Cyril Sarnath
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Chapter 171
🕑 Added 2023-06-09 19:14:25 +0000 UTCThe Solar Council’s conflict with Untainted Paradise was one of the strangest ones in the post-outbreak era. It has started with Untainted Paradise’s refusal to fulfil their end of bargain and open rifts for the members of the council.
Death of Syberius Sael and an argument over the first sub-boss dominion further deteriorated their relations but the true beginning of Untainted Paradise’s end was destruction of the council’s navy nearby Emerald City.
Unanimously, Untainted Paradise was voted out of the council. But the repercussions didn’t end there.
Their access to Arefact Exchange was revoked, effectively cutting off their main source of income. This, like any other council’s matter, was not publicly communicated, creating worldwide confusion when suddenly access to Level 4 materials ended.
Without their income, Untainted Paradise was expected to starve out and go bankrupt within several months but some councillors wanted blood. The Solar Council needed to make an example out of Untainted Paradise to ensure that no other company would rise against them in the future.
A comprehensive offensive was planned that would see all Untainted Paradise’s assets seized and the key individuals arrested or executed with sole exception of two individuals — Keynes Kid and Pucci. They were deemed as the critical assets but their apprehension was problematic as they were somewhere in the sub-boss dominion.
Regardless of Keynes Kid and Pucci’s location, the offensive received green light with Hunter spearheading the operation.
Then the unexpected happened and every resource at the council’s disposal was redirected.
***
#secret report rt3-21d
I can confirm that the Institute has detected a spiritual signature classed as an anomaly and decided to investigate it without informing the Solar Council. The decision was made at the highest level of the Institute.
***
Keynes approached the abandoned camp. It belonged to the couple he had met two days ago in the safe zone. His body and mind had been in poor shape back then, but it’d been enough to pick up on irregularities. Somehow, the two Level 6s resisted the dominion’s debuff so close to the centre and on top of that the male had a Talent that allowed him to track Keynes albeit for a short time and distance. It proved that his Untraceable buff had limits and the Pure Body wasn’t strong enough to resist a Level 6 Talent. Though without the Pure Body, Keynes suspected he wouldn’t have known about the tracking. It didn’t show as a debuff but a system message and a feeling that followed him until he was out of the Talent’s range.
He understood that Talents were stronger than skills and it was too easy to forget that they existed when they were so rarely used
It is here, Alice pointed at the two tiny patches of ground with several plants mixed together. They planted the same two saplings, then squeezed juice out handful grape-like fruits and finished up with planting a combination of herbs.
The thing here was that everything in these patches had already decayed. Keynes tried [Identify Plant] but the skill failed.
Once everything was done, the main plants flared spiritual energy and each one bore a fruit, which they ate, she continued her explanation.
Realisation was slow in coming but Keynes started to see the true theme of this dominion and he wanted to laugh. Plants and herbs in the dominion had a fundamental and very functional role. They were ingredients of recipes; recipes that were…miniature gardens.
“I’d appreciate it if you helped find Pucci and Kora,” Keynes said, knowing that Lem Solaris listened. Having Pucci would have been a tremendous advantage but Lem Solaris remained silent and it made Keynes wonder if she had any hand in his kidnapping…
Someone with his Talent would trivialise the challenge, though it wasn’t as if Keynes was in a losing position. His time with Hugo, Sophia, Wagner and Pucci rewarded him with better understanding of gardening even though he hadn’t had time to pursue this particular hobby or even make notes in his notebook he’d called “Possibilities Unlimited”.
Alice, go and watch these two ascenders for a couple of days. Learn everything you can; types of plants, arrangements, additional ingredients, out of ordinary methods. You name it, Keynes said. While he was confident in his ability in cracking the ‘recipes’ he wanted as much information as possible and the pair was a solid source.
- Sub-dominion Rank: 34
There were 33 ascenders considered ahead of him within the dominion. So it was safe to assume that others had figured out the theme too. He checked the Web and there were some people claiming that cultivating plants inside this dominion was important. Most of these people were laughed at and there were no details.
Keynes suspected that most of the people who commented on the Web, weren’t in the dominion and were just theorycrafting.
He put the tablet away. There was no news from Wagner other than the process of removing the Level 4 rift cluster was finished. All their rifts were now inside Emerald City. Also no further attacks came from the Solar Council. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any news on Pucci’s and Kora’s location, which only made Keynes more suspicious about Lem Solaris’s meddling.
With Alice gone, Keynes returned his attention to the decayed plants in the two miniature gardens. Even though [Identify Plant] failed, Keynes had another tool at his disposal. His control over spiritual aura gradually increased. He was playing with his aura at all times, trying to manipulate smaller and smaller threads. It was unfortunate that he didn’t receive any new techniques but he was sure that he was on track. He had the feeling that he was making progress.
The spiritual signatures of the decayed plants were corrupted. Something he expected. Physical condition heavily affected the spiritual makeup of things. Keynes didn’t stop there. He pushed spiritual threads deeper, searching hidden features which could hint at the identity of these plants.
The whole thing took him several hours and he had to use [Spiritual Wraith] twice to get rid of monsters that passed nearby. Eventually, he gathered enough little spiritual details that could help him find the plants. But first, he needed to eat. His body had recovered strength but now required nutritions.
He searched for a dry place but the closer to the centre, the heavier and more moist air was. Even without rain, most of the foliage was dripping water. Keynes was only minutely inconvenienced by the temperature and humidity. The Pure Body buff ensured this.
He ate in relative silence. The forest was alive with thousand little sounds coming from everywhere. An occasional roar or growl made him expand his aura but no threat was in his vicinity.
Holding Level 3 food, a nutrition-dense bar, in his hand, Keynes considered the new reality. High Level materials weren’t unheard before the first outbreak but they were rare, very rare. Now, there were entire cities being built from scratch with High Level materials, which was partially out of necessity as roaming monsters of Level 4 posed an unprecedented threat to Level 0 materials. Keynes had seen a video of a Level 4 rhino barrelling through a metre thick wall. And there were monsters that didn’t care for physical obstacles and needed to be stopped with runes and formations. But there was more to this new reality than that of course and it was where his thoughts were going to…
High Level materials weren’t only building materials, they were becoming fundamental elements of life. Pucci ran a project on one of uninhabited isles where they were replacing Level 0 soil with Level 4 and on top of that planted Level 4 trees. Though Keynes didn’t know the details, he read the preliminary results and knew that the trees produced only Level 3 oxygen. Of course, there was more to Levels than simply replacing Low Level materials with High Level ones.
But something bothered him in these changes, in this obsession to turn Earth into a Level 10 planet, though he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
Keynes took a bite of the bar. His attention switched to his meal. It was really packed with nutrients but as Level 4 and Perfect State ascender, he could feel it wasn’t enough to sustain him. So, perhaps, that’s what drives us to turn Earth into the Higher Level world. Low Level food won’t be able to sustain the strongest for very long.
This issue hadn’t crossed anyone’s mind so far because their spiritual imbalance between the environment and their cores was not yet out of sync. He realised that it would take time for the spiritual decay to kick in.
What nasty thoughts… Keynes shook his head, hard, dispelling the unsavoury thoughts. It might not be as grim as he believed. After all, Shaper was Level 10 and his spiritual stage was far higher than his. Obviously, Shaper was an outlier and Keynes suspected Shaper’s Talent at play here.
Not willing to commit any more thoughts to these issues, and not fully understanding why they emerged now, Keynes shifted his attention to the problem at hand. He needed to gather as many ingredients as possible and test them out. He finished off the bar and drank water he’d conjured, then left the spot and started moving through the jungle.
It was midday but the dense foliage above his head made the bottom of the jungle dark, forcing him to use [Night Sight] and actively scan the area with his spiritual aura. In this regard, he was constantly adjusting the method to make it less tiresome and more efficient. Unlike spells, spiritual aura didn’t consume mana but stamina and not just the physical one but mental one as well.
The bed of the jungle was its own microcosm. Thousands of non-monster insects moved about their own lives, oblivious to Keynes’s scrutiny. In a way, it was fascinating. These insects and small critters were…Level 3 and 4 like everything in this dominion. This gave him pause. Rifts taught him the most basic but also the most important lesson: everything was a resource.
Stranger still, rifts didn’t have non-monster entities. If a rift had insects in it, they were monsters and their intent was to kill or worse. Now he watched an ant colony work together, behaving like ‘normal’ ants. Other insects were the same, beetles, centipedes, butterflies.
As he observed them, his mind worked hard to determine what their role in the dominion was. Maybe he was overthinking things or maybe there was more to this dominion than he suspected?
Its initial characteristic was very simple, almost too simple.
I’ll have to consult this with Alice once she is back.
He turned away from the insected and started searching for plants that spiritually stood out from the rest of the environment. Going simply by appearance would lead him nowhere. The forest was simply too rich.
His spiritual sense picked up several interesting signatures. Half of them turned out to be insects hiding within foliage, but on those that were plants Keynes used [Identify Plant].
- Summer Thunder Knot (rare)
- -
- [Plant]
- Level 4
- Death Ivy (uncommon)
- -
- [Plant]
- Level 4
- Untrustworthy Moss (common)
- -
- [Plant]
- Level 4
The third result made him simple. The names were clearly meaningful. Each of these plants had something of a ‘theme’; thunder, death, untrustworthiness. He also noticed a sublime difference in their spiritual signature relative to their rarity. It wasn’t purely strength-based. There seemed to be another layer to the spirit of these three plants that hinted of depth and richness.
Really, with Pucci here, we’d have cracked this whole thing already.
But Pucci was not here and Keynes was left on his own.
As he moved his hand closer to Summer Thunder Knot he realised that he couldn’t just pick them. They needed to be replanted. For that, he needed prepared bedding. So he returned to the spot where the two miniature gardens were and cleared them with [Purify] leaving the pristine soil.
Okay, it’s time to experiment.
