Their meeting with the visage remained a top secret. The memory of Lem Solaris had insisted on it and even without a list of why it was for the best, Keynes agreed with it.

  Not everyone was ready to know about it. He was being a hypocrite here but he’d grown to understand that sometimes certain knowledge must be safeguarded and hidden.

  If others learned of the visage and its capability, their delicate order would be upturned. That was why Keynes hadn’t invited Rell and Persephone to the meeting. Neither could be trusted to keep this a secret or try to use it against Keynes.

  Eventually, Keynes found himself in the room inside the spaceship. The view of the planet was magnificent. He missed it. Once they got working spatial anchors, he’d definitely start spending more time here.

  But that wasn’t the reason why he returned here. His eyes peeled off the window and turned to the table and a football-sized egg inside a complex formation.

  A few superficial cracks spread over the surface of the egg. Apparently, a good sign. The visage had urged Keynes to start bonding the creature before the power difference between them would be too great, which might lead to unwanted side effects.

  As a spiritual companion, I can assist you in this, Alice said.

  No need, Keynes replied.

  This was something that had to be done by him personally but it wasn’t why he was hesitating about bonding the little hippogryph. It was the commitment he feared. Bonds were permanent, and in a way similar to soul companions like Lem Solaris and her master.

  “I worry that… where I go, I’ll only invite pain and misery into her life,” Keynes said aloud.

  Alice materialised as a tall and beautiful woman made out of dim light.

  “What kind of argument is that?” she asked, her voice smooth but also strangely ethereal. “It’s like saying I’m not sure she’d like success because where I go only success awaits.”

  A wry smile appeared on Keynes’s face; a corner of his mouth crept up.

  “Maybe, but even so, this is going to be hard-earned success.”

  “Honestly, you’re trying to be way too dramatic about this. Just bond her and be done with it. Either we can keep testing your unfair skill or mastering attributes like you planned initially, remember?”

  “Nothing has changed about mastering attributes. It’s going to take a little longer though. We’ll need way more Level 6 rifts to finish it.”

  “Clearly,” Alice agreed. “And for your Vitality, you may need a Level 7 rift.”

  “Not really. The atmosphere of this hellish planet will do the job this time. At Level 6, yeah I might need to go way higher.”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  A silence returned after that. Keynes and Alice stared at each other. Even their thoughts remained silent. Then Alice nodded toward the egg.

  “You must make a choice but you must be honest with yourself. Whatever you choose, it has to be what you truly want.” She started to turn translucent until she vanished. “I’ll leave you to it, Keynes.”

  Thank you.

  His connection with Alice became weak, indicating that she went to the spiritual realm, leaving him, in a sense, truly alone.

  He turned toward the egg. He didn’t think about this. Instead, he did as his heart told him. Maybe, it was a lingering effect of his earlier conversation about the True Soul or maybe he truly started to feel it.

  He couldn’t tell.

  His hand reached the egg. Its surface was rough in touch but warm. Keynes injected his spiritual energy into the egg. His eyes closed on their own volition as his awareness suddenly touched another awareness. But it was different from his. It was an awareness of an infant.

  Would you like to begin bonding with Thunder Hippogryph?

  Warning: This process cannot be reversed once finished.

  Red colour of the message reminded Keynes about the severity of what he was about to do. He confirmed and his awareness drifted away.

  ***

  Harter sat in a well-lit and futuristic waiting room that reminded him more of a spaceship from many of the different movies he’d watched before the world was turned upside down.

  An hour ago, he went to register with the city of Arshem. He did this because he could no longer live in the shadow of his brother. He hated that everything he did was dictated by Keynes, indirectly of course. Despite his brother’s absence, Harter felt like Keynes was always with him. And not in a good way.

  This ends today. I’ll register and become a full citizen of the World Government. I’ll no longer live in fear because of Keynes.

  However, after he finished with the paperwork he was asked, extremely politely, to wait in the waiting room for a clerk to finalise the process and inject him with the chip.

  He didn’t make much out of that. He’d known that some ascenders go through several stages during registration due to their Talents, skills and such. Each ascender was treated differently because of their threat level. Something Harter whole-heartedly agreed with. While Klaus argued that the World Government couldn’t be trusted, it was the World Government that kept the world from turning on itself and descending into chaos. Some places where the Umbrella scheme didn’t have much foothold were already a boiling cauldron with multiple powerful ascenders fighting for domination.

  He wished that Klaus and Maegan could see his point of view and do the same. At least their team would be eligible for the benefits of the scheme like access to rifts and dungeons and the most important of all, the access to Artifact Exchange. Without direct access to exchange, they were forced to pay commission to third-parties that crippled their profits by a substantial margin.

  Bored, Harter picked up a magazine. A generic one about rift monsters. Despite overwhelming technological advancements in the last years, he noticed a return of more traditional mediums. But he didn’t dwell on such things. He preferred action over thinking.

  A soft hiss of the door that parted away, pulled his attention from the colourful pages detailing various monsters and their locations.

  A young man entered the waiting room. He wore a sharp suit made out of very expensive rift material. Over time, Harter learned to see such things. Being able to tell the value of things was one of the most underappreciated skills in hunting business, but one of the most important ones.

  The newcomer radiated command, power and money. His hair was short, brown; his face lightly tanned. Just another rich guy who bought himself a bit of power.

  That made Harter frown. He was meant to wait for a clerk…

  “Hello, I’m sorry I made you wait. I had to teleport here from Geneva, and Arshem’s teleport is still a work in progress. My name’s Andre Turtelli. I’m the chairman of the Solar Council and I came with a job offer to you, Harter Kid.”