Three weeks had passed by in a blink of an eye for Keynes and his two companions. A few hours after Jedd Eldin had entered the rift, the instance changed and they were cut off from the outside world. They could still leave but no one could join them. It gave Keynes an opportunity to focus and consolidate his thoughts.

Jedd Eldin proved to be exactly the person Keynes needed and more. It was disturbing how precise the AI had been in selecting Jedd. After Keynes had told him his plans, Jedd explained why his plans would fail.

First of all, the scope of these projects was unclear and there were too many things Keynes wanted to do at the same time. Keynes’s argument that Untainted Paradise had almost unlimited resources was easily refuted by Jedd who explained that the World Government had had unlimited resources in the past and they had failed in many of their projects. In other words, without resources there was no success, but resources didn’t guarantee anything.

The primary issue lay in the skill and trustworthiness of people. The larger the project was, the more complex and tangled the structure became. And then of course was corruption that was always present, diminishing effectiveness and efficiency.

Jedd’s thoughts on the department of knowledge echoed Columbus’s. Gathering knowledge in one place was dangerous. Keynes understood this but couldn’t see a way to make a breakthrough if everyone hogged their little secrets and didn’t pool knowledge. Jedd’s argument was to stick to some version of compartmentalisation with supervised and project basis access. Nonetheless, Jedd admitted he wasn’t an expert in this field and the companies he’d worked for had usually convoluted mechanisms of sharing information and he didn’t think that these should be employed here.

When it came to space travel, Jedd crushed Keynes’s dreams mercilessly. Apart from the lack of know-how, space travel was tightly regulated by the World Government and without their approval nothing private could be launched into space.

At least he didn’t believe there would be many issues in creating and running Keynes’s department, altogether with search parties and an adventuring team. But he warned Keynes that if he went ahead with more ambitious projects, he would have to employ a skilled project manager. Jedd would never take responsibility for something like that.

Kora’s thoughts on that were rather restrained, especially after hearing Jedd's opinions. She was okay with planning and joining rift expeditions and so on but she didn’t want Keynes to think that she was an expert in training ascenders. She and Natalia had improvised most of the time and just had good fortune when it came to results. Keynes knew she was downplaying her achievements. He hadn’t been impressed with Wagner’s elite squad and they had meant to be trained by an expert, while Natalia’s team would have wiped the floor with them.

From what Kora had told Keynes about her training with Natalia, he saw that their methods were similar to Tom Ventura’s and Kaito Ren’s, so he was comfortable with her running training for their future recruits. Keynes had an opportunity to finally reveal that he was a Perfect State ascender and explain what it meant because neither Jedd nor Kora knew.

With understanding the risk of attribute imbalance, his earlier idea of having his people train 1-3 attributes per Level was no longer on the table. He needed a different approach. Making everyone a Perfect State ascender wasn’t that easy, considering what he’d seen in the Scottish Cluster. On top of that, Jedd wasn’t a fighter type, neither was he young. If Keynes wanted Jedd to be a Perfect State ascender they’d have to be smart about it.

Later on, Kora timidly proposed a counter argument. Training was the key. In his idea of having ‘perfect department’ Keynes had fallen into a rabbit hole where the only way to become more powerful was to gain more Levels and attributes. She displayed the weight of her argument in several of their sparring matches where she defeated Keynes without much issue. Obviously, these fights didn’t involve skills or Talents but the point was to show that attributes weren’t everything.

And it wasn’t all, she went on how different team compositions could face different challenges and so on. Keynes noticed that she often had a period of shyness after each discussion followed by outburst of ideas. She was a perfect fit for his department.

From there, their conversations progressed towards Talents. Unlike skills, Talents were considered personal and were rarely discussed, especially after the outbreaks. Surprisingly, Jedd knew quite a lot about Talents because of his previous jobs. In his experience, Talents were one of the most valuable commodities and companies were at each other’s throats to find and keep such Talents for themselves. One of the easiest prevention tactics was to not reveal these Talents to anyone even within a company. It led to a strange distortion of reality where powerful Talents once acquired by large corporations were erased from public knowledge.

Jedd admitted that he’d met people with Talents that boggled his mind and the society wasn’t aware what Talents were really capable of. He didn’t have an issue sharing his Talent with Keynes and Kora. And in truth it was down to the fact that his Talent was very niche and made him an excellent personal assistant and nothing else. Task Priority Talent had some quirky mechanisms and sometimes required a bit of effort to work as intended, which was to tell Jedd what task he should do next. One of the issues he had with it was that Task Priority, by default, had Jedd’s best interest in mind, which usually wasn’t his intention. Incorporating other people’s best interest in Task Priority required a very clear understanding of the other person’s best interest and their end goal. Over the years Jedd had mastered his Talent as much as his Level 1 had allowed him. He also added an interesting anecdote; right after the ceremony his Talent had been dismissed as below average and only through hard work and effort, Jedd had been able to climb the corporate ladder and eventually land a few lucrative jobs as a personal assistant.

After Jedd had told them about his Talent, Kora decided to follow his steps. Since the moment he had seen her team take out Level 4 monsters, he’d been wondering what kind of role she had in that team.

The truth exceeded his expectations. Spell Enhancement Aura Talent was insane. It obviously had limitations, at least until Level 5 when she picked the ability to blacklist other ascenders and monsters, which was a game changer for her. It didn’t mean her Talent had been useless before the Minor Talent Upgrade but it could have been a liability when enemies had been able to profit from it as well.

Keynes wanted to test her Talent right away and they did so with him using [Telekinesis]. After several hours and all Keynes’s mana, they concluded that Spell Enhancement Aura Talent was a godsend addition to any team. With it, Keynes was able to lift any block under half a metre in size. There was a small issue of precision but that wasn’t what he concerned himself with. He finally had an opportunity to experience [Telekinesis] interacting with Level 4 objects. But one question remained: would her Talent work with his Talent? And if yes, what kind of enhancement would Lockpicking gain?

It, of course, led them to Keynes and his Talent. Before he revealed it, he’d asked them to keep it a secret even from people in the company. Jedd and Kora had no problem with that. He considered a ritual of secrecy but decided against it. He tried to inspire loyalty and showing distrust would have the opposite effect.

The revelation went as well as he had expected, though Jedd handled it much better than Kora. After that, their discussions turned into theorising and planning about their next move once they left the rift. Time between, Keynes spent training [Telekinesis] learning more about his new skills — [Purify] and [Spiritual Wrath], and then training some more.

[Spiritual Wrath] was an evolution of [Spiritual Ghost] and it increased the duration of the spell from 4 to 10 minutes, which was substantial but that wasn’t what stood out to Keynes.

[Spiritual Wrath] (active) — Conceals your spiritual presence for 10 minutes. Can also change a physical appearance to a transparent wrath, which can turn invisible for 1 minute. Spiritual Wrath can cast a 2-metre-wide aura that will extend spiritual concealment to anyone within the aura radius.

Cooldown: 20 minutes (if physical appearance changed then 1 hour)

Mana Cost: High (70) to Very High (170)

There was a lot to unpack here. Because of mana cost, Keynes had only tried invisibility once. Unfortunately, mana at Level 4 was only 220 and even the Perfect State hadn’t changed that. For some unknown reason, mana was only increased by Levels, items and Talents. So losing 150 mana just to become invisible for 1 minute was rather extravagant. Especially when [Telekinesis] was mana hungry spell too and mana regen was a joke.

Nonetheless, the ability to cast spiritual concealment aura was a substantial boon. He’d be able to make his party spiritually invisible while clearing a rift. There were more tests needed to be done, especially with Kora’s Talent but he would delay them until he had a first iteration of his research team.

The other spell, [Purify], was everything its name said.

[Purify] (active, AOE, channelling) — grants an ability to purify things and living beings.

Cooldown: 0

Mana Cost: Low (5)

While the spell’s description was stingy with details, its low cost allowed Keynes to experiment a bit. In essence, it was a cleaning tool, although it required a little mind gymnastics. It would only clean what Keynes believed was dirty and unwanted. However, if things were in their natural setting, like dirt, the spell didn’t do anything. It didn’t matter though. Not worrying about bathing was the real winner for him.

He still wasn’t sure about the Pure Body buff. Alice had been unavailable for some time and since levelling up almost everything about his body felt different so he couldn’t pinpoint the buff’s role in it.

When three weeks were up, Keynes, Kora and Jedd made their way to the rift’s exit. Alice was still unavailable though Keynes felt her at the end of their bond. She had been distant in the past but nothing to this degree. He wasn’t worried about her as much as he was concerned about his spiritual aura. He’d done some progress in controlling his powerful aura but using it with precision was still out of question.

Speaking of precision, sparring with Kora had helped Keynes in adjusting to his new attributes. It was a real problem when unrestrained strength could damage Level 0 materials like furniture. Anyone who fast levelled would struggle with this issue.

“After you,” Keynes said to Kora and Jedd, who quietly stepped outside. Keynes followed.

He didn’t expect to find Wagner waiting for him there.

“Finally, I have been waiting for hours.”

***

A few days earlier

Traveller watched the human struggle with [Telekinesis]. To pick a spell like this without a supporting class spell was idiocy but he could hardly blame them. This…universe gained access to spells only recently and all prior knowledge had been wiped out aeons ago for some reason. Wherever Traveller went he found the same scenario. A world without Vitality attribute and the lowest spiritual stage allowed by the System.

What was wrong with this universe? Did he really want to know though? It stank of higher realm politics, which he didn’t wish to have anything to do with.

Once again, he focused on the young human. He could see far more than his full profile and things he saw weren’t positive. His mind had been broken and hadn’t healed correctly. His buffs weren’t helping either. His ascension should have removed any residuals from his non-ascender body. For some reason, it had failed, carrying on…

Wait a second. These buffs…they don’t have any business existing in a mere Level 4 ascender. There are too many of them.

The Pure Body and Untraceable buffs were the only ones acquired organically as far as Traveller could see. The other two; the Rapid Learning and the Photographic Memory buffs were the System’s errors.

And why was there Chaos debuff? Was the System trying to kill this human? Given how much strain these buffs and the debuff had on the human’s soul, Traveller didn’t give the ascender a long life, or sanity. Yes, his sanity would go first.

I can fix him. His spiritual sense reached toward the human—

“Stop,” a spiritual avatar appeared in front of Traveller. “Do not meddle, stranger.”