Keynes stared at the System’s messages shared by Kora and Persephone.

  The Insight of Soul has been awarded (sufficient prerequisite met).

  Both of them had received the Insight of Soul. But how? Or more precisely what was prerequisite to trigger it? Mostly a rhetorical question as he didn’t expect to get an answer to it. But the fact that both Kora and Persephone met the enigmatic prerequisite during Keynes’s unique ascension held important clues about the nature of insight, albeit not much about soul itself.

  The message’s colour is red, which has a strong relation to the soul. Before the ascension Keynes had only once received a System message in red colour when the Father of the Forest had given him the Inner Sanctuary, the soulbound item. He still had it, untouched by the System and Lem Solaris, which spoke something about the nature of the soul. It seemed to exist outside the System’s jurisdiction.

  I’ll have to speak to the Greater System about this next time, he made a mental note for himself.

  Back to the current System message. The fact that it was possible to gain an insight just by being present during an extraordinary event filled Keynes with undirected hope. He simply didn’t know what to do with that information but believed it was important. Another thing for later. He had his own insight of soul to attend to so he didn’t know what it entailed.

  The next message was from Persephone.

  Your Spiritual Matrix has been purified.

  *

  Impure essence has been replaced with pure one.

  *

  Minor defects in your cores were removed.

  Okay. Three System messages. Their description wasn’t detailed but Keynes had glimpsed what they underpinned and if he was correct in his assumption, then somehow… Persephone became a rift essence ascender. Normally, he could easily discern four types of ascenders: human, mixed, rift and Perfect State. But Persophone had undergone too many changes to be sure so he reserved his judgement for now.

  If that was indeed the case and Persephone had become a rift essence ascender, then a question arose, what else was possible? Could Kora become a Perfect State ascender? From what he saw in her spiritual matrix, it didn’t resemble his, so he didn’t know about that.

  Shit. While he had a solid idea of what happened to Persephone, still, the messages were too vague. There was no way to tell without thorough testing. They’d have to spar at some point, which wasn’t ideal as Keynes was now Level 5, each of his attributes increased from 35 to 41. A 17% increase wasn’t anything to scoff at. And when it came to his attributes, the numerical values weren’t the only change. Not even synchronisation was. Keynes had a strong intuition that his attributes themselves had undergone a qualitative shift.

  That brought him back to Persephone’s System messages. Like with his attributes, these were qualitative improvements. Which raised a fundamental question, what did the ‘quality’ even represent? A first analogy that came to his mind was of two humans with the same parameters: weight, height, age. Despite being numerically the same, they were very different people in every possible way. Did it mean that Keynes’s 41 points in attributes were not equal to a human essence ascender—discounting the spiritual part of the power progression—with 41 points?

  His intuition said yes. In that case, the Perfect State not only gave him more attributes per Level but also increased the effect of these attributes which compounded his gains. That sounded insane, and yet it made sense.

  Considering that the only way to improve the spiritual makeup of a body is essence, it makes essence so much more precious. He didn’t know if these improvements should be done at lower or higher Levels. In his case, most of the work was done by the System as he ascended as a Perfect State ascender, though he was aware that his spell, attribute and spiritual cores required manual essence cultivation to improve. Huh, it sounded like he, even at Level 5, knew jackshit about the System.

  Keynes switched to Kora’s System messages.

  Your Spiritual Matrix has been purified.

  *

  You have gained the Superior Spiritual Stage.

  *

  Minor defects in your cores were removed.

  2 out of 3 System messages were the same in Kora’s case, albeit the scale of changes in both cases couldn’t be evaluated as both women had had different starting points. The third Kora’s System message was also fairly straightforward. She advanced to the Superior stage. The same stage Keynes was at right now. Honestly? It was fucking unfair but not something Keynes was going to complain about. He was glad that Kora was growing stronger.

  He couldn’t wait to spar with her again.

  “Ladies, what would you say about a little sparring?” he offered as he closed down the System notifications.

  They looked at him as if he was crazy. Why? He didn’t see anything wrong with testing out their improvements.

  “I will pass,” Persephone said and a second later, Kora repeated her words.

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  He understood Persephone, she’d never been one to train with them, but for Kora to refuse a chance to give him a good, old-fashioned beating? Not a chance.

  He was about to ask them what was the matter when Persephone suddenly jumped to her feet. Her expression turned from solemn to sad?

  “I need to go.”

  What? What’s going on?

  Not even a moment passed and Kora was up as well, with a similar expression. Both women left dumbstruck Keynes alone and moved in opposite directions. Seriously, what the fuck?

  He received his answer a moment later when a familiar feeling of drowning descended on him.

  *

  “Stop it, you dummy.”

  Keynes knew that voice. It belonged to his mom. His vision was slow in coming as if through a thick mist. When he finally could see, he found his living room but everything about it was wrong. Furniture, wallpapers, floors. All of that looked out of place. Why? He tried to find the source of the wrongness and eventually did.

  His parents.

  They were way younger. They ran around the sofa, laughing and joking. He had never seen them like this and he didn’t remember this memory. Was this even a memory or something made up?

  At the same time as he pondered the questions, his parents dropped on the sofa, breathing heavily but looking more than content. They seemed genuinely happy.

  What has happened to them? Keynes wondered. He refused to believe that their age was to blame for it.

  “Look,” his dad said. “Key woke up.”

  His mom squinted at where Keynes ‘was’ and a cheeky smile appeared on her face. What the hell? He absolutely didn’t remember his mom smiling like this, ever. What was this?

  His parents slid off the sofa and approached him. Well, not him, but a baby in a crib. Keynes was startled by the turn of events. The whole thing became much more interesting. The fact he hadn’t had a memory of this, suggested that his perfect recall hadn’t been a thing yet.

  This, or the scene unfolding before his eyes wasn’t real. Either way, Keynes watched his parents speaking soothing words and playing peek-a-boo with a baby.

  No matter how irrational it was, Keynes felt a pang of sadness. His parents were good parents but in his case something had always been amiss. Love? Attention? Closeness?

  He had no way of knowing and in truth, this wasn’t about what was amiss in his relationship with his parents. It was a more fundamental question, far more important one.

  Who was he?

  At first, the question that appeared in his mind didn't make much sense in relation to the scene but then, bit by bit, Keynes understood the intent.

  Was he a child of his parents? He was but… the question sought a deeper truth. Was this who he truly was? A child of his parents.

  No.

  The vision changed.

  It made him think of the visions shown by the representative of the Greater System. As quickly as the thoughts of the vision from during the ascension came as quickly they faded away and Keynes was transported to his room. Once again, it all looked different, but more elements appeared familiar to him this time. There were fragments of faint memories in his mind. A brown teddy, a large plastic train, a wallpaper with animals shown on the map of the world. None of that was particularly important when he heard his parents’ voices coming from outside his room. He followed their voices, past the room that normally belonged to Harter. Judging by how much light there was, Keynes assumed it was early night or very late evening.

  “This is safe, Nina,” his dad said. “The program is led by the institute itself. It has the World Government’s guarantee.”

  Keynes walked out of the corridor in time to see his mom’s younger version sigh with a worried expression. Their parents stood in the kitchen, two glasses of wine on the counter. It really was bizarre to see this side of them.

  “I don’t care who guarantees what, Ewan. You are talking about experimenting on our children.”

  Keynes froze when he heard that. He wasn’t aware of any experimentation done on him or Harter. Which could mean their parents hadn’t gone through with the idea.

  “That’s why they’re allowed to participate in the first place. This project is secret and only researchers’ children are permitted to take part in it.”

  To Keynes his dad sounded proud.

  This must be some alternate reality shit going on here. Dad isn’t one to mess with secret government stuff, less likely to feel good about them. That simply wasn’t up his dad’s alley.

  “Nina, the glyphs are safe. They are a hundred percent beneficial,” his dad added when his mom said nothing.

  An experiment involving glyphs? Keynes was aware of glyphs’ growing importance but pre-outbreak glyphs hadn’t been that hot.

  “You promise to keep them safe?” Nina embraced her husband.

  Keynes stared at them bewildered.

  “Of course, my dear. They’ll receive the best benefits from the project. I’ll make them better than other children. They'll have an outstanding future.” Ewan assured his wife. What are you talking about?

  And what experiment?

  Instead of answers, a question appeared in Keynes’s mind. Was he his parents’ creation?

  Absolutely not.

  The scene changed once again.

  I have to know what experiment they are talking about! Keynes tried to make the vision to return but didn’t really have control. Return! Nope, nothing happened.

  The next vision was of him and Harter fighting. Keynes remembered this and how it had ended. Keynes had been 8 and Harter 7. His younger brother was angry with him because Keynes had been taking his things without permission for ‘testing’. Keynes scoffed remembering what had driven his behaviour back then. Keynes had dreamed of being a scientist, a dream encouraged by his parents.

  Harter threw a punch but that one year of difference between the brothers was like a vast chasm and Keynes made his brother regret that, which got their parents involved and Keynes’s turn to regret beating his brother up. Even now, Keynes remembered emotions fuelling him back then. Not anger or even frustration.

  No. What he felt was much worse. Something that… fucked him up for a long time.

  At that point, I had a perfect recall and couldn’t forget anything.

  Their fight had been sparked by a silly thing but one small thing led to another. Keynes had looked at his younger brother and felt superior. He had been stronger, smarter, better while Harter had kept forgetting things and couldn’t even stand up to bullies at school. He was a failure in Keynes’s eyes, the 8-year-old Keynes’s that was. The current Keynes didn’t have similar sentiment.

  Some time later Keynes had experienced a turning point and felt disgust at his own behaviour which shaped him until the Talent Revelation Ceremony, in a borderline negative way.

  So, I guess, the question is now was I a bully? Fuck no.

  The vision stopped but didn’t change. Hmm. So it was about being superior then? He felt something click in place but the vision didn’t shift as he didn’t actually give an answer.

  Why was that? Because Keynes stumbled unto his first major obstacle. Deep down at the core of his being, could he accept that he was just like anyone else? He tried but the circumstances weren’t normal. It didn’t matter what he wanted or believed was right. All that mattered was who he was at the very core of his existence.

  Soul-stuff sucks…