Cyril Sarnath
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Chapter 162
🕑 Added 2023-04-23 19:27:53 +0000 UTCSorry for the delay but I am still struggling with my health issues.
UPDATE:
I was so tired I wrote Lex Solaris instead of Lem Solaris. It's fixed.
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Many things happened simultaneously as Keynes reached the sealed rift with his Talent. A feeling of wrongness washed over Keynes. He remembered it…but then he didn’t. Suddenly his mind started falling. He heard Alice’s terrified voice and someone’s pained grunt. Then the forest vanished and a familiar vision appeared in its place.
But…
The vision was wrong, twisted.
Chaotic.
Chaotic.
This was the key. This was the trigger. Out of nowhere, came unbelievable pressure and Keynes saw himself fall through space and time. He saw Shaper’s vision deform and crack. There was a sliver of resistance from it as it tried to stop Keynes from finalising the opening. Keynes understood; according to the vision, he wasn’t meant to cause the outbreak.
Chaotic pressure attacked the spiritual vision.
“They are dead men. All of them, fools,” said a ghastly voice. “You cannot save them. Their fate is already sealed. They belong to the enemy. Not you.”
The vision broke apart. Pain blinded Keynes as a brutal strength tore part of Keynes’s mind away.
For a brief moment, he was wishing for death. For a brief moment, time stopped and Keynes stared at the chaos. His mind tried to grasp what his eyes saw but it was like climbing a vertical, wet wall with nothing but naked hands.
“Not yet ready. Too weak. Too pathetic.”
Then he felt another power reach to him and pull him away from this terrible vision. They made him feel like a speck of dust inside a hurricane. Meaningless and powerless. So many things went over his head in that impossible stretch of time.
Suddenly, he was back at the rift but time was frozen. Lem Solaris stood next to him, a glow on her hand indicated that she’d used a spell on him.
“That’s not supposed to happen,” she said.
Keynes’s mind felt like a raw wound. Every thought crossing it was agony so he said nothing. He didn’t need to. Lem Solaris could read his thoughts and without hesitation she used another spell on him. Pain vanished but clarity was slow in coming.
“Thanks for saving.” Keynes said, getting to his feet.
“I didn’t save you,” Lem Solaris replied, looking straight ahead. Even in her child’s form, she looked domineering. “I was not able to reach you.”
“Then who?”
“The System acted and pulled you out.”
“Out of where?” Keynes asked with a shiver. He started to seriously hate his situation.
Lem Solaris glanced at Keynes, her face was expressionless.
“Out of Chaos,” she replied. “Even in my universe, our understanding of Chaos is rudimental and poor. It is connected to rifts, fuelling them in some unknown capacity. There are countless debates as to what Chaos is and if it has its own agenda because it is sentient and intelligent. No doubt. What occurred here is further evidence of Chaos’ involvement.”
“Involvement? Like…wait. What’s going on here, Lem Solaris? What does Chaos want? Why the System cannot just…seal it away?” He started to sound desperate. There was panic in his voice.
“Check your system messages.”
The Greater Rift has opened.
The Greater Rift? The System had warned him during the previous outbreak. But what was it?
As usual, Lem Solaris heard his thoughts and explained.
“It’s bad news. Where rifts are dimensional bubbles, the greater rift is something far more complex and sinister. It is a web made out of rifts. All of them connected to each other through different Levels. Unless you have dimensional Talent, you should not enter it. The rifts inside the greater rift reset at random and it is very easy to lose the way back.”
Questions exploded in Keynes’s head but Lem Solaris was quick to cut him off.
“Forget the greater rift. Forget the vision and Chaos. The System, in fact, managed to seal it off. I want you to focus on your training. On top of beating your friend in hand combat, you will have to reach the second sub-boss. I don’t expect you to defeat it as you are now. Just reach it and I will reward you with an appropriate spell and useful piece of knowledge.”
“Wai—”
Lem Solaris didn’t let him finish. Time resumed and Keynes was thrown in the middle of a Level 4 horde of monsters. His mind instantly switched to combat mode and he started punching and kicking the duck-like monsters. Common rarity, they posed no threat to a Level 4 Perfect State ascender. Keynes tore through them with ease. But he wasn’t alone. There were several soldiers from the Resistance. Despite being Level 3 and 4, they struggled with overwhelming force.
Without hesitation, Keynes shot toward the rift to kill the boss.
***
Lem Solaris was glad she could perfectly control her emotions. Managing emotions wasn’t her strong suit and what she witnessed shook her to the core. To witness the opening of the greater rift…
It was beyond rare occurrence. Her universe had only two greater rifts. Both were closed off to anyone below Level 50. Traveller had been banned from entering them because of ‘the incident’ but the greater rift wasn’t the important part of what she saw. She had seen what Keynes Kid had seen and she no longer doubted Traveller. Somehow they found themselves in the middle of a High Realm’s plot.
She quickly refocused on the task at hand. Without Traveller she couldn’t do anything and so there was no point to dwell on it. She teleported to where Kora Kowalska was and without a warning stopped the perception of time for her. She had a provisional approval from the System to include her into her training.
Kora Kowalska jerked around, looking confused. Lem Solaris couldn’t blame them, these ascenders were like the first humans encountering a hyper advanced civilisation. Though Keynes Kid showed capability to quickly adapt to Lem Solaris’s presence, others were going to be a pain. In his case, the job was done by the Rapid Learning buff. For the rest, finding themselves suddenly yanked out of reality by a god-like entity would never be normal. Lem Solaris briefly considered how to handle the girl. Kora Kowalska was older and mentally more mature than Keynes Kid, and from what Lem Solaris observed, she was analytical to a satisfactory degree.
To prevent the whole deluge of questions, Lem Solaris used [Serenity] on the girl. It put her at ease and made the whole conversation less annoying. Lem Solaris explained what she expected from her and what she would receive in return if she fulfilled the expectation.
After Lem Solaris finished her talk, she sent the girl to Keynes Kid, and then whipped them to a coast before the second sub-boss’ dominion appeared.
***
“Keynes.” Kora said. “Am I dreaming?”
They stood on the beach. Behind them the overgrown line of the forest ran in both directions.
Keynes turned to her. He knew what had happened but he was not permitted to tell her the truth. But Kora surprised him.
“I met a child. Her name was Lem Solaris. She told me to…reach the dominion sub-boss but… Keynes, what's the matter?”
The shock must have been obvious on his face. He definitely was surprised that Kora had met Lem Solaris.
“Nothing. It’s just going to make my life easier.”
They sat down and talked about their encounters, trying to piece things together. It wasn’t easy. Keynes’s memories were incoherent when it came to the opening of the rift. It was also a weird feeling to not be able to perfectly recall something. It made him check his buff/debuff status.
Status:
- Buffs:
Rapid Learning (permanent), Pure Body (permanent), Photographic Memory (strong), Untraceable (medium, permanent).
- Debuff:
Chaos (permanent, dormant, ???).
His Photographic Memory was intact and the Chaos debuff. At least, there were some good things in the big cauldron of mess.
“How are we gonna find the second dominion sub-boss?” she asked quietly sometime later. “This Lem Solaris was very vague about...well, everything.”
“I don’t think this is her intention,” Keynes admitted. “There is just too much to learn. My brain hurts just thinking about possibilities.”
Kora only nodded. There was nothing else to say. They had already gone over Lem everything Lem Solaris told them.
“Fancy a spar?” Kora asked.
Keynes gladly accepted as he needed to take his mind off the recent events. They both knew they would eventually need to make a move. Deep down they hoped that Lem Solaris had teleported them to this particular coast. With that conviction in mind, they trained for the next hour.
Master?
The unexpected question cost Keynes a painful punch to his stomach.
“Keynes?” worried, Kora immediately disengaged, hearing his grunt. “What happened?”
Alice? Are you back?
Yes!
“My spiritual companion returned.” He could now feel the bond snapping to life. It felt different but he couldn’t pinpoint the changes.
Master, I missed you. The sentiment was mutual. But there was no time to catch up as a system message appeared.
Dominion of the Father of the Forest has arrived (global message)
Reach the centre of the dominion and reap unique rewards (global message)
Number of dominion monsters globally has increased (global message)
Strength of dominion monsters globally has increased (global message)
Rewards dropped by dominion monsters globally has improved (global message)
Location of the Dominion of the Father of the Forest has been uploaded
*
You are inside the Dominion of the Father of the Forest
Dominion of Monsters
Local Event
*
The Will of the Trees
The global sub-boss challenges you to reach its seat of power and try to claim it for yourself.
Mission: Unknown.
*
Additional rules:
The dominion is open at all times.
*
The top 10 challengers are revealed globally in the sub-boss dominion ranking and their location (10 kilometres radius) is broadcasted.
*
Ranking is based on the distance to the sub-boss.
*
Some rules are unknown.
*
Additional debuffs have been inflicted on you.
*
Debuff acquired!
The Pure Body buff failed to prevent the debuff!
- The Will of the Forest (temporary, very strong) debuff.
Unknown.
***
The arrival of the second sub-boss dominion and the global system message caught many people off guard. Many of them paid for the moment of distraction with their lives as they were in the middle of dealing with the outbreak.
After the first two outbreaks, general attitude toward the next outbreaks and both of them were widely and globally celebrated. Even with over three thousands of rifts scattered around the world, the access to most of them was heavily restricted and so most people turned to alternatives. Australia remained untamed despite several tries led by various parties, including the World Government. The World Reserve became a no man’s land and the new destination of adventurers and challengers to the House of Poison. Without Windsor Freeman or his Inner Circle, no one in the World Government knew why the World Reserve had been protected in the first place and so they didn’t try to stop waves of adventurers travelling there. The third option was South America with New Columbiana in the north and abandoned and wilderness in the south. The fourth destination was Arshem, lying in between the Oriental League and the Baikal rift cluster.
The fourth outbreak brought deeper transformation to the world than anyone thought possible. Endless hordes of Level 4 monsters could easily overwhelm and overrun even a large team of adventurers. Life outside of cities’ walls became impossible to all but the most elusive and powerful ascenders. Suddenly, the world switched from scarcity to abundance of monsters as every corner of the planet was dominated by monsters.
But the transformation didn’t end there. As many prominent figures had already noticed, the age of High Level human essence ascenders was at the end of the road. For the first time in the history of Earth, any capable ascender could go into the wild and become a legend. Many did.
And even more answered the call of the global dominion and travelled to challenge the Father of the Forest.
Among the mayhem, the greater rift seemed to go unnoticed. For now.
