The past five days had been a whirlwind of activity, but somehow also perfectly calm compared to everything that had happened previously.

No more Nation Bosses had risen, all the little fuckers had spawned in the first second of the Challenge and were slowly being ground to dust by military or armed citizens, and there was enough spare man- and firepower available to come down on the occasional freshly appeared Raid Boss like a ton of bricks.

As for me, I’d been traveling. London, Edinburgh, and Dublin first so I could zap the Fianna and Arthur over there if it became necessary, then spent some time in all the places the Royal Navy might gather so that I could relocate Drake, and then hit all of Europe’s other capitals. Showing the flag, garnering support, and so on. I also restored some of Paris’ most impressive buildings in passing.

We’d also finally done some tests about how my portals worked in general, and how they interacted with vehicles.

The general testing had been pretty simple; the portals could admit “a group” of people as long as it was not excessively large, such as anything over a platoon. It could also stay open for up to a single hour if no one used it, but while one could go back and forth through an open portal, doing so would rapidly degrade its stability, reducing both the number of potential passengers and the time it would stay open.

And repeatedly teleporting in and out of a slowly-moving pickup truck had been incredibly eye-opening. My teleportation points were calculated relative to the Earth, not my surroundings, so I couldn’t step into a plane, leave it, and then teleport to it once it had arrived at its destination. Also, teleporting Vice Admiral Drake onto an aircraft carrier would be a pain, since the elevation of the deck was decidedly not static, shifting based on weather, waves, and even the tides. We’d settled on flying me around on a helicopter so that I could open the portal above the deck and just let him fall a few meters.

However, thankfully, portaling out of a moving vehicle was much simpler and more streamlined. The portal would conform to the shape of the vehicle and move with it, meaning I could easily evacuate, say, an airplane, even when it was in the middle of crashing, which made air travel a thousand times safer … as long as the plane wasn’t too crowded. A passenger plane wouldn’t work, not that they were flying anyway, but the diplomatic planes I was able to borrow worked a-okay.

Of course, I also gained a few Levels in the process.

[Myth(ical) Mediator Lv. 22 -> Myth(ical) Mediator Lv. 25]

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[Skill gained: Walking Encyclopedia]

[Skill Boosted]

[Skill gained: Sensitive Discussions]

Walking Encyclopedia

Rapidly gain knowledge of topics being discussed and put the information at hand into the correct context with the rest of your knowledge.

Sensitive Discussions

Automatically destroy listening devices within the current room and obfuscate long-range means of observation.

[Walking Encyclopedia] would further boost my learning capability and make mediating a technical discussion far easier, while [Sensitive Discussions] would provide some much-needed privacy.

As for the Boost, I decided to slap it onto [Arcane Core] because Fionn had started to share some magic so I could spread that knowledge far and wide, or at least to those who would use that knowledge for good. It wasn’t anything to write home about yet, but it would get there, and the flat boost to my mana pool should be useful for most of the things I decided to do.

I dug through my status sheet a little, checked my various cooldowns, even did a gut check on my various plans … it was a waste of time. A complete one. I’d done all this a thousand times before, but I needed to do something to distract myself with something because we were in the final hour before the Third Challenge, and if I didn’t stay out of my own head, I’d drive everyone else crazy.

As though they weren’t nervous enough already.

And then, the clock finally hit zero and reset, giving us fifty days to “prepare” for the next Challenge … assuming we survived this one.

The Third Challenge, [The Waking of the Unliving], has now begun, giving life to objects that never should have had it.

The Second Challenge, [The Breaking of Graves], has concluded, and the dead will no longer rise. However, existing undead will continue to exist until they are slain.

The Fourth Challenge, [The Wrath of Natural World], will begin in fifty days.

Time remaining: 49:23:59:51

Fifty days of fighting what sounded like animated statues. I’d been half-right about that, it was inorganic objects given form, but it seemed like elementals would be the Challenge after this one. Storm elementals, living tsunamis, and earthquakes that actually wanted to hurt people, by the sounds of it.

Fifty days.

By then, I hoped to be able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with these legends around me. Because those were fifty days of leveling, of acquiring a seemingly limitless number of skills via [Knowledge Transfer], and breaking the intended limits of all my System Skills until reality itself cried uncle.

I’d be someone who could shape the future of this world.

Or, at the very least, do my part.

Because some of those things out there …

Bavaria (animated monument), Level 45 Raid Boss

Yeah, that thing was terrifying.