3 monster half-specialized in strength.

So with the total cover granted to him by his cosmic mist bubble and a perfect bait manipulating the 5 monsters, he only had to apply his favorite fighting style of being an annoying and pesky human.

With his first target chosen, he waited for it to charge while waiting a bit in the air, and when it passed below him, he locked the energy platforms below his feet and used them to crash on it from above, flattening the monster to the ground.

It cried as a way to signal it was being attacked, but the strident sound and the blinding light bait, as well as the slight sound absorption still present in the cosmic mist, made it so that his call didn’t reach anyone but himself and Rune.

When it counterattacked, it only wildly stirred and bustled around, trying to hit the thing that attacked him.

And then he received another flattening from above him, and this time it was followed by a few punches before the attacker backed once again.

‘As long as I manage everything right, I can always be alone with my target… And also…’

Diving once more from above, this time he just kept punching, and the immediate consequence was that the monster finally hit him and his 25 000 armor got lowered to a bit less than 24 000.

Yet, Rune kept his position and started a pyrrhic-like catfight with him at so much of an advantage it didn’t look at all like a pyrrhic fight.

40 seconds later, the monster stopped moving. Rune was left with an armor of 18 000, he had lost 27 000 armor in total to kill it.

‘Did I misjudge its strength? Or maybe it activated a health regeneration boost in the middle?’

Not dwelling on it too much, he went to his second target and enacted exactly the same plan, except he didn’t erode its health twice before starting a pure behemoth execution.

Being equal with the monsters made him have no need to be careful, he didn’t even think about using his slow and steady health erosion style, his cosmic mist made its use against large numbers of monsters as powerful as him not that relevant anymore.

Another minute later the second monster died, the other 3 still had no ideas of what was happening.

5 minutes later, the fight ended in an anti-climatic way and Rune brought his leveling notifications up as he gathered the cores and departed.

*Ding* Energy: Specialized Cosmic Mist Element reached Tier 2 Level 24

*Ding* Energy Compression: Provided Quick Compression reached Tier 1 Level 4

*Ding* Body Control: Provided Humanoid Body reached Tier 1 Level 10

*Ding* Body Control: Provided Prolonged Body Use reached Tier 1 Level 10

‘That wasn’t bad for an initiation fight, I hope I’ll soon stumble upon a squad or an army of peak tier 3.’

…

For 5 days, Rune followed the cliff path and only occasionally fought, he clearly encountered more people fighting than monsters he killed.

As for the “hardest” fight he had to do, it only involved a squad of 30 green dog-like monsters who clearly had maxed all their stats with some of them having specialization in their sense of smell on which the cosmic mist wasn’t very effective.

Or at least that’s what Rune deduced in his after-fight analysis.

After those 5 days, he reached the transition patroller camp in which he recognized a very particular rock.

It was the one he put down the first time he discovered the neon white ether responsible for the erosion anomaly.

At this sight, he only smiled a bit and continued following the cliff path, being a pioneer wasn’t bad if it allowed his traces to be kept like this, low-key and inconspicuously making his existence known only to the more observant ones.

The slow transformation from a green and brown jungle to a white and black one revived memories about his first lone adventure before he even was a tier 3 sponsored adventurer.

At that time he didn’t have an ether pocket dimension, had no connected lenses to note things down, the IGS probably didn’t even have all the raw resources gathering process underway, and only a few select people had access to what everyone now considered normal amenities.

Carried by his instinct, Rune continued for a few hours and only stopped when the erosion rate reached 10 cohesion-infused armor per second.

‘Neon white ether everywhere, the perfect incarnation of what I want my growth mastery to give me resistance against, including all the hazy boundaries between pure ether environmental effects and possible energy origin.’

To not be bothered by passersby or monsters, he scaled the cliff down a few hundred meters and created a cavity there.

With his cave complete, he filled it with cosmic mist and created a spell matrix that continuously created new cosmic mist based on his energy regeneration while also keeping as much of it as possible near him.

Linking this matrix to his energy pool, he could now be assured he wouldn’t be bothered by anyone, and as there was no internet signal available where he was, he couldn’t entertain himself with anything other than with music.

And though listening to beautiful music while looking over the endless horizon available just before his eyes sounded like a completely possible entertaining activity, Rune would have all the time to do that once he proved his 2 chosen artificial effects fused with his 2 natural ones couldn’t give birth to his growth mastery.

‘I’ll do that after trying for an entire day…’

Taking deep breaths, he controlled his body to enter a state similar to deep meditation, and as he learned during his first 20 rounds of G-Introspection, let himself go.

…

Perceiving time differently, Rune arrived at the entrance of the introspection space in a few hours and as he planned, advanced until he reached the third layer where he got through tens of different grains before connecting with one related to his cohesion’s subconscious.

Following the direction, he ended up finding the area with the most overwhelming presence of cohesion-related subconscious grains.

He had already decided on the two effects he wanted to try first, so he started to warp dozens of grains to what he defined to be “Growth”, and another few dozen to “Freedom”.

Once he did that, he willed the expulsion force to take him out and was directly sent out.

…

Opening his eyes, the cosmic mist made it so that he saw nothing but infinite darkness, not even specks of white could be seen floating by.

‘Now, I have one day to work with those effects… It worked, right?’

He brought up his cohesion infusion specialization window.

Cohesion: Specialized Cohesion Infusion

Specialized Slotted Mastery (Tier 4)

By carefully infusing health into your energy, you can directly give it the cohesive property only found in it, such manipulation can now be used at a practical level.

You have reached the point where you can perfectly find the most important cohesive property in your health, you can now infuse cohesion-based health in your energy at a ratio of 1 health for 1 infused energy, regardless of quantity.

Cohesion isn’t just a stat, it’s also a part of your being. You’re the only one who can discover more use to it, bend it to your will, and impose what you want this cohesion to be and become.

Current effects: Isolation, Rejection, Growth, Freedom

‘Ok, now I just have to… Do it.’

In exactly the same way as before, Rune started to take deep breaths, except this time it was really just meditation to help him focus.

‘Adaptation at the core, so growth. Then the first filter is freedom, if it’s something that restricts or harms my physical body and spiritual mind, then it passes through. Then the second filter is the rejection of anything already belonging to someone. And finally, the last filter, isolation, which makes sure that if it's environmental, then it’ll be included as something, intersecting with the first and second filter alike.’

Keeping this framework in mind, keeping the neon white ether present everywhere around him in mind, he created a mental picture of his cohesion specialization surrounded by 4 equally shared spheres that orbited around it.

At the same time in his body, his health was manipulated to allow pure cohesion to come into existence, it was how any secondary specialization should have been built: Based on the primary one.

From those 4 spheres, one of them, the growth one, separated itself from its original trajectory and a faintly visible thread was established with the cohesion specialization sphere at the center.

Making sure he knew what he wanted with this growth effect, he brought the freedom sphere and dispersed its content, making them fuse with the growth sphere.

Next, he did the same with the rejection sphere, followed by the isolation sphere.

His cohesion, in reality, has taken a new form, and when he didn’t have anything else to do mentally, meaning he had done everything following the normal procedure of creating a growth mastery, he focused on his empty mastery slot.

‘... As expected.’

Nothing happened. The little bit of pure cohesion was stable, warped but stable. Yet, it still didn’t work.

He took his first step into the growth mastery creation path after finishing his first try, all of this meant he joined the large community of people who sought to have a growth mastery, had all the requirements fulfilled, but they couldn’t get it.

Why?

Because even after failing, Rune had no feedback on why he failed, no feedback on what he did wrong, no feedback on which steps were wrong…

He only had a self-created mental picture, a framework as detailed as possible, 4 effects that maybe didn’t fit the framework, an environment that corresponded to what he wanted, and…

That was it.

‘Well, here we go again. I prepared 86 universal variants to test for every 4-effects fusion, and I have 63 custom-made ones for growth and freedom.’

With everything that he read, of course, he prepared as much as could, and that included slightly adjusting his framework to have more affinity with different effects, the main way everyone apparently used to successfully make their growth mastery.

‘If it has to take 2 months, it will take 2 months, I’m not in a hurry, my exploration immortal path depends on it.’

In his mind, the only issue was the time needed, and he had no urgent matters to attend to.

He was totally free of any burden and he had a few millennia left to live.

…

Loose, unrestricted, uncommitted, all very close effects to the freedom one, but for Rune, it wasn’t even the start of how much he planned for, he had expanded his reach much further and much deeper.

Restraint, confinement, seal, hamperance, hindrance, self, bound… With his imagination, he modified his first filter concept in his framework to work with so many different effects that he would need half a year with one effect every day to test everything.

And it was the same for the growth-type effects, evolution, potential, adaptation, development, change, advancement, rise… As the core of his growth mastery, he only had to check the guide to know hundreds of effects that once worked for someone.

Even if it only worked for that single recorded person since the start of time.

Who was the first one who compared the difficulty of getting a growth mastery to reaching the beyond? Certainly not only one person.

Testimonies of trillions of people who never succeeded even after decades of trying were easier to find than testimonies of those who succeeded in under a month or a week.

Maybe the law of the silent majority could be applied here, but Rune couldn’t help but think about the growth mastery research faculty, a nearly empty building, and a research leader who clearly expected him to stop trying soon.

He didn’t see himself above others, he wasn’t pessimistic or had an inferiority complex, he was a realist, someone who tried to judge any situation as accurately as possible, and even when he made a judgment, he kept reminding himself that he had possibly missed a crucial piece of information.

His indecision originated from this trait.

Yet, for the matter of creating a growth mastery, he had all the information he could have ever decided, it was freely available as long as he searched, so there was no place for indecision.

That’s why even after 3 months had passed, he didn't even think about stopping.

It really was only a question of time.

During his rare and short breaks every time he tested every framework variant for a given 4-effects fusion, he noticed a massive increase of traffic a month and a half after he started, but it didn’t make him want to know more about the situation.

He would know it sooner or later, it was once again only a question of time.

So he continued to scratch off effects combinations and try new ones. Maybe at any moment now, it would be the right one.