Without a moment of hesitation, Keynes shot toward the giant frog. He didn’t bother with physical attacks as he wasn’t equipped for that, but once in range, he unfurled his auras.

They slammed into the champion and for a second it resisted. Had to be the champion thing like it’d been the case in rifts. But then its resistance vanished and the frog’s face started to melt, warp and turn to dust all at the same time. The chaotic energies were brutally tearing the monster apart. It tried to shoot its tongue at Keynes but its mouth fell apart before it managed to properly open.

Holy crap. Is this the bladegrass’s doing?

The strength of the spiritual aura-enhanced [Chaos Aura] was off the charts.

Of course, Alice had to come back and spoil the fun.

It appears that the champion has a chaos-related weakness, master. So, it wasn’t the powerup then. That was disappointing but with how much strength his aura had gained, Keynes couldn’t complain.

Congratulations!

You have killed the champion!

Three champions remain.

The reward was a substantial amount of dominion points and essence that hit Keynes like a track. Sadly it didn’t even amount to 1% toward the progress.

He quickly withdrew [Chaos Aura] leaving only his spiritual aura on. Then he heard the sounds of the battle in the grass, which was far higher than they had suspected. The only indication where Esopp and Serrata were was an ongoing blizzard. Shards of ice and thick snow created a thirty metres wide dome. Esopp’s spell was tearing the grass apart and soon revealed the man standing in the centre, killing dexterous lizard monsters that got close to him. [Blizzard] wasn’t enough to kill them but the ice shards did a good job of wounding the attackers while something seemed to slow them down.

Serrata was doing much worse though because of her skillset. Without good visibility and range between her and her attackers, she was handicapped. She’d also had to move out of Esopp’s [Blizzard] as the skill didn’t seem to discriminate between enemies and allies.

It was something to think about in the future.

Keynes barreled down, landing nearby Serrata.

“What was that?” she asked.

“A champion,” Keynes replied, pushing his spiritual aura against the monsters, slowing them down.

Serrata’s pulse sped up upon hearing it. Keynes swept her and took into the air, leaving Esopp alone for now.

They flew to the other side where a mutilated body of the champion had fallen.

“Did you…” she muttered seeing the consequence of [Chaos Aura]. “God almighty, what happened here?”

Keynes landed at the edge of the dark forest. Shadows were unnaturally deep and intense. This wasn't an usual place like the rest of the dominion, meaning it could hide another treasure. The perspective carried Keynes away a little…

“Keynes Kid,” Serrata said. “What’s the matter?”

Keynes shook off the pleasant thoughts and focused on what was going on around. There were no monsters coming from the dark forest but he needed to bring the rest of the team from the other side and get Esopp out of the mess.

“I’ll be back,” Keynes said and took off.

Flying above Esopp, he shouted and the other man heard him. Immediately, [Blizzard] ended and Keynes landed in the clearing created by the skill. The grasses were thin but at least four metres high. Somehow they didn’t bend under their own weight. Not wasting time on thinking about this, Keynes grabbed Esopp and took off before lizards could overwhelm them without the support of [Blizzard].

After dropping Esopp at Serrata’s position, Keynes then transported the rest to the other side. The lizards didn’t leave the grass ‘river’ for some strange reason. It seemed like the dominion followed a completely different set of rules. Even more concerning were the changes to the terrain itself. It looked like everything inside the dominion was very elastic to the whims of the controlling power.

A quick check in the System information confirmed that an owner of a dominion had a lot of control over most aspects inside the dominion. They weren’t free though.

“What’s the plan?” Serrat asked once everyone settled down. The body of the massive frog put them on edge. Even the elites from Untainted Paradise glanced nervously at it. Keynes didn’t dwell on it. The champion was a weak and quick kill. Unlike others, Keynes was optimistic about the fight with the sub-boss. If the scaling wasn’t too absurd, the power of the sub-boss shouldn’t get out of hand. It raised a question about the current attempt and the strength of whoever tried to defeat the sub-boss. Either Keynes was too optimistic about his chance or the other ascender was far weaker than Keynes.

He, naturally, preferred the latter option.

“We’ll have to scout the path ahead before we commit into this direction.” Esopp pointed at the dark forest. “Although there is no guarantee there is a way around it.”

“Can we even afford to go around?” Serrata enquired. “I’m concerned about the attempt on the sub-boss.”

After seeing how weak the champion had been, Keynes started to share his sentiment. He didn’t want to share the alternative option, which would be to leave the team and face the sub-boss alone.

“Does it even matter?” Esopp asked. “One day here or there. I don’t think it will make any difference.” He looked worse for wear and required a healer’s attention after his ordeal. The Unwanted debuff that lowered base regeneration by 1% every hour spent in the dominion was already making a huge difference. Without a healer, the prospect of unhealable injuries would have been too dangerous to press forward.

“How do you know that?”

“It’s a guess but I can only think about two people who would be stupid enough to go directly to the sub-boss,” Esopp replied.

Keynes had been told that Syberius Sael, Vivena’s grandfather, was going to be here. The way that man was described to Keynes, made him look like some bloodthirsty villain. Keynes didn’t know who the second guy could be.

“But if that’s the case, it would imply that they have access to [Flight] or other movement ability. It is a disturbing prospect.”

Keynes frowned.

“It doesn’t change anything.” Esopp shrugged, unbothered. It visibly threw Serrata off balance. She was confused by the complete disregard of the issue by Esopp. Was Syberius Sael even their problem? Wagner mentioned that the man had requested a meeting with Keynes while Keynes had been in the World Reserve. So did Vivena. But they kept Keynes’s return to Geneva quiet. With the world unified once more, there was always a risk of betrayal.

This dominion was the best example of this. Even though the Solar Council sent a joint expedition, most of the powers had their separate parties here in hope to claim the rewards for themselves.

Serrata exhaled, slightly irritated. She looked even worse than Esopp, although she didn’t need healing. Her hair was dishevelled, her clothes torn in several places. After all, the Breakable debuff was lowering the durability of items by 10%. It clearly applied to all items, not only magical ones.

“Where does your total disregard for the issue come from?”

What was going on? Where did all this talk about an issue stem from? And why was Keynes again out of loop? Because I don’t care about these things most likely? But he was curious now, so he looked expectantly at Esopp.

The elites and the healers glanced at each other and made themselves scarce, leaving the three leaders alone.

“First of all, this isn’t a place for such conversation.” Esopp sat down on a fallen log. “Secondly, we don’t think Syberius is a threat you make out of him. He’s ambitious, true, but beyond that there is not much to the man. He doesn’t have a game changing Talent and all his eight Levels come from human essence, which makes his base attributes at…?”

“Thirty-nine.”

“Thirty-nine,” Esopp repeated. “That’s not much. I know that your base attributes are slightly higher than mine. So why should I care about Syberius’s attributes?”

“Because he’s ruthless, ambitious and has wealth to back it up.”

Esopp waved a hand, in an exact, dismissive manner that had kicked off this conversation.

“Syberius is a threat we know and we are sure we can handle. There are other individuals we should be worried about.”

“Sandman?”

“And Freeman. He’s still out there after all.”

A shout ended the sour conversation. Trees came alive like treants and swept their thick branches. Quickly, they realised how bad of a match up it was for them. [Ice Shot]s and Serrata’s arrow attacks were doing very minimal damage. They needed fire. One of Artefact Exchange elites had [Fireball] but it was one person versus hundreds of trees.

[Chaos Aura] was out of question unless Keynes wanted to melt his companions. So he stuck to using his spiritual aura but the trees seemed quite resistant to it. Using the aura actively also drained a lot of Keynes’s stamina.

The group had to retreat to the edge of the forest and rotate their attacks. The treants were slow but extremely durable. Even [Fireball]s had only marginally better effect than [Ice Shot]s or arrow spells.

It would be nice to have [Create Fire] and [Fire Manipulation] at moments like this one. I’d be able to burn the forest down.

Indeed, master. I believe with the Bladegrass upgrade, your Spirit core is capable of absorbing another spell before Level 4.

The problem here was the opportunity cost; by absorbing additional skills, Keynes lost opportunity to wear stronger items. It really showed that the System favoured ascenders with powerful spiritual cores. He was at the peak of Level 3 and still the number of spells and items he possessed was very low in his opinion.

The battle lasted until night when they finally emerged from the forest on the other side. Keynes activated [Night Sight] and whistled. The dominion definitely was modifying the terrain to accommodate its own, unknown agenda. Ahead of them was a several kilometre-wide swamp.

“What now?” Serrata asked, exhausted. She was on her feet by sheer force of willpower. Everyone in their group, including Keynes, was extremely tired. Only Esopp’s [Endurance] kept him in good shape otherwise the other man would have collapsed here.

“A swamp.”

Groans were the only replies.

“Let’s camp here,” Esopp said. “I’ll take the first watch.”

***

Syberius fled from the sub-boss’s lair.

He didn’t even manage to lay a finger on the enormous creature. Immediately, he was assaulted by hundreds of small monsters that could fly. To deal with the swarm he’d need a strong aura skill. Something like [Fire Aura] because his [Poison Aura] was damaging the monsters too slowly. Many were going to die but it was too late. On his way here, Syberius had passed spawning grounds with thousands of monsters there.

The number of dominion monsters was mind-numbing. Even if Marakus didn’t betray me, what chances would we have? Suddenly, all his preparation felt inadequate. Syberius had based his expectation on other dominions found all over the world. But it was clear that none of them were anything like this one.

Rewards must be incredible, he told himself, but his mood quickly turned sour. His failure to take the sub-boss down made it unlikely that he’d be able to kill it alone. He was going to need all the help he could get.

The Solar Council expedition.

He checked the number of remaining ascenders.

Contenders remained: 260

That was more than he expected but in the end it would work to his advantage. The leaders of the expedition would be easy to manipulate. Once he assumed control of the expedition, he’d push it hard toward the centre of the dominion and if they were unable to kill the sub-boss. Syberius could always leave the dominion and wait until it opened again.

The System explained that a failure to defeat the boss would open the dominion once all ascenders left it and it would open again in a few days. If Syberius made sure that none survived, the subsequent expedition were likely to underprepare. He, on the other hand, was not going to make the same mistake twice.

But first, he needed to find the Solar Council Expedition.