Chapter:

Len nearly fell as the ground shuddered around him, dust raining down from the cave ceiling. Even his high level of body cultivation wasn’t enough to stave off the ravages of time.

His custom runed armor compensating and lending him strength his old body didn’t have anymore.

“Well they’re certainly going at it. Like teenagers with too much energy,” Rick muttered beside him. The man’s brunette hair had turned grey, cut short to his head so it wouldn’t look as patchy. His eyes sunken and wrinkles making his skin ridged and soft.

“And don’t get cramps from walking too much,” Len muttered, righting himself. He blinked his watery eyes, peering through his glasses at the old-tech tumbler. His helmet on his hip opposite his sword.

He flexed his fingers, studying the bony digits and wrinkled folds they moved like rusted hinges. His once black hair just a shade darker than Rick’s grey now. “When did we get so old?” He sighed.

“Dunno, probably when we were twenty-six? We’d been fighting off the apocalypse for six years at that point. And that was?” Rick glanced up, doing the mental math, sitting back into his armor, lokcing out the joints with a flare of mana.

They’d made it together, Rick with the metal, Len on the runes to overcome their old age and give themselves some comforts on the battlefield. Try standing around in armor for a week and say you didn’t want to have a clearning feature, or extra padding for sleeping, or the ability to sit anywhere.

“That was nearly a hundred and twenty-seven years ago,” Len said as he put his ear to the door once more and turned the tumbler, feeling the clicks run up his hand.

With his ear to the door he looked at the others with them. Their ‘crew’ a bunch of ‘outlanders’ just like Rick and himself. Some with the pointed ears of elves, or the jutting jaws of the orcs. People that had escaped to Risam through tears, from their own worlds.

A click, different from the others rang in his ear and through his fingers, he turned the tumbler in the opposite direction. He checked the number and wrote it on the wall. The wall and door were smooth, contrasting with the rest of the rough cavern.

Just two more numbers.

His mind wandered as he moved the tumbler carefully.

He and Rick had become friends after the fall of their nation, without a place to call home, walls to hide behind they’d fought the apocalypse from the wilds. Few cities were willing to take in people that were different. Resources were thin and distrust healthy.

Guess there’s not really any other nations left now. The latest monsters had been too strong for the remaining nations and the roaming bands of outlanders had banded together for one last hail mary.

Raiding the God Emperor’s personal vault.

Another detonation, a skill, a bomb, or something went off with rnough force to rattle the underground cavern. Len pulled his hand away from the tumbler to not jar it, waiting a few seconds to start again.

“Guess Dennis is having one hell of a time fighting off those monsters. Serves him right,” Rick muttered.

If he can’t defeat them, then no one else can.

“He’s the strongest cultivator of humanity,” Len said, his attention on the door.

“Yeah, only because he’s killed everyone else that could possibly become stronger than him,” Rick said.

“I heard that you two could fight him,” One of the outlanders said.

Rick chuckled. “Maybe at one time. Though we can give him one hell of a fight.”

“Stop the chatter, why isn’t the door open yet?” Another outlander growled. The mana shifting with his words.

“Things take time, lock isn’t mana based, its old tech, gears and tumblers. Takes patience,” Rick said, a warning undertone in his voice.

Another one. Len noted it on the wall and went back the other direction. “You really have mellowed Rick, warning people now. Usually you just punch them in the face.”

“Easier that way, but it hurts my damn hands afterwards,” Rick muttered.

“You going to punch me old man?” The outlander stepped forward and flared his aura.

It wrapped around everyone, using the pressure to push them down. Rick’s fifth realm cultivation wrapped around the man’s and slammed into it like an anvil dropped from the fifth story onto a mutated wolf.

The man dropped to his knees, cracking the ground. None of the other outlanders were affected, showing his control and focus as well as his power. Len never stopped turning the tumbler, an old tune playing in the back of his mind.

Threats were common and overused. Though society was now based on strength alone. The God Emperor was the strongest and if you went up against him he’d destroy you. He’d created an empire based on sub-servience to him.

Well now the protected people of Hamonia are learning that just relying on someone with the biggest stick to keep the big bad out of the hen house, is not nearly as useful as knowing how to defend your own dumb ass.

The last number fell into place. Len turned his attention back on the smooth vault door.

He let out a wheezing cough, dust, asthma, old age. Take your damn pick of the hour. He rolled his shoulders, perpetually hunched from his years working on runes. Len got his breathing back under control as Rick removed his mana from pressuring the outlander. The man climbed to his feet, glaring at the others to challenge them, without looking at Rick or Len.

Had to have more than a few tricks to be this damn old through the apocalypse.

Len turned the handle set next to the tumbler. It clanked as he felt the connected gears shifting and spinning.

Locks disengaged and the circles in the middle turned until they created a cross from corner to corner.

“Very clever design, the small handle moves gears and a pulley system,” Rick stood up as Len pulled on his helmet and drew his sword, the others readied themselves for battle. “It opens the entire thing.”

The outlanders gathered their mana, he could feel the charge in the air.

With the sound of metal on metal they slid apart revealing the room beyond.

The outlanders rushed through first.

“Is that the spear of Hermia?”

“Gods, look at all those ingredients!”

“There’s enough Midriol to craft a damn tower out of.”

“The vault of the god emperor himself.”

Len and Rick followed them through, the walls had been carved out into massive rooms, filled with racks to hold weapons and gear, resources were dumped haphazardly throughout. Priceless in Len’s eyes they were seen as something tedious to be carried by the God Emperor.

“Gather everything that you can, one person per room to start. Weapons and gear first, then resources!” Len yelled. With all of this we can make some damn impressive gear. His fingers itched to go through all of the weapons, learn their runes and secrets. Maybe there would be something new for him to learn.

A woman opened a set of double doors opposite the vault door.

“Gods,” She said, the word running shivers through Len’s spine.

He drew upon his mana, his steps becoming lighter, a spell weave alight in his mind as he and Rick crossed the space in a few steps.

Moving in on either side of her.

An elderly woman was chained to an obelisk dense in runes. Medical machines of the highest grade lay around her, using the chains and tubes to connect to her.

Life support. Len categorized it. As a Rune master, enchantments were akin to reading a novel to him, each told their own story when strung together.

Long white hair fell from her head, covering her face, reaching to her knees.

Blue and green mana veins cracked through the ground, converging under the obelisk.

The woman’s chest shuddered.

“She’s alive,” Rick said, his eyes glowing as they darting over the floors, he’d at least learned some damned caution over the years.

Len ran his senses through the ground and examined the room. “No traps, but we’re right over a dense mana line.”

Rick grunted and moved ahead, weapon at the ready.

The outlanders fanned around the door behind them.

“Loot everything you can and use the teleportation medallions to get you the hell out of here as fast as you can,” Len warned as he followed his old brother in arms.

“Yes commander!”

This wasn’t expected but they still had their mission to complete.

The outlanders hurried back to the other rooms.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Miss, can you hear me?” Rick asked the woman strapped to the pillar.

“Not again Dennis, no, we can’t. We have to stop! Your soul, its falling apart,” The woman whimpered, the chains shuddering around her.

Rick and Len shared a look. There were few that knew the God Emperor’s real name, few that were still alive from before the apocalypse. And she said it with familiarity.

Len kept his weapon at the ready, if she was allied with him, they needed all the time possible.

“Miss?” Rick asked again. He glanced from Len to the machines and back again. Destroy them? Len shook his head.

She flinched through remembered pain, Len grimacing as it took her moments before realizing there was none coming.

She lifted her head with monumental effort, her green eyes peering through her white hair. “What’s happening?” She croaked.

“Miss, we can help you down and get you out of here,” Rick said.

Her eyes darted from Rick to Len, sharp, focusing. “How old are you?”

“Not really the conversation I thought I’d be having in here,” Len said.

“One hundred and fifty three,” Rick said.

Her eyes widened as she took in a deep breath, the whole room seemed to breathe with her, the mana veins shuddering with her. Mana ran through the obelisk.

“I need you to stop my brother and I,” She said.

“What now?” Rick asked.

“I need you to stop me and my brother from finding this place. Stop us from trying to use our guild and him becoming the God-Emperor.”

“Miss, I think it is best if you started with some context?” Rick asked.

“Once he finds out that you’re here he’ll go back and kill you, make this so it never happens. This is the first iteration. Fresh, new. Unaltered.” She coughed.

“Water?” Len asked.

“Please,” She pleaded like a forgotten desire.

Len drew out a canteen from his storage pouch, he’d given the larger rings and amulets to others.

He moved up to the pillar, he drew up the stone under his feet, bringing him level with the woman. He pushed back her hair, brittle with age.

Her face was lined with wrinkles much as his own. He knew the ravages of time. In her past she must’ve been a beauty. There was a strength in her eyes. He fused his cane to the stone under his feet, opening the canteen and holding it out to her.

He moved back her hair, she flinched as he held out his hands to show he wasn’t doing anything bad. Then slowly he did it again, as he might’ve with a tamed beast before the apocalypse.

He got her hair out of her face and tilted his canteen. She drank greedily from it, a look of bliss upon her face.

He pulled back after a bit, letting her swallow, she tilted with her chin and he gave her more, he repeated it twice more before she shook him off.

“Thank you. I would have asked your names before though if I know then my brother will,” She said.

“You were talking about Dennis, God Emperor of being a dickhead,” Rick asked.

The woman winced but continued. “Have you seen how he act like he already knows what’s going to happen, like he’s lived the day, the battle before and he’s going through the motions?”

Len closed up his canteen as the stone under his feet sunk back into the ground. He stored the canteen and pulled his cane out of the ground as it levelled out with the rest of the room.

Len had seen the God Emperor fighting before, a terrifying sight as he destroyed all that stood in his path, moving like nature and the world shifted to his will. “Yes.” Len said, regret deep in his stomach. How were they supposed to win against such a man?

“That’s because he has.” The woman said. “This obelisk manipulates souls and time. It drags souls back through time. Allowing one to know what will happen in the future. This used to be a dungeon. We were just young hunters when we cleared it out. My brother was badly wounded and pinned to the obelisk and I wished that we could go back and change everything—and we did.”

Len frowned, looking over the pillar, the runes were dense, the material not something that he knew. I’ve never seen some of these runes before.

“You’re Daniela Malone?” Rick asked.

“Yes,” She cleared her throat and pushed on. “We returned to the day before, my brother and I back in the hunter guild about to sign up for the dungeon clearing. We went through the day and it repeated like it had before. We came to the dungeon and fought our way through, then we tested out the obelisk. It allowed us to teleport myself and my brother back a day again. We went through the day and secured the dungeon once again.”

“I thought you died nearly a hundred and thirty years ago?” Rick said.

“My brother faked the accident and caught me here,” Daniela said.

“So since then he’s been what, coming here and getting you to wind back the time clock on him?” Rick asked.

Diplomatic as always.

“We linked our souls, he would go off on the dangerous missions. I would be here, then when he died I would know and I could roll back time, bringing his soul back as well and he could do the day again. It allowed us to become powerful quickly, our guild rose with us and we formed it here above the obelisk. We were turning the tide on the apocalypse, saving people.” Her head dropped, “Though there is a cost. To the person that activates the obelisk, it saps their power, though if you go back in time, that power returns to you. With Dennis, with each regression the mind starts to break down, my brother has done it hundred if not thousands of times. He was a good brother, a good man. He took on the world’s worries and sought to change them, to try and make the world better. It broke him.”

She took a few wracking breaths.

“It tore his soul apart, drove him mad. Turned him into what he has become.” She closed her eyes in pain. “We wanted to make the world better, to help.”

She drew in a shuddering breath and opened her eyes to look at them both.

“I can send you two back. You’re old enough that you’ll be there before we reach this dungeon. You have to go and quickly. Those cultivation manuals, information on past battles and history, memorize as much as you can. You are the only chance to save my brother and me from this fate.”

“You said he only went back a day though,” Len said.

“I learned with time how to make that longer, though I didn’t dare use that with my brother else he go back to the beginning and make the world anew again,” Daniela said.

“And if we leave here without going back in time?” Len asked.

“Then my brother will return, he will force me to return to the day before and he will be waiting for you to kill you. This is the first iteration so this is a new future that he has not regressed through yet,” Daniela said. “This is our only shot.”

“So we all go back in time and put things right with making sure that Dennis no longer plays time hopscotch and we’re all good to go. Well ‘cept the apocalypse happening and all that fun,” Rick said.

“I can’t go with you. If I go back in time then he will with me, such is the way our souls are linked together. I can only send your souls back.”

Rick and Len looked at one another. They’d both expected to die here, a shot however crazy it seemed to be able to divert this all and write it anew?

“How far back can we go?” Len turned back to Daniela.

“Till you were born.”

“Thank you but no thank you,” Rick shuddered. He raised his hand, drawing up the ground to create a chair that he sat on with a sigh.

“If we’re too young we won’t have any autonomy. We need to have freedom,” Len sat back, the ground raising into his own chair that kicked back a bit to give him a recline.

Rick gave him a glare, his stone shifting into a throne—with a recline. He grinned, hands resting imperiously on his armrests.

“Apocalypse kicked off in full when we were twenty.” Len pushed on, focusing on Daniela.

“So before then.” Rick’s brow furrowed, turning serious both had led parties and trained fighters. “The Aurora’s Vanguard rose to power when we were nineteen, lots of guilds on the rise then. When did you find the obelisk?”

“One hundred and thirty-two years ago,” Daniela said.

“So when we were twenty one,” Len said, numbers came to him easily.

Rick stilled. “You hear that?”

“No.” Len looked around, there weren’t any noise--there weren’t any noises.

“Daniela!” A voice boomed through the underground cavern, the chamber, a voice filled with madness, with power. The God Emperor himself.

The chairs threw Len and Rick to their feet as they drew out their weapons.

Len hit his teleportation slip, cracking it. Nothing happened.

“Shit the teleporation doesn’t work,” Rick said, a half-second faster than him.

“Well, I’ve always wondered what it would be like fighting the God Emperor. If we can keep him off the others then maybe they can run for it and get theirs to work,” Len said.

“Well shit, its worth a damn shot!” Rick said, his runes glowing brighter across his armor. Len channelled his mana into his as well.

“See you on the other side brother,” Len said. They moved closer to one another.

“You too yah mad bastard.” Rick clapped him on the shoulder. The footsteps pounded through the door.

Mana rose throughout the room, gathering behind them.

“One hundred and thirty-six years. Use them wisely. Save Dennis and I, save the world. You’ll have one shot restarting the apocalypse.”

Len looked back, Daniela’s hair was rising around her with the charge of mana. She looked like some etheral goddess, the obelisk drawing massive quantities of mana from the vein below. The room rumbled with the sheer power.

“Good luck, and please. Dennis was a good man once.” Daniela’s smile was as fragile as her.

Power flooded into the room, the obelisk’s runes resonating with power that ran through its length. The room danced with light. Daniela’s eyes shone with power, her channels and core outlined in power.

The footsteps kept coming.

The God-Emperor smashed through the door into the room. He looked like he was in his mid-twenties, black hair, handsome features, body with the lithe power of a warfighter.

His eyes were filled with madness, his face twisted into something terrifying. He threw a spear as soon as he entered the room.

The world seemed to contract, time held in a singular second.

Len stumbled, the coal on his shovel missing the furnace he was filling.

“Watch what you’re doing shovel head!” A man bellowed, barely audible over the roar of flames and machinery.

What in the fuck? Len looked down at the shovel he was holding. He was covered in sweat and coal dust, the two mixing together into a black slurry on his skin. His shirt was stained with sweat and coal dust.

His coveralls barely had signs of their once blue coloring. He stared at the machine he was feeding coal into with a group of three others.

Their faces were black with the dust and sweat, the flames roaring in the furnace’s belly as it eagerly consumed the coal they threw in.

The pigworks. Not a rune or mana crystal was to be seen.

His parents had pushed him to head into the cities, to the foundries and iron works, industry was growing faster than ever. There was money to be made. Money that the farm desperately needed.

Beasts, thought tamed were attacking livestock, eating into fields. The lords weren’t helping out, too focused on their own things.

He’d gained employment at the bottom rung, hoping to work his way up. Looking to go from coal shoveller to furnace operator.

“What you doing? Get working!” A larger man yelled from where he was shoveling coal into the furnace, his ire growing. The others flinching away from his words, focusing on their work, not wanting to get involved.

“I quit,” Len said, walking away from the coal piles and the underbelly of the furnace.

“What you think you’re doing?” The foreman’s meaty hand clasped onto Len’s shoulder. Born of a working strength and anger at his own position.

Len drew on the mana around himself, it pierced his five mana gates all at the same time.

The pain nearly dropped him to his knees as they cracked open, he drove it through his mana channels. There’s so much of it.

With his mana control, refined over decades, used as secondary limbs to carve out his runes, mana coursed through his channels, sinking into his center.

Like a spark to flour his core ignited, a marble of white vapor.

“Eugh!” The foreman backed away as fear ran through Len. If he got too strong then the God-Emperor would hunt him down.

He doesn’t exist yet. Plynthia still stands.

Len wrinkled his nose at the smell from his clothes, his impurities flushed through his pores and excreted.

He ran out of the furnace room, throwing his shovel at the tool shed, it embedded itself handle first in the wooden wall.

There were sound talismans already. New.

His eyes landed on a group of buildings near the foundry, bunkhouses, general store, cafeteria, buildings that supported the workers. He ran for the ‘call house’, using his elbows and weaponized scent to move through the line to one of the sound talismans secured to the wall with only thin wooden walls between callers. It was half a meter wide and a meter tall, made of metal, with only nine rotating numbers beneath, a receiver to listen through, a speaker to talk into and a handle to activate it.

He pushed past one getting off of the sound talisman, rotating in Rick’s number and pulled the handle down. He felt the mana activate. Someone knew about mana already. The sound talismans had come about suddenly and been accepted by everyone, even though they didn’t understand how they worked.

“The fuck there’s a line!” The man next up yelled. Others glaring from where they stood.

Len flared his mana and pressured them all. They paled and nearly dropped. Only a few had even opened their mana gates.

He looked at his hands as it rang.

No wrinkles. His back was no longer curved. His joints didn’t ache, his eyes were clear. He rubbed under his eyes, the perpetual bags were gone.

“Yooo, Len?” Rick said.

“Yeah?” Len heard something wrong in Rick’s voice, guilty.

“Hey dude, umm, so, probably going to get arrested. Gonna need you to post my bail,” Rick’s voice picked up as it would when someone was running. “Valoria Military Academy! Fuck it feels good to be able to run!” Rick was laughing as Len heard yelling in the background.

“We’ve been back in time for less than five fucking minutes!” Len hissed into the receiver.

“We’re back in time!”

“That’s not the point!”

“Kind of the poi—oh shit he’s fast!” There was the sound of air coming out of lungs and then feet on the ground.

Len lowered the receiver looking at the people in the room recovering. “Fuck.” He rushed through the crowd out to the street.