Keynes sighed. Exhaustion was catching up with him. It had been weeks since he started doing interviews. Things had gone smoothly, mostly. It turned out that not everybody had the same tolerance for risk as him or Kora. Some people panicked feeling trapped by the spacesuits, others didn’t want to return to orbit, captivated by the solid ground beneath their feet and open sky above their heads. Not everyone was cut out to live on a spaceship.

  After a while, it became tiring to deal with their antics, but at the same time Keynes grew more confident about his ability to read people. As days passed, he was able to observe them more minutely and use his perfect recall to remember small details he had missed previously.

  Even so, his attention had been constantly pulled elsewhere. He had opened all Level 1 rifts in the cluster, helping level up Sellana and Trisk as their roles in building the base increased dramatically. Even his father had been scheduled to level up to Level 5. Most of the responsibility for levelling rested on Natalia as she had required experience and patience, but Keynes had given her hand here and there. Normally, Kora would have done it but she was busy building the purifying system based on the moss from the cavern rift. After the initial failure, Trisk had created tunnels deep underground with as little exposure to the surface as possible. Kora worked with Rell on this project as the researcher had visited the planet as well. Keynes didn’t know details but the prognosis was optimistic. The moss was capable of dealing with the toxic atmosphere but certain conditions had to be met. His father’s glyphs helped to purify the air inside the tunnels enough to trigger the growth of the moss.

  From there, the moss was able to spread, becoming capable of dealing with the toxic air more effectively. Their end goal was to suck the air from the surface, send it through the moss tunnel beneath the base, then pump the clean air into the base with a one-way exhaust that would keep the air pressure inside the base stable.

  It sounded easy on paper but without Sellana’s genius, it would be many times harder. Keynes memorised the runic systems and formations that were going to make it possible and he still didn’t understand what exactly made it work the way Sellana described. The underlying rule of the purifying system was that it was going to have a single mana charging point with about a hundred unit mana storage that would cover a week’s worth of mana cost. She had actually noted that the low cost wasn’t intentional and was the consequence of having the primitive infrastructure built out of blue iron.

  Without blue iron as the foundation, the cost would likely be a hundred times higher due to mana loss. They seemed to be absurdly lucky, though Willow admitted that they were missing many basic skills, items and blueprints, so luck was a subjective perspective. Also, not many organisations on Earth could claim a cluster consisting of 27 Level 1 rifts and a single Level 3 and 4 rifts on top of that.

  “How are you feeling?” Kora asked, approaching him from behind. He had sensed her the moment she entered the rift, two hundred metres away.

  They stood in the forest rift. The most ordinary and Earth-like rift in the cluster. It had trolls as monsters and a climate of Spring. Warmth and mild temperature soothed his face. He considered taking off his shirt but felt reluctant to do so in case others might enter.

  The crew was allowed to spend time here after all. Keynes wished they could keep the single instance open for people to move in and out of this rift without a worry of leaving anything behind. He knew it was possible. Alice and Willow had confirmed that such a rift orb existed and was called the rift orb of perseverance. It locked the instance of the rift, disabling its recharge time. In some way it crippled the rift but Keynes would take such a “crippling” anyday. Apparently it was one of those extremely rare rift orbs. He could understand why.

  “I’m fine,” he replied, trying to sound unbothered by his exhaustion.

  “You’re a bad liar,” Kora said, putting her hand on his shoulder. “I don’t need to ask the question to know the truth. You look like you haven’t slept in weeks.”

  “It’s not a big deal. I wouldn’t say no to one of Pucci’s stamina elixirs though.”

  “Rell’s working on it,” Kora replied, causing Keynes to turn and look at her. He felt something stir in his stomach but quickly pushed it down.

  “He does?” Keynes was surprised to hear that. “I wasn’t aware of this.”

  “We decided to not bother with every little thing, given your interviews,” she said with a bit of amusement at the end of the sentence.

  It made sense. There were many things going on right now and he didn’t need another distraction. Wait a minute. Having elixirs didn’t sound like a little thing.

  “You’re joking right? Elixirs… that’s big.”

  She nodded, satisfied that her teasing succeeded.

  “The main issue are the ingredients. We have an entire catalogue of every elixir your department collected in Untainted Paradise. Luckily, we found some seeds as the rift reward and started cultivating herbs on the spaceship.”

  Keynes’s mood was immediately uplifted. Most ascenders dismissed elixirs until they tried them. Pucci had created many elixirs but the three fundamental ones: mana, stamina and health regeneration were indispensable. He was focused so much on the glyphs that he forgot about elixirs. That alone pointed out to him that he needed a few days of rest. But he couldn’t stop the interviews with the crew. There were too many people still waiting. However, he had made some decisions during these weeks. No matter how many people he was going to interview, none of them could change his mind about Kora, Natalia or Jedd.

  He was going to make an announcement later today…

  Another person entered the rift, Keynes noticed her before Kora did.

  Natalia walked toward them, her aura radiating satisfaction, happiness and… reservation? That last emotion was weak but also quite out of place.

  “I knew I would find you here,” Natalia said as she stepped from between the trees. The rift didn’t have a path or road but the space between trees made it rather sparse. “Sellana finished the formation.”

  “Already?” Kora asked, while Keynes frowned.

  “What did she finish?”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “The door formation,” Natalia replied.

  “Ah.” He didn’t know she worked on that.

  Kora gave him a knowing smile. He looked at her, she was quite tiny in comparison to him, then sighed, giving up on pretending.

  “What’s the door formation?”

  “I think neither of us is qualified to answer that question.”

  They moved toward the exit.

  As Kora left the rift, Natalia spun on her heel, jabbing her finger at Keynes’s chest.

  “If you’ll hurt her, I will kill you.”

  With that Natalia left as well, leaving Keynes dumbfounded and speechless.

  ***

  “We have used a copper inlay around the door to instil the formation,” Sellana said, pointing at the strip of copper running around the exit from their base. “Creating the formation directly on the stone has inherent risk of failure stemming from the stone’s erosion. While formations don't damage underlying material the same way runes do, this formation is far too important to create it on a rock.”

  Keynes agreed, though he had never given it any real thought before. This made him realise how minute details mattered. Looking back at his request to have a glass ceiling, he might have been an idiot to demand something like that. Too late for that. This ship has sailed away though.

  “Wouldn’t blue iron be better than copper?” Willow asked.

  “Not really,” Trisk said, while inspecting the wall around the copper inlay. “Blue iron is perfect for mana-related functions, however formations don’t use mana.”

  “But what makes copper good?” Willow pressed.

  Their original mission crew was down on the planet today. A coincidence Keynes missed.

  “There is nothing inherent that makes copper superior as a formation base than other metals, but it is far better than stone,” Sellana explained, then turned to the gathered. “I’m going to switch the formation on now.” Keynes realised he had never seen this particular process. Sellana rested her hand on the copper inlay as Trisk stepped back given her space. Keynes sensed burning curiosity from Willow.

  Keynes felt a faint spiritual presence manifest, then, light appeared mimicking the circular shape of the copper inlay but with a nearly incomprehensible pattern. As Sellana moved her hand as if she turned a dial. The light complex formation of lights slightly changed with each motion. No one spoke until Sellana finished. When she looked at them she saw nine fascinated faces.

  “You have never seen a formation adjustment?” she asked.

  They shook their heads. She nodded. For her young age, Sellana appeared very mature and patient.

  “Okay, well, in general, formations have a precise function that can be turned off and on with no variable state and no adjustment phase.”

  “That’s not actually true,” Keynes said idly, remembering the flying platform from the World Reserve. He explained Sellana about the flying platform. She had never heard about them, which wasn’t surprising given the secrecy veiling the reserve.

  “Sounds like there was some kind of a modulator that controls the behaviour of a formation or these platforms were arrays.” Seeing that she might lose them, she explained. “An array is a combination of several formations though I had very little experience with them. They are hellishly complex from what I know.”

  That made the tribes’ achievement even more impressive in Keynes’s eyes.

  “But let’s return to the topic at hand. We aren’t going to use an array any time soon. A single formation has precise function. An adjustment phase is a consequence of additional raw materials that allows me to make the formation more in line with our needs. Once I lock the formation, it cannot be changed, unless provided with more raw materials.”

  Sellana finished the adjustment. The light receded, leaving a weak line running alongside the copper inlay and permanent spiritual aura. The formation that acted as their invisible door blocked toxic air with all its contaminants from passing through. That also included air moving from inside, which meant they needed a ventilation and pressure control system. The work was far from finished. They were actually going to build another door formation in case of emergency, though they were still debating a filter formation, which according to Sellana was a magnitude harder to create and required far rarer ingredients than the door formation.

  The next day, back on the spaceship, Keynes made an announcement regarding the structure of his organisation. He decided to form three departments with three leaders who would report to him. The first department was headed by Rell and revolved around the research and management of the spaceship. Despite building the base on the planet, the AI had made it clear that the spaceship was their headquarters. Unfortunately, without essence, they lacked the building blocks to turn the spaceship into a comfortable place, for now.

  The second department was going to be run by Natalia and its role was focused on making the planet habitable for them. He had to reverse their roles because Rell had several projects going on the spaceship while Natalia had much more expertise managing rifts and levelling.

  The last department was different from the first two. It revolved around rifts as rifts were the key to their survival. Keynes had wanted Kora to take the lead in that department but she had refused, which forced Keynes to assign Willow as the leader of the third department. However, Keynes wasn’t going to give up on Kora, so he made her his personal assistant alongside Jedd. At least for now. He knew that over time his organisation would need more departments and leaders.

  The rest of the crew would be divided between the three departments according to their needs while the remaining ones would stay outside of the structure. Keynes didn’t stop the interviews and made sure to personally review and sign off every person joining one of the three departments. He wanted to learn as much about his crew as possible. After all, Lem Solaris had hand picked them for him.

  ***

  The announcement didn’t make much difference for Trisk as his duties didn’t change. Also, Natalia was a fair boss. After the first door formation was up and running, Trisk and Sellana began work on the second one, putting the filter formation on a backburner for now. Natalia wanted to establish a permanent base as soon as possible.

  Trisk reached Level 3 a few days later. Despite his dislike of cultivating the spiritual core, he couldn’t deny its importance. He traced his hand alongside the outer wall of the base, compressing the stone making it nearly as hard as steel. He couldn’t wait until he became Level 5.

  ***

  It was Harter’s turn to cook his team’s dinner. Not something he fancied but none of them had [Cooking] skill so they took turns. He grimaced, thinking of the price of these small beef steaks. Non-monster meat was becoming pricey as the monster meat was slowly taking up its space on the market shelves.

  His team didn’t mind eating monster meat but since Arshem had accepted the Umbrella program three years ago and closely monitored traffic in and out of the city, going shopping without a chip was bothersome and expensive. Non-chipped ascenders had to pay for entrance and premium on all products, plus they couldn’t use Artefact Exchange services. The Solar Council had them all cornered pretty nicely…

  “Carter!” Harter turned toward Maegan upon hearing his fake name. As a brother of Keynes, he was forced to stay incognito and lie even to his friends. “Check the news! King of Winters and Hunter clashed again!”

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