Chapter 3: Listening.

I was walking down the stairs. Going deeper and deeper into the pit with every step.

My grip on the spear was so tight that my hands had gone numb, yet I didn't dare loosen it.

'The moment I let go is the moment a monster pounces on me. I must not let go. I must not let go. I must not let go.'

"You know, the new guy's doing really well. Are we sure this is his first time?" Marco asked casually.

"Should be. I haven't seen him before today." Ramji answered.

"Its probably because we're here." Drew countered. "I mean, we are giving him free wins."

"No, its not just that. Usually people start to break down around these parts. Its the stress you know? It gets to them. New guy's handling it like a champ. I think he'll get a lot of training in today."

"I hope so man. I'm really tired of being the only group with three people."

"Eh. It'll be fine. Not like the first outbreak's happening anytime soon."

"No, but we're missing a lot of training as is. France's team just got to level 2 and Elsie's about to reach 3. At this rate, it might be months before we catch up to everyone else."

"Its not that bad." Drew assured him. "Besides, levelling isn't a sprint. Its a marathon. Isn't that right Coach Homer?"

"Correct." The musclebound man declared. "It will all be fine so long as you don't lose sight of your goal. Cecil here is doing fine so far. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say that this is one of the better runs I've seen from beginners. Especially once you consider the fact that, unlike you, he's starting out without a core. Your parents did much of the heavy lifting in their youth so you could be born at level 1. None of you have any notion of what its like to be without magic. To be truly mundane. Every single one of you had an intrinsic advantage over Cecil. The fact that he's doing this well is nothing short of praiseworthy."

"Oh yeah. I hadn't thought about that." Drew commented. "That has got to suck too. He can't even read the magic in the room."

I wanted to say something. To scream at them for their callous disregard of human life.

Yet I couldn't.

My brain was still processing all of this. The fact that magic was real. The fact that these yokels were real, honest to goodness superhumans. The fact that monsters were not only real, but that they'd be a part of life from now on.

'Coach cult leader said that the monster apocalypse was coming. He said something about a Regressor? What even is that? How do they know its coming? How did they get superpowers?'

I had too many questions and too few answers.

Worse, I was constantly pushing them out of my mind in order to focus on the here and now. Desperately trying to stay alive and kicking.

After all, the lighting in the tunnel was very dim as the light posts being few and far between.

The wolf-things could and would make use of this fact. Slinking away into corners or behind stone pillars in order to ambush us.

Well, ambush me.

For some reason they always seemed to know which member of the party was the weakest, regardless of where in the formation I was.

'Maybe they can smell the fear. Maybe they know I'm nowhere near as confident as these guys behind me. Shoot. I have to get out of here. I have to make it back in one piece. These guys have Eva and Uncle Uter somewhere. I need to warn them. I need to tell them about the monsters. I need to get out of here with them. We need to tell the police. The RCMP. The regular army. People need to know.'

"Hey Cecil, we're about to run into a pack of Rippers. You might want to get back and let us do our thing first."

"A pack!?" I asked incredulously. "As in, more than one!?"

"Oh yeah. Way more than one. Its actually really lucky that we've seen loners so far. These ones usually come in threes at least. We usually see twenty of them at once on the lower floors."

"There are lower floors!? How does anyone survive that?" I choked out.

The four of them stopped dead in their tracks. Looking at me as if I'd said the sun was pink.

"You, um, weren't paying attention to Coach Homer back on the surface were you?"

'No, I was too busy trying to escape from all of you.'

Thankfully, I was smart enough to keep my mouth in check.

"I'm afraid I must have missed it. I'm sorry. Please remind me."

"Okay." Coach Homer started. "Ramji and Drew, go over there and weaken the Rippers ahead of us. Marco, stay here and help me explain."

The two of them nodded and went deeper into the cave without another word.

Coach Homer turned his head to face me. His eyes meeting mine for the first time since we started our journey.

"First of all, magic is real. No, it isn't like the movies. We cannot swing a stick and make all our problems disappear. The reason behind this whole operation is that our founder, Carlyle Robertson, is a Regressor. The man lived through the apocalypse once, became powerful enough to go back in time and decided to lay the groundwork for a more effective resistance. Are you with me so far?"

'You're nuttier than squirrel poo.' Is what I thought.

"Yes, of course. Please keep going." Is what I said.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Excellent. Now, the way magic works is sort of like a bio-chemical reaction to radiation. With normal ionizing radiation like, say, gamma rays, you get tumours and other mutations stemming from the breakdown of your DNA and RNA sequences. Continued exposure leads to continued degradation until your cells start dying and replicating in ways they shouldn't. With magic, your body acclimates. It processes the background energy to supercharge all the cells in your body in different ways."

"So, superpowers?"

"Sort of. Your body takes in the magic slowly, soaking it in little by little. Eventually, a threshold is reached where it becomes an intrinsic part of you and each threshold after that only serves to improve upon your first. That's why your Analyzer has a level counter. Those stats you see underneath are modifiers. They're at one because, without any prior training, your body's basic functions are being multiplied by one. That is, they don't change. Active training will slowly increase your stats as your body gets forcefully acclimated to magic faster. Level 2 will double the modifiers and level 3 will triple them. That means that someone with all stats at 1 will be twice as strong, twice as fast and twice as tough as a regular human at level 2 and six times more powerful than a regular human at level 3. Meanwhile, someone with all their stats at, I don't know, 5, will be ten times as powerful as a baseline human at level 2 and three times that at level 3. Still with me?"

"Yes, levels. Like a video game."

Marco burst out laughing.

"Man! Get a load of this guy! Dude sees the Analyzer and thinks we're playing around."

"No. Not like a video game." Coach Homer's face grew stern as the words left his mouth and I feared some manner of corporal punishment was coming.

Instead, he kept on talking.

"A normal human that sits back and relaxes when the amount of atmospheric magic increases will likely not form a core when they reach level 1. If they do, it'll be a basic one. Something like [Fire], [Cut] or [Strength]. They still get skills, but their magic will be limited in scope."

He shook his head as if the mere thought of it disappointed him.

"Going without a core means being locked in to level 2 at the absolute maximum and having a basic core means being capped at level 3 with very few skills available. Skills are, essentially, your magic powers. The better your core is, the more you have and the greater their variety and versatility gets to be. This is why the first level is the most important, despite it not doubling or tripling your body's capabilities. You need to get all your body's statistics as high as possible so that you form the best core you possibly can once you reach level 1. Again, I literally cannot overstress how important this is. Whatever you get will not only impact you, but your entire bloodline for generations to come."

"My bloodline? You mean my kids, why would they..."

"Because children inherit their parent's core. All the Robertsons have the [Knowledge] core. The same one Carlyle Robertson first developed. A core is more than a means to wield magic. Its your legacy."

He was about to say something else when Marco interrupted him.

"Okay, okay. Forget about the fancy words and the weirdness of the magic. Think of it in terms or trading cards right? You wanna have a deck filled with five star, SSS rank uberpowered cards, but you gotta put in the effort to scrounge around for each individual card in the deck first. Otherwise you end up with a bunch of one star cards that won't win you any games. That's sort of what we do here. We put in the effort to make the best cards. Does that make sense?"

"No. That makes no sense at all. Am I a card? What does this have to do with a legacy?"

Coach Homer coughed into his hand and signalled for Marco to step back.

Marco shrugged and leaned against the right railing attached to the smooth carved wall.

"Right. Forget everything he said. Let's say that two people get to level one after the monsters break through and they later want to start a family. If neither parent has a core, the children start at level 1 without a core. Forever trapped by a ceiling they cannot surpass. If only one of their parents has one, that's the one they get. If both parents have one, they have a fifty-fifty shot at either."

"Okay? So its like genetics?"

"More or less. My father was one of the first people Carlyle recruited and I got my core from him. I started my life at level 1 with a 5th stage core. Which means I was quite literally born with an advantage over the vast majority of humanity."

He lifted his tank top to show a shining red gem atop his heart, with crystalized tendrils that spread down to his stomach.

"This core is called [Conditioning]. It gives me all the skills available to the basic cores: [Strength], [Dexterity], [Constitution], [Intelligence] and [Effort]. I am currently level 8, one of the highest in the world right now. Chances are good that I'll make it to 10 or 11 before I die of old age. With luck and hard work, I might even make it to 12 or maybe even 14."

He sighed blissfully. As if contemplating a distant dream.

"My worst stat was at 6.3 when I reached level 2. Try to wrap your mind around that. Think of how strong I am now. How much more I can do compared to a normal human. That's what's on the line for you here. That's what you stand to gain."

"Yeah right." Marco scoffed. "Your skills literally boost your growth rate. You telling him that is like a steroid fiend telling a new weightlifter to get good. No way he's going to get anything close to that."

The big man gave him a sideways glance. Unspoken words floating between them.

"Sorry. My bad coach. Anything is possible if you put your mind to it. Don't listen to me new kid. Sky's the limit."

Coach Homer lowered his shirt.

Placing his hands on his hips.

"I did not exist in the original timeline. Nor did any of my students. According to Carlyle, less than 7,000 individuals worldwide managed to get an advanced core. Of those, only 41 were above the 3rd stage. The governments monopolized and misused the dungeons, making it so that no one could train effectively until it was too late. Can you guess what happened when the outbreaks got worse?"

"A lot of people died?"

"No. Humanity itself died out. All in a matter of decades. The survivors simply weren't strong enough to look after themselves and the generations that followed couldn't improve themselves past the ceiling."

I listened and understood. Sweating bullets as the implications washed over me.

"You're trying to take over the world. You're waiting until its all over while building up an army of superhumans."

Coach Homer's features twisted into a snarl.

"We aren't trying to control the world Cecil. We're trying to save it. The governments of earth had their chance and they blew it. We can't allow that to happen again. These first few decades, this prelude Carlyle gave us, have made all the difference. There is hope now, where there hadn't been any."

His features softened then.

His face growing impassive.

"We have a chance this time. We can suppress the original outbreak and train up more people the right way. This town isn't the only one of its kind. Carlyle has set up shell companies all around the world and maneuvered them over all the dungeons he knew about. Our organization will be the shield of humanity. The ones who will keep our species from dying out. This period is critical precisely because the following generations will not be able to grow past the limits we reach. There have to be many of us because only us stand a chance."

I didn't say anything at first.

Taking the time to absorb the words I'd just heard.

"Even if what you've told me is true, how would Mr. Robertson have survived to know all of this? He's, what 89? He would have to live another few decades to know what's coming."

"He did." Coach Homer replied. "Your vitality would have been at 1 when you first entered the dungeon. That alone would have meant a normal human lifespan. Each additional point doesn't double your life expectancy, but it does go up. Him surviving until his hundred and forties in the original timeline is the norm, rather than the exception. You might live even longer, if you get a good core."

Okay.

Okay.

Keep calm.

Stay very calm.

Breathe in and out again. In and out.

"Why us?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I asked, why us? Why would you take us into your little operation. If what you're telling me is true, you should've been looking for hardcore veterans or, Olympic athletes or something. Why bring my family into this? Why even bother with me?"

"That's an easy one. The town is about to grow. We're going to be taking in more people now that the foundation is more or less secure. More people with advanced cores means better odds for the human species as a whole. Your family is among the first of the new wave of immigrants."

"You didn't answer my question though. Why us specifically?"

Marco shrugged.

The coach stayed silent. Not saying a word for several seconds.

When at last he spoke, his voice was even as still water. His words measured and carefully chosen.

"Consider it, a stroke of luck on your part. Be thankful and do your best with the opportunity."