“We broke into the weekly top 100 in the global ranking,” Serrata noted, a little surprised.

Keynes had stopped paying attention to the global ranking a while ago when he’d realised that he’d need to look for dominion monsters to keep his rank, and events like the one in the Capital were rather rare.

There were four rankings available to Keynes in the System interface.

All-time: 6600 Monthly: 6600 Weekly: 44

And the local one for this dominion.

Sub-boss dominion: 22

Only 343 ascenders remained inside this dominion. Still Keynes was surprised to find twenty-one people ahead of him. Especially with the extra points for completing the bladegrass challenge. Were others finding similar treasures or was it down to the number of killed monsters? Keynes leaned toward the latter as their current path saw fewer monsters and finding a natural treasure required a very strong Spirit. Obviously, he didn’t know where he stood in terms of a spiritual stage against the rest of the world but it was unlikely

The lull in the number of monsters was about to end very soon though. The mountain range veered north while they needed to go east to reach the centre of the dominion. From there, they expected to encounter far more monsters.

“As long as we stay out of Sandman’s way, we are good,” Esopp responded to Serrata’s comment.

Sandman was currently the top 1 in the global monthly and all-time ranking.

“Didn’t he work for you?” Serrata asked as she nimbly jumped from one rock to another.

Their party was currently descending the mountain’s slope, going into the jungle.

“Long story short, he didn’t.”

The topic dropped but Keynes sensed tension in Serrata’s aura. It was quite clear but it was hard to tell if it was something new or simply the upgrade made it possible for him to sense more. Despite growing curiosity Keynes pulled his attention away from the conversation and focused on the terrain ahead. With a longer range, Alice was capable of warning him earlier about threats.

Eventually, they left the mountain and entered the forest.

With a smaller team, fighting monsters became surprisingly easier. They came in a greater number but Keynes’s spiritual aura did its job, confusing and disorienting the monsters. Esopp was the first to notice that something was different about Keynes but he wisely didn’t say anything.

Another unexpected benefit of a stronger Spirit was a sense that Keynes was on a precipice of completely nullifying the debuffs except the Enemy of Chaos debuff which was very strong. It led him to theorise with Alice about his next Perfect State upgrade. If he received another body buff upgrade, which by itself should be strong enough to completely neutralise debuffs, and on top of that applied an Orb of Perfection on the debuff, would it mean he’d be able to get rid of his Chaos debuff as well? Alice guessed that should at least make him 100% immune to all debuffs up to Level 4 without exception. It was extremely tempting to go this road but there were other options he’d considered already.

One being a Vitality attribute.

It felt like an odd one and perhaps a waste of a precious orb if he could get his hands on some passive [Regeneration], [Restoration] or [Recovery] skill. So far nothing had shown up in the market and neither Alice could confirm that such skills existed. He believed that they existed but the drop criteria could be harsh. Still the hidden room was something that could circumvent such limitations.

Why Vitality?

Because it made him harder to kill and he was curious what would the Orb of Perfection alter in the case of attributes. Would Vitality be simply more efficient or would the scaling go up? Or maybe was there something more esoteric? He didn’t know, the System didn’t have the information available and Alice was tight-lipped on the matter.

It was kind of stupid. What was the point of hiding the information? If people knew things ahead of time, the whole progress would speed up. Anyway, it wasn’t something Keynes had any impact on and so he didn’t bother with dwelling on it.

Another option was his Talent.

He knew that Pandora had used her Orb of Perfection on her Talent and it was improved. He’d experienced it himself when they’d sparred. She claimed to regret it but Keynes wasn’t so sure if she understood the implications of having her Talent improved. It was something Alice had to explain to him because he hadn’t known about it initially. There was a hierarchy of sorts, meaning that Talents were at the pinnacle and ruled everything else. For example, if there was a [Lockpicking] skill it wouldn’t have the same power Keynes’s Talent had and wouldn’t open rifts or hidden rooms. This was why Keynes was very careful about investing everything into his body buff. If he encountered an ascender with a Talent that disabled other ascenders’ buffs, Keynes would be in trouble.

The issue still was a problem for tomorrow as Keynes had to level up first, which was unlikely to happen in this dominion. The penalties were too much. If they only went inside a month later, he’d be Level 4 then and steamroll through this dominion without an issue.

Instead, he was forced to do it the hard way.

***

They were growing tired. The forest was denser here than it had been at the outskirts of the dominion, as well as the air was thicker and heavier here. There were also more monsters. They came in larger groups and showed signs of intelligence in their attacks. The higher number of monsters put Serrata in the weekly top 40 and if they continued the current pace, she was confident of getting into the top 10 where items were of much higher rarity.

Still there were other concerns on her mind.

First was Esopp Earl’s off-hand comment about Sandman. The current top 1 in the monthly and all-time ranking. Despite her best efforts, her company found out very little about the man. All she knew was that he’d worked for the World Government until Windsor Freeman vanished. Esopp Earl’s warning unsettled her but she didn’t want to push the man. Even if she could defeat him as her base attributes were a little higher, fighting Keynes Kid and their elites would be dangerous.

Not that she considered fighting her allies. Her boss had explicitly warned her against such a course of action. Not only they all needed Keynes Kid to keep opening rifts but also the boy was a big mystery.

And here lay her second concern, after he’d returned from the scouting his spiritual aura was stronger. It blanketed the area around them, doing something to the monsters. She’d noticed Esopp Earl’s concealed surprise and she furiously began to wonder; where did the boy take his strength from? What secrets he possessed and how could she convince him to share them with her?

Esopp Earl was an obstacle, keeping the boy on a tighter leash than Keynes Kid was aware. It would be worthwhile to separate these two and question Kid.

Day passed and with the night arrived another event, this one had a warning that the monsters were minimum of Level 3. Serrat ordered her people to rest before the event started. She needed them in the best shape. Losing more people was unacceptable.

***

Two days later they had received a message that the sub-boss was attacked but the assault failed.

“Someone has already reached it? How?”

“Most likely an individual with movement or teleport ability,” someone replied. A good point. The fact that the attempt failed pointed toward that conclusion.

Their group had managed to not lose any more members. In fact, the count of ascenders in the dominion was very slowly going down now. It stood at 290. Meaning that those who remained were strong. Keynes couldn’t decide if the number was high or not. In some way, knowing that so many strong people were in the same place, filled him with concern. There was always a possibility that they would turn against him and his party, because of the way the dominion worked. It encouraged elimination of potential rivals.

Especially that Keynes was now top 13, Esopp top 16 and Serrata top 18. They considered the bonus missions and decided against going after them. The truth was that they were ill-equipped and prepared to do it.

After last night, the monsters got way stronger, almost bringing their expedition to halt. Individually, they were easy to deal with even for the elites in their party but these monsters always came in groups of a hundred at the very least. And if they weren’t careful the Hateful Slayer debuff would attract too many pushing their group into a dangerous territory.

This was not all.

They also found a two hundred metres-wide belt of high, yellow grasses that cut the forest in two and from above looked like a yellow river. The forest on the other side looked different though. It was so dense and dark that it resembled a wall. Keynes and Alice sensed a lot of monsters moving through the grasses unseen. It reminded him of the Bladegrass and got him worried. What if a similar trap waited for them there. He would be fine but the rest of the group would be sitting ducks for the monsters.

He had hope he’d find more such treasures on their way here but nothing had stood out so far.

“What are our options?” Serrata asked, staring at the treacherous grass river. “I don’t think we can survive entering this.”

There was a bit of silence as everyone considered her question.

Then one of her elites raised a hand. Serrata nodded.

“What if Mr Kid flies us over?”

Alice calculated the mana and stamina cost and time. It would be easy for him to do this. The issue lay elsewhere as Serrata quickly pointed out.

“I don’t think a single person can survive on their own on the other side, waiting for the rest. That other forest looks very uninviting and I have a suspicion that a new type of monster awaits us there.”

Alice? Keynes asked. Could you scout ahead?

I already did, master, she said with a heavy sigh. Whatever is there, hides from my senses.

That was bad news. If the entire forest was pitch black and on top of that the monsters camouflaged their spiritual energy, they would not last long. It questioned the entire idea of entering the forest but it had to be done if they wanted to kill the first sub-boss.

Keynes confirmed that he could do so but he agreed with Serrata that something dangerous lurked there and facing it one by one would be asking for trouble.

“What about two people?” Taker asked. “Miss Serrata and Mr Earl should be able to hold off the monsters until more of us get there.”

Taker’s idea had a strong merit but Keynes warned them that the trip was going to tire him off and because his spiritual aura was the strongest and most sensitive, they were going to be at risk of an ambush.

It sparked a debate, which slowly led to other groups in the dominion. Did any of them pass this strange grass river? If so, how did they do it? The count didn’t go down much in the last couple of days, indicating that either the peril of the crossing was inflated by them and it wasn’t as hard or no one else got to this point, except for a single jackass attempting to defeat the sub-boss.

“Maybe we should consider joining the Solar Council expedition,” the healer from Artefact Exchange said. To Keynes’s surprise, no one outrightly objected.

“Assuming they are still in the dominion,” Taker said. “You saw how many people have died in the first days.”

The three leaders let others discuss the matter. It was interesting to hear out the thoughts of those below them in terms of power. In fact, looking at the issue through the prism of the likes of Keynes or Esopp would see others dead as they couldn’t be expected to put up the same fight.

Eventually they settled with Taker’s idea of moving two at a time, starting with the strongest who could secure the landing spot.

“Watch out for fliers, jumpers and projectiles,” Keynes warned them as he grabbed their waists, their backs to him. He activated [Flight] and rose about thirty metres above the grasses.

“I’m buying the skill no matter the price,” Serrata muttered half way there. “It is--”

A roar coming from the dark forest cut through the air. A wall of short-lived debuffs attacked and then the Level 4 monster the size of a house shot out of the dark forest.

Champion!

Keynes was forced to drop Esopp and Serrata.

“AH!”

“What the--”

Then he dodge the monster’s long tongue that snapped ominously where Keynes had been a second ago.

Great. An oversized frog.