'Let's start by looking at how the different kinds of Ether form. I mean, I already know how they all form, but I gotta look even closer.'
Kyle decided to look at Metal Ether first.
He could create whatever kind of metal he wanted as long as he put enough Ether in it.
However, the process of creating Metal Ether was more complex than one would think.
For example, one could understand how to make a fire via friction, oxygen, and tinder rather easily.
Just spin the stick, and it makes heat.
But if one wanted to know it in detail, one had to know more.
How did friction make heat?
It converted mechanical energy into thermal energy. The rough surface resists motion, which was how heat was created.
But how exactly did that work?
Well, the mechanical energy is orderly, but the spinning part of the stick receives huge local stresses and shear forces, turning the orderly energy disorganized. That creates chaotic vibrations, which make atoms shake, which is basically what heat is.
But why are shaking atoms hot, and so on, yadda yadda.
One could go more and more into detail until the mere act of spinning a stick was a huge dissertation for a university physics class.
Creating Metal Ether was similarly complex.
There were many tiny concepts that interacted with each other to create Metal Ether.
And Kyle decided to experiment with all of these concepts.
Funnily enough, he had already done that while trying to comprehend the Law of Metal. After all, he needed to find the correct interactions to understand the Law of Metal. Only when the concepts interacted with each other correctly would the creation of Metal Ether be possible.
'And now, I have to essentially break this framework into pieces again and find ways in which concepts from other Elements can interact with them to create something new.'
Kyle decided to integrate concepts from Fire Ether generation into Metal Ether generation first.
Start easy, right?
Kyle started his first experiment, and moments later, a bit of unstable Metal Ether was created, which quickly collapsed into Neutral Ether and dissipated into the surroundings.
However, he had already expected this to happen.
'Would be weird if I succeeded on my first attempt.'
In order to create a specific kind of Ether, it needed to have certain properties, the most important of which was stability.
The Ether needed to be able to exist while interacting and being surrounded by other kinds of Ether. At least for a little while.
Wind Ether dissipated as well, but it didn't fizzle out immediately. One could still manipulate and make use of its power before that happened.
Kyle tried the same experiment again, but with changed variables.
This time, a bunch of deformed and useless crumbs of metal formed in the air before falling to the ground.
'I mean, it's stable, at least,' Kyle thought as he looked at the crumbs, which started to collapse under the immense stress of atmospheric pressure. 'But you shouldn't build a house with that.'
Kyle's long and isolated period of experimentation started.
A couple of days after he started, the world grew restless.
Emperor Winterfire was gone, and his most important Grand Sorcerers and generals had died.
However, no one was trying to take leadership for themselves yet.
After all, there were still Transcendents out there. One of them would probably become their leader.
Some weeks later, the powerful people realized that no other Transcendent would claim leadership.
That was when the first powerful people started to declare huge swathes of land their territory.
Meanwhile, Kyle was still creating the most useless kind of Ether imaginable.
A couple of months later, the first wars started.
While most of the organizations were okay with the current division of territories, some of them didn't agree with it.
The first of many civil wars started.
'Huh, that doesn't look too bad,' Kyle thought as he saw a couple of hot crumbs of metal.
They were not heated up. It was just in their nature to be hot.
Even more, they didn't even give off heat, which was super weird.
Technically, they were several hundred degrees hot, but if one touched them, one wouldn't feel any heat.
'But what's the fucking point of that?'
One year after the incident with Emperor Winterfire, more wars happened.
Meanwhile, Kyle looked at more pieces of hot metal crumbs, but this time, they were actually hot to the touch.
'Alright, it gives off heat, but the metal is about as hard as paper. Still not very useful.'
Three years after the incident with Emperor Winterfire, the wars became less numerous but bigger in scope.
Several alliances had been created, and the first new Ether Essence had reappeared. The fight for that new Ether Essence was the primary cause of the bigger wars.
'Huh, that could also work,' Kyle thought as he saw a grey flame.
He moved his hand through the flame and felt some resistance. It was almost like the flame was heavy.
'I mean, I could also go with ethereal properties. Why make metal hot when I can just make fire hard and heavy?'
Five years after the incident with Emperor Winterfire, four big factions had conquered the former territories of the Winterfire Empire.
Each one controlled one Ether Essence, and they were not the biggest fans of each other.
The leaders of the four factions all had Aristocrat's Bodies, and they started a race to see who would become the first Transcendent.
Meanwhile, Kyle watched a grey flame, which looked just like the last one, with interest.
He moved his hand through it with an intrigued expression.
It was like he was trying to push his hand through a solid plate of metal.
Yet, the flame acted just as ethereal as a normal flame.
It constantly changed its shape as it burned, and whenever that happened, it was like a hot metallic spear was trying to pierce through Kyle's hand.
'That's crazy,' he thought. 'You know, this is actually a pretty good baseline. I just need to scale it up and increase the power of it to its limit, and I would have an amazing new weapon!'
'I can use this thing for defense and offense!'
Kyle did some calculations.
'If I wanted to make this useful in a battle, I would probably need about three more years, and if I actually want this to be the base of my new power, I would need another two.'
'At that point, my power would increase drastically! Maybe that would even be enough to fight Emperor Winterfire.'
'I guess this is a base concept for a future Complex Level One Law. I would just need to refine it.'
Kyle dismissed the flame.
'But that's not my goal. I'm here to learn more about combining Ether.'
Metaphorically, Kyle had conceptualized a huge machine, but if he wanted to use it, he needed to build it, test it, and run it.
'Anyway, let's try metal and wind next.'
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