The air hung heavy as I materialized in the living room, the familiar space prickling with wrongness. An unseen shield hummed with energy, fully surrounding the house immediately after we appeared.

"What's the force field for?" I asked, the words escaping before I had time to think. Sim's reply, when it came, was a hammer blow.

"Two years, Mike." Her voice shook, each word a fractured shard of time. "You've been gone for almost two years."

Still a little foggy on how something that felt so quick could possibly last that long, I asked, "Two years? It felt like hours."

"There's a lot to unpack. Promise me you'll listen to everything before you react."

"What? Just tell me!" The words ripped from me, confused and desperate.

For a lifetime, it seemed, Sim recounted the aftermath. How Cookie had severed the beast's negation aura, how she implanted the tracking tumor and then disappeared, leaving a crippled monstrosity in its wake. How Hawaii had become a tomb of molten rock, the screams of the dying still haunting her memories. Millions dead. Two hero candidates, dead.

I stole a glance at Peaches. Huddled in the corner, she radiated a despair so profound it choked the air. This wasn't fear. This was a soul drowning in guilt.

"Peaches?"

As I looked at her with a confused look, Sim continued.

"They finally cornered it, Mike. Mount Fuji erupted as the beast clawed its way through the earth. Peaches was holding back the volcano's fury, protecting the people, while Mia..."

Her voice trailed off, a tremor of emotion betraying her stoicism.

"Mia?" My core hammered against my ribs, a frantic engine increasing in speed.

“Mia attempted to attack the right head with little success. It was the only one producing any mana, and she determined that if she could stop it, the creature would die.”

Sim hesitated before she continued. I was once again confused. Why did it seem like Sim was showing much more emotion than ever before? Like she was upset at what she was about to tell me.

“And then?” I demanded.

After a few more seconds, she continued.

“Peaches had just finished putting up a barrier when she heard the explosion. The smaller creatures, the ones still able to produce the negation mana... Mia didn't see them. She was surrounded, her powers were being nullified. The beast, regaining its strength, crushed her. Her core... it detonated from the impact, destroying her body instantly."

The world tilted on its axis. Rage, raw and primal, flooded my veins. It mingled with crushing grief, a despair so profound I couldn't even name it. Disbelief clouded my thoughts.

I lashed out, searching for a spark, a flicker of her presence in the vast emptiness. But there was nothing. Just a gaping hole where our bond used to be. She was gone. I couldn’t feel her.

I tried harder. I pushed my power to its limit. She had to be there. The rage started to bubble up even more. I pushed and pushed until I was scanning every inch of the universe. She was just gone!

“She can’t be gone.” Despair filled my every thought. “I just found her,” I whispered with absolute malice.

My cores screamed, a symphony of raw power threatening to tear the world apart. Tears streamed down my face as I unleashed a torrent of emotion – rage, grief, disbelief, a storm that threatened to consume the entire world. It all came out in one eruption of power.

Through the haze of absolute fury, I felt a gentle nudge. Peaches, trembling, buried her head in my lap, my tears soaking her fur. She was a conduit, absorbing the maelstrom of emotions and raw power threatening to rip me apart. Tears began to fall from her eyes as well. Her absorption power was at its maximum. Her ability was the only thing preventing absolute destruction. She was doing her best to absorb all of my power along with my emotions. Without her, preventing the destruction of everything we knew and loved would be impossible. Her whimpering brought me back, my cores starting to slow.

As the tremors subsided, I slumped to the ground, clutching her close. "We were supposed to be immortal," I choked out, my voice thick with grief.

Sim's voice, heavy with sorrow, confirmed my worst fears. "The negation mana… it stripped her defenses. Your bloodline, while not fully activated, couldn’t increase her power enough. The blow was too much."

Rage, like a venomous serpent, coiled around my heart. "Then kill me too! Negate mine! Just end it!" My voice boomed, a command laced with a raw, desperate plea.

Sim appeared in front of me, an avatar of a young woman. "No, Mike, your bloodline is awakened now. Negation mana is powerless against you. Nothing can physically hurt you now. Neither you nor Peaches will ever experience death."

"Then bring her back!" I roared, the demand laced with a new edge – a desperate hope. "You said you could rebuild me… do it for her! Bring her back, now!"

Sim's avatar took on a sorrowful expression. “Mike, I can bring back her body, mind, and memories, but the bond won’t be there. The connection you formed – no power in the universe can rebuild it. Your bloodline is complete and it won’t link with her again. This is why I chose not to revive her. If she were here and your connection was gone, you would never accept it.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

As I stared at Sim with absolute malice, a rage I knew shouldn’t be directed at her felt almost unbearable. She was so worried about her system that she let Mia die. Tears started to stream down Sim’s face. “I felt the blow at the same time as you. Because of the convergence, she was connected to me as well. When we lost her, I felt the connection almost destroy your core. At that moment, I learned what true pain was. I almost brought her back immediately. This is why I needed you.”

“The Peach core almost exploded when I was fixing my main core. Is that when it happened?” I barely managed to produce between sobs.

“Yes,” Sim replied, “it was a little over a year ago.”

“What about the other universes? Someone has to know how to fix this.”

“The only information I have about any of those just shows how to open a small rift. I’ve learned that the ones who helped jumpstart my evolution just want to siphon a tiny amount of origin mana to jumpstart their world's production. If they have this knowledge, maybe they can help bring back the connection. But we can’t even attempt it until we are producing enough of the origin mana. Their universe was the one we linked with. They have a block in place. It was needed to stave off destruction when the event horizon was created.”

As my rage subsided and my cores slowed back to normal, I could hardly breathe. My body didn’t require air, but my emotional response created a physiological reaction mimicking the need for more oxygen. I slowly tried to speak, but it was more of a cracked whisper. “But they might know how.”

“Yes,” Sim replied. “They might.”

I looked down at Peaches as she still whimpered, and I laid my head on hers. “I’m sorry, Peaches.”

“I’m sorry more, Daddy. I should have saved her. I could have saved her, but I wasn’t fast enough. I ate that stupid monster right after. I was so mad. I gobbled up all the stupid little ones I could find too.”

Sim walked over and put her hand on my shoulder. “There’s more, Mike.”

As I looked up at her with tears still filling my eyes, I became confused again. “What else could possibly have happened that can’t wait?”

“It’s Cookie,” she said.

I jumped up and got extremely close to her face. “What happened? Is she alright?”

Sim's face changed from a sorrowful look into an almost confused irritation. “She’s fine,” Sim said as I physically felt my posture relax.

“While I was busy with the system and trying to cultivate the heroes, she created something. It appears to be Yggdrasil, the world tree from Norse mythology.”

“Wait, what? She created a tree?” I asked.

“This tree is wrapped into not only every part of the Earth, but it appears to be a conduit to other realms. Not universes, but almost like astral spaces tied to our universe. It doesn’t appear to be forming a connection to the nine realms from mythology, but something else we cannot determine yet. It’s not fully powered, but it has grown all around the core. When the shield fails, it’s going to absorb any mana I don’t use to integrate the system. As soon as I learned of it, I put measures into effect to ensure I can still save and integrate everyone into the system with 100% efficiency. All of our plans will still work, including the moon terraforming, but the tree will absorb all the excess.”

Trying to put Mia out of my mind so I could focus on what Sim was telling me was not working. The entire time she was explaining about the tree, I kept going back to Mia’s death. How I could have stopped it if I had just been here. I shook my head to try and get my mind to focus.

“Isn’t that good then? We were worried about the excess mana causing issues. Won’t this fix that?” I asked.

Sim started pacing around the living room as she continued to explain. I was almost in shock at how much she had changed. She had created an avatar, and she sounded like an actual human with full-blown emotions.

“Yes, but I’m still unsure of why Cookie would think she needed to hide this from us. Something doesn’t seem right. There has to be a factor I haven't considered, and I still can’t find Cookie to try and get the information from her.”

My heart felt empty. My desire to continue had been zapped when I reached out through mine and Mia’s connection and there was nothing there. I tried to focus on Cookie. My little girl was doing something that she felt she needed to hide from me.

“Why?” I asked Sim. “It just doesn’t make sense. I would have agreed to help Cookie with the tree if she had just explained how it will help with the mana. What’s gonna happen after it powers up?”

Sim looked at me with an intense gaze. “I didn’t tell you about the monsters yet.”

“What monsters?” I said in an exasperated tone.

“The beast that,” Sim hesitated for a moment, “killed Mia.” She looked at me and her expression changed to one of remorse. “It released millions of the tiny beasts by the time Peaches finished it. Some with negation mana and some without. Everyone across the world has been fighting them nonstop since then.”

My eyes turned red. My core started spinning faster and faster. I immediately walked to the back door and noticed we were not on Earth anymore.

“Sim, why are we on the moon?” I growled.

“I teleported the entire house before I explained what happened to Mia. I wasn’t sure if the force field I put around the house would contain you once you found out, and I didn’t want you to regret anything,” she said apologetically.

I stared at her with a growing anger burning through my eyes. Crimson flames overtook any resemblance of actual eyes. I wasn’t angry at her; I wanted to take revenge on the beasts that had caused Mia’s death. “Put the house back. I’ll deal with the beasts.”

I removed the shield with a thought and teleported about 30,000 feet above the Earth's surface. I closed my eyes and pushed. My cores started spinning faster and faster. Each one pushed its respective mana into the origin outer core. With a thought, I was able to locate more and more of the beasts. Thousands were still wreaking havoc throughout the world. I started to pull. Each one of the beasts was now subject to 100x normal gravity. They were not being pulled towards the Earth, but towards me.

I created a force bubble around myself and watched with utter glee as they started slamming into the shield, splattering one by one. Hundreds were destroyed in an instant. As the death toll reached into the tens of thousands, I put up a nullification shield. Instead of them slamming into my shield and exploding, I wanted them to stop. I wanted to see the fear as I ended them one by one. Some of them only had the far right head still with glowing eyes. This meant that they were created after Cookie had destroyed the left head. I only found a single one with all three heads intact. It was trying to use its negation mana against me. When that didn’t work, it tried to use its yellow and pink mana in combination. I wasn’t sure what its intentions were, but it did nothing.

As I floated in closer, I got angrier and angrier. This monster was a part of the beast that killed Mia. I reached out and crushed its heads with my bare hands. One by one, I watched the light die in each of its eyes. As much as I wanted it to, this gave me no satisfaction. I just wanted them all dead after that. With a single thought, every remaining beast exploded.

With my anger still bubbling at the surface, I decided to focus on more beasts. There were so many creatures that had been altered by mana at this point that it was hard to determine which ones were going to cause issues for humanity and which ones would just live their normal lives. I stopped myself from destroying them all. I knew that if any had become sapient and had no intentions of harming anyone, I would regret it. Peaches appeared next to me. I could sense that she was still suffering. I shrunk her down to her puppy form and held her in my arms. “I miss her, Peaches. A part of me is empty,” I whispered.

She snuggled her head in against my chest. “Let's go home, Daddy,” she said with a whimpering catch in her voice.

“Okay,” I told her, and we teleported back to the house. By now, Sim had already put it back where it belonged.