Owen was waiting awkwardly outside of Myra and Peggy's parent house, feeling like he was going into a job interview. Lucas had let him stop by for a short bit to shower and dress in finer clothes to meet with their parents, but Owen thought it was all too much and a small waste of time. It wasn't that he had absolutely no desire to meet their family, but they had less than ten hours before the first gates started to break and Owen felt restless knowing that he could do something.
They had gone to talk with Officer Adams first and found out that while they were in the most recent tier 2 gate, they had managed to create barriers around the others and were in the middle of hiring anyone and everyone they could find to try and help out by being stationed near the gates when they were scheduled to break. Because there weren't any gates not being surrounded by the government, was the only reason Owen had agreed to meet the parents now rather than after the break.
Finally collecting his wits, he knocked on the door gently and waited for a response. He heard someone rushing towards the door, before opening it and Owen felt relieved it was Myra. "Hey, can I come in?" "Oh, is he here? Bring him inside dear." Owen heard a lady's voice from inside the house. Owen grinned sheepishly and Myra moved aside to let him come in, sticking her tongue out in a taunting gesture.
The inside of their house was nothing like he had ever seen before except for maybe some youtuber videos and the like. The outside didn't stand out too much from the other houses in the suburbs near town, but the inside had almost every square inch decorated with something.
He slowly moved through the house, making his way towards the dining room and had to stop as a gruff looking man moved to stand in his way. "So you're Owen." The man said as he looked Owen up and down. "Glad to see you could make it." He moved his hand forward for a handshake and Owen shook it back, fully expecting the man to try and tear his hand off.
He was surprised to see that the man didn't put any extra strength behind the handshake and just smiled at Owen before gesturing for him to take a seat at the dinner table. Their mom joined shortly later and just beamed at Owen.
"You know, you are the first friend Myra has brought home before? She used to just stick to her sister all the time, brooding in the corner, but I'm glad to see you're breaking her out of her shell!" The mom smiled happily. Myra just sat with her head in her hands groaning as Peggy gave her a consoling pat on the back. The next several minutes were Owen hearing childhood stories of the two girls and he did his best not to laugh, as Myra stared daggers at him. By the time their mom started sharing stories about Peggy, she was trying to stare Owen to death as well.
Owen had the most normal dinner he had had in a long time. It had been several years since he and his dad had seen each other often. He used to drive to his dad's place every other weekend after his mom passed and they would share a dinner together in her memory. It made him the dinner with a family feel very bittersweet as it made him miss when he had made the effort for the small things like this.
The dinner thankfully went uneventfully as well. He had expected it to go for several hours and was worried he would only get more and more stressed as time passed. But it only went for about 30 minutes before he, Peggy, and Myra were prepping to leave.
"It was an absolute blessing to meet you Owen and thank you for helping keep my girls safe." Their mom said giving Owen a big hug. Owen felt his face reddening, but just smiled awkwardly as he gave a small hug back. "Don't get any ideas, but thank you for keeping them safe." Their dad said half jokingly. Owen shook his hand again and turned to see both Myra and Peggy scowling at him.
He continued to walk to the car and got in the back, hoping they would go easy on him, but his luck only ran so far. "Peggy how could you think this was a good idea, that was awful." Myra groaned, before turning to Owen not giving her sister a chance to respond. "And you!" she said pointing threateningly at him. "No mention of any of what you heard to anyone and I mean anyone. In fact as soon as I find out if there is a memory wipe skill I can get I wiping away everything you heard."
Seeing she was running out of steam, Owen took a gamble that he knew he was destined to lose. "Actually, I was thinking I might need to stop by again, it would be great to hear more about your childhood from your darling mother. I had no idea you were a big fan of anime or a certain fascination with some dressed in orange ninja kid." Owen grinned, despite knowing he would regret it. He was right as he needed to dodge several slaps Myra threw at him.
The rest of the drive continued about the same as Peggy laughed along while driving them to the police station to meet up with Officer Adams again.
"I'm not sure anyone is going to be onboard with the idea," the officer said hesitantly for what felt like the hundredth time. Owen held back his growing annoyance as he stared at the officer. He wasn't annoyed with the officer but more himself for thinking it would be easy. "Is there someone I can talk to that will know for sure." Owen asked exasperated. "I can ask again, but I'm sure the answer will be no." The officer said as he stood up. He looked just as annoyed as Owen felt, but Owen couldn't make himself care.
The officer only managed to move away a couple steps before a deep rumbling was heard and felt as the whole building shook.
*Congratulations, 10 people on earth have successfully passed the level 30 threshold
Tier 1 gates will break in 3 minutes and will be replaced with tier 3 gates.
Tier 2 gates will break in 10:23:29*
The room that has just been filled with stressed cops and high levels of tension, exploded into chaos as people started running around. Owen meanwhile felt like he was going to be sick. People had already reached an insane level of power and the rest of the world was going to suffer for it. Even if the reasoning was because they were clearing out gates.
One glance between the three told Owen they were going to proceed with the original plan and they each picked a direction as Owen texted Lucas to cover the north side of the city to the best of his abilities as Owen rushed south, leaving the police to figure out what they were going to do by themselves.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
As Owen made it further south he heard echoed screams throughout the city and looking at the time, he spend up even faster. The 3 minutes had already passed, while Owen had been rushing to the closest gate south. He just hoped the monsters couldn't all pour out of the gate at the same time.
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Myra had managed to make it to the closest gate and found several other people looking worried and nervous. "I'm here to help keep the monsters from spreading out all throughout the city." Several heads nodded in anticipation as the time dropped down to single digits, and then finally zero. A horde of monsters appeared all at once, barely giving her time to use identify while trying not to get overrun.
*Sacred Moon Bear level 14*
She instantly felt a little bit better about the break, since she hadn't been sure if Owen had been lucky with the levels in the tier 1 gate he had cleared earlier, but she was glad to see the levels were manageable. When she had a little more space away from the others trying to help keep the bears busy, she charged her body with into the gauntlet and empowered body.
Then the whole sale slaughter of bears began.
Every attack cleaved cleanly through several bears at once making it so that she only needed to spend minimal energy as after only a minute, more than half of the bears had been killed by her. She looked around expectantly, until she found someone who looked important, rushing over and swinging her axe straight at the bear's head and meeting no resistance.
"Where is the next closest gate?" Myra asked, it took several moments before the man was able to stumbled out a response and then look mortified when he had realized Myra was leaving the rest of the bears to them. He tried to protest, but in a flash Myra was already speeding off, to try and help reduce monster numbers as much as possible, still slaying a few bears along the way.
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Peggy was in the middle of dodging a claw attack, from something called a Holy Thrall. Each attack seemed to tear the air itself, but her rapier combined with her bracelet killed the monster in short order. She turned back and immediately cast both her heal and buffing spells out at the groups of people that had gathered to help out.
It didn't take long to completely clear the waves of thrall, before she spent some time quickly walking between the wounded people and healing anything outstanding. Turning to the woman who had appeared in charge of the gate, Peggy waved her over impatiently. "What can I help you with miss?" the woman stammered, but Peggy barely paid the question any attention. "I need directions to the next closest gate and I need people to come with and help."
Soon a large group of people were dashing towards the next gate with Peggy in the lead, looking frustrated as the time for the tier 2 gates to break had reached under 10 hours.
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Lucas was a little upset with Owen when he had realized he was going to need to clear a tier 1 gate break himself, with a couple of random folk. He himself had barely reached level 15, but had managed to pick a very unique class, that he hadn't had the chance to describe to anyone other than Owen.
As the gate broke in front of him, He channeled one of his first new skills and felt proud as more than a dozens clone of himself were holding a myriad of different weapons. They couldn't deal as much damage as Lucas would have wanted, but they dealt enough to keep the weird mole looking monsters distracted. Lucas himself was finding it easier and easier to tear through the monster with his new spear skill. He felt like the strongest person in the world as his kills eclipsed every other combatant near this gate as more than a third had been killed by him.
He heard more screams, which distracted him from the fight and turning towards the sound saw hunched over wolf looking creatures pouring out of the entrance to a building a block or so away from where he was at. Leaving some of his clones, he tried to pull a couple more people over to help intercept the monsters from pouring out into the town. But everyone seemed busy with their own fight. He clones wouldn't last long without him nearby, but he did his best to make it over to the entrance of the building and begin tearing apart the ranks of monsters pouring out.
Catching a majority of them, he was feeling satisfied with himself, until he heard cars crashing into each other, only to see more than a dozen what could only be described as giants making it onto the same street as him.
He could only hope he would get some back up soon.
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Owen and Briar had needed to split up, with Owen making Briar wear a change of clothes. He was worried that Briar would get attack by some frantic people trying to kill any beast in sight, so he still had Briar helping out nearby. There had been seven gate breaks near where he and Briar were currently fighting, with Briar handling several different groups of monsters at the same time using attacks Owen hadn't seen from him yet.
Owen himself was constantly switching between his sword or spear, based on the type of monster that had approached. He felt his heart sink once more as they saw a new type of monster come dashing in, from who knows where, attracted by the noise. Several of the other that had shown up to help with killing the monster had died and most of the others had fled at this point, leaving Owen and Briar alone, in between 5 different groups of monsters.
Owen wasn't worried yet as he was still able to kill most of the enemies in a single attack while using empowered body, with the only exception being the golems that seemed to be made of steel.
"Briar what happen if I channel my mana into you?" Owen shouted over the fighting. "I can use one of my stronger attacks, that lies outside of my personal mana range." Briar said back, with Owen being confident it hadn't shouted, despite Owen still hearing its words. "Can it clear out most of these monsters?" Owen asked again, feeling hopeful. "I'm not positive, it takes a long time to charge the attack, I would need to go into hibernation mode to charge it as well." Briar responded while tearing the head off of an ice creatures body.
"Fuck it, let's do it!" Owen shouted and Briar immediately disappeared. Owen began channeling his mana into the body of the bracelet and was surprised that after pouring more than 300 mana, there was still room for more. He kept passively charging the bracelet as the swarms around him got even bigger. He wasn't sure how long he fought by himself for, but he was down to his last dregs of HP and MP with there still being an almost uncountable amount of monsters still on the street they had been fighting in.
Owen was getting ready to flee as Briar hadn't responded in a while, but then all of the sudden, he heard a frantic voice from Briar in his head. "Throw me into the group of monsters now, I can't hold the condensed energy for any longer!" Owen tear off the bracelet and tossed it into the group of monsters and he began running away as far as possible, pushing his empowered body to the max.
Several seconds passed without anything happening, but as soon as he started to slow down he heard a loud snapping sound and a barrier of wind exploded out from where he had tossed Briar. It created a large dome of energy, covering all of the monster, then an explosion of fire covered half of the dome, before being followed by and explosion of ice as well. The dome seemed to shake as the different elements clashed together as steam began to make everything inside of the dome haze.
Thinking the attack was done, Owen began rushing back towards the dome, but there was a loud tremor that rock the ground and had began to cause one of the more damaged buildings to topple over.
Owen's brain could barely process what happened before the dome shattered, sending the condensed fire and ice out in every direction. He got flung back into the side of the car and as he was losing consciousness, he felt Briar slip back around his wrist as everything went black.