Alice jumped off the truck, getting on the same level as Jack. She stared at him with wide eyes and a growing smile.

Oh no.

“JACK!” His sister shouted, throwing herself at Jack. Jack tried to raise his arms to hug her, but his sister pinned them down with her hug. “Oh my god, I thought you were dead! Holy shit, you’re alive!”

Jack was unsure of how he should react. Although he knew this person was Alice, both by her dog and by the way she talked and acted, the Alice he knew was barely five foot six. Jack was six foot flat, and this giant towered over him! Plus, the Alice he knew didn’t have an ounce of muscle on her! Now, she was like an Amazonian!

“The hell happened to you?” Jack asked, genuinely curious.

Alice laugh-cried, burying her face in the crook of his neck. “I missed you too.” She stood up, kissing his forehead. “Anubis! Down!”

Anubis sat on his back legs, but scooted so he could lick Jack’s hand. Disgusted, Jack backed away from the annoyingly cheerful dog.

Alice ruffled Jack’s shaggy hair. “Holy shit man! How did you survive!? When we all saw the giant door pop up, we thought the whole city was destroyed!”

Even from here, if you found a good straight view, you could see the peak of the giant door that used to be Jack’s hometown through the blue haze of distance. “How’d you know it’s a door?”

“There’s others.” Sensei answered. “Come on, we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

Now that Alice had properly vetted Jack, everyone else seemed content to return to their days. Guards returned to the walls, gardeners tended to the farms, and that one lady relentlessly scolded Macey for running off.

All told, there were nearly a hundred people. Thirty six of them were armed and armored, even if not all of them tended to the walls. The other sixty odd people looked and acted like civilians, with the majority tending to the farm that had replaced nearly all the green space in the park. Aside from Macey, everyone looked between sixteen and fifty. Hiro looked the youngest, but maybe Jack was being racist towards the asian kid.

Sensei, Hiro, and Alice led Jack to the nearby building, where a podium was set up on the far end, and dozens of folding chairs sat haphazardly about. Sensei took one of the chairs, and Jack did the same. Alice stood behind Jack with a big, dumb, teary smile.

“So how do you two know each other?” Hiro asked.

“Siblings.” Jack said.

Sensei nodded. “Where you from Jack?”

Jack thumbed in the direction of his hometown. “Alice said you can see the door? Yeah, there. It happened just before the year ended.”

“What’s his Apocrypha?” Alice asked Hiro.

“Predator.”

Jack grinned, displaying his teeth. Immediately, Alice thrust her fingers into his mouth to get a closer look. Her eyes changed from teary to fascinated in an instant.

“Woah!”

Jack flailed in place, trying his best to escape gently, but to no avail. Alice was like this even when Jack broke his arm as a kid, turning it every which way to get a better look at it. Needless to say, it hurt. Compared to that, he could wait this out.

“He also has nine achievements.” Hiro said.

Alice’s grip tightened on his cheeks. “He what!?”

Jack tapped his sister’s muscular forearm. “Agh- ara hah?”

She removed her fingers, not even bothering to wipe them. Jack suddenly found himself hoping she at least washed them before coming here. “What’s the big deal with achievements anyways?”

“How much do you know?” Sensei asked.

“Not a lot.” Jack gave his default answer.

Hiro brought his knuckles down on Sensei’s fedora. “Be more specific.”

Sensei scowled, adjusting his hat. “What do you know about achievements? How to get them, how you got yours, etcetera.”

“Five times, I was shown a golden text box saying ‘you got an achievement’ or whatever. After the first one, I got what I’ve been calling a taunt skill. The most recent one gave me my teeth. And these.”

Jack removed his gloves, immediately offering a hand for Alice to study. He popped his claws in and out for everyone to see.

Sensei nodded. “That’s your Apocrypha. At the end of the year, everyone got one. It’s like a pity achievement. What else do you know?”

“That’s about it, really.”

Sensei nodded again, but sighed. “Right then. It seems I have to assume the role of teacher once more. Yara yara, what a pain.”

Hiro hit him on the head again. This time, it looked like it hurt.

Sensei held his head, glaring at Hiro with tears in his eyes. “Hey!”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Just give him the cliffnotes.” Hiro rolled his eyes.

Sensei sighed, but obliged. “Do you play video games? You know about them, good enough. Achievements are basically the same from games, minus the easter eggs. You do something great, and you get an achievement. There’s tiers to achievements too, you’ll know which tier you got by the text box you saw when you got the achievement. The lowest tier is Great, and the second is Magnificent, and the third is Awesome. Tamer there is the only one with an Awesome achievement.”

Jack looked at his sister, who was engrossed with his hand. When she pressed on the center of his palm, his claws were forced out. “I didn’t know there were lower tiers.”

Sensei nodded, but paused halfway. “I’m sorry, lower?”

“My achievements. I got five text boxes, but you said I have nine achievements.”

Hiro started. “Wait, you’re saying you only got text boxes for Awesome achievements!?”

And a Legendary. “Yeah.”

Sensei shook his head slightly. Alice and Hiro lost their enthusiasm and gave Jack a look.

Jack raised his hands. “At the end of the year, I got a few other text boxes. One of them said something like ‘you can read messages from the Universe easier now’.”

Sensei nodded. Hiro pressed his earlier point.

“Wait, so you’re saying you have five Awesome achievements!?”

“Four, actually. The fifth one I got a few minutes before the year ended. A Legendary achievement.”

The room fell into silence. All eyes went to Sensei.

He nodded.

“HOLY SHIT!” Hiro and Alice echoed each other.

“There’s more…” Sensei muttered, burying his hand in his neckbeard.

“Dude, that’s awesome! I mean legendary!” Alice laughed, slapping his back. “What’d you do to achieve that!?”

“I was the only living being in the whole city.” Jack admitted.

The others immediately blanched.

“Well… that explains your other two achievements.” Sensei muttered.

Jack pointed to himself. “You said that my first three achievements are Executioner, Apocrypha Survivor: Predator, and Slaughterer. What about the other six?”

Hiro shook his head. “I don’t know man, I’m sorry. My skill only lets me see the first three achievements. I see them in order, first by level, then by the date you gained them. Apocrypha is a Great achievement, and since yours is before your Slaughterer, that means you either got it super recently, or its a Magnificent achievement.”

“What’s the difference between levels?”

“How hard they are to obtain, as well as how strong the rewards are.” Sensei answered.

Alice got in front of Jack, placing her fists on her hips. “I have two Great achievements, one Magnificent, and one Awesome!”

“She has the most achievements that we know of. Or knew, I suppose.” Hiro said.

Alice ticked them off on her fingers. “My first I got was ExtraDimensional Vet. I got it when healed a monster I’d never seen before! My second was my Magnificent achievement, Tamer! I got my Awesome achievement when I tamed a boss monster from a dungeon! It’s called Who’s the Boss! And then my Apocrypha is Alpha! I got these babies when I got the Alpha trait!” Alice flexed her muscles.

Hiro offered his achievements next. “I’ve got three. Two Great, one Magnificent. The first one was actually my Magnificent one, which is called Quiet as a Mouse. It reduces any sounds I make when I want to be quiet. The second one gave me an inspection skill that tells me traits of people. Among other things, name, age, gender, and achievements are all parts of the list. My Apocrypha is Prey.”

Jack grinned, pointing to Hiro. His polar opposite.

Hiro also gestured to Sensei, who was lost in thought. “I’m sure you saw for yourself, but besides Maurice and Macey, everyone else had to fight for survival. Maurice survived by luck alone. All three of his achievements are Great level. One helps him tell if someone’s lying, and the other gives him limited omniscience. And I mean limited. He can tell the outcome of a checkers game before it even starts. Chess games are a little iffy though. His Apocrypha is Savant. We think it just boosts his other two achievements, since he’s been seeing the future a lot better now.”

“You can tell the future?” Jack asked with partial awe.

“He predicts it.” Alice said, crossing her arms. “He still needs information to draw inferences on. There was no way he could have seen you coming because there was no hint to base that guess on. Games are easier, since they play by rigid rules. He’s also mostly accurate about what achievements do. We should probably ask him what your two achievements do for you.”

They waited in silence for a second, but Sensei seemed entrenched in his thoughts.

“He’s predicting the future.” Hiro explained when it was obvious he wasn’t going to speak any time soon. Hiro shrugged. “Or the past. He could be trying to trace back your journey to get here.”

“Were you alone?” Alice asked. “Are there any other survivors?”

Jack tilted his hand back and forth. “I scoured the whole city over the course of my year there. I found pockets of survivors, but none of them made it past the third or fourth month. I’ve been alone since the beginning. I’m the only survivor.”

Sensei’s head jerked up at the statement. “Normally when people talk, they mostly tell the truth. There’s occasionally omitted information for the benefit of expediency, but when you said you were the only survivor, there was no doubt in your mind. And I mean no doubt.”

“When I say I scoured the city, I meant it.” Jack pointed back in the direction of the monolithic door where his hometown used to be. “Literally not a stone went unturned. I got my Legendary achievement when there was nothing but me left alive in the whole city.”

“Oh…” Alice whispered.

Jack shrugged one shoulder. “But if what Hiro says is true about you requiring information in order to predict things, I think I have something you might want to know. When I got my Legendary achievement, it gave me an option, yes or no. It said ‘Everyone within this city reveres you as its leader. Would you like to claim this city as your territory?’.”

“Would you like to claim…” Sensei fell silent again, this time falling deeper into his concentration.

“I selected no. I didn’t know if selecting yes would tie me to the territory, and I didn’t want to chance it.” Jack clarified.

Alice sighed. “Well, I for one and glad you did.”

Hiro laughed nervously. “No kidding! Hey, I know you only just got here, and I would love to just let you rest for a few days, but I’d like to know. Clearly, you’re a good fighter. Would you like to join the adventurers?”

“Jack wouldn’t hurt a fly!” Alice said, offended on his behalf.

“He’s the lone survivor of a city in the apocalypse with multiple violent titles like Executioner and Slaughterer.” Hiro deadpanned. “He’s a fighter.”

Alice went to contend with him, but hesitated and looked back at Jack. Jack gave her a reassuring smile, which unintentionally displayed his pointed teeth. She huffed, crossing her arms. “If Jack joins, then so do I.”

Hiro’s eyes lit up. “REALLY!? I mean, *ahem* you mean it?”

“Adventurers leave the settlement and fight monsters, right?” Jack asked.

Hiro nodded.

Jack grinned like a true predator. “I’m in.”

Hiro smiled nervously, shaking his hand. “Welcome to Clearview.”