12 Aspera’s Training

A whole month passed quickly for Rune.

During this month, he had noted 2 things: One, magic was becoming a thing really quickly. And second, Utopia was a true friend.

He was a cultured and handsome gentleman, probably as much in the Universe as he appeared to be on the information board.

[Utopia: I reached it Rune! I achieved it! I'm so amazing! I'm so intelligent! I'm so perfect! I can't describe my feelings! It's 1.5 minutes Rune! 1.5! I reached 30 seconds!]

[Rune: Cosmic Ether Universe Law you really reached it?!]

[Utopia: I did an entire 8 hours round and my gathering log doesn't lie! I reached the limit of the sapiently possible! I! Did! It!]

[Rune: Let me calculate real quick, 1.5 minutes per resource, dividing 60… 40 resources per hour, 2 800 EP per hour, and… 67 200 EP per day! You absolute monster!]

[Utopia: Even a little above that, I gained 23 943 EP in total after those 8 hours, so just a bit more than predicted for the hour's yield. But it still says everything about my divine invisible luck! Now give me my music! Gimme! Gimme!]

[Rune: Your stats? How much momentum and perception? It's not proven by the wiki or anything, but I feel like perception is primordial to succeed. I personally needed 260 perception before only getting a weak sense of hearing from my original body. So calm down.]

What Rune and Utopia were talking about was the supreme farming speed, and 30 seconds was the result Utopia reached between finishing absorbing a resource and sprinting to another one while keeping in mind that 1 resource per minute was only possible if teleportation was a thing.

It wasn't. Not yet.

At a density of 75 resources per cubic kilometer, you needed to theoretically scan a cube of 237 meters of edge length to be sure to get at least one ether resource.

From that point of view, investing more than 120 points in perception was useless, except if you were in a special situation like extreme misfortune or near an anomaly.

Boosting it beyond 200 brought a case like Rune. He could see ether resources, but he wasn't fast enough to reach them in a short time.

In the end, it turned out the apex farming plan was to invest enough in perception, then only invest in the momentum stat.

From there, you just had to rush a predetermined path planned by your perception sphere to eventually reach the limit of sapient farming yield.

[Utopia: 500 momentuù, that's the limit of tier 1, I searched the board and some already reported that amount so it's nothing new. 500 is the individual stat limit of tier 1, and I can prove it, as for my perception, it's at 130.]

[Rune: Ok.]

[Rune: Go farm, it's really unfounded but before I started my training, I reached 260 points in perception, and I really think it has an effect.]

[Rune: If you're in a hurry, I think 200 perception is enough. Anymore and it's only a bonus.]

[Utopia: Now that you did it you'll return to farming, right? Everyone else became crazy with energy manipulation… We are the only remaining survivors!]

[Rune: Yeah, I'll go back to farming soon, so, how to describe it…]

...

Half a month ago.

"It's like catching a goldfish by hand… F*cking d*mb," Rune stopped farming after reaching 260 in his perception stat. He had gathered 448 665 EP in 15 days, and tried himself to the task of manipulating his awareness.

And he had now become frustrated enough to talk loudly.

Avatar (Basic Rank) (Tier 1)

EP: 35 461

Stats Total: 459

Health: 10

Health Regeneration: 1

Strength: 1

Cohesion: 1

Energy: 10

Energy Regeneration: 65

Purity: 10

Affinity: 1

Momentum: 100

Perception: 260

Rune was completely sure he could have, in fact, done what he was doing when he had 200 perception.

His training was primitive but effective, its only downside was that, as it was full-time training, he had stopped farming and increasing his perception stat. Or any other stat for that matter.

'I only need my hearing sense, why can't I do something so simple?'

Reasoning and rationalizing his difficulties had a limit, and being frustrated at his training was normal for even the most talented.

'Am I going crazy? How did I do it?'

Having already succeeded once for a brief moment, his irate mood came from this one-time success of 2 seconds.

'I'm so frustrated I just want to launch a bunch of water balloons at children passing by!'

As he had only just begun his awareness training, he really only succeeded one time and failed every other attempt.

"Whatever…" Returning to a calm inner-self and emotionless external-self, he started his primitive training method again.

His training method consisted in very simply switching back and forth between his original body and his avatar. As that action was linked to moving his awareness, he just had to try and do it as slowly as possible, or slow it down as much as he could and feel every change happening.

And once he felt in control, he had to try to stop it in the middle in one fell swoop. But it was more easily said than done of course…

He could slow it down at every attempt, but never stop the switching process from happening.

'I already made Utopia in charge of finding the ideal mix for farming, and I promised that when he found it I'd have a way to listen to music again…'

Thinking about the pact he made rekindled his determination, he really wanted to hear music again!

'Why doesn't it stop? Maybe It's like energy training, you can't succeed at the beginning, even if your stats tell you you're able to do it… Sigh… Let's just passively switch my awareness and become more familiar with everything involved.'

Being a pioneer was hard, and while he could honestly say he wasn't interested in fame, it didn't mean he would say no to some ego boost once he successfully proved that this method worked.

Another of his motivations was just contributing, maybe as a form of atonement for everything he got from all the dead avatars' owners who then gave all their intel to help others.

He wasn't a saint, but deep inside, the values of the IGS were anchored in his very being, and reciprocating was one such value, it was basic civility.

Ten days after starting his awareness splitting training session, he could feel a clear change compared to when he just started. His control over the switching speed had become a lot better, and he at last could start his "sense of hearing only" awareness training.

Training in awareness manipulation seemed to be a long process with decreasing return from his experience, he had only become able to slow the switching speed down to a 5 minutes after days of dedicated effort, and in fact, he didn't even start to hit the hard part, the true manipulation.

The central point of his awareness was his ether soul, the wiki gave away this knowledge to those who involved themselves in basic research on the subject. True awareness manipulation implied "control" over at least 1% of his awareness.

He didn't know what percentage of his awareness needed to be left in his original body to have access to his hearing sense, but he at least wanted the music he heard to be complete.

He didn't want to hear crackles or cuts, so he didn't target a precise percentage of awareness left behind but a concrete objective.

After 10 days of trying to tame his dissident awareness, he had already learned how to manipulate his awareness if it was only in one body, but the level of manipulation he was talking about didn't involve dividing it, only cutting a sense completely or keeping it completely.

"So trippy," Rune just disconnected all his senses except his sense of sight, so he was talking without being aware of what his mouth was doing.

He could move one of his arms and from his point of view it just floated up without making any sense.

"A lot better than the first time, hehe," he laughed sincerely as he remembered his chaotic first attempt.

Because the first time he disconnected all his senses as an experiment, his body spontaneously started to empty its stomach, probably because his brain short-circuited. It had been a very bad experience.

"Ok, so it really increases one sense," he concluded as he looked at his hands and through the window. The experiment he just did was roughly about the myth of blind people having more refined senses than others.

And in Ether Law's terms, this myth now had an explanation: Your awareness became more focused on your other senses due to you using one less sense and everyone having an equal amount of awareness.

Cutting every sense except one forced all of one's awareness to go all-in on this one sense, and by biology breaking means, his eyes could now see insects crawling in the front garden of his house after looking from his open velux window.

'So if I cut every sense except my sense of hearing, I'll only need a minute amount of awareness to be on my original body's side and still be able to hear from my avatar's side.'

Over the course of 10 days, his training had completely transformed from a switching process observation to original body senses manipulation.

It was just so fun once he got to his point.

Those who trained with energy should also feel the same way he did, the feeling of accomplishing something completely new without any guidance was thrilling.

'If I wanted to know what part of my ether soul corresponds to the hearing sense of my original body, I'd need months of additional training. It probably means it's not the right way? Or maybe it's the orthodox way?'

Thinking outside the box was easy to say when it was about simple riddles, but reality often made a point of making everything harder than it had to be.

"I just need a drop! A single drop of awareness and I'll know how to progress!" Expressing his determination loudly helped him hype himself.

'The answer shouldn't be to slow the switching process but to do it manually. I need to switch manually, take all my awareness, and send it to my avatar!'

If just to hear music, he needed months and months of training, then Rune would still do it. At the same time, he also wouldn't say no to a little shortcut or a different approach that brought this time down.

And so, four days later, he reached apotheosis by hearing for the first time music in the Void Dimension.

The amount of awareness that was on his original body's side wasn't even enough to be called a droplet, it was the equivalent of a molecule.

The amount was so tiny that he only heard sizzling and crackling, as if his original body was a broken radio that was picking up a wrong wave.

With the ultimate reward standing just some practice away, Rune really entered the zone, pushing his awareness so gently and minutely that molecule by molecule amount of awareness passed to the other side.

It was his outside-the-box answer, and the more he did that, the clearer the music became.

'4%.'

A day later, with bright and lively eyes, Rune approximately calculated the amount of awareness he sent to his original body's side. It was the amount that had allowed him to listen to the Riddle Anthem in the Void Dimension after.

(The Riddle Anthem - Jack Holliday and Mike Candys - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMOY0Pesucs)

'4% is enough.'

He had never felt so hyped up to continue farming as he felt at that time.

[Rune: From my estimate, I'll need months of practice just to become able to send enough awareness to activate my sense of hearing in under an hour.]

[Utopia: And how much time do you take to do it like… Now? Right now?]

[Rune: Five hours, 5 hours to send 4% of my awareness without engaging the switching process.]

[Utopia: So do I need to bring my perception up or not?]

[Rune: It being possible at 10 PER doesn't mean it's "really" possible, bring it to 260 and it'll take you 15 days. I don't know what higher stats bring to the time needed, I'm only a lone hermit after all.]

[Rune: That's why I'm going to release it on the board, once people give their own training time, it'll gain traction and reach out to lots of people, I hope it'll help those like me who have had enough of being in complete silence all day.]

[Utopia: That's admirable! You're a true hero! Utopia Out!]

Similarly closing the information board screen, Rune was left with only himself and his newly acquired music.

'And now, my rush for 500 momentum can finally start. All the others are really into this new energy magic thing though, they only talked a few times in 10 days.'

Ten days ago, the government had released a mini announcement.

They used the Aspera AI core, a universe-class AI core of the IGS defense department, to create a training regime for the energy fundamentals.

The result, once it was released, was an explosion in the number of people deciding to pick up the training on their energy fundamentals.

Energy could even be said to now be the go-to fundamental on the board, and was subject to the rule of enough quantity transformed into quality, with minor spells, major spells, killing-yourself spells, and everything happening simultaneously at a frightening speed.

There was no stopping the advancement of the newly pioneered energy manipulation field.

Heroes with over 1 000 total stats or commoners with 100 total stats, everyone could follow this training regime if they invested enough in their energy stats.

The devised training was very complete and very time-consuming, a true shonen-like training including the 24 hours in a day after application of the energy revitalization loop technique.

[Training regime for energy mastery conceptualized and modelized by the Aspera AI core:

4 hours: Create an O energy shape in the air, must be stable and be able to flow.

2 hours: Maintain an energy orb without sending it, the more energy, the harder, the better.

4 hours: Repeatedly use your energy by colliding multiple energy orbs, the more complex and unfamiliar the energy orb, the better.

2 hours: Create a normal energy orb and compress it, keep compressing for 2 minutes before dissipating and starting again.

12 hours: Redo the same training while understanding what a diminished amount of energy brings to all the training. Never reach zero energy in your energy pool.]

Thankfully, Rune wasn't concerned by this boring training without anything concrete to gain at the end, so it had nothing to do with his life. He was going to farm.

In one month of farming, after he gained the ability to listen to music in the Void Dimension, he gained 1 104 446 EP and brought his momentum to 213.

The second month, he gained 1 634 412 EP, bringing his momentum to 376.

In the third month, he reached his target goal of 500 momentum after 20 days and continued to farm for 10 days to bring his survivability up, gathering 1 980 677 EP in total.

'Utopia is crazy, he was ahead of me by at least 2 and a half months… Was my EP optimization so bad, or are Rululus just innate divine beings even when they're teenagers?'

Wondering how that situation could have happened, Rune was aware that soon he would reach the end of his spirit's maximum period of activity of one month.

Switching to his original body, he was welcomed by a totally normal bedroom with chill music playing in the background. His first action upon coming back was to switch to another playlist and then make his end-of-month summary.

Avatar (Basic Rank) (Tier 1)

EP: 394 996

Stats Total: 895

Health: 10

Health Regeneration: 10

Strength: 10

Cohesion: 10

Energy: 10

Energy Regeneration: 65

Purity: 10

Affinity: 10

Momentum: 500

Perception: 260

'I also have Void Initiation rewards to claim.'

Having already deactivated his energy loop, fatigue was coming fast, hitting like a deadly asteroid, but he still checked his event window.

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

'Well… Probably just got it, or maybe my past self was being stupid and was enjoying the music too much to hear the notifications?'

Musing to himself internally in confusion, Rune honestly hadn't expected the 10 000 kilometers traveled distance objective to be completed just like that.

'Let me see, let me see… 500 meters per minute, 2 minutes for one kilometer, so 20 000 minutes if untouched, it's equal to… 14 days? Isn't this number familiar? Did I already calculate it?'

Confused for a moment, he shrugged his shoulders as it wasn't really that important.

'Wait, shouldn't I have accomplished it much earlier?'

Doing the math instinctively, he immediately linked this result with something else that had bothered him a few minutes ago.

'Sigh… I think I know how Utopia reached 500 momentum so quickly, he just took the optimization I decided to forsake in favor of doing awareness manipulation training. And here I was, thinking my long-term memory was pretty good…'

He had the answer but he hadn't remembered it. It was that simple.

Overcome by the fatigue invading his mind, Rune ultimately decided he couldn't continue living in this state and stripped down to his underwear before going to bed immediately.

He fell asleep the moment his head touched his pillow.

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