Kora’s words stopped the argument. Several heads turned their way. Keynes felt different auras clashing with each other. He was sure that he, Kora and Persephone were the only ascenders who could sense auras of other people to such a degree. Natalia, despite being almost a Level 6 herself, wasn't at the Medium stage yet.
It wasn’t only an issue of difficulty of essence cultivation but also of competing priorities. Essence was an internal resource required for Levelling, spiritual cultivation and other improvements involving skills, attributes and techniques. Keynes had learned that Levelling was by far the easiest and most efficient use of essence because all other avenues were prone to waste a lot of essence in the process.
But he wanted to stress out to Natalia that spiritual stages were far more important than they expected at Higher Levels and he’d not let anyone anywhere near a Level 6 rift without minimum the Medium or even Elevated stage.
Natalia was the first one to break away from the group. She looked annoyed and Keynes could easily guess who was the source of her foul mood. Rell stood on the other side of the table, vividly gesturing. Because of their new structure, Natalia, Rell and Willow were equal, so she no longer could tell him to shut the fuck up.
Others were less vocal though their auras were painting the true picture. Jedd, who Keynes didn’t expect to find here, was deep in thought, clearly worried; Trisk was bursting with energy but seemed too polite to interrupt Rell; Willow was pointing at some documents scattered on the table, while Pierre and Roman were arguing between themselves. For some reason, Persephone wasn’t here.
“Good you’re here,” Natalia said as she reached Keynes and Kora. “We must run some decisions through you because we cannot agree on how to move forward.”
Keynes groaned internally. Playing politics and management was the last thing he wanted to do. This, and Levelling, had been why he’d delegated running the operations to these three. But in their defence, the semi-soul space hadn’t been a thing when they set up the command structure.
Maybe I should put Jedd in charge of them? Hm. He glanced at Jedd and realised he couldn’t do this to him.
“I’m all ears,” Keynes said and others quieted down.
“There are two issues here,” Natalia said. “First, we can’t decide if we should include the semi-soul space into our operations. It sounds like a no-brainer but only you, Kora and Persephone can move between without issues and we don’t have communication with the outside world…”
“It doesn’t have to be included in daily operations,” Rell snapped. “But we must take advantage of this place and use it accordingly. There should be a contingency plan that involves the semi-soul space.”
Natalia shot Rell a chilling stare but didn’t refute his claim.
“This leads us to an anchor system. Even if this place is not part of our standard operations, we’d be expected to keep people here to act as anchors. In that case, we’d need the three of you to agree to a workable schedule, otherwise we can’t leave people here for god knows how long.”
“Don’t forget about instances from variable rifts we wish to preserve,” Rell said.
“Not just variable rifts but any instance from any rift that we need more time than a recharge time to fully explore and exploit. Some recharge times were heavily reduced but our operational capacity was barely improved,” Willow added with a hint of annoyance.
“We aren’t going to turn this place into some dispatch hub. In a few weeks, the traffic of materials alone would destroy it…”
“Hold on,” Kora spoke up, releasing some of her spiritual aura, which silenced everyone, even if they hadn’t spoken yet. “I said I have something of interest and you should’ve asked me what it was, instead of changing the subject.”
She didn’t sound angry but there was a hidden edge in her voice. Her threatening demeanour looked comical with her petite size. It worked like a charm and everyone stood and waited for her to explain what she meant.
Instead of elaborate, Kora dumped the loot from the Level 6 rift and cued Keynes to do the same. He even removed the bookshelf from the spatial pouch, placing it next to him.
The silence was deafening but their auras were boiling with excitement and curiosity. They were about to swarm the loot when Kora spoke up again.
“This isn’t all,” she said. “The rift itself has many interesting properties, including magical stones.”
“Magical?” Everyone except Willow and Rell appeared confused.
Keynes gave them a brief explanation from Alice but it looked like Willow and Rell knew more than that. According to them, magic was a special property while spiritual energy was the building block of reality. They went into technicalities and theories regarding magic.
“Enough,” Natalia snapped. “Just tell us, what got you so riled up?”
“Haven’t you been listening, woman?” Rell asked. “If an object is magical then it means it can be used an unfathomable number of things.”
“Like?” Natalia asked, with a sigh.
“Like creating an anchor or proper runic infrastructure. I bet that spaceship of his would gobble the whole rift worth of those magical stones in one go and ask for more.”
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“That is correct,” the spacesuit spoke into Keynes’s ear.
The argument between Natalia and Rell started anew. It was difficult to pick a side, because both of them made sense. The semi-soul space gave them a unique and tremendous advantage and not using it was simply dumb, but on the other hand, it’d forced Keynes, Kora and Persephone to remain here or at least stick to some kind of a schedule. In other words, it would undermine Keynes and Kora’s plan to Level up, while Persephone had her own projects going on. On top of that, turning it into a hub of constant movement between different locations would undoubtedly wear this place down.
There was no easy solution here.
“Let’s for now, use this space for scheduled meetings between us and for emergencies only,” Keynes said, interrupting the argument.
“Would a valuable instance of a variable rift be considered an emergency?” Willow asked.
A good question. Yeah, it was time to be a big boss.
“If it contains a strategic resource for us, then yes. But you must draw a list of what kind of resources could be considered as such and leave it here for me,” Keynes replied. “That said, I want some rules here. First of all, You can raise a single building of stone foundations and wood only. A few bedrooms, a meeting room, standard amenities, a warehouse, maybe a cellar. And a yard. Once you figure out how to create stable anchors without using people we will further discuss the use of this place. But I want to be clear, our base of operations is on the surface and the spaceship is our research facility. Our aim is to move anyone but necessary personnel to the surface base.
Willow, Rell and Trisk. You’ll go with Kora back to the Level 6 rift and gather all required information and resources. But do not overdo it. I don’t want to hear any more arguments.”
“What about the loot? There are rift orbs, skill shards, items…” Rell obviously decided to disregard Keynes’s words.”
“You will get a shot at looking through this stuff when you’re back from the rift.”
Rell looked like was going to argue but Keynes nodded to Kora who grabbed Rell and vanished then returned for Willow and Trisk.
“So annoying,” Natalia muttered. “Why must people like Roust have a genius-level intellect? So unfair.”
He agreed with her, though Rell wasn’t as bad as she made him look. He just liked to do things his own way. Keynes glanced at Pierre and Roman, their presence here, was a little out of place given their ranks but he realised he should have sent them with Kora. The air in the rift might hold a key to improving the air filtering system. And these two were experts in the field.
Fuck it.
“Pierre, Roman, I think you should follow them into the rift. I want you to look into the air in that rift.” Keynes said, then moved them to the rift, finding Trisk sitting on the ground with his legs crossed.
Is he meditating? Keynes asked Alice.
Or he is using his Talent, she replied.
While meditating? Keynes continued.
“What’s going on?” Roman voiced his own confusion.
Trisk cracked an eye open, unsurprised to find them here.
“I’m doing an analysis of this building,” Trisk replied. “It’s easier this way.”
He closed his eye, falling back into a meditative state. A cue for them to leave him be. Keynes sensed Kora, Willow and Rell outside.
“Let’s go,” he said to Pierre and Roman, leading them outside where he handed them to Kora and happily left.
Upon his return to the semi-soul space, he found Natalia and Jedd checking the items.
“I guess you don’t have a Level 6 Scroll of Identification on you?” she asked Keynes, while she held a skill shard.
He shook his head.
“These weapons look promising though,” she said. “But the blood amulet is useless unless you have a compatible Talent.”
“The rift has a blood affinity so that’s expected,” Keynes said.
“Blood affinity?” Natalia glanced at the bookshelf with a renewed interest. “Are these books real?”
“Yep.”
Natalia put the skill shard back on the table and moved to the bookshelf. Keynes left her to it and approached Jedd.
“Do you have a moment?”
“Of course.”
They walked to the edge of the semi-soul space. Unlike the rift, which seemed to never end, but in truth a person remained at the edge despite walking for hours, the semi-soul space had an invisible barrier that stopped them. It was barely a hundred metres from the table.
“How are things?” Keynes asked, turning to Jedd.
“Better than expected,” Jedd replied. “We may actually need to revise our initial projections.”
“Oh, why is that?”
“Food supply is stable and according to our estimates, we should begin to produce surplus in a few weeks. Anyway, I have compiled a full report. Let me retrieve it.”
“No need.” Keynes raised a hand. “Just wanted to know your feelings about the whole thing. It is very easy for me to hyper focus on something and lose track of other things despite having a perfect recall.”
Like a Thunder Hippogryph, Alice muttered.
Like a Thunder Hippogryph, Keynes repeated back.
They made their way back, chatting about everything.
Natalia put a book back on the bookshelf and turned to them.
“We must find more rifts with books,” she said, sounding solemn. “It should be our priority.”
“At this point, most things are priority,” Keynes said with a smile but Natalia didn’t smile back.
“This is pure knowledge. This is what we are lacking the most right now. Our progress is solid but we’re going to reach the point of impasse and regression without advanced knowledge.”
It was hard to disagree with her but Keynes wanted to know what Jedd thought about it.
“I agree that knowledge is paramount for us and we should focus on it once we have all our bases covered.”
“Do we have all our bases covered though?” Keynes inquired.
Natalia sighed. “No. Our outstanding issue is Levelling our personnel. We’ve agreed to Level up everyone in the surface base to at least Level 5 for safety reasons.”
“Safety reasons?”
“There are many fail points across the surface base. And fixing them isn’t a matter of extra work but expertise. Hence I said that knowledge should take priority in everything.”
“Hm.” Keynes mulled over her proposition. “Level 6 rifts are truly dangerous so the only people I would feel comfortable going inside would be me, Kora, Persephone and you. While I agree with you on this, the logistics might be a little tight.”
“Persephone’s Talent can help us,” Natalia said. “We just need to explain to her why she needs these books.”
