As soon as Haruka told Keynes about his sister, he regretted it. At the back of his head, Bill’s rebuke sounded inevitable. They were meant to be careful about the Perfect State ascender. The sheer amount of will, time and resources required to achieve the Perfect State was insane. At the same time, gaining the Elevated stage? Impossible.

Haruka’s sister was still in the Medium stage and she struggled to get there even with cultivation techniques. Haruka could attest to the hardship of climbing the spiritual stages. He was stuck at the Elevated stage now without a prospect of climbing higher anytime soon.

His sister likewise found maxing out attributes at Level 2 many times harder than at Level 1. Difficulty only increased as they grew stronger.

Keynes bombarded Haruka with questions, sounding excited and eager. Haruka glanced at where Bill was finishing up the stew. Of course, his friend wasn’t going to help him.

“Okay, slow down, Keynes.” Haruka raised his hands. “I don’t think my sister would appreciate it if I talk behind her back. Don’t you think so?”

“You are … right,” Keynes admitted. “Sorry for being pushy. But it can make you feel lonely, this … need to max everything out. I haven’t met anyone else who even considered maxing out all attributes.”

Strangely, Haruka’s sister had said a similar thing to him.

Bill looked up from above the stew and gave Haruka a familiar glance – a warning. A timely one at that, as Haruka realised that he was about to open up to Keynes about his sister.

Bill came with two bowls and handed them to Keynes and Haruka.

“Eat this, it will make you feel better,” Bill said.

“How so?” Keynes asked, staring at the stew.

“Rift monster meat has many interesting properties. It speeds up recovery, boosts your energy level and sometimes grants mind clarity, but that depends on the type of meat.”

Keynes was sceptical. Understandably so if he hadn’t tried the rift meat yet.

Haruka started to eat, showing Keynes that it was safe to consume. Haruka finished his bowl and handed it to Bill so Haruka’s friend could eat his share. They had only two bowls with them.

Keynes still stared at his untouched stew.

“What’s the matter?” Haruka asked.

“Sorry, I was lost in my thoughts.”

Keynes ate his stew without hesitation. Sumak, Haruka’s spiritual companion, whispered that he spotted Keynes’s attempt at checking the stew but it seemed that Keynes failed.

I forgot that he’d used his aura offensively. He must be exhausted.

“Keynes, do you know that using spiritual aura offensively can be dangerous?”

From the look in Keynes’s eyes, Haruka could tell that the other man didn’t know much about the way Spirit worked.

“By itself, the spiritual aura doesn’t drain your Spirit but once it is offensively used it drains you like crazy.” Keynes’s abnormal spiritual stamina had to be the effect of his Perfect State. If Haruka had done the same, he’d have collapsed after ten minutes. Keynes lasted an hour.

The conversation about the Spirit relaxed Keynes. His friend, Vivena returned some time later, and accepted the stew, though only after Keynes had guaranteed that it was safe and she needed it.

Once they ate, Bill and Vivena took the first watch.

***

The next couple of days were spent hunting rift monsters. None of them were the size of the horde from the savannah and the four of them had no issues, effortlessly dispatching the monsters. That actually bothered Keynes as he didn’t have a chance to push himself.

Still, he had an amazing time. He talked with Haruka extensively about the Spirit and cultivation. Unlike his sister, of which Haruka spoke very little, he chose the spiritual path.

There was so much more to the Spirit than Keynes could imagine. Upon his ascension to the Elevated stage, Keynes’s understanding of the Spirit expanded. He was now able to feel every motion of essence in his body and control it perfectly.

During these moments, Keynes had a faint impression that there was something else connected to his core. When asked, Haruka only smiled but encouraged Keynes to continue prodding.

Alice echoed Haruka’s words with odd amusement.

Four days after they’d met, they encountered another savannah and a large horde. They didn’t charge the horde this time and decided to fight the monsters wisely.

Vivena had also started learning cultivation. It wasn’t easy without a technique but Haruka and Bill assured her that techniques could be learned.

They approached the horde from four different directions and used hide and seek tactics to confuse the monsters. While Haruka had amazing aura control that hid his presence, Keynes’s [Spiritual Ghost] was improved by the Elevated stage and lasted now 2 minutes. When monsters didn’t sense spiritual energy but saw movement, they grew confused. Everything in the world had spiritual energy. Something having none was unthinkable and their brains, if they had ones, were short-circuiting. Bill’s aura control was much weaker and he couldn’t vanish like Keynes or Haruka. Vivena had only basic aura control and couldn’t erase her spiritual energy the same way the other three men could.

Tidying up the horde took them a few hours and a lot of stamina. At the end of the fight, Keynes took to the sky and did recon around their area. The jungle was endless in all directions, only sometimes spotted by pockets of savannahs. Keynes saw the change in the land in the south, there were many steep hills.

He didn’t notice any signs of civilisation Bill and Haruka could be from. Keynes really wanted to meet Haruka’s sister. Another Perfect State ascender—proved that all six attributes could be trained here.

As he stayed a few hundred metres in the sky, feasting his eyes on the mesmerising view, he instinctively began circulating the essence around his Spirit core.

There came the first shock, the essence was too thin to enter the core. His Spirit core was too powerful for the essence! Then he flushed the essence throughout his body.

What is that?

His spiritual sense encountered something. But that couldn’t be, could it?

Alice, do I feel another core?

What do you think, master? Alice asked, appearing around him. She could vanish now even from his sight if he didn’t concentrate on their bond.

That I feel a core but somehow it feels different. What is it?

There was a long pause before Alice replied. She sounded unsure.

Master, what else do you sense?

The essence in his body was under his control but it wasn’t spread evenly. Keynes gathered all the essence in one place, and then moved it through spiritual channels.

The more condensed the essence was, the stronger sense of his spiritual structure Keynes received. Because of his memory, he remembered the structure quite clearly and noticed some inconsistencies. But as he began to investigate them, Alice drew his attention away from them.

Master, don’t get distracted. Focus on the other thing.

Keynes resumed the inspection of his spiritual structure and as he got closer to his Spirit core, he sensed another irregularity that resembled a core but wasn’t one, or was it?

Then another one.

And one more.

Keynes counted six. Six of them … six attributes! Alice, are these attribute cores?

Yes, Alice confirmed.

He remembered her saying about a better way of maxing out his attributes, was this it? Was this the way to speed up the process of maxing out attributes?

No, Alice crushed Keynes’s hope. Or at least not what you have in mind, master. Cultivating these cores has a different purpose, one you must discover on your own. What I meant back then is something you are not ready for yet. I should have not spoken about it. I am sorry for that.

Keynes didn’t push for more, it didn’t feel right. He returned to their camp just in time for Bill’s monster stew.

On his way here, Keynes activated [Spiritual Ghost], startling everyone as they didn’t sense his arrival.

“Is that a technique?” Haruka asked, growing curious. In reply, Keynes smiled, then he reconsidered and said.

“I'll tell you after I meet your sister.”

That caused Haruka to laugh.

“Poor man,” Bill murmured without elaborating further.

After that, the topics changed a couple of times until it settled back on the monster meat.

“Why don’t you put the meat in your dimensional pouch?” Keynes asked. At this point, the other men’s dimensional pouch wasn’t a secret.

“Because it decays. The rift monster meat cannot be stored in a dimensional space after it has been purified.”

“Why?”

“A great question.” Haruka shrugged, biting a chunk of the meat. Then without a warning, he smirked. “I understand that we may come across as wise men or such but it isn’t like this, Keynes.”

These, indeed, were Keynes’s thoughts. There were only a bunch of people outside of the World Reserve who knew anything about the spiritual stages, cultivation and rift-related matters.

Persephone had a cheat Talent that did all the work for her. Shaper was— Keynes had no idea who or what Shaper really was, so he didn’t count. Captain Ventura had some understanding of spiritual energy but nothing as extensive as Haruka’s. It was only natural to think about Haruka and Bill and their people this way.

When Keynes said nothing, Bill added.

“What we know isn’t the consequence of some highly guarded mysteries but hard, collective work. But in the grand scheme of things, it means nothing, in a year a company or two will gather enough knowledge and resources to make us look like incompetent fools, which we most likely are.”

“Why not capitalise on this knowledge today?” Vivena asked. “You are clearly ahead of the curve. Don’t squander that.”

“And what should we do to stay ahead of the curve?” Haruka asked, curious.

“You can teach others.”

Bill and Haruka looked at each other then with deep frowns looked askance at Vivena.

“Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose?”

“If you have the right ritual, the knowledge you impart here, couldn’t be spread without your permission.” She knows about the ritual of secrecy? This has to be it. But how?

While Vivena looked taken by her own idea, the other two men seemed unconvinced and a little uncomfortable. Keynes took the opportunity and asked Vivena to join him for a walk.

She accepted.

It was an early night and the cloudless sky started to get lazily poked by the stars. The scenery would be romantic if not for hundreds of dead rift monsters laying about.

Keynes sat down, his legs crossed. Vivena joined him.

“Can you imagine that they want to go into space?” he said, feeling melancholic and a little heady after eating too much stew. After a few seconds of stunned silence he frowned. “I think it isn’t something I should reveal though. Especially to a competition.”

“I am not a competition, Keynes,” Vivena countered, sounding amused rather than shocked. “But yeah, this isn’t something you should be telling anyone… You always wanted to go into space though. Wait. Why—OH! Rifts on other planets; that possibility hasn’t even crossed my mind.” She faced him. “Keynes, I don’t know if you understand the implications but this isn’t just opening rifts here on Earth. It is…”

“Building a monopoly?” Keynes asked. “I guess you are right, this certainly looks like it. But I’m more interested in discovering what the rifts have to offer. I’ll make sure we won’t build another World Government. I’ll never let them use me to do so.”

***

Wagner was stressed out of his mind. Keynes and Vivena were away for TWO WEEKS and issues multiplied exponentially. The word about their company had spread out worldwide. Reactions were mixed, though combined with Geneva’s declaration of independence, they were rather positive. If Esopp Earl and Columbus Curt could work together then there was hope to end this senseless war.

Unfortunately, the World Government didn’t back down. Losing Earl and Rugman cracked its facade but soon some new leaders were going to be elevated to replace them. Windsor Freeman gave a speech about unity and why the resistance worked against everyone. It was a poor speech and Freeman didn’t sound like himself. Something was off. But Wagner didn’t dwell on it, he didn’t have time to do so.

Many prominent figures contacted Wagner. Everyone wanted in, everyone believed that the high table was here in Geneva.

The Saels, the Ravencrofts, the Nishimuras, the Stonewoods, the Trumans; these were only a few out of hundreds of prominent families who asked for a meeting with Wagner. Those who knew who Keynes Kid was, cut to the chase and demanded to be part of the deal.

And above it all was Persephone.

Surprisingly, both Esopp and Columbus agreed with Keynes about having her on board, but then their ideas widely diverged and it fell on Wagner’s shoulders to find a way to make all the parties happy.

Then came planning of their operations, including selection of possible sites for the location of rifts. The number of conditions the location had to meet was mind-boggling. Esopp was helping with this as he understood politics much better than Wagner. Beneath the theatre of the war, the world was being portioned by the rich and powerful. Many minor governments were going to declare their independence as well. They needed a location they owned.

Procurement of required materials was a huge pain as the uprising all over the world spiked prices to ridiculous levels. But that wasn’t something Wagner or Esopp couldn’t handle, they were absurdly rich and, if the situation called for it, had assets to sell. The issue was the rift materials they needed, mostly Level 2 construction raw materials.

Those who could supply them asked for rift items in exchange. They weren’t interested in dollars. A few rift material exchanges were online already. Wagner didn’t own any rifts. Esopp’s family had three Level 1 and two Level 2 rifts but none with any resources to counterbalance the prices of what they required for their construction. They could sell unclaimed locations of Level 3 rifts but both Columbus and Esopp were against it.

With Columbus’s army taking over South America with its over a hundred rifts, it fell to the ex-chief-in-command to deliver the materials.

The last piece, which Wagner was mostly focused on, was recruitment and dealings with the Red Moon Legion.

The legion terminated their contract with the World Government after Geneva had become independent. Wagner, Columbus and Earl agreed to use the legion as their security until the end of the war. Their company was neutral and Columbus didn’t want it to be associated with the resistance. He was going to step down as the leader of the resistance once Freeman was defeated.

As their notoriety had blown up, recruitment became hell. Some people asked for absurd salaries, others were obvious spies. Wagner had to use proxy after proxy to make sure that no one knew who and where he was recruiting.

He needed a break. Keynes's mother had spent hours with him soothing his overworked mind. But her low Level was showing and he didn’t receive as much soothing as he should. He needed to get Tyr to level her up, which she’d refused twice already. But they were going to do it anyway. She couldn’t stay Level 1 for any longer.

Ah, and I need Sylv to reschedule the meeting with the Ministry…

The door opened and Sylv entered Wagner’s office.

“Sir, your guests have arrived.” Esopp, Columbus and Syberius Sael. The first two came to counterbalance the presence of the Level 8. Syberius Sael was a dangerous man and the last person he wanted to meet right now. But he couldn’t refuse him outrightly. The Sael family was influential even after the World Government tried to seize their assets.

The Saels weren’t enemies Wagner wanted to make.