A week later, Jedd and Willow reached Level 5 as the Medium stage ascenders. In Willow’s case, he was only a mixed essence ascender while Jedd was a rift one. There was a substantial difference of 4 points on each attribute. Each Willow’s attribute was 31 points whereas Jedd’s attributes were at 35.

  Their Minor Talent Upgrades were harder to gauge as both men had non-numerical options out of which Willow picked Time Dilation. His perception of time was slowed based on the complexity of a problem he was trying to solve. The harder the problem, the slower the time.

  Jedd’s Minor Talent Upgrade expanded his Task Priority Talent, which upon activation highlighted which tasks were the most important right now, an intuitive reasoning as to what underlined the importance of tasks.

  Both men also de-aged, with Jedd looking 20 years old and Willow about 40-ish. Natalia was over the moon with their upgrade choices. Talent upgrades aside, an output of a Level 5 was far superior than those below by a fair margin. Higher Levels committed fewer errors as their attention was sharper, and could multi-task to a higher degree. They also didn’t need that much sleep and had quicker recovery and greater stamina. In other words, they did everything better than their Lower Level counterparts.

  On the other front, Willow and Keynes were able to create quite a list of mods from Level 2 and 3 rifts. They didn’t touch Level 1 rifts as they were required by the people of the surface base in their day-to-day operations.

  In short, Keynes began to get a better grasp on why this skill had evoked such a strong reaction from the Greater System’s representative. As long as you weren’t stopped by the negative mods, the skill was broken. Simple as that. Some rewards they found because of the skill were straight out unknown and exotic to them, others were highly coveted like rift orbs. And the benefits didn’t end there.

  The skill could and did add special rift events, with a few events completely unknown to them, like the Orchard, with unique monsters and rewards, or the Maze, a large labyrinth which upon completion granted 30% toward an attribute mastery of a selected attribute but obviously an ascender had to be at the same Level as the rift with the Maze.

  By themselves, the Maze or the Orchard weren’t that important but the fact that things like these existed made them wonder what else existed out there in the rifts. They were yet to see if Higher Levels, rarities and types added exclusive mods, though Keynes feared it might be years before they arrived at any sort of conclusions. His time was severely limited and many other things competed for his attention.

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  “It’d help us a lot,” Natalia said when Kora escorted Jedd to the spaceship. Willow had already travelled to the surface base. Apart from them, the semi-soul space had a few people who acted today as anchors. Persephone and Daego were back at Level 6 rift collecting the magic rocks. “Jedd’s technically our face up there in the spaceship and now as Level 5, he would project power, which he lacked before.”

  “Yeah, but it was quite time consuming,” Keynes said. “How do you find time to Level up people while at the same time running the surface base?”

  “Well,” Natalia sighed. “It’s not the end of the world, but with all the projects in the pipeline I might need to select a carry team sooner than later.”

  Keynes almost told her to do it as soon as she could but then he remembered his conversation with Alice about classification of ascenders and an idea, a little radical, occurred to him.

  “I want to show you something.”

  Natalia gave him a questioning look but otherwise said nothing. They waited a few minutes for Kora to return only to tell her that they were going back to the spaceship. She had questions but Keynes refused to answer them until they reached their destination.

  Not only that. They were also picking up Jedd on the way. Yes, Keynes should have thought of this earlier, but this idea hadn’t come to him until Natalia mentioned forming a carry team to take over her job of Levelling ascenders.

  “Where are we going?” Jedd asked. Keynes sensed a hidden unease in Jedd’s spiritual aura. It was rather normal. Going from Level 1 to Level 5 and the Medium stage in a bit over a week was a massive leap.

  He knew of studies done by the department of knowledge about problems in adjustment of some ascenders who Levelled up too quickly. Keynes was careful to give Jedd time but no research had been done about spiritual stages as far as he knew.

  “It’s time to make some introductions.”

  The three of them gave Keynes a confused look, at the same time, Keynes felt the band containing the AI on his wrist vibrate but he ignored it and led them to the heart of the ship.

  “What’s this place?” Kora asked when Keynes gestured and a wall parted away and he beckoned them inside.

  The chamber was suffused with soft blue and green lights running alongside walls and ceiling. It was large, clearly spatially expanded and its walls were made from the black alloy Keynes still didn’t recognize.

  But everyone’s attention was on the column in the middle of the chamber with a red tree engraved on it.

  “Welcome to the heart of the spaceship, powered by AI Mycelium you and Rell created in Untainted Paradise. It was additionally fused with a dream tree, I got from the Father of the Forest, by Lem Solaris. She imbued it with a sliver of her memory.”

  “Keynes…” Kora murmured while others were just stunned.

  The visage of Lem Solaris decided to make his dramatic entrance.

  “Welcome back, Keynes Kid,” the visage said. “Long time no see.”