“Using the Void map the government provided I roughly know where I am, so I’m going to enter the nearest dangerous grounds and see if it’s a good one, if it’s good I’ll farm there, if not, I’ll just try another one,” finishing his intro sentence, Rune continued.

“I want to max my stats but Utopia clearly made me understand that it’ll come naturally with time, so I’ll put more effort into my try everything plan.”

“I think I’ll start with fundamental body control and close combat first, I’ll then try energy training, then I’ll see if the energy path or physical path have optimized their mastery knowledge and take everything I need!”

Having finished his piece, he let Nelo explain his.

Upon waking up, they gathered and organized a day off to cool down and clearly think about their plan.

Exiting the building after all this time was really different from the feeling of coming back from farming in the Void for a complete month.

Currently, in a modern and isolated in-house coffee bar, they were discussing the real facts involved in their plans.

“My original plan was to bring up my stats and focus on energy masteries, the recent energy puzzles genius revolutionized energy mastery knowledge and separated manipulation into fine and grand manipulation, so…”

“I’ll still continue the energy path! Only later will I try the other paths and look for any talent I might potentially have,” Nelo then gave the speaking rights to his sister.

“My instinct tells me to go learn the new mastery knowledge of the physical path, using energy to reinforce your body seems dope.”

“I can use my previous work in energy fundamentals to maybe become a pioneer in this new field, and that’s it, I don’t like to plan, my instinct is enough,” finishing her piece she then looked at the judge of the table.

Acting a little embarrassed, Utopia cleared his throat before talking, “I’m just going to tell you what is the most optimized path for me, not correcting you on what you think is best for yourself.”

He then started to give his plan.

“First, I’ll focus on my awareness training, everyday I’ll redo the manual transmission necessary to have music playing during my farming. The next focus will be sphere training, which I really think Rune should also do more of, it’s the easiest to do with a minimum of effort from my own opinion.”

“Once I ascertain my talents in those 2 domains, I’ll enter the nearest martial supreme dojos, which is coincidentally in the neighboring 4th district to learn basic physical fighting with pros.”

“I’ll try myself to close combat and body control first, just the fundamentals. After that, I’ll start my energy training with the goals of mastering physical reinforcement, so I’ll then have a physical path period only.”

“Ascertaining my plan to this step is already pushing the boundary of believing nothing will happen during all this time spanning months and months, but I’ll do everything firmly and steady, and only after all that will I go and verify my energy manipulation talents, with fine, grand and compression training.”

Letting all his plans sink into his friend's mind, he didn’t say anything else and waited for someone else to talk.

“I’ll consider your advice,” Rune simply answered, Utopia already knew his personality so they didn’t need more words.

“I’ll wait for your good news, I don’t plan to change my instinct,” Astryde was clear about her plan.

“Once I’ve done my first step, I’ll carefully decide my next,” Nelo let his answer flow and terminate the ongoing silence.

Observing that his 3 friends had properly reflected on their own plan, Utopia felt it was time to end this conversation.

“Then that’s it, I’ll also say it on our private forum but I plan to wait 4 months before starting a serious fighting camp, so you can go back to your home and come back later or live in the training building, the choice is yours.”

“Personally, I still plan to use it as my primary training and meditation spot, but we’ll only see each other by happenstance or maybe at the end of the month sleep.”

“Now! Let’s enjoy those new energy-cooked meals and energy-infused cocktails, I’m old enough to drink alcohol!”

Utopia returned to his childish hero fascinated facet, it wasn’t an artificial persona, it was the true him, only smoothed out by his rululu life experience that he sometimes showed.

After a great meal, they all returned to the training building and went their own way with a single “later” exchanged to each other.

This return was of course not to sleep, as they just did that, it was because they each had their own path to follow, and this path, at least the majority of it, was a path that could only be trodden alone.

...

“Of course I’ll not go, I have an entire training facility available here...”

In his assigned bedroom three times the size of his home’s one, with full futuristic furniture and appliances he never got to enjoy before, Rune was ready to start his dangerous ground exploration.

Switching all his awareness to his avatar, he appeared in the Void dimension.

During the last week, when they all started to farm and do their own thing again, he only farmed at 80% efficiency due to all the talking and other things that interrupted him.

As such he “only” gathered an additional 382 958 EP, which he could add to the previous 478 697 EP he farmed before departing for the momentum training camp.

Obviously, he already invested everything in physical stats, his objective was to make his survival a fact and not a probability.

Avatar (Basic Rank) (Tier 1)

EP: 15 349

Stats Total: 1 287

Health: 61

Health Regeneration: 21

Strength: 10

Cohesion: 100

Energy: 10

Energy Regeneration: 65

Purity: 10

Affinity: 10

Momentum: 500

Perception: 500

A simple forum search could lead to numerous specialized stats sponsored guides, and in the category of increased survivability, cohesion was king, with health a lot behind and health regeneration nearly equal to it.

Everyone had their own objectives in securing the survivability of the avatar.

Cohesion reduced all damage that touched upon the threshold of reducing one’s health, health allowed the avatar to have enough time to run and flee in case he took too much damage, and the health regeneration mitigated the continuous damage some dangerous grounds and new generation spells inflicted.

The only mystery was the Ether Law gravity. Even today, when your avatar could feel gravity, you could only run. Ethan, a hero who maxed his physical stats tried to land on a gravity planet but failed miserably and died, losing 10 days of time.

The most accepted theory was that either they were missing something or tier 2 was the solution to reaching gravity ground.

‘Maybe I’ll soon finish you.’

Looking at the Void initiation event, above the Deep Void initiation event, Rune was sure he was going to get the completion reward soon, in fact, as soon as he accomplished the 10 000 hours milestone.

Event

Void Initiation

Gather a total of 100 ether-rich resources from the Void Dimension: 10 000 EP (COMPLETE)

Gather a total of 1 000 ether-rich resources from the Void Dimension: 100 000 EP (COMPLETE)

Gather a total of 10 000 ether-rich resources from the Void Dimension: 1 000 000 EP (COMPLETE)

Travel more than 100 kilometers in the Void Dimension: 10 000 EP (COMPLETE)

Travel more than 1 000 kilometers in the Void Dimension: 100 000 EP (COMPLETE)

Travel more than 10 000 kilometers in the Void Dimension: 1 000 000 EP (COMPLETE)

Survey the Void Dimension for 100 hours: 10 000 EP (COMPLETE)

Survey the Void Dimension for 1 000 hours: 100 000 EP (COMPLETE)

Survey the Void Dimension for 10 000 hours: 1 000 000 EP

Discover a special resource: 10 000 EP

Discover 10 different special resources: 100 000 EP

Discover 100 different special resources: 1 000 000 EP

Use 10 000 total energy in any way: 10 000 EP (COMPLETE)

Use 100 000 total energy in any way: 100 000 EP (COMPLETE)

Use 1 000 000 total energy in any way: 1 000 000 EP (COMPLETE)

Attain 100 in any individual stat: 100 000 EP (COMPLETE)

Attain 1 000 total stats: 1 000 000 EP (COMPLETE)

Completion Bonus: 10 000 000 EP

‘Maybe the event expected me to be a lot more adventurous? I’ll make up for it soon… If I’m lucky and get a good dangerous ground.’

After he started to move with his avatar, he called 2 system windows he wasn’t going to open in at least half a year if the situation didn’t change.

Event

Deep Void Initiation

Gather a total of 10 000 monster core: 1 000 000 EP

Clean 10 monster nests: 1 000 000 EP

Reach the dimension’s boundary: 1 000 000 EP

Find 10 rare resources: 1 000 000 EP

Successfully interact with a peaceful ether life form: 1 000 000 EP

Find living ether vegetation life: 1 000 000 EP

Completion Bonus: 10 000 000 EP

There was no notion of progression anymore, only objectives to accomplish.

EP became useless after maxing one’s stats anyway, so the rewards seemed a bit lackluster compared to the first compensation event.

But maybe EP will have another use in the future, or so Rune hoped, he was a professional farmer after all.

Dimensions

Deep Void

Able to bear ether life forms

Slightly unstable, dimensional anomaly possible

Tier 1 Perception 50% restriction

Tier 1 Momentum 50% restriction

The Deep Void Dimension was birthed soon after the Void Dimension, it is only a billionth of its size but has a dimensional link to the Void Dimension allowing ether density to come in but not out, explaining its ability to produce ether life forms.

The ether life forms born in it ended up becoming ether beasts that lived off the ether density, but with every successive generation, aggressive instinct took over. This behavior ended up becoming the majority.

Enter?

‘No.’

Entering meant transporting his avatar to a random spot in the Deep Void Dimension.

He would also end up losing his current position in the Void dimension, a position which he roughly knew, so no.

And even if it wasn’t the case and he was still completely lost, he didn’t want to enter this dangerous dimension now of all time, he wasn’t ready at all.

Some wanted to abuse the transportation system and repeatedly be teleported in different spots alternating the 2 dimensions, but there was a one-month cooldown on it, so it wasn’t etherly possible.

‘Now that I thought about it, Utopia said something about anomalies being everything except flying ether crystals, but I remember reading about this fact before, was it on the wiki?’

‘He also said that anomalies are probably pieces of other dimensions that arrived where they were by eventmential dimensional rifts, and that explained why the misty system exists.’

‘Is there any possible drama involving the Void protecting the universe dimension from potentially dimension-ending events? It would certainly complete the previous theory about the Void being unstable because it took everything for the universe… Too much drama!’

Rune gathered resources, but he only absorbed pure ether crystals worth 100 EP and let the rest continue on with their infinite journey.

Using math, he now considered his time not worth using to absorb those low-value resources worth only 70 EP, he wanted double or even triple that, and if special resources were added, he would finally consider it to be an efficient farming session.

‘Top 10% hehe.’

And on this unimpressive thought, he continued his trip to his first dangerous ground.

…

Rune arrived at one of the grounds he didn’t know he passed by, but the overpowered IGS found it, and much more, throughout his momentum training camp.

This special ground presented a very impressive sight as a first impression, a red aura emanated from it.

It was only visible with a perception sphere, and his being a kilometer in diameter now, he could see this aura being contained in a rough sphere of 200 kilometers in diameter after doing a round around it.

‘Large enough that no farming problem will appear seems the resource density is also similar.’

Casual observation could already conclude that.

‘Just need to follow the guide and everything will work out fine.’

Heroes had already prepared a general method to study a ground's potential danger, and as more people joined in on the fun, it was becoming a classic.

Observation and true test interweaved to produce a 90% complete diagnostic of the dangerousness, the remaining 10% being random pulse damage that could only be added to the intel by chance or after dying.

After concluding the dangerousness evaluation, he checked the 3 crystals he gathered from the shallow dive he just did and started to absorb them.

It was to check the richness of the place.

And opening his gathering log, his first opportunity as a top 10% was here.

Absorbed ‘Ether crystal’, gained 204 EP.

Absorbed ‘Ether crystal’, gained 196 EP.

Absorbed ‘Ether crystal’, gained 209 EP.

His farming was going to become 3 times better, and who knows? Maybe special resources could also be found here.