‘The spiral of death, inevitable.’

He knew, he hoped, he wanted this situation to happen.

Rune wasn’t regenerating any armor anymore.

The linear increase of the erosion rate achieved the necessary threshold for him to know that despite sending all the energy he regenerated every second, his armor was being completely eroded.

Not at 1 point per second, it only just started, maybe only 0.01 point per second, but he was at his limit.

‘It’s like I can feel my armor's inevitable death, is it instinct?’

The perplexed and lifeless look on Rune’s face explained everything he was experiencing.

The black and white environment, the cliff that never changed, his death approaching, his body wanting to take a step back, his life was at stake, but he wanted to push just a little further.

He didn’t know what he wanted to do after taking that additional step, he just wanted to know how he would feel.

Taking to the air, he hoped for nothing.

For all the distance he traveled, nothing changed, no floating island, no tier 4 zone, his limit meant nothing in the end, it represented nothing for the Endless, just a random point in the middle of nowhere.

His previous accomplishment of reaching further than any other appeared childish compared to the feeling of his limit meaning nothing.

‘Let me take a break at the cliff…’

For some reason, Rune felt tired all of a sudden, he didn’t even want to know what was the reason behind it, he just needed this break.

Arriving at the cliff, he sat down on the hard ground before realizing that all his energy was contributing to keeping him alive, so no foamy energy sit or bed for him.

By happenstance, the night was falling.

The straight cliff being oriented nearly north to south allowed Rune to see the fist-sized star, a yellowish red star, fall down and create the famous scenery of dusk.

Before his eyes, a thousand kilometers of nothing, in the Endless, there were no colors associated with dusk or any of the star movement, only the endless white ether present everywhere that you could see with your perception sphere or white ether mist that you saw with your eyes.

From some legendary tales available on the board, when a region had the effect of completely suppressing the perception stat, the star became the lifeline to guide oneself, but they were tales from long lost civilizations.

“Maybe they were children’s tales…” He wondered.

Having read so much biography about legendary tier 5 and tier 6 entities, he wondered if when they were young they felt as limited as he felt now.

“They’d have a legendary build like the Magia Ama build or the Uranus Engineer build so I don’t need to worry about that…”

The moment he learned about infusions and elements, and more recently composite elements, he linked some of what he considered pure fantasy to the real Ether Law.

“Tier 4, everything starts at tier 4… It’s so obvious when I think about it.”

That was something all tales had in common, from biography starting with “once upon a time” or “all my family died”, only with 9 slots and provided masteries could the protagonist start to shine its reality-altering light upon the world.

“Without forgetting a legendary quest, hehe.”

Though he never read any explanation about how all the other tier 6 they encountered at the end of their biographies ended up where they were, nor why they needed his help to defend the whole of sapient life against a narcissist or lunatic tier 7 powerhouse.

As he continued to wander around unsolvable dilemmas and impossible riddles, his spirit cleared up a little, finally, he attained total relaxation, he had nothing to worry about, not preparing to face impending doom by the hand of the world, not worrying about his whole family vanishing, and his spirit slowly fell into torpor.

His armor was still being eroded, but the rate was so abysmal that he felt safe, death was coming but he became used to it.

After months of traveling the Endless, Rune knew that death had always been by his side, roaming.

…

His body was tingling.

A soft and comfortable ever-present tingling.

After Rune’s body entered a sleeping state, his spirit followed suit and all his passive training stopped, the only thing remaining was a subconscious survival instinct sending all his energy to his energy armor spell matrix.

If his armor was to be truly overcome by the environment, his last line of defense would be his health regeneration, and 33 health per second was enough for him to survive in an even more hostile zone.

As for his situation, it seemed that Rune miscalculated a little.

He wasn’t under a 0.01 damage per second erosion but more like 0.05 or more as, after one day and a half, his armor was breached, and the air, or more like the remaining air that passed through all the energy he was compressing to defend himself, started attacking his skin.

So insignificant it was that he didn’t even wake up, he just kept sleeping.

The end result was that after 2 days of slumber, Rune woke up to find his armor completely gone.

Every second he was sending all his energy to an empty spell matrix, he was like a lightbulb at the end of its life as his armor was flashing and twinkling, every time he sent an energy point in there it was compressed in the thinnest armor and then broke apart in a soundless explosion.

Such compression and destruction happened 33 times per second, epileptic be warned that with his eyes he could see the quickest flashes of light in his life, like when he stood up too fast from a gaming session, except this time it didn’t stop.

Still laying on his back from just waking up, he was thinking about life and doing nothing, just enjoying nothing.

“If a monster ambushes me, I’m dead after 3 strikes… Yup yup yup… Fuu!”

Now that he didn’t feel tired anymore he stood up and started running at sprint speed to where he would be able to regenerate his armor.

His inner self was realizing how stupid what he had done was.

‘Really a nut job to have come here as a tier 2! Fuck my pride and fuck my dreams! Gotta escape bro!’

Having cleared every monster in his way was really the most intelligent thing his past self did. After 1 hour of retreating, he reached a zone where he regenerated 5 armor per second, a fine amount compared to 0, so he slowed down till he stopped completely, and while he waited for some semblance of safety, he checked his notification.

*Ding* Energy Fundamental: Energy Compression reached Tier 3 Level 5

*Ding* Energy Compression: Basic Energy Armor reached Tier 3 Level 3

*Ding* Energy Compression: Basic Energy Defense reached Tier 3 Level 3

*Ding* Cohesion: Specialized Cohesion Infusion reached Tier 1 Level 7

*Ding* Cohesion: Specialized Cohesion Infusion reached Tier 1 Level 8

2 days of being completely exposed to the elements seemed to have done something to his way of compressing his energy and using his energy armor spell matrix.

Having gained 3% energy compression efficiency during his sleep was probably thanks to the accumulated experience during his fights against monsters.

One thing that shocked even him however was his cohesion infusion mastery increasing, he didn’t remember making an automatic infusion process.

So he felt his own health flow, and as surprising as it was, he had made a primitive but functional automatic infusion, and when he looked at it he understood how he made it instantly and it was just that, easy to replicate, not a marvel of health and energy engineering.

‘I’ll take those 2 levels, thank you.’

With this out of the way, he waited 20 minutes till his 6 200 armor was completely filled, only then did he move again.

‘I won’t jump and I don’t want to fly, so I can only go the other way.’

He certainly wasn’t going to fly above the abyss, if a tier 3 bird decided he looked appetizing or he lost his footing and fell, except the star high in the sky and maybe one day finding the straight cliff again, he would be lost forever.

Or maybe the bottom was very welcoming? He for sure wasn’t taking a chance.

Keeping to the radioactive zone would not only give him more safety but also immunity to losing himself, the erosion rate was a strong indicator of his position relative to something far away.

Reaching tier 3 was only a question of time for him and as he was blocked by a natural wall, a natural limit he couldn’t trespass following the cliff path, he had to innovate.

After all this planning, there was only one path beside the going back towards civilization path, and it was towards the east.

A band of 50 kilometers where he was losing 131 armor per second, a road full of monsters, where Rune would only enter deeper into the black and white jungle.

Having a regeneration of 5 armor per second was sufficient to engage in dangerous battles, not only did it forbid going full juggernaut style, but it implicitly told him that once he took a strike, he wouldn’t recover from it till he won or escaped.

Taking a deep breath, as a meditative way to prepare himself, Rune was ready, “Here we go,” and penetrated into the black and white jungle.

…

‘That’s a mountain chain right?’

With an overloaded sight, Rune could see the ground rising a thousand kilometers away before it suddenly cut off, and further behind, multiple darker shapes appeared.

Without any global positioning system, he couldn’t be sure it was the extension of the mountain chain he saw back at the landing zone but it was still a possibility.

The fact he was still under a constant stream of more than 130 damage every second indicated however that unless it was stopped by topographic obstacles, then the mountainous environment was included in the radioactive zone.

‘A thousand kilometers, 10 to 15 monsters, so around 4 hours till I arrive.’

Making quick calculations, Rune decided to keep his steady pace, he was fine here after all.

*Ding* Cohesion: Specialized Cohesion Infusion reached Tier 1 Level 45

The leveling notification allowed him to realize that he needed to know how much time he used to go from the cliff to the mountain chain, so he opened his masteries window.

Masteries

Tier 1 Masteries

Physical Fundamental: Reinforcement: Tier 3 Level 3

Physical Fundamental: Fighting Instinct: Tier 3 Level 18

Physical Fundamental: Body Control: Tier 3 Level 19

Energy Fundamental: Fine Manipulation: Tier 3 Level 0

Energy Fundamental: Grand Manipulation: Tier 3 Level 0

Energy Fundamental: Energy Compression: Tier 3 Level 20

Spiritual Fundamental: Perception Control: Tier 2 Level 93

Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division: Tier 2 Level 85

Spiritual Fundamental: Momentum Manipulation: Tier 2 Level 97

Tier 2 Masteries

Energy Compression: Basic Energy Armor: Tier 3 Level 19

Energy Compression: Basic Defensive Energy: Tier 3 Level 19

Cohesion: Specialized Cohesion Infusion: Tier 1 Level 43

‘Awareness at 69 before, to 85 now, so 16 level up, with one every 2 days that is now at every 2 and a half days… 32 to 40 days, so 36 days, let’s settle on this… But I didn’t remember sleeping though?’

It wouldn’t be the first time he completely lost sense of time, but he was sure he couldn’t stay awake for so long while doing spirit passive training.

‘Is it lucidity before death? My ether soul has finally regenerated too much energy and is shutting down silently?’

Even after a month or maybe months, his ether soul continuously generated energy, and it wasn’t slowing down.

When he got access to the globalized information board, he tried and found some things about one’s ether soul stopping regenerating, but it was full of ether jargon, what he got out of it was that it was attributed to a major conflict mixing a dependent entity with an original and avatar bodies.

What he got out of it was that it could happen, just that to make it happen to tier 2 entities, the limit was millions of times higher.

‘2 000 per minute, no break, let’s take 30 days, so time 60, time 24, then time… 30… 86 000 000 energy?! That’s some good work there myself!’

The light joke was the limit his mind put on this number because even more mind-boggling was the amount of armor that has been eroded during all this time, Rune didn’t even want to calculate it.

Of course, the complexity behind it all was more than just rounded numbers, every level in his defensive masteries increased his armor efficiency, with currently a boost of 358%.

In addition to that, his level 45 infusion mastery now had a ratio of 5.5 health for 1 infused energy, so every second he infused 6 energy, and once this energy was transformed it changed the balance to be more positive.

He put this difference to profit by training his grand and fine energy manipulation with the surplus energy.

Using simple moves like energy pulse, he reached peak tier 2 a week ago, then it advanced naturally soon after as his accumulation seemed to be enough.

Advancing steadily towards the faraway mountains, he encountered monsters on the way.

He didn’t know when, but for some time already he only saw a challenge in confronting late tier 3, only such a big stat differential gave enough leeway to a mindless beast for it to represent a challenge.

He didn’t know the stat threshold he considered to be a challenge so he arbitrarily decided it to be 2 times his own stat, 4 000 stat points.

He only encountered two exceptions to this rule, a black and white bear, a panda-like monster, who despite showing a peak tier 3 strength, was too susceptible to interruptions and was comboed to death in 5 minutes without Rune being struck once, and the other a centipede-like monster, with segments of chitin and lots of little limbs.

Its complex fighting range was only balanced by a complete impossibility to strike above itself, even nature made mistakes, and it was Rune’s goal to find and exploit them. It died in 3 minutes, Rune wasn’t struck once.

To keep his feet on the ground and don’t ascend, he used the fact that his ego didn’t exist, “No, no, no, don’t get arrogant and overconfident, just wait for a peak tier 3 tiger to ambush you, and then we’ll see how you use the fact that looking them in the eyes is a weakness, we’ll see…”

Peak tier 3 was just plainly impossible for him, no matter the weakness of the monster, he would be overpowered in minutes if he didn’t escape.

In the end, peak tier 3 monsters were true apex predators, a designation only given when they could fight by themselves an early tier 4, something he absolutely didn’t want to encounter yet.

He was fortunate that he didn’t encounter a peak tier 3 in the radioactive land, and the record was going to be sealed soon as the mountain chain was only some kilometers away, already the surrounding topography wasn’t flat anymore, the black and white jungle was diminishing in density as fast as Rune advanced.

And then it happened.

Feeling the air change instantly, he realized why the environment change was so fast, it was an Endless region transition, and the ever-present stream of damage ceased to exist when he crossed this border.

Stopping to observe this transition in detail, he took to the air.

Before his eyes, a very light blackish brown forest adapted to a mountainous environment till out of sight, and in the far distance, the black and white foliages transformed to true green greeneries, the influence of the radioactive land ceased to be.

Upon realizing this, all the pressure his ether soul was under disappeared.

For the first time in a month or maybe a month and a half, his ether soul stopped regenerating energy 1 minute later, his energy balance was fully positive, and he didn’t use it for anything.

Having experienced so many perplexing and shocking moments, he was little by little becoming used to them, the Endless was satisfying his desire for adventure and discovery as much as he ever wanted.

‘Let’s see what this new region has to offer.’

He was still relatively close to the landing zone, so by connecting the dots, the first thing he thought about was that the region he entered was one the IGS already discovered, but when he returned with the whole Undecided months ago there wasn’t any news about the new region.

‘Or was it? Can’t remember…’

Evaluating that there weren't any immediate threats and not feeling anything himself, he climbed to the nearest peak.

It was only the border of the region and he could see much higher mountains in the distance, but that was for later, now was the time to make a 1-second long after-action report and sleep.

It was night and the region didn’t offer a moon or anything of interest, just an infinite sky full of ether, normal ether, not a neon white one.

No flock of birds visible, no tremors passing through the earth, no monster’s cry or roar…

‘Time to sleep then.’

He wasn’t going to let the unexplainable fact that he didn’t sleep for a whole month escape.

Finding a flat clearing higher, he created a foamy mattress and went to sleep, life was that simple, and Rune loved it when it was simple.