It was quiet all around me. No chirps, no howls, not even the pitter-patter of feet, or even breathing for that matter. Everything was still, and quiet. The shaking of the whole Earth stopped, and the blinding light from space ceased.

"Sophie? You alright over there?"

"Y-Yea I'm fine. Is it safe to look now?" she asked, her voice muffled.

"Don't know. I don't see any red light through my eyelids. I'll take a quick peek…" I slowly opened one of my eyes, bracing myself to become blind if the red light persisted…

"Coast is clear. You can open them up now but do it slowly or else it'll look like you're in the middle of a rave."

After about a minute of caution, my eyes were now fully open. I first noticed that the crimson sky was now gone and that the atmosphere was back to normalcy. The sky now had an orange glow slowly permeating through the atmosphere.

Looks like it's sundown. We should probably head back to the bunker before it gets dark. I don't want to walk around the streets dead at night when the lampposts all around the city are probably destroyed. Speaking of heading back…

"Yo, Sophie. You saw that message before that video feed, right? The one about us being the first ever to defeat a C-Rank monster?"

Sophie brushed the dirt off her clothes. "It was hard to miss. Even as a Dungeon Conqueror who has entered many Dungeons, I've never seen that before."

If Sophie is unfamiliar with it, then that would mean it's a new feature. It also said that it was calculating our reward. As a person with gamer blood flowing in my veins, I cannot pass up this loot. First, I should check my Status page…

"Status."

Status Inventory Name: Isaac Rank: 1st Points: 0 Strength: 64 Agility: 51 Durability: 60 Mana: 88 Masteries Marksmanship Lvl 4 Swordsmanship Lvl 6 Night Vision Lvl 4 Energy Manipulation Lvl 6 Heat Resistance Lvl 4 Poison Resistance Lvl 3 Frost Resistance Lvl 4 Mental Fortitude Lvl 1

Nope, don't see anything here that could've been my reward. My Stats or masteries haven't ranked up, so it must be an item.

I pressed the Inventory tab and instantly spotted an item that hasn't been there before. What's even better is that the Inventory limit has been increased by five spaces! That means I now have ten spots to freely put my items in. That Inventory upgrade was something I'd been begging for ever since I was in that cave eight months ago! Back on the item topic, it had a ring icon on one of the spaces. When my finger hovered over the ring, another small screen popped up right under the square slot.

[Ring of Orthrus. It is a ring made from the bones of the monster Orthrus. Once equipped, your mana and agility are increased by +2]

Oh-my-god! Items have a description attached to them now?! Thank you lord for answering my prayers...

"Sophie, what reward did you get? I got this sick ass ring!" I equipped the Ring of Orthrus on my ring finger and admired it closely.

"…I got a necklace made of bones." She was holding it with the tip of her fingers with a disgusted face as if she was holding a bag of dog shit.

"I am not fond of bones. While the special property it has is nice, I do not like it. I'll give this to Darion instead…"

Sophie stuffed the necklace back into her Inventory and wiped her hand across her pants. I would ask if I could keep the necklace instead, but Sophie said she'll give it to Darion instead. Don't want to steal my best friends present. That would be a messed up thing to do.

"Moving along," Sophie continued. "That video feed from earlier… That was weird right? We already knew that Earth and Athiens were being combined, but what irked me the most was when he mentioned the 'true purpose of these powers'. I can't help but replay that part repeatedly in my head…"

"Whatever he meant by that, it was obviously with bad intentions," I replied, prying my eyes away from the ring. "What we should be focusing on is learning what we know now. The conversion has completed its process, meaning that Earth and Athiens are finally combined."

Sophie brushed a stray lock behind her ears. "The portals and that red light are gone too. The transferring of monsters and other sorts of creatures on Athiens is probably fully within Earth now. More problems are being stacked right on top of each other. I feel like we won't be able to rest at this point..."

If the monsters and the athios are now here, then this poses a bunch of problems, obviously. It's likely that they are spread all over the world- a world that is already in disarray. Add in the creepy announcement from those sons of bitches called the Pillars, the world is in more chaos. Reconstruction efforts are looking bleak as new monsters will disrupt the local ecosystems and the food chain of the world. The monsters and athios are invasive species and are probably not welcome by humans and animals. Things are going to get a lot bloodier from here on out. This is such a pain to think about…

Another blue screen popped up out of nowhere. I mumbled curses while reading what was on the screen closely.

[Welcome to the new and improved System Operations, now referred to as S.O]

[Now that the conversion is finally completed, the S.O. is fully functional, and all features will now be available for all highly-sentient creatures!]

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

[Please explore the new S.O. and get familiar with the features and guidebook given to you in the Inventory. You have an hour until the First Stage begins.]

[Good luck and do your best!]

"..."

Sophie and I were so astonished at what we just read that we just mind-numbingly went into our Inventories and took out the guidebook the messages were referring to. In silence, we just read the contents of the books in our brains. It was a small rectangular pamphlet with only two pages of information on it. On the cover was an illustration of a human and an athios holding swords, facing against a wave of monsters, and each other. They’re positioned in a way that they were in a three-way face-off. The title was written on top of the pamphlet in yellow letters, and it said:

"…What a stupid title and cover photo," I said as I scanned through the first and second pages in a flash. After finishing the last sentence, I went back to the beginning to read through the contents one more time.

"…Holy shit."

This was a way worse situation than I thought. It was so bad that I hadn't realized that I dropped the pamphlet on the ground. When I looked over at Sophie to see her reaction, she too had a similar reaction that I had, a quivering mouth, twitching eyes, and shaky hands. We were both in shock at what was written in this pamphlet.

****

"…Anyways, good luck in your new life…" Fiey finished reading out loud.

We were all inside the tent, huddled together after that whole announcement from that bastard. We had to clean up the large mess of strewn papers and equipment all around after that huge earthquake. That was when every superhuman got that message about this new and improved System called S.O. We were also given this pamphlet that Fiey just finished reading to everyone.

The room was quiet as everyone glanced at each other with worried expressions. This was a lot to take in as new information after another was thrown towards our faces at a hundred miles per hour. We didn't even know how to react to this sudden news as we all just stood there, our minds racing with all sorts of thoughts. The part that everyone was collectively thinking about was when the message stated that the First Stage will begin an hour from now. What could it mean by the First Stage…?

"The monsters and residents of Athiens are now on Earth? How is that possible?" One of the superhumans spoke.

"What rubbish. I mean, isn't that impossible?"

"Are you dumb? Didn't you see those portals coming out of the ground and sky? How the hell do you think it's impossible?!"

"There's a tab called Missions? What could it be?"

"Oh wow! There really is a Point Store!"

Everyone was in an uproar about the new revelation. One by one everyone was on the S.O. inspecting the new features. Some were excited while many others were understandably nervous. Curious about what the new features may be, I went on to open the new S.O.

Status Inventory Name: Laila Rank: 2nd Points: 0 Strength: 61 Agility: 87 Durability: 46 Mana: 71 Masteries Marksmanship Lvl 5 Swordsmanship Lvl 6 Mana Weapon Construction Lvl 7 Heat Resistance Lvl 4 Night Vision Lvl 4 Poison Resistance Lvl 3 Aura Blade Lvl 3 Frost Resistance Lvl 4 Dragon Tamer Lvl 1

Oh? There's a new category on the Status page: Points. Right now, I have zero points so I can't really spend them on anything. Next to the Inventory tab are Missions and Point Store; the newly added features in the S.O. That would mean there are Status, Inventory, Mission, and the Point Store. First things first, the Missions tab. When I entered the Missions section, there was a blank red screen with nothing in it other than a countdown.

[55:29 until the next stage begins.]

Well, that was a waste of my time. Time to check the Points Store-

I let out a small gasp at the complexity of the Point Store. There were a ton of categories labeled as Weapons, Armor, Items, Consumables, and Miscellaneous (Misc. for short). In the Weapons sections, there was a wide variety of swords, spears, shields, clubs, bows, crossbows, and even guns! There was so much that scrolling down the list felt endless! When I went over to the Armors section, as expected there was a lot of armor ranging from cloaks, iron plates, wool, and... stuff that reveals way too much skin to even be called Armor.

In Items there are raw ingredients used for cooking, crafting, and brewing. For Consumables, it's just a bunch of potions that serve different purposes. There's also food and water. Weirdly enough though the Misc. section has a lock on it so I can’t access it no matter how many times I tapped, making it officially useless.

That’s not all. Every item is categorized into a rarity, and it works differently from Dungeons. In ascending order, it goes from Gray, Green, Blue, Purple, Gold, and finally Red. The higher the rarity, the more points it costs to acquire them. If I had to describe this system, it's obviously ripped out of a video game. I don’t mind it though; it makes it easier to understand.

"Alright everyone! Are you done gawking at your screens or what!" Fiey roared. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked up from their screens, watching Fiey.

"Good. Now that that's settled, we'll have to address the most worrisome part; the stages." Officer Fiey walked away from the corner of the room and placed herself at the front, facing everyone.

"We only have about fifty minutes to go over what we learned, so in the meantime, we'll combine our brains and figure things out from here. Obviously, this stages thing is bad news and I want everyone to get that through their thick skulls."

No one made a rebuttal to Fiey's insult and simply just stayed quiet, listening to their officers' orders. Seeing that everyone was being attentive, Fiey's lips curled into a smirk.

"Alright then. That's what I like to see. Let's go over what we learned."