[Player Log Start!]

[Log Holder: Benedict Carrey]

[Level: 1, Sub-Level: 7]

They sat there, watching the smoke whirl around. The mystery machine spewing out colorless, breathable gas from its other end.

The smog layer was becoming thinner. Lighter. In front of their eyes, they could see it as it shrunk down and down, while still moving towards the carbon isolator tube to fill up the vacuum left behind. But, despite it all, the sky remained unchanged. Lucky was chewing on her bottom lip with anxiety.

“How about we go to ground level?” Ben offered desperately, “Check what the situation is from down there? Maybe the canisters in some of the others are full and need to be emptied out.” It was a long shot, but she had to do something. Lucky, for all her poison and drive, didn’t deserve to have her hopes crushed here.

The mechanic nodded sharply, “Yeah. Alright. Let’s check that out. You ready to fly?”

No, Ben was not ready to fly in any sense of the word. But she nodded and grabbed onto the back of the chair anyway, putting her rebreather in as Lucky began prepping for liftoff.

The flight was fine, all things considered. Just something about it was inexplicably odd in a way that Ben was having trouble describing. Then, Lucky dived down low, pulling the chair into a horizontal path only meters before hitting the ground, and the sight of the ground below her was what made it click in Ben’s head.

It was far too visible.

She made to tap on Lucky’s shoulder to alert her of this discovery, but then remembered that they were going through a mountain crevasse filled with sharp rock pillars that could easily skewer them and that right now was not the time to be breaking her attention.

Instead, she waited until they were on marginally less obstacle-filled air to tap on her shoulder.

Just like last time, the chair veered wildly to the right for a gut-wrenching second, before Lucky regained her senses and course corrected.

“What?” She asked.

“The clouds are gone!” Ben replied, wishing to gesture around them, but not brave enough to let go of the handles a second time. So, she made do with exaggerated head movements. Lucky frowned through her oxygen mask, and then had to concede that the smog that had been surrounding them for so long really was gone.

Carefully, Lucky reached up, grabbed her oxygen mask, and pulled it down. She took a hesitant breath, her eyes watering as she did so.

“You okay?” Ben asked worriedly, checking for a Status Effect bar that might have popped up somewhere from her inhaling whatever was still in the air.

Lucky shook her head, “No, I mean yes, I mean…” She growled to herself, “I am fine. The air is… clean.”

Ben lifted her own rebreather, curiosity overtaking her. Sure enough, the air, while still laced with that acrid aftertaste, was sweet for the most part. Clean and light and breathable. Ben took in deep lungfuls of the stuff, reveling in not having to conserve her breathing.

A hysterical laugh built up in her chest. And who cared? It was the middle of a rocky mountain area, devoid of any life. She could let herself laugh. So she did.

Lucky stared at her for a moment when the first peals echoed of the mountains, but in the next second she was laughing alongside her, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Ben, the sky.” She gasped out, bent double over her armrest, “Look at the sky!”

The sky, which had been blotted out by the veil of smog, shone down on them in inky hues, lit only by the colorless sun. Except it wasn’t just colorless. There was a slight tinge of yellow in there, faint, but growing with every second.

Blue was permeating the unrelenting black of the sky, bit by bit, flicker by flicker, bleeding it all out until only the brightest blue stood out anymore. Like forget-me-nots.

Ben already knew that they had succeeded, even before the panel popped up. But still, it was a welcome achievement.

[Finished the Apocalypse of Realm L-35 | Trackland!]

[You have Earned 2,000 Exp!]

[Return to Level 1?]

[{x} Yes { } No]

Ben found her eyes wandering over to Lucky, who was watching her with intent eyes. Could she see the panel, too? Or was she simply observing her?

“Well, you have a place to return to, I trust?” She asked, her voice remarkably steady for the tears dripping down her face, “This is where we part ways.”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“I don’t want to just leave you here.” Ben admitted worriedly, “What will you be doing now, if I left?”

“I’ll figure something out.” Lucky promised, her eyes glinting with that same fire, “Maybe we’ll even meet up again someday. But right now, you have your own world to save. And a… brother to recover.”

Ben nodded, trying to keep her sobs down. This wasn’t the goodbye she had expected. It wasn’t the one she wanted. But there wasn’t any time to revel in the fact that they had saved a world – a whole, entire world, that was an awe-inspiring thing! – because they had other things to be focused on. The journey wasn’t even close to over, and the Level wasn’t done.

“Keep this place safe, alright?” She asked her, “It needs looking after. Just in case the Harbingers try to make it end all over again.”

“Or if our people are monumentally stupid all over again.” Lucky joked, sniffling a little, “Now stop stalling and go, Ben.”

Ben laughed, and had to stop herself from crying all over again as she looked at the sky. A bright, blue sky. When was the last time she’d seen one? Could her world get their own sky back again?

It was that image in her head, of acid green being overtaken by serene blue, that made her finally bite the bullet and press [Yes]. The green pixels wrapped her up in a gentle embrace, taking her back to the old, abandoned bar. Not a dust particle out of place from how it was before.

Her legs were shaky under her, and the first move she made was stumble into a chair, looking at the deep grooves in the wood of the table in front of her. That was real. That happened.

She had staved off an Apocalypse.

Holy shit. She needed a drink.

Despite the sorry state of the bar, she found a bottle of whiskey stowed away in the back, and helped herself to a glass. Not much. Just enough to get a buzz. Liquid courage to strengthen her nerves and tell her that it wasn’t a very vivid hallucination.

Once she had sobered up enough to trust herself out there alone, Ben pulled the Console out of its safe. Pulled up the Direct Message feature and sent Ben a text. Here’s to hoping he had reached Hygeia without any issues.

[Choose Recipient: Gideon Tench]

[Message: Back home (^_^)!!! U k? Kids 2??]

It took only a brief minute for the answer to come: [Yes. Also, they’re making fun of you for typing like that. It literally couldn’t translate for Asadullah.]

[Will be more mindful in future. Gotta go now. Traveling back.] She replied quickly, tucking the Console into her bag. It would be a long trip. Not as long as it would be coming all the way here, but close to it, at the very least. If the hoard was still here. She was dreading that leg of the journey already.

That turned out to not be a problem. The highway was devoid of any undead. Not a single zombie was left behind by the hoard. All of them had moved on, leaving the rotting remnants of their meals still smeared across the floor.

Ben wrinkled her nose as she was forced to step over one. Eurgh.

But it was an honest question. Where did the rotters all go? What had driven them all so far away from this place? Their footprints were still embedded into the road, a bloody trail pointing in the exact direction they had been going. Or were herded towards.

Curiosity getting the better of her, she headed after them. Ben wasn’t planning on doing something stupid. She understood how messed up these creatures were. The time spent in the Tracklands hadn’t made her forget. She just wanted to take a quick look, see where they had ended up, and then run for the hills once she had confirmed that they were still alive.

Except as she continued walking, and saw no sign of the hoard except the days-old footprints, she began to feel the first prickles of anxiety work its way into her stomach. The direction they were headed was feeling awfully familiar.

She pulled out the laptop. It was just paranoia. Please let it be paranoia.

The Compass appeared, pointing her into the direction of Hygeia. Which was straight ahead. Where the zombie tracks were all leading towards. She cursed, stepping off the highway. It could be coincidence, she told herself. Just the part of the highway where more people had started gathering towards and being turned into easy pickings. They couldn’t be trying to breach the Hygeia walls.

“Verity said that… the Boss Fight would start in a week.” The phantom voice replayed in her mind.

It had been two weeks since then. Had she been wrong? Or, worse still, had it already started?

Her legs itched with restlessness. Every part of her was screaming to run. In which direction, though? Towards, or away? It was safer to back away. No way that she would get hurt. Avoid all the misery and the pain that was inevitable.

But towards would mean that she could at least have the chance to save someone. Tench hadn’t sounded concerned in that DM, that meant that he and the [Party(Main)] were safe, at the very least. She couldn’t live with herself if she just left let that possibility hang in the air, dooming them to death. Or something worse.

Stuck in the limbo of indecision, Ben made a choice. She would not run. Away or towards, it did not matter. Right now, this called for a new course of action, even if it wasn’t her usual form of doing things.

She retreated to a tall tree – still no zombies in sight, but one could never be too careful – and she pulled out the Console. All the [Party(Main)] members were still being displayed on the users page. If they died, they would be removed, right? Or at least greyed out or something. And they weren’t here, so she had to clutch onto that strand of hope.

She moved back to the DMs, sending out another one.

[Choose Recipient: Verity Monroe]

[Message: Be real with me. What is going on?]

There was a longer gap in response time than the first. Ben tried not to let that weight too heavily on her, but at the moment she was so close to ripping her own hair out that she couldn’t care less.

At least the response was serious and brisk, [T lied. Its bad. Come quikvly we need hlep]. The typos didn’t look good on her part. Must have been seriously distracted to not notice where she was putting her fingers on the keyboard.

That was okay, because Ben got the message anyway. She got to work pouring all two thousand Exp. Points into her Stats. Sharply leveling up her overall, buffing up her durability, and adding more than enough to her Melee ability to get it up three levels.

[Achievement Unlocked!]

[Speed Leveling!]

[Details: More than one thousand five hundred Exp Points invested in Stats in less than an hour. Congratulations!]

Cute. But Ben didn’t need that right now. What she needed was to run and see what kind of monsters were attacking her team.

[Player Log End!]