Wait a second, what? Raine read on. About half a dozen pages later, he saw a paragraph that let him breathe a sigh of relief.

“Pepper took off fast. First, it blew up in Liria. Then the Lirian Province. Then all of Iurisa, and money came pouring in. Just two months after the first trip, I had to take another trip to the Old World with a dozen others and buy loads of pepper. We jacked up the price, and people still bought it like mad. As for turmeric, it fell flat. Pretty much no one bought that shit until years later, when it caught fire in the eastern provinces. Clove was also popular, but not nearly as much as pepper. And then there was cinnamon.”

So they did end up making money off spices. That was what Raine hoped, at least; it was possible that Wes Blackwood was lying and Hopkins had actually sold cocaine, not pepper. Is this still how they make money? The price must have fallen dramatically since it was so profitable, considering how Jones Clark must have jumped on the spice bandwagon. And how did they bring all this money to Earth?

The first thing that entered his mind was bringing gold from the New World, but that was impossible. And selling a hundred million dollars worth of gold out of nowhere was sure to draw attention that Hopkins didn’t want.

Some other ideas popped into his mind, like selling goods and services in the New World and having people pay on Earth, or offering crazy vacations to bored millionaires. But how does Hopkins get several hundred million in revenue? Does that all come from selling stuff from the New World, or is it mostly from subsidiaries like the developer of Planet E?

Raine continued reading.

“Cinnamon was the one. It was the monster. But for the first four months, it did terribly. Pretty much no one bought it, and I thought it was a real stinker. I regretted not bringing more pepper instead on the first trip. But one day, Sage had an idea. He was going to meet the Prince of Karlis again, since he was invited to Karlis for a tournament. And in that meeting, Sage introduced the prince and several of his friends, among which were heirs to dukedoms, to food with clove and desserts with cinnamon, like cinnamon rolls.

“That was how it started. With that one chance to showcase the taste of these spices, demand for cinnamon and clove steadily grew among the Karlisian aristocracy. Then at some point, as knowledge of dishes with cinnamon spread, demand for it exploded.”

Huh. Interesting. Raine closed the book and put it into his briefcase. He was getting tired. He got up, left the cafe, and headed back to the Gilman Tower.

. . . .

He spent every spare minute on Wednesday reading the book on swordsmanship. After a swim and a run in the morning, his team rode horses, shot arrows, attended the last first aid lecture, and had another swordsmanship lesson. There was valuable time between each of those things. Raine spent it getting through hundreds of pages of the book.

“Woah, man,” Vick said as they were in the Lexus, heading back to the Gilman Tower. “You had this much—” he spread his thumb and forefinger an inch apart “—left to go in the morning. Now it’s just 50 pages or something.”

Raine shrugged. “All for the sake of money,” he said.

“How’s the book?” Max asked. “It’s about swordsmanship, right?”

“Yeah,” Raine said. “There are images every now and then, so it’s not really as long as it looks. You want to try reading it? I need a break.”

Max agreed, and Raine passed him the book.

Then, for the rest of the ride back to the Gilman Tower, Max bombarded him with questions about what this word or that phrase meant.

“Let me see,” Arnett said. “How hard is the book?”

“On a scale of one to ten, it’s a nine for me,” Max said, passing Arnett the book.

“Seven or eight for me,” Raine said.

Arnett opened the book on a random page and stared at it for a while. Then he calmly closed the book, passed it back to Max, and nodded.

“You got none of it, right?” Max said.

Arnett shrugged.

“Yeah, I didn’t understand shit,” he said.

“Dude, it’s time to work on that Ephrian,” Vick said. “Work starts in just a few days.”

“I know,” Arnett said. He groaned in frustration. “It’s time to study like I’ve got a final exam tomorrow.”

Everyone was feeling a mix of anxiety and excitement. They were in their last days of training, yet they worked harder than ever. Several of them went to the archery range after dinner. Meanwhile, Arnett and Grant worked on their Ephrian. Vick went to the gym. Raine finished the book on swordsmanship and continued reading Blood, Sweat, and Cinnamon.

. . . .

On Thursday, Raine had another trip to the hospital. The doctor told him it was time to start his rehab, and had him do several simple exercises, like one where he laid on his back and tried to press the back of his knee flat against the floor. She told him that a physical therapist would help him keep recovering once work started.

The rest of the day was uneventful. He spent the rest of it training and reading Blood, Sweat, and Cinnamon.

As it turned out, Hopkins did sell a drug. It just wasn’t the kind Derron had imagined.

Hopkins had gotten its start on Earth by selling real estate in the New World and getting paid in dollars. It had mainly sold mansions to tech millionaires and disguised the sales as investments. That had been its main business for a while, and then came the founders’ massive bet on a pharmaceutical subsidiary. Its only product was a sleeping aid whose main ingredients were New World plants.

It was the pillar of the Hopkins Company on Earth, with a variety of other businesses, like the developer of Planet E, making up less than half of the company’s total revenue.

After having his main questions answered, Raine’s interest in the book’s contents fell. In the evening, he blasted through the rest of the book.

He closed it and put it down on his desk. Finally done.

He celebrated by crashing in bed early.

Then came Friday.

At 6:00 AM, Raine spent an email to his teammates with their schedules for the day and did the exercises the doctor had shown him. Then he spent two hours studying Russian.

Raine changed and left his room. Lukas was in the living room, reading a book on the sofa. It was one of the novels from the shelf at the back.

“This is about the Hopkins founders,” Lukas said, raising the book. “I asked June about it.”

“Huh, really?” Raine asked. He paused and thought about the novel he’d read before. “Well, it makes sense.”

“That’s why the character development is so bad,” Lukas said. “The ones who wrote this tried to make the founders seem like great people.”

“It could have been done better. Way better.”

“Too much work, I guess,” Lukas said. “But it’s pretty weird that the company has so many books about its founders.”

“Hey, founder worship is huge in Silicon Valley right now,” Raine said. “Hopkins just took it to the next level. And I guess this was one of the ways they gave us information about the New World without being too blatant.”

Lukas shrugged. “But it’s pretty exciting, isn’t it? We’re going to another world with swords and magic.”

You’re really believing the other world story, man. But then again, I kind of am too.

“What do you want to do there?” Raine asked. “Kill goblins?”

“Probably,” Lukas said. “I’ll first have to make sure they’re really the evil bastards the Korean guy said they are. How about you?”

“I’ll probably just sit at a desk and translate stuff for Russian millionaires.”

“Wait, Russian millionaires?”

“Russian millionaires,” Raine said in a matter-of-fact manner.

“Huh. Sounds fun,” Lukas said. He closed the book and put it on the shelf. “Oh, did you hear about the guys who quit?”

“Huh? Someone quit?”

“Yeah, Max told me about it yesterday. On Tuesday, two guys went to Steele after training and said they couldn’t take it anymore. Their team placed last in the competition, so it’s not that surprising. But damn, they were so close to the end.”

“Well, this is just the training,” Raine said. “If they can’t take this, they probably won’t be able to take the work itself.”

“Yeah.” Lukas pointed at the shelf. “The work obviously isn’t easy. In the first week, the founders fought and ran from a group of eight goblins.”

“Damn, eight. Imagine eight guys with sharp sticks trying to kill you. That’s basically what that is.”

“I know, right? I’m hoping we get more training with swords when we’re on the other side,” Lukas said. “I think the best I can do right now is wave around my sword like an idiot if I see a goblin. In the book, the founders paid a former mercenary to teach them how to use a spear. You think we’ll have to do something like that?”

“Probably not. I can’t imagine the company putting so much money into us up to now and not giving us more training for something so essential.”

“That’s true.”

They continued speaking for a short while before leaving the apartment and heading for the lobby. Their teammates met them downstairs.

They started the day with a quick swim. Then, while most of the new employees cycled, the team leaders went to the Costas Hall. Raine had the three books from Hugh under one arm, having grabbed them before coming to the Costas Hall.

“Cool,” Julia said. “It’s our last lesson.”

“Yeah. Pretty soon, it’ll be time to work. Let’s get rich, people,” Raine said.

“Or die trying,” Marco said with a wry smile.

“I’m not dying,” Cecily said. “So I’m evidently going to get rich. I’ll be sure to invite each of you to my party to celebrate the millions I’ll have in my bank account.”

“Pfft, sure,” Julia said. “The first one to screw up and get themselves hurt will be you.”

Cecily snorted. “Oh please.”

Hugh appeared soon, sparing the others from hearing an argument between Cecily and Julia.

He greeted them and told everyone but Raine to enter one of the rooms.

“So how far did you get?” Hugh asked.

“I finished them all,” Raine said. He passed Hugh the three books.

“Did you speed read?”

“No, I read them properly.”

“Great. Then which founder passed away?”

“Derron Costas.”

Hugh nodded. “What was one of the first spices Hopkins sold? Aside from cinnamon.”

“Clove.”

“Great. And what’s it called when two people cross their swords Hollywood-style?”

“A bind.”

Hugh quickly followed up with a few other questions about the three books, each of which Raine answered correctly.

“Not bad,” Hugh said with a smile. “By the way, you don’t have to join this lesson, since it’s going to cover content in Intermediate Ephrian.”

“How should I keep improving my Ephrian?” Raine asked.

“You can pay for lessons in the New World, but you’re pretty good at learning on your own, so just study at the library when you’re there. Here’s a list of books I recommend you read.” Hugh passed him a piece of paper with a dozen book titles on it.

That was it. Raine was on his own with Ephrian. He had no intention of paying for lessons, so he planned on sitting in the library all day when he reached the New World.

Raine left the Costas Hall and went to the Gilman Tower. He briefly considered taking a nap, but instead, he spent an hour studying Russian.

Goddammit, all this studying better be worth it.

Once that was over, he had lunch at the cafeteria and watched his teammates take another swordsmanship lesson.

“So that was the last lesson?” Lukas asked Ava when it was over.

“You’re at the end of training, so yeah,” she said. “But once you’re in the New World, you’ll be thrown in a team that includes someone like me or June for a while. Our job is to help you out, so if you just ask, we’ll teach you.”

“Isn’t that the reward for the top ten in the individual competition?” Max asked.

“No, it’s different. Those people get a team with someone like June and get guidance from someone like Song Hyun-woo.”

“Huh, cool.”

“Steele will tell you all of this later anyway,” Ava said with a shrug.

After the swordsmanship lesson, the team trained for another three hours. Instead of being happy that their training was over, most of Raine’s teammates were concerned it wasn’t enough to prepare them for their work.

“What if I run into a dragon?” Vick asked. He chugged the last of his soda and continued, “Will my great canoeing skills save me somehow?”

“Your sword will probably be the size of its toothpick,” Arnett said. “If you see a dragon, you’re fucked.”

“June said they can’t talk, so I assume they aren’t smart enough to use toothpicks,” Max said. He bit into his sandwich. “And maybe dragons aren’t that big in the New World.”

“I’ll be so disappointed if dragons are puppy-sized,” Vick said. Then he paused for a moment. “Actually, I’ll probably keep one as a pet then. I’ll be a dragon tamer.”

“Okay, dragon-tamer-to-be,” Arnett said. “Good luck not getting your face bitten off.”

After dinner, they were called to the giant hall near the Gilman Tower. Raine and his teammates took their seats.

Steele stood behind the lectern, waiting for everyone to enter the hall and sit down. A few minutes later, she started speaking.

“So by now, all of you know about the existence of the New World. It probably seems unbelievable to you. But it’s real, and it’s in your interest to accept it and move on. Some people in the past wasted precious time in the New World because they tried to figure out how the ‘illusion’ or the ‘hologram’ works. Most of them died fast.

“For one month, you’ll each be assigned to a team of five or six members, one of whom will be someone like June, with several months of experience. That person will be the team leader. Their job is to guide you and impart as much knowledge upon you as possible.

“After that one month is over, the experienced member will almost always leave the team. You can keep working with the rest or form a team with new people. If you want, you can even work on your own, although that’s probably going to get you killed. Students will be able to return to Earth for free on the 4th of August. The rest will have to pay a fee or return later, in October. Before you complain, you should know there’s a significant cost to moving people between here and there.

Then Steele moved on to where they would stay and what Rialis City was like. The projection screen showed a map and a sketch of the city from the perspective of someone on a rooftop.

What the hell, are those bikes? They managed to make bikes on the other side?

For the next 20 minutes, Steele spoke about what the company did in the New World and on Earth. Raine knew most of it from Wes Blackwood’s book, so he didn’t pay much attention.

“...and finally, I’d like to congratulate you all for making it through training. We usually have more quitters, but this time, there were just four.”

Huh. I assume those extra two were also from the lowest-ranked team.

“That’s all. You leave for the New World on Sunday morning. Good luck.”