Rachel looked at the office and the market. These rank 14s are very old, much older than her. Of course, when one takes into account her other incarnations in other charges of reality and her earlier incarnations in this same universe, then she would be much older.
Unfortunately for her, her access to information is limited; she has to buy it if she wants to get valuable information. As for info about her predecessors in this universe, who were eliminated, she has no idea how they came and how they were destroyed; the office, specifically, can help a lot with that.
Using the office's database and the market's storage, Rachel could consolidate her position in rank 14. She is definitely among the most powerful rank 14s when one counts all rank 14s, but among her incarnations, she is nothing special. She lacks info, her creation energy output is low, and she has no rank 14 hosts.
Even more, she can sell the data she gains to the inter-universal data center and get more contribution points.
"Let's start with the office!" she thought. She would try hacking into the office first because data is the thing she needs the most at the moment.
Looking into the seal, she cast her first spell.
"Unlock!" she cast.
Unlock is based on the unlock universal law. Usually, because it is a general universal law, rank 13 won't use it in combat, but right now, Rachel has near-unlimited energy; she can suppress whatever specific universal law her opponent takes out.
Rachel has no clue what kind of firewall the office uses to keep its secrets safe; in that situation, the more general universal law she uses, the better.
In general, Rank 13s use specific universal laws because when fighting a peer, they cannot suppress their opponent's universal law; if they cannot suppress it, then the more specific the universal law, the better the chances of winning.
Among rank 14s, universal laws lose their offensive potential; the war of rank 14s is a war of energy. Universal laws cannot do much. For rank 14s, universal laws are useful only in delicate jobs, like lockpicking, and even then, they only help; most of the job still will be done by energy.
Putting a lot of gray energy into the unlock universal law, the universal law shook. The unlock universal law is, like all universal laws, part of the fabric of the universe; a universal law being shaken can be felt everywhere.
Fortunately, even if it is a general universal law, it's still only one, so the shock was very small, and not even rank 13s were able to feel it.
The office was sealed and completely unable to act; it couldn’t try to suppress the unlock universal law. Being hit with the spell, the office remained motionless.
Rachel, with her eyes closed, shook her head. She could feel that the code was complicated beyond this universe. It could not be designed by only the office here; it must be designed in that universe.
She has heard of a universe that is the headquarters of the 'resistance' against her. The details regarding that universe are freely available in the interuniversal database; she knows a lot about that universe and knows that most offices are products made there.
"It would take… let me estimate… 108814 years to decode it!" she sighed; that timeline is not practical at all.
"It should be because the office is connected to the resistance's headquarters; me wanting to decode the office here is the same as hacking their entire database! Even worse, if they notice my hacking efforts, they can change the pass and reset my progress!" she thought with disappointment.
It was not totally unexpected; it would have been weird if they allowed the data to be leaked out of the office so easily.
"The other way is to cut off the office from the resistance's headquarters, but that is difficult and would cause most of the data in the office to be lost. It is not worth it!" Rachel looked away from the office with disappointment.
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She hoped to be able to decode something, but literally, everything in the office was protected by the resistance's firewall.
Next, she looked at the market. The market, also known as the trade, was the most powerful forum to buy and trade things. After Anti-Rachel appeared, it replaced the market as the main forum, but only among low-ranking immortals. For rank 13 immortals, it remained as the main store and trade center; Anti Rachel simply didn’t have things high-ranking immortals demanded.
Even though the market was the center of immortals' commerce for innumerable years, it is still only a local rank 14, with no help from outside; it is completely different from the office, which was supported by a behemoth.
"Unlock!" she cast her spell. Closing her eyes, she smiled bitterly; even with using gray energy, the unlock universal law still didn’t work.
"It takes 10134 years, which is much better than the office, but it is still…" she sighed; she needed better unlocking spells.
The resistance's firewall was designed by many masters of supreme grandmasters, and maybe even quasi-omniscient masters, so it is no surprise that Rachel could crack their code even with her many masteries. But, the code of Market surprised her; it was too good for an isolated rank 14.
"Maybe it was quite close to achieving a quasi omniscient mastery?" she thought.
Masteries include from low to high: quasi master, master, quasi grandmaster, grandmaster, quasi great grandmaster, great grandmaster, quasi supreme grandmaster, supreme grandmaster, and quasi omniscient.
Only the oldest and most powerful rank 14s have a chance of achieving quasi-omniscient. It is technically possible for one to reach omniscient in a concept, but as of now, it's doubtful whether anyone succeeded.
Omniscient mastery in a concept means one knows all the details with one look, knows all mysteries of a concept, knows the future and the past.
Supreme grandmasters know and understand all about a concept from past to present; as for what happens in the future, even supreme grandmasters won't know. In the future, a concept may advance so much that supreme grandmasters would drop from their masteries and enter quasi supreme grandmaster. This is why it's important to keep oneself updated regarding new discoveries in concepts.
Omniscient mastery, however, means one would initially know everything, even the future discoveries of the concept. Considering the future is probably endless, the difference between omniscient and supreme grandmaster masteries is very big.
Now, Rachel has not even one quasi omniscient mastery, so it's no wonder she cannot unlock the much older rank 14s's firewall.
She is definitely much more powerful than them and can crush them when it comes to pure power; after all, the war of rank 14s is a war of energy. But when it comes to these technical things, she would lose to them; she can crush these codes but can't unlock them. Of course, crushing Market's codes means all of its storages would be destroyed, which is definitely not what she wants to see.
"I may be able to bring the time down if I use a lot of gray energy to turbocharge the unlock universal law; more so, I can bring the time further down if I add other universal laws to it," she thought.
After calculating for less than a second, she thought with another bitter smile, "It would still take 1099 years, which is impressive but still not practical." She managed to speed up the calculations by adding all of her gray energy output, but it was still far from enough.
Simply put, her masteries aren’t enough; even if not quasi-omniscient, she must at least have supreme grandmaster on the concepts that have to do with unlocking; then, she must design unlocking spells, and only then can she bring down the years to a practical level.
Not intending to force her way through and shatter everything, she put the market away and started thinking of ways to increase her mastery. There are many ways, but illusions and dreamland are the most common ones.
Deciding on a plan, she sent instructions to her incarnations.
…
"Dreamlands?" Rachel's incarnation in the hand of Lee nodded.
"Hey, Lee! I have a mission for you! It's code red!" she said.
Hearing it was code red, Lee listened carefully. "What is going on? Is it related to the Central Committee?" she asked.
She has come to the central committee for a few decades now; just recently, she managed to get days off.
"My main body just ordered everyone to start making dreamworlds!" said Rachel.
"Dreamworlds? Everyone making dreamworlds?" Lee touched her chin.
"This means all dream-related materials are going to get expensive!" she smiled. As an immortal who is heavy into the dream concept, she and her academy have long been storing all kinds of dream-related ingredients.
"I'm going to get rich!" said Lee; even though she has a Rachel incarnation, she is still quite poor, always having financial problems sustaining their operations.
But immediately after that first thought, Lee's face fell. "But then I'm going to go bankrupt!" she thought.
She has a lot of dream-related material and can get rich if she sells it, but after that initial profit, she has to buy dream materials at much higher prices.
"Don’t worry about it! My main body would provide resources for her incarnation and their hosts!" said Rachel. Her main body now has endless gray energy, which means she can literally create anything she wants out of thin air.
Hearing this, Lee nodded and said, "Tell me about the details."
Rachel began explaining the data regarding what kind of dream world the main body wanted. As for curiosity about why the main body wanted dream worlds, the two of them didn’t ask.