Cyril Sarnath
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Chapter 169
🕑 Added 2023-05-26 17:36:08 +0000 UTCKeynes sat on a fallen log, listening to Wagner’s report. Keynes needed him to find Kora. He was torn by his loyalty and Lem Solaris’s stupid task.
“You have to find her.”
“We’ll,” Wagner assured him. “Once we finish cleaning up here.”
Keynes learned that the Solar Council had attacked their rift cluster and Emerald City following the destruction of their headquarters in Geneva. Tyr Truman and Andrew Gunnar were dead, which should have saddened Keynes more but barely felt anything. A part of him wanted a bloody revenge and only Alice’s bond kept him from turning back and travelling to Geneva. Wagner wasn’t very surprised that the council targeted Pucci instead of Keynes. They learned their lessons and went after easy targets. Pucci was the mastermind behind the alchemy department. Wagner had explained the whole reasoning of why kidnapping Pucci now was a very sound move. It implied that Keynes’s role in the grand scheme of things was diminishing. Either way, Keynes didn’t care. He just wanted Kora back.
One thing that piqued Keynes’s interest was the fight between Esopp and the council’s navy. Esopp defeated it single-handedly by freezing the fleet. Wagner admitted that they’d underestimated Esopp’s strength. Keynes agreed with that. The Hated Foe proved to be a greater boon than they anticipated. Wagner was going to take another look at the rift with this modifier.
Unsurprisingly, Windsor Freeman hadn’t appeared at Emerald City, which Keynes was glad for though they wanted the information about the superstructures.
“You should reconsider returning to Emerald City,” Wagner said after a short musing. “Our enemies know where you are. Even if they aren’t targeting you, it’s still dangerous to be there on your own. Unfortunately, we cannot spare Columbus or Esopp now that the council knows our location.”
“I told you before, I am fine. With [Flight], [Spiritual Wraith] and Alice, there is no chance I can be pinned down.” But [Blink] is the next skill on my list. Even if it was the assassin’s Talent, having an ability to blink in and out of a fight is too important. “What about the teleportation formations?”Keynes asked.
“What about them?”
“How’s it possible that we don’t have them?”
Wagner stared at Keynes through the tablet, looking tired. Keynes didn’t pretend he cared. This whole mess was on Wagner and his insistence to antagonise the council.
“To create one without research we’d need a blueprint but we were pretty unlucky with blueprints,” Wagner explained eventually, sounding…annoyed?
“What about research?” Keynes pressed forward. Witnessing the ability of such a formation firsthand, he couldn’t help but feel confused.
“We don’t have resources to research these formations, Keynes. We have more important issues to deal with than them.”
This caught Keynes off guard because he didn’t remember anything in their system to stand out as more important than the ability to teleport people around.
Wagner didn’t wait for Keynes to gather his thoughts and said, “Once you’re done with the dominion and Level 5 rift, we are leaving Earth behind.”
“Already?”
“Yes.”
***
The forest blurred beneath Keynes as he flew toward the centre of the dominion. Without Kora, he no longer feared the dominion’s debuff. His spiritual aura was too powerful for anything to threaten him.
Master, are you sure about this? Alice’s voice echoed in his head. Your state is…
I’m ready, Alice. As ready as I can be.
He continued his flight for another couple of minutes. His rank soared from thousands to hundreds to top 100 in the matter of ten minutes. Either the majority of challengers was on the other side or there was something very strange about this dominion.
MASTER, WATCH OUT! Alice screamed in his mind and Keynes veered off the trajectory of a flaming arrow. He immediately activated [Spiritual Wraith], his mana dipped by 70 points, which represented about one-third of his total man. With some mana used to sustain his flight, Keynes had to be mindful of his tank. The importance of mana was steadily increased as Keynes relied more and more on spells instead of pure physicality.
We have to find another way for you to warn me, Alice. Screaming in my head doesn’t help much. It came only a second before the arrow.
I am sorry, master. I will correct my behaviour, she replied, sounding apologetic.
Don’t worry about it now. Go find out who attacked me.
There was a team of seven people. All of them were Level 5 rift essence ascenders and from the feel of their auras, they were at least in the Medium stage. It was interesting to find anyone who wasn’t at the bottom spiritual stage. Keynes understood that with time, more ascenders with high spiritual stages would emerge.
Like Hunter.
It also reinforced his belief that his time in Level 4 was very limited. He still had an orb of perfection and an orb of grand insight. With only a rough idea of what to do with them, Keynes was still hesitant.
“I know you’re there!”one of the attackers called out. “Surrender and we’ll let you free.”
Keynes was not in the mood for playing. He could wait for [Spiritual Wraith] to come down from the cooldown but decided he didn’t want to hide.
A tree nearby him exploded as an arrow hit it. It wasn’t a flame arrow. Was there another archer or the original one could change the affinity of arrows? It didn’t matter. Keynes closed his mind and focused on [Telekinesis]. While the skill was not strong enough to affect living beings, it had several cool features. It acted as quasi-sense akin to the spiritual aura but without any pressure emitted by the latter. Keynes only recently started discovering different applications of his spells.
The attackers were slowly moving toward him, forming a crescent. They knew his position, which meant that at least one of them was above the Medium stage or had a Talent that enabled some sort of tracking. Their hands constantly moved, which also explained how they communicated without words.
They were many powerful items, the spiritual energy radiating off them, giving away their exact positions. He filed away this information. Powerful items had a substantial downside.
As they neared the distance of ten metres, Keynes threw the undergrowth into the air with [Telekinesis]. Dry leaves and twigs were quite light and it barely cost any mana. There were shouts of warning and surprise. Some spells were released in the direction of Keynes’s spot, though Keynes had already moved away from there.
[Mana Shot] took the archer out. It wasn’t charged enough to out-shot the man but he was definitely knocked out. Keynes didn’t wait though. He closed the distance as the undergrowth started to fall down. A woman in heavy armour tried to block Keynes’s kick but he feigned it and instead used [Mind Illusion] on her upon touching her head with his fingers. The illusion was too weak to take hold to Keynes’s surprise and he paid for this with a punch to his stomach.
Despite her bulky armour, there was no damage to Keynes’s health pool and he immediately counter-attacked, training with Kora kicking in and proving how beneficial was pushing one’s body. Two seconds later, the woman was lying unconscious on the ground.
Two done, five to go.
[Fireball] came at him but instinctively, Keynes flared his spiritual aura at full power, deflecting [Fireball]. Keynes didn’t plan it. He didn’t know he could do it. It was done in the spur of a moment without a conscious intent behind it.
“What the fuck?!” the attacker shouted as he stumbled. Two of the attackers straight up lost consciousness, being hit by Keynes’s aura.
“Must be a Talent,” said one of the two ascenders who remained on their feet. “No one can have such a strong aura.”
Another [Fireball] rushed at Keynes, he dodged it the old-fashion way. It was followed by some kind of root and wind attacks. Both only grazed Keynes, shaving off a sliver of his HP.
“Stand down,”one of the attackers said, wiping dirt from his face. “We aren’t here to kill anyone.”
Despite the words, a spear came at Keynes from behind. With Alice watching his back, Keynes easily dodged being punctured. But more attacks were coming. Keynes wished for [Empower] right now as he didn’t have any way of defending himself without lethal counterattack in the form of [Chaos Aura].
He dodged a few more times then decided it was time for some lessons. With only half of his mana left, he was very precise in his next attack. He used a spiritual aura together with [Chaos Aura], narrowing the area of damage to a spear-like area then used it on the spearman’s arm. It vanished in a puff of dust and scream of agony.
The spearman fell to his knees holding his shredded shoulder. The effect of [Chaos Aura] was random with no consistent outcome.
Two others who still stood stopped their attacks and started retreating although it wasn’t easy in the dense thicket. Soon they were tearing branches and roots as their pace hastened. They left the fallen behind without a second glance.
“Aaaaaaaa!” the spearman was screaming. “My arm! My arm! I-I will-will…”
“[Mana Shot].” Keynes didn’t need to use verbal commands to fire spells but there was something satisfying in doing so. The spell hit the spearman square in the face, knocking him out.
I sense monsters converging on this location, Alice informed him. There are a lot more of them than usual.
Without another glance, Keynes jumped into the air and flew away. He reviewed the fight in his mind, while Alice kept an eye on the potential enemies. The distance to the dominion sub-boss was several kilometres now and Keynes’s rank jumped once again to top 50. Despite this encounter and the dominion’s debuff, Keynes couldn’t help but think that he was missing something about this place. It was too easy.
***
“Please come in,” said Jedd Eldin.
A door opened and a mousy Level 1 slipped inside. Jedd immediately employed an appropriate mindset having experience in dealing with such situations. He briefly wondered who this man was, not his name or employment status, that information was displayed in his tablet, but if he was a whistleblower or a wronged employee who wished to trade information or defect to another department.
“Hi,” his guest said. As a Level 1, Jedd gave him around fifty years old. Without so many High Level ascenders around Emerald City’s offices it was easy to forget that most people in the company were still Level 1. “Mr Eldin?”
“Indeed.” Jedd showed the newcomer to the empty chair. “Mr Raust, I assume.”
The man froze hearing his name aloud, then gave Jedd a hesitant look but eventually made up his mind and sat down.
“How…do you know my name?”Rell Raust asked, his voice shaky. If not for the standard company uniform, Jedd would have a hard time taking him seriously. But he also understood the fallacy and trap of this avenue of thinking. Many of his previous bosses failed because they didn’t recognise a wolf in a sheep’s disguise. With Talents around, appearance could be the greatest misdirection.
“I do not let anonymous people into my office,” Jedd replied, a little surprised by the man’s naivety but he gave him the benefit of the doubt. “Don’t worry. No one else knows you’re here.” It was a lie unfortunately. The way their system was structured, gave someone somewhere in their company access to information about non-founder activity. Jedd spent a week trying to figure out the information management in the company and found that the position in the company determined the level of access to information. Founders had shared access to all activity in the company and nothing could be hidden from them.
But Jedd’s guest didn’t need to know this. He shivered enough without this knowledge.
“That’s…reassuring.”
“Please, shed some light on the reason behind your visit.”
“I…I run a fungi team under Mr Pucci. I tried to raise the issue with him several times but he has never been interested in my work and I was told that it is only because of Mr Kid that my team exists.”
Jedd nodded.
“I was going to make one last attempt at speaking with Mr Pucci but has gone to the dominion to supervise the work there in person. But I cannot wait any longer.”
“Unfortunately, I cannot say how long Pucci is going to be absent.” In fact, Jedd heard rumours that Pucci went missing but he didn’t say anything. “Unless you require the attention of Mr Kid?”
“I…yes. That would be for the best,” Rell Raust replied. “A few months ago, we development of neural network made out of fungi and we got ourself a situation...”
