Chapter 391: Not Going to Slip Between His Fingers

Doren POV

Doren paid as close attention to the rift as it allowed him. Usually, he would task someone else with doing it, but this was a unique situation. This particular rift wasn’t considered a success and was forgotten as he and the others worked on other projects.

“What made you so interested in this rift after all of this time?” He heard Gale ask him as they both enjoyed a little meal.

“I got notified about some curious developments. It might be nothing, but I wanted to make sure. It’s not like I am too busy at the moment,” he explained simply, not wanting to give too much away.

As much as he trusted her, he wanted to keep this one closer to his chest. After all, this rift had been more of a personal endeavor rather than an actual project he had been asked to do or tasked with. He also knew that she had other relationships with people who were in direct competition with his own work.

She was smart enough and loyal enough that she would not reveal anything that would be detrimental to him, but he liked to prevent as much information from getting out as possible. There was no reason to risk it.

“Wasn’t that the one that we originally tried to make into a testing ground for a guild?” Gale asked with a frown.

“I believe so,” he said, feigning some doubt. But he knew that was exactly the one she was talking about.

“But didn’t we have some issues with the—”

He cut her off. “Yeah, and we decided to turn it into an experimental ground for other, more non-conventional ideas.”

Gale shrugged. “Hmm, I would have thought it would have already collapsed after all this time. It’s kind of surprising that it managed to hold up this long.”

“Yeah, me as well,” he nodded along with her.

“What did you end up doing with it toward the end? I know you mentioned that it had failed, but now I am curious,” Gale asked.

He hid a frown. For some reason, she was being more inquisitive than usual. However, to be fair, he had never told her or the others exactly what he had done to the rift.

“What’s with the sudden curiosity?” He asked with a laugh.

She shook her head. “Honestly, I am just interested in what has gotten your attention. It’s rare to see you put your attention on stuff like this anymore.”

She had a point. As much as he kept up some projects here and there, it wasn’t anything like the past. His passion for such things had dwindled significantly. Other things caught his attention now.

Speaking of the rift, he sensed something odd had occurred. He momentarily ignored Gale as he investigated what was going on.

He took the time to get an overview of what had happened so far. He made sure to check in on the kids who had brought his attention beforehand. He was reasonably confident that most of these kids were scions of prominent families. He believed he even recognized the signature bloodline coming from a few of them.

If he was correct, then someone from House Zenith was currently on the seventh floor. His lightning magic was impressive, and he was well-trained, as one would expect from a family as scary as that one.

There were plenty of others who were at similar stages of the rift. They were clearly talented and were well beyond the typical strength for their ages. He was confident that some of them would get to the eighth floor given some time and effort.

A boy with a special variation of sound magic was tearing through the floors. Doren didn’t know which family or clan he came from, but he clearly had some advanced training. There was another girl who used a fascinating form of transformation magic. She was able to adapt her body to whatever each floor required.

She enlarged her muscles when she fought the boar and became massively strong. Even against a unique opponent like a wraith, she somehow transformed her fingers into something very similar to the wraith’s claws. This allowed her to actually make contact without issue.

There were plenty of talented children in the rift. The guild must have invited many powerful scions and heirs.

However, Doren was somewhat disappointed that the violet-eyed girl hadn’t passed the fifth floor. However, that wasn’t outside of his expectations. People like her usually specialized and excelled in their chosen fields. Something that tested one’s physical strength in such a simple way wasn’t easy for them.

He narrowed his eyes and focused, trying to capture as many details as possible from these participants, but it was all in vain.

There was a limit to how much he could observe during the participants’ attempt. He was unable to be physically present in the rift while the person was moving through the floors. This meant he couldn’t use his own domain or more powerful skills to scan the people inside, drastically affecting how much information he was able to acquire.

He would have loved to be able to enter and examine certain participants personally, but the rift was unable to maintain its structure if someone as powerful as he entered it. The time dilation effect didn’t help matters either.

Specific floors in the rift were artificially enhanced to allow powerful individuals to enter. But there was a limit to how many floors like this were available, mainly since the rift was meant for Tier 3s. The mana requirement to strengthen such a floor would mean that the ambient mana would kill or injure most Tier 3s. It would also impact how the rift would evolve. There was even a chance that it would grow into a Tier 4 rift.

Doren and the people originally helping him create this rift did their best to fix this issue and find a workaround. Unfortunately, they could not do anything. It had to do with how the rift was created in the first place.

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The rift had been a naturally spawned rift. It was only after it had already been spawned that Doren and the others had repurposed it for their own needs.

However, this particular reason was also why it was considered a failure in the end.

They managed to create rifts entirely from nothing in the past, but that resulted in other problems. As much as they wanted to control every aspect of the rift carefully, creating a realistic and complex rift on their own was tough.

Their self-created rifts were somewhat plain and simple compared to naturally spawned rifts. It was why they still repurposed natural rifts if they required something more complex. Of course, this meant they had to deal with some other issues, but sacrifices had to be made.