After Ark's little speech tonight,The UNtalked in private, Jeremy and Jeff were put on confined leave for the next month. Their only duties were to transport Jeremy once or twice a day, depending on what Ark told them, up to the Ark where Jeremy was to drain as much as he could. Additionally, he was banned from doing any other work for the military, except making those little videos that Jeff and Jeremy have been making for YouTube.

For the next four days, it was quite chill. Someone even managed to sneak in some weed for Jeremy, and Jeff got himself a bottle of Jack. At nighttime, the two of them would just relax, watching TV or talking. It was nice not to be going psychotic, and they made a deal not to turn on the news for the next couple of days.

At the end of day four, their little vacation was over. Jeremy sat outside his tent with a joint in his mouth on the military base, and everybody was looking at him with a side-eye like he was a piece of crap. He didn't care. He was tired, stressed, living in a tent, and felt like saying, "F*** you all." He was upset, but at the same time, he was in Scotland drinking and smoking; it was a good little vacation, if you will.

But then, Zen, who was still their controller, informed them that the United Nations had decided Zen would be their military liaison through Canada. This turned out to be the case in the end, giving them at least one point of reference.

Zen had been giving reports and explaining that Jeremy had been following orders and not causing any trouble. However, the United Nations informed Zen about a small incident where some of the water taken from Scotland mysteriously disappeared during transport. There was one compressed cylinder about the height of a teenager, 5 ft tall, containing Mana water. They didn't know where it was, but they knew that a certain Commander had been bribed and disappeared with the container. They needed Ark's help to locate it, if possible.

As Zen explained this to Jeremy and Jeff, Ark chimed in through their three-way communication, explaining that he had already set up a scan of the area around each dungeon. Nothing was showing up within a 2 km radius of the dungeon, which was the current distance visible due to most of the dungeons having low to almost no power.

Ark had kind of planned for something to go wrong, and when it did, he intended to use that incident to drop the bomb on Jeremy in a good way to help him out. After Zen told Jeremy and Jeff about the lost canister, Ark came back with the following words:

"Hey, Jeremy. So, I've got a scan going around 2 km around each dungeon, and I've got nothing. I don't see the cylinder because its magic is being hidden. Now, when they start releasing it, if I notice anything, I'll say something. Now, I want to apologize to you, Jeremy. Don't freak out, but I talked with the United Nations a while back and explained something to them. Yeah, the reason why you're draining your power into the Ark right now isn't because we're turning on dungeons quickly this way. It's because your body is so juiced that you're breaking down and dying."

The joint fell from Jeremy's mouth as he looked at Zen and started crying, falling to his knees. "I'm dying," he choked out.

Zen's eyes held pity and remorse for the kid he remembered when he was 18 or 19, now in his 40s and still as much of an idiot, now dying.

Zen asked softly, "Is there anything you need?"

Jeremy had lost it, so Jeff shook his head and said, "Just give me some time with him. He's unpacking a lot of s***. Oh, and no, Ark can't find it because it's in a metal cylinder. If they open it, maybe he can find it then. We'll let you know."

Zen wasn't happy with that answer, but after seeing Jeremy crying on the ground, being told he was about to die, he didn't push further.

As Zen walked away, seriously depressed himself, as soon as Zen was out of earshot, Ark said to Jeff, "Get Jeremy inside now. I'll explain more."

Realizing something else was going on, Jeff grabbed Jeremy by the arm and under the armpit, brought him into the tent, shut the flaps, and settled Jeremy into his bunk room where he had a bed. Jeremy was distraught.

Ark turned the three-way call back on. "Jeremy, I'm so sorry I lied to you."

Jeremy raised his head at those words. "What? How can I trust you?"

Ark took on Jeremy's exact voice. "I had to do it because you technically are dying, but I think I've figured out how to save you. I didn't want to tell them that; I just wanted them to realize how much you put into this and how much you're risking your life. Technically, you are dying, but draining your energy into the Ark is already showing great improvements. Thanks to the sewer system I set up here, I'm getting poop. I'm turning that poop into biologicals that are being broken down into really weird organisms that have never been on your planet before. I'm currently doing a lot of experiments with cultures. Some of these alien microorganisms—if this turns out right, I'm shooting for an HP potion or MP potion, just like in your books. How do you feel about that? If I can make that and it does something like gives you energy or heals you, that's a start. Guess who's going to get the first whack at that? You will, because you're dying. Of course, we'll test it on mice and all that, but once it's safe, you'll be so strong, and I'll make sure they don't kick you out. Just work with me not to f*** this up. I might lie to you again, I apologize, but I'll always tell you that I lied after and explain why. That's my deal with you, Jeremy. You're my guardian; I'm your Ark. You don't know what that means because you don't know the history of my planet, and I don't have that unlocked right now because I've been reset. Once we get there, I'll explain myself. But the two of us are one now, in a weird way. Oh, and I'm okay with adopting Jeff."

With that, Jeff smiled and agreed, albeit as a joke, but Ark could hear Jeremy's thoughts and Jeff's thoughts and all together, they kind of all agreed. So, Ark made it official. "I officially invite you, Jeff, as a Guardian Junior." The power Jeff felt in his neck did something really weird because before, he didn't have the ability to turn his hearing on and off. Well, he kind of did. Now, in the back of his head, there was a dial, like a little something he could twist. As he twisted it just a little bit, it wasn't just sound he was hearing; it was vibrations. It was like his body became a tuning fork. Jeff just left that on and started to learn, smiling the whole time.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Jeremy, having had such a roller coaster ride, dug into his pocket, pulled out a little tube with joints, and lit one up in his room. He didn't care anymore. Jeff yelled at him, told him to get outside. Jeremy went back to his chair outside the tent flap and sat there for the rest of the night, not wanting to talk to Ark, who was really pissed off at Ark.

They found out that the United Nations had put a bounty out on that Commander, and I'm not going to say which government it was from because they're trying to avoid blaming one country for one person. So, it was a personal, not a governmental, posting for the arrest and recapture of the lost water. It was all over the news. Even without hearing it on TV, it was on people's radios all around the base, and people were talking about it. It was like you couldn't not know.

So, basically, the whole world knew that magic was available to one person if they could find him, and that it could kill you. The crazies all over the world were hunting this guy down, thinking he was in the United States, Mexico, or Canada. They didn't know which way he went.

As one last screw-you to the United Nations for all the infighting, Ark let them know that he had released a list of answers to people's questions that they had asked Jeremy. The thing was like 30 pages long, the real long version. They were all non-answers, and every once in a while, one of the answers would have a hint in it. He published it openly to the newspapers, asking for more questions to be asked. The United Nations couldn't do anything because right in Jeremy's contract, it was that he was supposed to do this. That Ark had given out the information before they vetted it was what was wrong. So, what were they going to do? Stop Ark? How?

The next morning, Jeremy had a fire inside him. He wanted this energy out of him, so as soon as the sun rose, Jeremy was at the mess hall eating, dressed, had a shower, and was full of energy.

Jeff, who had been following Jeremy the last couple of days, couldn't keep up at first. "Okay, slow down, come on," he said, but Jeremy just wanted to get to the Ark and start draining himself as quickly as he could.

During Jeremy's breakfast, he had come up with an idea the previous night but didn't want to bring it up until he fully thought it out. Ark was listening to Jeremy's thoughts and heard about this. He let Jeremy think it all out. By the time Jeremy was done, Ark already had something figured out, built, and ready to answer Jeremy's question because he had a really good answer but didn't know what to do.

"So, the question was, if I pump too much energy into the Ark, how the hell do we get it to go up and out without it screwing up the environment or going down into the planet? Is there something that we can transfer that into inside the Ark or inside the dungeons? But the dungeons are connected, so that doesn't work. Yet, at the Ark, is there some way of pulsing that energy away up into space?"

Ark could actually do something like that and had thought about this before, but not pulsing. The idea was that instead of a giant beam of energy, a constant pulse at different frequencies or different energy wavelengths, or something like that, could just dissipate into the environment, into the atmosphere, in controlled amounts.

Everyone had already been recording and noting that around the Dungeons and the Ark, when a dungeon was not active, you couldn't really see it, except right around the gate. If there was plant life, it would get greener and healthier. When a dungeon was turned on, for about 2 km around, the green was all grass; it was beautiful, a lush environment, whatever it was.

Around the Ark, that was about 20 km.

The town actually had to talk to its sheep herders and cow herders and ask to have more herds brought in because the grasses were growing so fast that the animals they had couldn't eat enough. Within a week or two, they literally doubled the amount of animals. They were everywhere, chomping down grass. The poop piles were everywhere.

The military base hired some people with riding lawn mowers to come and cut the base and then dump the shavings over a fence for the animals, so the animals wouldn't be inside the base or Tent City, really.

After the military was informed that Jeremy knew, they got a chaplain and a shrink to come see Jeremy and Jeff because, at this point, Jeremy was now, supposedly (which no one knew was half-lie), going through the steps of denial due to his oncoming death.

When the chaplain and shrink talked with Jeremy, they gave him a positive report. He was very happy, outgoing, and had hope that he was going to survive. It was all good vibes, and they just said he was very stressed out and should take some time off. So, yeah, they basically said, "Do what you're doing," and for the next week or two, all Jeremy did was go to the Ark every day and drain his energy.

After two weeks of doing this, Ark let the United Nations know that Jeremy's death date had been extended due to draining his mana, and he wasn't in danger, but he wasn't out of danger. He still had to keep draining; he had way too much. Once Jeremy's was low enough, they would start draining Jeff too, or find another way to get him to start using it.

One of the questions the United Nations members had was, "Is there another way that Jeremy can be getting rid of this energy, other than pumping it into the Ark?"

Ark actually had an experiment he wanted to try with Jeremy. His collar had a limiter built in that would make a shield of energy around Jeremy to keep the energy in. If they were to turn down that shield's power, not all the way, but just start turning it down, Jeremy's magic would come out. They could see if his body could acclimate to a higher amount. Then, maybe they could pump it through him, allowing him to get rid of it, but not at the amount that he was holding onto them. So, they were talking about starting with half a percent.

The United Nations honestly wanted to do this, and it wasn't a hard sell for them to allow them to test on Jeremy, but only Jeremy, not Jeff, was the answer they got from the United Nations, Ark.

That night, after dinner, officers, Zen, came to find Jeremy and Jeff after finding out about their approvals and let Jeremy know that he had the green light to work with Ark on a very small, limited basis to see what kind of magic Jeremy could actually do now that everybody had stopped freaking out.

Jeremy actually knew all this because Ark told him, but then threw in a little twist of his own, which he hadn't been told would have been approved, so both Jeremy and Jeff kept a straight face when Zen pulled this little stunt, but they went with it.

Zen explained that during testing, Jeremy was to record it for the higher-ups to watch before it goes on YouTube.

That was close to the agreement that was made, but that wasn't the agreement, and Zen didn't know Jeremy's contract, but a certain JAG officer put in a line that all videos were to be live-streamed to YouTube for The Archives.

Those were Jeremy's standing orders.

So, Jeremy just agreed with Zen and said, "Of course, we will follow the procedures that we were given."

Zen's distaste for Jeremy showed on his face instantly when he remembered how Jeremy would listen to every word like a lawyer and weasel his way out of stuff that didn't sound right.

But Zen also had Jeremy saying he would, so distrust was now on the table. We'll see what Jeremy did.

So, that interaction didn't go too well, and the next day, they set it up to live stream like they always did. They hit record and didn't find out about it until after because they didn't want anybody to know that they were testing on Jeremy.

The test didn't just go well; it WENT great. It was magical...