“What do you mean the tree is eating people?” I said in a panic.

Sim's avatar appeared in front of me. “As soon as I released the first batch of integrated back into the world, roots shot up through the ground, sucked the life force, soul, consciousness, whatever you want to call it, right out of everyone, and they dropped dead. There are already 400 million people that have been devoured. Go to the tree and see if you can stop it. It’s too powerful for me. It blocked all connections.”

I immediately teleported to the base of Yggdrasil. As soon as I arrived, I was greeted by two men. At least they appeared to be men. I could sense a big disturbance in the mana around them. One of them had darkness intertwined with his aura, and his body only seemed to process void mana. The other man had a singular core, but it was able to process a minute amount of all ten types of mana. Nowhere near as powerful as myself or Peaches, but I had never seen anyone with a core like this.

“What did you do to the tree? Why is it killing people?” I demanded.

Both men looked at each other and then at me before they both dropped to one knee. “Please allow us to explain, but first, you must let the tree finish. Origin The Omnipotent must not be allowed to pass through.”

I took a step closer and the man that could process the different types of mana put his hands up and started waving them at me, trying to get me to stop.

Before I made it more than a single step, the man kept talking. “The tree is the only shield you have that can stop him. It is 80% complete, and once it reaches 100%, the Tri-Mental-Union can complete the connection and you will have the time required to stop him yourself. If you halt the process now, not only will your world be in danger, but your entire universe could be devoured.”

Doubt showed across my face. I knew this had to be a trick. Whatever they were doing, I was going to make them stop. That’s when everything changed. What he said next made me freeze in place.

“The Tri-Mental-Union has put herself in the pathway to help finalize the connection and will perish if the connection is not completed.”

I stood there absolutely fuming. Millions of people are dying. How can I allow this to continue? I asked myself. But if he’s not lying, then Cookie will die if I don’t allow it to finish.

“Damnit Cookie! This is why you didn’t tell me any of this,” I screamed.

As I started to get more and more upset, the power radiating from my cores started to leak out. I could not believe that after all of my planning, all of my work, the details that Sim and I had to go through to determine the best course for humanity, and now hundreds of millions of people are just dead in an instant. My eyes started to burn with a crimson rage. My red core began producing more mana than the rest, pushing more and more through every channel and into my main core. Peaches appeared next to me and activated her absorption skill. One of the men stood up and lifted his arms. A black aura began shining through, absorbing as much mana as he could. The other man began speaking. It sounded similar to a chant, but I couldn’t understand anything he was saying due to the absolute fury I was feeling.

This was when Sim’s avatar appeared in front of me with Mia. Mia put her hand on my shoulder and stared into my eyes. Her eyes glowed with just a hint of white light. “Mike, calm down. We’ll figure this out and do what we can to fix it.”

As I looked into Mia’s eyes, my mind started coming back to me. I could hear her words, but the meaning was still foreign. She was gone. How is she standing in front of me?

“Mike, we can figure this out. Please calm down,” she repeated.

As I purposefully slowed the rotation of my red core, I snapped back to full coherency. “Mia?” I said, with a sad confusion plastered across my face.

A worried irritation pushed through, and I turned to Sim’s avatar. “Sim, what did you do?” I demanded.

Mia put her hand on my cheek and began speaking. “Sim gave me the memories up until my death and then added in everything that has happened since. She felt you losing control and knew there was no way to bring you out of it without me. You would have destroyed everything.”

At this point, the Grand Magus stood up and interjected. “I apologize, but two things need to happen immediately, or we will all be devoured. Release the next group of souls for the tree. I can feel Origin preparing to come through where the siphon connection was to be situated. Also, push as much origin mana into the base of the tree to allow the Tri-Mental-Union to activate the shield. I apologize again for the urgency, but you must allow this to happen, or we all die now.”

Sim closed her eyes momentarily and opened them with an urgency that she had never expressed before. “I apologize, admin, but I must proceed without permission.”

As soon as Sim finished speaking, I felt a huge spike in mana. I knew what she was doing. A wave of overwhelming despair came over me. I didn’t have the mental capacity to stop her. I was still too focused on the fact that Mia had returned before we knew the consequences of bringing her back and that if I acted now, Cookie would be gone. We had agreed to not bring Mia back without learning more about the possibilities of a soul.

I watched as lights started pouring into the base of the tree from every direction. I realized that Sim had just fed millions of people to the tree.

“What are you doing?” I screamed.

I watched as Sim looked at me sympathetically and mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.” She then closed her eyes and raised her arms. I activated my divine sight and watched as she pushed more origin mana than I had ever seen go into anything straight into the tree. The entire base began to glow. I felt a pressure from the center of the earth fighting against the shield that Yggdrasil was creating. I could feel the absolute terror it instilled in the two men standing before me. As the tree fully activated, the pressure on the core became tremendous. I heard an ungodly bellow from within the core, and then it vanished. The two men looked at each other and then at me and dropped to their knees once again. “Thank you! We will do everything in our power to assist you before his inevitable return.”

This was the moment that Cookie appeared. She put on a sympathetic smile before she spoke. “Hi, Dad.”

I tried to hold my composure seeing Cookie for the first time in what felt like ages. She no longer looked like a woman with a mission. Her eyes felt softer, her face had an expression of sad relief, and a small smile crossed her lips. “I’m so sorry I had to put you through all that. This was the only way, and you would have never been able to sacrifice so many.”

Tears started to run down my cheeks as all of my cores sped up. This time it wasn’t anger or sadness I was feeling, it was disdain. I was completely disgusted with what had just happened. I still didn’t know all the details of why everyone thought this was necessary, but around 5% of the world's population was just sacrificed.

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I didn’t know what to do. I knew I had to sit and have a conversation with Cookie, but I was so disgusted with everything I couldn’t bring myself to speak to her. I quickly created a new room beneath my house on the moon with a full cryochamber. I snapped my fingers and inserted Cookie into the chamber, activating it immediately. I dropped my head and, without saying another word, teleported to my new home on the moon.

…

Hannah had been hiding for quite a while now. Cookie had helped her develop an ability to shield herself from not only her father but also Sim. The only bad part was that when the system went active, she was going to be left behind and might be destroyed by a mana burst. Because of this, she decided to drop her shielding and allowed Sim to teleport her to an astral space for integration.

As Hannah appeared in her own astral space, a screen popped up in front of her vision. It had a big blinking button that said “Begin.”

As she looked around, she noticed that there was absolutely nothing. No lights, sounds, objects, or anything of any substance. She couldn’t even see her body. She appeared to be just a ball of energy. Strangely enough, when she mentally reached for the button, a tendril of light pressed it and the surroundings exploded with light.

“Scanning….Please wait…. Welcome Hannah. To begin, would you like to change your name?”

Two buttons blinked in front of her. Yes - No.

She mentally chose No.

The next set of choices came in rapid-fire. As soon as she made a choice for one question, another was already in front of her.

Would you like to retain the race of - Human.

She chose Yes.

Retain race - Caucasian 31% Danish, 22% Irish, 19% Scandinavian, 18% Russian, 10% Austrian?

She chose yes again.

Retain gender - Female.

Once again, she chose yes.

Please choose a height.

She chose to make herself a little bit taller and was now a staggering 6’2”. Considering this was more than 6” in growth, she was very excited.

Please choose a build.

Hannah had always had a skinny fat build. She wasn’t big, but she also had very little muscle tone, so she chose to increase her muscle to show more of an athletic build. Her appearance had become more and more beautiful as her mana channels became larger, but the changes didn’t account for her lack of muscle.

Please wait… Bloodline detected… manual bloodline has been formed with outside assistance. Do you wish to keep this bloodline or alter it based on the true genetic bloodline your DNA allows?

As Hannah considered what she was reading, she became very confused. Cookie had helped her activate her bloodline. “What does it mean by manual bloodline? Did Cookie force a certain type of bloodline on me? Did she alter me in some way? Was it more or less powerful than what I actually would have gotten?” she wondered. Ultimately, she decided to trust her friend.

She chose to keep it.

Scanning… please select a path.

In front of Hannah was a list of available paths pertaining to her type of mana and powers. Because of her skills and abilities she obtained prior to integration, all of the choices had to do with mental or psychological abilities. She ultimately chose Mind Mage. This allowed her to not only keep her skills and abilities she already had, but it was a legendary path. That means her growth and powers would be much stronger as she leveled. This path allowed her to allocate 20 free points per level as well as increasing intellect and wisdom both by 15 points each.

“I wonder if that’s good or not? She said out loud.

Once she chose her path, a list of professions appeared. There were three main professions that went along with mind mage. She had a gigantic list of over 50 options, but the three main ones were highlighted: Healer, Tactician, and Battle Mage.

Hannah had gone through many battles as well as planned many operations while Cookie was incapacitated. She thought back to everything she went through. She was wondering why one of the options was a healer. The only person she had helped was Cookie, and that was only done because she had caused herself to overexert her mana channels activating the tree. She had no intentions of being a healer, so she disregarded that option immediately.

Tactician made a lot of sense to her. She had planned and schemed even before there was any mana. Part of her responsibilities in the company was to plan out operations. That’s how she and Cookie had first met. They worked on a kidnapping together. They had to plan out how to kidnap a foreign dignitary without anyone knowing they were missing. It was quite the undertaking, but ultimately, they had done it through a month-long ruse. After Cookie had come back from her bloodline activation, that was pretty much all she did. Plan out distractions and where to release mana to create monsters so everyone would stay busy. She was the only reason Yggdrasil was able to grow undetected. She had made sure that if it seemed like someone was getting too close, they were attacked.

The third option sounded kind of fun. She was sure that a profession like that would come with some extremely powerful skills. She wanted to be as powerful as possible during the next phase of human existence but wasn’t sure if she wanted to be on the front lines if something happened. She decided to test her luck and ask a question.

“Can you show me a list of skills for each profession?”

She waited for a few seconds but never heard a response. “Sim, is it? Why can’t I get a list of skills?” Hannah asked.

A few seconds went by before all of a sudden the choice disappeared. A girl was now standing in front of her. “Hello, Hannah. I’m glad you decided to ask for clarification. Otherwise, I would have let you complete integration without noticing that you were the cause of most of our issues for the past couple of years. No one going through integration knows my name.”

Hannah stood there in absolute horror. Her new body had finished forming, and the ball of light that had been her existence was now deeply embedded in her core. Once her body formed, all mental blocks had been stripped away. She had just made herself known to the system. Unwittingly, she had opened her mind to further probing, removing the block Cookie had placed on her.

Sim stared at her with a mock smile on her face, showing an emotion unbecoming of an artificial being. It was one of sinister, malicious glee. Like she had just found her prey, and the fun was about to begin. Hannah had never felt such fear. All of her mental defenses were gone. She felt like a child again, standing before her father, cowering after purposefully pushing her neighbor that couldn’t swim into a canal for an accident that did nothing but make her drop her lunch. This is when she was teleported away and appeared at the family compound on the moon, standing before the statue of Peaches with a dead bird in her mouth.

…

Sim had mentally contacted me and told me that she had found the source of the monster outbreak that had been the reason so many had died prior to system activation. She explained about Hannah and gave me all the details she had extracted from her mind. I immediately teleported to the moon and stood before her.

“Hello, Hannah. Sim tells me that you’re the one who helped Cookie keep us busy the past few years. You know you’re responsible for quite a few deaths, right?”

Hannah was cowering in a crouching position. She had so much fear and anguish coursing through her mind that I couldn’t even understand half of what she was thinking. I looked over at Sim’s avatar and nodded my head. Sim allowed Hannah’s mana to rush back into her nodes in her head. She immediately snapped back to reality and stood up. Her mental defenses were back in place.

“There, is that better? Can you talk now?” I asked.

“Yes,” she responded. “I do not regret what I did. It had to be done. If you had stopped the tree, then we would all be dead or slaves right now.”

“I know,” I told her. “We have some guests that came through, and Sim was able to see what we were up against. Ultimately, the tree did its job, and it’s done now. I’m still trying to decide what to do with Cookie. I know why you both did what you did, but it was a horrible way to do it. If we had worked together, we could have saved a ton more lives.”

Hannah stared at me with a confused look on her face. It looked like she was going through everything play by play and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t more upset. “So you’re just mad about a few extra people dying?”

“Yes,” I told her. “Even one extra death is too many. What happens after we give people the ability to defend themselves is up to them, but these people died when we could have protected them. They died before they could protect themselves. In some cases, the monsters you let loose killed hundreds before any of us could get there. There has to be some type of consequence for that.”

Hannah just stared at me again. Confusion plastered on her face.

“Okay, you know what…” I flicked my finger, and she disappeared. I teleported her to the same room with another cryochamber that we were holding Cookie in. “I’ll deal with both of them later.”