Keynes took the shield out of his dimensional pouch in time to block the attack. It surprised his attacker, but the man recovered too fast for Keynes to press the advantage. The attacker had to be Level 3 with some items that boosted some of his attributes. He was quick but not as fast as Hellescott who was a Level 5 human essence ascender. Keynes’s perfect memory allowed him to compare both men. With some help from Alice and his attribute interface, he’d been able to make some guesses about the attributes of each type, human, rift and max-out ascenders.

Knowing his opponent’s strength was a great boon. He could anticipate the speed of his enemy’s attacks and reaction time.

“I’ve done nothing to you,” Keynes said.

The masked man attacked again, the shortswords cut the air but Keynes managed to dodge them, although barely. His lungs started to burn. Before the fight, his stamina was extremely low, if his attacker decided to go all out, how long would Keynes last?

“You’re working for the tyrant. That’s all I need.”

“Tyrant?” Keynes asked but moved his foot too late and one of the blades nicked his thigh.

Crap.

Seeing Keynes’s hesitation, the attacker rushed forward. Keynes released the control of his aura. It blasted outwardly. It didn’t stop the masked man. His swords fell on Keynes. One hit against the shield, the other one met Keynes’s sword.

“Time to die,” the assailant hissed and repeated his attacks.

Keynes’s defence became desperate as his stamina was dropping at an alarming rate. His muscles burned from exhaustion and he was hair’s width from losing his grip on the sword.

Then Keynes’s back touched the wall, the masked man rolled sideways, and upon finding his ground he cut at Keynes’s hips. Keynes couldn’t block it in time.

“MASTER!”

He hissed as the blade cut him, then grated on the bone. Keynes dropped the sword and the shield. The dagger with piercing damage appeared in his right hand.

“Monsters are coming!” Alice shouted, terrified.

Keynes barely heard her. He threw the dagger at his attacker. The masked man grunted and dropped on his back. The hilt of the dagger protruded from his chest.

“Is this a fatal wound?” Keynes asked.

“Master… monsters.”

“Fatal or not?!” Keynes snapped, the last of his strength was draining out of him.

Alice’s senses examined Keynes’s enemy then she shook her head.

“I … need your help. Hide my aura, I lost the … control.”

Alice did as he asked. Keynes’s spiritual aura vanished. Keynes dropped to one knee, then collected his sword and shield, hiding the shield in his dimensional pouch.

His enemy lay on his back, the two short swords lay on each side, while he clutched the hilt of the dagger. Keynes used the sword to stand up. He could hear the monsters coming close. He’d planned to use them to escape from this man but his plan failed.

He pressed the tip of the sword against the attacker’s stomach.

“Take the … mask off.”

Keynes definitely needed something to boost his recovery, he was barely holding.

The man’s mask disappeared, indicating that he too possessed the dimensional space.

Keynes didn’t recognise his face. It was getting quite dark anyway.

“I don’t know what tyrant you’re talking about but know that…” Keynes had to take a breath. “I do not serve anyone. Not that you need to know it.”

His attacker’s eyes stared at him with hatred.

Keynes thrust the sword. He felt the man’s aura blast off, sending the monsters into a hungry rage. He was trying to take Keynes with him but that was not going to happen. Keynes clumsily pulled his dagger out of the man’s chest. The powerful spiritual aura vanished.

Master, MONSTERS!

Not yet. Keynes grabbed the shortswords then spied the pouch around the man’s neck. He pulled it but found it impossible to hide it inside his dimensional space.

Your Spirit isn’t strong enough to support two dimensional spaces at the same—MASTER, RUN!

“Oh, crap.”

Keynes put his back to the wall and started hobbling toward the stairs leading up the wall. The monsters missed him at first, lured by the body of the attacker Keynes had killed. But as he reached the top of the stairs, some of them had to sense his blood and moved his way.

Any ideas? Keynes asked, eyeing the approaching monsters. If he wasn’t wounded and exhausted, he would-- he actually might not have a choice.

As the first monster was about to lunge at him, the sound of whirling blades came from far away.

Helicopters.

The monsters froze. Keynes didn’t wait for them to shake off the stupor, and he hobbled away as fast as he could.

***

The other side of the wall fought until the bullets ran out. Defenders thought it’d not happen but some monsters were quite resistant to physical damage. Six hundred defenders were forced to climb the western wall and fight there. Only the leader survived out of the squad Keynes had been a part of.

As he threw away his rifle, Keynes’s words returned to him. The rifles were useless. They needed something else. The squad leader stood up to tell the rest of his fellow troopers to take anything they had at hand and take the fight to the monsters, then he heard the helicopters and he hesitated. He shook his head and sat down, wondering about the stupidity he was about to commit.

Fellow troopers and civilians shouted in triumph. They were saved.

Were they really or did they only prolong their lives for a couple of days?

The helicopters rained death on the monsters although only outside of the city perimeters. The two helicopters that approached the defenders, dropped ammunition, medical kits and a woman. She was Level 5 with a tracking Talent. Her job was to find the saboteur who had blown up the gate.

The news of the attacks on other cities was devastating but with the helicopters overhead, a Level 5 and supplies, the defenders buckled up and began the offensive.

It was going to be a long night.

***

Keynes couldn’t sleep as he moved away from the gate. Helicopters were killing the monsters in droves there. He moved as far as he could before his body refused to go any further. Keynes tried to use his Will only to realise that he’d already done it.

He collapsed on the wall, listening to the massacre happening a few hundred metres from him. The essence was negligible at this distance.

Try to sleep, master. I will wake you up if you're in danger.

But Keynes couldn’t.

“I killed a man today,” he said softly, his lips barely moving. He knew he didn’t need to talk as Alice could read his mind but he wanted the words to leave his mouth. “I don’t know what to think.”

He tried to kill you first.

“And then I defeated him, I could’ve left him there but instead… I killed him.”

I’m sorry but my understanding of human psychology is nonexistent. To me, this is a very simple matter. Kill or be killed.

“They are humans, not monsters, Alice.”

If he managed to kill you, would it matter? Death is death, no matter who brings it.

Keynes relaxed, her words rang true in his head. She was right. Some people were no different from monsters. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift off.

***

Master, Alice woke him up. We have a situation here.

Keynes’s eyes cracked open. The night was still on.

How long did I sleep? He asked. And what situation are you talking about?

I sense a Level 5 sniffing around. Her Spirit is at the very bottom but her last level was gained through rift essence.

Impressive. Alice seemed to remember or learn—or whatever the process was called—more with every day.

Keynes slowly sat down, then allowed Alice to leave his body as he asserted control of his aura. Alice used his aura during his sleep to monitor the area. It didn’t bother Keynes because he’d been asleep but during his waking hours, he would rather avoid it if he could.

The person she had been talking about walked alongside the wall. She seemed to follow… oh, crap.

Am I still bleeding?

“No, but you can easily open the wound if you aren’t careful.”

Hell. From one mess into another.

If she was Level 5 and on top of that, her last level had been gained through the rift essence, then she was a threat. Serious threat.

Keynes decided to slowly climb down. His body hurt like hell. His stamina recovered to 40% but his health was barely recovering.

The wall was only four metres high but the climbing down was agony.

When he reached the ground, Alice checked on the tracker and as he’d suspected, the tracker followed his blood trail. They were less than fifty metres from them.

Then the shooting started nearby and Keynes took advantage of the situation and hobbled away from the wall toward a narrow street. His initial thought was to enter the first building and hide there but didn’t it sound exactly what the tracker would expect from a wounded person?

It was.

And so he moved further down the street until he came upon a house that looked like a hotel. Keynes used his Talent to get inside. He cursed the fact that he couldn’t lock the door behind him without a key. He’d feel safer that way.

His steps slowed almost to a standstill when he heard a child’s cry. Those people were lucky that these monsters met resistance. The area in Scotland where the seven rifts had opened met a different fate.

Keynes climbed the stairs at a snail’s pace, not deliberately. Then found the door to the loft and unlocked it. A door could be locked from the inside, which he promptly did.

The loft was turned into a small warehouse for spare furniture. Perfect.

Keynes took the first bed he found, then as he put his head down, he was asleep in an instant.

***

Dreux stood above a pool of blood on the top of the wall near the destroyed gate. Whoever left it, must have killed another person whose body Dreux found all over the area.

Two saboteurs?

It certainly was a possibility.

Dreux’s Talent highlighted details in a small area she focused on. Over the years she perfected her control over her Talent. It was too easy to push it too far, bring too many details to life, and waste precious mana. Dreux’s minor upgrade offered her the ability to see recent changes done to the area. It was the game-changer. All of sudden, in a matter of days, from a nobody she had been turned into the World Government’s most important asset.

The World Government always had people to find but now they were becoming real superstars as the enemy of the government had risen and they needed to be tracked down.

Nonetheless, some of her colleagues shared with her their recent failure. She didn’t know the details but it was important because the orders came from the very top.

Dreux felt a vibration. She took out her phone and read the message. Her eyebrows climbed up. Interesting. The Director of Intelligence, Lanhai, ordered every tracker to immediately leave for a village, not far away from here, and search for a person in a purple cloak and hood that completely obscured the wearer’s face. The most interesting fact was the priority. It superseded everything else. The saboteurs didn’t matter anymore.

The last piece of information was that the person MUST be taken alive. Killing them, accidentally or deliberately, was punished by death.

Dreux was about to hide her phone when another message appeared and her eyes widened in shock.

The first tracker or a team of trackers to find the wanted individual was going to receive the massive reward from President Freeman himself.

Bollocks, this is going to be mine.

She contacted the pilot to take her ass out of here.

***

The next day was quiet. An occasional shot here and there. Keynes sat on the roof, eating military dry provisions. He’d grilled Alice about the possibilities of dimensional space in regard to supporting a garden. She’d said that it didn’t feel impossible but she couldn’t tell what would be required for this to work.

Yeah, they were back to the same old issues, knowledge. Speaking of knowledge, Keynes needed to go through the dimensional pouch of his attacker. Maybe he’d find some answers there.

First, he was going to check the two shortswords.

Vampiric Shortsword (Rare)

“Your energy is mine.”

-

+2 Dexterity

-

Each attack drains a tiny % of stamina from the wounded enemy.

[Sword]

Level 1

It was the best weapon Keynes had ever seen. He put it back and took out the second shortsword.

Shortsword of Speed (Uncommon)

“Everything is speed.”

-

+4 Dexterity

-

+1 Strength

[Sword]

Level 1

Seeing all the Dexterity bonuses, Keynes had to say, he was lucky to survive the encounter.

He took off his dimensional pouch and put it aside, then grabbed the other one and accessed it. The content didn’t meet his expectations. Subconsciously, he thought he’d find the loot from the rifts but that wasn’t the case.

The only other magical item was a robe with self-adjustment and self-repair enchantments. The white mask was ordinary as many other clothes inside. But Keynes couldn’t complain, the attacker had a lot of food provisions and cash. Things Keynes lacked the most.

The last thing Keynes took out was a notebook. It was full of instructions… oh, crap. This man had been responsible for blowing up the gate. Keynes read further and his hair stood on end. There were other cities already crossed out in this notebook. It looked like Crest was the last on the list.

And there were names, all crossed out as well. This guy was an assassin. Most of the people on the list were mayors and minor political figures living in the cities.

“I think I stumbled upon something ugly,” Keynes said, then told Alice what he’d found. She didn’t have a good idea of what Keynes was talking about so he gave up on explaining it to her.

He leafed through the notebook, finding notes about cultivation, points of interest like rifts, military warehouses or safehouses.

The attacker had also tried his hand at writing poetry but no thank you, he’d been terrible. Keynes read the notes about the cultivation and found a few interesting remarks. For example, when spinning the essence, it was important to create two streams of the essence, then use one like a gentle pressing hand. This was an ingenious insight. Most notes talked about ways to manipulate the essence around the core in different ways.

Keynes showed it to Alice and she said that the assassin most likely had a good cultivation technique. Keynes could say she wasn’t happy.

“Maybe I should use the Scroll of Random Teaching?”

“No.” She shook her tiny head. “That scroll is worth more as an ingredient.”

“Ingredients of what?”

“Ingredients of … I don’t know.”

Of course.

Keynes emptied the dimensional pouch, then put it all into his pouch, leaving inside no more space.

“On that note, I think it’d be worth getting monsters’ parts. Most of them can be used as ingredients too.”

“Ingredients of…?” Keynes tried to tease her a little.

“It’s not my fault,” she snapped at him but did it in a funny way that put a smile on his face.

“It’s okay, I don’t blame you, Alice.” Keynes put the notebook aside. Something just occurred to him. “Do you think the other guy had the spiritual companion as well?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Every ascender in the Medium Stage has a spiritual companion. We are very important.”

“Can you see the other spiritual companions?”

“Hm.” She pondered his question for a moment. “It depends. I can see the spiritual companions of people who consider you a friend and allow their companions to become visible to you and in extension to me. With strangers it is different. I can see the companions only if you are at least two stages above them. And in this case, only I am able to see other spiritual companions.”

“Doesn’t sound very fair.”

She shrugged and made an ‘OH’ face.

“I’ve just learned something. When you advance to the next stage, you’ll be able to use me to communicate with other people who are in the same Spirit stage. That’s exciting! Although, a warning, you must consider each other friends.”

Keynes cursed. They had so much to discover. And if this state wasn’t natural, then why were they like this?

He sighed, knowing there would be no answers.

“It looks like the city is back under the control of the army. It’s time for us to leave.”

***

Officer Cruas sat behind the desk, reading the reports from the last two days. It didn’t look good. He lost more than seventy percent of his troopers and on top of that, the Level 5 tracker had disappeared. The officer wished for a break. The silver lining was that the monsters were out of the city, the gate was being repaired but their problems were only the beginning. The director refused to send any more troopers to Crest. The entire region was in shambles. The rift monsters were everywhere and it didn’t seem like the Alps warzone was going to be contained any time soon or the rifts cleared.

And there was the matter of a vigilante with a sword and purple cloak who reportedly had killed hundreds of monsters by himself. Some of the troopers and civilians even started calling him the Ghost in Purple.