“You don’t look that good.” Alia said, as Ethan’s face was pale. The sensation was gone.

“Yeah. I suddenly feel like I need to get some rest.”

“Must be the industrial air.” Alia said. “I’ve seen it happen to people who work in these kinds of places. But you’re in the second realm, you should have some resistance.”

“Some.” Ethan said. “I felt a certain discomfort a while ago.”

“Interesting that you do. I felt nothing.” Alia walked, but her eyes seemed to constantly look at all the various stuff being made. The constant rhythm of all kinds of magical tools at work seemed to perpetually flood the industrial district.

Ethan nodded, his mind deep in thought. He didn’t expect that David would’ve traced Kaname too, but he was now certain that David could sense the presence of the dark. Secondly, Celeste Mirrorsong had some contact with the dark goddesses, that just confirmed it.

He wondered what was the best way to investigate Celeste’s connection to the darkness. “Alia, what do you know of Lady Mirrorsong?”

Alia paused. “...why?”

“Let’s say I were to work for any of the large duchies... which one should I work for?”

“Aahhhh. Thinking ahead for your future career.” Alia nodded agreeably. “That makes a lot of sense, actually. I... actually never thought of doing that. Most graduates just drift to whichever duchy they were most familiar with, but that’s not necessarily a good decision. Good point, good point indeed.”

She thought about it seriously and eventually answered.

“I actually don’t know much about her.”

Basil on the other hand, nodded. “I’ve not spoken to Lady Mirrorsong beyond menial requests, but from what the boys tell me, she seems alright? Maybe she is occasionally a little stressed out and tense.”

"Would you work for her, Basil?" Alia asked.

"Yeah. House Mirrorsong is a decent administrator. Rifts are removed on time, the cities are well powered and protected, people live acceptable lives, I guess."

Alia nodded. "That's one plus point."

"I would say most duchies are actually pretty decent." Basil continued. "They are not cruel... unnecessarily. It’s the lesser nobles that can be... unbearable."

"Shining endorsement, Basil." Alia smirked.

"It's a fact. Almost always better to work for a Duchy than a Barony. They’ve got bigger land, more rifts, more people, more money, more stored capital, secret protectors and more history."

“Hah.” Alia laughed at the last few phrases. “You’ve been listening to all those old tales.”

“There’s a reason why they are there, Alia.” Basil responded. “Don’t discount them.”

Ethan just nodded along. “Do you think we should head to the wild rifts? Even if we can’t contribute, maybe we could just uh... soak in the energy?”

Alia’s eyes seemed to sparkle. “Oh yes!”

The wagon yards were fairly crowded in the afternoon, but it wasn’t as bad as the morning. Ethan noticed some familiar faces, fellow commoners like them.

Ewen grinned at them. “Hey, you guys are here.”

“Yeah!” Ethan smiled as he shook his hand. Ewen quickly introduced him to his team, and two other friendly teams.

“We’re forming a team of twelve to take on the wild rifts, just so that we have some cover. Never know what we see out there.” Ewen nodded. “You guys are headed to the Glades as well?”

“We’re thinking of going there, but uh... we plan to just hang around and just soak in the ambient energy.”

One of Ewen’s teammates nodded. “That makes sense. If you guys are first years, the energy would be helpful. 1st realmers would probably find just enough to get them up a few stages, and save some GP.”

“If you want, you can join our rift, but you won’t get any share of our haul.” The 3rd year offered.

“That’s fine.” Ethan said. “It’s probably going to be more beneficial to Basil, since he’s still in the 1st realm.”

Basil shrugged. They paid for their wagon trip, and joined the queue. By the time they got to the Glades, it was about sunset. Ethan asked a question that made Alia chuckle. “Is it safe to go there at night?”

“There’s no real difference.” Ewen answered. “The monsters of the rift are still the monsters of the rift, and the rifts do not care what time of day it is outside.”

“True.” Ethan nodded.

One of the wardens gave them a briefing, just like the ones before, and Ethan looked at Ewen. “No one will save us?”

“Yup. That’s why we form larger groups. At least we’ve got each other’s backs.”

They walked through the glades, and Ethan momentarily paused to admire the scenery, with its twisted, glowing trees, and streams of shimmering blue waters filled with illusory fishes. Eventually, after they weaved through countless paths, they arrived at a rift that was available.

“This one looks about the right tier.”

They entered the rift last, after the 3rd year students, and rested around the exit. The rift itself was different, instead of somewhere more condensed, they felt a sprawling, expansive location, with incredibly dense ambient energy.

“Whoah.” Ethan had to admit it felt different.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Most nobles take their children to a wild rift to train.” Basil repeated, as he made himself comfortable. “Those that don’t have their own cultivation chambers, at least.”

Ethan nodded, and sat on the ground. The wild rift was a forest, and they could hear fighting from a distance away. Even all the way at the entrance, they felt the ripples of battle. Basil closed his eyes, and sat on the floor.

Contrary to popular belief, there was no requirement for sitting postures for cultivation. The only requirement, at least in the lower realms, was the absorption of sufficient energy and the subsequent growth of the core. The core was a living engine that grew, particle-by-particle.

Ethan rested on the grassy floor, and focused on the energy particles around them.

He focused on the grayish shadow element. Everything else was useless.

That was a drawback of rift-cultivation, the energy was just a big mixture, and filtering through the particles took their attention and mental effort. There was still enough in the air, for someone in the first realm, and by Ethan’s own measure, this rift was about a fifth as effective as a cultivation chamber. Not a bad decision, considering they paid nothing for it.

Alia similarly concentrated on the energy, and quickly noticed. “There’s a bit more water and wind energies in the air.”

“That’s good for you.” Ethan shrugged. Shadow element was harder to find. Some elements were just less frequently available.

Because of the mental effort needed to filter through the energy particles, the three descended into a focused silence, each concentrated on picking the right particles from their surroundings.

A few hours passed by, and then, they all got the familiar ding.

[Rift completed]

The entire world seemed to shake, and the group returned. All twelve of them looked exhausted, but no one was seriously hurt. “You guys made it back!” Ethan nodded and Ewen shrugged.

“This is a level 11 rift, after all.” Ewen shrugged. “If we couldn’t do this much, we’d never make it very far in the Garden.”

“Level 11!” Alia’s eyes seemed to glimmer in admiration.

Ewen immediately put it in context. “Don’t look at us like that. The nobles with Titan-grades are doing at least Level 15. At our age, you should be able to do just as well as us”

“Shit.” Alia cursed.

Ethan sat and wondered briefly, why were so many students still stuck in the high 2nd realms and early 3rd realms, when they were already in the 2nd realm by the second week. Something didn’t make sense. One of Ewen’s teammates held a large core that glimmered.

“Alright, we’ve got to drop this off with the Wardens, and they’ll pass it on to the Garden for our credits.”

They exited the rift, and Ethan immediately caught up with Ewen. “I’ve got something to ask. Is there something that stops you from moving up the realms? How many times do you need to spend in the cultivation chamber just to move up a stage, these days?”

“Ah. If you’re in the 2nd realm, you’ve just entered the treadmill. I’m at the 10th stage of the 2nd realm, and getting me from 9th stage to the 10th stage, took me almost twenty-five visits to the mid tier cultivation chambers. The first stage to the 2nd stage cost me 5 visits. The mid tier cultivation chamber costs 50GP per trip. Do the math.”

The cost per stage of 1,300 GP instantly made everything click. A brief extrapolation seemed to imply a total GP cost of about 6,000 to 8,000 GP to get from 1st stage to 10th stage at the 2nd realm with a rare-grade core.

If they collected 50GP per day, that would still take 120 to 150 days of hunting the rifts. If they averaged at 20GP, that still took 300-400 full days of rifting, just to get to the top of the 2nd realm. That’s not including downtime. At their current rate of 10-15GP per day, it would take 600 days. They still needed to set aside some GP to change cores!

Ewen, of course, noticed Ethan computing the time, and shrugged. “I’m not fast, by the way. By most measures, I’m in the last 30 percent. The stronger nobles are well in the early-3rd realms by now, a few geniuses even in the mid-3rds. It’s also easy to get distracted by the other stuff we can spend GP on.”

“Huh? Like what?”

“Equipment!” Ewen laughed. “Check this out!”

The 3rd year student pulled out a strange glove that pulsed with energy. “This thing costs 1,100GP. It gives you a specific additional skill which doesn’t take up a skill slot, and it doesn’t have to be in the same element as your core. It’s one of the ways we augment our weaknesses in battle, by acquiring ‘complementary’ equipment. This one is rated at the 3rd realm, and produces a temporary earth shield. At the 2nd realm, you can sustain two pieces of equipment, three, if you have a titan-grade core.”

“Oh.”

“It’s a tough call at some point, to either spend GP on cultivation chambers, or to get better equipment.” Ewen admitted. “The Garden doesn’t care how you get there.”

“I see!”

“I got to go.”

Ethan bowed to the senior student. “Thank you, that was instructive!”

“No worries. We commoners should hang out a bit more.”

“They got 550GP for that rift.” Alia explained later as they returned to Fortuna. It was really late at night, but the roads were wet lit. The wagons had a group of night shifters that took the rifters to the glades, and back.

“550GP? Divided by 12, that works out to about almost 50GP per person. That’s not bad.” Basil was just impressed by the big numbers.

“It’s just one trip to the mid-tier cultivation chamber.” Ethan explained. “They need to do twenty to get anywhere near the amount needed to break through to the 3rd realm.”

“If they do one every day, these two weeks would net them.... 1,000GP.” Basil whistled at the large numbers. “That’s a lot.”

“They could solo a rift.” Ethan said. “And get there in two days.”

A suggestion that Alia immediately discarded as ridiculous. “The quantity of monsters increases. It’s suicidal when the strength of the monsters increase accordingly.”

If he attempted a rift at the 2nd realm, it’ll be himself and two summons. Unless, of course, Zaram got much stronger. At the 4th-realm level of strength, it seemed possible.

***

That night, he secretly snuck out of the inn, and summoned Kaname and Gordeaux. He could summon a total of two characters, for seven hours each. Even if he swapped characters, they ‘drew’ energy from the same two tanks of time.

The two summons were both dressed in casual, civilian wear. “Alright, I need you two to keep watch on the hero and the heroines. Keep a lookout for Celeste Mirrorsong as well.”

Kaname nodded, and briskly shuffled on the rooftops of Fortuna.

Gordeaux, a blacksmith dressed in civilian clothes, was a natural fit for Fortuna. He exuded the industrial worker’s aura that no one would even doubt he was from anywhere else.

He returned to the inn and rested for the night.

[Kaname: Dogs spotted. Following-]

Ethan wasn’t expecting that. He thought they would’ve lied low. “That was quick.”

[Gordeaux: Milord, I have Lady Sara Argos in my sights. She’s having drinks with some seniors.]

Ethan had a general sense where they were, and contemplated joining his summons. Then Basil knocked on his door. “Hey, Ethan, you there?”

“Yes?”

Basil came in, and sat on a chair in the room. “Can’t sleep, huh?”

Ethan shrugged. “I guess. You too?”

“Not really. Just wanted to talk about what the seniors said. You seem quite... mathematical. I didn’t quite catch the stuff you discussed with Ewen and Alia, but it sounded important.”

“Ah! It's more of a merchant concept of profit per day. I just applied it to our GP earnings per day and calculated-”

Basil looked lost.

"Let me explain it from the start, eh." Ethan nodded, and then decided to trust his summons to do what they know best. He smiled at Basil, and began to explain his questions to their senior, his concerns, and then took a paper to demonstrate the concepts of GP-per day and the total GP cost of the 2nd stage.

It was a rather eye-opening experience for Basil, who never looked at the issue from that angle.

To Ethan, it just reminded them of the mountain they had to climb.