Faction Upgrade
In the end, Jake unleashed a staggering 1 sextillion Aether points in a single thought, nearly a ninetieth of his wealth. The price per square meter soared from 3,000 Aether points initially, then slowed to a final cost of around 800,000 Aether points. The average price throughout the spending spree was about 500,000 Aether points—a sum that would have once made Jake's blood run cold. And judging by the slack-jawed Oracle Guardian beside him, even Eighth or Ninth Ordeal Evolvers were not immune to such breathless spending.
As Jake's Aether points dwindled at a dizzying pace, his disc-shaped island expanded equally as fast. Its former territory soon became a mere speck compared to its newfound vastness.
Within seconds, the expansion ceased, and Jake surveyed the result. The dark gray metallic surface of the enormous disc, untouched and uniform, overwhelmed him with a sense of emptiness and vastness, as if he'd landed in a strange, flat metal desert.