Chương 34: Clean

My head ached.

"What happened?" Overlapping shouts echoed around me.

"How can this be?" Sensation slowly returned to my limbs. I wasn't falling anymore. I felt cold against my back. I groaned, and forced my eyelids open. I had fell unconcious many time's in the rift, and everytime I had opened my eyes, it was the same bland ceiling. I was the night sky this time. There weren't many stars visible through the light pollution—exactly what you'd expect in a sprawling urban metropolis like Neupolis.

"The Rift is gone!" someone screamed in the distance.

"This is the biggest discovery in decades!"

"How did this happen?"

"Check on the Walkers! They must know something!" I was out of the rift. I had completed the quest and successfully closed the Rift. I had actually done it. A giddy, almost hysterical sense of relief threatened to bubble up in my chest, but I quickly shoved it down. This was absolutely not the time to stand up, dust myself off, and proudly announce that I was the one who closed the Rift. I channeled my magika, the familiar cold rush grounding my thoughts.

Focusing on Shadowstride, I let myself sink into the darkness beneath me, vanishing from the center of the chaotic site. I emerged a split second later in a dark, overlooked corner, where nobody was paying any attention. From the shadows, I surveyed the scene. There were about a dozen other Walkers scattered on the ground, slowly groaning and regaining their composure. It looked like it had been a crowded day for this Rift. I even spotted Hanz and his rowdy friends picking themselves up from the dirt.

Between the sheer shock of the giant blue tear vanishing and the confusion of the ejected Walkers, no one had noticed that one of them—me—had disappeared into thin air. But they would know soon enough. Once they checked the records, my name would be on the list. I vanished once again, this time emerging just beside the Riftwalkers Association's booth The unprecedented disappearance of a Rift was enough of a spectacle to finally get the receptionist girl to look up from her phone.

She was standing outside, frantically talking to a guard. Both were wide-eyed, asking each other how this was even possible. Neither of them had an answer. I focused on Shadowstride, extending my senses to feel for the shadows inside the small building. The interior was brightly lit, leaving only a few thin shadows near the furniture, but that was enough. What I was looking for was casting a shadow of its own.

I vanished and emerged inside, tucked tightly into a blind corner, hidden from the main security camera's lens. I couldn't let it record my face. The camera was mounted high near the ceiling. I couldn't reach it with a normal jump, but the enhanced muscle fibers and explosive power granted by the passive effects of Shadowstride made it easy. I leaped into the air. The last thing the camera recorded before going dark was the blurred image of my palm snatching it.

I ripped the device right off its mount, snapping the wires, and crushed the plastic casing in my hand. Now that I was officially off the grid, it was time to do the real work. I walked over to the rows of lockers and began systematically destroying them. Even when I found my own stuff and retrieved my bag, I didn't stop. I smashed the hinges and dented the doors of every single locker in the room. With this they won't be able to trace it back to me.

Next, I moved to the front desk and flipped open the staff laptop. The digital clock in the corner of the screen read: 07 Feb, 20XX, 10: 04 P. M. I had entered the Rift on February 6th at 9: 10 A. M. I had been inside for over thirty-six hours. It felt both incredibly long and far too short. Long, because of the sheer torment Lania, Pyiari, and the other kids had endured in there. Short, because I hadn't gotten nearly enough time to properly say goodbye. Pushing those thoughts aside, I focused on the task at hand.

While wandering endlessly through the facility's maze earlier, with nothing but my own thoughts for company, I had meticulously planned how to defeat Aram. Once I figured that out, I had started thinking about the aftermath. I'd imagined what would happen once I closed the Rift. I thought I would be awarded for my invaluable findings, hailed as a hero who finally figured out how to permanently eliminate the monster threat. Then reality hit me. It wasn't that simple. j. m. k67 clearly knew about the quest.

He even completed it. So why didn't he close it? Why did he go in such a roundabout way to spread the word? Was he afraid of something—or someone? The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. The answer was easy to guess once you looked at the bigger picture. From the moment Rifts first began appearing, the global economy had drastically shifted. Society became entirely centered around them.

Rifts provided invaluable resources, magical materials, and advanced technology. Several ordinary people had opened their own Guilds and risen to the top of the social hierarchy overnight. Sure, there were massive setbacks and casualties, but the global market had multiplied by twenty times its original value. But this new world order only made the rich and powerful richer and more powerful, while the poor and weak sank even more.

So, what would happen if the public found out that Rifts could actually be closed permanently? People would demand they be shut down for safety. But the Guilds and Megacorporations would lose their infinite gold mines. Would they just sit back and let that happen? Absolutely not. There were definitely powerful people out there who already knew this secret and were actively suppressing it to protect their bottom line.

If I just walked out into the light and announced, "Hey, I know how to close Rifts," their reaction wouldn't be to give me a medal. It would be to make me disappear. Until I was strong enough to fight back, I had to stay hidden. I looked at the laptop screen, searching for the software that logged entry and exit timings. I clicked the icon shaped like a big 'W'. A prompt popped up, demanding a username and password.

I lifted the keyboard, checked the drawers, and then searched the sticky notes plastered to the bottom of the monitor. Bingo. A sets of username and password, written in messy handwriting. So kind of them to just leave it lying around. I typed in the set of credentials, and it let me right in. I navigated to the corrections tab, pulling up the logs for everyone who had entered the Rift since February 5th. There were a total of forty-three individual entries, including mine.

My file still had a blank space under 'Exit Time'. I began systematically tampering with all of them, randomizing times, deleting rows, and scrambling the data. Then, I accessed the locker records and wiped them completely clean. I wasn't naive enough to think this would keep me off their radar forever. They would probably contact the main servers, recover the cached logs, and use whatever technical shenanigans to rebuild the data. But it would buy me time.

Time to make a real plan, gather allies, and eventually let the whole world know the truth. But I had one more thing to do before I left. I opened the web browser and searched for "top Rift journalists and Rifttubers contact emails". Thanks to a handy AI summary on the search engine, I got a compiled list of their public addresses in seconds. I copied the entire list and opened the Association's logged-in email client. Sending it from an official government IP address would make the leak look incredibly credible.

I pasted the addresses into the BCC line, left the subject blank, and typed a single sentence into the body: Life's Last Hope Rift has been closed. I clicked send. No chance of them unsending it now. I closed the browser, wiped the laptop down with my sleeve, and walked to the door. Sensing that no one was immediately nearby, I slipped outside. I stuck strictly to the shadows, using the natural cover of the night.

Everyone's attention was completely locked on the empty space where the Rift used to be, as military officers and Guild officials aggressively questioned the ejected Walkers. I paused behind a stack of crates, close enough to overhear a scrawny guy holding a spear, he answered the guard's question.

"Me and my party came here to hunt Strange Toy! Some guy did warn us earlier that it wasn't spawning anymore. We thought it was a joke to thin out the competition. But it wasn't! We waited in the playground area for about three hours, and nothing happened. Then, a blue system window popped up out of nowhere."

"What did it say?" the officer demanded."' Rift will be closed. All Walkers will be teleported out.' Then everything went black, and we woke up out here!" The officer tried fishing for more information, pressing him on whether the environment changed or if he heard anything, but the scrawny guy really didn't have anything else to say. Either the scrawny guy had a terrible memory, or the system message I received was unique. I had gotten the same messages as him, but also an extra: Hope you enjoyed the story.

The Akashic System had spoken directly to me. Because I was the only one who got to experience the true history of the rift, only I got the personalized message. Why was the Akashic System showing us these stories? Was there a deeper reason behind the Rifts? Definitely. And I was going to find out. I silently slipped away, reaching the site's perimeter wall. It was high, topped with barbed wire, but low enough for me to toss my bag over.

I used a quick, low-output burst of Shadowstride to slip through the shadow cast by the wall, emerging on the other side just in time to catch my bag before it crashed into the pavement. I found myself in a dark, quiet alleyway. The only sounds were the distant sirens and shouting coming from the former Rift site behind me. I slung the bag over my shoulder and started walking. I didn't want to risk getting caught on any CCTV cameras, so I actively avoided all the main streets, winding through narrow, unlit alleys.

It made the path back home significantly longer, but I couldn't afford to be careless now. Eventually, I entered the familiar street. The comforting smell of cheap spices and roasted meat hung in the air. I looked at the local broth shop from the distance. It was officially closed for the night, the massive cauldrons empty and scrubbed clean. But sitting around a small wooden table inside were three figures: Pia, the gruff chef, and a woman who I assumed was her mother.

They were talking softly, eating bowls of leftover broth, and just enjoying their time together. Pia's parents were making sure she enjoyed every single moment she had left before her condition worsened, and looking at the bright smile on Pia's face, she really was enjoying it. I smiled to myself, turned around, and walked the rest of the way to my building. My apartment society was cheap, which meant no security guards to ask questions and no cameras in the hallways.

I dragged my exhausted body up the fourth floor. I dug the key out of my backpack, unlocked the flimsy door, and stepped inside. I didn't even bother turning on the lights. The sleep I had gotten while unconscious in the Rift didn't do a damn thing to cure actual mental fatigue. I desperately wanted to just crash. I stumbled into the bathroom, scrubbed the grime, dried blood, and sweat off my body, and practically collapsed face-first onto my bed, wearing nothing but my underwear.

It wasn't like anybody was going to see me in my own house anyway. There were so many things that I needed to do, but right now, I just wanted to sleep.