Chapter 44 - Groundwork For Open Beta

Acting Sect Leader Maximus Radcliffe

Friendship is one thing but knowing Immortal Ascension Pavillion predicament in the human world, the dwarves had driven a hard bargain when the sect tried to restart trade. The Dwarven Federation has managed to walk away from the negotiation with a number of additional favorable terms. In short, it mostly increases the sect's commitment to fulfill certain trade goods and limiting trade with some other foreign races for the coming century. This is something the dwarves knew very well the sect with have to begrudgingly accept for the short term.

The first trade was a resounding success for the sect, countries and disciples that have participated in the trade. Most important for both the sect and countries are the non-sensitive components for runic fusion reactor. Once those components come in, the capacity to access will undergo a significant increase. The large scale construction of this group of runic fusion reactors are expected to be completed in four Earth months. At that time, the sect will have an additional three hundred thousand access slots. As for the major economic powerhouses, America, China, Russia and European Union alone will be able increase the number of new access slots by a hundred and fifty thousand access slots each. The combined number of access slots adds up to six hundred thousand enabling to enter Open Beta phase.

Before is ready for Open Beta phase, the sect will need to make an adjustment to the access point rule. Majority of the countries have lobbied that it is wasteful that all access slots are locked to a single disciple when each of them are limited to access twelve hours a day most of the time. The countries have proposed to adjust the access points limit to "x" number of concurrent logins into instead. This new adjustment will affect the capacity issue on weekends when campaigns allow the older disciples to access for more than twelve hours a day. As long as Maximus solves this issue, the sect will double the number of disciples it gets to recruit from Earth.

Updating the access point rule is the easier part. Negotiating with the countries to reserve a number of access slots for civilian use will be trickier. Every country has been reserving all their expanding access slots to individuals that will advance the national interest. In the initial stage, access slots are allocated mostly to academicians and civil servants but the allocation of new access slots quickly diverted to retired academicians, bureaucrats and military personnel. Such recruitment is less disruptive on government operations back on Earth. Diverting a small batch of active workforce to will have marginal impact on day-to-day operations but when the number started to go into tens of thousands, even countries like China and India with its larger population won't be able to sustain it for long. Pivoting access points to retirees also seems to produce better results. Those retirees are much more enthusiastic when given a second chance to relive their live in a much younger body.

As for the gains on the dwarven side, the introduction of spirit battery alone was a shocking surprise. The idea of spirit battery itself sounds simple but this simple theory can be compared to the theory of gravity before it was proposed by Isaac Newton. Without Earth, Maximus believes the cultivation world might never discover the wonder of spirit batteries. It all comes back down to the one of the great flaws of the cultivation world that stifles innovation among the lesser powers. The stigma against innovation is so great that the lesser powers will never dare to come up with such a groundbreaking product. Even if any lesser powers' disciple has come with such an idea, it will be quickly buried or forgotten to avoid a self-brought disaster. As for those great powers standing at the top of the pyramid? They are so used to ample amount of cultivation resources that there is no need for them to think out of the boxes when it comes obtaining more spirit energy.

All spirit batteries sold to the dwarves come with anti-counterfeiting measure to prevent them from easily reverse engineering the technology. However, Maximus is well aware such a measure is just a rudimentary way of delaying the inevitable. Even before the sect's trade delegation left the Dwarven Federation, the dwarves' emperor realm experts have descended on the lower realm in their avatars to learn firsthand about spirit battery. With emperor realm experts stepping into the picture, it is not difficult for him to guess the dwarves probably have their own spirit battery prototype by the time the sect trade delegation left the Dwarven Federation. After that, it will probably just take the dwarves another few weeks at most before they can produce their own first generation spirit batteries. In any case, the sect welcomes the competition and also a chance to study the Dwarven version of spirit battery design. There might just be something to learn to further enhance the sect's latest design.

The first batch of spirit batteries sold for a very nice profit at ten times the retail price back on Eldorin. It might be price gauging but such profit margin is a onetime deal only. After that, the price of spirit batteries will have to come down accordingly to compete against dwarven products. Even if the dwarves start their own production line, Maximus believes it wouldn't be easy for them to match the sect's cost of production. This involves another manufacturing principle the Earthlings introduced and he will make sure the dwarves never learn about it anytime soon. On this topic, he is sure those dwarven emperor realm experts will also try to figure out what all those runic components that have been ordered in large quantity actually do. Those experts might have guessed correctly that the sect is still withholding more groundbreaking innovations but it will probably be impossible for them to discover what the sect is holding back without a mole on Eldorin betraying the sect's interest.

Reestablishing trade with the Dwarven Federation has also led to a drawback that the sect has anticipated but was unable to estimate its severity at this point in time. The sect's surviving spy network has sent back intelligence that their enemies have quickly became aware of the sect's trade with the Dwarven Federation. With this last piece of clue, their enemies are quick to surmise that the sect has definitely found a new world in the lower realm to replenish its talent pool. This is not difficult to guess since the sect has begun to behave abnormally the moment Maximus have found Earth. The intelligence sent back is reassuring for the time being. Almost all their enemies are not worried that Immortal Ascension Pavillion have found a new world in the lower realm. As a matter of fact, most of their enemies wouldn't even be concerned if the sect has found a few more worlds. Unless the sect has somehow found more than a hundred new worlds in the lower realm, the chances of Immortal Ascension Pavillion recovering to even half of its previous peak is almost impossible. Finding even more than one new world is a statistical wonder and even if Immortal Ascension Pavillion can create a miracle, finding more than a hundred new worlds would be out of the question. Their enemies just find the new development a minor nuisance, delaying the inevitable by a few thousand years at most.

Unbeknown to the sect enemies, the sect only needs a single new world for revival. Earth is a world that broke all logic. Even the most suspicious emperor realm expert will never be able to guess how outlandish the new world the sect has found. Most human worlds on average have a population of a billion souls. Even in the more prosperous worlds, it is rare for it to reach more than a billion and a half souls. Maximus is aware of less than ten such worlds in the immortal realm that has reached such large population milestone. The world Immortal Ascension Pavillion headquarter is located being one of them.

Earth's population size alone would rival five of the most prosperous human worlds. However, what truly differentiate Earth from the rest of human worlds are the quality of Earthlings' cultivation talent. What is deem as a rare cultivation talent in the cultivation world is as common as grass on Earth. Even those legendary Earth and Divine grade cultivation talents that are touted as the find of a millennia or an era are just considered rare back on Earth. After the numerous recruitments and keeping track of the new disciples' cultivation talent, the sect has surmise that recruiting on Earth alone is almost equivalent to recruiting from a third of the talent pool in the entire human worlds. One can imagine the implication of a single sect fully monopolizing a talent pool of that size. It is such a pity that the sect can only monopolized this almost exclusive talent pool until the countries on Earth achieve independence.