Two days had passed since the bet with the Sect of the Illusory Edge.
Daniel was currently sitting on his chair in the castle's hall, and next to him, were Zack, Alesia, and many other leading members of his group.
Sitting in front of them, was the Illusory Maiden, which had come to deliver Daniel's winnings directly to him. She had been let inside the pocket dimension alone.
In Daniel's hand, was a semi-transparent white crystal. He was observing it attentively, and inside it, he could feel Zack's presence.
Zack himself couldn't stop looking at it. It was as if he was drawn to it. As if his very being wanted nothing more than to just be with that white crystal.
"How does it work? Is it possible to merge it back with the rest of his spirit?" Asked Daniel to the Illusory Maiden.
The Illusory Maiden responded by saying "It isn't an irreversible process, if that's what you are asking me." She then took a pill out of her spatial ring.
This pill was white, and it appeared identical to a common healing pill, but there was something intrinsically different in it. It emanated faint spiritual essence, along with life essence, time essence, and healing essence.
"This is a healing pill, but it is made to heal the spirit.. If consumed along with the portion of the spirit that was removed, it should help in mending the damage.." Said the Illusory Maiden.
Daniel knew that that object was not part of the bet, and that the Sect of the Illusory Edge could not be forced to give that item to them, so, he decided not to assume anything, and said "Would you be willing to sell one to us?"
"I'm actually here to gift this one to you." Responded the Illusory Maiden with her usual cold demeanor.
"I somehow doubt that that's going to be a simple gift. Continue.." Said Daniel with a faint smile on his face.
He was right. After hearing Daniel's words, an embarrassed expression appeared on the Illusory Maiden, as she said "You are correct.. It is an apology gift, and it's yours no matter what.. But I've been asked to propose something to you."
"I'm listening." Responded Daniel plainly.
"We know that you will soon leave the city, and go to the capital.. We would like to create a direct passage to your pocket dimension, so that we can trade even after you leave."
By creating a direct passage to Daniel's pocket dimension, the Illusory Maiden meant to form a spatial connection between her sect, and the dimension they were currently in.
Technically speaking, a pocket dimension was a spatial construct that floated in the middle of the deep and dark void, which was so immense, that there was no historical record of two pocket dimensions having ever been remotely close enough to one another.
A common analogy to explain how the creation of a pocket dimension worked, was the fisherman analogy. The fisherman being the cultivator, and the fish being the pocket dimension. The fishline, which in this case was is the ring, worked as a mean to connect the fisherman to the fish.
If the fishline were to break, the connection between the two would be lost. The fish would go back swimming into the endless blue ocean, and the fisherman would never be able to catch it again.
Right after people had managed to create pocket dimensions, and learned how to make them liveable, they had studied a way to increase the number of points from which they could be accessed.
After thousands of years, they had discovered how to form direct passages.
The method was simple. Going back to the fisherman analogy, it would be like letting a second fisherman connect his fishline to the middle of the first fisherman's line.
This method had been created by cultivators that were outside of the isolated world from which Daniel came from, so he and his group members weren't aware of it.
Of course, even if Daniel was aware of it, he would never allow a secondary connection to be created to his pocket dimension, or at least, not at his current level of cultivation.
As he was now, many could enter his pocket dimension and destroy it from inside.
After a quick explanation of what creating a direct passage to a pocket dimension meant, Daniel rapidly understood.
Originally, he had thought that the reason why interplanetary merchants were so rich, was because they had the opportunity to operate in multiple planets with the highest amounts of resources, but that was far from being the reason, in fact, these merchants had all started the same way.. From a single planet.
Creating a direct passage between one city and one's pocket dimension simply required the permission from the local government, while trading and creating direct connections in various planets, required the permission of each individual government, along with the permission of the faction to which those planets belonged.
That was the type of influence that Daniel needed in order to obtain a license to travel between worlds. He needed to have a necessity to leave his current planet in order to increase the size of his business.
Creating a net of commerce in the planet in which the company had originated, was the first step to deal on an interplanetary level.
After a few minutes spent thinking, Daniel decided to refuse the offer of the Sect of the Illusory Edge.
The reason why he had refused, was because he didn't want his business in this city to have to go through the Sect of the Illusory Edge. Instead, he would ask permission to the local government to create a direct connection to a secondary pocket dimension, which would work as base for their company to operate.
Whenever he would visit another city or planet, he would create a direct connection to this base, allowing people to visit it and trade with them.
That would leave the inhabited pocket dimension safe, and work as a free mean of teleporting between cities, and in the future, planets.
Of course, he would first need to visit a specific location, before he would be able to create a direct connection to the pocket dimension.
The same would be if he managed to obtain the permission to travel through worlds.
Differently from the way that members of faction used to travel through space, which was thanks to the powers granted by their factions, just like the portal of essence of corruption that the Heralds of Corruption used, or the portal of spiritual essence which the Spiritual Emissaries used, the way merchants traveled from one place to another, was through interplanetary teleportation devices situated in the major cities of each planet.
In the past, the first merchants would make use of these teleportation devices whenever they needed to move between planets, but soon enough, they had decided to adopt the method of creating a web of direct connections between the planets they visited, and at the core of this web, would be the base of their companies.
It was a mostly known fact that the biggest company bases would either be set in planets which entirely belonged to them, or were within pocket dimensions.
Once the Illusory Maiden left, Daniel went into a quiet room with Zack, and by following her instructions, he helped him merge once again with the missing piece of his spirit.
At the same time, Daniel was able to witness a few new concepts, like the connection that life had to the spirit, the effect that time essence had on the recovery of an injured spirit, and finally, the way healing essence could help a spirit to recover.
Despite the use of the time sphere, the entire process had taken more than twenty-four hours, meaning that if left to himself, Zack would have recovered only after five days.
Once his spirit was whole again, Zack managed to regain his previous cultivation at the late second stage of the immortal cultivation, or sixth rank.
-----
Ten days later.
Before leaving the city, Daniel decided to go to the government offices. There, he spent hours between meetings, and filling forms for the sole purpose of doing two things. Register his company, and receive the permission to open a direct connection to his company headquarters.
For his company headquarters, Daniel had created a pocket dimension in the shape of a tower. He then filled it with various essence spheres like wind, water, earth, metal and wood. Additionally, he placed numerous light spheres in it, which kept the place well lit all day round.
Daniel had given Alis the job to refournish the place. He wanted her to turn this simple-looking building into a refined base of operation.
In a matter of days, the tower had transformed. It was now divided into floors, which were divided into different levels.
The ground floor was the place where the direct passages to the various cities and worlds would be installed. The more Daniel's company would grow in time, the more they would need to focus on enlarging it.
The floors from the first to the tenth, were filled with various shops which belonged to Daniel's group. There, Daniel sold the weapons, armors, food, and essence spheres produced by his own group.
The floors from the eleventh to the thirteenth contained large marketplaces, in which people could rent a spot, and trade with visitors from various different cities and planets.
Each floor from the fourteenth to the eighteenth had a different auction house, one of which, was a silent auction.
The nineteenth floor was an extremely large and elegant reception room, where Daniel's group would host events, and make announcements to the public.
Finally, the floors from the twentieth to the twenty-third, contained the various administration offices.
Possessing a headquarters was one of the many requirements for registering a company. Aside from that, a certain amount of members was necessary, as well as an official sector in which to operate.
The reason why these requirements were necessary, was so that the government could differentiate between companies by size and success. Opening a direct connection wasn't something that was allowed to every company, in fact, it was necessary for the company to be over a certain size to be able to receive the permission.
At this stage, Daniel's company was large enough to receive a region-wide permission. Which meant that he was allowed to open a direct connection within each and every city within the region of origin of the company.
The next levels of permissions were continent, planet, and system-wide. After being in possession of a system-wide permission, Daniel would need to register his company to the faction which possessed the planet in which the company had originated, which in this case, was Iewah's faction.
Only then, he would be allowed to use interplanetary teleportation platforms.
For now, his company was still at the lowest level, but showed promise.
Daniel was currently sitting within the registration office. In his hands, were various documents, and each of them had been marked with his immortal essence, filled in, and signed.
Only one document hadn't been completely filled in, and this document was probably the one that the majority of company founders had filled in first when registering their companies.
This document was the very first page of the registration form, and only one section had been left blank. That section, was the company's name.
"You've been staring at that damned piece of paper for twenty minutes now.." Said Sewah from within Daniel's mind.
"I was so busy lately with all of the details.. And now I can't think of a name for the company.." Muttered Daniel to himself.
After an additional ten minutes, Daniel finally shrugged his shoulders, and wrote a couple of words in the form. He then stood up from the chair he was sitting on, and approached the counter.
The young woman behind the counter checked the various documents to make sure that everything had been taken care of. In the first page, which was oddly placed on the back of the stack, she saw, right next to -Company Name-, the two words "Golden Karma".