On the way to my apartment I spotted another aberration or fracture, or whatever. This one was growing out of the front of a store, and being investigated by an unusually beautiful woman.

She turned to look at me and I waved stupidly at her. I could feel myself grinning, and hoped I didn’t look too crazy.

When I got to my apartment, I found Dingo napping in my ‘backyard’—a barely enclosed six-by-six-foot area.

This was a common occurrence. What was unusual, was Dingo himself.

“When did you get so big?”

His head snapped up at hearing my voice and he bounded over to me, easily clearing the fence around my yard, not even needing to jump.

He greeted me eagerly, licking my face.

Without needing to get on his hind legs.

On all fours, he was now at least six feet tall.

“What happened to you? You’re like a horse.”

Suddenly paranoid that despite the slobber he was depositing on my face he’d become corrupted, I inspected him.

He went stiff, ears pricking, alert for any danger.

My own unease faded, however.

Dingo (Dingo)

Rank: Copper

Level: 1

“Wow, how’d you reach Copper already?”

He huffed, sniffing at me. Probably looking for food.

“At least my level’s higher than yours. What card did you get? And how?”

Though as for the how, I could guess. He had a bad habit of eating things he shouldn’t. That habit was the whole reason—or at least a significant chunk of it—for why I was stuck in Byron Bay as the proprietor of a bike and coffee shop.

“You probably should stay outside,” I said, opening the gate and heading for the door into my apartment. “I’ll bring you treats I guess. No telling how long the power will be on, might as well use up the fresh stuff.” I frowned. “Need to get that generator set up. And get more fuel.” I had stabilizer for it and a bit of fuel, but hadn’t been able to stockpile the fuel itself due to the cost.

“There’s that place Bob mentioned. They should have—” I stopped myself, shook my head. “What am I saying? I don’t need fuel and generators. I have heckin magic.”

‌

∎ ∎ ∎

Dingo followed me inside.

It seemed more effort to try to stop him than to just let him in. Plus, even with the safe zone, I’d feel better with him around while I was sleeping. Especially now. While there was no reason for the Gold-rank woman in the woods to sneak into my apartment during the night and assassinate me, that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

Though thinking about it made me realize that if she really were Gold rank, there was nothing Dingo or anyone else could do to stop her.

I took an entire package of butcher scraps from the fridge and put it in a bowl for him. Normally it would be a momentous feast, but given his current size, it was barely an appetizer, and he wolfed it down in mere seconds.

I shook my head watching him, then plugged the kitchen sink and let it fill with water for him to drink. None of my bowls were big enough to last very long with his new proportions.

I pointed a finger at him. “I swear to all that is good if you pee inside… I do not want to clean that up.”

He barked once, which I took for assent.

I filled a glass of water while the sink filled, which took a while with Dingo drinking from it, and chewed on a Snickers bar.

Once the sink was filled, I turned off the tap and headed to the bathroom to take a shower.

Despite the sun not even having fully set, I fell asleep moments after crawling under the covers, Dingo on the bed with me, which was only possible because the mattress was on the floor, so there was no frame to break.

If only my doors were so lucky.

‌

∎ ∎ ∎

I startled awake, heart pounding.

I briefly wondered what had happened, then the sound that had woken me came again.

I fully came to my senses, processing what I was hearing.

It sounded like a war was going on outside my bedroom window.

I got up to look, noticing Dingo wasn’t in my room anymore. I must have shut the bedroom door before going to bed, and at some point while I was sleeping he must have knocked it down to leave, because it now lay knocked off its hinges in the hallway outside my bedroom.

I was having bad luck lately with property destruction.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

I pulled back the curtains and was immediately blinded. “Bloody balls!”

I squinted against the sun’s rays, trying to focus. But even after my vision adjusted, I didn’t see anything. My window was open, and the ruckus sounded like it was coming from the direction of the beach, which I, given my limited means, did not have a view of.

I threw on clean clothes and quickly headed outside to see what was going on.

Dingo wasn’t around but I wasn’t that worried. He often took off and did his own thing but never strayed far or left town, usually spending his days going between cafes to beg for food or rummage through their dumpsters, the nearby skatepark, and the unofficial dog park.

The streets were as empty as the day before. The beach, on the other hand, was another matter entirely. It was positively filled.

“What the balls,” I muttered, staring at the scene in shock.

I’d seen a lot recently, but this was insane.

A giant beam of blue energy erupted from a gleaming figure floating twenty feet above the water’s surface, a few hundred yards out from shore. The beam slammed into the sea and vaporized enough water to cause a burst of steam large enough to be mistaken for a low-lying cloud.

When it cleared, the surface in the immediate vicinity of the blast was completely black like an oil spill.

The one who had shot the beam looked like an old-fashioned knight in full plate armor. The beam seemed to have been shot from a giant polearm which he now lowered toward the water again.

Another blast erupted and this time after the steam cleared, the surface of the ocean sparkled, the blackness gone.

The armored knight floated down through means I couldn’t determine and the sparkling disappeared. He looked toward me then, causing my heart to leap into my throat.

“Uh oh.”

But he just waved his polearm at me in what I took to be a friendly gesture, then flew farther out to sea in the direction of what looked like a pirate ship hovering a good twenty feet off the surface.

And he wasn’t the only one fighting. Far from it.

Judging by the unnatural churning of the ocean and large amounts of mana radiating out of it even in areas without a mythical flying knight in shining armor, there was fighting going on beneath the surface as well.

According to my map, the Byron Bay safe zone extended up until maybe fifteen feet from the water, but despite this the beach was even crazier, packed into that tight band of unsafety, with prospectors and monsters of all kinds: another coral monster, some kind of water beasts or elementals, an apparently sentient shipwreck, something that looked like it might once have been seaweed but which now was a giant monster the size of a tank; all of them fighting people who from their mana alone I could tell were incredibly powerful, to say nothing of how easily they were tearing through monsters that themselves were largely Colossus-class, with the odd Behemoth scattered here and there.

At least there weren’t any more Titans.

I didn’t see any of the tower staff in the mess, but it was such chaos that I couldn’t be sure they weren’t somewhere lost in the mix.

It was a huge contrast to even just the day before. There was hardly an inch of unoccupied sand on the beach.

This was normal for tourist season, but instead of pasty sloshed yobbos in budgie smugglers, it was people in a wide range of armor, from full plate, to someone I recognized wearing none at all.

She didn’t seem to be participating in the fighting, instead enjoying the sunny day, lying out as though there wasn’t a battle worthy of the end sequence of a superhero movie going on all around her.

Technically I only recognized her mana, since the last time I’d seen her she hadn’t exactly been herself.

As I stared at her, her information appeared. I was so distracted I’d inspected her without meaning to.

Sarixia of Troekn (Telandrian)

Rank: Steel

Level: ???

Her gaze instantly snapped to me.

“Balls,” I muttered, quickly turning and walking away.

A moment later something like a duck-mouse appeared from nowhere in front of me.

“What the—”

The animal suddenly turned into Sarixia.

“Uh…”

She stood there, smiling, giving me an unfettered view of what precisely a telandrian looked like. Which was kind of elf-like. She was tall and lithe and beautiful, though her hair was midnight black rather than blonde. “I recognize you. You’re the one Rilen hates.” She held out her hand. “Sarixia.”

I stared at her hand.

Okay, if I’m being honest it wasn’t her hand I was staring at.

“Hellooo?”

I focused on her face. Her eyes were black as well. Completely. Which distracted me even more. “Uh, yeah. Hey. I’m Noah.” I shook her hand. “You… on vacation?” I wondered if her strange eyes were natural, or from some card or ability or item. Koren was part telandrian, but had normal human-looking eyes.

“You could—”

“Jurassic times call for Jurassic measures!”

We both turned to look at the source of the voice, which was a man wearing an incredibly ridiculous outfit running toward us rather gracefully given his attire.

“Is that a dinosaur costume?” I wondered aloud.

Sarixia groaned. “Not these guys.”

The man reached us, looked Sarixia up and down, then shook himself and focused on me. “The end is nigh! I have a tiny arms problem, and I demand to be included in this conversation!” Contradicting this, he punched me with a very normal-sized arm, which did nothing seeing as we were in the safe zone, turned around, bent over, mooned me, then took off running into town, butt-flap flapping.

“What the bloody balls was that about?”

“Followers of Discord. They run around acting like fools.”

“Why?”

“Because of their Paragon, Discord.”

“Paragon? That’s in one of my cards. What is it, like a cult?”

“More like an idiot club. They’re worse than Chorus’s Choir.” She sighed. “As if my vacation wasn’t ruined enough already. How do they always manage to afford gateways? I swear they cheat somehow. Those ash-mouthed burning stupid—” She shook her head and took a calming breath.

“Chorus?” I asked. “That…”

I trailed off as she stretched languidly, raising her arms above her head and slowly bending to one side, then the other.

“Hm?” she asked, arms behind her back and chest thrust forward in some kind of standing yoga pose.

“Uh, I was… What are you…”

“Those guys get me riled up. Need to destress. They got me banned from the lottery. Burners. They just—” She grunted. “See, getting worked up again.” She put her hands on her abs then moved them slowly from front to back, tracing her fingers along her skin as she slowly breathed out.

Whatever she was doing was causing mana to spark off of her visibly.

I shook my head and focused on her eyes. “Um, what… Oh, yeah, what are you doing here? You said you’re on vacation?”

She dropped her hands to her sides and rolled her neck. “More or less. Waiting for the tower to open like everyone else.”

“Not fighting?”

She looked toward the beach and the battles taking place there. “It’s too crowded. I use summons to fight, and I don’t want to risk someone hurting them.”

“But you send them to fight?”

“Not in this chaos.”

I was pretty sure her response didn’t make sense, or at least didn’t answer my question, but I was too distracted to be sure. I tore my gaze away from her, looking back toward the beach. “Yeah, I’ve seen it busy, but never anything like this.”

“That’s what happens when prospectors get wind of a Titan-class tower.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“I’ve been told you’re the purveyor of fine wares.”

“I mean, I own a store. Don’t know about the fine part.” I pointed up the street. “Can’t quite see it from here. Can’t miss it though. Got a big tower jutting from the back. Other than Finnegan’s hotel I think it’s the only one in town that’s open.”

“I’ll be sure to stop by sometime.”

A crash from the beach drew our attention. A cloud of sand settled around a form, which revealed itself a moment later as the seaweed tank monster, which a group of prospectors was engaging.

“Oh burn it, they’re messing up my spot. Nice meeting you, Noah. Again. Under more pleasant conditions.”

“Yeah, likewise. And as you are.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“I mean, not as a tree. But… yourself.”

I watched her stride back down to the beach, easily dodging the head of the seaweed monster which the group of prospectors liberated from its body, then plopping to the sand and stretching out, hands under her head, as though nothing unusual was going on.

I shook my own head.

What was I doing again?