Kora and Persephone regained their consciousness roughly at the same time. They glanced around, a little disoriented but much more thoughtful. When Keynes approached them, they outrightly said they didn’t want to discuss their insight-induced visions. He didn’t argue as he felt precisely the same as his friends. There was an instinctive unwillingness to share anything related to the insight of soul.

  He was very sure it wasn’t a coincidence. More of the System fuckery and messing with ascenders progression. Though deep down, he understood that the soul wasn’t something to trifle with.

  “You feel better now?” Keynes asked Kora and Persephone.

  They gave him a stern, but amusing—mostly to him—look but nodded. In that case they needed to go over the rift first, then maybe they would agree to spar with him later.

  “Check your notification.”

  “We did,” they replied, looking confused. But they did as he asked, knowing that Keynes wouldn’t ask them to do so without good reason.

  “What is this?” Persephone asked, her eyes wide. “Semi-soul space?”

  “From my discussion with Alice, it appears that the three of us gained a private rift without monsters and rewards. It doesn’t restart and we can leave and enter at any point.” That last thing Keynes figured out just before Kora and Persephone woke up. He instinctively knew he could leave the soul space whenever he wanted. He wasn’t entirely sure about entering but there seemed to be no obvious exit from the rift so he assumed that exiting and entering worked on the same principles.

  “That’s impossible,” Persephone said, but it was Kora who decided to act. Her spacesuit appeared and then she vanished. Keynes felt she was gone from the soul space but a deeper connection between Kora and the soul space remained. He tried to contact her via his spacesuit but it didn’t work the same way as he couldn’t contact the spaceship.

  Kora reappeared a second later. She raised a finger then vanished once more. This time it took her over ten seconds to reappear. Keynes still felt her through the soul space connection so didn’t worry.

  When she returned this time, she dismissed the spacesuit, her face showed utter shock.

  “The rift doesn’t exist anymore. It’s like Keynes said, I can enter and leave from anywhere I wish. Though I return to the same place in the physical world I entered from.”

  Without delay, Persephone mimicked what Kora had done and after a minute she came back, aghast.

  Keynes didn’t bother checking it for now. It wasn’t going to be different for him.

  “There is one more thing to check,” Keynes said. “Kora, go back to the physical world and move about five hundred metres from where you appear, then come back to the soul space. I will exit as well to establish my position in the physical world.”

  She nodded, put on the spacesuit and vanished. Keynes did the same. The rift vanished and its place was replaced by the toxic, red, inhospitable terrain. Keynes looked around, finding Kora moving away from his spot. With a thought Keynes returned to the soul space.

  It took her five minutes to reappear. Within the soul space she appeared exactly in the same place. That gave Keynes hope. He approached her, put his spacesuit on and told her to leave together, but she needed to bring Keynes with her.

  At first, nothing happened.

  “Stop resisting,” she said.

  “I’m not resisting,” he replied, but he actually did, only he didn’t recognise it until he focused on it. There was an intent from Kora to take him out of the soul space. He surrendered to it.

  The soul space vanished and Keynes reappeared on the planet. With Kora standing next to him She held him by his arm. But the most important thing was…

  “We are where I entered the soul space,” Kora said.

  This meant one thing.

  He TELEPORTED.

  “Fuck me sideways,” he muttered. Alice, you there?

  Yeah, can’t say I liked when she pulled you out of the soul space though, she replied.

  “We must figure out the distance, cost, cooldowns…” Kora’s excitement broke through her usual quiet demeanour. She kept talking, while Keynes decided to bring them back to their soul space. There was some faint resistance from Kora but not enough to stop him.

  She gasped upon arriving back in the soul space.

  “Huh? You brought me back? Shouldn’t I give you permission or something?”

  “You did resist,” Keynes said as he dismissed the spacesuit. “A bit.”

  She also dismissed her spacesuit. She was pouting at him.

  “We’re gonna spar after this. There’s no way you’re stronger than me.”

  “I’ve always been stronger than you,” he replied with a faux seriousness.

  “So?” Persephone interrupted their banter. “Did it work?”

  “It did.” Kora turned to her. “We must learn what’s the maximum range and how often it can be used.”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Any impact on your mana or stamina?” Persephone asked.

  “None,” Kora replied. “Except for the initial resistance from Keynes, there was nothing else.”

  “We have to go further,” Persephone said. “I’m going to get back to the base and enter the soul space from there.”

  Keynes and Kora exchanged glances and smiled. They knew what was coming.

  Persephone vanished from the soul space before they could say anything else.

  “What do you think?” Kora asked, looking at the spot where Persephone had been a few seconds ago.

  “About the soul space? Hard to say before we learn its limits. There is also a matter of us three tied up by this place,” he noticed.

  “Hey! I didn’t know being tied up with me is such a problem to you,” she said with a fake indignation. “Anyway. I meant what caused this whole thing. I have never heard about anyone ascending to Level 5 causing something like this. Not even in the post-outbreak world.”

  Keynes sat down and crossed his legs. He tried to conjure a chair or manipulate the ground but the soul space didn’t behave like his dominion back on Earth. Hm, I wonder if it is possible to merge the soul space and a dominion?

  You’re forgetting that this is not the true soul space. It is SEMI-soul space and that changes things. I am very sure that the true soul space would give the same or even more control than a dominion, Alice explained.

  Keynes mentally acknowledged Alice’s words, but his attention was on Kora who sat down in front of him. From the moment he had met the representative of the Greater System, he considered how to explain and what to say and to whom. Naturally, he was going to tell Alice and Kora, but beyond that, things got tricky. It wasn’t purely about trust as he trusted Natalia as much as he trusted Kora, but it didn’t sit well with him to tell her. Obviously, he would need to say something. The fact that an unusual ascension could trigger such extraordinary effects was a critical piece of information. Keynes had no way of knowing if they could repeat it again upon his ascension to Level 6 or higher, but he was certain something special was going to happen upon Level 10 and perhaps Level 11. Both were milestones.

  Alice surprised him when she became partially visible to Kora. Kora jerked, shocked at seeing Keynes’s spiritual companion.

  “Don’t act surprised, you two,” Alice said, acting all knowledgeable, which she perhaps was now. “The Fourth Degree is a big deal.”

  “The Fourth Degree?” Kora asked, her expression and spiritual aura already returning to normalcy. That was quick. “What exactly does it mean?”

  “Degrees mean consecutive Perfect States achieved in a row from the very beginning. Perfect State cannot be started from Level 2 onward. Later on, when an ascender stops achieving Perfect State, the degrees are an indication of how far the ascender came before giving up on further Perfect States,” Alice patiently explained. “Does that answer your question?”

  Kora frowned but replied. “It does.”

  Keynes himself had given the topic a little thought before as it never seemed important enough to warrant his attention. In fact, he had only met one other Perfect State ascender—Pandora.

  Considering how easy the first degrees were, it was odd that the Perfect State was nearly non-existent. Though he didn’t think it would stay that way for long. Even a single degree made a difference in the long run because of the way the attributes were calculated upon ascension. Anyone who knew about it and had means to achieve it and still failed to do so was nothing but a fool. That would make Fen and others from the Highland Special Ops academy just that—fools.

  Well, they were that for failing to take advantage laid before them.

  “Let’s focus on the topic at hand,” Keynes spoke, interrupting the chitter between Kora and Alice. They were getting too comfortable. Not that he minded much their newly developed commandery. “My ascension to Level 5, which caused all of this, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Right.”

  “No interruption,” Keynes warned them. “Or you’ll regret it.”

  Kora raised her hands in an act of faux surrender, but Alice had some fight in her.

  “You cannot beat me!” Alice waved her fist in front of him.

  Keynes flicked his fingers and Alice vanished with an exasperated yell. Kora gave him an unimpressed glance, which he shrugged off with an innocent smile.

  “Keynes, bring her back,” Kora said.

  “What about your spiritual companion?” Keynes asked, ignoring her request.

  “She cannot make herself visible. Not until Level 10 at the current spiritual stage. Though she’d rather remain invisible. She isn’t anything like Alice. She has no personality. She’s just a standard spiritual companion. Now, bring Alice back.”

  “Fine.” Keynes snapped his fingers, mostly out of habit as the gesture had no practical application.

  Alice appeared at the same spot she had vanished from.

  “YOU!” Alice was gesturing wildly. “Fight—”

  Keynes snapped his fingers again and Alice vanished once more.

  This repeated several times before Alice finally calmed down.

  “Ready?” Keynes asked, amused. This time, Alice pursed her lips and said nothing. Kora spoke in her stead.

  “Come on, Keynes, don’t drag this out.”

  He launched a recount of his ascension and conversation with the representative of the Greater System, leaving nothing out. When he finished, Kora’s face was tense while her spiritual aura barely contained unease that festered in her spiritual core. Alice seemed troubled as well but her worry stemmed from something else.

  “I don’t know if I should be elated or terrified,” Alice said. “The Higher Realms…”

  “There is much to stomach.” Kora nodded. “I hope you don’t mind if I take my time thinking over it?”

  “None at all,” Keynes replied. “Albeit, I may ask you for advice about choosing the Minor Talent Upgrade.”

  “Of course, I’ll help you. These four choices are good in their own rights. They would require careful consideration, and—”

  “Let’s spar,” Keynes interrupted her and jumped to his feet. No spells and boosting equipment.”

  “So you’re asking for a beating.” She smirked. Her small body, delicate and almost teenage-like face framed by a jawline-long black hair could deceive anyone. She’d even managed to gain a lesser technique of hand combat through sheer effort, which in itself was quite an achievement.

  Techniques were immensely difficult to acquire.

  Kora moved, her feet swift, each step with purpose and efficiency. Keynes watched her as if through a new pair of eyes. It wasn’t only the fact that his current Perception was 41 points and Kora’s 40, despite him being Lower Level, but there were other factors at play here. Passive [Pure Body], the Fourth Degree innate boost and to a lesser degree the Attribute Imbalance Resistance buff.

  In a split of a second, Kora was upon Keynes. She aimed her fist at his face at speed that would shatter a wall. Keynes decided to test out his resilience and braced for an impact.

  Before Kora’s fist connected, something else occurred. Almost purely on instinct, Keynes pulled at his spiritual energy, infusing the spot Kora targeted. He had never done anything like this and it came to him as much as to Kora as a shock.

  ***

  Kora nearly stopped the attack, sensing no intent from Keynes to evade or even block it, but she trusted him. He must have his reasons to act as he was. At this point his raw attributes should be higher than hers.

  Her fist connected and—

  It was stopped! It felt as if she struck an impenetrable wall. Her eyes widened, finding her fist buried in Keynes’s face.

  He was smirking.

  Okay, it appears I have a real fight on my hands.