Keynes smirked as he succeeded at his experiment. He also enjoyed Kora’s reaction. She looked at him utterly stunned, though her resilient mind didn’t fail her and she attacked again immediately. Despite Keynes’s attributes being 1 point higher than hers, the difference was negligible. Adding to this her hand combat technique and she was still superior to him in this regard. In the real-life scenario it wouldn’t matter as he could defeat her with [Chaos Aura] alone, however, it didn’t mean he should disregard hand combat.

  Kora pressed him hard, her determination was leaking through her spiritual aura and one thing needed to be said here, her spiritual aura was at least twice as strong as before gaining the Superior Stage. But while they could be matched evenly in attributes and Kora had an advantage in hand combat, there was no contest when it came to spiritual aura. Keynes, even at the same stage, was vastly stronger than Kora.

  They’d agreed to not use spells but they were still free to use spiritual aura and both decided to make good use of it. At full blast, Kora’s aura started to put pressure on the environment around her as if gravity was multiplied in that area. Anyone even a single stage lower than her would be completely immobilised by it. To Keynes, her aura was barely an inconvenience. She failed to suppress his movement, not that she actually cared about it. He could feel her razor-sharp focus, her punches and kicks were becoming harder and harder to evade, and he received more glancing blows than he should.

  But Keynes wasn’t going to waste such an opportunity without learning something. Following his first stunt where he negated Kora’s punch with his spiritual energy, he started experimenting more. He quickly figured out that as long as Kora were using her spiritual aura to enhance her physical attack, albeit indirectly, his novel defence mechanism wasn’t that effective. Clearly, spiritual energies countered each other, which made sense. What he wanted to do now was to learn how to take advantage of that; with each glancing blow Keynes adjusted his spiritual energy, not in strength but ‘quality’ or ‘frequency’—he wasn’t sure how to better describe it as its mechanism was similar to when he was manipulating his aura to make himself invisible to others. It certainly didn’t help that Kora’s determination grew alongside her frustration at not being able to land a clean strike.

  As minutes trickled in, Keynes honed his spiritual energy, making Kora’s glancing blows less and less effective. Five minutes in, she started showing signs of spiritual exhaustion. Her spiritual aura became inconsistent and wavered. Also, for the first time, her frustration got in the way as it must interfere with her hand combat technique because she messed up her footing a few times. Not that Keynes would be able to do anything about that. He was still on defence, which prompted her outburst.

  “Keynes, you can’t just stay on defence.” Even for an outburst it was well-mannered and rather kind.

  “Why not?” Keynes replied between breaths. “Doesn’t it work though?”

  “This is a sparring match, not some endurance marathon. So not really.”

  “You just need to try harder.”

  Her reaction to his teasing was instant. She for once used her spiritual aura to actively suppress him and at the same time she attacked with doubled determination. Her legs and arms became a blur, each of her strikes capable of shattering a tree or a wall.

  He almost lost there as her fervour caught him off guard. Her small frame gave her advantage as her moves were less restricted. But his spiritual energy manipulation started to pay dividends eventually. No longer Kora’s glancing blows were able to harm him. It came at a cost, accelerating his spiritual exhaustion, but the upside was massive.

  For the first time, he could put himself in the favourable spot, where Kora’s attack gave him an opening. He took a punch to his ribs, but didn’t fold as she expected, instead, he counterattacked. His 41 points in Strength descended on her like a fist of god and sent her reeling to the ground.

  Kora yelped surprised, massaging her jaw.

  “Hell, Keynes, what was that?”

  “Sorry.” He helped her up.

  “None of that,” she said, a smile appeared on her face. “It’s my fault. I should have expected foul play from you after you blocked my first attack.”

  “Foul play? I would never! ” Keynes asked, feigning indignation and giving her a shrug. “Anyway, I figured something out.”

  He launched an explanation regarding his spiritual energy manipulation and how he used it to empower his defences. She listened attentively but she was too exhausted to try it herself. The passive spiritual aura was nearly free but manual usage was really draining, especially used outside of one’s body. While Keynes’s level of aura control was outstanding, he couldn’t recreate what Shaper had done to him in the World Reserve.

  Soon.

  “Not much of a spar,” Kora sighed as they sat down on the grass near the place where they’d sparred. The spot looked worn and in a few places grass was badly flattened or outright damaged. They actually realised something; this place didn’t reset itself and any damage was here to stay. They couldn’t just use this place to train. That sucked but he was quite positive that this would change if they fed it the Greater Orbs of Rift.

  “I just like to mess around and try new things,” Keynes said. Kora was right, their fight wasn’t much of a spar and rather a way for Keynes to test something he’d stumbled upon with Alice earlier on.

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  They waited for another thirty minutes, mostly relaxing and talking about random things when Persephone returned to the soul space.

  “I teleported,” she said hastily as she approached them. “I am currently at the base. Now I am waiting for a shuttlecraft to take me to the orbit and see if I can enter from there.”

  Keynes never saw Persephone this excited. She usually was reserved and a little cynic. To see her like this was a surprise. At the same time, cogs in Keynes’s mind started to turn and they turned fast.

  “What about mana and stamina? Were they impacted in any way?” Kora asked.

  “It doesn’t cost any resources.”

  “That’s impossible,” Kora muttered.

  “Well, it looks like it is after all,” Persephone said. “Now wait, I want to test something.”

  Persephone vanished, then reappeared again but this time Keynes and Kora received a System ping that someone else was entering their soul space. Their approval was required to allow an additional person to enter. They both gave their approval and waited.

  Next to Persephone materialised Natalia. There were a few differences in how she appeared in comparison to Persephone. While Persephone's appearance was instant, it took Natalia about two seconds to fully materialise.

  “What the fuck is going on here?” Natalia exclaimed as she stared at them. “Where are we?”

  While Kora and Persephone explained everything, Keynes pinged Alice.

  What if I deployed the Inner Sanctuary here? How would that work?

  Alice appeared in front of him, but stayed invisible to the rest.

  Deploying the Inner Sanctuary here is the quickest and surest way to destroy the semi-soul space and warp the Inner Sanctuary, likely killing everyone inside. So, no, it won’t work, she replied.

  Pity, he mused. It wasn’t just vanity on his part but genuine instinctual feeling that merging the semi-soul space and the Inner Sanctuary would produce something unique. Nevertheless, he trusted Alice in this case.

  Well, first of all, the Father of the Forest asked you to deploy the Inner Sanctuary in another universe. The semi-soul space is not a different universe no matter how it feels. Until you form a true soul, you don't really have a soul… Don’t look at me like that. This is the requirement of ascending to Level 11, after all. So cheer up and look forward to Level 11.

  Didn’t you just say I’d promised to deploy the Inner Sanctuary in another universe? Keynes asked, wondering what Alice's true thoughts were about the Inner Sanctuary.

  A true soul exists outside of a universe so it is always a possibility…

  But? Keynes had a very strong suspicion as to what she was getting at.

  A true soul is naturally tied to your life, if you lose it there will be complications. I am not perfectly sure what kind of consequences are for an ascender’s true soul but it is likely that the soul space would close any way to the physical or spiritual realm.

  Huh? I thought death would destroy a soul space? That actually surprised him.

  Soul is governed by very different rules from everything else. You should not apply logic to it, she warned him.

  Wait, does it mean I could potentially live forever inside my own soul? Keynes asked, trying to understand it.

  Perhaps, she replied, then pointed at Keynes’s friends. They are about to wrap up things there.

  Keynes let Alice go, his attention shifted to Kora, Natalia and Persephone. Natalia was practically interrogating Persephone and Kora.

  “Keynes,” Natalia said, when she noticed his gaze, her usually reverent tone gone from her voice. This obviously was serious but having Natalia behaving like this only added gravity to the whole situation. “We want to start a series of tests. You up for this?”

  “Sure.” He nodded. “What tests by the way?”

  “I am going to leave and try to re-enter. If I am not back within one minute, Persephone will return to bring me back. That’s the first thing we must figure out.”

  She did so and didn’t return. An interesting thing was that if they wanted to, the three of them could stop Natalia from leaving but that restriction had to be unanimous to take effect. They obviously let her go without contesting her exit but it hinted that their control over this place was dangerous to a third party.

  I really want to get my own soul space. But at the same time, Keynes didn’t think it would be that easy to create a place better than this merely at Level 11. Wait, she said, I will form my true soul at Level 11, which will only open a possibility to have a soul space, not guarantee it.

  Persephone disappeared and a moment reappeared with Natalia, then said that the shuttlecraft was ready and she was going to enter from orbit. The plan here was to learn if Natalia’s exit/entry point was tied up to Persephone’s or she was independent.

  “What did you feel when you tried re-enter?” Keynes asked.

  “Nothing,” Natalia replied, frowning intensely. She wore casual clothes though she could deploy the spacesuit at any point. Anyone who stayed on the planet had one. This was their requirement. Natalia wearing casual clothes meant she must have been off duty when Persephone had returned to the base. “When I left this realm, there was nothing I could connect to.”

  “What about your spiritual sense?” Keynes further inquired. This was one thing that really irked him. If they could flee here from the physical realm at any point, did it mean they could just cheat and escape whenever things went south? It almost felt like his Talent when opening the secret doors inside the rifts. Something to further test together with how entering this space from a rift affected the rift itself. Did the rift reset or behave as if someone remained inside? What would happen to one of them if they returned to a rift which had already reseted? There were more and more questions that had to be answered before they began to take full advantage of this place.

  “Again, nothing. I couldn’t sense anything. Also [Mental Link] cut off the moment I exited this realm and there was no way to restore the connection. When Persephone returned to take me back, I tried to analyse the whole process but nothing registered to my spiritual or physical sense.”

  “No worries,” Keynes said, thinking about what they were missing.