Erik eventually left them, as he couldn’t convince her otherwise. With new information in hand, Erik decided to try to keep away from towns and cities entirely. He quickly went back to the last town to find a few things he could use his power with, and a bag or backpack to keep the things in.

  He had also asked the woman if she knew where he could find a motorbike, preferably an off-road one in her hometown, and had been given directions, though she couldn’t promise it would be there, or if it worked at all.

  Among the things Erik had collected in his new, stolen backpack were a few children’s frisbees in a semi-transparent purple colour, a few boxes of assorted screws, a yellow bouncy ball and quite a few pebbles. The problem with his power was that he knew that it worked in quite a few different ways, but he didn’t know how it would work, and with what, before he touched the thing.

  He’d tried his flashlight, and his magic somehow wouldn’t react to it. The same applied to the cellphone he’d taken, a bottle opener and nails. He wasn’t sure what made some things, like the screws, work but the nails wouldn’t, and it irked him. He would have to run around touching everything to see if it would be helpful to him.

  What also worried him was the fact, while he knew what his power would make the stuff do, he didn’t know the effect of it. He considered the stick he had used on the beast the previous day. He had gotten a feeling of what it would do, and he just did it. He hadn’t known how long the glue would last, how fast it would dry, or how brittle it would be when solidified.

  Against the massive beast, it had only lasted for a quick minute before the creature managed to break it open from within. That meant he would have to test the new things he’d found out before doing it in a fight, where his life or that of others was on the line.

  Therein lay another problem; since he didn’t know how effective the thing would be, it wasn’t exactly safe to test them just wherever. It should be an open area, where he could potentially be attacked by the beasts lurking around, and even then he wouldn’t know the effect of the power in close quarters.

  He had really gotten an annoying power, and he could only hope Jessie would have a better one. She should be back in a few days at most. Erik was worried what she might do when she finds out there’s been an invasion of beasts unlike anything the world had ever seen during her absence. He hoped he could get to her before she did anything rash.

  Some words Nana had said during one of her explanations, was that magical bodies were quite impervious to mundane things, and the most effective way to take down a magical monster or a Remnant was magic. Erik considered the beasts again. If bullets or bombs barely made the dogs flinch, but Erik could harm them with nothing but his fists… They had to be magical in nature.

  That brought about a whole other concern for Erik. After thinking on it for quite a while, he had boiled it down to two theories, neither any better than the other. It could mean that magic was having a renaissance. His list of consequences this could bring were likely very incomplete, but he figured one of the things would be a resurgence of magical beings.

  This could even explain how there suddenly were two people from the same planet appearing in Afterlife at the exact same time. It didn’t explain why no one else from Earth appeared in the following months after that, however. It might just be a coincidence, after all.

  What it meant for the beasts, was that this wave of hellbeasts was just the beginning, however. More magical beasts could appear if the magic was coming back. For all Erik knew, it could maybe even affect the tides and temperature, but he couldn’t know.

  His other theory, the one he found more likely, was that another Remnant was the cause of all this havoc. Erik had wondered why he hadn’t heard anything about any Remnants his entire life, as it was unlikely there were none at all on Earth. That meant most of them, however many there were, were keeping it secret.

  Erik understood why. The world wasn’t ready for magic, nor would they simply let magical beings live in peace. Erik wasn’t sure whether it would be like in the movies, where the governments of the world would capture and experiment on them, but if they didn’t, the media would be even worse still.

  Erik had told the mother and son from earlier to keep his ‘superpower’ a secret, as he wasn’t sure if he wanted the world to know just yet. The beast invasion might make it difficult to hide for long, but he wanted to know how the world was dealing with it before showing off.

  If another Remnant was behind this, they would have to be stopped, one way or the other, and the militaries of the world would likely not be capable of that if magic was involved. Based on the strength and numbers of the creatures that might have been summoned by some magical power, the Remnant was likely much stronger than Erik, and he’d need help if he was to stop them and he feared just Jessie wasn’t enough.

  In this weird mental state, where Erik was happy to be alive again, feared for his world and worried about his future, the newly reborn Remnant crossed roads, mountains and rivers on his stolen motorbike. He kept clear of those towns he could, no matter how small, but kept on the road between them, to maximise his travelling speed.

  When a nearby town was marked by road signs, Erik rather went into the forests, circling the towns from afar before getting back on the road somewhere further away from the towns. This wasn’t always as easy, as the norwegian landscape was a whole lot of mountains and cliffs, forcing him to backtrack more than a couple of times and find another route. He didn’t want to stray too far from the roads as he feared he’d get lost in the unknown environment.

  He wasn’t surprised that he didn’t find any other people roaming around the often dense forests, but he was worried how far south he would have to go to find some kind of trace for any military defence attempts.

  He didn’t search the towns, but he should have spotted at least something along the roads, whether that be military vehicles smashed by the roadside or anything else. There were quite a few cars along the road, some even with dead people in them, though those were few and far between.

  Many seemed to have managed to escape their cars, but didn’t make it far, as there were quite a few corpses along the road as well. Erik felt cold inside as he looked at all the dead he drove past. If he was angry or sad, he wasn’t sure, but it made him think of his father.

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  He hoped he lived, that he got away. He sure as hell hoped he wasn’t behind all this. If Erik was a Remnant, the bloodline was from either his father or his mother’s side.

  Since he saw his mother die, and didn’t see her in the Afterlife, she couldn’t be doing this. If it was his father, then he would have died sometime earlier, but he had never been gone or missing for three months as far as Erik could remember.

  Supposedly, magical beings like Remnants also aged slower, especially as their magical powers increased, but he knew his father had visibly aged in the twenty years Erik could remember back to. It could’ve been a trick, but Erik wasn’t so sure.

  At night, Erik camped out in the woods to decrease the chance of being attacked by the hounds. He cursed himself for not even thinking about camping gear when leaving either his hometown, or the town he had stolen the bike from. He had several pebbles and frisbees, but not even a single blanket.

  He had also forgotten clothes and food, though he didn’t feel hungry even after more than two days since he resurrected. It might be because of his magic, but also everything else that was happening.

  Sleep came slowly that night, and he dreamed of magic and wonder, trials and challenges, monsters, blood and death. He woke before the sun the next morning, and didn’t go back to sleep. He was mentally exhausted. His body was practically fully healed, as the damage done to him was practically only a concussion from the paw strike. He still felt sore where he was struck, but that was it.

  Maybe it was too much to hope for that his mind would still be as low-maintenance as in Afterlife. He missed whatever magic made everything seem so okay. He got ready to continue on.

  Late the previous night he had passed Oslo, barely escaping a few hounds that seemed to be patrolling the highway. After slowly falling behind for a few minutes, they had given up and stopped chasing him. Were they ordered in some way to stay in a certain area?

  Right now, Erik was close to the Swedish region of the Empire, and in just an hour or so, he would be crossing the divide. He was even less certain where to ride from there, as he wasn’t as familiar with the roads and towns.

  As he crossed the border, he was ambushed by two hounds coming from out of nowhere. He barely had time to react, but managed to throw himself off the bike, barely avoiding a pouncing hellbeast. The dog-like animal landed in a roll, and was quickly back on its four feet.

  The second hound charged at Erik a moment after, and Erik dodged to the side, trying to reach into his backpack at the same time. The beast grazed his side, and the force was enough to throw him in a spin, likely with a broken rib or two.

  Luckily, the beasts weren’t used to their prey fighting back, so when he was down they were in no rush to strike at him again. Both inched closer to the Remnant with a hungry growl. For their part, that was a mistake.

  Erik had the time to reach into his backpack, finding just what he was searching for, and pulled the things out. With a box of screws in one hand, and pebbles in the other, he was ready to fight back.

  The man threw one of the small rocks at one beast as hard as he could while still being mostly accurate, and another at the second. As the rocks hit their targets, a deep boom sounded in the vicinity. The dogs fell limply over on their sides.

  It wasn’t over yet, and Erik knew it. The pebbles made a concussive blast, and Erik was intrigued at how powerful it had really been. It proved quite effective against the hounds, but he didn’t know for how long.

  The problem with the stick he had used previously, was that he couldn’t attack the parts of their bodies that were covered, as that might reduce the structural integrity of the solidified mass keeping the creatures at bay, as well as not harm them in any meaningful way.

  That meant he had no choice but to attack whatever part of them was sticking out.

  It was likely a good way to keep one out of the fight while focusing on the other, but he would have to see how long the concussive blast would last on them.

  As soon as they hit the ground, Erik grabbed a small handful of screws from the box, and threw them at the closest hound. Unlike the stick and pebbles, he had to use more of the screws at the same time, the reason for which was made apparent the moment they landed on and around the target beast.

  As Erik felt his magic in them activate, each of them shone blue and lifted off the ground, hovering there for just a second after which they released a blue-ish plasma between two or three other screws.

  The result resembled a bird-cage of lightning, and Erik could soon smell the grilled meat of the dog. Its body started to smoke as it convulsed.

  The second dog rose to the ground quickly, just when Erik was picking out more screws to throw at it, and by now it clearly regarded him as a threat.It charged at the man without even a thought, but Erik had prepared for that as well.

  Throwing the screws back into the box, he picked up the frisbee he had prepared at the same time, and threw it straight at the monster. As Erik activated it, the frisbee turned itself from its horizontal flight to a full stop with its top side now facing the beast instead of towards the sky.

  The beast paid it no mind as it rushed its target. The sound like that of a bird hitting a window reached Erik, now with a new batch of screws in his hand. Hoping the frisbee-shield was one-directional, he threw the screws at the confused beast.

  It was bleeding from its mouth, and had visibly lost a few of its large brown-ish white fangs. The force it must’ve had when hitting the invisible magic wall must’ve been enough to push a large truck out of the road. Had it actually rammed into a truck though, it would probably come out from that completely unharmed.

  Did the fact that the shield was magic completely nullify the beast’s resistance, or could the entire creature have crushed itself in the impact if Erik’s magic had been stronger? How much of the force it impacted dissipated in magical ways before the monster was affected by the remainder? Was the third law of physics wrong when magic was involved?

  The screws flew past the invisible shield without a problem, and Erik activated them right as most of them hit the creature. As it had a slight wind-up time, Erik was glad the beast had hit the wall with such force, as it was likely concussed and did nothing but shake its head sideways.The second beast was quickly taken down, filling the air with more smoke and smells.

  The lightning-emitting screws lasted for about five seconds, which Erik hadn’t noticed from the earlier tesla bomb, seeing as he was attacked before it had died out. It seemed that was the maximum time for the concussive rocks and the high-voltage screws both. A short while later, the frisbee fell to the ground, the magic in it vanished without a trace.

  Erik picked it back up, but it didn’t feel right in his hands. It was the same instinct he felt when he grabbed it and knew what it could do, but it was more hollow now. Erik charged it with magic again, feeling nothing unusual. He then tossed it and activated the shield once more.

  It had lasted ten seconds the last time, and did so the second time as well. When it had fallen to the ground the second time, Erik reached down to grab it, but it unceremoniously cracked and broke apart in several pieces. The pieces didn’t give Erik any feeling at all as he lifted them from the ground. It seemed these were too poor quality to survive the magic coursing through them.

  Unsure whether the monsters were dead or just incapacitated, Erik moved closer to the last one taken down, and he felt more than heard it still breathing, weak as it was. He checked the other one, and it was just as the first.

  They would likely survive, and he didn’t know when they would wake up, so the Remnant considered checking his bike to see the damage and leave. That wouldn’t help in the long run, however. He couldn’t be the anime hero who always left his enemies alive, only for them to turn to the good side because he had said something that resonated with them.

  These creatures had to die, because the less of them there were, the better for everyone. He could use this chance to experiment a little.