Cyril Sarnath
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Chapter 208 Leadership
🕑 Added 2024-03-30 14:49:25 +0000 UTCHey, thanks for your patience. I got you the chapter! Also, I wanted to remind you that this arc is mostly focused on base building from very very scratch. Wars and such will follow.
Moreover, we are getting closer to a interlude involving several characters from Earth.
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Keynes jumped from one rocky outcropping to another. Halfway to the exit, he’d dismissed the spacesuit, wanting to enjoy the fresh air. The frigid temperature didn’t affect him, his Vitality and the Pure Body buff were too strong. Level 1s from the mission crew would be a different story though, but that was a problem for later.
The breath of fresh air wasn’t the only reason Keynes chose climbing down over [Flight], it wasn’t even to conserve his mana. He wanted to gather his thoughts. It must be the charm of this rift that put him in such a pensive mood.
He felt bad for forcing the issue about the window in the ceiling, almost felt bad. He really liked the hollow area around the third rift.
By the way, I wish we could name rifts. Calling them rifts by number sucks, he murmured in his head.
I’m sure it can be done, no idea how though, Alice chimed in, sounding a little distracted. After they were done with the cluster, he would need to discuss with her the spiritual realm inside the rifts. Could it be permanently changed? Later…
After several minutes, Keynes arrived at the rift’s exit and activated the spacesuit. He didn’t welcome the sensation of being cut off from the world but there was currently no way around it without casual 500 Vitality. That was some absurd number.
Actually, absurd was an understatement.
He thought back to the Attribute Progression Table he had seen in Emerald City and whistled.
Even if he assumed that a human essence ascender could cross Level 10, which they couldn’t, it would take such an ascender 31 Levels to achieve over 500 points in a single attribute. A rift essence ascender needed Level 21 to achieve that number and Perfect State ascender required Level 18 though Level 17 was nearly there.
This made no sense. How could a Level 0 environment have such a strong impact on a High Level ascender?
The calculation was based purely on the Vitality attribute. It did not calculate buffs, items, skills or Talents. Or other unknown factors.
“So, the number would certainly be lower than 500?”
If there are other factors present then very much so. To improve my analysis beyond attributes, I would have to analyse the considered factor to get accurate readings.
“It’s okay for now but I will keep that in mind.”
You can also master [Chaos Aura] or get [Purity Aura] to nullify the effect completely, Alice added.
Keynes couldn’t even fathom a level of mastery required to disintegrate toxic air with [Chaos Aura]. His Perception and Mind attributes would have to be 3 times higher than they were now to manage the stimuli and precision, not to mention oxygen.
Still better than 500 Vitality, Alice said, being privy to Keynes’s thoughts.
True.
Anyway, it was time to leave. They should be aware by now that Keynes had killed the boss and would not try to attack him upon leaving the rift. Just to be sure, Keynes activated [Spiritual Wraith], erasing his spiritual signature and making himself invisible. The invisibility would only last 1 minute while the spiritual concealment lasted for 10 minutes. Technically, using [Spiritual Wraith] was frugal and not very wise, considering its mana cost—70—but he decided to do it anyway.
He placed the egg next to the rift’s exit.
I will be back for it, he said.
You better be! Alice warned him.
When he emerged from the rift, the others were arguing about the glass ceiling. There were several eagles scattered about. Far fewer than insects outside the second rift.
Naturally, no one noticed him. He used [Flight] just to levitate him above the ground. He listened.
“Even with a base down there, the glass up there is vanity,” Rell was speaking from orbit. “It doesn’t offer any real benefits and causes many potential issues.”
“True, the schedule is tight,” Natalia agreed.
“No, it isn’t just tight. We’re running on fumes. We are already behind in most of my calculations and they were done for a group of 50 people not over five hundred. I don’t even understand why we are still debating this stupid issue.”
“We have meat,”Jedd added, conciliatory. “The eagles are fully edible as well.”
Rell snorted, which was followed by a fast tapping then Rell spoke.
“These two rifts cannot sustain us. That is a fact. Also, even IF we had all the meat we need to sustain five hundred people, disregarding everyone’s preferences or balanced diet, there is no way Ul can prepare all this food. This is the issue we should discuss. Not the fucking glass!”
Keynes almost dropped the concealment spell, but he endured, quelling his rising anger.
“He has a point,” Persephone said.
No one commented after that and [Spiritual Wraith]’s invisibility eventually ran out.
“Keynes,” Natalia sighed, sounding part-relieved, part-tired and part-surprised, but she didn’t mention his sudden appearance. “Please, make this idea with the glass ceiling go away.”
“We aren’t doing it,” Rell said, his voice loud. “We don’t have time for his caprices.”
“Rell,” Natalia and Jedd said warningly at the same time.
“Don’t Rell me! I won’t die because the boy doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation,” Rell snapped.
“Ignore him, Keynes,” Natalia added on the private channel. “He has too much on his plate. I will have a chat with him when we get back.”
Maybe, Keynes would have listened to her and agreed to her suggestion but then something else happened. It felt like the Emotional Affliction debuff, but there were no System warnings. Keynes’s mind became lucid and clear, his emotions vanished.
He silently glanced at everyone gathered in the hollow.
Keynes… Alice’s voice reached him but he dismissed her.
“No,” he said and confusion filled the others’ auras. “This conversation must happen here and now. Delaying it will only make things worse in the future.”
His voice was calm but devoid of empathy.
“There is nothing to talk about,”Rell snapped.
“What Rell is trying to say—” Jedd said, conciliatory.
“Don’t put words in my mouth,”Rell interrupted. “I mean what I say. This idea—”
Keynes commanded the AI to cut the orbit’s comms off. They only could hear him now.
“Enough. I’ve made my decision and I will not change my mind about the glass. Don’t forget I am your leader not because I wanted to be but because you, all of you, decided to come aboard the spaceship and follow me. I don’t expect everyone to follow forever or anything like that but for now, we are stuck with each other.
“We are ascenders. We have Talents and soon we will have countless spells, items and Levels so nothing will stand in the way of our progress.”
He made a step forward.
“But real progress is never easy. I want you to step outside of your comfort zone and think outside of the box. Also, I want you to trust me.”
There were many other words on his mind, some harsh and cynical, others soft and comforting, but some unseen hand guided him in expressing his mind.
Of course, there were other, darker undercurrents that he chose to conceal because they were built on a lie that he didn’t like being a leader. Or that he liked to be left to his own devices, finding his own path, staying out of the spotlight.
Except these were lies.
His earlier struggle with the whole thing, and subsequent delegation of command to Natalia didn’t stem from fear of failing as a leader but fear of how natural, how right it felt to stand above others. There was a saying that only those who didn’t want to be leaders should be leaders. He feared becoming a tyrant. Someone like Windsor Freeman or worse…
But no longer, not anymore.
There were leaders and there were the leaders, the true ones.
The unnatural calmness continued, a distant echo of what he had sensed from Esopp’s trait of dominator.All his worries and hesitation had already melted away.
“Did I make myself clear?”
Natalia was first to respond and she did it in a shocking way.
“I will follow you to the end of the world.” She dropped to one knee. Ul followed and then even Croft kneeled down, albeit without the same fervent as Natalia.
Persephone remained standing. Keynes didn’t expect them to kneel. He wasn’t a monarch or worse, a god.
“Stand up,” he said, quietly. “Don’t do that ever again. I won’t have my crew turning into fanatics.”
“Understood,” Natalia said.
“One more thing. Trisk, I have an extra job for you, when you finish up there.”
***
Trisk traced his hand over the walls built around the first rift and smiled. His emotions were in mayhem. A spaceship, another planet, an extraterrestrial rift and then his leader’s speech and his request. They made the whole thing feel like a dream.
He finished shaping the alien stone, creating thirty centimetre-thick walls and ceiling of a chamber around the rift and tunnel that led to the landing zone. Kora was on the other side of the chamber planting the moss from the rift in shallow crevices Trisk had made for it. The whole thing wasn’t anything spectacular and would have to be adjusted, reinforced and eventually rebuilt from ground-up but the rock was felt, to his Talent, solid enough to insulate this side from the toxic air outside. That left one issue…
“I can design either purifying or blocking runes. Level 0 stone will degrade too quickly with both sets this close to each other but the bigger issue is fueling the runes. We don’t have mana containers and runes do not store mana for later. They only draw enough to remain active and functional,” Sellana explained.
Pierre and Roman fell into a heated debate that forked into two different solutions.
Pierre’s solution was building an airlock and removable physical barriers. This method closely followed the standard systems used in space technology. On paper, the idea seemed solid and functional. Mana would only be required to purify the airlock before getting inside the tunnel.
But it would require air tight doors and control of the pressure and a working circulation system.
On the other hand, Roman’s idea was far simpler but less elegant.
He wanted to use strong purifying runes fuelled by at least two people at all times, remaining near the entrance in shifts. The entrance would have to be built from Level 1 materials to slow down the degradation of the material. Unfortunately, they didn’t have anyone with a metal-shaping Talent to work metal, even if they found enough in rifts. The best they could do was to use Level 1 rock from the rift. It would still have to be repaired at least once a week.
Following the first set of runes, there would have to be a backup set two metres into the tunnel with a single person remaining there for the emergency. No matter which idea Trisk preferred, he knew that there was no real choice here. The first option was out of the question. Stone wasn’t designed for this, not even Level 1.
Shortly after Keynes picked Roman’s idea, Sellana approached Trisk with rune designs. They used their spacesuits to transfer the designs and spending modes 30 mana, they could use the spacesuit AI to control the quality of each rune to ensure the runic circuit would not fail.
“I am out of mana,” Trisk announced, quietly, dampening their enthusiasm. At least he was spared from experiencing a mana headache this time. “Shaping Level 1 stone, inside the rift and again here, then creating precise runes in it… Hmm. It actually might be more mana than my entire mana pool.”
“Really?” Sellana asked, surprised.
“The more precise the more mana hungry my Talent becomes. These runes look hellishly precise to me.”
“Don’t forget that the circut’s wheel must have the same density and weight throughout the whole structure. Any part out of proportion and we are looking at very low efficiency,” Sellana added, as if oblivious to Trisk’s bad news.
“Or the circuit’s complete disintegration,” Trisk added.
“Exactly…”
Not to mention that I have to create an urgent tunnel from the third rift straight to the shuttlecraft for some unknown but important reason. All of this in 24 hours and without mana. I am having a blast!
