Len dug his chisel into the obelisk’s material. It fought him as he grunted, barely smoothing out the side of a rune. “Hammer?” He reached back.

Rick put his hammer in Len’s hand. “Thanks, strength alone won’t get me through this.”

He tapped the chisel, focusing the vibration through it, cutting into the stone like material. The work progressed slowly, a rune smoothed out here, another carved out there. New connecting lines.

He bastardized a collection of runes. Len was relying on the material being a great mana conductor to make up for his sins.

Len rolled his shoulders, running mana through them, being here was like consuming a alchemical pill, he recovered in barely a breath as he studied his handiwork.

“It will draw in mana constantly, then go into the broken enchantments, creating a enchantment resonance, the power will keep increasing feeding into the material again and again pushing past its limits rapidly, causing it to degrade in several locations at the same time.”

Rick got up from where he'd been sitting. "Time to run?"

"Just about nearly." Len raised the hammer and chisel again. “You know which direction we have to run right?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, this is the last rune.” He made it deep and thick as the sound of chisel and hammer on stone rang out.

It started filling with mana rapidly "Run!"

Len turned, Rick rushing for the exit. Len followed him. The shrews eating the basilisk hissed and scattered. Rick and Len blew past them and through their own home.

Len blinked against the daylight as Rick slowed for the packs.

“Throw them on and go!” Len hurried him on, tossing Rick his hammer.

He caught it and holstered it as Lent hrew the front pack on, then the one on his back followed by his messenger bag, before grabbing up the rock and plant. The movements a blur.

“You think it’ll be that big?” Rick asked, throwing his backpack on. His front pack already secured.

“This way right?” Len pointed off into the forest.

“Yeah.”

Len ran for it, speeding between plants.

“I don’t know what that material is, but it took using your hammer, resonating strike and a mana blade to cut into. I’ve seen Azori before, maybe it was some saint beast material.”

“Sain beast is legendary and Azori is Divinie. You think it was primordial?”

“Its able to warp time Rick!”

“Fuck! Use the enchantment blocks we used to jump and activate just the weight reduction enchantment.”

Len opened the top of his front pack, using his sight and elemental pings to know where he was stepping, each footfall taking him a dozen meters.

He fished out the enchantment block, putting it between his back and breast plate.

“Can you hold this plant?” Len yelled.

“One sec to get myself sorted.”

“Got you.” Len closed up one strap on the front pack and pulled out the activation rune for the enchantment plate.

“Good!” Rick bounded past Len. Len held out the rock and plant, Rick grabbing them as he shot forward even faster, the leaves and trees bending away at his passage.

Len tightened the straps on the front pack so the enchantment wouldn’t fall out, then put the rune in place, his first step nearly sent him into a tree. He pushed off of it back towards the ground, staying above the undergrowth, pushing off of trees that groaned under the pressure of his feet.

He and Rick ran amongst the trees, beasts and creatures ran from them as they moved like a natural disaster through the forest.

A spike of mana rippled through the ground and air. Len drank it in recovering all he’d lost, reducing the friction between his body and that of the air, increasing his speed even further.

He passed through a chittering group of monkey beasts stirred up by Rick’s previous passage. They threw rocks the size of his head and trees as large as him with enough force to cause the air to howl.

The mana in the area created a tremor, then the physical world shuddered.

Len shot up through the canopy, glancing back.

Mana erupted in a pulse where the obelisk had been, it tore through the ground, through the forest, like a plow through a field. Stone, dirt and trees were carved up and tossed aside. The unctrolled mana rushed through the materials it interacted with, overloading its capacity. Trees simply tore themselves apart, rock was turned to powder.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

A lifetime of mana was dumped into them in seconds. Like putting too much coal in a boiler and not reducing the steam’s pressure. Eventually the boiler would explode. All of that was happening in just moments.

Len touched down on a tree and kept going, the wave of mana weakening some, but still coming. He sped forward, using the earth element to get the trees to throw him forward, the heat element to speed him from behind.

He could hear the wave chasing him, the rush of air, the crack of materials coming apart. He didn’t know how long it went like that as his path started to rise, the noises dying down. Rick was up ahead, standing on rocks along the incline, watching behind him.

Len angled for him, slowing his pace as he took several steps on the stone to bleed off his momentum, they were at the base of the rise.

Len turned back a crater lay where the obelisk had been, the hilly ground around it had been flattened somewhat. You could trace the hills by the reduced destruction beyond them.

The wave had reached out in every direction, destroying and flattening all. Everything had been reduced to parts.

Fires had started in several spots and were growing rapidly. The area around the crater was bare.

They were both panting even with their higher cultivation.

Life-mana from all that had been killed rushed into Len’s body. These creatures had red cores. For each stage of core you needed to kill ten creatures of the same level to increase, if they were a level higher you needed to kill half that amount, so five, if they were weaker you needed to kill two times as many, so twenty.

Killing the basilisk, the panther and shrews, it had barely registered in recovering his mana.

A cold shiver ran through him for a moment as his core recovered his mana then pushed through blue liquid solidifying.

He let out a breath.

“Your core go blue solid too?” Rick asked, his voice detached.

“Yeah.”

“For us to both do that, then there must’ve been what like eighty thousand creatures killed?”

“If they had red liquid cores,” Len said.

“I think its gone,” Rick said.

Len used his all-sight and peered through the veil of the world, looking through the dozens of kilometres between them and where the obelisk had been.

The world was saturated with mana, spread throughout. Wonder if that depleted the mana stone?

He surveyed the area where the obelisk had been, no sign of the tell-tale signs of an enchantment. The veins of mana stone were deeper now, shards of the upper levels spread around.

“With the spread of mana and stone, its sure to bring new animals to the area. It’ll recover quickly,” Len said.

“And others might be interested in the ground shaking explosion.”

“Maybe,” Len agreed and closed his sight.

“Well, I still remember everything,” Len said.

“Me too. So what do we do now?" Rick looked over.

"You said it, the apocalypse is still on its way. Just this time we know its on its way.” Len looked around.

“What if we were take what we knew about the apocalypse and use that to not just survive, but thrive?” Rick asked.

“Huh?” Len asked.

“How many times did you wish we could do things different? Change things knowing what we do? We have the chance now.”

Len drew on the mana around him. “Mana is here so the apocalypse isn’t stopped, its just restarting.”

“What if this time it starts we have a head start,” Rick grew more animated.

“Think of all the people that were killed because of Dennis seeing them as a threat,” Len caught some of that energy. “The Alchemist Lord, the red order of knights, the automatic Merk?”

“Your runes, my armor,” Rick said. “It would be a massive undertaking.”

“What about Dennis himself?”

“You want to work with the God Emperor?” Rick looked at Len sideways, holding up his finger. He squinted at Len. “Wait, no. Are you interested in Daniela?”

“What, huh? Well maybe? Strong woman like that,” Len let out a dry cough.

“Shouldn’t we kill that fucker?” Rick asked.

“He hasn’t killed anyone yet. Hasn’t stepped down the path that led him to become the God-Emperor.” Len mulled through the thought. “We should probably keep an eye on him and make sure he doesn’t fall the same path. Without the obelisk tearing his soul apart every time he goes back he should be sane—maybe?”

“Okay so watch Dennis, turn Eskon into a city that can weather the apocalypse, build-a-fighter? We know how to increase one’s cultivation, can make powerful weapons and armor, enchant them too. Just a bit of training them up can make a guild that thrashes the crap out of the Hunter’s Bureau.” Rick grinned.

“Huh?” Len asked. “Build-a-fighter?”

“We make cultivation pads, give them proper training to cultivate. Build weapons and armor, proper stuff. Train some people to carve up sound talismans. Drop the price of magical goods, break the Hunter Bureau’s stranglehold and strengthen people as whole. Teach them the right ways. Jump them ahead by fifty years. Have them clearing the forest, clearing the path to the mana mine.”

Len nodded hesitantly. “All that information out there, you sure?”

“Len, the God Emperor failed because he thought that he was the only one that could save humanity. Made it so that he could be the only one that was able to. How many stars did he cut down as they were still rising? I’m not saying we don’t make magical contracts to protect ourselves, or rush into this. I’m saying that empowering people, just what will they come up with that we wouldn’t? How many more will survive the apocalypse?”

“Some will come to hate us,” Len warned.

Rick shrugged. “Everyone can have their opinions, and do things in their own way. Fuck em.”

Len grimaced and gave a reluctant nod.

“We’re getting that metal to make gear, that food to build them up,” Rick said. “They’re starving.

“To a starving man, the greatest treasure,” Len pressed his thumb to his fist, holding it out to Rick. “Is food, and after the apocalypse started the hardest thing to find was food.”

Both had many days where they’d had to stretch food and water further than it was meant to go.

“We take those that have been thrown to the side, we feed them, help their families, build them up. Those that are willing to—the sky’s the limit. Those that squander it, looking to take us just for our food. We use a magical contract to weed them out.” Len said.

“That’s devious. No one can hide their intentions to a magical contract,” Rick nodded along. “If they’re willing to work they’ll pass through, if they don’t then they’ll run right out of the door till they’re willing to work.”

“Add in a clause that they can’t talk about the contract.” Len shrugged.

“Elegant.” Rick nodded.

“We then know the ones that are willing to work and those who aren’t. We find jobs for those that are interested to work.”

“Hire on all the people we know that will do great things and push them to do so,” Len held his chin. “Its not a terrible idea, but neither of us is a great leader.”

“Ah,” Rick waved him off. “We can find one of those.”

Len raised an eyebrow, Rick seemed rather confident in that.

“The big picture,” Rick waved his hands expansively, capturing the destruction infront of them.

A touch of things to come.

“Alright.” Len collected his thoughts. “Well we’re going to need to do some hiring when we’re back in Eskon.” Len frowned. “And we should look into our families, see if we can bring them with us.”

He took in the sight once more and turned for the mountains again.

“Lets get moving.”