Somewhere in southern France a meeting was taking place. The ruined and abandoned village was a perfect location for such an event.

Every person in attendance wore a white mask. Over twenty people stood in what once was a cosy living room of a once nice cottage.

The meeting was called together by Baruka, second-in-command of the White Masks organisation.

“My friends,” he said to the gathered. “We have gathered here today to pay tribute to our fallen friend – Karim. He was mercilessly murdered by the tyrant’s goon – Keynes Kid.”

Growls and curses followed.

Baruka nodded, taking in the hatred the name of his enemy stirred.

“He must pay for what he did.”

But first, they had to find him and it had to be done without Persephone finding out. Baruka’s boss had instructed him to leave Keynes Kid alone, something he couldn’t do. It hurt Baruka to know that Persephone was not only indifferent to Karim’s death but also had taken the side of his murderer.

“He must die!” Baruka shouted and the others repeated his words.

“DIE! DIE! DIE!”

It went on for some time. Then came the time for details and planning. The moment Keynes Kid appeared anywhere in Europe, he’d be a dead man.

***

“This isn’t right,” Vivena said as they traversed the jungle. They were moving toward another horde spotted by Keynes from above a couple of hours ago. “Don’t you see it? Where are the wild animals? There is none. The rift monsters drive them to extinction.”

It was a solid argument. One that neither of the three could refute. The ecosystem was thrown into chaos when the rift monsters took it over.

This also gave Keynes pause. What were the true consequences of the outbreaks? Keynes didn’t know and on top of that, he remembered one more system warning he’d tried to ignore.

Never mind. If everything goes according to plan, we won’t need another outbreak. I will open the rifts one by one. And even though Haruka and Bill think the outbreaks are necessary, I can always open rifts for them as well.

Keynes pushed the conversation about outbreaks away. He had other things on his mind. He had to catch up with all the system messages he’d received after gaining the Elevated stage.

The improvements to his spiritual companion were difficult to gauge as Alice was avoiding the subject. But she’d already said that the whole situation with the malfunctioning spiritual system was an oddity so there was no saying what to expect. What he’d noticed so far was that she could go farther away from him. She seemed more capable and gained a degree of agency. Keynes would have to drill her about the details later on.

His spiritual aura was self-explanatory and Keynes could feel the clear difference between the Medium and Elevated stage auras. Spiritual Resistance was rather understandable; if anyone used their spiritual aura on Keynes, he’d have a greater degree of protection.

[Spirit Ghost] improvement was detailed: longer duration, shorter cooldown but a higher mana cost. Simple enough. The understanding of spiritual energy was harder to figure out. Alice flatly refused to say anything on the topic.

As for the spiritual communication, Alice had already told him in Crest that he’d be able to speak to others who are in the Elevated stage through the spiritual companions. Haruka was a good candidate. Keynes would need to broach the subject with the other man.

What’s the spiritual mantle, Alice? Don't try to balk at me! He warned her but because she knew his mind, she also knew there wasn’t anything behind Keynes’s threat.

Surprisingly, she told him.

You have gained the ability to use and wear items of a higher Level than yours, master, or wear more items of your Level.

So … I cannot wear as many rift items as I want?

No. Each item has spiritual weight and your Spirit can only handle so much. In the Elevated stage, your Spirit is very strong so you can punch above your weight!

Keynes wasn’t aware that there was a limit of rift items a person could wield or wear but it made sense. Everything had spiritual energy.

His attention was pulled back to the conversation.

“Har, aren’t we close to … the northern rift?” Bill asked.

Haruka looked around and after a moment of silence, his eyes went wide.

“Bill… the rift! It is gone!”

The two men rushed forward, Keynes and Vivena trailed them. They cut through the jungle at great speed, until they reached a very small clearing with many roughly cut boulders set in a circle. Inside the circle was empty.

Bill and Haruka froze as they passed the ring of boulders.

“This cannot be…” Haruka muttered. “How is this possible?”

“Are you sure this is the right place?” Vivena asked. “A disappearing rift?” She gave Keynes a discreet glance.

“This is the right place,” Bill confirmed. “Maybe it self-destructed?”

“Why would it do that?” Vivena asked.

“Because it was a volatile rift.”

A volatile rift? Is this another type of rifts like stable and variable?

Yes, Alice confirmed but didn’t elaborate.

“I have never heard about a volatile rift,” Vivena said. “Did you, Keynes?”

Keynes shook his head.

“What was different about the volatile rift?”

“It was stable but had a chance to contain stronger monsters than normal. Bosses were also spawned irregularly. It was a nightmarish rift.”

Keynes mulled over the information about the volatile rift. He understood the underlying rule of the rifts: harder meant more rewarding, hearing about the volatile rift got him fired up.

“What about rewards?”

Bills smiled, although it was a pained smile.

“It was a Level 2 rare rift.”

“So that’s already four percent.”

“It gave eight percent, Keynes, and an extra reward,” Bill said solemnly. “But we lost many people there. It was a very difficult rift. That was the reason why no one delved this rift.”

Vivena sat down on a boulder.

“It would still give us four percent,” she said. “In twenty days or less, we’d have been able to ascend to Level 4.”

“It only sounds easy, Vivena,” Haruka said for the first time in minutes. “But Bill’s right. The rift was risky even for us.”

Not if Vivena had more serums with her. Boosted by her Talent, she’d breeze through the rift without issues. It was no wonder why she didn’t bother herself with maxing out her attributes. Her Talent trivialised the rifts at her current Level. She could pick the hardest rift on Earth and make it look like a playground.

That was actually cool. Of course, as long as Vivena had a serum with her.

“It doesn’t matter either way,” Bill said. “The rift’s gone. Maybe for the best.”

“But how?” Vivena looked at the centre of the circle.

“The orb of relocation,” Keynes said. “I have seen it already.” He explained to them the orbs. It turned out that Bill and Haruka had encountered some orbs but not the relocation one.

“Could it be that your people had found the orb and relocated the rift?” Vivena asked, her eyes burning with interest. And no wonder, the concept of relocating rifts was incredible. They could build what the White Mask had done but many times larger.

It was exactly what Wagner and the rest were trying to do after Keynes told them about the White Hall.

“Maybe,” Haruka replied, a little distantly as if he wasn’t fully convinced.

They didn’t dwell on the subject and moved away from the empty site. As they walked toward the horde, Keynes froze, sensing something nearby.

Alice, are you sensing it too?

Others stopped and looked back at Keynes, their stares confused. Keynes raised his hand and waited for Alice to reply.

Yes, there is a faint spiritual signature here.

Can you point me to it?

She appeared before his eyes and beckoned him to follow her. Keynes’s heart started to beat faster as realisation dawned on him. If he was right. This was going to be big.

“What’s the matter, Keynes?”

“Follow me.”

The source of the spiritual energy wasn’t far. It was also invisible but that wasn’t the problem. In the Elevated stage, Keynes could flood the area with his aura and see hidden things.

And he did.

They all saw it then. A shimmering whisp in the air.

A rift.

“What the hell?” Bill murmured.

“Someone hid that Level 2 rift here?” Vivena asked.

But Keynes knew better, he’d seen this before, in Jamaica and France.

This was a sealed rift.

“No,” Keynes said. “This rift is sealed.”

“Keynes,” she said his name with such strength that for a second it made him stop. “Don’t do this.”

“Do what?” Haruka asked.

“And how do you know it is a sealed rift?”

Keynes didn’t answer any of them.

Rift (Uncommon; Variable)

Level

3

Status

Sealed

Requirements

-

Modifiers

Champions have 10% to drop an item (permanent).

Details

This rift contains a higher number of monsters, champions and a boss (overcharge effect).

Affinity

-

Special Status

Overcharged, Unexplored, Modified

Champions were new and the rift was already modified. Keynes also could see that the rift was variable, he hadn’t been able to do so before.

He made the window visible to the rest even though Haruka could see as much as him.

“That’s…”

“KEYNES!” Vivena snapped. “You cannot do it.”

“I won’t cause another outbreak,” he replied off-handedly, knowing very well that Haruka and Bill didn’t know about his secret. But he couldn’t keep it any longer. He was going to open this rift right now.

Haruka and Bill, unsurprisingly, bombarded them with questions. They couldn’t comprehend what was going on. And no one blamed them for it.

“I can open rifts without causing outbreaks.” He assured Vivena, while the other two stood speechless, staring at Keynes. He wasn’t exactly truthful with her as he couldn’t be fully sure that he could open a Level 3 rift while being only Level 2 without rupturing it. He had to try though.

Keynes didn’t waste time.

Attempting to open the rift…

The Rift’s Status: Sealed.

Lockpicking initialised…

Each second seemed like an eternity, and with each one he feared that he’d have to level up to unseal it without causing the outbreak.

Then the message came through:

Do you wish to unseal the rift?

Yes/No

YES!

The rift opened successfully.

Heck, yes! It worked… oh.

Monsters exploded out of the rift – goblins with passive skill that allowed them to diminish their enemy’s Dexterity by 10%.

They were short, with a long nose and ears, and sharp pointy teeth. Unlike Level 1 and 2 monsters, these wore frayed capes and crude leather armour. They were armed in iron daggers with chipped and jagged edges.

And they were freakishly fast. Before Keynes could blink, Vivena was next to him, slicing the goblins in half with her bare hands.

Shortswords appeared in Keynes’s hands and he made a step forward.

“You three stay here. I am going to kill the boss and stop the Overcharge effect before they overwhelm us,” Vivena said and then entered the rift.

Keynes, Haruka and Bill fought with everything they had. Keynes even used his aura aggressively, but Level 3 monsters were much more resistant to its effect. When Haruka’s aura overlapped with Keynes’s, the monster finally started to collapse and the three men did the short work of them.

Five minutes later, they stopped coming out. The boss must have been killed. It took Vivena five minutes to get to the boss and kill it? That was more than Keynes expected.

When no more goblins remained alive. Keynes noticed the amount of essence in his body. It was a lot and its quality was higher than the essence from Level 2 monsters. He immediately began cultivating it hoping to see progress with his core. To his dismay, the essence was still too weak to budge his core.

He dropped on his bottom.

“I’m not eating these things,” he said, trying to lift the mood. It didn’t work.

The fight was short but his stamina was almost at 5%.

“That was a close call,” Haruka said, solemnly. “If Vivena hadn't killed the boss, we wouldn’t have lasted another five minutes.”

That was impossible. The goblins didn’t seem like a big threat. Yes, they moved incredibly fast and Keynes’s own movements were slowed down but still… No, it was an eye-opener.

Vivena appeared ten minutes later, beckoning them inside.

Inside they found a grotto and judging by its complexity it was massive. Tunnels were lit by torches, and came in many shapes and sizes. This wasn’t all. They even found a couple of heaps of crude iron armour laying around.

Vivena showed them the bodies of champions. They were larger than the normal goblins and of different rarity, out of four she encountered, two were common, one was rare and one epic. Their armour and weapons were also of a higher quality and in a better shape.

Epic? Keynes asked Alice.

Yes. It’s the rarity directly above Exotic, she explained, cheerfully. This is where the fun starts!