Ves completed his exploration of the new ch Designer System.
His overall impression was that its na was not that accurate anymore.
While the System still offered plenty of ways to further his ability to design chs, it gained an entirely new facet that almost completely overshadowed its older uses.
The Divine Bazaar and the Tree of Possibilities were already outrageous enough. Both of them granted him a backdoor to all of the goods and secrets hoarded by the hidden cults that were apparently rife in human space!
All of these scattered cults that may or may not have ties to the Five Scrolls Compact all possessed their unique advantages. Few people ever got in touch with these obscure cults so it was impossible for Ves to learn about them, let alone hunt them down and compel them to cough up their secrets.
With the new System upgrades, Ves did not need to take action and provoke a lot of powerful new enemies. He could conveniently obtain what he needed as long as he was willing to pay the necessary Ascension Points!
"The na of the new currency is a telling indicator of what the System is truly trying to accomplish." Ves surmised.
At first, Ves was able to earn Design Points by designing chs. Simple as that.
Now, he was able to earn Ascension Points through multiple ans. While he still retained the ability to earn points through designing chs, he could also acquire them by completing strange missions and recruiting Chosen Envoys, whatever that exactly ant.
Although the latter two thods sounded a lot different from designing chs, Ves was able to see the common thread that connected all of them together.
"The point of doing all of this is to ascend to godhood." Ves concluded. "ch designers aspire to advance to Star Designer, which is an existence on the sa level as a True God. Doing all of that other stuff such as practicing a cultivation scripture or filling up my Chosen Courtyard with Envoys are all different roads that lead to the sa destination. The purpose of the System is to help its user reach the post-divinity phase and beyond."
This description did not necessarily fit the ch Designer System, but completely sounded natural if it was related to the tal Scroll!
After Ves chose the Spiritual Ascension upgrade track, the System appeared to be encouraging him to adopt a specific developnt strategy, one borne out of the fact that he possessed multiple incarnations.
Ves could still work towards becoming a Star Designer as usual, but his incarnations were both capable of evolving into True Gods!
The fact that Blinky and Vulcan could reach this powerful state opened up a lot of new possibilities that few people could have imagined.
"I can adopt a diversification strategy!"
Traditionally, the Larkinson Clan achieved initial success by forming a strong ch army and building up a successful ch business.
However, if either of these two activities began to stall, the Larkinson Clan would get into deep trouble.
This was why Ves and the leadership of the clan invested a lot into hedging their bets and diversifying their business activities.
Initiatives such as the Larkinson Biotech Institute, the T Institute, the hogrown shipbuilding operation centered around the Digilent Ovenbird, the Open Consortium, the Creation Association, the First Star ch Academy and all kinds of other smaller business activities comprehensively added more insurances to the Larkinson Clan.
Though the Living ch Corporation definitely brought in more money than all of those other business ventures combined, if the ch company ever collapsed one day, the Larkinson Clan would not beco destitute all of a sudden!
"The best part about all of this is that as long as everything is going well, my clan is earning a lot more money than normal!"
Ves saw that he had the opportunity to pursue a similar strategy with regards to his spiritual developnt.
From the mont he obtained Blinky, he had already noticed that the growth of his Spirituality attribute vastly exceeded that of his imdiate peers.
Though his wife, Ketis and a few other people had managed to close the gap after Ves gifted them with their own companion spirits, it was clear that incarnations granted him a powerful advantage over more conventional ch designers!
After years of designing chs and working alongside other gifted ch designers, Ves had developed a pretty good understanding of the consequences.
A stronger spirit not only comprehensively improved a ch designer's understanding, learning ability and affinity towards ch, but also allowed them to imprint their design philosophies onto ch designs to a stronger degree.
In fact, Ves' growth in this aspect was so strong that he was pretty certain that his Spirituality attribute already exceeded the minimum threshold of that of a Senior ch Designer!
What did this an?
Ves already satisfied one of the requirents to advance to Senior!
Of course, the reason why he had been stuck at Journeyman all of this ti was because the career path of a ch designer centered more around knowledge and ability rather than spiritual accumulation. It was a highly intellectual and cerebral profession by nature, which ant that brute force was not enough for him to reach the next rank.
In this regard, Blinky and Vulcan could provide relatively little help. While the latter possessed a lot of science and engineering know-how that Ves sotis borrowed in order to solve difficult design problems, he was rely making use of theories and thods developed by other people in the industry.
Ves was confident that he had accumulated enough in other areas. He designed a lot of chs over the years.
With no events or crises that could take Ves away from the design lab, he was able to complete one ch design project after another.
The only real distractions were his kids. As soone who felt strongly about family, he insisted on accompanying his cute little children as they enjoyed their childhoods.
Even so, Ves could not allow this sentint to compromise his passion for ch design. He had heard plenty of cases where ch designers lost their drive to design chs because they beca too dosticated.
"I'm pretty sure I designed enough chs considering how productive I've been in the last five years."
However, that was still not enough for Ves to feel that he had reached the turning point of his remaining ti as a Journeyman ch Designer.
Seniors reached their position by relying on their inventions. Ves had already asked for advice from nurous ch designers who completed the sa journey.
Whether it was Termanao Dervidian or Benedict Cortez, both of them told him that his ti would co sooner or later. He could not rush the process because it mostly ca down to waiting until he received enough inspiration to know how he could substantially push his design philosophy to the next level!
It was because of this limitation that Ves did not put too much emphasis on developing Blinky and Vulcan in parallel.
"I could be wrong, though."
There was a possibility that advancing to Master ch Designer or Star Designer made it a lot important to possess enough spiritual accumulation.
If that was the case, then having a couple of powerful spiritual incarnations would provide Ves with an imnsely valuable advantage!
Of course, it would take many years for that to beco relevant.
"I need to take care of my more imdiate needs."
He left the Sacred Hearth and went back to the Pantheon in order to check his Status. It had been years since he last inspected it, and a lot of subtle changes had occurred over the years.
[Status]
Na: Ves Larkinson
Profession: Journeyman ch Designer
Specializations: Mutual Growth
Ascension Points: 34
Attributes
Strength: 1.6
Dexterity: 1.7
Endurance: 2.0
Intelligence: 2.6
Creativity: 2.5
Concentration: 3.2
Spirituality: 10.6
Neural Aptitude: F
Skills
…
Abilities
[Superpublish]: Available (Used in Bardo Star Cluster). Can be activated once a year.
[Inventorize]: Available. Can be activated a single ti.
[Ti Gate]: Available. Can be activated once a year.
"Damn I'm good."
Ves did not need to inspect his Status to know how much he improved. He was able to use his own judgnt to determine how much his attributes had improved and how many Sub-Skills he acquired over ti.
Still, he felt a lot of psychological satisfaction when he was able to compare his new figures with the older ones that he recalled from his mory.
The most notable change aside from switching his Design Points with Ascension Points was the massive increase in Spirituality.
Since the Status page rged both his and Blinky's numbers together, it had exceeded the score of 10, which was probably an important threshold!
"It's too bad that my Skills and Sub-Skills haven't improved as drastically." Ves sighed.
He was too lazy to study each of the improved and added Sub-Skills in detail, but no matter how much he had managed to absorb during his ti in Davute, he had yet to make a breakthrough in understanding that was significant enough for him to advance to Senior.
Ves paid special attention to two new Sub-Skills.
[Phasewater I]
[Offensive Phasewater Technology I]
"Damnit! I spent so much ti on studying Phasewater, but all I managed to do was get my foot in the door!"
The difficulty of learning enough about phasewater theory in order to develop a basic understanding of the exotic was too great!
Ves was actually one of the faster ch designers to comprehend phasewater. There were many other Journeyn who had spent just as much ti and effort on studying phasewater theory and failed to reach half of his level of understanding!
Compared to expending years worth of ti on trying to understand how this mysterious dinsion-manipulating exotic worked, Ves would rather pluck an enlightennt fruit from the Tree of Possibilities and absorb everything he needed to know in an instant!
"The problem is that I need to wait for the damn tree to spawn the right enlightennt fruit!"
Ves had scanned all of the available enlightennt fruit during his first visit to the Tree of Possibilities and failed to find anything related to phasewater technology.
This was the downside to covering so many different scientific and spiritual fields! The tree only grew a couple of hundred fruits at a ti, so the chances of stumbling upon the ones he needed the most were low!
"Even if a phasewater enlightennt fruit is available, it is not certain that I can pay for it." Ves admitted with a sigh.
The System was absolutely fair in this regard. Rarer, more exotic, more powerful and more novel knowledge cost far more Ascension Points to obtain.
Ves couldn't afford all that much with just 34 AP to his na at the mont!
Just as he began to think about setting his sights lower and starting off with a few modest purchases to set him on the right path, he suddenly rembered that he still had a bunch of lottery tickets that were begging to be used.
His eyes lit up again.
"Yes! How could I have overlooked them? The golden lottery tickets might not be that precious, but the radiant lottery tickets are absolutely fantastic!"
Based on what little he obtained from a radiant lottery ticket in the past, he guessed that the value of goods they spit out ranged from 100 to 10,000 AP!
In fact, it may very well be the case that the radiant lottery tickets could potentially give Ves items that were worth far more than the upper boundary, as he hadn't used them often enough to figure out their distribution pattern.
"No matter whether I can get a prize that is worth 500 AP or 500,000 AP, I will always be able to obtain a windfall!"
Compared to what he could gain from spending 34 AP, the potential prizes he could win from using up his lottery tickets were far better!
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