I pushed through the doors on the north side of the Carolina Union and walked up to my two friends.

Davis Library was located just a few feet north of the Carolina Union, and there was a small corridor between the two. I had walked down that corridor many times when I walked to the law school, which was a few thousand feet to the east. The sight lines to the east and west were long, but approach from any other direction was blocked by the surrounding buildings. It was as good a place as any to regroup.

After a moment of surprise upon seeing the door open, Carlos and Liz smiled widely at me. Carlos waved at me with his index and middle fingers, and Liz walked forward to hug me.

I put my hands forward in a warding gesture and said in a frantic voice, “Hold on for a second. I’m wearing a shield generator, and it might activate if you get too close.”

“Right, right,” Liz said, taking a step back and looking away in embarrassment.

“You got here in one piece, Vincent,” Carlos said with a toothy smile. “Did you run into any monsters on the way here?”

“Yeah,” I said quickly. We had to get out of there and start looking for Starsteel as soon as possible.

“That’s impressive, man,” Carlos said. “We’ve barely managed to survive this long even with all the people here. Most people who got caught out on their own probably got… you know.”

“Yeah, I do,” I said with a sigh.

In a voice filled with barely-suppressed emotion, Liz said, “Is this really happening everywhere?”

“Yeah,” I said again.

Elizabeth’s voice shook as she said, “I tried calling my mother, my brothers, my old friends, anyone that I still had a method of contacting. N-none of them responded.” Tears started to fall down her face. “I-I think most people in the world are already dead.”

Could that be true? Could billions have already died? Though it seemed impossible, I knew in my heart that it was true. For all of mankind’s technological and tactical progress, we had no weapons or skills that could possibly resist the onslaught. Our only chance at survival was the Revelation System, and most would not have the skill to make a functional build in time.

I took my phone out of my pocket and checked the time. Jesus Christ, System Integration had only been an hour ago.

Carlos leaned against the brick wall of Davis Library and took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. With the skill of someone who had done it hundreds of times before, he lit a cigarette and took a deep drag.

We sat there in silence for nearly half a minute as Carlos smoked and Liz covered her tear-filled eyes and tried to stop crying. At that moment, it finally sunk in. The world as we knew it was over. Our world’s political entities, modern conveniences, and social structures were gone and might never return.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Yet, I felt very little sadness. The world we lived in just an hour before had little for me. My family had been gone for nearly a decade, my prospects were immensely limited, and my chances of finding another group that would accept someone like me approached zero. The only people on the planet I cared about were in that city. The suffering of the rest of the world had very little to do with me.

I spoke to break the long silence. “Hey, Carlos.”

“Hmm?” Carlos grunted. His cigarette had almost burnt down to the filter.

“I thought you quit.”

Carlos laughed darkly, causing him to inhale some of the smoke. He coughed lightly and said, “I did. This seems like just as good a time as any to restart bad habits. I mean, shit, we had to get the System where people are throwing around building-level attacks before level 5. Couldn’t we have gotten the System that started with little kobolds wielding rusty spears?”

“Speaking of the world being screwed,” I said, using the opportunity to change topics to our most pressing issue, “there’s a continent-sized object currently falling toward the Atlantic Ocean.”

Carlos jerked his head back in shock and indignant rage while Liz let out a snort of self-effacing laughter.

“Of course there is!” Carlos shouted down the corridor at the top of his lungs.

“So, what?” Liz said with a crazed smile on her lips and heavy tears in her eyes. “Are we just dead? Is that it? What’s the point of the System if we’re just going to get vaporized by an asteroid?”

“Hey, it’s okay,” I said, shooting my hands out. “I just unlocked this thing called a Sarcophagus Ship in the crafting menu. I just have to make three of them and we can escape the planet before the blast reaches us. The Revelation System was created by humanoid aliens. They must have ships in orbit that we can meet up with.”

Confusion and worry appeared on Carlos’s face as he turned and looked me in the eye. I was very familiar with that look, and it was probably warranted. The stuff I was saying was absolutely insane.

“The Revelation System was created by aliens? How do you know that? I mean, it makes as much sense as anything else, but why aliens?” Carlos asked.

Honestly, I didn’t have a good answer to that question. I knew that humanoid aliens were involved, but I didn’t know why I said that the System was created by them. I just started talking, and that thought came to the forefront of my mind.

That information must have come from Epsilon, I realized. The amount of information shared between me and the star child was immense, and it would take me a while to parse all of it. Somewhere in that massive packet of data was the knowledge that the lesser beings - the ones with pointed ears specifically - created the Revelation System.

“It’s a long story,” I said, deflecting.

“Are you okay? You haven’t had any hallucinations recently, right?” Carlos asked in an attempt to subtly determine if everything I had just said was the result of a delusion.

“I’m fine. I’m not hallucinating,” I said, lying. My condition was under control, but they couldn’t understand the specifics of how I handled it. As long as my hallucinations were limited to Vinzadir and the world of Dungeon King, I would be fine. I wouldn’t be a danger to myself or anyone else. “This is all real. If you need proof, just look at my eye. That’s real.”

I stepped close, and Carlos noticed the imperfections in Epsilon’s mimicry. He flinched back and asked, “What happened to you?”

“I can explain while we walk,” I said. “Come on.”

Liz went into the Carolina Union to tell Professor Carlyle that we would be out looking for Starsteel. After a few minutes of me impatiently tapping my foot on the brick pathway and scanning our surroundings for Diluvians, Liz came back, and we began our search for the material necessary for our survival.