What are rifts?

It was the first question asked by the Head of Silvercloud Academy during my first class there. I remember it vividly to this day because she was a person who looked at things from a different angle.

Her perception of rifts was not an exception in this matter.

She found rifts mysterious and otherworldly, of course they were that, but she helped us look beyond basic functions of rifts, which were to kill monsters, gather essence and reap rewards.

Rifts were also a place of challenge where one could test themselves. Maybe it was the failing of our race that at the societal level, we did not see the need to prove anything to ourselves.

But this was not what she was getting at.

She was trying to make us ask an important question – why do rifts possess such bizarre mechanics? What is the goal?

And then there was the reason why rifts were called rifts.

High-level rifts had often more than one entrance and exit (unless challenge mode was activated) with many sub-rifts and other dimensional gimmicks.

All of this begs a question – what the hell are rifts?

Personal Notes of,

Zerkon, 9th Pledged, Claw of Travelstorm, True Eye, Traveller of Unclaimed Planes, King without Crown, Cursed Worm

***

Keynes sat on a moss-covered boulder in the middle of tropical forest, playing with a tiny silver orb. It was the size of a golf ball but its value made anything on Earth obsolete. He sighed as his Perception picked up the sound of footsteps.

One person. Quick. Determined.

He would smile if the circumstances allowed him but he no longer lived in the illusion that things could be like before he’d learned truths of rifts or earlier, before he’d received his damned Talent.

He slipped off the boulder, hid the orb and put his hands into the pockets.

She arrived a moment later. A green blur.

The Queen of Poisons.

He looked over, keeping his face hidden underneath a hood. Even in the daylight, she would only see dark contours of his face. The Cloak of Shadows was an old friend, one Keynes would have to tell goodbye to. After today, the world would change. Level 5 rifts were the first step toward leaving Earth behind.

She's arrived, master, Keynes’s spiritual companion Alice said. She was a translucent, palm-sized being floating around Keynes.

That’s rich.

Oh, wasn’t this funny?

It was not. She was pushing his unfunny jests back onto him.

“No words?”

“I was talking to someone,” Keynes replied, taking the newcomer’s appearance in. She looked striking in the jade green combat coat with half-translucent fringes. Her golden blonde hair spilt over her shoulders, flanking her beautiful face while the same sad eyes he remembered scrutinized him.

“Do you think you are in a position to ignore me?”

“Yes.”

Her expression hardened. This wasn’t what she’d expected.

“I’ve come to kill you.”

That made him smile. People claimed he'd changed always missing the obvious when they looked into a mirror. Did they know who they were now? How far did they drift away from where they’d entered the unknown waters?

“So you are.”

An ivory blade with a sickly green liquid seeping out of the sword’s edge appeared in her hand.

She truly was the Queen of Poisons. Even the air around her suffused with many deadly poisons. They were invisible to his Level 5 eyes but nothing could hide from his spiritual senses. Not a single person in the world came close to him in terms of cultivation. Being first was one of the three pillars of success.

“But I don’t have to do this,” she said, her voice hard but not as hard as she wished it to be. “It’s only fair to give you a chance to surrender. You might’ve missed the news but I ascended to Level 6. With my Talent on top of that, no one on the planet can stand against me.”

Master, are you going to fight? Alice asked, rubbing her tiny translucent hands in excitement.

Perhaps but I may have to send you on an errand.

She grimaced but Keynes paid her little mind. She got annoying during fights and he’d have none of her nonsense today.

“If you hope I’d walk away from this, you’d better attack me now.”

“Keynes…”

Go find me a good spot to spend a night, he told Alice.

I… what?! She asked indignantly but fled unable to refuse his command. Knowing her taste, she’d pick a terrible place to sleep then she’d turn it around, finding him her worst but she wouldn’t know how she’d been played.

He threw her out of his head and focused on his opponent.

“I’m sorry but this choice was made a long time ago. I won’t change it for you.”

Even though it hurts.

She blurred and came at him with full speed and one intent – to end him.

***

Two years earlier

Keynes Kid watched the class full of students. They were all his age – 16. They looked excited for a change, which didn’t surprise Keynes as he’d heard them talk about the new second-term class. To him, it was a waste of time, but he didn’t voice his displeasure. Teachers and even the Principal Joshua didn’t have much say in this. Keynes knew because he’d checked already if he could skip this class.

He couldn’t.

The last student entered the class and took his seat. Unsurprisingly, the two nearest seats next to Keynes were left empty. Keynes possessed certain qualities others found distressful. For one, he had a photographic memory, which allowed him to recall almost anything. Others found it strange and creepy. Uneducated kids, no pun intended. Perhaps, his outstanding grades would have attracted hopeful leeches if not for his second quality – he liked to say things others didn’t like to hear.

Keynes wasn’t a fighter and being honest in front of show-offs and their female followers didn’t seem like a good idea but he had an ace up his sleeve.

His brother Harter.

Harter wasn’t a guardian angel, but people liked to stay on his good side. It played into Keynes’s hand, so, all was well.

A man entered the class. He was dressed formally but Keynes picked up inconsistencies that pressed tabs in his brain. No tie, colours were slightly mismatched and the man’s shirt looked to have creases. It all added up to an image of a man who didn’t pay attention to himself. A sad turn of events because to Keynes, the man’s face resembled that of Alfred Nobel. A respected man with explosive talent.

“Hello, my name’s Webster Frog. I’m a military specialist, currently of the Fourth Rank from the San Antonio base. I’ll be your talent educator for the next few months.”

The introduction immediately spun a series of questions from the students.

“Is your name really Frog?”

And this is the intellectual level of people I have to share class with. A military specialist of the Fourth Rank doesn’t sound half bad.

It wasn’t a secret that the military knew the most about the Talents. Having one of them here to teach the class appealed to Keynes more than he expected. Principal Joshua didn’t mention it the last time we spoke about the Talent class. Interesting. There was a possibility the principal decided to keep a tight lid on this or he didn’t know himself. Either way, it didn’t matter anymore.

Before the military educator could reply to the dumb questions, a knocking on the door interrupted him. The door opened and Principal Joshua entered.

He wasn’t alone and hell… A girl that walked behind the principal arrested a few gazes and sped up a few more pulses. She was, simply put, very pretty. Keynes liked to think that he was above such things but right now he struggled with unfamiliar emotions.

“I am extremely sorry for the interruption, Mr Frog,” Principal Joshua said with an unmissable amount of respect for Webster Frog. Principal Joshua turned to the blonde girl with similar respect and introduced her. “This is miss Vivena Foxglove. She’ll join you only to take the Talent class. I urge you to be kind to her.” The last sentence had a hint of threat in it.

The principal left the class, closing the door behind him. Vivena Foxglove stood in the middle, soaking the hungry stares of the class. If Keynes focused on her face, he’d notice how uncomfortable she looked but his mind was elsewhere, trying to figure out why he hadn’t heard her surname before. To have the principal make the introduction himself and give a subtle threat indicated rather unusual circumstances. Keynes didn’t like not knowing stuff.

His attention returned to the class when someone mentioned him.

“Look at Kid.”

“Yeah, he fell for her.”

“That’s creepy.”

Despite the presence of the military educator and the girl, the show-offs didn’t see a reason to stop the teasing. Keynes opened his mouth to say something and with terror found… void where words should flow. The heck is this? He asked himself.

The show-offs continued to tease him for a minute but with his lack of response, they quickly grew bored.

The military educator grunted, evidently out of his depth and asked, “Can we start the class?”

Some nodded, while others looked at each other with confusion. Only then, Keynes noticed the new girl’s expression. At first glance, she was just another pretty blonde, but Keynes wasn’t like his peers, he noticed things others didn’t. The sadness in the girl's eyes struck him hard, harder than her beauty. She reminds me of Violet Evergarden. Shit, that isn’t good.

“Please take a seat,” the military educator said to the new girl when he noticed she didn’t move from the spot. She nodded to him and her blue eyes took in the class. Keynes froze as the understanding seeped through at snail’s pace. The only two vacant seats were next to him. Cliché as hell!

She made her way to the end of the class and—thank the heavens—took the farther seat, leaving one empty seat between them. Keynes shoved her out of his head, which was not possible with his freaking memory.

The class started and thankfully Mr Frog ignored another wave of idiotic questions about his surname. He wrote on a whiteboard a single word: TALENT.

“What do you know about a Talent?” he asked.

The enthusiasm everyone had shown before the class was slow to return but Joe was quick to point out. “You should ask Kid. He knows everything.”

Mr Frog frowned and Keynes could understand his frustration. Keynes’s surname always worked against him but there was very little he could do about it at his current age so he didn’t bother himself with it.

When no one answered, Mr Frog added, “I’ll be the one who supervises your Talent Unlocking Ceremony.”

It worked, though Keynes mentally facepalmed himself. Mr Frog’s argument didn’t make sense. The Talent Unlocking Ceremony was tightly regulated and no one could interfere with it. They fell for it nonetheless.

“Talents are special abilities.”

“Talent can give us awesome powers.”

“Talent can make us super-rich.”

It went on for a bit until Mr Frog raised his hand stopping the shower of idiocy. Keynes sighed and squinted at the new girl (idiot!). Her eyes stared at him with curiosity. The piercing quality of her gaze gave him a shiver. She’s bad news. Her surname fits her, foxglove’s a poisonous flower.

“You all are correct,” Mr Frog said, eliciting a silent groan from Keynes. They weren’t right. Talents could mess up your life so badly you just wanted to die. “But there’s more. Talents can be all of this, yes, but we must remember about their other side, a darker one.”

This fouled the mood in the class.

“Let’s start with basics. Every person receives a single Talent at the age of 16. Do any of you know where the Talents come from?”

“Talent stones?” Darcy asked.

That made Keynes snort despite his best effort to stay silent. That evergarden girl messes with my head. He closed his eyes but it was too late for regrets. He had the attention of the class and Mr Frog.

“Do you know better, young man?” Mr Frog asked.

“Yes,” Keynes replied, his voice not where he wanted it to be. “Talents come from the Spiritual DNA. They form for 15 years since our birth with a margin error of one year, making the age of 16 the earliest safe year to force the unlocking of a Talent with the use of a Talent stone, which is an alchemical concoction of 121 ingredients tightly controlled by the military and the World Government. Fourteen of the ingredients aren’t disclosed to the public, making the Talent stones hard, if not impossible to replicate. The Talent stones merely activate our spiritual energy, pushing our ordinary bodies to Level 1 bodies. Does that suffice, educator?”

Keynes went overboard. Like always when asked for an explanation, his mind switched gears and flooded others with knowledge. Keynes could still name every known ingredient of a Talent stone, although he didn’t think the Talent stones were that important in the process. Many poor regions didn’t have the presence of the military and there the Talent unlocking occurred naturally over several years as the spiritual energy matured and expanded within people’s bodies. It was a shame how little was known about the spirit and its energy.

The military educator didn’t utter a word. Was he shocked? Keynes didn’t think he was, given his frown. It was disturbing how similar he looked to Mr Nobel. It weighed on Keynes sometimes, when his strange mind had a massive catalogue of faces, real and fictional, and at some point, he began noticing a similarity between unrelated people. Sometimes they felt too similar as if these people were reincarnated. This wasn’t possible as many of them lived at the same time or were a part of fiction.

“Are you using the Internet right now?” the military educator asked, seemingly without awe. A little twist Keynes didn’t predict.

“No, sir.”

“Then how…” he began saying but the show-offs interrupted him.

“Kid’s a freak! He knows literally everything.”

“Yeah, a freaking Wikipedia.”

This went on for a full minute before Mr Frog stopped it.

“Please, show some respect to your peer. Can you elaborate, young man?”

“I have a photographic memory.”

That elicited the true reaction from the educator. His eyes bulged and his body froze. The rest of the class, excluding the new girl, knew this already but to them, the concept of being able to remember everything was too alien to grasp so they goggled at him as if he said something outlandish.

“He’s like a computer?” Liam asked.

While the educator struggled with his emotions, Keynes risked a glance at the new girl, Vivena Foxglove who looked too much like freaking Velvet Evergarden.

She was openly staring at him. Keynes could handle almost anyone, even his brother Harter, a hell of a stubborn idiot. His only true weakness was females who caused Keynes’s body to misbehave. He understood the whole chemistry behind this phenomenon but sadly there was no medicine to cure this.

“That is impressive,” Vivena Foxglove said. “It’s like you already have your Talent.”

Keynes gulped because he’d never considered his perfect memory to be like a Talent. Keynes had a photographic memory, not a genius mind like Edward Morra. There was a huge difference. So, he naturally missed a lot.

“That is indeed impressive,” Mr Frog admitted, taking some of the oppressive attention away from Keynes. Seriously, I can’t function when this girl’s around me. This is so cliché and I hate it. “And I agree with Miss Foxglove. Having a photographic memory is like possessing a Talent already.”

It wasn’t the right thing to say in this class.

“He’s a freak!”

They were 16 years old but their minds were stuck in the dark ages where women with a scrap of knowledge had been called witches and burned on a pyre. I guess I should blame myself for this. I should’ve accepted Principal Joshua’s offer and joined his ‘elite’ class.

“I wonder what kind of Talent you’ll get. It may be worth some testing. Usually, there is very little correlation between the standard and spiritual DNAs. But that’s only because there aren’t variables strong enough to cause the influence…” It looked like Mr Frog forgot where he was. He was talking to himself while everyone in the class shook their heads or snickered. He’d have a hard life after today.

“What’s your name?” Vivena Foxglove asked gently.

Keynes squinted at her, finding it hard to reply to her.

“My name’s Vivena Foxglove,” she said after a short pause.

Keynes grunted, cursing his body for being so immature. It couldn’t handle a single pretty girl. God, I’m an idiot.

“Keynes… Kid.”

She frowned, perhaps wondering if Keynes had called her a kid. No, he was certain that she took it the wrong way.

“My last name’s Kid.”

“Oh. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

He quickly turned away from her. The class lost interest in the brooding educator and stared at him and Vivena Foxglove.

“Why she’s talking to him?” Jesus, to think that they’ll receive a Talent this year… It seemed scary. Some powerful Talents could be dangerous in the wrong hands.

As the rest of the class turned on Keynes, only verbally as they wouldn’t dare to touch him fearing retribution from his brother Harter, Vivena Foxglove watched it without a word. Keynes really appreciated she didn’t defend him. He could fend for himself and her help would only make matters worse. The thing was, his vast knowledge suddenly stopped cooperating. Is this really the drawback that balances out my perfect memory? He couldn’t answer his own question but he hoped so. He wasn’t an idiot. It was like getting away with murder. All he needed to do was to avoid pretty girls. Easy.

The military educator finally gathered himself. He glanced at Keynes then he focused on the class.

“Let’s talk about Talents.”

He no longer asked questions. The man must have understood the futility.

“We won’t go into details of the Talent classification. There’s no benefit in possessing such knowledge unless you plan to become data analysts or Talent researchers like me. However, it’s good to know that Talents divide into three main categories: passive, active and inactive.”

“Duds,” Joe called out and Keynes wanted to facepalm himself again.

“Yes,” Mr Frog agreed. “Inactive talents are the unfortunate ones as they refer to things that don’t exist.”

“Isn’t that weird?”

“What do you mean?” Mr Frog asked.

“Duds. Why do they exist?”

“We don’t know. Thousands of Talent researchers in the solar system work hard to understand this dire phenomenon and find a way to prevent it.”

“It sucks man. I don’t want to get a dud.”

“Yeah, duds are scary.”

While the class voiced their theories about inactive Talents, Keynes risked another look at Vivena Foxglove and started when he found her watching him. Why is she doing it? She wants something, doesn’t she?

“You must know a lot.”

Keynes frowned at the statement, trying to figure out its meaning.

“I remember a lot, yes. Usually.”

“Usually?” she asked intrigued.

In his mind, he cursed his stupidity. She made it hard to think. He didn’t want to explain because what could he say? “Yeah, I remember shit, when a pretty girl’s talking to me.” Yeah, that wouldn’t go down very well, would it? Keynes changed the topic.

“What are those pins on your uniform?”

She touched the three pins above her heart with her nimble pale fingers, causing Keynes to swallow hard. That wasn’t his plan.

The pins resembled plants and flowers but he didn’t recognise them. Vivena Foxglove smiled.

“My family run a plant business. We develop new specimens of plants. These three pins represent my achievements. I know they’re silly but I like to remind myself that I’m not that useless.”

Keynes nodded, not trusting himself to speak up lest he say something he’d regret.

The discussion about the duds ended and Mr Frog was explaining that Talents can be anything and they rarely recurred, but they did. After all, the population of the solar system was 132 billion people. Variations of Talents could only go so far. Keynes found interesting the fact that once a Talent appeared the chance for it to recur dropped significantly, prioritising unclaimed Talents. Mr Frog said that the military and the World Government possessed a gigantic list of all the known Talents. Woah, that’s important, isn’t it? I want to know more.

“Can you tell us more about the list? Can we access it? What are the proportions between passive, active and inactive talents? Are there new Talents appearing? How many people can hold the same Talent simultaneously? How much do Talents deviate? If I have a flying Talent, what other flight Talents could appear?”

A stunned silence.

“That freak,” Darcy muttered.

“These are excellent questions,” Mr Frog said. “Unfortunately, all the answers to these questions are highly classified. Plus, some cultures aren’t very open about their Talents and prefer to keep them secret.”

“You don’t need to disclose who holds the Talents from the list,” Vivena Foxglove said. It was the first time she addressed Mr Frog, and she was right. Keeping the Talent list hidden from public scrutiny felt wasteful.

Mr Frog nodded.

“These kinds of decisions are far above my paygrade, I’m afraid. I agree that we need fresh eyes to look at the data.” He turned toward Keynes. “I hope that you’ll be interested in pursuing a researching career, young man. What’s your name by the way?”

“Keynes Kid.”

“It’s pleasure to meet someone with such a peculiar mind.”

“Freak!” The show-offs were relentless.

Mr Frog turned to the rest of the class.

“That’s all for today. We’ll do a basic behavioural and activity analysis for the next few classes.”

Keynes and Vivena Foxglove were the only students who didn’t file out of the room. Keynes didn’t know why the new girl stayed but he wanted to ask a few more questions. He was intrigued now. He wondered if he could have some impact on his Talent. Every 16 year old was terrified of having an inactive Talent. Such a Talent was close to a death sentence. People with inactive skills didn’t earn much as they didn’t possess the ability to compete with those who had useful Talents. As Vivena Foxglove noticed, his perfect memory could be counted as a Talent in itself. If I receive a genius mind or something similar… It’d be a ridiculously overpowered combination. Keynes’s bottleneck was the processing speed. God, I could be Edward Morra in flesh with the right Talent.

Vivena Foxglove stood up and approached the educator. Keynes didn’t move from his seat, giving the two a bit of privacy as they conversed too softly for Keynes to understand what they were saying.

After two minutes, she thanked Mr Frog and left the room. She even waved to Keynes. She definitely is bad news.

“Mr Frog,” Keynes said from his spot. With the new girl gone, a heavy weight was taken off his chest. “I would like to learn how to influence my Talent before it appears.”

Keynes’s words gave the educator pause. From the conversation with the class, Keynes figured out that such influencing was possible although Mr Frog didn’t say it outrightly. If the military and the World Government kept harmless things like the Talent list secret, then, Keynes imagined, they’d surely keep knowledge of shaping locked Talents secret as well. It was now a question of whether Mr Frog knew it and would he be willing to help Keynes.

“It’s a very unclear process,” he said finally. “Partly because Talents aren’t autonomous and they’re a part of a greater set. Therefore, you may have all the right influencing variables in place only to fail because someone else already has the Talent you’re aiming for. This makes the Talents almost random. But as I say, we know very little about the shaping process. That's why we’ve started this class, so we can learn more about you and see how the circumstances would impact the final version of your Talent.”

“Isn’t the Talent recorded in the spiritual DNA? I found no information in books or the Internet but I imagine… the military will know more.”

Mr Frog chuckled. He put his documents into a leather bag, closed it and gave Keynes a curious look.

“I can understand where you're coming from. I guess you are trying to acquire a Talent that will combine very well with your perfect memory. I can imagine the possibilities. There are wondrous things you could achieve with the right combo. Hm. I’ll speak to my commander and see if there’s anything we can do for you. But… would you agree to undergo an in-depth analysis? It may help us establish the optimal method.”

“Anything.”

***

The Talent class turned into a massive experiment. Others didn’t see it because they lacked the ability to see the bigger picture or didn’t listen to what the military educator was saying. The military gathered information about 16 years old’s lives to see what kind of Talents they’d receive and analyse the data. The timing seemed unfortunate for Keynes. If the military just started focusing on it now, it meant they’d begin to see results in 10, maybe 15 years. And by that time, they should have a working model of shaping locked Talents. The world without inactive Talents. Interesting.

Unfortunately, Mr Frog failed to secure permission to help Keynes in shaping his Talent. They still invited him for the in-depth analysis, which he accepted under one condition. He wanted an unabridged and unredacted version of the report. If they weren’t going to help him, he’d do it on his own.

A day before the test at the San Antonio military base, Mr Frog discussed the desired Talents. Obviously, most of the class wished for flight, invisibility, mind reading or other comic bullshit abilities. Keynes didn’t usually take part in discussions as he was focused on a Talent he wanted, and he tried to think about ways to influence it.

The class ended and Vivena offered him lunch. They weren’t on talking terms, mostly because Keynes avoided getting himself entangled in conversations with her. She still had that disarming and brain-mushing effect on him. They’d exchange ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye’, and sometimes would comment on the topic of Talents.

“Isn’t that a bit… random?” he asked, not understanding where the offer came from.

“Maybe, a bit?”

That was definitely wrong but he still agreed. They waited for the class to leave as there was no point in inspiring more teasing and rumours. Vivena exited the room first, Keynes followed.

Two large men, wide as a door and dressed for a funeral flanked Vivena. Even without the sunglasses and gleaming hair, Keynes could see who they were. Why the hell does she have bodyguards? Who is she? He raked his brain in searching for any hints about her family. Foxglove. They dealt in a plant business. Before Vivena appeared in the class, he hadn’t heard about them.

“They’ll accompany us, I hope you won’t mind,” she said in almost a subdued voice.

“We must check him first, miss.”

She looked at Keynes with a sorry look but then something in Keynes’s expression made her hesitate. At that point, Keynes’s mind was a blank canvas. Maybe that was what she saw… hopefully not.

“It won’t be necessary. You’re Level 2s. Keynes is not a threat.”

He nodded dumbly and followed her out of the school, forgetting about the chemistry class he had in five minutes. Keynes wished to disappear when he realized what he got himself into. He walked next to Vivena while the two bodyguards tailed them. They had every pair of eyes in the school on them. For the first time in his life, Keynes was glad that school would soon be over because, after today, he’d need Harter to beat up a few people. I hope they won’t kick Harter out of the school for this.

“You’re looking uncomfortable, why?” Vivena Foxglove asked as they reached her car. It wasn’t absurdly luxurious at the first glance but a few things didn’t add up here.

“My school’s full of jerks.”

“I thought you had thicker skin.”

Keynes almost flinched because she sounded disappointed. Hiding his thoughts, Keynes brought a fake smile to his face. Not the easiest thing to do considering his usual attitude of being painfully honest.

“I’m just tired of them.”

Vivena Foxglove accepted the explanation without comment. One of the bodyguards opened the door for her. The other one opened the front door and beckoned Keynes to enter the car. They don’t trust me to sit alone with her, even though they’re Level 2s. Fine, it’s better for me. And I shouldn’t have agreed to her invitation in the first place.