Keynes woke up with growing apprehension about the impending event. He was going to level up today, achieving Level 4 and the third degree of the Perfect State. He'd inquired Alice about the potential buffs and rewards for this ascension, but she'd remained tight-lipped.

As he got out of bed and finished his morning routines, he noticed a message on his tablet: Jedd Eldin had entered negotiations with Untainted Paradise. Keynes added a note to the hiring department to be generous. He needed an assistant as soon as possible as his to-do list was constantly growing.

I hope they get him on board in the next few days.

***

The air outside was heavy and hot, the sky overcast. Keynes was definitely going to learn how to shield himself from weather. His visits to the cold rift were horrible, and he refused to wear that silly wetsuit, even though it had potent thermal properties. Whoever was in charge of fashion needed a kick in the butt. Why not incorporate the wetsuits into proper uniforms or something?

Kora appears to be waiting for you, master, Alice said, pulling Keynes out of his musings about fashion. He glanced ahead and saw her standing by the door to the first dome.

"Hello," she said, with a mix of shyness and excitement.

"Hi," Keynes responded, unsure of what to say next. He hadn't expected to meet her here. She had always been with her team before their rift runs started.

And today of all days, Esopp wouldn't be here until later because he had something to take care of. She smiled, making this more uncomfortable than it should be. Keynes didn't enter the dome. If she was waiting here alone, it likely meant she wanted to talk to him without witnesses.

“I understand you weren’t waiting here without reason,” he said, a little awkwardly, a touch too coolly. If Kora noticed it, she gave no sign.

“Yes,” she acknowledged, pushing herself off the rail and stepping closer to Keynes. Not close enough to invade his personal space, he was glad for that. When it came to dealing with women, Keynes was quite incompetent. “I have been thinking about things you said yesterday and… do you think you would have a place in your team for me?”

His frown deepened, then he began to register what she’d said and things in his head got weirder. The hot and humid air was forgotten for now as well as the fact that the carry team was waiting inside.

“I’m sorry, I got ahead of myself,” Kora apologised.

Keynes shook his head. “No, you didn’t. I… just didn’t expect it.” Unless he misunderstood her intention. Their conversation yesterday revolved around her skill and how it could be used to help more people to advance to higher spiritual stages.

“Still, it was presumptuous of me—”

“Stop it,” he cut her off. “I wouldn’t have told you about spiritual stages and cultivation if I didn’t think you weren’t worth it. But the truth to be told, I didn’t really give a thought about forming a team, especially given my skill set. I’m not exactly a team player.”

It wasn't the full truth. During his time with Vivena, Haruka and Bill, his thoughts had oscillated around a topic of having a team but they’d been more in perspective of his future space travels, not this. And there another thing emerged, the carry team had shown him what ‘being a team’ meant. They were precise, efficient and organised in fashion far exceeding Keynes’s imagination.

“I understand…”

Keynes sighed and she trailed off. She was too apologetic.

“You don’t,” he said, trying to not sound malicious. “You cannot have a shred of idea of what… who I am or what I can do.”

She looked like she was going to say something but in the end she stayed silent. Keynes felt bad. He didn’t mean to shut her down; he was unreasonable.

“Sorry, I’m just nervous about today. Level 4 is a big deal to me.”

The change of the subject lifted the mood and steered the conversation away from the topic of a team, which wasn’t Keynes’s initial intention. Nonetheless, talking about Levels and how they influenced their lives was a good idea.

Natalia gave them a stink eye when they entered the dome. They still had a few minutes to spare but Kora suddenly jerked and then—without explanation—joined the rest of her team. Keynes suspected that [Mental Link] was at play here. After the team had absorbed the skills, Keynes and Esopp discussed with them the parameters of [Mental Link]. In essence, the skill allowed two or more ascenders to speak telepathically. There were limits to the spell though. It cost mana and had fixed range with the biggest issue being that it didn’t work between two ascenders if one of them was inside a rift. They didn’t test it on privacy screens or rooms secured with runes or formations. This was the job of the science department; and later would also involve Keynes’s department of knowledge.

The range of [Mental Link] was around 100 metres, although Keynes suspected that it’d change with Levels, spiritual stages and manual modifications. Another huge limitation of the spell was the fact that only two people could converse at the same time. Others who had the spell and were linked to each other, were excluded from the conversation. From pressuring Alice a little, Keynes was able to figure out that the limit of active links wasn’t hard capped. He felt it was a major shift in the way this skill was limited and he wondered how he could break the limits of [Telekinesis], but it’d yielded no insights or discoveries.

After the last of the VIPs—minus Esopp—gathered, another day of rift runs started. Keynes wouldn’t level up until the seventeenth rift anyway. Esopp had warned him to wait as he wanted to be there. They’d agreed that other VIPs would be excluded from that rift in exchange for some minor bonuses elsewhere, although these things were handled by the cluster manager.

The next few hours passed quickly as Keynes remained in his mind for most of the time. He was mulling over Kora’s earlier words. Having her on his team…

What would having a team mean anyway? He asked himself, unsure where his train of thoughts was going. There were several layers he considered here. The first layer would be his personal group that would follow him around the world and inside rifts. Then there would be the extended group that would help him run his department and his dominion. Finally, he might need an additional layer consisting of special individuals who would handle for him special requests, like finding out what his brother was up to or searching for Daiyu Fen and Tulli.

And above all of this, I’m going to need enough stuff to travel with me to other planets and moons… It sounded strangely unreal, even in his head, though it had no reason to. Humankind had colonised most of the solar system already. They’d failed to terraform the extraterrestrial planets or moons because of the cost but they’d become sophisticated in building bases and underground cities.

These are some ambitious plans, Alice muttered unhappily because to her these ideas felt threatening. Keynes could feel her emotions despite her attempts at obscuring them. At the same time, it was touching, although a bit annoying, that she was convinced this course of action would impact her in a negative way.

Given the pace of the advancement, I don’t think they’re that ambitious.

Esopp appeared two rifts before Keynes’s expected level up. He wasn’t forthcoming about his absence but it involved hiring someone. It seemed like all founders were going to build their own ‘armies’ of assistants. Well, with the exception of Wagner. He already possessed one.

The time eventually came and the six of them entered the rift.

“What should we expect?” Natalia asked with only a hint of displeasure she’d previously shown.

“Just a standard level up,” Keynes replied flatly. “Nothing spectacular.”

She nodded though she didn’t look convinced.

The theme of the rift was rainy ruins of a mediaeval castle with some primitive orcs and a strange variation of wolves. With almost childish easiness, the carry team was killing the monsters, the essence slowly built up inside Keynes as he circulated it around his spiritual core. Unlike cultivating his spiritual core, which led to gaining a higher stage, this process didn’t have the same resistance and difficulty. Levelling up was easy and straightforward…

The moment he reached 100% was much more pronounced than the last time. He felt completeness. He didn’t trigger it right away despite the urge. He was curious about these new forces that suddenly appeared inside him. All the essence that made up 100% of his progress was now a large pool within him. He couldn’t touch it as there was thin but powerful film covering it. Normally, unallocated essence would be open to manipulation but once he committed it toward the progress it vanished from his senses—until now.

Kora had told him that not only his way of manipulating essence was different but the essence itself felt different. Keynes had realised that the System’s penalty wasn’t simply a penalty. It was something else. His conversation with Kora had led him to a simple but important conclusion; the essence was a building block of ascender’s power. And because there were three types of ascenders: human essence, rift essence and Perfect State, and their power levels varied dramatically, especially at later Levels, it meant the greater power had to come from somewhere.

It came from the compressed essence. The penalty was only an indication of how strongly the essence had to be compressed to fuel the new strength of an ascender. This combined with Kora’s observation explained why Keynes’s essence was different. He was glad that the System did the compression itself and the only drawback was a greater amount of essence required to level up.

His conclusion opened up some questions. First of all, cultivation or circulating essence around a core actually required manual compression and it wasn't an easy process. So, in this regard, the System wasn’t lending its hand.

Keynes pressed against the film, not to touch the pool of the essence but to see what his body would do.

It triggered the ascension to Level 4…

Congratulations!

You reached Level 4.

All attributes Advancements achieved.

Perfect State (third degree) unlocked!

-

Orb of Perfection awarded.

-

Orb of Grand Insight (third degree reward) awarded.

-

Purifying Body upgrade into Pure Body (third degree reward).

-

[Purify] (third degree reward)

-

Spiritual Aura upgraded.

-

[Spiritual Ghost] upgraded into [Spiritual Wrath] (third degree reward).

-

Trait of Spirituality (third degree + Superior Stage reward) awarded.

-

Gain another Perfect State to unlock further rewards.

Upon gaining the Perfect State (fourth degree) permanent (cumulative) 15% essence penalty will be applied.

Oh…

His spiritual aura vanished completely. Or at least it appeared so to others. What they didn’t see or know was that under his new spiritual weight, it collapsed. Through his Superior stage, Keynes felt his new spiritual power, its strength on a completely different, absurd level.

If he released his spiritual aura this moment, he would knock out everyone inside the rift for a couple of minutes without exception.

As he considered touching it, Alice hissed, do not, master. Your spiritual control is so bad that destabilising the spiritual equilibrium is going to make a mess.

Right… What then?

You must learn how to control it without exploding like a dying star. You will have to stay inside this rift until then.

He tsked then looked up his profile.

Name: Keynes Kid

Species: Human

Level: 4 (Perfect State third degree)

Progression: 0%

Spirit Stage: Superior

Spiritual Companion: Alice

Spells:

Spiritual Wrath (Integrated) Flight Create Water Telekinesis Night Sight Inspect Plant Chaos Aura Mind Illusion Purify

Talent:

Lockpicking

Techniques:

The Technique of Cultivation The Technique of Aura Control The Technique of Lesser Knowledge of Wind Currents The Technique of Flight The Technique of Meditation

Status:

Buffs:

Rapid Learning (permanent), Pure Body (permanent), Photographic Memory (strong), Untraceable (medium, permanent).

Debuff:

Chaos (permanent, semi-dormant, ???).

Attributes

Permanent

Temporary

Total

Strength (0%)

35

2

37

Dexterity (0%)

35

2

37

Will (0%)

35

2

37

Mind (0%)

35

4

39

Perception (0%)

35

2

37

Vitality (0%)

35

2

37

He didn’t even need to look at his new attributes to feel his new strength. Obviously, his body, mind and spirit required time to adjust to new parameters but…

Holy shit, I feel like a god… or—wait.