"Wait—what did you say your names were?"

Esopp repeated their names, and the cluster manager's expression turned to one of shock. His face shifted rapidly through a range of emotions, finally settling on fear and being overwhelmed. The others remained confused but wary, with the exception of Natalia, whose irritation was reaching a boiling point. Esopp, for some unknown reason, was smirking.

The two founders watched in silence as the cluster manager processed the new information. Even though his emotions began to calm, Natalia broke the silence. In many ways, she reminded Keynes of Daiyu Fen—strong-willed and impatient. This evoked a muted pang of regret in him, but Keynes suppressed it.

Master... Alice muttered, sensing the dying embers of his emotions.

"I need more than names I don’t know," Natalia said, pulling the cluster manager out of his stupor. He gave her a disbelieving look, then glanced at Esopp and Keynes questioningly but neither founder said anything, so he decided to explain who they were to Natalia.

"They're the founders of Untainted Paradise," the cluster manager said.

Kora, Miguel, and Ulf were similarly speechless, their high Mind attributes protecting them from deeper shock that had hit the cluster manager. Natalia, however, seemed to not care about their status.

"It doesn't change a thing," Natalia said, her voice lacking some of its previous conviction. "We're here to do a job. I cannot operate when people from outside can come and randomly stir shit up," she added, giving Keynes and Esopp a stern look.

Esopp snorted, while Keynes watched Natalia with a mix of growing respect and strong irritation. On one hand, she was staying true to her role and task, but on the other hand, she didn't seem to understand the kind of power that Keynes and Esopp wielded here.

Master, your thoughts are strange, Alice muttered. He knew it. A few weeks ago, he wouldn't have minded Natalia's lack of respect, but now he felt a sense of entitlement. He couldn't quite understand where it came from.

Unsure of the answer, Keynes decided to focus on their current situation. They needed to figure out what to do about the four [Mental Link] spells and the other hidden rewards they might find. He didn't mind giving these four spells shards away to the four carries, as they would benefit from them. But at the same time, he hoped to find some answers to his growing issue of a lack of offensive tools.

"We can't accept these skills!" Natalia exclaimed after Keynes had expressed his wish to give the carry team [Mental Link]s.

The cluster manager stood, stunned, and watched Keynes with disbelief.

"Natalia's right," Miguel agreed. "They're worth too much."

Ulf and Kora remained silent, deep in thought.

Esopp sighed then placed the four shards in Natalia’s hand anyway. She shook her head.

“You’re putting… over three hundred million credits in my hands, it’s a kind of pressure we don’t need. We’re doing fine without them.”

It sounded definitive but Keynes wasn’t going to give in to her argument. This team, in his opinion, was the strongest group of ascenders, excluding the founders, that their company possessed. Not investing in them was a mistake. The elite team had been a disappointment and now Keynes wanted a real elite team.

“You’re taking the skills,” Keynes said, projecting cold indifference, then he turned away and strode out of the rift. Only after he stepped outside, he allowed himself to shiver from the cold.

***

Keynes's act had worked, and the carry team accepted the skill shards. Their efficiency wasn't immediately improved as they had to factor in Keynes's and Esopp's involvement in the rifts with the hidden rewards. It usually involved Keynes scouting the reward area first, which made Natalia dissatisfied, but after the third day, and an updated plan, she stopped being snappy.

Without any true offensive capabilities, Keynes used his time in the rifts to focus on [Telekinesis]. He noticed an interesting but not really groundbreaking thing. Even the light objects in Level 4 rifts were difficult to manipulate with the use of [Telekinesis]. When played with the skill outside the rifts, the difference was becoming stark and obvious. That gave Keynes a better understanding of the inner mechanism of [Telekinesis]. There were several limitations. The first one was life itself. Living things weren't immune to [Telekinesis] but were extremely resistant. It made no sense to him. Why would life be resistant to this particular spell? Of course, Alice was useless.

Resistance to [Telekinesis] scaled disturbingly well with Levels. One of the Level 4 monsters Keynes encountered during his scouting didn't even notice his attempt. Materials' resistance felt more linear, which was comforting but still annoying.

Then he discovered an astonishing fact: resistance for Level 0 materials was uniform and varied only with the weight of the material. Things started to change with Level 1 and higher materials. Suddenly, the types of materials mattered as much as their weight. There could be only one culprit: the Spirit. Although, Alice warned Keynes that he was simplifying things too much. While spiritual energy was a building block of everything, it didn’t bring Keynes any closer to solving the issue. Even understanding the concept of a spiritual matrix wasn’t helpful and so, Keynes was forced to learn [Telekinesis] the hard way.

And it was hard. Unlike [Flight], [Telekinesis] affected other things. Based on this insight, Keynes realised that there were two categories of spells: internal and external.

Internal spells affected only the owner of the spell while external affected things outside the owner’s of the spell. There were sub-categories, but they were not important right now. Internal spells seemed quite malleable, although their malleability didn’t mean improvement. That was a very easy detail to overlook. While [Flight] was better than when Keynes had found it, much of the improvement came from the techniques, or more precisely, a more skilful application and control of the skill.

Skills were like automobiles, to fully utilise one, an ascender had to train. To make it better, an essence with correct affinity was required.

During many frustrating attempts at moving rocks in Level 4 rifts, Keynes decided to support the skill with his spiritual aura. This didn’t work well at first, but he believed it was the way to go. He remembered how Shaper had deactivated his [Chaos Aura] with his spiritual aura. If something like this was possible, then using spiritual aura with [Telekinesis] should be possible as well.

Eventually, Keynes started to see clearly where the issues lay. His control of spiritual aura was insufficient despite an impression of mastery. Alice confirmed that he was on the right track.

So, if my spiritual aura control is bad, what does it say about others? He asked.

You must have noticed that spiritual aura has many facets and knowing how to suppress your own aura does not mean other aspects of aura control are mastered. Though I should not use the word 'mastered' here. I am yet to meet an ascender with a spiritual aura near mastery level.

What about Shaper? Keynes asked, nonplussed.

His aura control is the product of his advanced spiritual stage.

In other words, things looked dire because no one trained anything because they didn’t understand the concept of training. This was the consequence of Levels. Each time an ascender levelled up, their attributes increased making them stronger, faster, more perceptive, and so on. What was the point of training if all it took to get more powerful was to level up again? But this concept was outdated, not that it had ever been valid.

Even with the Rapid Learning buff, Keynes's progress with [Telekinesis] and spiritual aura was slow. He was clearly missing something. This led him to turn his attention back to Natalia and her team. From the information he'd found in the tablet, he was able to learn that the current carry team had made leaps and bounds of improvements over the course of weeks. From conversations with the team, after the rift runs, he learned that they trained their bodies outside of the rifts. Planning and all that was important, but Natalia was a strong believer in continuous improvement.

On the fifth day—a day before Keynes's level up—he ended up being cornered by Kora. He was on his way to the living quarter when she approached him. Suspiciously, Esopp had vanished earlier.

“What’s the matter with your hidden reward?” she asked, catching up with him.

Keynes glanced up at her. For the first time, she was alone. Usually, Miguel had followed her. Keynes debated if it was the right moment to speak with her about his idea. It had been forming since he'd learned of her ability to see essence. Unfortunately, four hidden rooms had failed to give him this particular spell. Only today's reward seemed at least partially valuable. A sphere of metal of runic rarity with a programmable mechanism that allowed manipulating psychic resistance of the sphere. It was the answer to his ongoing issue with [Telekinesis].

After short consideration, he explained it to her.

“[Telekinesis], woah,” she said. “Can’t say I’m not jealous.” She didn’t sound jealous to him and neither her aura showed signs of it.

“There is a long way before I can make it useful.”

He explained the nature of the hidden reward.

“I can’t wrap my head around these hidden reward rooms,” she said softly. “But then again, two years ago, something like a rift would have been an insane idea to me too.”

“Tell me about it,” Keynes agreed. “Things got out of hand pretty quickly.”

“Yes, that they did,” she said, falling silent for another thirty or so steps. When her voice picked up again, it was hesitant and quiet. “Do you think there will be other rift outbreaks?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. One of the things they hadn’t revealed was Keynes’s Talent. Even though it wasn’t a secret, it was not common knowledge either. Keynes didn’t wish to speak of it and so changed the topic. “Tell me about your skill. It is [Essence Detection], isn’t it?”

She was surprised that he knew about it and quickly started explaining it to him.

“I was authorised to take the skill shard…”

Keynes didn’t want to hear excuses or anything. Something like this hardly mattered to him. He told her that.

“Your idea of ‘no big deal’ is really off, do you know? Everything we’ve found in the hidden rooms alone is worth fortune. I don’t understand how you don’t see it. Aren’t the rifts the source of the income of your company?”

Keynes rolled his eyes. If he wasn’t careful they would be approaching the topic of his Talent, which he wanted to avoid. Still, he couldn’t help but agree with her. He no longer considered things as valuable even if they were worth millions or more on the market. His ability to open new rifts and furthermore, the existence of hidden rewards to which he had easy access, had corrupted his perception. In the end, he didn’t wish to change his attitude.

“Let’s get back to your skill. How much can you see?”

“Will you tell me what you’re doing with essence then?”

“It’s called cultivation. Or more precisely, spiritual cultivation. Its aim is to use essence to enforce your spiritual core, which in turn allows you to advance to the next spiritual stage.”

“Spiritual stage?” she asked, confused.

“Later,” he said. “Tell me about the limitations of your skill. How much you can see…”

They ended up wandering around the rift cluster until very late hours. The activity in the cluster didn’t stop at night. Hundreds of tons of materials were removed, labelled and shipped away until each rift was stripped clean. It was easy to lose themselves in the chaos. Keynes and Kora spoke about her spell until there was nothing new she could tell him. In turn, Keynes elaborated on the idea of spiritual cultivation and stages.

It was one of the best days he had in months.