This was bad. Really bad.

Grow strong or die. In the simplest of words, that’s what Eve had told him two days ago. If he was allowed a few more words, he’d add ‘Do it Consistently.’

And that was the problem. He couldn’t say he was going to get stronger and get to it eventually, he needed to be producing results consistently. Failing this quest would be the furthest thing from showing results.

Not only that. Failing it would take away his method of getting stronger. At that point, the aliens might just decide that they should get it over with, kill him, and harvest his organs. In fact, he might have been given the quest to make up their minds on that. This quest wasn’t deciding if he could continue being a founder. It was deciding whether he had value as a person or an ingredient.

Honestly, that probably wouldn’t have been such a problem if it weren’t for the Outstanding Quests. If the tutorial was telling the truth, the minimum difficulty was all he had and the potential difficulty ranged up to instant death.

“I don’t think it’s as bad as you’re thinking it is,” Will said, reading his friend’s obvious distress.

“Why’s that?” Jake asked, slinking in his chair.

“The notification said that Outstanding Quests are supposed to be above and beyond for our level, but they didn’t mention anything about affinities.”

“Right.”

“Well, we’re only in this mess because your affinity is overpowered. Outstanding Quests should be easier for us than for other people.”

“Right,” Jake repeated. He didn’t have the firepower of something like a rocket or bomb affinity—assuming those existed—but his versatility, utility, and defense were insane for their level. The right weapon was always in his hand at the right time and though he couldn’t do it too often, he could send an enemy’ attacks into another dimension. He just needed to improve his levels and skills and he’d be untouchable.

“Anyways, before we start talking about the next quest, we should probably start talking about what we should be doing in general,” Will said.

“Okay.” Jake straightened himself out in his chair. “What do you have in mind?”

“Well, you said that this is an invasion and it's basically going to be the end of the world as we know it, right?”

“That’s basically what Eve told me what was happening.”

“Okay, so why’d you go to work before you came here this morning?”

Jake shrugged. “You don’t exactly go to bed early enough for me to visit before work.”

“That’s not the point I’m trying to make here, man. Why do you still have your job?”

Jake tilted his head. “Because they’re paying me?”

“The alien’s are paying you to complete these quests,” Will countered.

“Yeah, and I’m not getting the payout for that for another two weeks.”

“You don’t have any money saved up?”

“I’ve got a little bit,” Jake admitted.

“Then quit your job. It’s the end of the world, man.”

“I already told them I was quitting yesterday,” Jake said. “I’m just waiting to collect my check at the end of the pay period in a couple days.”

He couldn’t exactly work on anything related to Gamify while he was recovering his HP from getting beaten half to death in an instance. Might as well be getting paid while he was waiting.

That said, he wasn’t willing to keep that up beyond these first couple of weeks. Now that they were playing with a concrete deadline, he wanted to keep his job even less.

“Okay,” Will said, obviously feeling lukewarm about Jake’s decision. His friend was in a do or die sort of situation, after all. “Just so you know, I’m quitting my job today.”

“You’re a freelance programmer, Will. You work for yourself.”

Stolen story; please report.

“Yeah, and I still need to free myself from these projects I agreed to do. Gotta send them the ‘sorry I’m breaking this contract the world’s ending.’”

“You’re actually going to write that?” Jake asked.

“Yeah, let ‘em think I’m crazy. Won’t break the non-disclosure with Gamify when I don’t tell them the details and they don’t believe me.”

“You know the world is probably not going to end, right?”

“Probably is a whole lot less certain than I was feeling when I woke up today.” Will picked up the user manual from the Founder’s Kit and opened it. “This mana overflow stuff has to be messing with our brains. There’s no way we’re supposed to be feeling this calm after everything we just went through.”

“Definitely.” Jake didn’t think he could have pulled off half the crazy things he’d done without some mental intervention affecting him.

“Anyways, you got any details on what exactly happens next besides complete a quest in a week or die?”

“Eve said that Gamify is going to keep spreading The System through the instances until the whole world is covered in mana and people can use their skills anywhere. Society is supposed to collapse by then, either on its own or due to The System.”

It made sense too. Things were fine while it was still just a few people like them running around with access to The System, but what happened when Gamify got the rest of the population integrated? No society was built to handle over half the population deciding to quit work because they got a chance to become Superman. And even if that somehow didn’t end up being the straw that broke the camel’s back, The System could probably have dinosaurs running down the street once there was enough mana. Things just wouldn’t be the same.

“Who do you think we should give the last two user sets from the Founder’s Kit to?” Will asked as he leafed through the user manual.

“I don’t know, but I don’t think we should give them to our families.” Rather than showing favoritism to their family members, Jake wanted to get someone who would be a better fit for their team. If things got dangerous, the two of them would just have to protect them.

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to recruit any of our friends from online, so I’ve got nobody to suggest,” Will said. It wouldn't be the hardest thing in the world for Will to get a few of their friends over to Golding on short notice, but the problem was getting them to stay. They couldn’t tell them the real reason why they were inviting them over. They would have to bet on their friends being okay with leaving their entire lives behind to live with the randos they play games online after they had just lied to them about the whole trip. It was messed up and it wasn’t worth trying.

“You got any co-workers that you think would be a good fit for us?”

Jake thought of Ernie. “No.”

“Let’s just keep it to us, for now and see how it goes,” Jake said. “If someone good shows up, we’ll invite them. If we end up needing another person, we’ll find one after we figure things out.”

“Worst case scenario, we can go find ourselves an MMA enthusiast to join us and hope they get a fighting affinity,” Will said, before frowning.

“Look at this.” He flipped over the user manual and held it out for Jake to see. “‘Guides can be obtained from the store. Weapons can be obtained from the store. Payment can be obtained from the store.’ Is there anything actually useful in this thing or is it all just safety warnings and stuff that the wristbands will tell us anyway?”

“I mean we could ask.” Jake held up his wrist brain. “Does the user manual have any information that you don’t have?”

Most of the information covered in the User Manual can be obtained from asking the wrist brain questions and waiting for the relevant tutorial to appear.

The User Manual contains safety warnings and instructions that the wrist brain does not refer to.

Will sighed. “I’ll still give the whole thing a skim through. See if I can find anything useful.”

“Sounds good,” Jake said. On the inside, he was cheering that he had finally dumped the boring task off on Will.

“Let’s put that away for now,” Will said. He put the book back down in the Founder's Kit box, then put the lid on top of it.

“What do you think we should do next?”

“Let’s go check out the other instances like you said?” Will stood up from his chair.

“Do you have a place where I can put the spear that Branch gave me before we go?” Jake asked. Mana overflow from the instance in Will’s backyard was covering the large property up to the gate, but there was nothing beyond that. Jake was sure that he could maintain the spear in his Inventory outside of that for a little while with only just his mana, but it was only just that.

It wasn’t worth risking trying to take it back home with him, burning through his slowly regenerating mana, and having his Inventory collapse on him. He trusted Will enough to get him involved with all of this so he could trust him with his weapon too.

After they had hidden the spear away on the property, the two of them unloaded all the gear they had taken into the instance back into Jake’s car. Jake got into his car and Will got into his own and tailed him, so Jake wouldn’t have to drive him back.

The two of them set off for Jake’s neighborhood with their first destination being the gas station convenience store Jake had cleared out the day before. They weren’t planning to stop by for too long. They were just checking to see if Gamify had already started to get to work on the store. Two weeks was an insane deadline to rebuild a store, after all.

Jake had told Will before they left that they should just pop on their display shades in the parking lot without getting out of the car and just drive off after taking a look. This was still the bad side of the neighborhood, after all and he didn’t think they had enough Vitality to shrug off gunshots yet..

When he turned his car onto the rundown street the gas station was on and saw what the aliens had done, he was shocked. The convenience store, the pumps, the parking lot—the aliens had put a giant white box over it all.

He took a parking spot along the curb in front of the business next to the box. Will took the spot behind him.

Will whistled as stepped out of his car. “These aliens work fast,” he said.

“Yeah,” Jake agreed, staring at the box. “They do.”