After it was decided that the Magic research would be postponed to after Flash Thunder was fully re-creatable the sanctuaries administration decided to conduct the first Rank 6 campaign. Preparation raids were done which involved people of Rank 5 – 3 attacking the target horde and reducing the number of high ranking undead and minds and killing the monsters without losing members.

After the preparatory raids were done a full on campaign was carried out immediately afterwards; no one was ready for another Nemesis horde especially not a Rank 6 one. The horde was exterminated with minimal casualties and afterward the sanctuary carried out 15 more Rank 6 campaigns in 3 months, which got Jola, Kore, Funmi, Samad and Mistura to Rank 6 and many Rank 4s to Rank 5.

The sanctuary was in a constant state of war with the monster territories. Some hordes even attacked the sanctuary only to be pushed back and exterminated but most hordes stayed in their territory. Everyone found it weird that the monsters never ran away, they never left their territory for long. Even if they knew the sanctuary was only capable of wiping each one of them out one at a time, they never banded together.

It was especially weird since many of the High Rank monsters had a maximum intelligence en-code that surpassed humans. The general conjecture was that the monsters behaved this way because they had no experience. Where as they average Rank 5 had lived for more than 25 years with education that stems from centuries or millennia of human advancement, the average undead Rank 5 had only lived for some months, they had intelligence but no knowledge, no history, nothing.

This theory explained a lot but it was still extremely stupid for the monsters with such high intelligence to not know when to run away or gang up. It was an unanswered question and the sanctuary could only continue to reap the benefits of the monster’s stupidity while it lasted without knowing the reason for it.

During the 3 months of Rank 6 campaigning skilled weapon technology reached new heights. Without Deji studying Flash Thunder the research had slowed to a snail’s pace, but when Deji rejoined the research it sped up exponentially; a Superior High Human was an important resource. That was why the Jola’s administration had been ensuring people who hadn’t evolved were evolving into Superior High Humans not just High Humans.

Deji had begun to crack how the non-aura abilities were activated, but his greatest achievement was understanding aura activation. With activated aura weapons being supplied, the need for energy rose and Anita’s energy stones became an essential resource for the sanctuary.

Funmi began selling accessories that had energy stones in them. It quickly became a trend and many people bought them as it was an easier and more stylish way to carry energy stones than pouches.

Deji’s greatest wall was the psychic technology used to activate Flash Thunder. No matter how much he tried or how much his intelligence stat increased, he couldn’t even get a glimpse of how it worked. Well it was to be expected as making psychic technology was harder than making a human brain, which Deji wasn’t even capable of attempting.

Demola had also improved the quality of the weapons; they didn’t look as crude anymore and were more functional. Sadly most of these improvements could only be enjoyed by those who could control energy so the number of Rank 3s skyrocketed as people doubled down on their training as the life of Rank 3s and above became obviously better than those of Rank 1 and 2, Rank 0s barely existed anymore, children made up most of the Rank 0 population.

Deji recruited 7 Humans that had trained their intelligence to the High Rank to learn magic as long as they signed a 40 year contract they would be given enough en-code to get the superior intelligence High Human evolution.

There were few of them as intelligence was very costly train to Pinnacle Rank and one could only get superior intelligence as a High Human if one had Pinnacle Rank intelligence stat as a human. No one could have superior energy as the human race didn’t have the energy stat.

It cost 11,100 en-codes to instantly get a Human with a High (low) Rank stat to the Pinnacle Rank of that stat if that stat wasn’t intelligence. It cost 1,110,000 en-codes to instantly get a Human’s intelligence stat to the Pinnacle Rank from the High (low) Rank. The cost of evolution would also increase as the person had to fill all the stat en-codes to the maximum after fulfilling the conditions.

The stat maximum en-code would have increased 10 fold and the increase is also reflected in the unattributed Maximum en-code. Hence it cost approximately 200,000 en-codes for a Human to evolve to a superior High Human, for those who didn’t chose intelligence. And it cost approximately 20 million en-codes for a superior intelligence High Human.

Jola’s company was incapable of this sort of expense before but now that they had Rank 6 people and they often did Rank 6 campaigns it wasn’t impossible but it was still very costly.

Deji proposed the idea of creating a Superior by getting all stats to High (high). The usual method of becoming a Superior was to get one stat to pinnacle which was relatively easy for humans. With enough patience and consistent training an average human with Intermediate Rank stats would be able to get one of them to Pinnacle. This was true for any stat apart from intelligence; if one wanted to get Pinnacle Rank intelligence the average person would need a sponsor.

Most people before the IP distribution had all stats at the Intermediate rank. Athletes, soldiers and body builders had High rank physical stats. The stats that were High depended on the sport or the body type. Researchers and experienced programmers had Intermediate (High) intelligence on average. People who had naturally High intelligence were very rare, a good number of them didn’t even have professions that required much intelligence.

Deji proposed “There must be a reason for there being a superior evolution quest has the same reward as the other quest even though it is way harder. I believe it will give us High Humans with superior energy and even if that isn’t the case the reward should still be special”.

His point made sense so the administration decided to sponsor the evolution of one of his students to complete the quest. The student had a High intelligence but also had many of her stats at the Intermediate (high) Rank and her stamina was at the High (low) Rank so she the experiment cost the least. After spending hundreds of thousands of en-code they got the students to complete the quest; bringing all her stats to the High (high) Rank and after spending about 26 million en-codes, the student evolved.

The result was Deji expected, the student was a superior with superior energy; a maximum energy en-code of 1,000,000. The price to pay for it was more what was required to make a superior intelligence High Human and she was the person with the least cost so the student had to prove that the investment was worth it before they created another superior energy High Human.

A new Rank 5 known as Lekan discovered how to convert energy into aura. He created a dojo where he thought the art of aura creation, learning from him required a huge sum of en-code, 3 million, or agreeing to work for his company for 8 years and a contract of secrecy that if broken would be met with great punishment.

The sanctuary after the 16 Rank 6 campaigns had 520,197 Rank 3s, 567 Rank 4s, 23 Rank 5s and 5 Rank 6s.

Jola was happy about the growth but something at the back of his mind had been worrying him; the meeting of the Lagos settlements. He had rushed the speed of the sanctuaries growth all this time because he didn’t want the sanctuary to be weak when the meeting happened, he wanted the sanctuary to have a say.

Jola discovered the other settlements when he sent out groups of high rankers to scout Lagos for other settlements. He had found out about a few settlements, he found out that most of them were not as liberal as the sanctuary as they forced people to increase their Ranks and work for the ruling class.

These settlements were founded by thugs who had stock piled weapons for their crimes before the apocalypse. They had a ‘Might makes right’ form of administration that surprisingly enough worked for them because they knew how to handle such administrations as they had been living in such conditions before the apocalypse.

Jola didn’t want the sanctuary to be weak enough for them to harass or dominate if they ever had a cause for disagreement and he was sure they would.

The Lagos settlement meeting was a whole other level of crazy. The person who organized the meeting was a person that was strong enough to beat Rank 6 monsters when Jola was just a Rank 4. The person didn’t belong to any of the settlements but wanted them to agree on a way to live with each other and settle disputes.

No one dared to question the person’s authority as the person was strong enough to humble everyone. The person decided that the leaders of the settlements were to meet 4 months from this time for a weeklong conference. The person promised only advice would be given and no one would be forced to make decisions; the person would also provide security during their stay so they need not bring many soldiers. It was promised that the leaders who came for the meeting would all get one chance to get her protection for their settlements. No one knew why the person was doing this or what the motive was.

…