They left first thing in the morning and took the same route that had brought Keynes to the base. But they didn’t stop on the airstrip and instead reached a small harbour where a bout took them to a neighbour island.

A welcoming party waited for them in a fishing village. From what Esopp said, almost all islands in the proximity of two hundred kilometres indirectly belonged to their company now. As impressive as it sounded, it was hard to imagine that most of these islands had populations living on them.

Then came another shock.

“Don’t even say anything,” said Tyr Truman. Wagner’s chief of security or whatever position he held now. “I don’t want to be here. I hate the wet air. Hate the heat. Hate everything about this place.”

Esopp wasn’t surprised to find Tyr here, meaning he’d been warned before. Why didn’t they tell Keynes about this development? He wasn’t particularly angry about that as he didn’t much care but he was curious why Wagner and Esopp had left him out of some decisions.

“It couldn’t be helped,” Esopp said. “With the recent development at the Solar Council, we have to level you up to Level 7.”

“Seriously?” Tyr said sarcastically. “I could do it in Persephone’s little hideout.”

“And what is the recent development?”

“It’s the damned Legion.” Tyr waved his hand, annoyed. “They weren’t invited to the council because of their association with us so there is a considerable amount of suspicion that Legion will break the contract with us over this.”

“Wasn’t Columbus going to take over the military arm of our company?” Keynes asked.

Esopp nodded and something in his expression gently shifted.

“Columbus is sitting tight in South America in the case of the council betrayal and attack on Wagner.”

Tyr groaned.

“Don’t worry about him. He’s a back up plan but we don't think this will happen. All of these are contingencies.”

“We should have bought Legion and be done with it.” Tyr shook his head.

“Wagner tried,” Esopp replied, surprising Keynes and Tyr. “Even offered them way more money than we have but Legion refused.”

“Holy shit.”

“But let’s focus on the positives,” Esopp said. “We have rifts to open. Let’s go. It’s not far away.”

They left the harbour and moved to the upper side of the fishing village. It was a small place with no more than a hundred people living here. Tyr was complaining the whole way until they reached the hill. Down in the valley was a small dome erected in a clearing. It wasn’t larger than Keynes’s house.

“What am I looking at?” Tyr asked.

“The valley of rifts,” Esopp smirked. “Twenty Level 4 rifts in a kilometre radius.”

Keynes’s eyebrows climbed to the very top. They had a rift cluster so close to Emerald City?! So, the location of the city wasn’t random.

Wait.

A freaking TWENTY Level 4 rifts?

One thing Keynes had to admit. Wagner and Esopp were crafty as hell.

Suddenly, their idea of training proper teams of delvers didn’t seem too far-fetched.

“You must be kidding me,” Tyr mumbled. “Why has no one told me about this?”

“I’m telling you now,” Esopp said, then turned to Keynes. “I have a question for you, kid. Is it possible to replace human essence with rift essence in my body?”

An interesting question…

There is, actually, more than one way to do it but that is I am allowed to say, Alice replied before Keynes managed to ask her. He relayed the answer to Esopp who nodded.

“If there’s a way, I’ll find it.”

***

Twenty Level 4 rifts wasn’t a joke. If Keynes pushed himself hard enough, he’d be able to max out all his attributes, even Mind thanks to [Telekinesis], and then level up inside a month. Once he gained Level 4 he was going to add skills to his collection and began forming a proper skillset.

Keynes had given a lot of thought to how he wished to fight and more, how he was going to counter vigilanties hunting him down for his Talent. It sucked that he didn’t know when specific skills would appear in a loot drop table but if the apparition had spoken the truth, his Talent’s affinity might circumvent the issue. [Mind Illusion] and [Shadowfall] were good examples of the System reacting to his other needs. Keynes had high hopes for the chamber of rewards. It occurrence was rare but this could be easily remedied with enough Rift Orbs that decreased recharge time. If he cut it to a few minutes, he’d be able to rush the boss, kill it then check the area for the hidden door.

When Keynes, Esopp and Tyr reached the valley, they were met with a serious looking group. Immediately, Alice flagged some of the members as being very strong. They were rift essence Level 5s with some of them having attributes maxed out. If a perfect state ascender was among them, Alice wasn’t able to say. At Level 5, a rift essence ascender even in the weakest stage had a considerable amount of spiritual energy and with at least once all attributes maxed out it’d be an even larger amount, which in turn would be harder to tell but not impossible. Keynes didn’t have proper spiritual technique leaning toward reading stronger individuals’ auras.

“This is our very elite,” Tyr said. “To think of this, I guess, we need a good, tough name for them.”

Something didn’t sound right here. Something about the very elite part. Keynes mulled it over in his mind, wondering what it was that had ticked him off so much.

As Tyr started to introduce the group to Keynes and Esopp, and while most of the men were surprised to find Esopp Earl here, they were kind of passing over Keynes’s presence, which meant they didn’t know who he was. This should be expected and yet it stung a little. Especially, in the light of Esopp’s words about forging loyalty.

When they were finished, Esopp took over the gathering and showed them around. Their accommodation was tents but of a higher quality and with air conditioning glyphs to Tyr’s pleasant surprise.

They weren’t alone in the valley. The number of axualliers and support staff was significant and easily went beyond a hundred.

“Why the dome?” Keynes asked after frustration took over him. He still couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the ‘very elite’ term because these men were intimidatingly strong. In terms of pure attributes, they were far stronger than Keynes and even had an edge over Esopp.

“It’s made out of a material that absorbs spiritual energy and slowly dissipates it. The Institute’s satellites can detect rifts that are being unsealed. This will prevent it.”

Oh. Why didn’t they come after him when he’d opened the rifts in the World Reserve he couldn’t fathom but it was worth keeping in mind for the future.

After the tour around the valley, Tyr, Keynes and Esopp returned to the command tent where two dozen of analysts stared at screens with a laser focus.

“Logistics, mostly,” Esopp explained. “Once we open the first Level 4 rift, we’d start shipping out Level 4 materials out of here. Some will go to Emerald City, others to our warehouse in Arshem and a secret underground base near Geneva.”

Tyr asked about Arshem while Keynes zoned out. Something clicked in his mind. Something about the very elite thing. In the world, with seemingly unlimited essence but extremely limited access to it, especially due to a long recharge time, rising to Level 5 wasn’t cheap so calling these Level 5 the very elite made sense but only in relation to this specific limitation. Outside of that, they were normal ascenders of Level 5. And this issue slowly consumed more of Keynes’s thoughts. It hadn’t begun here but with each aspect of their company Keynes was exposed to, he noticed these cracks.

He guessed that on average, they might not amount to anything significant but the average didn’t matter when a team of Level 10 Perfect State ascenders could conquer the world, literally. In a sense, your faction was only as good as your top hitters.

Keynes couldn’t allow it to stay like this but the notion of loyalty returned to him like a boomerang. Showing these people the secrets of cultivation and pushing them to max out some of their attributes wasn’t a guarantee that they wouldn’t switch sides at some point and became enemies. In such cases, the ritual of secrecy wouldn’t help.

It’s the ideal that binds followers to their leader, Keynes realised how much wisdom Esopp’s words contained. But what’s my ideal? Opening rifts? Interstellar travel? Levelling up? No, these alone don’t feel like something worth dying for.

What else then?

Obviously, it had to be tied up to the company. But what was the company ideal anyway? Unlock the rifts? Kind of. In the end, Keynes and the rest wanted all the rifts to be available to all in one way or another. To get there, they had to open rifts for themselves first, then open some for the highest bidders, and then for the rest…

Then his imagination stretched a good bit and he saw himself sitting a spaceship travesting space between stars. If other planets and moons, even completely lifeless and barren, had sealed rifts, then they weren’t talking about owning a few rifts here and there but entire planetary systems, brimming with rifts. From that perspective, everything looked different. Having a system worth of rifts made anything possible. Humankind would no longer be restricted to the solar system.

And that was an ideal that moved something inside Keynes’s chest.

Without looking back, he left the command tent and found his way to the elite’s tent that acted as their common room. Upon his approach, he slowed down and listened. There was quiet banter that indicated their high spirit and good mood but nothing over the top. Keynes had activated [Spiritual Ghost] so unless they heard his footsteps, they wouldn’t sense his presence outside.

As he entered twelve pairs of eyes looked at him. They knew he was important but nothing else. Without having a better measure, they showed a lot of restraint. Smirks and smiles were replaced by blank, cold professionalism.

“Sir? How can we help?” asked one of them. When Tyr introduced them, he didn’t tell Keynes their names. Something that had to be remedied.

“I have a few questions.”

“Of course, please ask, sir.”

Alice, check if we have privacy, please.

Yes, master.

Now, he had to figure out how to play this out.

***

A week ago.

Wagner finally received an invitation to the Solar Council but the bastards left him only a few hours to prepare himself. It showed him that they might call themselves the rulers of the solar system but they were very low people. They couldn’t swallow Keynes’s rejection but at the same time, they couldn’t refuse his counter-proposition.

Being left out of the high-level rifts would significantly limit their powers. Wagner’s researchers had recently speculated on the expected maximum attribute points for Level 4 items.

Level 1 items had a total maximum of 18 attributes, crafted or not. Only one-third of that could go into a single attribute.

Level 2 items had a total maximum of 24 attributes with only one-third going into a single attribute.

Level 3 items had a total maximum of 30 attributes with only one-third going into a single attribute.

They expected that each Level added 6 points to the maximum an item could have. This didn’t exactly match the progress of ascender’s attributes but the theory was that at the higher Levels, attributes from items meant less and a heavier focus was placed on skills and items with special effect and augmentations.

Wagner contacted Columbus who was in a different part of Geneva, laying low. He had his own teleporter as they called people who teleported others for money. Columbus confirmed that his office in South America had also received an invitation.

Good. It was time to enter the lion’s den.