~Bryan~

It had been an hour since Bryan had returned to the underground bunker with his team in tow. After giving a brief report on what had transpired during the battle, as well as his suspicions, or rather confirmations regarding what Arthur had managed to do and how powerful the young man was, it was decided that the best course of action would be to let him recuperate within the room that Alyssia had once occupied.

That way, the young healer could be in relative comfort whilst he recovered and could also be monitored by trained staff during the entire process.

Arthur had a lot of questions to answer and Bryan’s superiors would do whatever they could to weasel even a little information out of the enigmatic man. Bryan didn’t really think they’d be successful in getting anything out of Aurthur if they only asked him nicely but the government was leery at the prospect of doing anything that might even remotely offend the young man, especially after how badly their relationship with Alyssia had become.

That meant that they could be nothing but polite when asking questions, even if they were burning with curiosity about what secret the man was hiding. In fact, the staff working at the faculty had been dumbfounded when they saw Arthur's wounded state, something about his blood being some incredibly potent liquid for who knows what alchemical purpose. Bryan didn’t really care about that though. What he was really concerned about was the fact that even after getting a number of healers to collectively spend over two-thousand ether healing Arthur, the man’s injuries were still in a similar state. ‘Just how high is his fucking health? Five thousand, ten? No, it's probably more, Bryan wondered in amazement. Everyone present had been shocked when they had witnessed the healing procedure, and yet Arthur's absurd health had somehow been forgotten in the flurry of activity that had taken place after the news of Shade's death reached everyone.

It turned out that a lot of things had been postponed with the presence of the ticking time bomb and now that the shadow mage had been dealt with many plans that had been waiting in the pipeline were quickly being put into motion.

For one, Toshiro Tatsumi had been bought in for questioning now that he no longer had a crazy powerful guard dog around him at all times and everyone was eagerly awaiting the new information that would be found out about the Silver Rose group. None of that had anything to do with why Bryan was waiting to meet some of the most powerful people in the entire nation, however.

Sadly, he was here for an entirely different reason, far more sinister than anything the world was expecting. The discovery of a threat that could put the entirety of the Earth in jeopardy, never mind just America, and it was just Bryan's luck that evidence of it had been found within the destroyed remnants of Shade's body.

That now made him partially responsible for investigating what exactly this so-called threat exactly was, as news of it couldn’t just be dispensed willy-nilly. The fewer people that knew about it, the better as the last thing the world needed to deal with right now was some terrified people doing stupid things. Bryan had no doubt that would be the case if it ever got out that Earth was being treated as some sort of testing ground for alien forces. At least that was what had been inferred when he identified the item that survived Arthur's devastating magic. Bryan's identify skill had exploded from level 6 to level 9 in the seconds it took him to read the item's description, the fastest skill growth he had ever experienced since the arrival of the system.

Sadly, that was the least of his concerns when he realised what the item's presence on Earth meant.

Experimental Mutagen ??? (Unique)[Decaying]-

A strange catalyst that possesses the potential to significantly enhance an individual's genetic potential and strength, though it is incredibly unstable.

??? ??? ???

Possesses striking similarities with the incredibly volatile substance xyveros.

Bryan had instantly realised that the origins of the items could never have been somewhere on Earth. nothing so strange could have naturally developed and the time frame since the systems arrived was far too small for someone to have developed it already.

No, the Silver Rose's leader Thorn must have no doubt obtained it in the tutorial from someone. An alien force. It had raised so many questions that Bryan hadn’t reacted with appropriate levels of caution after seeing it.

At least he hadn't initially.

That was when things suddenly turned strange. He'd felt an immense amount of energy suddenly come over him. It felt powerful, near-omnipotent and most importantly, familiar. It had felt like the system. Before Bryan could even begin to guess what was going on, he had received the most personalised message from the system that he had ever seen. It was a warning, not to him but to the people of Earth.

Forbidden materials were detected on a newly evolved planet. Formulating appropriate responses. Activating higher protocols… … …

Host Bryan Dolt, Unfortunately, it seems that some organisation has seen fit to use your planet to test some extremely volatile items. Sadly, I cannot disclose the exact nature of said items and what they can potentially do as your world is far too young to properly handle such information.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

All I can say is that any individual who has bonded with such items must be eliminated with all due haste. Trust that you don’t want to see what will happen if this issue is not put to rest immediately. Those that supplied such items to your planet are far beyond your own abilities to handle, though they shall no doubt cease to interfere any farther with your planet now that they risk discovery. To do so would be to risk exposure to themselves and they wouldn’t want to bring upon themselves the ire of any system law enforcers.

The damage to your world has been done, however. The dimensional membrane is weakening. Your job is to only deal with those that have bonded with such items. Warn your world, and warn your people.

Good luck Bryan, and may you prosper.

Sincerely, System Admin 114832.

Bryan had just stood in shock for a full minute when he read the message, not quite comprehending what it was saying. A system admin actually messaged me personally. What the fuck is in that mutagen, Bryan had wondered in shock.

Finally, after almost three minutes had passed and his teammates started worrying about what was going on with him, he finally managed to calm himself down. Schooling his expression, Bryan had maintained a mask of composure until he and his team reached the underground bunker with Arthur’s unconscious form in tow. Thankfully, none of his teammates had seen the strange item or the system message he had received and if they wondered why he was acting so strange, they didn’t comment on it.

Bryan had wondered why the system assistant hadn’t given any order on what was to be done with the experimental mutagen but upon rechecking the unique item from where he had securely placed it within his bag, he realised why. The mutagen was gone as if it had never existed in the first place and after Bryan had gotten over the panic he’d felt at the thought that he might have just lost such a dangerous thing, he realised that it was probably what had happened to the mutagen. It had simply ceased to exist, probably too unstable to sustain itself when not bonded to an individual.

Still, Bryan did wonder at what exactly the item had become once it disintegrated. There had been absolutely no traces of it in his bag, no dust, no residual crystals, not even a scent that might have suggested that it had become a gas. Bryan had obviously told his superiors everything that had transpired. All of this had happened an hour ago, however, and now Bryan was waiting outside the room that contained perhaps some of the most powerful people on the planet.

Thankfully, many of those important individuals and diplomats were still on American soil after the meeting about the Mercantile organisation that had taken place recently and they had immediately rushed to this place when informed that the world itself was in jeopardy.

Bryan had also had to make all due haste to make his way to the meeting point, a grand building that had existed long before he was even born. Bryan felt a brief spike in someone’s aura from within the room and he involuntarily took a step backwards as his instinct screamed at him to flee. It looked like discussions were getting heated in there, and not for the first time Bryan questioned why he hadn’t told one of his subordinates to disclose the system warning to the government instead of doing it himself. He quickly quietened those dissident emotions.

Just because he was afraid to meet those terrifying people didn’t mean that his decision to bear the news alone had been the wrong one. Though in hindsight, he should have expected such a strong response from the world’s governments when he told them about a planetary-level threat.

At first, his superiors had seemed sceptical, though that had quickly changed when Bryan went into detail about the message he had received from the system, something he had immediately written down when he read the gravity of the information it contained. It wouldn’t do well if he forgot all about such an important piece of evidence that backed his story now, would it? Bryan wasn’t naive enough to think that the world would believe his warning, the American government, maybe, but not any of the other world powers.

They would no doubt think that the entire thing was some elaborate ploy to fulfil a hidden agenda that the Americans had been planning. Their caution was entirely justifiable, however, as the American administration had never been known for their integrity and honesty, quite the opposite actually, and Bryan had no doubt that the spike in aura earlier was from someone who was angrily denying the story he had told. Actually, there are probably a whole lot of angry people in there, Bryan worried, considering what that would mean for him. Whilst he was no doubt one of the strongest individuals in the country, he was under no illusion that remained the case when it came to the rest of the planet and everyone in that room could probably crush him like a bug underfoot, or at least know of someone that could on their behalf.

Bryan gulped nervously.

He was about to go into that room and invite all of their attention onto himself. Everyone had obviously wanted to meet the so-called bearer of bad news and it was just Bryan's terrible luck that the task fell onto his shoulders. I really should have let Anna at least see the mutagen before it disappeared, Bryan chastised himself. That way, he would have had someone corroborate his story and he wouldn’t have to face this situation alone. For once, Bryan's extremely cautious nature had played against him. He sighed tiredly. There was nothing he could do about that now, except perhaps learn a little from his mistakes and trust his team members more in the future. Bryan looked down at his wristwatch. It showed seventeen minutes past twelve. Exactly one seventy-three minutes since Shade had been laid to rest, the last ten of those having been spent waiting inside this very building.

If the goal of holding Bryan in suspense was to make him stew like some sort of criminal awaiting trial, then the people in that room had been extremely successful. Bryan was positively terrified about what he was about to do, almost as much as he had been when he was waiting for Shade to emerge. Waiting is the worst part of any situation, Bryan decided, inwardly cursing whoever aura it was that kept spiking up and down like it was some sort of failing heartbeat. Learn to control your fucking aura, Bryan inwardly raged. His already nervous state now made the phenomenon extremely annoying, instead of the terror it had first inspired in him. When the time he had spent waiting approached a half-hour and Bryan's apprehension had now started to become boredom, something finally happened.

Every single aura within the room suddenly disappeared, as if they had been snuffed out and the vanishing of what had now become background noise to Bryan had a starling effect on the man. All his meandering thoughts stopped flowing instantly and he felt himself focus to a razer point. The door to the meeting room opened slowly, seemingly without the aid of any individual as no one was present there when he looked at the entrance. The message was clear as day however as Bryan grimly took a step forward.

He was being summoned.