Keynes activated [Spiritual Wraith]. The monsters froze, disoriented. He didn’t bother with killing, instead, he used [Flight] and flew a few metres up above the ground. From there he watched Kora’s show. [Empower] was busted. End of story!
At full power, she could one-shot him. They judged that it scaled her strength to somewhere between Level 6 and 7. This also put into a perspective how strong a Level 8 like Hunter was.
Level 4 monsters she was ‘fighting’ now died after a single punch to their heads. Some of them were rare. And all of this, without boosting her stats through items.
She is impressive, Alice noted, floating next to Keynes. He silently agreed but at the same time, he noticed something unusual. Kora’s moves weren’t as refined and fluid when she sparred with him.
It is because lesser variations of techniques are very strict in their definition. Fighting monsters is not considered as lesser hand combat.
As if there was any definition provided by the System.
Sound of splintered trees and torn bushes reached them. Kora was having some fun. She threw a large black-green snake a metre wide. Keynes noticed it was of relic rarity. These were very rare, and possessed two active and two passive abilities. There was also innate strength added to higher rarities not listed by the System. But he had no reason to worry. [Empower]ed Kora didn’t struggle with the giant snake. It was too slow to keep up with her and after three rapid punches, it perished.
He’d call it anticlimactic if not for an item that dropped. Kora grabbed it and threw it to Keynes. She still had a few monsters to finish off before they could call it a day.
Ancient Treasury (Relic)
“Time isn’t the only one that likes to devour shiny things.”
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Dimensional Space [0x0x0]
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Hunger of the Lost
Feed the ring items of at least this item’s Level and rare rarity to increase its dimensional space.
An increase in dimensional space scales with Levels and rarity.
A Level of the item scales with available dimensional space.
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Ancient Law
This item can contain other dimensional spaces as long as they, individually, do not exceeds this item’s dimensional space.
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[Ring]
Level 4
Keynes almost released [Flight] upon seeing the ring’s modifiers. This thing was insane. Keynes put it on his finger and his body spasmed but he remained in the air.
“Argh…”
Master, the ring’s spiritual strain is too great. You must take it off.
Yeah, he felt it too. That damned [Chaos Aura] was too heavy on his Spirit. But while he had it on, he carefully observed his core and spiritual connections. He wasn’t idle the whole time spent in the dominion and improved his spiritual control by a substantial margin. It not only allowed him to once again use his spiritual aura against monsters without worry about hurting his allies. With the increased control came additional benefit, better understanding of spiritual energy inside his body.
While he was aware that items and spells had spiritual weight, it was a different story to see the connection between them and the core. No two connections were alike and yet the ring stood out like a sore thumb. Obviously, it was overshadowed by Level 45 [Chaos Aura], but skills were, in general, very differently connected to the core from items. Both connections were complex and sophisticated in their own rights and seemed to work on different principles. Unfortunately, they were beyond Keynes’s comprehension but he was positive about learning it eventually.
A few moments later, Kora was done with remaining fodder and turned to him expectantly. Instead of explaining, he threw the ring back to her. After wearing it for a few minutes, he could perceive the ring’s spiritual energy much clearer now even if it was away from him. He wondered if it was his Superior stage at work or was it something unique to the ring.
“Woah, Keynes! This ring changes…well, everything. It can solve all our issues and we have so many items at hand we don’t need.”
Keynes snorted, unable to hide a smile. He remembered her shock when he had given her and her group [Mental Link] skill shards. They had been terrified to accept a spell worth millions of credits and now she wanted, without hesitation, to destroy items worth perhaps more than the four [Mental Link]s.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, narrowing her eyes but without a serious edge. “Every item is worth a lot but… this ring—”
“Kora,” Keynes interrupted her before she fell into a rabbit hole. “I fully agree with you. Those items we’ve collected. We don’t need them. This ring though is something else. If we fed it enough, we could ask our crafters and engineers to create a self-assembling house with dimensional runes and formations.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“Exactly!” she said with relief. “I’ve heard there were some serious breakthroughs with dimensional runes that enlarge an interior without affecting an exterior.”
“True but these blueprints don’t belong to us. The Runesmith Guild owns them.”
“Keynes!” Kora shouted giddily. “It doesn’t matter who owns what today. Two years ago, Natalia and I were two nobodies and look at us today. She is the head of training for all rift carry teams…and I, I am here.”
He stared at her in her blood-soaked black armour and impish smile plastered to her face and something of this carefreeness was shared with him. He felt the weight of the entire world vanish from his shoulders. It wasn’t his fault his Talent turned out like this. He didn’t owe the world anything.
Kora approached him and then, slowly and awkwardly, hugged him. It was very brief.
“Thank you for giving me this chance.”
A year ago, Keynes would have frozen if a girl hugged him. But he was no longer the same person. He felt and remembered how he’d changed over time. So he smiled at her and put his hand on the side of Kora’s shoulder.
“I thank you for being here with me.”
***
Wagner and Cyrano sat at a table set inside a very unique Level 1 rift. The rift entrance was located on a small island on a lake inside the massive cavern with half of the ceiling missing. The water in the lake was bright blue and fluorescent while the sky was pale green with several large planets hanging dangerously close. From the very first moment, Untainted Paradise’s researchers were trying to discover if these planets were real and if yes how this was possible. Could the boundary of a rift be broken? Would it be even necessary if they had a rift orbs of enlargements? But how many rift orbs would it take to reach them? Wagner didn’t even wish to consider the cost.
The unique feature of the rift were monsters which all dwelled in the lake and didn’t leave it. As long as no one entered the lake, they were perfectly safe. This, combined with the magnificent view and refreshing atmosphere, made the rift a prestigious escape for Wagner and other Untainted Paradise’s executives. It was also one of the deepest and most secure locations in Emerald City.
“We’re currently sitting on 50 Level 4 rifts and none has the same climate and sights as this one. There is something special about it,” Cyrano noted.
“It is,” Wagner agreed. He stabbed a Level 2 steak with a fork and carefully started cutting a piece off. They stopped eating food or drink liquids below Level 2 some time ago. It wasn’t only their nutritious or spiritual energy values but the taste. “Also, the chef outdid it himself.”He added with a mouthful of meat
The taste was divine.
“He did.” Cyrano nodded. “I have to applaud Pucci as well. The quality of the wine is incredible. I didn’t expect him to figure out how to farm, whatever this is, outside a rift and retain all the valuable properties.”
“He was very vocal about it.”
“Let me guess, he thinks producing a luxurious and exclusive product is a waste of his time because it isn’t a plant,” Cyrano said with amusement.
“Indeed.”It wasn’t the whole picture though. Pucci’s department was constantly stretched to include new branches, which were outside of Pucci’s expertise. Wagner felt like the entire company was in a similar situation. There were too many new opportunities, which had to be seized. “But this isn’t why I asked you to meet me.”
Cyrano waited with a speculative sparkle in his eye.
“How’s your department faring?”
The edge of Cyrano’s mouth edged up. Wagner had been briefed about the condition of Cyrano’s department and knew that not only the outbreak didn’t diminish their profits but pushed demand for Level 4 materials higher than they’d expected. They underestimated the strength of the fourth outbreak which was Cyrano’s failure. The corrective measures were implemented so they’d precisely predict the outcome of the fifth outcome. With Keynes out there, they had to be ready for anything.
“Better than ever. As I mentioned, we own 50 Level 4 rifts with one rift being of runic rarity, which appears to be a game changer.”
Wagner frowned at that. He was aware of the runic rarity rift as it had been brought from South America by Columbus after the fourth outbreak but the game changer part was new. It had to be a very recent development.
“Go on,”Wagner said, finishing the steak. A part of him wondered what kind of food was waiting for them at Level 10 if Level 2 was already this good. The other part was focused on Cyrano.
“We fairly well understand the relationship between the rarity and mods on items. They are closely interlinked. There is no doubt about it. But other kinds of relationships between rarity and rift drops are unknown at this point as we don’t have enough data to conclude anything with enough certainty.”
“With runic rarity, the situation is slightly different, albeit theoretical at this point. We believe that the runic rarity rifts are capable of dropping runic blueprints.”
Wagner’s eyes went wide. Runic blueprints? That would be a game changer indeed. There were several technological leaps in mana container and conductor technology. The current prototype developed by several top companies, were capable of holding 1000 mana units with minimal over time loss. And all these prototypes were based on the very early mana container blueprints, which had made Blue Space one of the richest companies for a couple of months until competitors appeared. Nowadays, Burgart Brenton was nowhere to be seen with Blue Space being sold to the Sovereign shortly after it had been removed from the Solar Council.
Wagner’s spies confirmed that the 1000 mana unit prototypes were already smoke and mirrors and the real stuff was currently developed far away from the public eye. These reports concerned him because, despite Untainted Paradise’s best effort, they were left behind in terms of runic technology development. The issue here was the same one as with development of space technology. These things were tightly controlled by the World Government and by extension by the Solar Council, which currently were considered enemies of Untainted Paradise.
But if they were in possession of a rift that could drop runic blueprints no matter what they were—they could always extrapolate designs and apply it elsewhere—their biggest weakness would be fixed.
“Make it priority,” Wagner said with emphasis, leaning slightly over the table. “With Artefact Exchange switching sides and the Resistance’s annihilation, we need every possible advantage we can get.”
“I understand,” Cyrano said between sips of his wine, slightly leaning back. “But this isn’t why you called me here, is it?”
“No.” Wagner shook his head. “It’s about Windsor Freeman’s words.”
“Do you think he will actually come here?”
“Columbus and Esopp are making preparations as if he was going to show up here. But that isn’t the topic at hand,” Wagner replied. “The part about rifts on other planets and moons is.”
Cyrano’s eyes immediately went up to the massive planets in the sky.
“We have some internal theories but without access to other planets we can’t do anything. I wish Mars didn’t back off at the last moment from our deal.”
“It wouldn’t go through either way. They couldn’t guarantee Keynes’s safety and we couldn’t risk the spaceship falling into the council’s hands or worse.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“I want you to sit down with Yassnach, she’s the head of the space department, and draft a plan of moving our rifts off-planet in the next five years.”
“What?” Cyrano blinked, taken aback.
“We finally created a stealth material that would allow us to slip out of the planet without notice. I want you and Yassnach to figure out the best location for our next base.”
Cyrano raised his hands.
“Hold on, boss, but there are many unknowns. Even if it is possible to move a rift off the planet, we know nothing about the consequences of the relocation. For example, it is confirmed that our Moon has rifts. The question is, what’s inside them? We don’t know if rifts’ biomes are linked to the planet or moon they have originated from or if there is something else at play. It could be nothing at all. The Moon’s rifts may be empty, Moon-like spaces completely worthless to us. Would moving them here change them? There are many questions that must be answered.”
“And it is your job to figure it out. We need an off-planet location in case the Solar Council moves forward with their plan of removing the rifts from Earth.”