But no matter how much he wished to agree with them, he couldn’t lose the Error affinity even if the trade off was absurdly good. The truth was that the Major Talent Upgrade at Level 10 might give him a similar choice without the drawback of losing the Error affinity. He also expected something big to happen if he reached Level 10 as a Perfect State.
Would you like to select Lofty as your Minor Talent Upgrade?
Warning: this choice is irreversible!
Y/N
Yes.
Keynes exhaled. He kind of expected the upgrade to be painful and was grateful it wasn’t the case.
“Done,” he announced.
Kora nodded.
“So, are we off to hunting Level 6 rifts?”she asked.
“Yep,” Keynes replied. “Lem, how much mana is a Level 6 scan cost?”
“Depends on the size of the scanned location.”
“How much can we afford right now?”
“A hundred square kilometre scan is within the surplus budget for this month. If you wish to expand the area of scan, you need to enquire Mr Raust and Miss Kowalska as they are in charge of mana budget.”
“We have a mana budget now?” Kora asked. “How thoughtful.”
“The mana budget was established recently to accommodate growing demand to use mana for base-building and experimentation.”
“How much is our current mana budget?” Keynes asked.
“Current daily mana income is between 50000 and 51000 mana units. The costs are divided into fundamental, operational and overheads. The fundamental cost covers the spaceship’s life support and amounts to 23000 mana units. The cost is lower than usual because of the life support ongoing renovation and fewer number of ascenders residing on the spaceship. Operational cost encompasses experimentation of food growth on the spaceship, operating shuttlecrafts and last but not least, running the filtration system on the ground base. Overhead costs accounts for anything not included in the previous two groups. On average, the total daily cost amounts to 40000-41000 mana, with a fixed daily surplus at 10000 mana.”
“Well, isn’t my sister smart,” Kora said with a tongue-in-cheek.
“In fact, the fixed surplus was Mr Raust’s idea.”
“Oh, I should have known that,” Kora muttered while Keynes smirked at her.
“Additionally, 10% of the current surplus reserve is available to you without submitting any request. Drawing at more than 10% would require consultation with Mr Raust and Miss Kowalska.”
“Shouldn't I have the final say?” Keynes asked, not out of spite but pure curiosity.
“If you wish to, you can overrule each and every decision and rule currently in place but doing so would undermine the decision-making in place. Would you like to proceed?”
“No need,” Keynes replied. “Let’s go with the 10% of the reserve for now. Any suggestions where we should start?”
“During Level 5 scan, I picked up different spiritual energies, some might belong to Level 6 rifts or higher. Also, scanning the same region will use substantially less mana as the scan can be focused on the points where these energies occur.”
“Do it.”
***
Keynes and Kora exited the semi-soul space and proceeded to the nearest Level 6 rift pinpointed by the scan. Before they left, they were informed about another discovery regarding the semi-soul space. It appeared that every person entering the semi-soul space had their own anchor. Natalia still could return to the ground base and more than that, if she chose to take Kora or anyone else with her, they would return to Natalia’s point of entry.
Keynes didn’t have an immediate idea what to do with it but he trusted his team would figure something out. Another matter they raised with Keynes and Kora was setting up a temporary headquarters here in the semi-soul space. Keynes and Kora naturally agreed. Keynes was actually surprised to find that they had ready access to wood and tools required to build a house. Apparently, one of the ascenders on the spaceship had Talent that allowed him to change a weapon into any tool of slightly lower quality.
Having tools was another step at expanding their base and operation. But it wasn’t important right now. The Level 6 rift was only several minutes away from where they had entered the semi-soul space. As they approached the Level 6 rift, both of them entered and left the semi-soul space establishing the new anchors. He also decided to check on his profile.
Name: Keynes Kid
Species: Human
Level: 5 (Perfect State fourth degree)
Progression: 0%
Spirit Stage: Superior
Spiritual Companion: Alice
Spells:
- Spirit Form (Integrated)
- Flight
- Create Water
- Telekinesis
- Night Sight
- Inspect Plant
- Chaos Aura
- Mind Illusion
- Purify (Integrated)
- Mana Shot
- Pure Body (Integrated)
- Touch of Elu’var (Soul-bound)
Talent:
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- Lockpicking
Techniques:
- The Technique of Cultivation
- The Technique of Aura Control (Innate)
- Knowledge of Wind Currents (Lesser)
- Flight
- Meditation
- Spiritual Sensitivity (Innate)
Status:
- Buffs:
Rapid Learning (medium, permanent), Perfect Recall (strong), Untraceable (medium, permanent), Chaos (permanent, fundamental), Attribute Imbalance Resistance buff (strong, permanent).
- Debuff:
Elu’var’s Curse (permanent, fundamental).
There were some changes. The Pure Body buff became [Pure Body] skill. What’s the difference?
Simple, in general, spells are more powerful than buffs, spells cannot be easily disabled and can be further modified. So, while buffs are useful you should never rely on them, Alice explained promptly with a hint of smugness.
The next big thing was the evolution of [Spiritual Wraith] into [Spirit Form]. This time he just checked on the skill description instead of asking Alice.
[Spirit Form] (active)
Integrated
Conceal your spiritual presence for 60 minutes. Can also change a physical appearance to a transparent ghost, which grants invisibility for 15 minutes. Spirit Form can cast a 5-metre-wide aura that will extend spiritual concealment to anyone within the aura radius. Increases mana cost to Very High (100).
Spirit Form grants the ability to enter the Spiritual Realm for up to 30 minutes.
Cooldown: 30 minutes
Mana Cost: High (50)
In general, it seemed to be a cheaper and better version of [Spiritual Wraith] but that was rarely the case. Even though it wasn’t stated in the skill’s description, Keynes had a faint impression that the [Spirit Form] would be able to hide his spiritual presence far better than [Spiritual Wraith] but that wasn’t why the skill had evolved though. Usually, skills’ strength progressed with Levels and sometimes with spiritual stages. In this case however, his skill evolved because it granted him a new ability - an entrance to the Spiritual Realm. The jury was still out there as to say if the addition was worthwhile or not. Alice benefited from the Spiritual Realm tremendously and even Keynes managed to use it to influence growth of plants but only time would tell its true worth.
Another change, perhaps the most important one, was an addition of [Touch of Elu’var] skill and corresponding the Curse of Elu’var debuff.
[Touch of Elu’var] (active)
Soul-bound
An ability to imbue modifiers on rifts. For each positive modifier, a negative counterpart is granted. Both positive and negative modifiers are random and cannot be selected or influenced.
Cooldown: 0 minutes
Mana Cost: Very High (150), variable.
The mana cost was more than half of Keynes’s mana, which currently was 286 points. He expected that with each extra modifier the cost would increase. He couldn’t discount a possibility that rifts’ rarity might also impact the cost. It was bothersome but not a deal-breaker. The sheer reaction of the representative of the Greater System made it clear that this skill was precious.
“More than that,” Alice said. “From what I can glean, this skill can directly affect a rift on the System level.”
“What does it mean?” Kora asked.
“It means that the skill could be compared to an ability that allows you to create a rift out of nothing. This level of control is usually reserved for the System.”
“It sounds like trouble,” Kora said. Keynes agreed that the skill was trouble but he couldn’t do anything about it and he’d decided to not dwell on it.
“Rightly so,” Alice continued. “Having an ability to add modifiers is a bigger cheat than than the ability to open hidden reward rooms.”
“We will see about that,” Keynes said, then moved on.
The final thing, which was not shown here, was that [Purify] became an aura on top of an active ability. Wait a second…
“I want to test something,” Keynes said and released [Purify] as a passive aura. “Lem, tell me how much Vitality I would need to survive right now without a spacesuit?”
“To survive without incurring permanent damage, you will need 150 points of Vitality,” the AI replied.
“What? How’s that possible? It’s a massive decrease from 500 to 150 just from one Level up,” Kora said.
“There are several factors at play here. Keynes has [Pure Body] which passively purifies his body from toxins and poisons. Activating [Pure Body] would multiply the effect depending on how much mana was fed to the skill. Additionally, [Purify] aura purifies the area around you, decreasing required Vitality by substantial margin. I calculated that you, Miss Kowalska, would only need about 380 Vitality to survive without permanent damage,” the AI replied.
Keynes poured more mana into [Purify] and added spiritual aura to the mix. The invisible aura gained a golden hue revealing a dome around 50 metres in radius.
“Your Vitality requirement fell to 100 points,” the AI said to Keynes and then added to Kora. “Your Vitality requirement dropped to 340 points.”
Keynes cut off the mana and stopped his spiritual aura. It gave him some things to mull over. Currently, his team was focused on creating a filtering system able to support life in their ground base, but maybe they wouldn’t need the filtering system in the future at all. Who knew?
Keynes decided to keep [Purify] passive aura on as it cost no mana and its spiritual taxation was negligible. On the other hand, decreased toxicity of the environment would make it cheaper for their spacesuits to run. They approached the nearest Level 6 rift.
“Blood,” Kora asked. “What does it mean?”
“Give me a second,” Alice said. “I will check it out.”
“What? How?” Kora asked. Keynes knew what Alice had in mind so he said nothing and just patiently waited for her to return. How Alice managed to enter a sealed rift was unknown to Keynes but he suspected that there were different fundamental rules that governed spiritual and physical beings.
She returned a minute later.
“It’s a vampire rift,” she explained. “A dangerous one.”
“I’m sure at Level 6 every rift is dangerous.” Keynes waved away her concern. “Let’s go.”
He proceeded with opening the rift and was, sort of, prepared for something new, which came to be. For the first time, he could remove the Overcharged effect from the rift before unsealing it. The consequence of this would be no rift outbreak, but also no boss or extra mobs. This suited them perfectly. At Lower Levels, outbreaks were easily manageable. A constant stream of Level 6 mobs could quickly turn into a disaster. Keynes had been worried about this earlier but his Talent grew in strength aside from the upgrade. He felt the upgrade activate as well but to a lesser extent deeming one Level of difference not big of a deal.
Furthermore he received a message.
Would you like to apply [Touch of Elu’var] on the rift?
Warning: for every positive modifier, the rift would gain a negative one.
Magnitude of modifiers depends on the channelled mana.
Y/N