Keynes exhaled as he left the dream state. His body was perfectly fine but he felt anything but. He had no idea about the inner workings of the dream state. It created a fully customizable simulation that used his body and mind, incurring benefits of the fight without side effects of said fights. Which in his case would be several deaths.
Nonetheless, the visage made sure that death wasn’t painless or inconsequential. Each time Keynes was struck down, he had to endure a long session of contemplation during which he had to analyse his mistakes. At the same time, all the wounds his phantom body bore hurt at full volume. A very distracting detail but one, which made Keynes learn how to think while in unbearable pain.
So yeah, he hated dying in the dream state and fought to the tooth and nail to avoid it. But Vivena moved with speed and agility that left Keynes at loss. One thing he’d noticed was the lack of training in the way she moved. She was impossibly fast but her footwork and coordination wasn’t precise. Despite seeing these shortcomings, Keynes was unable to capitalise on them.
“Care for advice?” The visage appeared next to Keynes with refreshment.
“No need,” Keynes replied but grabbed the refreshing drink and drank it in one gulp. “There are two obvious ways I can counter her. First, if I can gain two more spiritual stages by Level 10, I should gain a significant edge over her, given boons I receive upon each Level up for being a Perfect Stage ascender and having a high spiritual stage, I am pretty sure, I will gain some significant improvements from that. Second, by Level 10, I’d receive another five Orbs of Perfection. If I apply each of them on attributes, I’d close the gap between her and me.”
“Good luck with that,” the visage replied, respecting his refusal to hear its advice. “Let’s have another spar a week from now.”
“Why a week?” Keynes asked.
“You have some catching up to do with others.”
***
Natalia was overseeing the remodelling of the command chamber. The room no longer fulfilled its purpose. At Ragnar’s suggestion, Natalia wanted the command chamber to be at the heart of the surface base.
It was mostly to do with more people involved in the operations and greater need to keep tabs on what was going on. She was also taking a page from Keynes and asked for windows to be installed in each wall.
They had far more planned but she had to be mindful of contingencies, runes and the filtering system. The way their base was designed made everything interlinked, so a single change impacted all other parts of the base.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
They were going to change that and make the base modular with a few independent filtering systems working at the same time. Neither Roman nor Pierre were particularly thrilled about this as they had to put on hold their ultimate goal and do some useful work for a change.
But this was only a fraction of what had to be redesigned and rebuilt. From their planning sessions, following the meeting with the strange visage of a child, it became clear that they lacked space to accommodate Level 2 and 3 rifts and raw material they hoped to retrieve from there. On top of that, they only yesterday realised they had no training chamber. A critical flaw on Natalia’s part, which soured her mood considerably. Being in charge of the base made her forget details like the very fact that ascenders had to face danger. Until now, only a selected few had been exposed to High Level rifts, which made everyone else oblivious to the threat rifts posed. Natalia didn’t want to always rely on Keynes and her sister. They needed an exploration team capable of going into an uncharted rift without a fear of losing them.
“We need a rescue team, contingency team, carry team, escort team,” she muttered to herself, listing various teams their base required. The list was ever growing as other members of the newly established command team were coming up with new ideas and needs. Honestly? They made her feel inadequate. Impostor syndrome wasn’t a joke. It also reminded her about her true passion; killing monsters.
She didn’t mind being in charge, there was thrill in it as well but it wasn’t the same. However, regardless of her personal feelings, she had a job to do and wouldn’t want to fail Keynes or her sister.
Her eyes tracked Trisk whose hands slowly traced the walls. The walls continuously rippled, reforming at a minute level. The room was thick with mana and spiritual energy. The glyphs delivered by Ewan Kid were outstanding. Natalia was shocked to learn that he’d been a family guy with an average job before the outbreaks. His Talent with glyphs was extremely useful to them. Helping with mana regeneration, agriculture, filtering system and even mood improvements. Apparently, one of his late creations lifted the mood of people around. She’d already inquired for a complete list of all available glyphs and also a list of planned ones.
She winced as the edge of her spiritual aura detected Roman and Pierre rushing to the command chamber. These two always meant trouble. Their idea of terraforming the entire planet was always getting in the way of smaller projects.
They weren’t slackers by any means, just difficult to work with.
“Natalia!” Roman said. “We found you.”
“Yeah, this whole redesign is giving me a headache,” Pierre added.
Natalia turned toward them, wearing her annoyance plain on her face.
“What’s the matter? Did you finish redesigning the filtering system?”
They made a sound a child made after being reminded by their parents about something for a hundredth time.
“Still in progress,” Roman said.
“But that’s not important,” Pierre added.
“We found something at the bottom of the deepest cavern,” Roman explained.
Natalia gave him a surprised look because she wasn’t aware they had gone that far. These caverns were quite deep. Was it safe for these two to go there alone?
“We found an underground river,” Pierre added, glaring at Roman. “We found water.” He reiterated with emphasis.
