“No, it’s not something like a veil… Also not something in the air… But I can see nothing in the colors...”

Going full researcher mode, Rune tried things one after the other, he knew a method existed, and if a plant life from a tier 3 zone could do it, so he could do it, that was it.

After trying ideas that appeared after only observing but failed every time he tried, Rune entered the rainbow flower’s rainbow cloud.

And nothing happened.

Not a speck of his energy armor was touched, it didn’t penetrate or even interact with it and just flowed like water around it.

So he started the more practical phase of interacting with the thing. Rune covered his hands in additional layers of energy and manipulated the colored ether directly.

He even decided to absorb a part of it to refine into energy, he couldn’t manually do it outside his body so it certainly carried some risks, but before it was transformed, he would be able to observe it in depth.

But even then, he was now in this situation where even after trying things practically, he couldn’t determine why the colors didn’t mix.

The first experiment he did was of course injecting his own colored energy into the rainbow cloud, by then it became certain that the visible colors had nothing to do with it, it was a process attached to it that caused them to not mix with the rest, not the natural ether, not his energy, nothing.

Observing the rainbow cloud as a whole, Rune could only see a last clear-cut manipulation to do, touching the flower itself, it was the source.

“It’s not going to die or fade with a touch… It’s not that weak…” He stated the obvious.

Then approached the flower body and touched it with one of his hands.

And confirmed that he could experiment with it too.

‘Let’s see from where those colors come from, ok… There?’

Rune followed the flow of ether to the underside of the flower, it had 7 petals and 7 stamens and following it even further his hand ended up in the absolutely intimate part of the flower, and he finally saw uncolored ether.

At the deepest part of the flowering organs, that was where the transformation happened, covered by all sorts of protective covers, but sapient entities could be very delicate when they wanted to so he easily unveiled the area.

With the origin of the color cloud before his eyes, he focused as much as a life-death fight and carefully schematized the input and output zones in his mind, then with one of his fingers, he touched the precise area where the transformation should be done.

The touch from an ether lifeform human body was different from the defective universe human body, in addition, after touching the area, he overloaded his sense of touch as much as he could, and with his touch, he finally saw things he never suspected.

‘It was a mix from the start.’

The flower was mixing something into the ether before giving it a color, allowing it to not mix with the surrounding volatile ether as long as it wasn’t too diluted.

With every piece needed to solve the problem gathered, Rune now only had to replicate it, so he started the last phase of the rainbow flower stop.

He knew the consistency of the ether that gave the insulating property, so he just repeatedly tried to replicate it and by experience, he ended up developing his own method.

“Transparency… And… Yup.”

Wrapping up his experiments, Rune created a simple blue energy cloud, and next to it a cloud of gelatinous transparent energy, then fusing the two, he ended up with only the simple blue color.

Making an energy cloud of simple green collide with it, Rune confirmed that it worked, it was the visual equivalent of oil and water mixing together and a truly magnificent effect all in all.

Playing with his new toy, he mixed all types of colors with a lot of different effects, he only needed to mix them with the gelatinous transparent energy beforehand and he could then see new amazing sights.

After testing this new color manipulation trick multiple times to make sure it wasn't a fluke, it was time to go, he had nothing else to see or learn here.

Leaving the rainbow flower behind, Rune again followed a trajectory parallel to the cliff towards the north.

With his new discovery of a special attribute to the plant life ether, he lingered longer than previously to add a new attribute to plants he already studied, though it ended up being a very useless identification criterion.

‘Maybe there was something about the rainbow flower area... Only now do I encounter monsters again.’

Rune just stopped a bird monster who dived at him and was in the process of emptying its health.

Once he stunned it with a violent collision by remaining immovable, he only had to immobilize its wings, the rest was as natural as breathing with regular strike combos and extravagant use of reinforcement.

After discovering a new aspect of colored ether, Rune also tried to apply it to monsters, but as he half expected, life was a monster of complexity.

Not one monster or even species of monster had a signature energy emission, some could be judged as identical but it would be like twins, only the appearance was identical.

An adventure in a foreign territory was as exciting as it was dangerous, he occasionally looked up to confirm that his orientation didn’t change, that the cliff was not changing direction, and then he perpetuated his routine of adventure and discovery.

…

“Mmh?”

Days passed while Rune never stopped traveling, the only time mark he had was that he slept 2 weeks ago.

For him, what he was living was a dream, a pure fantasy, every time he observed a new fascinating plant or monster he would find a new surge of curiosity, it was never boring.

But as he did his usual high-altitude scouting, “something” that marked the start of “something else” was taking shape on the horizon.

By a simple awareness manipulation overloading his sight, he could see that the prior green jungle canopy suddenly became white, it was like a line separating green and white, he could even call it a moderately neon white.

Evaluating the distance Rune judged it at around 1 000 kilometers, the maximum distance his maximum overloaded ether lifeform eyes could see at when the long-distance ether mist entered into play.

‘Let’s take it slow, no one’s behind me and I’ve no one to answer to after all…’

Keeping a steady pace of 80 meters per second, he particularly gave attention to the coming change.

A new environment implied new monsters and plants, and like when the Undecided approached the jungle from a typical forest, there was a zone where the two environments mixed.

3 hours later, having progressed so much that by elevating himself he could easily see the totally neon white jungle canopy, Rune found the first obvious sign that the mixing zone was starting, and it was a very short mixing zone.

Amidst a fully green jungle, a black tree, identical to the brown ones present everywhere around it, was staining his perception, he couldn’t miss it.

Analyzing it for 5 minutes, Rune found nothing extraordinary about it, it didn’t have leaves, a wonder it could have grown to such a size, the ether it ejected was the same as the other trees surrounding it.

‘Let’s continue.’

And the more he advanced, the more he linked this tree to the zone he was arriving at.

Another shocking thing he clearly felt was that when he was 50 kilometers from the white canopy, all the monsters disappeared.

Not even a bird could be seen, and Rune knew why when at some point, he felt something impact his energy armor. It was weak, only making him lose 1 armor, but then he started to see leaves growing on the previously empty black jungle trees, white leaves.

And despite nothing new emerging, he could see a trend, the ground vegetation was thinning exponentially quickly, in only some kilometers all the green leaves changed to white and the ground became clear and paler.

Overloading his hearing, Rune could hear far-away monsters fighting behind him, but nothing near him or forward.

His energy armor was taking random damages more frequently and some inflicted a lot more damage, some rising up to 20 armor points.

Still following the cliff, Rune finally felt something changes in the very air, a profoundly disturbing feeling that he found after passing through an imaginary border of 1 meter.

Taking a step back the feeling passed, but entering again it came again, it wasn’t that imaginary in the end.

One moment the black trees were normal trees, but after this invisible border, they all started to shine and illuminate his perception with a neon white light.

Concentrating on the very air, he found it completely changed and covered by a faintly neon white ether, the trees were only amplifying what was already there.

And the imaginary border was the moment he entered in contact with this ether, and it had a very peculiar aspect as it seemed to erode Rune’s energy armor, it wasn’t even 1 point per second but he could immediately associate it with the strange and frequent damages he took.

‘It’s only the border, what will it be like once I enter deeper?’

His current armor generation was dependent on his masteries’ boost, with all his time adventuring and elongated engagement with monsters to discover their behavior, his 2 defensive slotted masteries became level 100 not long ago, gaining 9 levels each.

So with a boost of 303%, accounting for his energy compression fundamental mastery reaching tier 3 level 3, allocating all his energy of 2 000 per minute to it, he could have 134 armor per second, but with a permanent reinforcement allocation of 2 energy per second, he was down to 126 armor per second.

Taking his time to carefully observe everything, Rune could make some hypotheses as to why monsters were absent from this “neon white” zone and the contact zone with the jungle.

It was purely a question of advantage because maybe the monsters Rune would encounter soon were monsters that weren’t concerned with this erosive ambient ether.

And making a monster that took environmental damage and one that didn’t… It would always end badly for the one that took free damages.

‘Of course, I need to see if I’ll lose 50 armor per second once I enter deeper, maybe I’ll need to make a special purging session to replace my reinforcement mastery… Just need to advance it to tier 3 after all.’

In contrast to basic tier 1 mastery, which didn’t give a reality-breaking efficiency power yet at that point, if it was a specialized mastery to make a minor manipulation become usable, then tier 1 was already enough to “break” reality.

If he could learn the specialized cohesion infusion mastery, then he would have a realistic practical way to transform all his energy into energy with cohesion infused into it, and resisting the environment would be much easier.

Not dwelling on it too much, Rune entered deeper into what he wanted to call the radioactive zone because he felt a little inspired, and after just 40 kilometers, 8 minutes after entering, Rune saw a tier 3 monster charging towards him, or charging at him was more accurate.

Confirming everything he had thought about, the monster was emitting neon white energy itself and didn’t seem affected by a permanent damaging erosion of now 2 armor per second.

The monster was a famous armored lizard everyone knew, an ankylosaurus, but with pretty white balls on its armored back.

As it was alone, Rune didn’t try to escape the confrontation, its speed was what he assumed to be middle tier 3 strength stat, and nothing else indicated signs of danger.

It charged like any mindless monster, he prepared, and once they collided his feet only slipped tens of centimeters before stopping, then he kicked its belly 4 times before it disengaged.

A tail club strike came after a sudden rotation from it, Rune ducked to aVoid it, but once above his head it suddenly stopped and air elements appeared on it, making it plunge and flatten Rune against the ground.

‘Oops.’

While his reaction was innerly apathetic, losing 1 000 armor to something he could have predicted or aVoided was a little frustrating, but it was a very complex move coming from a monster.

Remembering that he didn’t find any trace of its element or anything before engaging, it was simply the first time he saw a monster hiding its ability, or maybe the environment had a hand at play here?

After its tail club strike, the armored monster returned and tried to bite Rune’s head but in the end, he was just being played with, Rune saw so many opportunities to strike that he didn’t have time to note how poor this monster fighting ability was.

It was something he could simply observe after so many fights, the tigers he fought could compare to a human in fighting complexity, but more often than not, all monsters he encountered had simple moves, bites, charges, and limb strikes, then claws or whatever they had.

So despite exposing an ability to manipulate its own tail club with air elements, probably a bit of momentum too, it was the only trump card it had.

When Rune emptied all its health after having enough, not even the strange neon white orb did anything, just disintegrating with the rest.

“So it was just supporting organs?” Musing to himself, he finished his preliminary after-fight analysis and continued going deeper into the radioactive zone following a parallel path with the straight cliff.

Every 50 kilometers, he evaluated that the air eroded an additional armor per second, the chance of the increase being linear was great, with the only exception sometimes receiving a sudden spike of damage, taking 50 to 100 armor with it.

Rune confirmed he didn’t change region as it was still the jungle region fist-sized sun he was used to, but now around him all the trees were black, charred black, and had white leaves, all emanating the same neon white ether that was the presumed cause behind the permanent damage.

After the erosion rate reached 10 armor per second after 500 kilometers in, Rune backtracked to the entrance to the radioactive zone.

‘Just need to leave a rock with instructions at the entrance and my job will be done.’

After exiting, he razed a whole 50 meters circle in the jungle, almost stuck to the cliff, and then made a hole near it to excavate rocks, then he took a big piece and put it down in the center of the clearing.

“New zone, called radioactive zone, has neon white ether everywhere that erodes everything alive, including compressed energy armor and health. The deeper you go in the higher the constant damage is, monsters seem immune to it, IGS Adventurer Rune Tudor.”

Clapping and rubbing his hands like he finished his job, he decided to check his masteries.

Masteries

Tier 1 Masteries

Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement: Tier 3 Level 2

Physical Fundamental: Fighting Instinct: Tier 3 Level 4

Physical Fundamental: Body Control: Tier 3 Level 4

Energy Fundamental: Fine Manipulation: Tier 2 Level 85

Energy Fundamental: Grand Manipulation: Tier 2 Level 86

Energy Fundamental: Energy Compression: Tier 3 Level 3

Spiritual Fundamental: Perception Control: Tier 2 Level 79

Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division: Tier 2 Level 69

Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation: Tier 2 Level 82

Tier 2 Masteries

Energy Compression: Basic Energy Armor: Tier 2 Level 100

Energy Compression: Basic Defensive Energy: Tier 2 Level 100

Reinforcement: Basic Reinforced Armor: Tier 2 Level 100

‘Hum… My awareness division leveling is the most stable so maybe I can calculate the time with it, let’s see… 1 level every 2 to 3 days, let’s take 2.5 days, and I departed at level… 54? Yeah around that, so 15 levels gained, means between 30 to 45 days, yeah, that seems right as I slept somewhere in the middle.’

The fact that his masteries continued leveling despite a reduced fighting activity was due to challenging himself during simple fights like the ankylosaurus he encountered.

Yet, fighting couldn’t directly affect 2 masteries, his perception control and awareness division, if he wanted to one day make them offensive, he’d need a spiritual power specializations, but for now, only steady efforts or very active and time-consuming training could push them to their limit.

Having made the choice that they weren’t the highest priority, Rune concentrated on just passively training them, but now with this new zone, a new training schedule had to be adopted.

“I just need a big fight, no worry, no worry,” talking to himself, Rune decided something.

Advancing his 3 slotted masteries to tier 3 would allow him to not only swap one for his infusion specialization but also increase his armor generation per second.

At first glance, this new zone was the dream zone for pushing his energy armor to its limit, and without any pause.

‘Did I ever regenerate my armor during my sleep?’

After 5 minutes of careful planning, he now only had to go and have a big fight, far from the previous one of course as he already had the fundamental masteries associated with his 3 slotted ones at tier 3, so he only needed to push them a little, maybe even natural training could, but where would the fun be?

When he finished planning, he was ready to go, so he entered again into the radioactive zone and went on to search not for flowers, not for rocks, but for a monster squad.