After experiencing a few things and reading on a whole lot, Rak sense of wonder was fading and even though this set of colored pencils weren’t much he couldn't help but marvel at it.

“I should take note of the other miscellaneous items as well. I'd like to find more items like the pencil set and the paint brushes.

Having these thoughts Rak summoned out his painting set and inspected it.

“I don’t have anything proper to paint on.”

All of Rak’s notebooks were about the size of two hands but after some thinking Rak directly ripped out a single page to test on.

“I have too much time on my hands.”

In the excitement Rak ́s various items were sprawled all over the table, his initially organized pile of pills a little scattered, two pencils fell to the floor and now there were two notebooks taking up space. He couldn’t help but laugh at himself, he was indeed a little bored these days. Good thing that during the two months of travel, Rak learned to relax by himself and even enjoyed training a bit.

Through his life, Rak has always had servants but now he was slowly getting used to taking care of himself. It was made easier because he can simply store food in his inventory and other necessities, but he still had to be conscientious about a lot of things he could ignore before. Even simple things like the passing of time was often something assistants had to notify Rak of.

Rak took up the smallest of three painting brushes. The body looks like it has been roughly polished and not given any finish, this is made clear by its rough feel. The other brushes have the same shape only longer and thicker.

“Is this a half finished product?”

The tip of the brush looks almost indistinguishable from a bundle of dried out pale yellow grass. Rak dips the tip into black paint smeared on a small painting pallet. After his previous surprise with the pencil, Rak is observing his logs carefully.

“Just like the pencils these tools also drain my energy.”

The paint slowly covers the entire brush only then does it stop draining energy.

“Isn’t this draining a bit too much energy?”

Feeling the loss of energy Rak is surprised. Considering his foundation as a Manipulator his energy is something he’s familiar with. Actually all people have some sort of innate sense of their energy, like being out of breath after exercising. This understanding can grow or fade depending on whether people continue their training.

“This should be about a quarter or more of my entire energy pool. What a terrifying painting brush.”

With the black paint covering the brush Rak begins slowly covering the torn out notebook paper, intending to see much he can paint at once. Soon the entire page is full and only a small amount of black paint has receded from the base of the brush with the tip of the brush still having black paint without any sign of being used.

“The energy the brush uses is negligible. But the paint seems to be plentiful.”

Feeling a bit helpless Rak quietly stares at the painting brush.

“I guess the other pencils will work the same way. Hmm?”

After looking at the painting pallet again, Rak notices one of the dents has no color in it. This empty dent inspires Rak to tap the pencil in. Immediately the colors begins draining from the brush at an even faster pace than it absorbed paint earlier.

“So it’s like this. The energy drain is similar but faster. Not bad.”

After making these discoveries Rak feels like he accomplished something and happily begins putting his tools and pills away. Even though Rak has just replenished his fatigue by leveling, it is still late at night and there is no need to stay awake through the night.

“The items are still unidentified.”

Before going to sleep Rak looked at his pencil and paintbrush, they still didn’t have a description. The only thing are the names of the items and below that the words ‘Unidentified’. In spite of the items being unidentified, they can still be used. One of the methods to identify an item is exactly to use it often, this can be considered the most tedious method but also straightforward.

The biggest problem with identifying items by using them is that there might be a downside from using them. One day the item might snap and break for no apparent reason. The user might experience a sudden backlash from the item, if that happens in a crucial situation it might even lead to death. The last issue is that on some items only a portion will be identified at a time, mainly because the hidden option or attribute on the item hasn’t been used or isn’t used regularly.

“Sleeping for eight hours should be fine, I can walk through the Bazaar again tomorrow before we go to the third floor.”

The third floor is the last stop, the mercenary group will not risk the death of a client by attempting to go through the fourth floor. On the fourth floor, people have to be able to defend themselves or have a person capable of defending both themselves and another person. This isn’t too difficult but the risks are not worth it for the mercenary group.

Selecting to sleep Rak immediately loses consciousness and returns to the real world. With approximately two hours before he’ll have to return or his physical body will remain sleeping and eventually he’ll be booted out of the tower.

“Ah.”

Stretching his legs Rak feels nothing wrong with his body, in fact it feels somewhat more comfortable than usual.

“It’s hard to tell but it does look like the nano machines are improving my body. Leveling is supposedly increased my physical attributes so I should be feeling the effects now.”

With a weak body, improvements are more drastic, Rak ́s physical state can still be considered alright but most of his exercise lately has been within Chaos theory and it has clearly followed into reality. The main reason why Rak can feel the increase in physical prowess is because of his incubating chamber which has the effect of amplifying nano machines efficiency and in addition to greater source of nutrients it elevates it by a few notches. For others it would take longer to take effect.

“Sir.”

Rak’s assistant is already approaching Rak with an amibiable expression. Rak glances at her and continues to move his body before nodding at her. Seeing this, she quickly waves her hand and pushes towards Rak. In recent days, Rak has become very routine in real life, no longer going out for morally questionable activities.

“Hm?”

Two of Rak’s siblings have contacted Rak. It is very rare for Rak to talk to his siblings outside of official family events and even there their contact is superficial. Rak’s siblings can be considered his cousins rather than sisters and brothers as they are like relatives he only sees on rare occasions.

“Is this because of the new Chaos theory businesses?”

Even though Rak did tell his father the majority of his experiences, his father didn’t mention everything to his siblings. The family has begun a great project of setting up various businesses within Chaos theory and everyone within the family is being pressured to meet certain goals. And due to Rak’s progress he’s been made the bar to reach.

“Reject all invitations for my siblings.”

Without answering Rak’s assistant only nods and begins tapping into the air, noting down a few things.

“This could affect my companies.”

While Rak has little interaction with his siblings that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what sort of people they are.

“If they think I’m in competition with them, they’ll be sure to slither my way. If they can’t get in touch with me, they’ll strike at my companies.”

Rak struck out on his own and has no direct responsibilities within the family but that doesn’t mean his siblings believe he’s not competing with them. In fact they’ll look at the family history and see that Rak is acting very like their father when he was younger. When they see this they’ll consider Rak a very real threat.

“God damnit.”

After pacing around the room for a bit Rak let out a breath. He had just gotten off the high of leveling up only to be struck down by these annoyances.

“Forget it, even if they burn down my companies that doesn’t mean its my failure.”

Rak set up quite a few businesses, they didn’t all succeed but none of them have failed. Some are still accumulating foundation and will emerge successful in the future. But toppling these budding companies would not be difficult for one of Rak’s viciously competitive siblings.

After settling down and rationalizing any potential failures, Rak began reading through the updates his assistant gave him earlier.

“So this is why. Mother and father are really ambitious.”

A whole lot of promises have been made towards people achieving good results in Chaos theory. Of course these results are all things Rak has done already and he’s being used as the poster boy for it. The only thing Rak hasn’t done is reach tier two or found a variant job.

Tens of businesses have been set up already by the family but none of them measures up to Rak’s success. A few are showing promise once they expand. Quite a few people were ambitious and attempted in setting up a business within a city and still stuck at that stage. Those that were successful were those that took the information at hand and set up in a town. Using Rak as model.

“Some of these things were things I was going to do.”

Quite a few of Raks ideas were being used, someone created a small smithy and began creating basic tools for adventures that want to travel into the Endless mountain range. There are some that directly copied the brewery business as well, with some success.

It can be a bit convoluted to tie together the difference in time but approximately three months in Chaos theory time has passed in the area around the Endless mountain range since Rak left. This is ample time to set down some foundations for businesses.

Some people already had some reputation with a town but the competitive people in the family almost all left for local cities. There are plenty of people that didn’t have grand ambitions in Chaos theory so they meandered around, some even didn’t leave their beginning village.

“At least the operation is going alright. The map is getting filled in quite a bit. Which makes this a lot stranger.”

There are hundreds of maps available for Rak to inspect, very few were are expansive as the one Rak has in Chaos theory but some must have gotten lucky or were from avid travellers. One thing that caused some worry, and is what Rak was wondering about is that none of these maps could be placed properly. Only a few pieces were tied together to form a total of twelve cities going from left to right.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

This twelve city map that went along the Endless mountain range is from the very few people that just so happen to be closer to each other. They had still been six cities away from each other but after the maps were being collected and inspected some areas actually fit together. With this they could tie together these few map pieces.

“Why split everyone so far apart?”

Rak had already sat down and was eating delicious fresh fruit while reading the updates. This type of news from the family was the most interesting to him, his companies rarely had any big changes that needed his attention.

“Someone is actually trying to create a caravan company.”

After learning a few things from Gou, Rak knew how hard it would be to make a profit from being a travelling Merchant. Not all Merchant travelled far but those that did gained more with proper setup. Some Merchant set up small Bazaar for a period of time before moving on from village to town and eventually to cities. Some never entered cities as it cuts into profits and could even be dangerous. But not many people know about these difficulties beforehand.

“There isn’t much on this caravan company.”

Rak has always been interested in the process of starting up businesses. He already had an outline for a caravan company and now he had the urge to directly return to the Alp to set things up.

“Maybe it was a mistake travelling here with Gou.”

Rak hadn’t been too hurried in returning to Alp town but now he felt a sense of urgency. He didn’t compete with his family members because they all worked within the family corporations. But now they were infringing on Rak’s field, at least from his perspective this was the case. A fiery competitive spirit has already begun kindling.

“Forget it, I’ve already gained plenty from this journey to Kalloway. When I get back I’ll go through the Bazaar again, focusing on tools similar to the pencil set.”

Gou isn’t going back any time soon so Rak already made plans to begin travelling back with his two horses. He’s already made use of Gou’s family to buy a used tier one carriage. With a tier one carriage and his two horses, travelling back should not take longer than one and a half months. Not travelling in a huge caravan will speed things up considerably.

“According to ‘Wildon’s misclenious wisdom’ I can increase how fast I learn things by reading relevant material. I’ve already confirmed that listening to people that already have talents and abilities increases learning speed as well.”

When Url taught Rak how to drive a caravan Rak didn’t realize how he had done it but after reading up on various things to learn about abilities, he found that direct teachings from an already established carriage driver is just about the most efficient way to learn.

Rak put down the updates and began habitually tapping his fingers on the table, each tap made the freshly washed fruits shake a little.

“It’s best not to underestimate my siblings.”

For the longest time Rak has looked down on his family members aside from his mother and father, because they slave away in the family businesses. I didn’t matter to him that they were all working in cutthroat high pressure environment.

“Being related to me they have to have some capabilities.”

Recently in Chaos theory Rak had begun reading books recommended to him by one of the Kalloway librarians. Unlike in Trove where only the rich can freely enter the library, Kalloway has all types and a huge population. This large population means that people like Rak, who have no foundations are often seen researching.

“It’s settled then. I’ll buy a collection of carriage driving and horse riding books. I can donate them to Alp town’s library. Hmm?”

Rak shot to his feet and two servants immediately ran up close to Rak.

“Of course! Why didn’t I think of it sooner? Where did Url learn his brewing?”

As his thought came to this point he couldn’t help but smile and when he finally snapped out of it he saw the two beautiful women standing by his side. He waved his hand, not willing to explain himself. The pair moved back to their previous positions, both still a bit flustered.

“In this way I might be able to pull it all off. There might be some issues but if I’m right it can all be slowly figured out.”

There are still at least an hour before Rak plans to log back into Chaos theory but a heavy feeling of impatience was smothering him. Unable to think of anything else Rak forced himself browsing global news, focusing on things related to Chaos theory.

In the news there are still some people who died in ‘unpredictable’ ways after logging into Chaos theory. Chaos theory never issued an apology but instead quietly created plans to prevent such cases from repeating.

Outside of this, the number of people being transferred by Chaos theory to safe facilities grew even larger. The number already being higher than any one city’s population. And random violent crime lowered once again, coming to an all time low. With people being housed and fed by Chaos theory there is a lot less of unstable people on the streets.

The degree of technology Chaos theory possess is a constant part of the news cycle, especially when talking about how it feeds the world. Even more terrifying it does it through a combination of liquid nutrients and nano machines, which should have been more expensive than just feeding people adequate gruel.

Eventually Rak waved his hand and the holographic screen in front of him collapsed. His eyes turned to his two servants.

“Hopefully these two can help me kill some time.”

Before Rak logged back into Chaos theory he made sure to advise his assistant that any messages or invitations from his brothers and sisters would be directly rejected. While he didn’t have much interaction with them he knew their competitive nature and knowing that he was ‘well of wisdom’ to them, they wouldn’t stop trying to reach him.

“Already back. I was so eager to get back I forgot my hands are still tied.”

Sometimes being held back doesn’t mean external factors are at play. Rak’s curiosity towards the world of Chaos theory has been burning for a while now.

“I’ll spend a day on the third floor but I won’t sleep there and directly exit instead.”

Rak arrived half an hour earlier than the appointed meeting place and was pleasantly surprised that he wasn’t the last one to arrive. He never liked the feeling of being late or forcing people to wait for him, which could have been admirable if he didn’t have multiple assistants serving his every need.

“Did you have a good night, Abstinence?”

Rak turned to the man speaking to him, without Featherfall and Cle the team is a lot more relaxed. These people are all capable of holding their own and usually disdain the clients but Rak had shown some ability. He might not be enough to clear the fourth floor, but he might be able to make himself useful in a lesser team tackling the second floor.

“Good, good. And you?”

Rak felt a bit embarrassed as he only knows the name of Featherfall and Cle. Forced into this situation Rak could only fumble and use a causal ‘you’ to respond.

“Great! We already made great profits.”

The man’s laugh suddenly stopped when he felt an elbow poke him. He had thought Rak’s way of speaking was intiatemate rather than awkward. This is due to cultural differences. This lead to him speaking candidly. It’s not a secret that the mercenary group makes profits of their trips into the Bazaar tower but they try not to broadcast it.

“As expected of a top rated mercenary group. I’m still fumbling about and just testing things.”

This particular group of people have slowly been unveiling mysteries surrounding the Bazaar tower and so hearing Rak was testing things they became interested. Even those that still didn’t feel Rak was worth talking to perked their ears.

“Oh? What sort of testing?”

This sort of question should be a whole lot more taboo and if it was Rak asking them he would be given a cold shoulder or even reprimanded for it. On the other hand f Rak wanted to make a future business out of the Bazaar tower he would have to decline to answer.

“I started with basic paper puppets. From what I understand they aren’t too reliable.”

“Oof, if you just use basic paper puppets then your profits are a gamble.”

Rak’s eyes lit up hearing this.

“Oh? You have another method?”

“Ah.”

“Why are you talking about the leader’s secrets, Harlat?”

Wanting to defend himself Harlat was about to speak when he saw two figures walking over. Not willing to create misunderstandings so he just give his friend a knowing look.

Cle only glanced at the group when she arrived.

“Everyone is here. Let’s go.”

Soon everyone was in a familiar battlefield.

“There is more of them. About twice as many as before.”

Rak slightly squinted his eyes trying to see the main differences between the floors. From Rak’s point of view so far the difficulty didn’t seem too high.

“Hmm? That almost looks like a person.”

One of the vine humanoids deviated enough from a plant form to that of a shapely woman. The creature has the silhouette that can easily pass as a woman from afar.

“Rak, we need you to stay close to Iota. He will make sure you don’t have any accidents.”

“Alright.”

Rak understood that Cle no longer considered him capable enough to defend himself. Best case scenario he wouldn’t be actively dragging them down. Worst case they’d have to allocate another person to defend Rak. Even if a few of them die, Rak cannot. This is their business after all and their reputation can’t be besmirched.

“So the difficulty is from that new plant person. Even Cle has to take it seriously.”

Previous two rounds Featherfall and Cle didn’t act until the end to speed things up but now they actively help defend against the barrage of ranged attacks.

There are numerous vines popping out from the ground attempting to whip any nearby mercenary. Some of these vines bloom pods or flowers that explode or scatter. The explosion cause small seedlings to penetrate people and bore beneath the skin. The flowers scatter various poisons.

Being a complete bystander Rak can only watch on. Cold sweat running down his back. At this point he understands why he wasn’t trusted with defending himself. There are simply to many directions the attacks are coming from. As they get closer to the vine humanoids the attacks become stronger and increase in quantity.

“That plant person must be controlling the rest or commanding them.”

The fight has more tension to it but the mercenary group has cleared this floor multiple times and with Cle and Featherfall acting the last fight quickly enters its apex. Vines constantly pop up around Cle and as quickly as they come out they are cleaved in half.

“How is she doing this? Is she attacking that fast or is it an ability her job has?”

At this point Rak realizes he really doesn’t understand the power of abilities hold in Chaos theory. He had read quite a few books and felt he held a decent grasp on things but now he’s doubting his knowledge.

“Even the other members seem to be on a whole different level.”

On the second floor, the group simply didn’t have the ability to show off like they are now. The attacks were weaker, in less quantity, less accurate and not at all as fast. The main difference being the vine humanoid leader that is unifying the vine humanoids. In addition to it attacking with its own abilities.

“This whole time I was comparing myself to these people but turns out there is this much of a difference.”

Rak let his thoughts wander while he was being protected constantly. Occasionally poisonous mist drifted over or seedling shrapnel flew towards him. There were many he didn’t even see before they were already rebounding off of the team’s protective measures.

When Cle finally fought her way to the vine humanoid leader and hacked it in two pieces the rest of the vine creatures became chaotic. With them being unorganized they died faster. The vine humanoid was resilient and regrew quickly, multiple vines growing from its body all lashing at Cle.

“This is impossible.”

The vines attacking in such a frenzy and with such attack speed that they blurred, making it difficult for Rak to see what was happening. Every vine was however being deflected in someway as they only managed to reach about a meter of Cle.

After some of the larger vine creatures died Featherfall joined Cle and all suspense vanished. With a single attack from Featherfall the vine humanoid leader’s offensive slowed down for a moment and Cle used it to repeatedly hack it into pieces.

Unlike the vine humanoid, Cle couldn’t easily recover from a dangerous wound so she acted defensively. In truth she could have taken some risks and dealt with the humanoid herself with ease. Only, as a leader, she couldn’t be too reckless.

“Good job.”

Simple words made everyone in the group flustered. Usually she only said the words if she felt the group had improved in some way. This time around she noticed how well the group had suppressed the enemy vine creatures, allowing her to focus almost entirely on the vine leader.

They had already been teleported to the third floor bazaar. From one end of town to another would take a normal person half an hour to walk through. Seeing the sight made Rak’s eyebrow twitch.

“I knew it was large but this too large. Is this still a bazaar or a village composed entirely of merchants?”

“Abstinence. Our job is officially over.”

“Thank you for the hard work everyone.”

Rak got a notification and five gold was deducted from Rak’s inventory. At the same time Cle saw she received her payment causing her to smile slightly making her beauty shine. If Rak wasn’t already accustomed to beautiful women he’d have at least felt a bit flustered as most of the mercenary group members were.

Because they were not really friends and their business relationship was over, Rak and the mercenary company split up. Rak didn’t intend to stay the night so he immediately went on to browse the vendors. This time around his goal was to find some curious tools rather than consumables.

“It’s still the same. Only the number of vendors has skyrocketed. I still can’t discern what is good or bad. Forget trying to see if items are of low or high grade.”

After seeing the size of the Bazaar Rak gave up any ideas about investigating it in its entirety. The second floor already pushed Rak to walk around for hours and he wasn’t sure if he had discovered everything there.

“I was hoping to discover an ability that helps me inspect all these items. I guess the best I can do is slowly test these things out. In the end it took me weeks to get basic stamina while It only took a few minutes to pick up my Manipulator abilities.”

Knowing he had no chance to explore every vendor Rak felt all pressure wash away and he just enjoyed his time. In this atmosphere he began recalling his experiences since entering Chaos theory.

“No matter how you look at it, I need to learn how abilities are gained. Jobs. Jobs seem like shortcuts. Supposedly I should be able to learn Manipulator abilities on my own but after taking up the job it became easy.”

The vendors all have various looks on them and many of them even shoo Rak away, saying they are busy. Some vendors look like inanimate objects and only begin moving after Rak talks to them while some are arguing with other vendors.

“I have to assume I can learn any ability that a job can learn. At least things like cooking, brewing, horse riding and whatnot might not seem like job related abilities, but what if they are?”

Over the past few months Rak has read a lot of books but they were all limited to unranked and tier one books. Even advanced questions at the local City office would be denied. Some things simply cannot be bought so directly. Of course asking other people to do so for you if they have the qualifications is an option.

Even reading books has its limits as some concepts can be hard to understand without either dumbing it down to a degree or directly experiencing it. This sort of thing is called esoteric knowledge, meaning you have to experience it yourself to understand it. Like certain emotions, love in particular. No explanation with suffice.

“It’s a tiresome thing but If I use my travel back to Alp to continuously inspect items, I might be able to forcefully gain an ability. If it doesn’t work at worst I ́ll have wasted time I could have used to train something else.”

Rak thought about his journey from Alp town and all the way to Kalloway. There is a lot of dead time where he has to just wait. Once his thoughts went there he remembered his daily Manipulator training and felt slightly repulsed. It was not the worst in the world as he could feel himself improve, but it could not be considered a fun activity.

“Forget it, I ́ll use an hour a day to inspect the items, an hour on Manipulator abilities and the rest can be used to read various books. So I need to stock up on even more reading material.”

After gaining considerable wealth Rak had been wantonly copying books from libraries. Without internet and franky lacking any hobbies Rak has been heavily relying on books to pass the time. At first Rak was pragmatic and read various informational books but eventually he began reading historical, local mythos, miscellaneous stories and even a few biographies.

Reading books has given Rak multiple ambiguous quests, especially local mythos. Such stories often depict dangerous items or beasts. Second comes historical books as they can contain valuable forgotten information, similarly about valuable items or rare beasts. Sadly on his way to Kalloway had no way to do these quests and could only continue travelling with the caravan.

Not only was the issue of travelling with the caravan an obstacle but by the time Rak read these books he had been travelling for at least a day and at worst a week. But not doing quests was nothing Rak really felt sad about, even now he still has some ambiguous quest from his first village and a few from Alp town. These things are not always worth doing, considering other more important things take priority.

“This looks like some sort of science apparatus. I don’t know how to use it but I think I'll still buy it. Then there is this pot. Why would this pot cost fifteen silver coins?”

Non consumable items are already rare but this vendor is selling two. Rak goes through the same song and dance every time he stumbles onto an item, he acts as if he’s unsure if he’s going to buy them but in the end always buys them. After spending the majority of the day shopping he has bought over ten non-consumable items.

“Forget it. I can slowly find out what these two can do.”

Even after spending hours walking around Rak doesn’t feel even a little tired. His fatigue only at fifty eight, meaning he’s still under the affects of a rested status. The real issue is the number of coins thrown into this shopping trip. Already Rak has spent twenty four gold on this floor and his inventory nearly full to the brim.

“I guess I need to stop here.”

Looking at his inventory and the colored number representing how much weight he can carry in it he has no choice but to stop. Hundreds of items fill up his inventory but their individual weight is very low. A single barrel of tier one beer already exceeds his weight limit but he has managed to stuff these hundreds of items into his inventory.

“Since I’m not staying here, I should just directly leave. I’ll make one last trip to the library, then go get the carriage Gou sold me, get my two horses and start my journey back to Alp.”

After standing still for a few moments Rak began waving his hands about and without any indication Rak vanished into thin air.