‘Oh, a new monster I’ve never seen before?’

Adventuring in a mountainous environment was completely new for Rune, he did not have any experience in a field that was so unbalanced.

The star was up and it was similar to any other star he saw till now, it was just a sun, it was a normal region with a normal star and no moon, accompanied with no restriction on the ether. In sum, a blank and average region.

The monster he never saw before looked like a regular goat, but its legs were overly muscled, its horns were displaced to be a lot more forward-facing and from what Rune was seeing with his sphere, it totally ignored gravity, so it used momentum as a tool.

It also showed normal monster aggressiveness as it was rushing towards him, its speed in the air without visible support was around 300 meters per second, proving its specialization into the momentum stat.

Preparing for engagement, Rune solidified his position.

Usually, it would be bird-type monsters that had speedster specialization, he never encountered a 4 limbs speedster so he was prepared for the worst, and by worst he meant the ability to boost one’s own momentum at the same time using basic efficiency and specialization, they were true pests before receiving a strike to their head.

The goat monster acted like a bull and collided with him horn-first.

What welcomed it was a cohesion-infused compressed energy armor, and Rune not only canceled all the momentum, he even grabbed the horns and used them to keep the monster from flying away.

It was primordial against a speedster to immobilize them, more than striking their head.

He assessed the strength of the charge to only be equal to the momentum it used, so unless it was very new at fighting then it was only a medium tier 3, with only some stats more than double those of Rune with crucial holes in its repertoire.

Ascertaining the non-existential threat, Rune decided to do a behavior analysis and see what a momentum monster that wasn’t a bird was like, so he released it and stepped back.

In a moment it was immobile, the other Rune received another charge from the front.

“Again?! I’ve seen tier 2 monsters who learned faster than you!” Surprised by the stupidity of this move he exclaimed instinctively.

Grabbing its horn again, he made sure that there wasn’t a trap, but he perceived nothing, so after giving it a firm perfect punch to its head, Rune released it again.

Dazed from the punch, it still didn’t relent and once again used its momentum to appear directly in front of Rune.

Another straightforward charge

“…”

After 6 such exchanges, Rune had enough and grabbed the monster’s horns for the last time, with a major reinforcement he returned it and pinned it to the ground back first.

The moment he did that he felt the equivalent of 300 meters per second momentum trying to push against his hands, but he just maintained a complete deadlock and started to strike with his two elbows, all his body was mobilized to respond and resist the momentum the monster could generate from nothing but its spirit.

Against speedster birds he did the same, so against speedster mammals, he would do the same.

Once its health was close to zero, it used its ability but it was revealed to simply be a boosted health regeneration.

“No synergy at all! Die already!”

The battle ended with Rune adding the monster “goat speedster” to his database, he couldn’t evade their moves but they were stupid, current sample size, one.

A very welcome monster species if his goal was simply to farm cores, but he had long reached the 1 000 000 000 EP limit, so he didn’t care.

‘Let’s go south, back to civilization,’ he turned his body in the supposed correct orientation.

With his spirit masteries approaching tier 3, he was hitting two birds with one stone by searching a new path back home.

He could gain a massive contribution by making this loop from northwest straight cliff to south mountain region.

The direction was clear as just looking towards the west, he could see when the transition from mountain to jungle happened.

He felt no danger from his situation as his armor would even resist some strikes from a tier 4 monster, but the goat also made him realize one of the situations where he would reach the highest probability of death.

A tier 4 speedster.

‘Let’s take 5 000 momentum, with a boost of minimum 800% if it's an all-in build, so… 750 meters per second… How the f*ck can I run away from that?’

Obstacles, air perturbations, sharp turns, nothing would work against such a true tier 4 monster unless it was newly born, even the current Rune knew that.

‘Unless… Perception disruption…’

It all came back to something he initially wanted to push back till later, but he had been proved wrong in so many ways throughout his adventure, he learned so much that he started to think back to his future build.

‘One defensive infusion, four defensive, one strength, that’s my tier 3 build, I should have taken 2 additional energy compression masteries and 1 long-term balanced body control mastery, I can’t lose this one… So if I change my... I’d have only one additional defensive and one balanced offensive, with a slot for a composite element…’

All that thinking was for a path that was already known to everyone, a pretty standard path, but it truly represented what the path to power through the Ether Law truly was, a path that wasn’t straight, it crisscrossed and interweaved with so many other paths, so many interesting paths, that everyone could find what they searched for and even more.

‘But Riker said composite elements have to be studied for a very long time, with the only shortcut being using slots to take the elements you wish to include, I already know what I want so maybe there’s more info on the board. If I become a privileged adventurer I’ll probably receive help for the search of info…’

His thoughts were interrupted when a fast-moving monster penetrated his sphere, followed by multiple other signals, all diving towards him at more than 400 meters per second.

Against coordinated flying strikes, Rune knew what to do, he reacted by creating a giant spoon out of energy and used it to scoop a large part of the earth, then jumped into the hole and let the earth bury him, 5 meters under the ground.

In 3 seconds the earth started to fall down and when the birds arrived, only upturned earth awaited them.

From beneath the earth, Rune provoked them even more, “Hahaha! You’re 10 000 strength too early before your dive can break through my ultimate move!”

Of course, it wasn’t restituted and transmitted as it sounded like but he was satisfied with it.

A squad of 20 late tier 3 bird monsters hit the ground and tried to dig a little, but they stopped seconds later and departed the following second.

‘No this situation doesn’t count, I still don’t understand why the earth is so repulsive for those birds, truly a mystery of ether.’

Such behavior has been tested multiple times and while earth-bound monsters didn’t hesitate to unearth him and some even dug to attack, birds were the opposite, acting like spoiled domesticated animals, they didn’t want to touch the earth for a second more than necessary.

After 5 minutes, he emerged back and continued on his way back towards home, constantly thinking about his future build.

Just that now it wasn’t a question of having his composite element now or later, but which elements properties he wanted in his element.

And oh god, there was a lot.

…

*Ding* Spiritual Fundamental: Awareness Division reached Tier 2 Level 98

“It’s not the right timing ether! Ahahah!”

At least a month passed since Rune started his return to civilization, and this new region and new zone really offered what he always desired, perpetual chaos.

Running away from a giant pack, or army, of hundreds of late tier 3 wolf-like monsters, which had a minor focus on speedster builds, was not something special here.

It was common.

“Stop trying to bite my armor! Nobody can stop me if I’m trying to run! Ah! Let go! Let go! Bad dog!”

A tackle and a bite momentarily stopped him, but he freed himself soon enough by kicking the sh*t out of the wolf who did it.

The mountainous zone was so full of monsters that Rune encountered more squads than monsters alone, if he had an escape mastery it would have broken through the tier 4 roof.

With all the experience he gathered by running away permanently from chasing legions of monsters, his sense of danger was reduced to minus 10, it was more fun than ever to escape.

“Stop! It’s been 1 hour! Stop chasing me!”

A squad so persistent was very rare, but it didn’t detract from the fun he was having.

“I’ll come back stronger if you don’t kill me now! I’ll forget about your existence the moment you let me go!”

Contradicting himself implicitly while running away like a small-time criminal was a good way to release his inner frustration, and as long as they didn’t let him go he would continue.

“Two times my stats but can’t catch up! Ah! No momentum boost is cheating!”

He had to escape from a berserk wolf.

“I’ve seen wolves at tier 2 faster than you! What?!”

A pillar of earth destabilized his footing and made him fall face-first, only an in-extremis miserable roll helped by some momentum manipulation allowed him to evade the pounce from the tens of wolves behind him.

“You’re trying to break the world record for the longest useless chase or what?! I can go on for weeks like that! I’ll reach a tier 2 zone soon enough!”

Incessant provocation did nothing to stop them.

‘I didn't steal their breakfasts, right?’

After 4 hours of chase, it was officially the longest chase he was the subject of since he came to the Endless, and like all the others there was no reason behind it.

The record was in the end pushed to more than 6 hours before the wolves army stopped their pursuit, they started to chase Rune during the night and now the star was beyond its dawn time.

For him, it was clear that this zone was perfect to train his escaping mindset and tactics, but training here would prove a little too deadly unless he became tier 3, which would soon be the case.

‘The black and white zone disappeared 3 weeks ago so I should reach tier 2 ether density soon, this environment really has nothing to offer and too much chasing to my taste.’

Rune didn’t know how much time he spent on this loop around 3 regions and 3 zones, but at least 3 months passed and maybe 4 if he was to be really honest.

Reality proved him right when some tier 2 monsters started to appear amidst the huge army of monsters he saw, which, by the way, he could now conclude that as a monster squad stood together they were slowed down to peak tier 2 chasing speed, they were slowed down by their tier 2 members.

He easily escaped those squads, and one day as he was escaping leisurely, he saw in the horizon an uncertain zone border.

It was completely different from the forest jungle environmental transition, the “mountainous” zone he was standing on was more like a plateau compared to what he was seeing in the distance.

The mountain chain he traveled through was a succession of hills and peaks, but everything could be described as smooth overall compared to what appeared in the distance.

It was the spitting image of what he imagined a rugged mountain chain should look like, with peaks ending in needle-like form, and nearly no greeneries at all, just brown, grey, and dark shades everywhere.

‘Come what may.’

If it was a tier 2 zone then it would be more fun to adventure through such a variant of the mountainous environment he became used to.

4 hours later, he confirmed that it was truly a tier 2 zone, and another hour later he stumbled upon a razed mountain top, a cleanly cut 100 square meters flat surface.

‘Tier 4 monster or encampment, maybe it’s been moved? Means I need to travel laterally to find an occupied camp, preferably towards the west to approach the tier 2 forest I first passed through.’

Changing his direction to leave the rugged mountain chain zone, Rune headed west, and an hour later he found an occupied camp.

After leaving the zone, he stumbled upon a similar forest to jungle transition he discovered back then with the Undecided.

At the same time he left the mountain zone, he passed through a region transition, and he found a sun the size of the tip of his finger that he remembered, he was back to the landing zone region.

‘So there’s a tripoint region transition close by? What luck, I’ll search for it if I pass by again.’

The reason he so easily found this camp was due to the fact that a clearing in the middle of a forest was as eye-catching as the sun in the sky, just a glance and it became visible.

At tier 2 ether density, Rune wasn’t interested in fighting monsters anymore, even squads were too weak to represent a challenge. If he had to fight he’d just go full juggernaut style and you know what? It would work.

Increasing his speed to a moderate strength effort, creating movable energy platforms beneath his feet and using them to have perfect adhesion and adopt an optimal posture, starting to accelerate, continue accelerating, the true way of using strength to travel fast.

With his current boost of 131% efficiency to his maximum strength usage, it translated to a potential 4 620 strength, and this strength used to its maximum potential allowed Rune to run for his life.

When he had to be even more quick, he used all his energy regeneration, 33 per second, to act as a passive reinforcement, and with a boost of 109%, it ended up as a permanent 69 energy flow making his body vibrate and his effective strength go beyond 5 000, the peak of tier 3, by a large margin.

A reinforcement acted as a multiplicative to one’s strength, it was the ultimate key to destruction in the Ether Law from what the board said because every energy used under the fundamental of reinforcement gave an increase proportional to 0.1% of one’s base strength.

If one used 2 000 energy to reinforce 2 000 strength, then one move would theoretically have a strength of… 6 000 strength, the reinforcement adding a 200% multiplicative to the moving strength, and that was basic tier 1 with 100% mastery over one’s own strength and energy reinforcement, not reality-altering masteries power.

For 5 000 energy to reinforce 5 000 strength?

If you had to include the fact that at this point your true optimal strength was 10 000 strength thanks to 100% additional reality-breaking efficiency body control, and your reinforcement had minimum 10 000 true energy efficacy behind it, the result was a unique move corresponding to…

60 000 strength, 10 000 energy translated to a unique 1 000% boost.

Fortunately, it only applied to the strength stat and not to the maximum body control boosted strength stat.

And what would happen when you increased the reinforcement efficiency with masteries?

Enough to say that Rune read about tales depicting true godly herculean feats, reinforcement, and grand manipulation were the two most supreme offensive fundamentals and destruction was easier than protection.

That’s all he thought about it.