Abilities and expansion plans

Sefirot's most important ability, was to allow Max to use the abilities of one Sequence above him until Sequence 1, then it would just strengthen his abilities. However, that was for something in the far future. For now, Max focussed on the abilities of Fool's End that he now had access to.

Considering how lacklustre the abilities of Bender were, the Fool's End abilities most definitely made up for them.

For starts, his [Attract] and [Repel] were now 30% stronger, meaning they could move heavier objects or lighter ones with much more force. These two abilities also had their precision improved, and Max wanted to test it out but there was nothing within the Sefirot for him to [Attract] or [Repel].

Thus, he simply used the powers of the Black tar to product a pen, and then tried to control it only using his abilities. Instead of flying directly at his face, Max was now able to subtly control the speed at which he wanted it to fly at him. And, it he used [Repel] at the same time as [Attract], he could essentially make the object float perfectly still.

This was something he could easily do by just controlling the glowing black fluid around him, but he could not do it only by using his abilities, which meant that once he advanced to Fool's End, he would also be able to do it on Earth, which was something very useful.

Other than this strengthening, his [Density Manipulation] also went through an improvement which now allowed him to change the density by another 20% more than before, and of objects 5 metres around him instead of having to directly touch things to do it. Of course, as before, the larger or denser the object, the more spirituality would be consumed.

Max dissolved the black pen; which would not work due to the lack of ink and moving components within the pen, back to black liquid. Max's control over the substance that he could only assume was a similar substance to the Grey fog from the Sefirah Castle, was not great. He could control all the liquid within the Sefirot, but not with enough skill to produce incredibly tiny moving parts such as the stuff found in watches. Creating simple and large objects thought was very possible. 

Next came the juicy part; his new abilities!

He can [Fool] the abilities of other Beyonders! How stupidly overpowered was that? Unfortunately, it was limited to only those of Sequence 8, but it was still something that was stupidly overpowered. And of course, it came with its own series of stupidly over-priced Spirituality consumption for each use of the ability. Plus, this ability was essentially useless here since there was no other Beyonder for him to experiment with or use the ability on. But it would be incredibly useful once he reached Sequence 8 with his real body.

Next came the abilities that were the most useful to the current Max. They were the [Anti-divination], [Anti-intuition], and [Anti-illusion] abilities which effectively destroyed the usefulness of the Sequence 9 Seer, and halved the usefulness of the rest of the Fool's pathway. Though these only apply to those at or Below Sequence 8.

Equipped with just these abilities, he could easily just destroy Klein if he did not have the Sefirah castle.

There was something rather different about these abilities, and that was the fact that just like [Danger-intuition] ability these abilities were also passive and always active, and did not use up his Spirituality unless they were being used to thwart actual attempts like divination and illusion or intuition suppression.

Other than these abilities, the Fool's End also allowed Max to substitute himself with paper figurines, to either exchange places with it or use it as a distraction. These could also be used to avoid hexes and curses, though not very successfully most of the time. Another very useful ability was that Mac could sense the Historical Void and enter it, while also being able to see Spirit Body Threads.

In a sense, the Fool's End had made him a nearly perfect hunter for the Fool's pathway, other than the fact that it did not give him any physical enhancements.

After having checked his Fool's End abilities, Mac finally got to work and began to think about how he would be able to make use of any of these abilities to help him in the real world below, and not just be useless. However, the only thing Max could think of at the moment was to just use [Anti-illusion] and [Anti divination] every now and then to ensure he was not being spied on by others. However it was not very effective for the latter since divination is not usually done for a long period of time and only lasts for a few moments, a few seconds at best.

Meanwhile, he might actually be able to use [Anti-illusion] to allow his main body to escape certain situations if need be, especially in cases where he was being manipulated by extremely powerful Beyonders or Artifacts. Thus, creating the habit of checking every single day could only benefit him.

The paper figurines substitution would not work outside the Sefirot and thus was useless to Max. The only thing that he actually could use properly was the ability to see the Historical Void and enter it, but so far he had not used this ability unless he was searching for a hiding Beyonder of the Fool's pathway.

Thus, after using the [Anti-divination] and [Anti-illusion] abilities, and not noticing any drop in Spirituality, Max closed his eyes and returned to his body by just thinking about it. 

…

Back in his body, Max sighed at the restrictions on his abilities and decided to go to sleep for the night and focus on improving his financial situation. 

As such, Max closed his eyes and went off to sleep, only waking up the next morning.

…

June 12th, 1348 of the Fifth Epoch

Max got up bright and early today after having a long night of almost perfect rest in his new home. After getting ready, Max headed out towards Dunant's Department store in preparation for finally getting the chance to change the format of the store. The current format was a waste of human resources, and time for both the customer and the sellers since the customers would have to browse through the various shelves of items.

Plus, at least one worker would have to follow each customer while they purchased items not only to help them but also to prevent thievery.

Instead, Max had a completely remodelled plan for the store and any of its future outlets across Backlund. It would no longer be a completely open store. Instead, the shop would mainly consist of a warehouse that customers do not have access to, and all items are sorted not for display, but for ease of access to the workers of the shop who would be the only ones involved in the retrieval of the items.

Meanwhile, a small area would be turned into the general waiting area, where customers would wait their turn as anywhere between 2 and 5 employees man their stations, taking requests from customers and retrieving the items, showing them to the customers, and then collecting payment.

Max even had an idea to further divide the workforce and have only a single cashier who would not only collect the payment but also hand over the product to the customer while the other workers only show the item for conformation, handing a token to the customers to collect the item at the cashier. However, this would have to wait until Max had enough workers and educated them enough to work like so.

A small portion of the remaining area was dedicated as the rest room for workers, and the rest of the space was dedicated to the 'special room' for VIPs like nobility or people of high political or religious standing. These would have luxurious couches and tables, as well as refreshments, just in case.

But these would all take time and money to carry out, and Max would also need to spend a long time to educate the workers, while slowly encouraging Ms. Victoria Dunant to expand and hire more workers. Plus, he would have to do a lot of advertising, some even in person, but it was possible.

And so, Max set off under the breaking dawn of the foggy Backlund skyline.