Keynes stared at Sakura and wondered why she was here. Or more precisely, why did she care? He didn’t. Although, he felt that if he focused hard enough he’d find a part of him that liked her. Since waking up, strange things happened to him, his emotions shifted like water in a pond, bringing up alien desires. At the moment, it wasn’t a desire but a formless blob of laziness, inertia of sorts.

Sakura stayed by his side for days. He remembered that he’d thanked already, several times. What a waste of energy this was. He closed his eyes, enjoying the silence.

“How do you feel today?” she asked.

Gah!

Strangely, her voice had a soothing quality like his mother’s Talent but Sakura’s Talent was a simple healing aura. She told him this already. If he cared he would ask her about her strangely crystal eyes. It didn’t matter.

She waited for his reply and Keynes couldn’t be bothered giving one. She could leave if she didn’t like it.

“Which prevalent emotion are you experiencing right now?”

Leave me alone… I just want to rest, alone, in silence. All this talk about mood, emotions, feelings. Gah! It drains my energy like crazy.

They called it personality instability. Apparently, it was temporary and would go away on its own, given time. Who cares?

Keynes cracked one eye open. Sakura was still here. Gah!

“I feel amazing. But I need more rest,” he said hoping to get rid of her.

She smiled—smiled—and without a warning pressed a button… Oh, not this button. It always messed with Keynes’s mood! How did he fail to notice her cheekiness!

Gah!

There was something disturbing about this technology. A wave slammed into him, scoured his current mood or personality or whatever the technical term was and left him empty. It was infinitely better than what he’d experienced just moments ago. Having such a strong disregard for everything, including one’s life was disturbing. If someone came and wanted to kill him, he’d only shrug. Scary.

Now that the incapacitating mood was gone, Keynes could finally appreciate Sakura’s intervention.

“Thank you.”

“They’re getting stronger, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Keynes replied. “At first, they were just mood swings. But now? It feels like my entire personality shifts and even though I know that this is happening, I cannot fight it.”

“Doctor Glen said that it will reach its peak in a few weeks and then start receding until it’s completely gone.”

“Does it mean I’ll have to stay here?” he groaned. “Although this wave thing is handy.”

“That wave thing is a mood cleansing glyph amplified and powered by my mana. It’s pretty draining. It has a cooldown as well. One use in six hours. Also, I do not believe it should be used too many times on the same person.”

“What? Why?” Keynes perked up.

“It’s powerful and I don’t think anything this powerful is safe for prolonged use. Just my personal opinion.”

“Aha, what about my stay then?”

“It’s not up to me. Doctors will decide but judging by how talkative you are, I bet they will let you get out of here in no time.”

Keynes’s face flared red instantly. When he first met Sakura, he had trouble speaking with her. Maybe she was right and the glyph affected him?

“Anyway,” she interrupted his brooding. “Lord Earl requested your presence today.”

Lord Earl was a big shot here and Keynes couldn’t wait to meet him again. His last visit was very brief and Keynes didn’t have a chance to inquiry about the rift. What it was? What was next? Would they allow him to enter inside? He hoped so.

Over the days, questions had piled up.

“Can I go right now?”

She started chuckling.

“You’re a strange man.” Man. It felt strange to be called a man, but being strange was just fine. Before the ceremony, Keynes was viewed as a teenager. Level 1 made him a man, apparently. “I will let doctor Glen know that you are ready.”

***

A meeting room turned out to be a spacious and well-lit conference room with an expensive wooden table and comfortable chairs.

Kaito Ren showed Keynes to his chair and exited the room. Lord Earl entered a minute later.

“Lord Earl.” Keynes shot to his feet and for the first time, a part of him resisted the respect he was showing to the Lord. A cold shiver cut through him as a grim realization hit him. Was this another of his mood swings? He banished the possibility and focused on Lord Earl.

“Please, sit down. I asked you here because we have a little breathing room and we must use this extra time in the best manner. My researcher team came up with a strategy that will allow you to level up in about three months.”

Keynes was shaking his head without knowing it. They expected him to level up? Well, the military and the government operatives did level up but Keynes wasn’t ready. The whole rift-opening ordeal kicked him hard. He didn’t need levels, he needed… what do I need? He’d noticed during his time in the medical ward that his priorities and wants became fluid and less stable.

“Could you explain what is going on?” A surge of new emotions appeared in him. Not right now! He could sense defiance building up. If he tried to resist it, he only fuelled it.

“You opened a rift. It’s a place you go to kill monsters and gain essence.”

“Monsters?”

“Yes. It’s been five days since you’ve opened the rift and we’ve entered it five times as the rift’s recharge time is 24 hours. You will enter it each day with a group of soldiers who will keep you safe.”

Keynes wanted to refuse it, desired to defy Lord Earl but then Lord Earl did something that caught Keynes off-guard. A wave of spiritual energy blasted out of the man, his face stone cold. Keynes’s defiance shattered like glass.

“I am aware of your current condition. But there’s only so far I am willing to go. Expect me to repeat this each time you will attempt to step out of the line. Understood?”

“Yes, Lord Earl.”

“Good.” He pushed a thick A4 envelope forward Keynes. “Our circumstances have changed and we must adjust. This is a new contract that will specify our requirements. In short, we need your Level as high as possible.”

“Can I ask why? And what has changed?”

“We need you to open more rifts. We expect to find Level 2 and 3 rifts in a matter of months. This will not be enough time to level you up but we will not attempt a Level 2 rift while you are Level 2. We need at least one Level of difference. As for the shifting circumstances, I cannot discuss it at the moment.”

The vagueness Waxillium Earl was serving here put Keynes off. But his defiance was gone and he had no choice but to agree.

“I am glad to hear that. Specialist Kaito Ren will accompany you to the rifts. You can also return to your old room.”

Aww, a part of him felt sad he wouldn’t be seeing Sakura on daily basis… or would he?

***

The evening arrived sooner than Keynes wished it. Kaito Ren came to Keynes’s room with a bag full of clothes. Kaito Ren was an Asian like Sakura although he was ethnically different. Keynes didn’t feel like asking about it. It didn’t matter to him anyway.

Kaito Ren placed the bag on the table.

“Hi, how do you feel?”

“A bit afraid?”

“A bit?” Kaito Ren smiled. “I may be Level 3 but going into the rift for the first time after what happened didn’t sound exciting.”

Keynes stiffened, while Kaito Ren noticed it and raised his hands.

“Don’t stress it. It isn’t as dangerous as it sounds. Only the first rift was crazy. You will be accompanied by a team of ten soldiers plus me. All Level 2s and 3s. The monsters always are Level 1 and they go down easily. Besides, the rift essence is amazing.”

“Rift essence?”

“Yeah, a new type of essence as our researchers say.” Keynes didn’t know Kaito Ren very well but still, he didn’t expect him to be so open. Maybe he didn’t notice it when he’d arrived here? He was stressed out of his mind, to be honest. “The rift essence feels thicker and denser than the normal essence but it still takes a long time to progress toward the next level.”

“If it’s thicker and denser shouldn’t it speed up the progress?”

Kaito Ren looked at Keynes as if he discovered an ultimate truth. But his only reaction was a brief chuckle.

As Kaito Ren chuckled Keynes decided to change his clothes. They had a rift to enter and seeing how relaxed Kaito Ren was about it, Keynes’s nerves started to ease up.

“Will I get a gun?” Keynes asked after he dressed up. Their suits looked identical. Black with an accent of silver on forearms and waist.

“Not a chance.”

“Why not?”

“You need training for that.”

They made their way to the cavern. It changed in the last few days. The rift was no longer exposed to the cave and instead hidden within a makeshift building inside the cavern. A tunnel first led to a small room with benches, lockers, armours and a wall full of rifles

“You’ll need to wear armour. Strict policy to not allow Level 1s inside the rift without armour.”

While Kaito Ren didn’t put on armour, some of the soldiers in the room did. Speaking of soldiers, the way they stared at Keynes, turned his skin to gooseflesh. What was wrong with them? Or him?

“Focus on the task ahead,” Kaito Ren snapped, losing his previous jovial tone. The soldiers didn’t exactly whip to attention as Keynes expected they would, but they stopped glaring and turned away.

Five minutes later, the squad stood in another room where the entrance to rift was.

“The rift will open in 34 seconds,” one of the researchers called out. They had a small station stashed in a corner. An L-shaped desk, a few computers and a lot of wires and cables connecting strange equipment.

Why did they change their strategy?

“Open!”

Keynes’s chest became a cage with a wild beast. He was about to enter a rift. He knew nothing about it and the two people who knew anything, Lord Earl and Kaito Ren, were quite cagey about the subject.

“Go!”

A dreaded command came and the first soldiers entered. Keynes strained his ears but he heard nothing. Once the soldiers stepped through the portal they vanished completely. Magic existed all over the world and yet, watching people enter a rift unsettled Keynes. The feeling of wrongness didn’t return. Though it didn’t return, Keynes still remembered how it’d assaulted his mind when he was unsealing the rift.

“Ready?” Kaito Ren asked, quietly. They were the last two to enter the rift. Other people in the room were research guys and several guards.

“Yes,” Keynes mouthed while his mind screamed the opposite.

Rift (Common)

Level

1

Status

Open (Ruptured)

Requirements

-

Modifiers

-

Details

This rift contains basic rift monsters and a small chance to encounter a boss.

Affinity

Nature

Special Status

-

This was new to Keynes. He could see much more than before.

“Can you see requirements, modifiers and special status or are they empty for you as well?”

“Empty. This rift had two special statuses when it was opened: overcharged and unexplored. I don’t know what these statuses did though. Let’s go.”

They entered the rift. Keynes didn’t know what to expect. Pain? Shock? Horrors? Nightmares? What he found left him speechless.

An autumn forest.

They were in a freaking forest.

“Where is this place?”

“No one knows,” Kaito Ren replied. They tried to set up a communication with the base but the signal doesn’t carry on. Satellite navigation doesn’t work either.”

“How can this be?”

Kaito Ren shrugged.

“I am not the best person to talk about technicalities. You’d need to speak to Willow Croft but I doubt he’ll find the time right now. They are so busy they barely sleep.”

Hundreds of questions swirled in Keynes’s head. First, the Foxgloves claimed that they could manipulate the Talent’s development and now Keynes stood inside a rift. A place seemingly outside of space. What else did the world keep secret from them?

A nagging desire to uncover mysteries took over Keynes and once more he noticed a change in his behaviour. His natural timidness evaporated and he wanted to dash forward and explore! The sentiment grew stronger as Keynes considered what it meant to be one of the pioneers. Standing on the forefront of discovery and exploration.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Keynes replied, taking in the scenery. “I just imagined the possibilities…” He didn’t want to explain himself right now. Exploration awaited!

At that moment, the soldiers started shooting. What they shot at, Keynes didn’t see. Then came the sounds. Terrible howls of pain and growls filled with anger.

Wolves?

And then Keynes felt something enter his body. It was invisible so Keynes didn’t know it was upon him. He twisted searching for the source.

“It’s the essence.”

“Essence? Really?”

The feeling resembled a pleasant bath at first, then there was that strange sensation of entering one’s body. The distraction was very strong.

“This essence… it burns my body.”

“That can’t be right,” Kaito Ren said. “It’s way thicker than normal essence but it’s not harmful.”

Keynes ground his teeth, torn by a desire to stay and need to leave. And with each second the sensation only intensified slowly becoming painful. Keynes grunted while the soldiers moved forward, killing the monsters Keynes didn’t see yet.

Kaito Ren squinted at him, concerned. What if the specialist decided to withdraw from the rift and Keynes wouldn’t get another shot at entering it? He didn’t understand why he feared this outcome so much.

So he pushed the pain away and started following the soldiers. They left a trail of bodies. Tens of wolves lay dead.

“Are they really rift monsters?”

“You can check it for yourself,” Kaito Ren said and approached one of the dead wolves.

Warg (corpse)

Level

1

Abilities

-

Details

Basic dweller of rifts.

“Warg? What is a warg?” The system described it as a basic dweller of rifts. But the more Keynes stared at it, the more it seemed very much like a wolf. Or did it? It seemed a bit larger, its fangs longer. Something about its fur attracted Keynes’s attention.

“We should move on,” Kaito Ren said. “The essence loses effectiveness over a distance.” That would explain why the pressure eased a little as they remained in place.

The rift wasn’t large. A half of a mile-long stretch of a forest. Keynes counted over three hundred wargs killed by the soldiers. It took them thirty minutes to reach a small clearing with a chest. Kaito Ren opened it and pulled out two scrolls.

“What are they?”

“Scrolls of Identification. Any item found in the rift must be identified.”

“So rifts drop items as well?”

“Yes, although the drop rate is poor,” Kaito Ren replied gestured to the soldiers to leave the rift as the message appeared.

The rift has been cleared.

The rift recharge time: 24h.

“How much essence did you get?” How can I know?

“Is there a way to check on it?”

“You should be able to see it in your spiritual interface.”

Keynes focused on himself, then tried to bring up his profile but failed. It didn’t make sense to not be able to check your stats. He could only see his Talent.

Luckily for him, the system answered Kaito Ren’s question.

Progress toward Level 2: 1%

“It seems I gained 1% from this rift today but I got it from through the system message rather than my spiritual profile.”

“Sounds about right. Yeah. This whole spiritual profile is bugged. Something to do with a low Spirit attribute.” He raised his hands. “Don’t ask me about specifics. I don’t have a clue what that is.”

On their way back, Keynes picked up a short twig and hid it under layers of clothes and armour. He wasn’t sure if he could take anything out of the rift but he didn’t want to risk asking in case they’d become suspicious and start watching him closely. He wondered what would happen to the twig outside of the rift. Would it disappear? Melt? Stay the same or something else?

To Keynes’s weak spirit, the twig felt slightly different but in what respect Keynes couldn’t tell as the feeling was elusive. They made it back to the exit where now a few scientists stood with measuring devices.

“Specialist Ren,” one of them asked. “How did the excursion go? No boss encounter again?”

“No.”

“Anything unusual?”

Keynes feared this moment. The burning sensation didn’t go away, just eased a bit and he had taken a twig from the rift not knowing if he could take it. Losing access to the rift would be a blow. His curiosity burned hot now and he couldn’t imagine not going forward. Unfortunately for Keynes, his wishes didn’t mean much to these people.

“Keynes mentioned burning sensation.”

“It’s all right now,” Keynes quickly countered, feeling nervous and exposed. “I feel okay.”

“We’d like to do a check up first before you return to your room.”

“It’s really fine…” Keynes replied defensively. He was feeling the tension building up inside his chest.

“It’s a routine check up,” the researcher said. “You’re Level 1 gaining the essence for the first time and not just any essence but the rift essence. It’s exotic to us at this stage. We must understand its impact better.”

Wait a second, they sent me without knowing how this can affect me? Are they nuts? They could’ve killed me… idiots.

Despite the dark realization, Keynes remained adamant in his conviction to gain more essence and level up. He didn’t care where the maddening drive to improve himself came from but he wanted it to continue.

“So, will you not ban me from entering the rift?” Keynes probed, maybe a bit too boldly, he didn’t want to give them ideas.

“God forbid!” they exclaimed. “Lord Earl would have us whipped.” Their laugh that followed was of course forced and didn’t fill Keynes with confidence.

“Specialist, please take Keynes to the post-rift test room,” one of them said after they stopped laughing.

Kaito Ren nodded and gently pushed Keynes through the portal.

And just like that, they were back in the cavern. Keynes wondered why they built a room around the rift but questions like this were answered with silence.

Two things Keynes found curious. First, they didn’t ask the specialist what he’d found in the chest and, the second, the little twig was still safely hidden under Keynes’s clothes. So, things taken from the rift didn’t lose their substance! He was bursting with excitement and almost spilt the truth. Luckily, the influx of more researchers who were heading toward the rift stopped Keynes dead in his tracks.

The post-rift testing room was two turns away from the rift. The room was full of lab equipment and Keynes could only guess what it was for as there were no clues in its design. People inside greeted them and asked a few questions then invited Kaito Ren to another room while offering Keynes a seat.

“Before we start testing, let’s go through a quick questionnaire.” Alright, questionnaires were easy, though often designed with a trap to eliminate dishonesty. He could handle this.

“Did you feel intense burning inside the rift?”

He froze, staring at the bearded man on the other side of the table. How did he know? Did the men from the rift tell him this? But that was impossible…

Hoping that this man’s response would similar to the two researchers from the rift, Keynes nodded.

“Could you describe it and circumstances when it occurred?”

“Once the essence reached me, it felt like entering a bath with a difference that the heat flowed inside my body, not outside it. From there it got worse until it felt like my muscles were being torn apart.

“Interesting interpretation…”

“Can I ask how do you know about the burning sensation inside the rift?”

Without looking up from the sheet, the man replied, “We received statements from abroad that Level 1s reported burning sensation inside the rifts…”

“Abroad? Rifts? Isn’t this the only rift?”

It was the man’s turn to freeze.

“I’m sorry, I misspoke. I meant this rift.”