A week ago.

Wagner was teleported to the address given in the invitation. He half-expected a trap to welcome him there. Such a low blow was entirely in the realm of possibilities of the Solar Council. But instead of death or imprisonment, Wagner found a lone man in a sharp suit that perked up upon their arrival and then lowered his head in a greeting.

“Mr Zimmerman. The Solar Council is expecting you.”

They are expecting me? This didn’t sit well with him and when a minute later Columbus teleported in, the same message was given to Wagner’s business partner. Something was up.

“Please, follow me.”

They were in the secluded garden just right outside of Geneva. Next to the garden stood an old and unassuming mansion. Wagner’s spiritual senses were pricked by dense lines of runes and at least a half dozen of formations that circled the entire building.

As they climbed the stairs, they saw only forest around the mansion. It was a smart location for a meeting of this rank. Wagner had expected the meeting to be held inside the Geneva Ministry’s bunker.

In the end, it wasn’t a simple mansion as they were led to a secure underground conference room. It was obvious from the first step in the room that they were the last. Everyone else had been here for a while. They’d given him and Columbus a different time of arrival it seemed. But it wasn't the time to argue with idiots, especially powerful idiots. The number of Level 7s here reminded Wagner of the High Parliament in Paris.

It was kind of refreshing to find the whole room go ghastly silent when Columbus Curt entered in a white uniform and set of hidden items that radiated enough power to fill the entire conference room.

With his insane Talent, none here could stand against that man, and they knew it.

They were led to their seats, which seemed quite random. They were placed next to the old Nishimura who represented the Oriental League and Anette Frey who was the leader of Mars. When Columbus and Wagner sat down, André Turtelli got to his feet and walked to the pedestal in front of everyone.

“I’d like to welcome our final members to the Solar Council; Columbus Curt, the current leader of the resistance and Wagner Zimmermann, the CEO of Untainted Paradise. Now. Let’s begin the proper meeting.”

***

The first hour was straightforward and actually legit. The agenda presented by André Turtelli was quite sound and neither Wagner nor Columbus could argue with it. The Solar Council wanted to expand their presence in space through building new space stations with high level materials and slowly eye the first potential expansion outside of the solar system.

Then the topic turned to rifts and some of the gathered showed very little restraint.

“We’ll buy the boy from you,” said a man Wagner hadn’t actually met in person. Burgard Brenton, or whatever he was called now, was the owner of BlueSpace, the producer of mana containers. They had a profitable trading relationship with BlueSpace but that man was an insufferable cockroach. “Just tell us the price.”

Neither Columbus nor Wagner took the bait and instead attacked him from a different angle.

“Are you proposing to enslave Keynes Kid?” Wagner asked, curious how the other man would spin it.

“Don’t bullshit us, would you? Are you telling me that you treat that upstart like an equal?”

“Yes,” Wagner replied simply.

“He’s, what, Level 3, right?”

Wagner didn’t answer. He needed a moment to evaluate the other man’s goal. Not a single person inside this room was here by chance. Burgard Brenton wasn’t an idiot and even a random question like this one had a hidden meaning.

“What’s your point?” Wagner asked, giving away no emotions.

“His point doesn’t matter, Zimmermann,” Siberius Sael interrupted Burgard’s response. “When it comes to Keynes Kid everything is on the table. You cannot privatise access to new rifts. That brat belongs to the council.”

Wagner noticed Columbus’s expression and prayed for the man to stay silent. Sael was trying to provoke them.

Luckly, before Columbus responded to the blatant arrogance, Serrata, the CEO of Artefact Exchange said, “I would like to raise an objection. Artefact Exchange disagrees with Siberius Sael’s demand. I will never support slavery.”

Her words changed the tides and others joined in their opposition to Sael’s idea but not everyone. Wagner was glad that their enemies revealed themselves so soon.

“Nonetheless,” Serrata asked after the heat in the room dissipated. “I would like to inquire, why is Keynes Kid not present?”

“He’s busy opening Level 4 rifts, of course.” It was time for Wagner’s own provocation.

With that the room exploded with arguments anew.

***

Now.

“Sir, you’d like to do what?”

“Fight you.”

The twelve soldiers exchanged glances. They were mighty confused.

“But why?”

Keynes’s answer wasn’t going to make it any easier for the men but he owed them it anyway.

“You’re our very elite, I’d like to learn what it means.”

Judging by their expression they were less than pleased with Keynes’s answer.

“If I may, sir, what Level are you?”

“Level 3.”

The fights were held at the edge of the valley, where they wouldn’t disturb other activities in the camp. Esopp and Tyr found them there just as the first sparring was about to begin.

“What the hell is going on here?” Tyr asked.

While the rest of the group started to explain, Keynes decided to begin the fight. There was nothing Tyr could do to stop him. The fight was without magical items or skills. In the beginning, Keynes didn’t use his spiritual aura as well but the 6 points difference in each attribute was hard to overcome. Even still, he knew that the other man went easy on him.

“Keynes, they are professionals.” Tyr decided to play on Keynes’s nerves. “Just leave the fighting to them.”

Keynes replied, “After I am done with them, you can show me all you got.”

That got through.

“Get him!”

***

Esopp watched the fight with burning curiosity. Since Wagner had told him about Keynes Kid subduing Turtelli, he couldn’t wait to see him in action versus another ascender. Fighting monsters wasn’t the same as fighting other humans. Especially stronger opponents.

Without his spells and items, Keynes was at substantial disadvantage and it was showing. The soldier was not only quicker and stronger but also accustomed to fighting with human opponents. Everything started to change after Tyr’s taunt. Clearly, Keynes realised that he cannot win this purely based on naked stats. Interestingly, he didn’t blast his powerful aura at his opponent but used it in such a subtle way that Esopp had issues following what was happening.

Each time his opponent attacked, Keynes brushed him with his aura, always staggering the attack and gaining an upper hand. After ten minutes, the Level 5 stopped the fight as he could no longer stay on his feet.

None of his colleagues smiled, while Tyr’s eyes were like two slits.

“You were meant to use no skills,” Tyr protested.

“If Keynes used a skill, we’d know it,” Esopp said.

“Then how?”

“All in due time,” Esopp said with a smirk.

***

Three hours later, Keynes collapsed in a heap. Every centimetre of his body hurt. While he managed to win some of the early fights, the later ones proved harder. Some of these guys had maxed out their Strength and Dexterity during their rise to Level 5 and while none of them had a technique to fully back it up, they knew martial art well enough. Even with the spiritual disruption as Alice called it, they were capable of outmanoeuvring him, not to mention that Keynes’s stamina hit the rock bottom before the last opponent and it didn’t resemble a fight anymore.

Still, Keynes was satisfied with the results. His attributes gained a few percent from this and he’d learned more than any of them could imagine. His photographic memory combined with the rapid learning buff had a compounding effect giving Keynes more than the sum of the parts.

Unfortunately, he didn’t get the chance to fight Tyr and knew the bastard would tease him because of that, although Tyr looked surprised with Keynes’s performance.

When time came to open the first rift, Keynes, Esopp, Tyr and the twelve elite soldiers stood before the shimmering point in the air. The plan was very simple. Upon the opening, the monster would pour out of the rift and it would be up to Tyr and his elite to keep them inside the dome while Keynes and Esopp would rush the boss. It was a common and stable rift without any modifiers so they weren’t worried about anything. Nonetheless, the fact that the twelve didn’t have proper rift or crafted items reminded Keynes how much the company’s approach would have to change.

Would you like to open the rift?

YES/NO

***

Ten minutes later Keynes and Esopp stood over the reward chest and smiled. In Esopp’s hand was a blueprint of a mana condenser. In its basic version, the item could condense mana two times, doubling the amount of mana stored in the standard mana container. But that wasn’t all as Esopp explained.

Some runes required condensed mana to operate and until now no one knew how to make that happen. With that massive boon, they walked out of the rift, ordering the twelve soldiers to clean up the monsters inside as they’d only killed the boss to stop the rift from vomiting the monsters.

Over the next week, Keynes only opened two more rifts, both common but one of them was variable. The rewards were items Keynes had no interest in. The rest of the time he’d spent training with the twelve or killing the monsters inside the rifts. He was once lucky to run into a tier 2 hidden room and got three skills and one item.

Stubbornly, the tier 2 hidden rewards were sticking to plants and his reward was [Bloom] skill. The other two skills were more interesting: [Blizzard] and [Primal Instinct]. The item was an uncommon bow with a split arrow modifier. He kept for himself [Primal Instinct], while Esopp took [Blizzard] and [Bloom] went to Tyr who was too speechless to protest. The bow went to the vault in Emerald City for now as the fourth person didn’t use bows.

Keynes was in the process of absorbing [Mind Illusion] and knew for the fact that [Primal Instinct] would overwhelm his spiritual core but he was a hair width from maxing out all his attributes. After that, with so many Level 4 rifts, levelling was going to be a breeze.

Unsurprisingly, their database didn’t have any information about these three skills. They had to be Level 4 drops. Alice briefly explained that [Primal Instinct] was a passive skill that bestowed upon an ascender instinctual sense of danger coming from other ascenders, monsters, plants and even terrain. Just that made him incredibly impatient about finally getting to Level 4. Not to mention, he’d become the Perfect State ascender of third degree and gain a bunch of new rewards from the System. Maybe another Orb of Grand Insight? Combined with the first orb, he’d be able to learn how to start rebuilding his core.

Before he got a chance to begin the levelling after maxing his attributes out, a message came that one of the global sub-bosses had been found but its dominion turned out to be more deadly than anyone had expected.

Wagner, Esopp, Tyr and Keynes held a video conference where Wagner convinced them to ally with Artefact Exchange and hit the sub-boss’ dominion. Apparently, some members of the Solar Council were on their side now. Keynes didn’t mind that. Although he worried that all the monsters of the dominion wouldn’t be enough to level him up with all the penalties he carried now.

After the bargain was ironed out with Artefact Exchange, Keynes opened another three rifts in quick succession, increasing the number to 6. With that done, Keynes, Esopp and six elite troops left the island and flew to the mainland from where they were going to travel to the dominion’s location.

***

Hideko’s swordsmanship improved faster than she could have expected with the recent acquisition of [Sword Mastery]. The passive skill was changing the way she thought, moved and even relaxed. Everything she did was with a sword in mind. In fact, she never stopped training as even her dreams were filled with sword-fighting.

Though her face was blank in the presence of her master, she smiled inside. One skill turned around her life so much that she considered herself one of the strongest ascenders now. With her epic Level 3 katana and another skill on its way she would be unstoppable.

All she needed to do now was to earn her dominion.

She didn’t need to wait for that long though as her father came to her some time later with wonderful news. A global sub-boss dominion was found in China, in their territory. The Nishimuras now controlled the entire Oriental League.

“But be careful, daughter, we aren’t alone in the endeavour to take the dominion down. Others want the Orb of Dominion too. You have my permission to cut down anyone who stands in your way.” He handed her the skill shard. Finally she had [Cut]. It wasn't a particularly rare skill but its versatility was incredible.

“I will make you proud, father.” And I will have my own dominion. Just you wait, Vivena Sael.