Jedd’s focus narrowed on the man who came to pick him up. He was a High-Level ascender, his spiritual aura permeating the air around him. But there were inconsistencies Jedd immediately noticed. For one, the man didn’t have the swag of a High-Level individual. Jedd’s previous bosses had the presence and presentation that told others that they were important and dangerous. This man didn’t have it and if not for his strong aura, Jedd would say he was just a Level 1 in his early twenties.

“Please, follow me to the helicopter,” the other man said smoothly.

Jedd bit a question. While the circumstances seemed perfect, the timing wasn’t. By the look of things, this organisation valued privacy highly, and if his assumptions were right, and they rarely had not been, his every word and move would be scrutinised and analysed. Some of his previous employers had used similar tricks to learn more about their new employees.

Oddly enough, the nameless man didn’t try to engage him in a conversation, which would be the first sign. He didn’t say anything else as they climbed the stairs to the helicopter pad. By the end of the climb, Jedd’s lungs burned and his shirt was soaked. He didn’t like places with high humidity and warm temperatures. They felt suffocating. But he stayed quiet as he joined the man on the top of the stairs. The other man looked perfectly fine, his dark-green, sort of, uniform seemed to protect him from the weather.

The view up there was stunning but expected. It was a tropical island after all.

But this wasn’t what caught his attention. The entire seaside was peppered with helicopter pads, and there were hundreds of them! Jedd started to reevaluate his earlier assumption about the organisation that hired him. The scope of this place and the level of secrecy alone were absurd.

Could it actually be the World Government?

Ten minutes later they were up in the air. The pilot didn’t say a word to Jedd or his guide so it appeared to be a well planned undertaking. The airtrip didn’t take long but Jedd took the opportunity to scan the scenery beneath. Apart from the massive airport, still in construction and a rail system… a rail system on an island? What am I seeing here? It made no sense to have a sophisticated rail system on an island that was about twenty kilometres across. Unless…

And there it was; a foundation of a bridge in construction. They were building a rail system that would span across several isles. Something like this wasn’t unheard of; the scale of some constructs built by the World Government was mind-bending but such endeavours were never pursued by a private company.

The helicopter descended as they approached another island and then landed on a solitary helicopter pad.

From there the travel was straightforward and done by a car on a dirt road. Jedd was amazed by a sudden change of transportation. It started to worry him as well and he asked himself a question: where the hell am I going?

Outwardly, he remained cool and professional, not that there was any need for that. He was ignored throughout the entire trip.

Then they arrived at the destination and everything changed. He struggled to stay composed as he stared at the otherworldly place with over two dozens of domes, one of the largest shipping docks he’d ever seen and a city worth of people.

“We should get going,” the other man said, bringing a stunned Jedd back to the present.

Walkways hanging a few metres above the ground snaked between the domes. The question was what was inside these domes? Jedd could see machinery and metal containers travelling to the docks and back to the domes. Curiosity wasn’t one of his dominant traits but now he wanted to know what was going on. The docks were too far away to see details, besides, the containers were closed.

His guide seemed unimpressed but Jedd was unable to say if that was an act or not. Before they reached the dome the other man was clearly leading him to, Jedd started piecing things together.

There were three possibilities: mines, high-tech farms or rifts.

Farms were unlikely as the domes weren’t large enough to explain the amount of the resources transported out of them. There were at least ten containers moving out of each dome per minute. Mines? Perhaps open excavation sites? Possible but he didn’t think so. The scale of operations was too large.

That left one thing: rifts.

They made the most sense. There was extremely high demand for all rift materials. Even pure water from rifts was sold at a colossal premium. It would explain how they afforded to build a bridge between isles. Jedd didn’t see a logistical point in having critical infrastructure separated but he’d learned a long time ago to never judge decisions made by the people who saw the big picture.

“Here,” the guide stopped by a door to one of the furthermost domes. He placed his hand on the panel on the wall, the door slid open.

The interior of the dome was disappointing. There was a rail system with mechanical arms that seemed to be responsible for loading containers on train cars.

Wait, Jedd realised. Is this why they’re building the bridge? To get these containers from this island to the other one… No. It couldn’t be. The cost… It was nonsense.

“Go inside,” the guide pointed at the shimmering point in the air that seemed to be the centrepiece of the whole rail system. “The man who has hired you is waiting on the other side.”

This was a rift! He got it right.

The man turned to go.

“Wait, what about the monsters?” A cold sweat suddenly covered him up despite the refreshing chill inside the dome. “I’m only Level 1.”

“No monsters inside.” With that the man left without paying Jedd any further mind. Odd but not outrageous given the peculiar circumstances.

Jedd took a deep breath and turned towards the rift. He was really going to do this, wasn’t he? Smoothing the ramping up nerves, Jedd approached the rift.

Rift (Common)

Level

4

Status

Open

Requirements

-

Modifiers

-

Details

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

Affinity

Nature

Special Status

-

Jedd blinked, while gears in his brain ground to halt. There were no Level 4 rifts on Earth. No, he was wrong. He almost facepalmed himself. Just a week ago he had read an article about the sudden influx of Level 4 materials of unknown origin. Artefact Exchange facilitated the trades but didn’t disclose where these materials had come from.

The answer was before him. So, not the World Government. They wouldn’t hide the fact of possessing Level 4 rifts, Jedd concluded. When it came to publicity, the current iteration of the World Government was starved for success. Jedd’s thoughts became more jumbled and sidetracked. He realised he was distracting himself from the task at hand.

A few quick breaths later, Jedd finally stepped into the rift. He’d never been in one before so he had no idea what to expect.

The first thing he noticed was a cloudless sky and a lone mountain in the distance. The temperature changed suddenly from cool to ambient.

The rift itself was a plain plateau with ankle-high grasses and boulders of varying sizes scattered all over the place. A moment of hesitation passed as he noticed smaller domes in the distance. They didn’t appear to belong to the rift though he wasn’t an expert. Those he knew who had been inside a rift were tight-lipped about their experience.

“This is it,” Jedd told himself. I knew what I was getting into when I accepted the job.

No one came to welcome him so decided to make the first move. His employer was likely watching him and would analyse Jedd’s every decision. It was better to stay true to himself and take initiative.

As he neared the domes, he realised that they were smaller than he’d thought. Each of them was the size of a small house. He still glanced around from time to time, worried about the monsters but none had appeared so far.

Eventually, he stopped before what appeared to be the main entrance.

“Hello?”

The door remained closed though. Jedd tried to not consider the potential consequences—

“Jedd Eldin?”

Jedd whirled around and found himself face to face with a very gloomy looking teenager. Jedd’s attention became razor-sharp in an instant, his mind analytical.

The boy wore dark clothes topped by an unfashionable black coat. Long black hair and pale skin evoked an image of a character from a cheap horror movie. Jedd wasn’t thrilled to find a person with such a lacking presentation here. He’d expected his employer to be something else.

“Yes,” Jedd replied without giving away his thoughts. His personal opinion about the teenager didn’t matter in a professional setting. It was one of the things he could do extremely well; the separation of personal and professional matters. “Nice to meet you.”

The teenager extended his hand, Jedd shook it.

“Keynes Kid.”

“Are you the person who has hired me?” Jedd asked, trying to figure out what Level was Keynes Kid. He wasn’t sensing any aura from the teenager, which didn’t mean much. Jedd was only Level 1 and his spiritual sense was lacking. It was usually due to the other High-Level individuals’ lack of restraint more than to Jedd’s ability to sense.

There was also a possibility that Keynes Kid hadn’t ascended yet to Level 1. He looked between fifteen to eighteen.

“Yes,” he replied, filling Jedd with an odd mixture of relief and disappointment. Being a personal assistant to a teenager wasn’t something he was excited about. Then again, his salary was astronomical so he would have to be not right in the head to not accept the job. “How much have they told you about the job?”

“Nothing. I don't even know the name of your company,” Jedd admitted neutrally.

He watched Keynes Kid carefully trying to piece together a better idea of who this person was who seemingly had an insane amount of wealth at his disposal. Keynes Kid’s face showed very little emotions, something that varied greatly between people Jedd had worked for. Some of them had been cold as stone while others had been excitable maniacs.

Keynes Kid accepted the information then his stare seemed to lose focus. It lasted less than a second and shortly after that Jedd wasn’t sure if he’d actually seen it.

“I guess this is how this company operates. I can’t really say. I’m not very involved in the day-to-day operations. This is why I hired you. I need a person to help me navigate this corporate maze,” Keynes Kid said, sounding somewhat flat. “And the name of the company is Untainted Paradise.”

So Untainted Paradise after all. With what Jedd had witnessed outside, the mystery of their hidden income source was solved. Somehow, they had access to Level 4 rifts. Focus, forget the rifts for now. Priorities first.

“If I am to be your personal assistant, I would like to know more about your role within the company and a brief overview of my expected role and tasks.”

Keynes Kid turned and beckoned Jedd to follow him. They walked around the domes. There they met another person. A young brunette sat with her crossed legs on the ground, her eyes were closed. She looked fragile but the moment Jedd got ten metres from her, her spiritual aura hit him like a boulder. She had the strongest spiritual aura Jedd had ever encountered.

Was this a test? Was she the one who had hired him? This would make perfect sense.

“This is Kora,” Keynes Kid said. “This is Jedd, my new personal assistant.”

Oh, well.

Kora opened her eyes and smiled.

“Nice to meet you… wait. You’re only Level 1?”

“Yes, my previous employers haven’t deemed me valuable enough to pay for my levelling.”

“Keynes, we should level him up,” Kora said. Jedd judged her attire to be completely practical with little flair or fashion. But she didn’t need clothes to ‘enable’ her. Her voice was soft and timid with a note of delicacy that didn’t suit someone so powerful. She also seemed casual around Keynes Kid, which so far didn’t help Jedd untangle the mystery.

“No, I have better plans for him,” Keynes Kid said, speaking about Jedd as if he wasn’t here. He didn’t like it. He ‘worked’ for Keynes Kid, but he wasn’t owned by him.

“Excuse me, but what plans are you talking about?” Jedd dropped his neutral voice, instead, employing a harder one.

“I will help you max out your attributes. The first degree shouldn’t be hard. But let’s forget this for now and talk about the immediate plans. There is much to cover.”

Keynes Kid didn’t show that he’d noticed a change in Jedd’s tone. He sounded completely unbothered as if the world belonged to him.

This is going to be a difficult year.