Keynes ground to halt, his boots dug into sand. He stared at his Attribute Interface for a couple of seconds, growing frustrated. Not a single percent into maxing out any of his attributes. He was still at 0% in all of them. His time in the rift with Kora and Jedd hadn’t amounted to any progression either. He’d noticed that his body could endure more physical training but working out harder made no difference. Why?
He huffed even harder, as if trying to get someone else's attention but he was alone on this remote stretch of sand between trees and bushes. Only a fraction of the cluster rift island was settled, the rest remained wild.
The true source of his frustration lay elsewhere though and it wasn’t the Solar Tax or their new enemy — Hunter.
Alice hadn’t returned. Keynes had failed twice to bring her back after the meeting with the other founders in the cave rift. Their bond was still active but any kind of feedback vanished. He raked his brain, looking for any hints as to what could have happened to her but nothing stood out besides the usual warning to not give away any restricted information to him, which she hadn’t done.
She wouldn’t do that either to me so it must be the System’s doing. Again, why? That question popped up quite often. It sucked that answers weren’t coming through though. But other Medium stage ascenders haven’t reported any issues with their spiritual companions so this doesn’t seem like the System-wide event. Then again, Alice wasn’t anything like other spiritual companions. Those who got their companions after the System had gone fully online couldn’t even name them. From the reports Keynes received, the current version of spiritual companions resembled a soulless system assistant without shred of humanity. Could it be that the System attempted to revert her back to the intended settings? Hopefully not.
A few ascenders went as far as disabling their companions, which had an unexpected benefit — stronger spiritual aura. It appeared that a spiritual companion reserved 30% of an ascender’s spiritual energy.
Keynes didn’t want to think about a kind of boost he would have received if he’d disabled Alice. But he’d never do something like this. While Alice tended to be of less and less use recently, her constant presence at the back of his mind was comforting and kept his dark thoughts in check. He didn’t believe he’d have reacted the same way to the news of the Solar Tax and Hunter if she’d been there.
“I don’t understand,” he muttered, staring at the sea. The crystal clear water and lazily sloshing waves had a calming effect but there were too many problems on his mind to relax. On top of that, he was leaving tomorrow with Columbus and Kora to bring back nine Level 4 rifts here, and he feared what he was going to find out there.
The world was a different place now.
To take his mind off Alice, Keynes sat down and tried to meditate. Even with the Technique of Meditation, it only worked for a couple of minutes as other things butted their way in. With the burden of setting up the Department of Knowledge on Jedd’s shoulders, Keynes started to think again about the traits and the orbs in his possession. The expiration date on the traits was bothersome because there was no solid information about these traits. What he’d learned from Esopp gave him mixed feelings. The Trait of Dominator made Esopp more powerful, his presence more domineering and gave him [Dominate] and [Presence of Dominator] skills but there were drawbacks too. Esopp had become tyrannical and dangerously ambitious. Keynes didn’t trust himself to be any different.
The existence of traits raised a lot of questions. They were immaterial like the Orb of Perfection and the Orb of Insight but for some reason they had an expiration date. Was it because they came from an external source or because of some other unknown mechanism?
“I hate not knowing,” Keynes said. He couldn't wait for the Department of Knowledge to begin doing its job. Things would be so much easier if they understood the System. For too long, they’d lived in a world with an incomplete System. No Vitality, no rifts, no skills.
It didn’t help that every faction hoarded discoveries and knowledge. Though Keynes had no illusions any longer about sharing anything with the public. He’d been naive to think that something better could be created. Even, within his own company, things had to be carefully assessed and people vetted before they were allowed to know.
“Screw this, I’m absorbing the traits…”
He mentally reached to both traits. If he was going to do it, he’d absorb both at the same time. Alice had confirmed it was possible and a combination of the two would be created.
“Don’t.”
Keynes whirled around, throwing sand into the air. He readied [Chaos Aura] and spiritual aura to use them offensively but stopped dead finding a girl child. She couldn’t be older than 6 or 7.
“What the hell? Who are you? What are you doing here?” His head whipped in all directions, looking for her parents.
She smiled at him while brooding in the shallow water.
“I’m here to train you and…I guess, to keep you out of trouble.”
Keynes shook his head, unable to understand what was going on. Then chill cut through his body like a bullet. The child didn’t exist according to his spiritual sense. Were his eyes deceiving him? Maybe someone used a mental spell or Talent on him?
She shook her head, her blonde curly hair jumping around.
“You aren’t under any external influence,” the child explained, turning her small back to him. Wait… Is she wearing a white toga? That kind of clothes went out of fashion at least two millennia ago.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
She glanced down at her clothes…
“You’re reading my mind?” Could it be…is she her?
“Yes and no,” she said, kicking water.
Keynes blinked, he was lost. Was this really happening?
“It does. Now, take a grip. Your Mind attribute and the Pure Body buff are enough to keep the shock at bay.” She nonchalantly stepped onto the surface of water and then sat down with her crossed legs a metre above the water. “My name’s Lem Solaris and I’m a soul companion of a person who asked me to come here and train you.”
“I don’t—”
“Of course you don’t,” Lem Solaris interrupted. “But that’s not an issue. Understanding and wisdom will come with time and experience. I’m here to ensure that you’ll have both.”
As much as Keynes wanted to follow, he couldn’t. There were scraps of comprehension in his mind but each felt incomplete or inadequate.
“Join me.” Lem Solaris stood up and started moving up. Keynes still sensed nothing from her. She was like a spiritual ghost.
Using [Flight], Keynes caught up with her. She looked strange just standing in the air but at the same time moving in relation to the ground. It looked nothing like [Flight].
“I know you have a lot of questions. Your mind is very loud. Anyone Level 5 with an adequate Talent would be able to hear your thoughts. By Level 10, a spell would suffice. You’ll have to start working on your mental defences or you’ll have to be content with others knowing what you’re thinking about.” She scrunched her tiny nose. “And that’s a bad idea because I’m not only talking about ascenders here but monsters too.”
“Impossible…”
“It’s taking too long.” She snapped her fingers and the world around them changed. Suddenly, they stood in the air above a large construction site. It took Keynes a few seconds to realise that he wasn’t using [Flight] anymore. “This is the Level 5 rift cluster you wanted to open.”
Keynes decided to keep his mouth shut as questions threatened to overwhelm his sanity.
Lem Solaris snapped her fingers again and the world changed once more. They were in an otherworldly place with a green sky and alien structures reaching to the sky like broken fingers.
A piercing screech turned Keynes’s blood to ice. The forest far beneath them featured trees and massive rocks in several colours not found on Earth but another detail quickly got Keynes’s attention.
Monsters.
There were many types of them but their behaviour seemed off.
“Level 5 rifts are the first difficulty milestone. This is where things start to get dangerous.”
“You can open a sealed rift?!”
“Oh boy,” she sighed. “At my Level, anyone can do it. And don’t ask about my Level, I need you to be conscious. So, I brought you here to explain the very first thing about progression. It sucks.”
“What?”
“Nevermind.” She raised her hand. She somehow looked bored and excited at the same time. Or Keynes’s mind broke already. “Anyway, the difficulty scaling isn’t smooth. It jumps several times and Level 5 rifts are going to be the first place where you’ll stumble, even with your Perfect State. You’ll find new types of rifts, monsters and so on. You won’t like most of it.”
The rift vanished, they were back on the small beach.
“If I’m to train you…” she trailed off, her eyes looking into the distance. “I have to explain to you what lies ahead.”
As unbelievable as visiting inside a sealed rift had been, Keynes’s mind regained full faculty. He had questions that needed to be answered first.
“Why have you stopped me from absorbing the traits?”
Without glancing his way, she answered, “I was warned that your world knows next to nothing so I won’t roll my eyes at your question. Traits bring the best and the worst out of the System. The power they offer is unique and unparalleled but they inflict a terrible cost. They mould you into something you’re not. Your friend ascender who has absorbed the Trait of Dominator will become a different person. These aren’t only personality changes. Spirit, soul, the entire way of life will undergo a shift.”
“What would happen to me if I absorbed these two traits?” she sighed at his unrelenting train of thoughts.
“It would’ve formed the Trait of Spiritual Dominator but this isn’t the road you wish to follow. You’d have become infatuated with spirit to the unhealthy point and beyond. Spiritual Dominators seek to dominate even the very spiritual fabric of reality. You should know that given your Chaos debuff, it would have negatively reacted with that trait and [Chaos Aura] would have stopped working with that much spiritual energy around. Spiritual Dominators are beings obsessed with commanding spiritual energy. With how complex and vast it is, it is a depthless rabbit hole.”
The vision painted by Lem Solaris was terrifying but why hadn’t Alice warned him about it?
“Because she couldn’t. The System in this universe doesn’t like giving knowledge away for free. Your spiritual companion tried to defy it but she’s only a mere tool of the System.”
“Is that why she’s away?” Keynes asked, fearing the worst outcome.
“Yes but she’s breaking away from the System.”
***
“Lord Sovereign.”
Ethan Blackwood peeled his eyes off the view beyond the window. The majesty of Jupiter was breathtaking and humbling.
“Speak.”
“The report from Earth has arrived.”
Ethan nodded, waving the servant away. Being so far away from that small blue planet made Earth’s problem distant and tiny. Also, there were other matters on Ethan’s mind right now. Moving rifts between planets and moons was possible. This was critical information that opened countless possibilities.
Ethan’s eyes returned to the window but instead of Jupiter, they turned toward a silver moon — Ganymede. It belonged to the Sovereign, his organisation. Shortly after the first outbreak, Ethan’s people had stolen technology capable of detecting spiritual energy of rifts from the Institute and built his own rift detectors. Then used them to check the moon.
Ganymede had over 100 rifts from Level 1 to 4. All sealed like the ones on Earth. His best minds worked on how to unseal them without Keynes Kid. Cracking that issue would get rid of the biggest hurdle the Solar Council was currently facing.
Untainted Paradise, no matter how idiotic the name was, was a threat to the Sovereign’s hegemony. Over the years, Ethan had managed Shaper, Vichy Ottoman, Windsor Freeman, Columbus Curt and lately Syberius Sael. Untainted Paradise wasn’t the only headache Ethan was dealing with though. The Dominion of Monsters and the rise of dominions was bothersome. Sandman and Vivena Sael were growing strong but nothing the Sovereign couldn’t handle.
They would either join him or would be crushed.
He unfolded the printed report.
Excellent, they found Emerald City.