I used to wonder why it was all kept such a secret. Especially when it seemed every high-ranking cultivator already knew about Space.

  Now I had a different question: Why had it been revealed? Why now?

  My instincts told me it had something to do with the demons and the wormholes. I wasn’t sure how exactly, but the very nature of wormholes hinted at distortion and compression of space.

  I figured that’s why Space was no longer the domain of the chosen few. It had become part of the public system — a Root, a stat, a line in the standard interface now visible to any cultivator.

  Spiritual Roots:

  ? Fire: 15

  ? Water: 16

  ? Lightning: 15

  ? Air: 50

  ? Earth: 16

  ? Wood: 15

  Martial Roots:

  ? Bde: 50

  ? Mace: 15

  ? Point: 16

  ? Fist: 52

  ? Palm: 15

  ? Finger: 15

  Celestial Roots:

  ? Gravity: 3

  ? Vacuum: 1

  ? Space: 52

  Fifty-two in Space. That was my official stat.

  I’d known it was somewhere around fifty, but considering I’d only consumed M1 essence, it shouldn’t have gone any higher. Unless I’d experienced some fleeting enlightenment the system hadn’t registered simply because it hadn’t known the Root existed.

  It might well have happened back when I was learning to equip armour straight from a spatial pocket. I did hit a few snags I’d been struggling with for a while, then resolved them all at once.

  Spatial pockets had been used for decades, if not centuries. Legends about the demons’ spatial rings had been around even longer. The pendant Novak had given me wasn’t some miracle or ancient artefact, it was a product of technology based on Space Qi. Possibly even a mass-produced item. Stable, standardised, and refined to the extent possible under the level of secrecy it had once existed in.

  Now that it had been made public, manufacturing such items should become easier.

  And surely, they couldn’t have stopped at just adding it to the interface…

  I opened the school shop.

  If the Root was now official, there had to be pockets — and there they were, though the selection was… cautious. Rings and pendants, various types of tokens and amulets, held between 0.001 and 0.005 cubic metres. From one to five litres. Enough to fit a sword, which was exactly what the girl in the promo video did.

  Though in her case, it was more of an engraved toothpick than one of the oversized weapons. Johansson, Bao’s master, might not have been able to fit his hammer in a pocket like that. Even here in Yellow Pine, I’d seen swords that would struggle.

  Still, something told me that cultivators who wielded such monsters could afford much rger pockets long before the public even learned they existed. And at a much lower price, because the new stock ranged from two to ten thousand points. Points only.

  No unit price. Pockets weren’t sold for units. Which meant my pendant with 0.1 cubic metres of space should, by that logic, be worth… forty thousand points.

  An absurd amount. Enough to buy two out of the three materials needed for the breakthrough to Fourth Stage.

  Not that I’d even reached Third yet. And you had to live long enough to get there. That pocketed armour had already saved my life once.

  To use a pocket at all, you needed at least fifteen points in the Root. Not many people were born with that kind of talent, so there had to be essence.

  Sure enough: M1 for fifty points an ampoule, ten times the price of the standard essences.

  Clearly a textbook example of supply and demand, and how to profit off hype. The supply was clearly limited, hence the price. No surprise here.

  What did surprise me was that, alongside pockets and essence, there were also techniques.

  Pure Space offered only defensive techniques — like Spatial Distortion, a shield built not on stopping an impact but on bending the geometry of space itself. It sounded intriguing, and the promo video looked great. A Finger beam hit the shield, bent off, and flew into the ceiling, completely missing the Space cultivator’s head.

  The only problem? As far as I remembered, Finger cultivators received feedback a split second before firing. A Finger user knows where their beam will nd.

  Which means either the shield was so fast it altered space in that fraction of a second, or the whole thing was just marketing nonsense.

  If the Finger attack missed the target, the cultivator would normally adjust the beam’s trajectory and sweep across the shield to feel out the correct angle of distortion.

  In the promo video, the beam spent a whole second flying into the ceiling without changing direction.

  I call that bullshit.

  Besides, it was a green-tier technique. I like the colour green, but you can’t seriously expect something really effective from a green-tier technique.

  Dispced Space was blue-tier — one rank higher, but still too close to the grey bottom. A cocoon that warped space around the cultivator, causing projectiles of various kinds to veer off target.

  I don’t know... To me, it felt like the same old crap, just something you could adapt to far too quickly.

  What I really wanted to see were movement techniques. Given the nature of Space, it should’ve been spatial shifting. Real teleportation.

  But there were no Space-based movement techniques avaible at all!

  Maybe it was just too difficult and dangerous to implement. I’d recently sliced off my own fingers with a Bde. I could easily imagine Space turning my guts inside out. Armour on or off, wouldn’t make a damn difference.

  Still, there were offensive techniques.

  Only dual-component ones, and no real variety. Just one technique per qi type practised here in Yellow Pine. Spatial-element hybrids that didn’t let you hit harder, only differently.

  For Bde, there was Spatial Rend. Literally a formation-bypassing technique, the exact thing I’d been looking for. But for bdes. Not discs.

  I caught myself frowning. Not out of deep frustration, more like professional irritation. Discs were a better fit: spatial distortion, trajectories, ricochets, pne control. But no — bdes. Contact. Clean cutting lines.

  On the other hand, bdes were simpler. Fewer variables. More control.

  Damn it. If they’d made a simir technique for Point’s spikes…

  A cold pang hit my gut, right where Dubois had already skewered me with his stilettos.

  I shut the shop window, trying to shake the bad feeling creeping up on me. I could’ve checked the Bck Lotus store. There was probably something for Space and Fist, but I was afraid there’d also be something for Space and Point.

  Somehow, I switched focus away from techniques. Techniques were just the top. Or the bottom, if you viewed their quality. Maybe that’s why they’d made them public, to let people refine them through actual practice.

  Maybe that formation-bypass wasn’t as effective as advertised.

  Still, I had the feeling the real consequences weren’t there.

  There were simpler, more important things.

  Logistics would be the first to change.

  Even limited spatial pockets already lowered the cost of transporting high-value or critical cargo. Now that the Root had been legalised, it was only a matter of time.

  Standards. Certification. Mass production. Handheld cases with pockets instead of wheeled crates.

  Wheeled, rail, sea and air transport — all of it would shift. Transport companies won’t survive this.

  Some might adapt. Some will vanish.

  New kinds of middlemen will appear, not between locations, but between volumes. Who has the right to carry, who has the right to store, who has the right to open.

  Loading and unloading will become a niche of its own, unless they find a way to automate the process and cut cultivators out of it entirely.

  But if cultivators turn out to be irrepceable, that will slow down the transformation of the transport sector.

  They’ll need time. Time for a new generation of rejected first-years with high Space stats to return to Earth. Or they’ll have to start buying essence for the old cultivators.

  I haven’t seen any sold for units yet.

  Which brings us to the idea of gardens.

  Since essence already exists, there has to be a Space Garden somewhere. Most likely hidden inside some cssified research institute, where a few dozen thinhorns are performing specific techniques to generate saturation.

  However many they’ve got, they won’t be able to meet demand, which means schools will start establishing their own gardens too.

  This isn’t Gravity or Vacuum, which never found rge-scale application.

  Here, everyone and their cousin will want to carry a tactical nuke in their pocket just in case. Which brings us to control. And licensing.

  Smuggling. Of course. No more drugs up the arse. Now you could swallow a jade bead and move a whole container of crap across continents without breaking a sweat.

  Sure, smuggling existed before. Space doesn’t create the problem, it just removes the limits. Banned substances, artefacts, biological material, all of that had been moving unofficially for years. Maybe even through the same kind of pockets.

  The demons certainly used them. At least the ones in Bck Lotus had connections with Earth-based groups. So maybe none of this is new. Maybe the smuggling routes I’m only guessing at have been in operation for decades.

  If so, making Space public now gives us a chance to fight this not with rumours, but with institutions.

  If anyone even wants to.

  Space wasn’t revealed because society was ready. It was revealed because they couldn’t move forward without it. Earth had reached a clear deadline.

  Seems like up there, at the very top of the political Olympus, they’ve decided this raid really will be the st one, one way or another.

  A rge-scale threat requires rge-scale tools.

  Space isn’t convenience. It’s a resource. A way to change logistics, and deliver strikes where no one’s expecting them.

  The military will definitely benefit from this.

  Logistics in wartime is a top priority. Even when it comes to civilian protection and support, this will help.

  But taxes? Taxes are going to be a nightmare.

  How do you account for goods that physically don’t exist anywhere? How do you measure volume? How do you track movement?

  And what about jobs? Drivers, loaders, security staff — a huge portion of the popution with low qualifications could lose their livelihoods. That kind of mass unemployment could lead to unrest. Protests. And just like that, we’re staring down the barrel of a political crisis and a colpse in public trust right before an invasion...

  My head was already starting to ache from thoughts like this. It was still morning, and I was already digging through the fridge for a bottle.

  Alcohol barely had any effect these days. The body registered it as a new, more efficient energy source. Fast carbs squared.

  I had the feeling I’d need that energy today. Everyone would be comparing their Space stats: who’s got a 5, who’s got a 10.

  I had 52.

  That was definitely going to raise questions.

  I’d managed to pour myself some gin, but hadn’t added the juice yet. Even if alcohol ‘barely’ hit now, I still needed to keep my mind sharp to deal with all those questions.

  Incoming call: S. D. Mendoza

  Accept / Decline

  This couldn’t be a coincidence.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “Be a dear and stay home today,” Mendoza said.

  “Because I’ve got 52 in Space?”

  “Exactly. The Order will be checking everyone whose Root looks suspiciously high. I’ll be busy, and I don’t want to waste time on you.”

  “Ohhh,” I said, the realisation hitting. “They’re fucked! Not just here. Everywhere.”

  “Verdis, Earth, fleet ships, outposts on other moons and pnets — this is a full-scale purge,” Mendoza expined.

  MaksymPachesiuk