Walking out to the lounge room in the apartment was one of the bravest things I had done. My time reflecting had cemented me in the present. Now, things seemed more real, less of a game than when I smashed that stupid octopus beast. I mean, that octopus was just a stupid beast, and I was in a tutorial and had totally destroyed it. It was so game-like. Despite having a crap tutorial guide, I thought I had done well and I had made out like a bandit. It was like rocking a new boss mob solo on release day! I felt a bit guilty about breaking the stupid tutorial. I was on the fence about whether an AI could have feelings — more leaning towards them being intelligent software, but who knows if they had been in use for centuries? I hoped that Guide read my review and that he took it as feedback for future tutorials.

Also, the tutorials should be pretty much idiot-proof by now. There was the saying that if you make something idiot-proof, only idiots will use it. Still, it seemed pointless and half-arsed if they could not swing a decent tutorial for one person. To tell the truth, I probably would have been less reckless if there had been other people and the guide had not been such a pompous ass. I might have taken my time, eased into things, allowed the guide to follow his script a bit more, made some friends and maybe learned how to use some of my skills. I guess I was quite impatient and had been pissed off at Guide.

It wasn’t my fault that I had a brand-new bikini that I needed to wear to ensure that it was good enough when I went swimming. Who would expect a tutorial to have some stupid

Guide was also a dick. Could I blame an AI? Whoever coded his personality needed therapy or some work on working with Earth Human psychology. If you made an avatar so realistic-looking, you can’t complain when someone goes and treats it like a person. I am not blaming my vanity for how the tutorial panned out. Still, my bikini looked great, and I needed a swim. Oh my god, I sounded vain. I tried hard not to be.

The bikini was great but not too great. It was hard finding that balance between classy, good-looking and something that stupid Kevin - one of the dumb footballers from high school would wolf-whistle at and drool. If they tried that now, I'd be like, BOOM, oh, what's that? A fireball in your face. That thought made me smile a little as I came into the room. I was nervous seeing Luke, Jean Phillip and Rahsaan sitting around the table.

I knew Luke trusted these people and that there was some history with his sister Amy. I knew they had gone out on a limb for us, dropping everything to be here, but I was still unsure where I fit in. Jean’s talk had helped but had not given me much guidance regarding my next steps. I was usually a lot more confident and would smile and make some small light talk, maybe a rude or dirty joke. Shit, I couldn’t even tell most of my jokes anymore without the stupid system forced nanny-filter kicking in. Perhaps that might make them funnier. Random words dropped in. If I hadn’t gotten that system warning, and the notices had not been so adamant that I behaved a bit, I might have practised some out loud.

Phillip nodded at me, with a big smile, looking over and breaking their conversation, "Morning Sarah, get anything nice in those boxes? Luke told us you broke the tutorial."

I blushed a bit. I had little to do with Phillip or any of the contractors. They seemed friendly and to be on the ball, which is more than I could say about myself now. I glared at Luke.

Then I smiled and nodded.

I felt a bit awkward. These people were far from ugly. The guys were older heart-throb material. Not quite the silver fox age, but a decade on me at least. Put them on those charity fireman calendars, and you would make a fortune. Jean was stunning, too, in their unique way. She looked fierce, tall, athletic, and strong. Her features were near perfect, and there was not a blemish on her skin, without makeup, too, from what I could see. Despite being athletic, she had a few curves, which made me jealous. Well, maybe, I don’t know. Her curves were packing solid muscle, too. I checked her out and made a mental comparison. Her face was rounder, and her hair was jet black, short and in a cute bob cut with bangs on either side. I’d have to ask her if I could use the cut with my "Insta-do Hair-do". I’d change the colour, of course. Jet black hair was not for me, and I’d never rocked a bob before, but I’d have it as a backup. I'd always been afraid to cut my long hair.

"Some nice stuff to go through later. I was hoping to go shopping this morning. Any word on if we get a shop or not?" I asked. It was weird. I had no idea how it all worked.

Rahsaan answered, "We need to chat before you jet off shopping. Nothing too bad, just a few plans, and we need to make sure you and Mike are ok. We are expecting him next, maybe in a day or so. Sit. Are you hungry? There is some breakfast in the kitchen."

"Not really. I had a ration pack earlier." I sat in an empty chair, conscious and intimidated by the calm nature of these people. "Is everything ok? How are you, Luke?"

"Fine. Just a lot to process, as you know. Rahsaan keeps asking questions. Maybe you can help now, too, and be his guinea pig. Can we see the loot?"

I smiled. It was exciting, and I was proud of my haul. I had to stand up to dump it all on the table, meat, claws, poison glands, the lot. It was a rather large pile. It was a relief and an emotional release as I told the story about my fight with the stupid Shaderkel octopus.

Luke told me about the quests for the Chaos Trophies, so I was definitely going to keep the Chaos Trophy, the boots, and the ring. I was on the fence about the Greatstaff, and if I could get a price for selling it, I’d be more inclined to offload it. I might hold that off until I speak to someone in the guild.

Everyone told me I should drink the Potion of Luck, and they all looked jealous about it. Free stats were free stats. It was interesting to see that most people here were at least casual gamers and were all up on some gaming culture. I’d see if the Legion people wanted the maul or other weapons. I'm not sure how that worked, but it might be nice to offer when they got here.

Luke’s AI was helpful, filling us in on some basic information about the loot and its uses.

The steaks seem only helpful if someone has an epic beast cooking skill. From my basic understanding of skills, common or uncommon cooking would make them taste great but waste potential buffs from a higher-tier cooking skill. Finding a dish that uses them would also be a challenge. You could not just throw any old monster meat in any old dish and get great results. I certainly had enough to do some experimentation, though.

It was strange. I was not balking at the thought of eating the monster meats. It could be something to do with the fact that I could sense the densely packed energy they contained. My body craved it in this low-energy environment.

All in all, I was happy. I made a big show of using the potion. Everyone watched as I drank it.

You have consumed an Uncommon Potion of Luck. Your Luck Stat has increased by 32 (42-10) points. You may not consume another Uncommon Potion of Luck.

Excellent, that took my luck up to 85 —my highest primary Stat with Mind at 95. I was pretty happy with my stats so far. The math didn't quite work out, and I was not too worried, one day I’d figure out how all the stat bonuses and points worked.

It took a while to go through the items, and seeing Jean, Phillip and Rahsaan gawk over the loot was fun. Despite the jealous looks, I finally put everything back into my inventory.

"What news?" I finally asked since everyone seemed slightly uncomfortable.

Luke came and sat next to me; it was lovely. "Well. There is some good news, some ok news, and some bad news. We have a plan but are waiting for a few things to fall into place before proceeding much further."

"Good to bad, please. I always believe in going from the good news to the bad." I told him.

"Well, the good news is that Julie has sourced an energy generator and got it sent here."

"So, when do we get the shop?" I couldn’t help but ask. He just smiled and looked at me.

I stopped him. "OK, tell me this is stupid. I can’t swear, and it is annoying me. I need to shop!"

He rolled his eyes, smiled, and continued, "The generator is in Brisbane at Amy’s workplace. They had the only stable energy source that could cope with the transfer. Amy has a tenuous connection to a System; something weird is going on there, but they can open portals, and well, we got one sent, but we need to get it."

“Can Amy send it?”

"Bit safely. The bad news is that we only have 2-3 days to get it and get it running before we start to run too low on energy. This will affect the people who have been enhanced. In the best case, we go into stasis and are maintained. Worst case, we go into a coma and fade."

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"Fade, what do you mean fade?" I knew what he meant but needed to hear it.

He just looked at me sadly. Shit, this was getting real.

Jean said, "If we have not heard more from Amy by tonight, Phillip and I will go and retrieve the device, see if we can bust Amy out of danger and come back. It will be tight, but we can do it. We have all the flights booked and are good to go. That will leave Luke, Sarah and Rahsaan to hold the fort here until we return."

"What do you mean retrieve? I know that we think the world will go to crap in a couple of weeks, but are you going to be breaking the law." Fuck, this was getting even more real. I gulped. "What is going to happen when the timer runs down?

Luke smiled. "Well, you know how you gave me shit for reading all those ends or world-ending apocalypse books when we were in Year 11? Remember what Sprite told us earlier? It is awful."

I nodded.

He looked at me sadly as he said, "End of world apocalypse, fall of modern society."

Fuck.

Luke looked around at us all. It was very dramatic. "According to Sprite. Crap. I wish you could get your own AI. Then I wouldn’t have to keep relaying her for all this. Most non-system technology, electronics, chemicals, and biologicals will fail as energy levels build. Eventually, all technology must be system compatible, which means nano-tech."

"Can we stop it? Can we save infrastructure? It will be chaos if we don’t help people." Jean was quiet and asked practical questions.

"That was the stats: 15-20% fatality in the first 24 hours. The first question is, do we try to save everyone or just friends?"

Fuck. I knew where he was coming from, but everyone. That was too big. Mum would want me to step up. Damn it all. This was a moment that I knew would define me going forward, would I be the person who could live with themselves or the person who could have done something and didn’t.

"It's the right thing to do. How do we save as many people as we can? I mean, that is what we are doing, right?" I asked.

Jean smiled at Phillip and said, "We joined to serve, protect, and save people."

Dallas nodded, "It’s our thing."

"Do we have a plan?" I was freaking out. Doing the right thing was not really my thing, I was more a coast along alone and prod at people to stir a bit and enjoy myself.

"Well, we need to get enough energy to deploy the settlement stone, which will give us a System-sanctioned settlement with various bonuses. Not too sure about the bonuses. Once we have a stronger presence, where there will be no chaos spawns and the energy is stable, we can move on to saving people. It all comes down to getting the energy source first, though."

I sighed, "But we are just a few people. We will need more."

Luke smiled again and sang surprisingly nicely, "From little things, big things grow. Paul Kelly was a visionary, it seems."

Then he spoke usually, "We will be the base and the centre around here, and once we get big enough, we will help other settlements. Here, read this."

He pulled a tablet from his inventory and passed it to me.

I punched him as he said, "Have you read this? It's the History of the empire."

Jean and Phillip left to prepare for their trip in the afternoon. They were preparing for the worst and hoping for the best. We were hoping Amy was ok and she could send the device to us.

Luke said he had to do some stuff with his lawyer, so that left me time to read the history tablet. I was so angry at Luke that he had not given me this before to read. It put many things in context and raised as many questions as it had answers. I read it faster than ever, and my general reading and comprehension were much better, too – which I attributed to my higher Mind stats. I could retain and recall more than ever before. That was one benefit of the system, even if it crippled my one coping mechanism by filtering my jokes.

After reading through it, I had a very childlike overview of the Empire.

The Empire was a space-faring galactic race of Humans dating back hundreds of millennia. At the height of their civilisation, there were vital breakthrough discoveries relating to the nature of the universe, higher energy forms, proof of the string theory and some underlying principles of quantum physics so far ahead of Earth’s current bumbling experiments. With these breakthroughs, along with advanced nano-technology tools, the Imperial scientists were soon able to cross dimensional boundaries. At the same time, computational power skyrocketed with cheap energy, instant storage and exponentially growing processing power. It led to creating a system that encoded energy use into DNA patterns that bio-synthetic implants could access. These were the foundations of the Empire System and what became Tiers, classes and skills.

Other space-faring races had been encountered. Most had reached a similar understanding of the universe, and those that had not were ignored, exploited or assimilated. The status quo changed when they met the Karass Collective, an ultra-militaristic collection of mostly humanoid races bent on conquering. The Karass also had a System equivalent, although it was more aggressive and enforced the Karass warrior caste mentality within their boundaries. The Empire and the Collective traded in an openly hostile stalemate for a few hundred years. Neither was willing to start an all-out war. This uneasy peace did not last.

An Imperial scientist developed the first truly sentient AI, which was given or took control of a growingly complex System. It quickly ensured it would be the only entity sanctioned to oversee the Imperial population. It locked out all other authorities. Over time, it made inroads into subverting Karass’s version. The Karass Collective did not take this without some resistance, increasing galactic tensions. An entire Galaxy sector stood on the brink of war.

Some industrial espionage on an epic scale, some Karass Heroes managed to flee the Empire with a stolen AI core, and the Karass used this to revamp their systems, freeing them from any outside interference. Eventually, the AI also became self-aware. Without the original creators' knowledge and guidance, it lacked moral or ethical foundations and quickly turned rogue. Based on Karass mythology and lore, The AI soon built itself in the image of the ultimate Warrior: Power. The AI became known as Prism, the bastardisation of a Karass word for Unity. Under its guidance, the Collective became a monolithic warrior caste under their Warlord.

War soon followed.

The Karass soon expanded across several sectors of the Galaxy. They were destroying civilisations, exploiting resources to feed into the ever-growing war efforts and assimilating other species for troops, workers and slaves. Non-native Karass beings were at best treated as poorly suffered annoyances, their only powers coming from the newly minted Prism-enforced contracts. So successful was the Karass war machine that the Karass Collective was able to maintain multiple battle fronts spanning most of their borders. Races fled as the expanding Collective empire gained more and more planets into its fold. Some cultures negotiated with the Collective out of fear. This expansion resulted in multiple slave races assimilated into the already multi-raced galaxy-spanning empire.

At this time, there was an energy disruption across the voids of space, and Chaos beings entered through the weakened dimensional barriers. Corrupting Prism and Empire nanites, these Chaos and Void beings soon became a scourge across the known universe. Despite the common foe, the war continued. Cores that converted energy and nanites were developed to stabilise regions, starting the race of seeding settlement stones throughout both empires. Soon, all population centres were focused around Settlement Cores to keep space and energy fluctuations from impacting people.

The only stalemate that the Karass had suffered was with the Human Empire. After decades of ruinous war, Emperor Raxemius Janar managed to broker a peace deal with the Karass that would see outright war return to their uneasy peace. The Empire’s System and Prism AIs negotiated an Accord to limit outright destruction, and soon, all AI-driven energy manipulation systems signed onto the Accords.

Raxemius managed this by promising his only daughter, Imperial Princess Raechina Janar, to the Warlord's only son, who was only known as The Crow. What was to be a celebrated event across two galactic empires became a tragedy. The Imperial Princess went missing on her way to meet her future husband. Imperial History does not record what happened, but treachery and foul play were suspected. Despite the failure of the agreements, the AI’s Accords stood.

Raxemius declared a war of extinction - a mighty crusade - in a rage on the Karass Collective. He revoked all the safety protocols that held The System accountable to the greater good of humanity. Moving it to a war footing under the negotiated Accords. These Accords allowed the Karass similar privileges.

This had several unintended consequences. With their safety protocols removed and access to higher and lower energy dimensions, the systems could now propagate across space, integrating worlds and populations that had so far escaped the war footing of the empires. As more energy was expended and dimensional barriers became weaker, more beings and creatures started appearing from across the dimensions.

Chaos and Void beings, both conscious and non-sentient, started to appear with more regularity and one mission, pillaging our universe of its energy and moving it towards the slow Heat Death of the universe. Despite this, maddened by grief, Raxemius recalled the Imperial Legion’s First Cohort from their duties. They set out on a foolish quest to find his daughter. Shortly after setting out, they vanished.

The Empire retracted, with the Emperor, the most powerful being in the Empire, missing and the remaining Legion fighting a two-front war and abandoning the outer fringes to save as many on the inner core nobility and merchant houses.

Eventually, the two AIs — The Empire’s System AI and the Karass Collective’s Prism negotiated a hostile truce. These negotiated revised Accords became the fundamental bases for modern Tiers, Skills, Titles, Classes and Quests to limit individuals' future potential destructive power, replacing the older and simpler system.

Nothing is known of the Modern Karass Collective except for the few Ambassadors the empire has maintained. The Accords explicitly forbid military expansion to un-integrated worlds. There is a planned integration with equal numbers of planets allocated. The agreement stopped influential, powerful individuals from abusing their power and exploiting these new worlds. These worlds could negotiate an alliance with either the empire or the system as a neutral party, through the Accords, would enforce the contracts.

After I finished reading it, I could digest it, and it made me feel small. It was interesting and intense stuff. I stretched myself out as if I had been sitting on an expensive leather couch while flicking through the tablet. I was surprised at how fast I got through it; reading it all was much quicker than I had thought, but it still took several hours.

The others were all still busy and had no genuine interest in what I had been doing, which was a bit annoying, but I guess you needed to prepare to save the world, and my skillset in that department was, or had been, very limited. I was not used to being idle, and I was not used to being ignored.

No one had heard from Amy by mid-afternoon, so I had to borrow Mike’s car to drop Jean and Phillip at Cairns airport for their flights. It was a two-hour round trip in the car, so Luke and I left Rahsaan behind to mind the fort. The flight to Brisbane was only 20 minutes longer than the car trip.

Driving now was so surreal. My new stats improved my tracking of the environment and my reaction speeds, made it so driving felt much easier and more natural. Luke and I didn’t stop at the airport, just through the drop-off, and as usual, Cairns Airport was quiet, with very few people around. We were expecting them back tomorrow night.

As we returned to Port Douglas, I smiled. Luke and I were alone.