“You missed me, didn’t you?” Alice asked with a cheeky smirk, at the same time trying to appear innocent, and failing miserably. It wasn’t all her fault as Keynes could sense her true intentions via their bond which made her attempt futile in Keynes’s eyes.

  But he decided to humour her and play her game.

  “Not really,” he replied, trying to keep his true feelings hidden from Alice. But this naturally didn’t work. The bond between Keynes and Alice was, in truth, the bond between Keynes and a part of him. Alice had her own persona but in the end, she existed only as a part of Keynes’s spiritual core.

  “I know you’re joking.” She flashed him an even wider smile. “You wouldn’t stand a chance out there without me.”

  Keynes snorted, patting Alice on her head. Surprisingly, she had enough physicality to make it possible. One more Level or stage and she may become fully physical, he guessed.

  Either way if that was going to happen or not, this raised an interesting question; Was this actually a positive thing? Would she be able to fight alongside him? Would her physicality make her visible and if yes, wouldn’t it open her to physical damage?

  Well, why not ask Alice?

  “I’ll be fine. Until Level 10, I’m only physical for you. I still can use spiritual attacks against others and can handle spiritual attacks against me. So far, we haven’t encountered anything dangerous in that department here except for Shaper.”

  “Here? What about the spiritual realm? Are there any threats?” Keynes asked, finding her confidence a little worrisome.

  “There have always been threats in the spiritual realm, Keynes. The only difference is that I am much, much stronger now. Don’t worry about me. I’ll handle myself.” She winked at him.

  “Okay, so tell me, what has changed with my ascension to Level 5?” He decided to change the subject as her confidence was literally freaking him out. He didn’t know what to think about it, given the fact that about two years ago she was barely an annoying voice in his head.

  “You will love it!” she replied, enthusiastically. Her demeanour completely changed, becoming less cheeky. “For starters, I gained a lot of knowledge. Like a lot. Next, I gained my own skills! They are not like yours and they’re mostly usable in the spiritual realm. For now. Thirdly, I am far strong now. I should be able to disable most Level 3 monsters and kill any Level 1 and maybe Level 2 monsters. Ascenders are way harder to kill or disable, so no luck there. Lastly, my projects I worked on can be fully realised now.”

  “Okay, slow down, Alice. What kind of knowledge have you gained?”

  “To better explain the kind of knowledge I have gained you must first understand the mechanism of me gaining this knowledge. It isn’t a simple download like it was the case before the System was fully active. I don’t believe the System will ever grant anyone free information that way. Because of the Fourth Degree and the Superior Stage which are by an extension a part of me, my ability to sense and attune spiritual energy has dramatically increased. By itself, it doesn’t mean much, but my time spent in the spiritual realm wasn’t wasted. Everything I have learned there allowed me to subconsciously comprehend the System on a completely different level—after your ascension to Level 5 that is.”

  Keynes sat down, trying to make sense out of what she said. Knowledge had been their biggest obstacle since Keynes remembered, even before his Talent Revelation Ceremony. When he gained the Medium Stage and Alice as his spiritual companion, he thought it would solve everything. This wasn’t the case. That wasn’t Alice’s fault to be honest as the System hadn’t been fully functional yet. Not that reactivating the System did jackshit. For some stupid reason, the System wanted ascenders to figure shit out from the very scratch. That topic wasn’t white and black and Keynes didn’t want to go there right now.

  He wanted to explore what Alice had gained. An ability to sense and attune a spiritual energy, huh. It sounded rather overpowered, but was it?

  And can I learn it as well?

  “First of all, you cannot learn it. At least not on your own. You would need tools to do so. Or a Talent allowing you to look ‘behind the scene’, and even with all of this I cannot say it would be enough to recreate what I can do.”

  “That’s unfair,” Keynes complained, though he didn’t really mind it.

  “It is what it is. I’m quite positive that this is a matter of power. At some point, you’d be able to glean into the System with a sheer force of your power. But I don’t know at which Level you would be able to do that. On the bright side, your insight is a lesser version of my ability so… happy days, right?”

  “Yay, I guess?” Keynes shrugged.

  “Now, is it overpowered? Hell, yes! For example this rift…” she trailed off, her body becoming nearly translucent.

  “Hm? What’s the matter?” Keynes asked, instinctively checking on Kora and Persephone with his spiritual aura. It told him that they were fine although still knocked out by the Insight of the Soul. What made Alice trail off then?

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “The rift has changed,” she said after a moment. She returned to her more physical self. “It is now linked to the three of you.”

  “Whaa… okay. I see.”

  There were more notifications from the System, which Keynes had missed earlier.

  The rift has been transformed into Semi-Soul Space

  The rift will no longer recharge or reset

  Monster and reward chest spawns are disabled

  To reset or upgrade the rift provide the Greater Orb of Rift

  You own 1/3 of Semi-Soul Space

  “Okay, need some help here,” Keynes said after reading the notifications. “What is Semi-Soul Space?”

  “A space connected to your soul obviously. I’m not yet sure in what capacity though as the soul is a league beyond and above spiritual matters. But I can tell that it is also connected to Persephone and Kora. So we may need to wait until they wake up. Because you are only a partial owner of this space, you may need the other two owners to have any impact on it.”

  “Is this like the Inner Sanctuary?”

  Alice’s face tensed up as she pondered Keynes’s question, then her eyes flared up with wisdom.1

  “An inferior version, but yes.”

  Keynes looked around, both with eyes and spiritual aura, trying to get a better sense of the transformed semi-soul space. He found nothing out of ordinary, except for the System notifications. Was this a fuck up? Or was Kora and Persephone indeed required to do anything?

  Eh, either way, I need to wait until their visions end. In that case…

  “You say you’re strong now. Can we spar, maybe?”

  “We… wait. I guess we can now,” Alice replied but sounding a tad unsure. “Before your ascension, such an option simply didn’t exist. I wasn’t permitted to attack you.”

  “Go ahead, do your best.” Keynes nodded as he returned to a seated position.

  Alice didn’t look very sure but did as he’d asked. She raised her fist and struck him. Keynes watched her fist sail toward him. She was so slow, it would be comically easy to evade but he wanted to know how strong she really was.

  When her fist connected, it didn’t do the expected physical damage. In fact, it passed through him without any noticeable effect… and struck directly at his core? He felt a faint tingling that wasn’t a physical sensation. It reminded him of what Shaper had done to him in the World Reserve but on a much smaller scale. Alice’s attack was insignificant in comparison.

  “Heh, what did you expect? You are a Level 5 Perfect State ascender with the Superior Stage.” she asked as she moved back to her earlier position. Despite her words, she stared at her fist with interest.

  “So we aren’t going to be much of sparring partners then?”

  “With time, we may.” She opened and closed her fist as if testing something. Sensing his curiosity she added. “Your spiritual core feels very, very different to anything I have ever encountered in the spiritual realm. It’s like it’s made out of a completely different material.”

  “Isn’t my spiritual core simply stronger?” Keynes wasn’t surprised by that. Even at the same Level, monsters’ spiritual cores varied.

  “It’s not that. I believe it is the Perfect State that makes it—makes you—different. Hm.”

  Then Keynes felt a realisation via his bond with Alice. She just figured something out.

  “Can I try again?” she asked him.

  “Sure.” He nodded, growing curious himself.

  Alice attacked without thinking twice, her attack painfully slow once more but Keynes let her hit him.

  Like before, her fist passed through his skin without any physical interaction and thi—ouch!

  “Ouch!” Alice yelped, mimicking Keynes.

  Two things happened at the same time. The first thing was a sudden pull at the bond that came from Alice, the second thing was pain. Like the tingle during the first attack, it wasn't physical. It didn’t mean it wasn’t painful. Spiritual pain was as real as physical one. And in some way more annoying.

  “What did you do?” Keynes asked, massaging his chest. The spiritual core didn’t have a physical location within a body, though it felt as if it was inside his chest.

  “Jeez, that hurt,” she muttered, shaking the pain away. “Well, it’s simple. As I said earlier, your abilities are by extension mine. So I borrowed your spiritual energy and it appeared to work like a charm.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” Keynes countered. “Your pull on the bond was really draining, so don’t do this… or wait. Try to do this again. It’s my turn to test something.”

  She narrowed her eyes but did so and an instant the pull was to go through, Keynes blocked it. Okay. Good, he could stop the pull before it happened.

  “Hey! This isn’t fair.”

  “It is what it is,” he said smoothly. “Anyway, let’s figure this out.”

  They spent the next twenty minutes, going over pulling energy from Keynes. The bottom line was it was tiring as hell. He would dismiss the ability out of hand if she couldn’t control how much energy she was pulling from him. The issue was that no matter how much energy she pulled, the impact on Keynes was undesirable. If she did something like this during a combat, the distraction it caused could prove fatal.

  He tried to limit the amount of energy from his side and had some minor successes, but again, it cost a lot of mental power, making the whole thing unrealistic during a combat.

  So, in general, was this even applicable? Of course it was.

  They suspected that Alice’s ability to borrow Keynes’s spiritual energy could give Alice a massive edge in the spiritual realm. The thing about spiritual energy was that it wasn’t uniform. It varied vastly. While quantitative difference was important, the true game-changer was the qualitative aspect of spiritual energy. Levels mostly brought quantitative change as the amount of spiritual energy increased by a large margin. Quality between Levels also changed, becoming thicker and more potent, but it was minor in comparison. The true change came with advancement in spiritual stages, making spiritual energy finer and more sophisticated.

  One benefit of qualitative evolution was much better control and control was what made spiritual energy on par with entire skill sets if not better in some cases.

  But none of this came close to the changes made by a Perfect State. It completely remade spiritual energy, making it superior to higher non-Perfect State Level ascenders. Even with a fraction of Keynes’s energy, Alice would be able to hunt the most powerful beings of the spiritual realm.

  Keynes wasn’t going to pretend that he understood spiritual energy and all its nuances but he couldn’t wait to test himself against Level 6 rifts. But before this would happen, Keynes had a conversation ahead of himself and then a choice of his Minor Talent Upgrade.