The familiar feel of a life I had enjoyed, far more than I had ever expected to, washed over me as I walked back into our home. The ever-present smell of gas wasn’t enough to overpower it. The gas was a double-edged sword. It had probably been enough to keep any of the new monsters roaming the planet out, but it also meant the house could go up in flames at any moment.

  I had briefly considered destroying the house once we had what we needed from it, just to throw any would-be pursuers off our trail. But the memories of our home were enough to make me reconsider. It seemed unlikely I needed to go that far.

  No one knew I was on Earth. I had made sure I wasn’t being followed when I’d left System space. And while that didn’t mean I hadn’t been, it did mean that anyone capable of doing so could have already crushed me at any time.

  They would already know where I was, and how I had spent my life here. There was nothing I could do to make that trail go cold at my current level. It was best that I worked under the assumption that those on the planet had no idea what they were facing, and that I did my best to keep it that way for as long as I could.

  Opening all the windows as I moved through the house, carefully checking any potential hiding spots, I made my way toward the kitchen. Despite the stove top gas still being on, there was nothing new coming from it. At least that meant we were quickly moving past explosive danger. If only everything could be so easy.

  I called back through the house for Ash. “Alright, it should be safe enough now, I’m in the kitchen.”

  What I needed right now was a good way to bring supplies with us. Any sort of spatial storage abilities would be far off. They just weren’t something remotely important to focus on for now. There was a good chance we’d get some sort of equipment to handle that, long before we had any ability to directly tap into a pocket dimension.

  That meant we, and by we I meant mostly me, were stuck with conventional means. Where had I left the hiking gear? We hadn’t been in years, but Rich and Ash had used to love trips to the woods when they were younger. The gear was nothing special, but I could make it work until we found better.

  The sound of a foil wrapper being torn open told me Ash had made it to the pantry. We had a couple of cases of bottled water in there, but that wouldn’t last long. I sighed lightly as I realized I’d be forced to deal with that new river even more now. At least I preferred sea monsters to vermin. They always tasted much better over a fire.

  “Stick as many protein bars as you feel like you can carry in your pockets. Oh, and go find your old pocket knife, too. It won’t do a lot, but I’d rather you have it anyway,” I said, turning toward them. Floof cocked his head at me with that odd look a dog does when they don’t seem to quite understand what you are saying.

  “Dad, I don’t even know where I last had that. Where’s the old rifle? That’s probably a better bet,” she replied.

  “Sadly, that won’t be much help either. We will take it, though. But I wouldn’t expect the bullets to work for more than a week. Once the ambient mana starts seeping into the ammunition, it’s going to be too dangerous to use,” I replied.

  In truth, we probably had more than a week, but I wasn’t very well versed in the construction of bullet casings. Which meant I wasn’t willing to risk a gun exploding in either of our hands. Plus, there was the fact that non-magical bullets wouldn’t do much against the more powerful things we’d be facing soon enough.

  What I didn’t want to think about was what the world governments were doing with their stockpile of weapons. Most of their communication systems had likely already failed with the integration underway, and I had no idea what that meant when it came to missile guidance or nuclear weapons, but I doubted it was good.

  I had seen worlds where their own defensive systems had caused almost as much death as the System integration had. It was never a good sight. Technologically advanced societies always fared worse when magic overtook them. At least initially; what kind of powerhouses came out of the integration in the end was just as random as always.

  It wasn’t like anyone had ever seen me or my brother coming that first time. And we sure as hell hadn’t expected to ever see our sister again. Hopefully, that would translate to what was expected out of Earth. Because I wasn’t running again.

  Last time I had done it to save Alecks’ life. My family was a lot bigger now than it was then. And any motivation I may have lost over the centuries to push toward the top of the System had been entirely replaced in the last day. I wouldn’t stop at where I had left off before.

  A one-man army wouldn’t cut it anymore. Armies could lose. I had children to protect. Nothing would stop me from doing that.

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  “Wait, does that mean everything is going to break down?” she asked, sounding worried again. Something was bothering her.

  “It does. At least until it all gets rebuilt with mana infusions. All of Earth’s tech and beyond can be replicated with System magic. It’s just going to take awhile,” I explained.

  “What happens to everyone relying on machines to live every day right now, though?”

  Oh. Damn, I hadn’t considered that would be what was worrying her, but no, it made complete sense. She had been in and out of hospitals so often recently. She had met so many people who needed modern technology to live. This was one of the reasons so many people, myself included, considered integrations horrible.

  “I’m sorry.” It was all I could say.

  I saw the tears for a second, before she blinked them away. I knew that hiding them didn’t mean she was over it. But there wasn’t anything we could do at the moment to help them, and sometimes, bitter reality forced you to push through. Right now we had to survive first, and if we did, we could help everyone else second.

  “There’s just a lot of people who I keep remembering, ones won’t have someone like you to save them. And I know we can’t do anything, but I hate it.” She looked away from me, hiding the return of her tears.

  I took a deep breath and swallowed nervously. She sounded so much like I had, back when I’d realized the true horror of System integrations. I had no good words of comfort for her. So instead I told her the truth.

  “I wish I could tell you something different. That there was some way I could just save everyone, but you already know I can’t do that. As powerful as you currently see me, the System is so far beyond me that I doubt it sees me as anything beyond a blip. Right now, all we can do is push forward, and try to keep ourselves alive as we work towards finding your mom and brother.”

  Floof, seemingly understanding the tension in the room, chose that moment to rub his head against Ash’s hand. “I’ll do my best. What else should we be getting from the house?”

  That was all I could ask. “Get any of your medication that you can still take that will be useful. I also want you to collect anything you are super attached to memory-wise. I want to bury our keepsakes in the yard. On the off chance we find the house again, it will be something nice we still have.”

  “Do you think my room is safe?” she asked, stuttering slightly. Her eyes had dried at least.

  “Yeah, I’m sure the house is empty. And I don’t think anything else will be out hunting until night. But take Floof. I’ll be in the garage, then I’ll head over to find you, and we can get a few things from your brother’s room as well,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said, the anxiety still obvious in her voice. But despite that, she turned and headed for her room, Floof in tow.

  We spent the next several hours slowly collecting what we’d need to survive, and the things most emotionally connected to us. There were a lot. Our family had been in this house for a little over two decades. So much had happened here, I could hardly believe it. A million mundane memories, ones I had loved every second of, were tied into every piece of this house.

  Digging the hole was faster. I secured all of our items inside of the old safe we had rarely used. Something that would have been much too heavy to get into the backyard without a dolly only yesterday, but today easily picked it up. I dropped it with a dull thud into the fresh soil. It almost felt like we were having a funeral for our old lives.

  That somber mood held as I filled back in the hole over it and loaded up the small cart I dug out from under years of piled up hobbies. Countless pieces of sports equipment, crafting supplies, and even a small home crucible had built up on top of it over the years. I left everything other than the baseball bats behind.

  “So what’s next on the agenda?” she asked as I looked into the sky.

  We only had another couple of hours at most before the sun started to set, and I wanted us inside, sheltered before that happened. There weren’t a lot of options for shelter either. So I was likely going to settle for the detached garage that the last standing house on the street had. Since it had no basement, I doubted anything had gotten into it yet.

  Before that, though, I was going to try to wash myself in the river. I was hoping to do it without a fight, but that would depend on just what residents occupied the new dark water. But as foreboding as that was, it had nothing on the brand new mountain range in the far horizon. Crossing that would be the big challenge.

  “It’s time to see what’s lurking in the river. I don’t want to sleep covered in all of this, so not a lot of choice of where to bathe,” I answered, grabbing the handle of the cart and heading off.

  “There’s something out there. Alecks, can you hear it?” Adam asked, terrified of the loud croaks followed by weird thuds coming from above.

  “I can, but just ignore it. We probably should have left today. But that decision is past us, and we have to live with the consequences,” his brother replied, not sounding nearly as confident as his words themselves would suggest.

  The trap door above them shuddered violently as something heavy crashed against it. Whatever was out there, it had clearly found them. The brothers looked at each other. The fear in their eyes was obvious to both. There was something else there as well.

  There was a resolve to fight. They had lived this long, and they wouldn’t go down without trying. Each of them reached for their new weapons as the door was ripped from its hinges.

  Adam held his short sword out at the ready as a loud croak echoed through their hiding place. A giant, dark green frog dropped through the door onto the ground, its tongue whipping out and hitting Alecks in the face as it fell.

  Adam rushed forward, trying to make his strange Frog-Stabber class active. Was this thing even a frog? He had no idea, but he would go down fighting.

  —Memories of Adam Miller before he found Earth