Trisk strolled down the hall of rifts and smiled to himself. He was still coming to terms with his new reality. Being a Level 5 felt different, physically and emotionally. There was a profound shift between Level 4 and 5 that was far greater than between other Levels. Trisk suspected the Minor Talent Upgrade to have some undocumented impact there.
Thinking of his Minor Talent Upgrade put an even wider smile on his face. He had been warned that his choice of upgrades might be underwhelming but gosh they couldn’t be more wrong.
- Greater Area of Effect
- Deeper Understanding
- Precision
His problem had been of a different nature. He had wanted all upgrades. He had spent a long time with Rell, Natalia and Keynes discussing his choice. Keynes had assured him that Trisk had the final call.
Trisk had chosen Precision and didn’t regret it. His reasoning was very simple but a little skewed. He wanted to be of greater support to Sellana with runes.
Runes required utmost precision and working with High Level stone made it difficult for Trisk to shape them with required fidelity. The Higher Level of the material the harder it was to affect it with his Talent.
In the end, Precision upgrade was the reason this hall existed and most of the base had been built. Trisk realised shortly after the upgrade that he had been blind before. He could now not only shape the stone but rearrange its structure to strengthen or weaken it.
It was how he achieved the beautiful lustre of the granite walls in the hall of rifts. The walls were reinforced, mirror-like and black with a green reflection coming from lightning formation. Other colours were not possible at this point as they lacked proper ingredients to activate formations.
Trisk liked it more this way. The dim green light added a note of dark magic atmosphere.
The hall of rift held fifty-seven Level 1 rifts, they had relocated from other places. Level 2 and 3 rifts weren’t yet relocated as they were still discussing the appropriate layout of their base. Despite their long string of successes there were many limitations that forced them to compromise or find a different solution.
Trisk crossed the hundred metre long hall of rifts and entered a smaller corridor that led to the lower floor and eventually Natalia’s office. For the first time he was invited for the ‘prestigious’ leader meeting. He was being a little sarcastic here but he wasn’t wrong.
The leader meeting only involved the leaders and Trisk wasn’t one. But something must have changed.
He entered the corridor. It didn’t have the same lustre as the hall but the walls were still smooth, the effect of the compressed stone. Near the ceiling were thin vents that pumped the clean air from the blue moss farm below. The most important aspect of their base. Without this primitive but weirdly effective air filtering system they wouldn’t be able to settle down here.
Even with continuous attempts by Roman and Pierre at using the air from the rifts to affect the atmosphere, the difference was non-existent. The red planet’s environment remained harsh and deadly. But there was no talking these two out of their terraforming plans. They believed that using cavern systems located around the planet to grow blue moss would eventually make the atmosphere breathable and turn the planet into something resembling Earth, once plants would appear.
His two apprentices greeted him as he passed them. They had received [Earth Shaping] and [Rock Shaping] spells and were supporting Trisk in his work. The former spell was weird as it worked only on matter that was within the soil. Anything above was not affected by it, the latter was more in line with Trisk’s Talent but a magnitude weaker and less precise.
He knocked on the door and a call from inside came, inviting him inside. He entered and found Natalia, Willow and Rell already inside. Rell’s presence was a surprise. The man was rarely coming down from the spaceship.
“Trisk, please take a seat,” Natalia said, pointing at one of several empty chairs around a large table that took up most of the room.
The light in the office came from a light construct powered by mana and had warm orange colour with a mix of yellow. Trisk understood that the cost of running these constructs made them only usable for short periods of time.
“You’re late,” Rell murmured as he leafed through a bound stack of papers.
Keynes’s decision to use paper instead of the tablets provided by the spaceship was one Trisk couldn’t understand and no one seemed to have a good explanation why that was.
“No. We are early, Rell. Don’t stress him on his first day.”
Trisk frowned.
“My first day?”
“Yes.” Natalia nodded. “As my deputy.”
“Your deputy…” Trisk was lost. It felt like there had been an important meeting but he didn’t remember it or had missed it. “What do you mean?”
“Each department needs a deputy leader and you meet the criteria to become my deputy.”
“That… what about Pierre and Roman or Sellana? They have more expertise in terraforming than me.”
“It isn’t only about expertise in a single field. As a deputy you need a broader set of skills and knowledge. I was impressed with your proficiency with runes and base designs that made the traffic in the base efficient. Also, you are Level 5 now, which comes with extra perks. We aren’t Levelling up everyone as our resources are limited.”
Trisk was stunned, positively.
“What does it mean? I mean my promotion.”
“We recently redesigned the structure of this whole organisation,” Natalia answered. “It is mostly the same as before but now there are ranks added to it. Us leaders are rank 1 whereas our deputies are rank 2, Sellana, Pierre and Roman are rank 3 and they are considered senior contributors, while the rest of the people working in the base are rank 4. Those who do not actively contribute are rank 5.”
“Shall we start?” Rell asked. “You can always discuss this after the meeting. Not everyone can afford to waste time staring at the stones.”
“Rell,” Natalia said, her tone harsh but not sounding serious.
“I’m joking,” Rell raised his hands, dropping the papers on the table.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Somehow, it prompted the rift researcher. Willow began speaking..
“I asked you here today because I have been reviewing rift orbs for a while now and we must start to make strategic decisions.”
“Shouldn’t Keynes be here?” Trisk asked. Rift orbs weren’t a small matter and so Trisk was surprised that Keynes was absent. By the way, I haven’t seen him since we talked about my minor upgrade. Which was over two months ago.
“Keynes left this to us,” Natalia said.
“The documents in front of you have all the rift orbs we managed to find.”
Trisk made a large eyes at seeing the neat and smooth text.
“I didn’t know we had a printer.”
“It’s not exactly a printer but close,” Willow explained, which earned both men a rebuke from Rell.
Result from approx. 18000 rift rewards:
- Orb of Relocation: 49
- Orb of Enlargement: 10
- Orb of Faster Recharge: 9
- Orb of Reduction: 5
- Orb of Alteration: 2
- Orb of Advancement: 2
- Orb of Monsters: 1
- Orb of Environment: 1
As Trisk peeled his eyes from the sheet of paper, Willow spoke up.
“Unfortunately for us, the drop rate we recorded is affected by the Alien effect, which is no longer present. The Alien effect had been adding an additional item to the reward chest. However, I started recording the rewards more closely after the Alien effect disappeared and will update you when I hit the required sample size.”
“I wasn’t aware that there are so many different rift orbs,” Trisk said.
“There are way more than these. Some do not drop at Level 1, others are exceedingly rare and I don’t expect to see them even after a hundred thousand rift rewards,” Willow said.
“How do you know about them then?” Trisk asked.
“I worked with rifts on Earth,” Willow replied and moved on. “On the next page, you have a brief explanation of what each orb does.”
Trisk and others turned the page.
- Orb of Relocation
- Adds an ability to move the rift between locations once per recharge period.
- Rift cannot be moved while there are ascenders inside, even if they are in the old instance.
- Relocation authority is not set - it can be moved by anyone.
- Orb of Enlargement
- Doubles size of the rift. Multiplicative.
- Recharge time unaffected.
- Monster count and essence doubled.
- New monsters and resources can appear but are not guaranteed.
- Orb of Faster Recharge
- Reduces recharge time by 50%. Multiplicative.
- Boss event remains at the 9 day mark.
- Essence and monster count unaffected.
- Orb of Reduction
- No information.
- Orb of Alteration
- Changes the type of the rift to a different one.
- Known types: stable, variable, volatile, mayhem.
- Orb of Advancement
- Increases the Level of the rift.
- Does not reset the rift so all the orbs remain in effect.
- Orb of Monsters
- Doubles the number of monsters.
- Can introduce new monsters.
- Orb of Environment
- No information.
Trisk was aware what kind of effects rift orbs had but he had never given them more than a passing thought. Reading about the rift orbs’ effects was an eye opener. It sounded like rift orbs allowed them to create a super rift? Was there a catch? There had to be as it sounded too good to be true.
“So, Keynes asked me to discuss the orbs we gathered and decide if and where we should use them. With exception of orbs of relocation. They all have been used already.”
“Ten enlarged rifts. Hmm,” Trisk mused. “I have some good ideas, I guess.”
Rell snorted.
“Why not having one rift enlarged ten times?” Rell asked. “Ten orbs enlarging one rift give us a 256 kilometre large rift.”
“It also doubles the essence provided by the rift ten times,” Natalia chipped in. “Enough essence to Level up four people in one go.”
“Unfortunately,” Willow said, drawing the attention back to him. “Rifts have a limit of 5 orbs.”
“It sounded too good to be true.”
“Not necessarily,” Willow quickly added. “It was tested on Earth that each Level increases limit by 1 but also there are greater rift orbs, which passively increase the limit among other things.”
“Aren’t they rare as shit,” Rell asked. “Untainted Paradise didn’t drop a single one and they had more rifts than us.”
Natalia nodded.
“Because they only drop from rifts with maximum orbs applied to them.”
Rell burst out laughing, while Natalia hummed, appearing thoughtful. Trisk was simply overwhelmed by the number of possibilities presented by the rift orbs. The more he thought about each rift, the more conflicted he became. He wanted to upgrade every rift.
“Let’s go over the rifts and calculate which maximally upgraded rifts would benefit us the most.”
***
You have mastered your Vitality attribute.
Further Vitality attribute improvement for Level 4 is impossible.
Level up to gain the improvements.
(Remaining time: 1 year)
Current essence absorption: 40%
Keynes vomited blood but a smile played on his face. After a month of torturing himself, he finally mastered Vitality. The last few days were daunting and he’d worried he might give up due to prolonged pain.
Fighting Level 5 monsters, without any items and skills was already borderline hard but it hadn’t been enough to master Vitality. His body needed to be put under far greater stress than this. Keynes had been handicapping himself, allowing monsters to land hits and push him to the verge of HP safety zone around 25% HP.
He got back to his feet, battling lightheadedness. He lost a lot of blood. The wounds on his back stung but he allowed the Vitality to do its work.
Persephone and Kora landed in front of him.
“It’s done. Now, only the Mind attribute is left to master and I can finally ascend to Level 5.”
“You must recover,” Kora said with an emphasis.
“I concur,” Persephone agreed. “I didn’t join the mission just to die alongside you because you’re too stubborn to listen to reason.”
“I will recover only to recharge our suits and regenerate our mana,” Keynes said. His body trembled with anticipation and eagerness but he agreed with the girls. The rift he was about to use to master his Mind attribute was the most dangerous of all other Level 5 rifts they had cleared.
Mental attacks were a different kind of bullshit.