Cyril Sarnath
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Chapter 160
🕑 Added 2023-04-16 12:39:18 +0000 UTCWagner and his top executives waited. After the encounter between Windsor Freeman, Keynes and Columbus, Wagner had called everyone into Emerald City for the meeting and confirmation of another outbreak.
Only several key people were missing like Andrew Gunnar who had become Untainted Paradise’s new CEO and moved to Geneva, a few heads who ran Wagner’s secret projects. He didn’t count the other three founders as their involvement in the company’s operations was marginal and their understanding of what was happening barely fractional.
Unlike the founders, the people in this room made Untainted Paradise not only function but they turned it into the most profitable machine in the world, which wasn’t easy with all the factors acting against them.
Untainted Paradise had over 300 thousand employees on their payroll, had to keep the location of Emerald City and their Level 4 rift cluster secret while their operations involved millions of tons of Level 4 materials being shipped everyday out of here. The fact they’d pulled it off in the first place was a miracle. Wagner hadn’t expected the secrecy to last this long and was preparing Emerald City for the public reveal. Initially, the founders had planned to open Emerald City and sell access to the public. But the maths was cruel and the kind of money they earned from each rift couldn’t be charged from individuals. Even if their profits from rifts dropped by 90%, the public still wouldn’t be able to afford the access and given Untainted Paradise’s own needs, their rifts might never be opened to anyone outside their company.
Despite their best efforts, 99.9% of Untainted Paradise employees were still Level 1. And now, their priorities changed once more as Untainted Paradise needed heavy hitters to counter Hunter. So they had to level up fighters to minimum Level 8. Wagner admitted that he’d been wrong about this. He hadn’t expected another individual powerhouse to rise so early and had preferred to develop weapons. Hunter had thrown his plans off the rail and now Wagner needed his own powerhouses to defend Untainted Paradise.
He also was frustrated at himself for only seeing it after he’d absorbed and had used [Higher Comprehension] skill. It was a marvellous skill bought for pittance, relatively speaking. It wasn’t without drawbacks. Its mana cost was astronomical and emptied Wagner’s mana pool in five minutes. Although he was very sure that it was possible to manipulate the degree of comprehension gained from the skill, Wanger wasn’t yet there. He suspected the ability was linked to spirit and he had foolishly neglected gaining spiritual stages against Keynes’s advice.
With [Higher Comprehension] Wagner had understood the importance of spirit. Though the skill was nothing like the Fruit of Insight, it allowed Wagner to connect dots of knowledge he possessed in his mind. The Fruit of Insight on the other hand imparted knowledge that was not his. Frankly enough, there was a spell called [Minor Insight] but it had been sold privately to an unknown buyer. Wagner’s spies tried to find it but without success so far. It wasn’t the end of the world. With higher Level materials, Pucci and Wagner were able to replicate the mechanism of the Fruit of Insight and worked toward creating a stronger version, although it didn’t appear like they would be able to shorten the time for the fruit to be ready for consumption. So no fruit for another hundred years.
Speaking of the devil, Pucci was eyeing Wagner with mild irritation. Pucci was a genius with gardening-oriented Talent that made him invaluable to the company. Their history went back to the time when Wagner had learned of Shaper and magical gardening. Now Pucci was the head of the second biggest moneymaker of Untainted Paradise - potions. He still oversaw gardening as almost all potions required herbs, fruits or vegetables as their primary components but Pucci’s work ethic led him to discover their bestseller potion - mana potion.
It accounted for 95% profits of all sold potions. It was a baffling result considering life and stamina potions being available for sale. Well, it wasn’t exactly ‘baffling’ as the mana itself was currency and the current price of a mana potion and its flat boost to mana regen, made profit as long as buyers could sell or store away their mana. Because of the flat boost, it was mostly bought by low Levels as supplement to their income. Life and stamina potions were bought by adventurers as ascenders who travelled outside of cities’ walls called themselves.
None of their potions had drawbacks anymore thanks to extensive research Pucci’s department had put in. Nonetheless, these potions were only Level 1 with Level 2 currently scheduled for the company use only. Level 3 had many drawbacks and Level 4 didn’t work as intended.
Wagner was going to buy [Higher Comprehension] and other intelligence-enhancing skills for his researchers once such skills hit the market. With [Higher Comprehension] Wagner had been able to realise that the same materials of higher Levels didn’t act the same way as the lower Level materials. This was parallel between potions and engineering materials.
The control centre which was the beating heart of Emerald City was hailed to be made exclusively from Level 4 materials but it was merely propaganda. Not only they didn’t have access to many Level 4 materials, but many materials couldn’t be created even if they followed the lower Level blueprints of the same combinations. It was especially true for electronics, which required many rare metals. Wagner’s engineers could not replicate low Level solutions with Level 4 metals, which led him to believe that at the higher Levels, materials behaved differently. He suspected spiritual energy at play but their methods of detecting spiritual energy were rudimental and far worse than the Institute’s.
If Wagner’s key researchers received [Higher Comprehension] skills, he believed they would be able to make leaps and bounds in their research on spirit. He internally sighed, understanding how stretched his priorities were and how little resources they had.
On top of all the issues, the encounter with Windsor Freeman had made Wagner consider changing the timeline on building the spaceship. If the Solar Council started moving rifts off the planet, they’d eventually ‘starve’ the population. The worst was that with [Higher Comprehension] Wagner saw the merit behind it and would do the same.
Through the World Government, the Solar Council had space traffic under complete control. No unsanctioned private space flights were allowed. If the Solar Council managed to move all the rifts off the planet, they would eventually create the scenario where they had absolute control over who, when and how much levelled up. Freeman was right, they were far more sinister than him. But Wagner didn’t see a way he could stop them right now. The only option was to be able to leave Earth without the Solar Council’s knowledge. It was possible as they had blueprints to create a stealth field and stealth materials but the cost and expertise required was still beyond what Untainted Paradise had. Wagner even considered bringing Haef Hasting into the space project. The man’s Talent was extraordinary and after Keynes had taught him about spirit, he managed to create items with modifiers other than attributes. No other crafter in the company managed to replicate his achievements so far.
But at the same time, Wagner’s deep dislike for the man made him hesitate. Hasting couldn’t be trusted.
“Wagner, how long?” Pucci asked. He clearly ran out of patience. “I have important work to do.”
Other heads stared expectantly.
“Any time now.” Columbus had informed him of Keynes’s decision and later on about Keynes’s departure to the rift.
Wagner had asked the heads to be here during the outbreak to coordinate the mayhem that was about to befall on the world. Even the head of finances was here although her face was sour. She vehemently argued against another outbreak. From her perspective, their exclusive access to Level 4 rifts put them in a favourable position—a good thing she didn’t know about the deal with the Resistance—and once the world gained access to Level 4 materials, their profits would dwindle substantially.
She was correct in that regard. While Level 4 materials were powerful, their rifts didn’t produce or have anything that would differentiate them among other Level 4 rifts. In other words, at the moment they were a big fish in a small pond but very soon the ocean would open up and their status would no longer mean as much. Her projection put their new profits around 40% of their current ones. If they included the insane Solar Tax of 70%, it would decrease their profits to 12% of the current ones. It looked dire but Wagner wasn’t going to hand over 70% of their profits to the Solar Tax any time soon and they were close to finishing prepping the Level 5 rift cluster. Not to mention, the ever-growing demand for potions. Although the current earnings from the Level 4 rifts dwarfed those of potions. For now.
“Is it really necessary for me to be here?” Pucci asked. “You know well that I am of no use in meetings.”
“You are,” Wagner replied. “I need your assessment, Pucci. We have a team, with two Level 4 orbs of relocations, ready to travel to any part of the world we believe have important Level 4 rifts.”
They were lucky to find another two orbs of relocations shortly after Columbus’s and Keynes’s departure. Wagner wanted to use the opportunity of chaos caused by another outbreak, and the stolen technology from the Institute and grab the best rifts for Untainted Paradise.
Cyrano smiled and Wagner knew well why. The news of the Solar Council’s plans convinced Wagner to no longer play nice and give green light to steal Level 1, 2 and 3 rifts from the World Reserve and Australia. Cyrano as the head of rifts would soon have more toys to play with.
“And how am I going to know which rifts are good?” Pucci asked, unconvinced.
“You didn't pay attention at the last meeting, old man, did you?” the head of research snorted. “We have access to the Institute’s detection network. We will know every location of every rift that opens.” Once that happened, they’d use satellites, drones and CCTV to access footage at these locations to judge the appearance of the monsters.
One of the breakthroughs achieved by Untainted Paradise’s mana-powered AI was to find a correlation between the monster types and the rift’s environment. Their library wasn’t yet impressive but they had a few matches they wanted to pursue. In truth, Pucci wasn’t required here but Wagner didn’t want the heads to fully grasp the extent of the AI’s evolution. The pre-outbreak AI models had been fine but their technology had plateaued and it was a wild gamble on Wagner’s and Pucci’s part to try to integrate the AI and mana through organic materials. It paid off big time and now Wagner scrambled to cover the evidence of his AI breakthrough.
The head of research knew this and warned Wagner about Keynes’s attempt to create the department of knowledge. Wagner had been receiving daily complaints about Jedd Eldin, Keynes’s personal assistant, who turned out to be a real deal. The personal assistant recruited a very sophisticated project team, and created the strong foundation of what meant to be Keynes’s department. The head of research feared that his department would eventually be subjugated by Keynes, which Wagner couldn’t easily dismiss. Keynes’s behaviour was erratic and unpredictable. He was very young and while his views were fresh, they were dangerous. Letting Keynes have an access to accumulated knowledge of Untainted Paradise wasn’t something Wagner wanted to happen.
“I pay attention to what’s important,” Pucci replied dismissively. “Plants are important. Even potions are…”
Wagner stopped paying attention to their argument as a massive red warning appeared on the screen inside the meeting room. The fourth outbreak started. The interactive map of the world showing the spiritual energy signatures went white.
And even without it, they felt the surge of spiritual energy pass through their bodies.
“God almighty,” someone mumbled.
“How many rift signatures?” Wagner asked a technician through the microphone.
“Five hundred nineteen,” came a reply.
“Pff,” the head of finance snorted. “We officially have gone from owning 99% percent of Level 4 rifts to 4%. Congratulations, we are screwed.”
