Where Levi stood, in the shadow of an overhanging shade tree, he escaped notice. No one screamed and pointed. He must look a mess, his clothes ragged, and holes burned through, stained with blood — both human and ogre — carrying a gremlin corpse.
He stood there for several minutes, silently observing, absorbing the peace of a city not at war.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, startling him. He’d forgotten it existed.
Now that he thought about it, he was surprised it had survived the dungeon intact and functional. Mana tended to ruin anything that relied on electricity. Level 1 dungeons must be too weak to immediately destroy a device.
He pulled the phone out and stared at it. There were a few dungeon-inflicted dents on the case, but it had otherwise survived relatively unscathed. The screen lit up at once and Levi tapped in the password.
Seven missed calls.
Levi glanced over the list and one name stood out immediately.
Gordon McKaine had called three times. Levi wouldn’t recognize half the callers if they were standing in front of him, let alone know them by name, but Gordon wasn’t someone he’d forget easily. They’d known each other since college, though only barely at the time, and he was always more Irene’s friend than Levi’s —
Levi froze, his heart suddenly stuttering.
Irene.
Peter.
His wife, his son…
Even now, thinking about them brought a pang of long-familiar grief and his hand reached for the photograph in his breast pocket, but of course, it wasn’t there. He needed no memorial to their memory... yet.
How had he not realized? If he was in the past, before the invasion...
They’d still be alive.
Suddenly, all of his thoughts and plans and hopes paled in in the light of this huge new revelation. He fell back against the tree, staring blankly, struggling to process the implications.
He’d come back in time.
Levi Morrison, warrior on the front lines of humanity’s long defeat, ready to take the fight to the demons and save the world, ready to die rather than surrender. Levi Morrison was also a father, a husband. Or, he had been, an eternity ago. Someone who went to work and paid the bills, who went out drinking with Gordon and their co-workers.
Levi struggled to imagine being that person. It felt like a distant dream. A few moments stood out, but apart from that, he remembered almost nothing. Unimportant events long since overwritten with battle strategies and suppressed trauma.
A world without dungeons or the system, without the invasions, without the ever-increasing hordes of demon invaders? What would he do with that?
Even standing within such a world, watching it flow by, it still felt foreign and unreal.
Part of him was glad the dungeons were already here, thankful for a clear path forward. He might have gone mad if he’d returned earlier, if he’d been forced to face the world uncertain if what he knew of the future was true. At least he had a timeline. He had a goal. He had objectives along the path to that goal.
Part of him screamed that he should drop everything and run straight home. Disregard his plans for leveling himself and the dungeons he’d need to reclaim his former strength, do nothing but run back to his family.
But that part of him was almost immediately shouted down by the rest.
The Levi they knew no longer existed.
How could he face them, knowing that they loved someone he could never be again? While to him a full decade had passed, Peter and Irene had probably seen him a few hours ago. How could he do that to them, replace the man they thought he was, usurp his own past?
Just imagining their reactions made his heart clench with dread. Irene’s cold glower. Peter’s confusion at the stranger in place of his father.
His mind flinched away from the thought. Yes. Definitely for the best that he put that conversation off a bit longer.
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He would go to them eventually. Nothing in heaven or hell could stand between him and his son. He refused to let his family die all over again. No matter what it cost him, he would save them this time.
The invasion was months away. He had time to figure this out. Time to figure out who he was, who he could afford to be; how to break it to them that the Levi they knew had lived a whole lot more than the few days since they saw him last; how to explain everything without sounding insane, or, if that were impossible, how to bring enough proof that it didn’t matter how insane it all sounded.
Music rang out again, a green icon bounced at the bottom of the mobile screen.
Gordon McKaine again.
Levi wasn’t ready for this.
He had no idea what to say, how to react.
Part of him wanted to run.
He could search for a new dungeon, dive into combat, push himself to level faster and faster. Ignore the outside world and do nothing but grind until he was ready to face the Demon Lords. Charge into battle with an army of summons at his back.
But he still had to live in the world for the remaining months before everything collapsed. If he kept acting like the world had already ended, he’d be locked up as a crazy person and never save anyone.
He cleared his throat, swallowing the choking uncertainty, and accepted the call.
“Hello?” He did his best to sound calm and controlled, even if he felt anything but.
“Levi, where are you?”
“I’m... at the park.”
“The park? Why? Aren’t you coming? You said you were right behind me, then you disappear for hours, and now you’re at the park?”
Were they supposed to meet at the bar tonight? He surreptitiously swiped to the calendar app, but his past self hadn’t been assiduous about tracking appointments.
“I... something came up. I need to go home.”
“What happened?” Gordon’s irritation instantly vanished, his tone shifting to concern. “Do you need a ride to the airport? Or a hospital?”
Airport? Why would he need an airport? Where were they?
“Uhhh...” Levi couldn’t think what to say, his mind refusing to return any appropriate responses. It was too much, too alien.
“Are you hurt? What happened? Are you okay? You don’t sound okay.”
Didn’t he? How was he supposed to remember how he talked ten years ago?
“I... have to go.” He shouldn’t have done this. He knew he wasn’t ready.
“I’ll come get you. Which park, the one by the hotel?”
“Uhhh...” Levi looked around, but the buildings he could see past the trees looked like any other buildings to him. He didn’t recognize the city, nothing about it felt familiar enough to place it. He’d been through so many cities, so many battlefields, if this one had any distinguishing features, he couldn't see them from here.
“Don’t hang up. I’m on my way.” Gordon’s voice was muffled as he leaned away from his phone. “Levi’s got a family emergency, I’m gonna go get him. Don’t wait up for me, I don’t know how long we’ll be.”
Murmurs of other voices, indistinct, concerned.
“If it’s the park I’m thinking of, I’ll be there in five minutes,” Gordon said to Levi. “We’ll be fine. You can tell me or not, it’s no problem. I’ll — ”
Levi ended the call.
How was he supposed to respond?
He paced, trying to regain some semblance of control over his thoughts, but they were stretched in so many directions he couldn’t quiet them.
Stay and talk to Gordon in person? Or get out before he arrived?
If he stayed, what could he say?
If he left, where would he go? He didn’t know what city this was, but apparently it was far enough from home that he’d need a plane to get there with any speed.
Should he leave Skarm’s body hidden somewhere and come back for it? He looked like... well, like he’d been through a battle.
Abandoning the dead gremlin did not occur to him. He’d made a choice a long time ago to protect everyone he could, and with a second chance like this, he refused to leave anyone behind. Not when there was any hope of saving them.
Carrying around a dead dungeon minion would increase his credibility if he decided to spill the truth, but also make him look more insane if he tried to come up with a reasonable excuse for it.
Engaging with the world in his current state felt like a mistake. He shouldn't have answered the phone.
Airport? Where was he?
He barely remembered this day the first time around, even straining to force his recall. The stat system had popped up in his head, but it came without any instructions and had vanished shortly after it appeared. He vaguely recalled getting an antibiotic and tetanus shot for falling on a rusty nail, now he thought back.
No one else had noticed the gremlin, or mentioned anything similar, so he’d dismissed the brief flicker of the system interface entirely.
After 10/24, it became deadly serious. A thousand portals opened across the world, all within hours of each other, and stayed open for about 18 hours — 18 hours of an unending stream of hellhounds and imps, and the occasional warrior group or pair of elites.
Then the portals closed, leaving the demons to rampage across the globe at their leisure.
The world fell into chaos, whole cities were wiped off the map in days, and it’d been a three-week all-out war before the bulk of the invaders were finally killed. But not all. It would be another four years before humanity finally managed to fell the first invasion’s Demon Lord. By that time there’d been three more waves — three more Lords. There was always one with each invasion, though the numbers of every other type varied unpredictably.
He was still circling his options when a voice interrupted his pacing.
“You!”
Levi spun to face the speaker.
The same woman who’d been screaming at him earlier, this time carrying a bag of groceries, stood staring at him with a look of shock and disgust on her face.
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