Chapter 206: Freedom Has a Menu
[THIRD CLASS — MANAGED RIFT ACCESS: ACTIVE]
[Available missions: 14]
[Team formation: enabled]
[Route selection: enabled]
[Contribution rewards: enabled]
Jin looked at it for a while.
An hour ago the Engine had given him a dual-aspect core off a boss nobody in this world had ever heard of, and he could not tell a single person where it had come from, sell it openly, or use it.
This was a list of fourteen jobs with published pay.
Smaller. Slower. Legal.
He opened it.
____
The first thing Jin noticed about the Managed Rift interface was that it did not tell him what to do.
He had spent sixteen months at Meridian being assigned things. Assigned routes, assigned teams, assigned equipment lists, assigned exercise slots, assigned instructors who had assigned him a position within an assigned formation. Fourth Class had improved that by letting him book a training room, provided he wrote down what he intended to do in it.
The Third-Class page opened on fourteen missions and a filter bar.
[Managed Rift 4 — Ember Shelf | Resource harvest: mineral | Rating: 2 | Slots: 3/5]
[Managed Rift 7 — Silt Hollow | Route verification | Rating: 2 | Slots: 1/3]
[Managed Rift 2 — Stonewell | Population cull: Ridgeback burrowers | Rating: 3 | Slots: 0/2]
[Managed Rift 9 — Kettle | Escort: survey team | Rating: 2 | Slots: 2/4]
[Managed Rift 4 — Ember Shelf | Beacon maintenance | Rating: 1 | Slots: 1/2]
He read all fourteen and then read the policy summary, which was mercifully four screens rather than forty.
Managed Rifts were stabilized pocket dimensions the academy held under permanent monitoring. Students in Third Class and above could browse, select a danger rating within their clearance, choose from mapped routes, book an entry window, form a team, and accept optional objectives. The academy tracked entries and maintained emergency extraction. It did not put an instructor inside with you.
They’re resource dungeons, he thought, and then made himself stop, because they were not, and confusing them with the thing on his phone was exactly the kind of small sloppiness that eventually got somebody caught.
Real place. Real animals. Nothing respawns.
The resource rules were the part he read twice.
Regulated cores, dangerous organs, rare plants, and valuable beast parts went into academy custody at the exit, without exception. Students received contribution points against published appraisal values and verified participation. The finder held temporary first-claim rights and could redeem a processed version of the material later, with points.
A skill crystal, a skill-bearing organ, or an inheritance item found inside a Managed Rift counted as regulated material until appraised. Naturally developed beast skills — anything a beast worked out through combat or insight — belonged entirely to the beast and its Tamer and were nobody’s business.
Contribution points could not be converted to Credits.
Jin read that line, checked it against the exchange page, and confirmed it. Points bought feed, medical nutrition, processed materials, skill resources, equipment time, and facility bookings. Points did not become money, could not be transferred, and would not touch nine hundred Credits sitting against a hatchery in the third district.
So it’s a company store.
He turned that over and found he did not entirely mind. Students could not safely preserve a raw core anyway — the processing facilities existed because the alternative was eighteen-year-olds carrying unstable organs around a shelter in a bag. The academy took the dangerous half and gave back the useful half at a published rate.
They take custody of everything that can kill somebody and pay me in the only currency I actually spend.
He opened the feed prices and stopped being philosophical about it.
Bronze-tier high-density feed had a points figure beside it that made him sit up slightly. Glitch’s requirements had gone up by nearly a third since the evolution. The protected allocation covered his present baseline, but it did not leave much of a reserve for the next Sync, a hard training block, or another sudden increase.
Flicker’s approved thermal nutrient packs were on the same page under medical nutrition, priced individually, in a category he was allowed to buy from because they were already inside her prescribed care plan.
He looked at both numbers, then at the culling mission’s published contribution range.
Right. That one.
He picked Stonewell for four reasons and none of them were dramatic.
Ridgeback burrowers were armored and dangerous in groups and manageable when isolated, which described a problem Glitch was built for. The terrain was connected stone and packed mineral soil, which was the best possible surface for Tremor Sense. The population had climbed ahead of the Tide, which was why the mission existed and why the rating was three instead of two. And the contribution reward included a feed-linked bonus.
He booked a window for the following morning and then sat there for a second, because nothing happened.
No approval request. No instructor confirmation. No queue.
[Booking confirmed — Managed Rift 2, Stonewell]
[Entry: 0800]
[Route: East Gallery — mapped, beacons active]
[Team: 1/2]
Nobody’s checking.
He tested it, mildly, by changing the route to a different mapped line and then changing it back, and the system accepted both without comment.
Sixteen months of Meridian deciding what he could survive, and now a screen was assuming he could turn a mission down, pick a later slot, or leave a team slot empty and go in alone if he wanted to.
That’s either trust or an actuarial calculation.
He suspected it was both, and booked the slot anyway.
He found Bram in the Fourth-Class conditioning hall, which was where Bram was on Tuesdays. Brunt, Bram’s Ironback Badger, stood beneath a weighted brace with his broad shoulders locked and his claws dug into the mat.
"Stonewell. Ridgeback cull, rating three, oh-eight-hundred tomorrow. I can sponsor one Fourth-Class partner into an approved route."
Bram straightened up and wiped his hands.
"Terrain?"
"Connected stone and packed soil. East Gallery, mapped, beacons live. There’s a section about two-thirds along where the passages narrow to two."
"Hold points?"
"That narrow section is the obvious one. If they come in numbers we take it there or we don’t take it at all."
Bram thought about it for maybe four seconds, which for Bram was extended deliberation.
"Fine."
"You get your own contribution. It’s verified separately, it doesn’t come to me, and sponsoring you doesn’t give you Third-Class access afterward. It’s one mission."
"I know how it works." Bram picked up his kit. "You’re allowed to sponsor people now."
"Apparently."
"Mm." He hefted the bag. "Last time we were underground together you turned on a generator and half a colony came to see what it was."
"That’s a fair point and I’d rather you didn’t make it in front of an instructor."
They planned it that evening in about forty minutes, which was the part Jin enjoyed most and would not have admitted to enjoying.
Route: East Gallery, with the option to break north at the second beacon if the burrower density was worse than the survey said. Entry at 0800, which gave them the full window and put their extraction well before the afternoon slot.
Equipment: standard Third-Class field kit for Jin, Fourth-Class for Bram, plus two extraction beacons rather than one. Jin put the second beacon at the narrow section, which was not required and cost him nothing.
Collection: Bram tagged and carried, because Bram could carry, and Jin ran the appraisal on what was worth taking, because that was the one thing his talent was unambiguously good for.
Withdrawal: Jin’s call, because it was Jin’s sponsorship and Jin’s route.
"You’re sure about that last one?" Bram asked.
"It’s a rule, not a preference."
"Good," said Bram. "Then if you call it, I go, and we don’t have the conversation underground."
The Stonewell entry was a reinforced door in a hillside inside Meridian’s perimeter, with a monitoring station beside it, two Association technicians, and a queue of nobody.
The technician scanned their tags, confirmed the booking, checked their beacons, and told them the extraction direction was marked in green from every point on the mapped route.
"Rating three," she said. "Ridgebacks. If your information stops making sense, you come out. That’s the whole briefing."
"Understood."
"Monitor’s active. We’ll see your tags. We won’t be talking to you unless something crosses a threshold."
Glitch went through the door first, because Glitch always went through doors first now.
The seal came down behind them with a sound like a vault closing, and Jin stood in a stone passage lit green at intervals, with a beast on either side of him and nobody at all waiting to tell him what to do next.