With hundreds and hundreds of strange and weird material samples available for an impromptu learning and discovery session, the group found an unusual passion in learning about something in appearance so simple but was in reality so complex and impressive as the gardener path.

As they didn’t have to care about the real core of the path, its creation and application, and only had to focus on learning to recognize material types, structures, compositions, and all the tens of sub-criteria that could only be applied to some type or structures…

It was just a good moment where they shared the discoveries they made along the way and marveled at finding one of the really obscure applications Adreana’s friend wrote about.

And as they passed through the first difficult hurdles of recognizing the basic types and structures, they started to organize all the samples in a roughly-made material museum.

“Look, this crystal-type is so weird…” Bringing attention to one of the samples she didn’t know what to make of by shooting an energy beam at it, Astryde called for the attention of her two friends.

Once the energy beam touched the crystal-type sample, it wasn’t stopped, as the majority of the crystal-type materials did, or reflected, as the vast minority did. It was absorbed, and the yellow cracked chunk started to radiate pure ether after a few seconds of processing.

Approaching it directly, Arik took the chunk with his own hands, wanting to find if the radiating ether was just that or something more.

“In metal-type materials, this structure effect is called… Was it… Force dispersal? No, that’s another thing…” Hesitating for a bit, he stopped himself from saying something wrong and preferred checking for the right and precise answer on his connected screen.

“Threshold absorption structure. The more strength forces are stocked inside, the more resistant it becomes to further strength forces. Is it called the same in the crystal-type?” He asked after finding the obscure structure effect name in the metal-type materials.

Rune swept to the crystal-type on his screen and searched for the “threshold absorption” structure, and found it right away.

“It's the same name,” he informed quietly before returning to his own much more boring wood-type sample.

‘If not for style, secret society thing, weird fetish, or VIP protection, why would anyone use wood-type? Spiritual powers are so rare and if someone specialized in those is really out to get you, using wood-type materials in your building isn’t the first thing you should do!’

Identifying a common blocking structure, he passed to the components identification stage and didn’t find any weird colored spots or reaction to energy and strength, so he put the sample down in the wood-type section and picked a new one.

Having learned early that while appearance was one thing, the reality was another, he made sure the crystal-looking block was really a crystal-type by focusing a beam of continuous energy on it and observing the reactions.

‘Diffusion, direct transformation into ether, completely blocked at the surface…’

In 10 seconds he ascertained that the chunk of crystal things was really a crystal-type material and then started another battery of tests to ascertain the structure part.

‘Looks like thousands of needles put side to side, no horizontal cracks, it’s at least an amateur level line structure, but why are the needles ending in small spheres?’

Using keywords, he found a result exactly in the same line structure he thought the material to be in.

‘Supplement spheres, used when a certain property needs to be added without compromising on the base composition chosen. Only destabilizes the end result a bit. Well, I can’t check what the composition is anyway so… Next!’

In under 8 hours, hundreds of samples had been organized into an open-air museum. The last 2 hours had even been spent only reviewing the identifications made by each other.

Everyone had been doing and learning seriously though, so only the nitpickers and too-complex cases were up to debate, often ending with the samples being put in the “too high level” section of the open-air museum.

“Let’s call it the Undecided open-air material museum, it’ll maybe give us a few contribution points if it helps the more suicidal prospects out,” looking over a pretty big area occupied by only big, more or less complete chunks of various materials, Rune gave away the best name he could think of.

“It’s truly the best name we could have found,” Astryde said and nodded at this fantastic name.

“Using the Undecided name shows that we are still of the same root as our beginnings. We just can’t decide on a proper name, so we clearly say that we don’t know. I approve of this fabulous name too,” backed up by some sort of physiological sense, Arik acquiesced too.

“Well, now that I’m an expert at recognizing material types and structure levels,” Rune had prepared to say that for the last 2 hours but had held back, “I can’t say I’ll do another scouting trip as deep as the last one, but at least I’ll have a new way to find interesting things.”

As the group was ready to conclude the surprisingly enjoyable 8-hour long material assessment forum and he was ready to return to his own corner to prepare for a long session of intent tinkering, he was interrupted by Arik who came close to him and started speaking slowly.

“I think you're lying,” he started like that, “I think it’s the last time I’ll see you for the next few weeks or so. You must be boiling inside at the idea that your cosmic mist intent failed you. And now that you learned about the thing that saved your life, you’ll start a cycle of intent tinkering and golem crushing. Am I right?”

Arik unexpectedly made a long-winded and pretty sensitive explanation about what he thought to be Rune’s current mental state.

And Rune, having no reason to hide his slight frustration at the situation, just answered honestly while laughing at it, “Hehehe, I can’t say that you’re wrong, I really intend to go on a very intense intent tinkering session after all. Maybe decrease the frustration’s intensity from ‘boiling’ to ‘it had to happen one day’?”

After correcting his friend in good manners, they each went their own way with their own plans.

Before isolating himself away from the camp where people would sooner or later come to, Rune saw Astryde going back to doing something on her screen. He also saw Arik departing in the direction of Tolevia, probably to go fight some monsters.

Those observations went through his mind but disappeared soon after as his short-term plan included an amazing objective that made him focus only on it and on nothing else.

‘Complete 1st stage… It’ll be my limit until I take a perception specialization or reach tier 5…’

The presence of Tolevia not far away was something that allowed him to be completely calm.

It was an enormous city, one that wouldn’t be cleaned even if hundreds of hyped and motivated Lounae went at it as if their life depended on it for a whole month. That’s why for him, it was just the perfect training center, a perfect training center that was only 15 minutes away from where he was and that he could visit anytime.

‘Once I reach this stage I’ll make my tier 3 masteries become tier 4. This way I’ll truly enter the real tier 4, the infernal leveling stage. But I’ll do it by keeping in mind that for my growth mastery to level, I’ll need another adventure apart from this one.’

And so, being confident in his situation, like everything was going well, he brought up his intent note document and started reading it.

He had a lot to do.

…

*Ding* Energy: Specialized Cosmic Mist Element reached Tier 3 Level 98

*Ding* Energy: Specialized Cosmic Mist Element reached Tier 3 Level 99

*Ding* Energy: Specialized Cosmic Mist Element reached Tier 3 Level 100

It wasn’t a moment full of enlightenment or a moment driven by fabulous insight.

It was just a natural transition driven by the desire Rune had for reaching his complete 1st stage intent again.

It was the desire to finally be able to block his own perception through his own hard work, no masteries or external help, just continuous and completely controlled refinement of something at the apex of intensity and complexity.

There were no leveling notifications, nothing extraordinary really, just a very small part of his perception that silently vanished.

This change meant that from now on, or until he did something to remedy the problem, trying to make his 1st stage intent go further signified going at it blindly, becoming only able to get a slight sense for what he was doing without having a return.

‘And that’s it. That’s just it. Complete 1st stage.’

The time he took to reach it in this session was unknown, but from the slight glimpses he got from the camp from time to time, which should have been named Undecided Tolevia Camp if he had anything to say about it, it had already started hosting several guests.

The sense of satisfaction at finally having his soul specialty-backed perception being overcome didn’t overwhelm him in joy or anything, it was even slightly depressing.

He still had his 2nd through 4th stages to work on, he even had a theoretical 5th to 7th if he ever entered an intent tinkering frenzy, but he couldn’t deny that he had reached a cap. And this cap was a wall that couldn’t be reconciled with his exploration immortal build path.

Coming to terms with his situation, Rune knew he wouldn’t compromise another adventuring mastery slot under any circumstances, so he stopped thinking about it.

‘Now I need to focus on actual practical training, intent tinkering will become something belonging more to the background, not even talking about how much I need to learn now that I promised myself to read a bit of everything…’

Standing up with a bit of momentum and feeling cool while doing it, he accelerated in the direction of the camp that wasn’t really far at all as he condensed himself a pair of spiritual eyes.

Seeing the situation of the camp prior to entering allowed him to prepare himself for what appeared to be a medium change. Compared to when he left, the biggest change was definitely the presence of very distinctive ether signatures that didn’t seem to care about being exposed.

‘The question isn’t if there are prospects, but how many there are.’

It was however quickly made clear after he turned his head to look towards the distant city that the main place where the unique ether signatures were gathered wasn’t in the shabby camp, but rather towards Tolevia.

From a quick sweep, Rune counted at least 5 extremely distinct bright beacons, 1 currently in the camp, 4 out there, probably reducing to pulp an army of small and cute bone golems.

And that wasn’t counting the less bright, but those could be unique monsters as much as they could be prospects, so he didn’t make any predictions on them.

Arriving quickly at the “entrance” to the camp, meaning entering within 10 kilometers of it, allowing his perception to take in everything in it, he noted that Astryde was discussing with some people and that Arik wasn’t here.

‘Out there fighting? Or just found a quiet corner for himself?’

Not thinking about it more than that as it wasn’t something that interested him, he would have made a turn towards Tolevia right now if it wasn’t for…

“Come here for a second Rune,” Astryde, who directly waved at him, calling for him too explicitly to act as if he didn’t hear.

Changing course without complaining internally or externally about the situation, he arrived a dozen seconds later and was surprised by the presence of 14 people excluding Astryde and himself.

‘For 14 people to be chilling here, there’s at least double that out there, at minimum.’

Doing weird and speculative math in his head, he finally arrived before Astryde, under the obvious attention of the 14 people who maybe or maybe not knew who he was.

“Yeah?” He went straight to asking why he was called.

Used to it, she wasn’t nonplussed and similarly went straight to the answer, “A few prospects want your help to be sent deep inside the city.”

“They can just do it themselves,” was his first instinctual answer, followed by a few more, “Form a squad and demolish everything, no need for me. You already said I would just say no, right?”

Turning her head and silently acquiescing to his question, she then spoke to the air, at least that’s what it looked like as Rune wasn’t the intended recipient, “Convince him yourself if you want to.”

To that call, 5 people stood up and headed his way.

But while someone else would have at least heard them and answered a definitive no, Rune wasn’t like that.

‘I’m out of here!’

Instantly covering himself in cosmic mist, it took him only an instant to infuse his newly upgraded intent, one with a 1st stage’s anti-perception power just below his own perception’s threshold, into it and disappearing from the perception of everyone here.

The 5 people coming towards him stopped, Astryde shook her head in exasperation, the ones she was talking with were speechless at what just happened.

Then, a voice echoed that defused any possible animosity out of the void, “I’m going to start a long fighting session. If you catch me then I’ll make a trip inside, so do your best.”

Moving after saying that to not be caught, he was ready to leave just like that.

Yet, one of the 5 prospects that stopped after he vanished from their perception started to speak, making Rune focus on him, “It’s just a few hours of your time, there’s no danger involved at all!”

In answer, a single of his life principles came to his mind, and he didn’t hesitate to say it out loud, “I’m asocial.”

Without explaining more about all the profundities involved in this very short sentence, he definitely departed, not answering any questions that were sent his way by the group of 5 that just had one of their agenda denied.

And during all that interaction, the brightest ether signature present in the camp, the one that overshone everything in Rune’s perception and vision, remained silent on the side, seemingly not caring about anything.

…

‘Ok, so what’s the best way to proceed?’

Having left the camp behind and all its associated potential social interactions with it, Rune was now fully dedicated to thinking on the best way to establish a scheduled-ish session.

‘I need to start clearing the city, so I should focus on killing, sure, that’s the main point. Remaining hidden during it? Once I get all my masteries into tier 4, maybe I’ll stop suffering enough damage to keep me nearly all the time in the red.’

Very pragmatically approaching what he was about to do, he evaluated when his armor regeneration would vastly outdo the damages he took using his slow and steady exploration immortal fighting style. And as of that moment, he found no reason to return to his ancient no-cosmic mist style.

The day he became able to completely safely kill tier 4 monsters, that would not only be a day of celebration, it would also be a day of change. But until that happened, he wouldn’t even consider the option.

‘I should also start learning more about monster nests in general, in case there’s something obvious I missed.’

The path leading towards Tolevia was empty of life, the straightforward path was, and as he looked forward, wondering the hows and the whys of the chaotic situation he saw ahead, he didn’t want to think about it.

It was too obvious.

He just needed to prepare himself mentally, he needed to adapt his thought process.

‘Yeah, what I’ll soon start is exactly the way a prospect should train. Others are in proximity to help, and depending on the build, do your own things and continue leveling.’

The warped law of the bone region only mattered for physical bodies’ attachment dependents, and the scope it entailed was in practice so small and unimportant that no builds or paths were definitely out of the window.

So everyone had lost their sight, and they didn’t care about losing it. That was the reality from the prospects’ point of view that Rune imagined as it was the same for him.

A good 15 minutes passed and scattered razed buildings’ foundations started appearing in his perception before he ultimately reached what could only be considered as a front line.

But should things have remained normal, the true city of Tolevia, the external area full of ruins and swarming with bone golems… Should only have started hundreds of kilometers away. He was certain of that.

The current front line was located in an area at the same time similar to a rocky plain, and at the same time swarming with hundreds of bone golems frenziedly battling with prospects … This fusion shouldn’t have existed.

‘So the patrols really had a use after all, they weren’t just aimless loners.’

From only his sight telling him what was happening, his perception soon stopped telling him he was located in an empty rocky plain and started reflecting the reality he knew to be very real.

The front line was extended over a few kilometers and took the form of a curved line, with the most chaotic and intense battles happening at the front.

‘Well, where I should go is already set.’

Making a turn, he didn’t even think about searching for prospects with paths or builds that synergized with him. He didn’t even want to try and make anything easier than it should be.

He was here to train.