There was a story that spread through Star Cluster #37, where a predominant clan that spanned over a few thousand star systems had tried to gain information on Governor Vanya’s background. The story went that the entire clan’s intelligence network was dismantled and completely removed, involving the death of thousands. After this incident, the clan in question had apologized to Governor Vanya and complied with her requests and demands. All the other clans within the star cluster had seen this and decided to just keep their mouths shut, especially those that were advocating for her impeachment.

Keep in mind, she was currently meeting with the family head of a family that hadn’t even consolidated itself on a Class Five civilization. There was no other way to go about this but to act as humbly and sincerely as possible. Especially when he heard that she was after a young man that lived somewhere in the slums undergoing the Experience Program, as it was referred to by most clans and families. It was only a young man that at best, was at the Ninth Stage of the Foundational Stage.

There was an unspoken rule about becoming a clan, you also had to have at least nine Avatar Stage cultivators that were raised by the family, they didn’t necessarily have to be blood related to the family. Currently, the Ocano Family only had eight Avatar Stage cultivators, but the family head, Roge, was on the verge of breaking through, he needed that one little push.

Comparing an advancement of a minor stage to a major stage was like comparing a crack on the sidewalk to a chasm. Minor stages were basically the advancement of your body, ability, and energy intake, while major stages relied more on the mentality and comprehension of Natural Energy. This, however, is worth it as not only does it raise your lifespan to about 150 years, but raises your strength exponentially. A Ninth Stage Foundational Stage cultivator wouldn’t stand a chance against a First Stage Avatar Stage cultivator.

Back to the subject at hand, Roge and Governor Vanya were sitting across from each other, separated by only a coffee table, in a simple drawing room. Drawing rooms had been declining on Earth for a few centuries before families and clans existed with the power they have now. Society on Earth didn’t like having such a formal room in their homes, so most removed drawing rooms, even living rooms started to dwindle. When the rise of families, clans, houses, and nobility was on the rise once more, it was deemed socially acceptable to have a drawing room to greet and entertain guests.

The couch under Roge felt more of a chair of spikes, afraid that one wrong move could mean his death. Society dictated that the person with a higher status spoke first, this was seen as a form of etiquette and respect. Roge didn’t even dare to breathe too loudly, afraid it would seem disrespectful to Governor Vanya.

After taking a sip of her tea, a calm yet cold smile was etched on her face as she decided to ask a few questions. “Mr. Ocano, I think you understand the situation quite well, the young man I am looking for is… special, do you think you can bring him back to me? I’ll stay here in Zeklon City in the meantime.”

Like a pecking chicken, Roge kept nodding his head in assurance. “Yes, yes, Governor Vanya, anything you ask of us will be completed to the best of our capabilities, I can guarantee that at least.” Roge was actually very eager to accept this request, if he got on the good side of Governor Vanya, then their relationship could possibly deepen and he would get pulled to her side out of her own volition. Ever since she obtained her seat in office in the star cluster, being on the governor’s side guaranteed prosperity.

With a nod, Governor Vanya kept her smile, stood up and put her arm out for a hand shake, “Remember, I was never in this building, I was never in this city, I was never on this planet, got that?” Her eyes slightly squinted, they seemed quite venomous.

Shaking her hand, Roge gulped, he definitely understood her question, she didn’t want this to be leaked, if it was, it would be his head would be on the chopping block first. “I never saw a thing.”

With that, Governor Vanya gave him an attractive and sincere smile and walked out the door, while Roge stood there, frozen in place like a wooden chicken. Governor Vanya was actually a very attractive and pretty woman, but Roge knew better than to be blinded by lust or let his eyes wander. You had to pick your battles, and a battle against Governor Vanya would only spell a loss.

---

While leaving the Ocano Family’s mansion, a silent Scout Cruiser had appeared out of thin air right in front of Governor Vanya. She quickly entered it, then it quickly disappeared once more.

“What’s the situation on Sabine? Has she recovered from the backlash yet?” Governor Vanya was currently on a video call with a middle aged man in a white lab coat. The lab coat was spotless and the man had his orange hair combed in a neat and organized fashion.

“If we got there any later she may have been overtaken by her ability, it could’ve been disastrous for the entire galaxy. Not only that, she is going through extensive surgery as this time, she tore multiple veins in her throat while vomiting. As for the minor injuries, a couple of fractured ribs and multiple broken bones throughout her body. Overall she needs to replace the limiter as the previous one broke due to the extensive instigation of her ability. I believe she may not fully wake up until next month.” The orange haired man gave an extensive report of Sabine’s situation. With the technology at Governor Vanya’s disposal, these injuries weren’t all too lethal, it only truly got dangerous when Sabine’s Rank-Z ability got unstable. Instability in a Rank-Z ability not only meant losing control of your body to the ability, but the influx of Universal Energy into the body severely damages the Energy Routes and the body in general.

Governor Vanya could only sigh while rubbing her forehead. Sabine wasn’t only one of her most useful connections, but her most trusted confidant. Without her, she not only lost an extra pair of hands, but a friend, someone that she could casually talk to. “What kind of destiny does that gray haired young man have to make Sabine suffer such a backlash?”

Sabine’s Rank-Z ability could be useful to some but useless to most. It was able to determine the change in Destiny Energy. It was discovered that time isn’t linear and the only reason we see it as so, is because we attempt to measure it. Instead of time being a straight line, you can see it as a jagged line that branches out. The line isn’t straight due to the fact that sometimes, space lags behind the movement of time, causing very slight pauses in time so that space could catch up. Though this doesn’t seem like a big deal, it’s finding was one of the foundations of space travel.

Everytime the jagged timeline spikes, it has the possibility of connecting to another time branch that spiked at that same point. For a limited amount of time, this allowed mankind to communicate with another timeline, proving the multiverse theory. Once space catches up, this window of communication is disconnected, but has led to the trading of useful information over the years. But there had always been a debate on which timeline was the main branch, most had agreed it was their own, but it was under the notion that because they hadn’t directly travelled to another universe.

Now after the spike, the timeline continues on how it normally would, until it branches out. What was learned is that timelines truly branch out once major shifts happen within a universe. When these major shifts occur in the universe, the universe has to “refresh” in a sense to update itself, similar to restarting your computer for a major update. This movement of trajectory of time is similar to riding on a roller coaster and it instantly speeds up to break-neck speeds. Some energy is released by this phenomena called Destiny Energy, as it gathers around the epicenter of the cause. Hence, Sabine’s Rank-Z ability was identifying where and how Destiny Energy moved. The larger the phenomena, the higher the backlash and instability.

The scariest part of her Rank-Z ability was that if the phenomena was large enough, it could instantly slaughter her. So she always wore a limiter, which controlled how intense her ability reacted, while limiting her own strength as a result. However, a phenomena that could cause this much of a reaction could only mean the life and death of humanity, maybe the universe. Surprisingly, it led her to the slums of a lowly Class Five civilization, somewhere on the edge of the star cluster, what the fuck could have happened here?!

Although with Governor Vanya’s connections, finding this gray haired young man would be as easy as a snap of a finger, she currently couldn’t make such moves. Her political opponents were lurking in the dark, waiting for her to take one wrong step to try her in court to impeach her. She could only use the locals to find him, after all, it was their home turf. Her grand plan was to induct Kezner onto her side before anyone else could get to him. She was confident that Kezner would be on his knees, begging her to leave the slums, even if it meant cleaning her toilet.

Disconnecting the call with the orange haired man, she turned to the Commanding Officer, “So have you requested the weapons for testing?”

With a salute, the Commanding Officer replied in a disciplined tone, “Yes ma’am, we requested it from a tradition smithing master, his shop is small but the weapons he produces are of high quality and as long as we produce the material he would have them finished by tomorrow evening.”

“Oh tomorrow evening, isn’t he working alone?” Governor Vanya was interested in this person, he had the strength to produce so many weapons over the course of a single day, only at the peak of a Foundational Stage cultivator could accomplish that, what would he be doing in the slums?

“Ma’am, he stated he had an apprentice that was just as talented as himself, here is the information we could dig up on them.” The Commanding Officer pulled out two packets of paper that had all the information of the master and apprentice, including their pictures.

One of them quickly caught Governor Vanya’s eye, as it didn’t have a last name, which was rare in these modern times. “What’s up with his situation, why does he only have one name?”

“Ma’am, after losing his parents in the Black Flame incident, he gave up his family name and legally kept it to Kezner. It was never known why he removed his last name, but this could be due to the trauma of losing both of his parents, however he was shown as psychologically stable for the most part.'' The Commanding Officer obviously did his best to find as much information of Kezner’s background, and to be honest, it wasn’t all too hard with Governor Vanya’s status.

Turning the first page out of curiosity for how such a child would look like, she saw his picture and paused. Squinting, a light flashed in her eyes, “Tomorrow we’ll pay them a visit to see how much they progressed…” Her voice drifted off towards the end as she was lost in thought.

---The Next Morning---

With a yawn, Kezner sat on his bed and looked at the holo-watch on his nightstand to his right. It read 6 A.M. but it was still decently dark. Brushing his teeth and taking a shower, Kezner quickly got dry and put on casual clothes, by that time it was 7:15 A.M. Skipping breakfast, he grabbed his wallet and holo-watch and opened the front door, only to find a box.

“I almost forgot about this…” he thought as he placed the box on his coffee table. He grabbed a crappy dull knife from the kitchen and easily sliced through the tape to get to find another box in there that had the logo for his sneaker. He decided to wear the shoes tomorrow for his first day of school, and just wear the older pair today. He cleaned the mud off of them, but the damage had been done.

He had to make it to the bus stop, or else he would have to wait 30 minutes for another bus, causing him to be late to his job. Almost every entry level job within the galaxy in the private sector would have the weekend off, this was seen as a form of tradition throughout the years which became law. In Kezner’s case he really needed the money, so he worked under the table to support himself and save some money.

Even though he received millions, he knew himself best, and couldn’t trust himself enough to break his habit. On top of that, it would be suspicious to add millions to his bank account, though it was private, the families and clans on Zeklon still had connections to the banks. Though the Galactic Bank stretched to every part of the galaxy, it was split into different levels of management, from planetary, to star system, and to star cluster. As a whole, it wasn’t as united as it appeared, with constant power clashes between the levels of management. Since these different levels fought with each other, families and clans would usually indirectly support a side.

Even if he wouldn’t look suspicious depositing millions into his bank account, he couldn’t trust himself enough to keep working afterwards. He learned that only through hustling your way to the top could you truly be successful, if he simply used the easy money he got casually, not only would he lose it, he wouldn’t gain the experience to truly be rich. He needed to preserve this mentality at all costs or else he wouldn’t be any different than the prodigal youth that go and squander their parents’ hard earned cash.

It took him about half an hour to commute to his job, it was located on the outskirts of the commercial sector of the city. He worked at a small forge, as an apprentice metalsmith. Smithing had become almost completely obsolete of manual labor, everything was done by 3D printers, while it only required people to simply draw or give details about what they want and what metal they are using.

Manual metalsmithing was seen as more of an art form and tradition rather than a “real” job. This job was given to Kezner by the government program to at least give him something to put on his resume while receiving income. As for the business, in return for hiring Kezner, the government would lower the taxes and rent for 10 years, it was a win-win situation. The only catch was that Kezner had to keep the job for at least two years or else he would lose all his benefits.

After working here for about a year, Kezner started enjoying the process and saw it as some way to relieve his frustrations. For the last year he hadn’t really hadn’t worked with anything but jewelry, like rings, necklaces, and bracelets. Most of them were antiques that were made before 3D printers were advanced enough to print metal, so they required these long disposed of techniques.

The old forge seemed hidden compared to the towering skyscrapers that pierced through the sky. It seemed small in this setting but it was actually an average sized shop. When Kezner reached its door, put his finger on the fingerprint scanner and entered the old forge. This was a legal requirement that an employee had to get their fingerprint scanned to enter their workplace, it was also easier to keep track of who came in where. In this small shop, it was just Kezner and the old man, so it was obvious who came when.

“Hey boss, I’m here.” Kezner’s unenthusiastic, monotone voice rang through the shop. The shop portion of the old forge was quite simplistic, just a glass counter that had different accessories like rings and earrings, and an old cash register on top of it. Cash registers were out of date and most people scanned using their G.B cards. The forge was behind the shop, and it was crammed with all sorts of different machinery and tools to assist in forging.

“Oi, kiddo, help me out here, there’s a big order today!” The boss was an old, tall, burly man named Rankev. He was one of the last beacons of traditional metalsmithing, with the origins of his techniques dating back hundreds of years before humanity expanded towards the heavens. His techniques weren’t inherited by blood, but from teacher to student, and he saw Kezner as his student. Kezner wasn’t a conceited fool and decided to inherit these techniques, as having an expertise in an extra skill and getting paid for practicing it didn’t have any downsides. Worse comes to worse, he masters the forging technique, never uses it, and passes it down to another generation that seemed interested.

“Some big shot requested a couple of swords similar to ancient Earth.” Ever since man was able to cultivate, cold weapons, which included most bladed weapons, rarely existed at this point. The last cold weapon still in use were combat knives, but even those were starting to get replaced by their laser counterparts. Weapons now mostly consisted of guns and cannons that used Natural Energy such as in the incident yesterday.

Kezner gave a nod, rolled up his sleeves, and put on his apron and goggles.