It took some realigning to remind myself that this was the actual level of the world, and the challenges based on my level only came from the quests I had done and dungeons I had been to. I quickly found a way to expel my Dao like a smokescreen, causing the creatures that inhabited the wilderness to scatter rather than approach. Most of them would likely see a human as a snack, and I had no interest in bullying lower level monsters. Either one day they would be strong enough to challenge me, or someone else could get their experience from them.
It was intensely interesting to see the effects of the System in real time. Due to my strength, I was able to walk paths which others simply could not. According to the instruction manuals I had been reading the whole world would be seeded with pockets of power. As time passed, those pockets would break apart in places where the world was reclaimed, and in other areas the monsters would reign. For now, it was the latter everywhere, but humanity would fight back soon.
We had already started, I reminded myself. I had left my collection of Introductory System books at the guild with express permission and hope that Julianna and the others from Newtown would make use of them. Hopefully the children of Newtown would grow up ready to face the new existence before them. I was both jealous and sad for them. It wouldn’t be simple.
The world during the Shift had been brutal. Hell, I had walked into a room with over a dozen people as everything began only to walk out alone. Mine was a special case, but those first days weren’t easy anywhere. While Newtown and my own Outpost were now able to defend themselves, which in turn meant some kind of normalcy for the populace, that wasn’t true elsewhere.
I was trying to remain hopeful, though. While Newtown was definitely lucky, it wouldn’t be the only place to become a sanctuary either. Whether my family found such a place or not would be revealed, but it was possible. I might be a little more confident if I had seen more settlements of any kind. Or other people. Anything but wildness and monsters, really.
Newtown was established and protected by System rewards, but the rest of the world wasn’t so lucky. The kids there might be the only children getting schooling anywhere right now. They were the future of the planet, and with a curriculum based around the System itself, they would have the best chances at success. In many ways, my generation was simply the test run. Most planets would see decades of life after the Shift before nomads began to appear, giving them time to prepare.
The timeline unknown, it was hard to stop myself from sprinting. However, only having a general direction and a compass that didn’t point quite north anymore, I erred towards a wider ranged scout. My first plan was to find a settlement, ideally connect them to Ascentown in some way, either by giving them directions or drawing a map. Trade routes would be invaluable once we could start harvesting the grade one materials I had claimed. More than that, the transfer of information was the only way for humanity as a whole to survive.
Unfortunately my task was seemingly going to be fraught with frustration. The first two or three times I spotted a building amongst the fields and trees, my heart leapt. By the eighth time, the trickery was wearing thin. When the world was torn apart, it had grown massively. Random biomes were seemingly spliced against the old infrastructure and buildings all over. Newtown itself was a small portion of Oxford which had been dragged away from the rest. My own university town had disappeared completely, and I was just glad there was nothing there I needed to find.
Only one direction left to go. Forwards.
“Stop!” Naea shouted, just in time. My Dao field had not kept everything at bay and a pack of would-be assassins leapt out from a nearby dilapidated building. It had been a few months since the Shift, and places like this were becoming habitats.
Monster - Vampiric Weaselbat - Level 28
Monster - Vampiric Weaselbat - Level 26
Monster - Weaselbat Executioner - Level 27
Around a foot long, the winged rodents were fast. Likely, all of their ability points lay in the Speed attribute, and it was honestly only Naea’s shout that kept me from losing an ear as I leapt backwards. Lost in my thoughts and complacency setting in with the ease of the journey so far, I hadn’t been paying attention.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Naea and I purged the creatures with prejudice, Naea herself soaring off quickly as the final members of the swarm tried to escape. Considering they actually threatened me a little, it wasn’t a bad idea. A flock of those things could probably tear through Ascentown even now, given the right conditions. It was a good reminder that I, myself, was the outlier and that the world was still lethal for most.
While I was promising to be more careful, my foot disappeared into the floor. I bellowed in anger as I fell into the ground, the soft layer of leaves and mulch covering a tumble right into a chunk of what must have been a London subway. I landed on my feet, but that didn’t stop the incoming mockery. A voice from above echoed down into the tunnel. “Want me to fly around again? I can keep looking out for ambushes while you stay safe down in there!” Naea giggled in response to my pratfall. I told her to do exactly that, in less polite language, and took a minute to compose myself.
Was I in such a rush that I would get myself killed before I ever had the chance to even find my family? I had been avoiding the idea all day but after a day of setbacks, it was a genuine struggle not to let panic set in. I felt no closer to them than I had been the day before. Taking a deep breath, I overpowered the dark thought with a force of will. If my family could do anything well, it would be survive. Even at the expense of others, if needs be. They had been doing that for generations.
Reminding myself that I did want to find them alive, I took the time to see how much of the world was down here. There was always a chance to find something interesting and I needed a distraction.
I had been in the middle of graduating when the world went to shit, and never had a chance to find the house I shared with a few others before the world got all mixed up. There were lots of things that might have been worth grabbing from there. I hadn’t missed the internet or my phone much, but now that we had proof that magic could interact with machinery, I kind of wished I had one. I wasn’t expecting to find one in a random subway, and I didn’t, but what I did find was more than enough to take my mind off the immediate dangers my family might be facing.
The randomisation of infrastructure was strange to behold, too. Everything had looked incongruous against the backdrop of a magical world. The empty first floor of a parking lot, roofless and in the middle of an open plain was just downright weird. As far as I could tell, there was no damage to the halls of the stations. This underground part of London had been placed here and the world around it shifted to fit it.
I almost forgave gravity for dropping me into the humid place as my eyes landed on a dead end. The walls of the Tottenham Court station which the tunnel had come from ended, with a few more feet of dirt beyond and then a wall of rock and mud, as you would see if you dug straight down almost anywhere. Though I was glad to see more of how the planet itself reacted to the Shift, I was more glad to see the trash on the floor.
One of the quirks I noticed in the office buildings I saw over the last day was that the building itself was the only thing moved. There weren’t phone lines connected or personal belongings inside the offices, nothing like that. Just barren buildings, empty and sad. The same was true underground. The tiled walls might exist, but the train track wasn’t here, nor was there a partially sliced train. There was simply not much to be found in these places. It was like a barebones video game level, half made and without decoration.
Maybe it was to encourage people to make their own things now the System was here? I could see the Tree doing such a thing. Removing most of the materials and technology from a planet so that the embrace of magic would come quicker. I had looted enough random raw materials from monsters that it didn’t seem too farfetched. It was just a hypothesis, but I didn’t see anything that poked a hole in it, so I shrugged my way into believing it.
My other guess was that someone stole the valuables as the Shift occurred. This felt less likely, because such a being would find itself at my ire, and upon the receiving end of anyone else like me. While I wasn’t necessarily anything special right now, I did plan to be. On a long enough timeline, that meant lots of vendettas for the thief. Eventually, that would be way too many enemies, surely. Not for me, I admitted to myself. If given the chance, would I plunder a whole planet’s worth of value?
Oh, absolutely.
Whatever had happened to the materials one might have expected to find inside any given building, they were gone. Which made the plastic bottle, snack bar wrapper and cardboard sandwich holder all the more obvious. Also, I thought with disgust, who the fuck would leave litter somewhere when the planet had just been made pristine.
Debating with myself whether I should stay and wait for the culprit, Naea called from above. If they were around, they wouldn’t show themself with her noise anyway.
It didn’t matter. This was proof that people were out here, somewhere. It wasn’t like I could tell how long the stuff had been there, but it had happened after the Shift at the very least. That was enough of a start. Right as I moved to inspect the mess, a pulse passed over me. Then, the air was locked down by an external force. I raised my eyebrow and maintained an area around myself. Maybe I would get more than just a hint. “What is that, Nae?” I asked, using our connection to remain quiet.
“Company,” she answered. The tone in her voice set me on edge. I asked another silent question and Naea returned an affirmative emotion through our bond. I’m not sure if they’re enemies, though. I’m invisible but they know you’re down there. Be as impressive as you can, she said.
As you command, miss, I replied as my mana went into overdrive. If there was a single person on the planet who knew how extra I could be these days, it was Naea. If she was telling me to let it rip, then of course I would. I shot upwards like a rocket, right through the thin floor above, the invisible fairy above showing me where to appear. I had just been thinking how frustrated I was.
Time to work some of it out.