Chapter 73

  Raime woke to warmth and weight pressed tight against his side.

  For a moment, in that slow, drifting space between sleep and waking, he almost expected lavender light above him, the hum of Ithural’s air in his lungs, or the faint psychic presence of Neimar sitting in the throne room.

  Instead—he felt soft sheets, the stale home scent of detergent and cooked food, and Alice wrapped around him like a constrictor.

  Her arms were locked across his chest. One of her legs was thrown over his hip. Her head rested against his shoulder, breath warm on his neck.

  He sighed quietly.

  I’m really home.

  He pushed that realization down before it could sting. Carefully—very carefully—he eased himself free. Alice didn’t stir. Her breathing remained slow and heavy, completely unaware of the world outside the blankets.

  Raime rose with a wince. His right stump throbbed, but no fresh blood leaked. The bandage over his ruined eye itched faintly, but most of his wounds were closed now, the skin already starting to scar.

  He levitated up and off the mattress rather than dragging the sheets, hovered for a second to make sure nothing moved, and then making his clothes dress him he drifted toward the door. No floorboards creaked. No hinges groaned.

  Down the stairs—he didn’t bother taking steps. He simply let himself float downward, silent as dust.

  Varuk wasn’t in the garage, or anywhere in the house.

  But Raime felt him.

  A faint pull through their bond—presence, awareness, distance. Varuk was close, maybe a few hundreds meters away and awake.

  He’ll come when he wants to.

  Raime turned toward the kitchen as the hunger hit again, sharp and gnawing, like an empty pit tearing itself wider with every breath. He’d eaten enough food last night to feed three grown men, and it still didn’t feel like enough.

  That was why he woke up.

  He needed more.

  He reached the kitchen doorway and paused.

  Victor was asleep, sprawled sideways across the couch like he’d melted into it, drool soaking into the cushion.

  Albert was standing by the narrow stone window slit, peering out into the dim early light with a rifle leaning against the wall and a baseball bat in his hands.

  Their parents were somewhere outside—he could sense their movements faintly, slow, routine. No monsters anywhere near.

  Raime stepped into the kitchen.

  “There are no monsters around,” he said calmly.

  Albert jumped.

  The bat slipped from his hands and clattered on the floor. He spun, eyes wide. “Raime! Shit—how did you—? I didn’t hear anything!”

  Raime sat down in one of the kitchen chairs, lifting his legs in a lazy float before lowering himself onto the seat.

  “That’s kind of the point,” he said. “How are you doing, kiddo?”

  Albert blinked. “Uh... fine, I guess. Hungry?” He pointed vaguely at Raime’s stomach. “You look… different.”

  “Eh, for you it has been half a week, for me it was a bit more than fourty days…” Raime said. “things happened, and I’m hungry.” With a flicker of his will, the fridge opened, and milk drifted out in a gentle glide. A cabinet popped open and a pack of cookies floated toward him. “Why is Victor still asleep?”

  Albert picked up the bat again and leaned it against the wall. “He spent half the night on lookout. Mom says we need to take shifts in case monsters spawn closer to the house. And his class is made for those things anyway.”

  “Hmm.”

  Raime poured the milk in a bowl, added cocoa and sugar, then filled the whole things with cookies before Albert even finished speaking. His little brother watched the floating food warily, like he still wasn’t used to seeing things move without hands.

  “And you?” Raime asked between bites. “Why are you up so early?”

  “Couldn’t sleep,” Albert said. “Also… leveling is too slow.”

  Raime raised an eyebrow.

  Albert crossed his arms, sticking his lower lip out a little in frustration. “Mom and Dad won’t let us fight anything unless it’s almost dead already, or very far away. They only let us finish it off for the exp if it’s safe enough. It’s annoying.”

  Raime snorted into his milk.

  “And Victor?”

  “He also wants more kills,” Albert said with dramatic annoyance. “We want to catch up. We’re only level four. It’s basically nothing.”

  “It’s something,” Raime corrected. “You’re alive and healthy.”

  Albert kicked lightly at the base of the counter. “Still not enough.”

  Raime chewed thoughtfully, enjoying the simple sweetness of the cookies more than he ever remembered enjoying sugar before.

  “What classes do you two have again?” he asked. “Exactly.”

  Albert perked up a little. “I’m a Warrior. But! My light affinity is super high, so… uh… the skills I’m getting look kinda weird for a normal Warrior. Not flashy or anything yet—but different. I’m hoping I can go Paladin eventually.”

  Raime nodded. That tracked. Albert had always had an instinct to protect first, act second.

  “And Victor?”

  Albert laughed. “He’s weird.”

  “I know that,” Raime said dryly. “What class?”

  “Night Watch.”

  Raime blinked. “Why?”

  Albert shrugged. “It was one of the options he got. He said it sounded cooler than Rogue or Marksman. And his affinity is for shadows. Not super strong, but enough to change his class choices. It’s so strange that we have like… oppisite affinities we are basically the same…” Albert was talking more to himself than to Raime by the end.

  Anyway, he keeps talking about becoming some kind of dark knight. Or, his words, ‘something like Batman.’”

  Raime almost choked on a cookie.

  “Batman, so he wasn’t joking yesterday.” he repeated flatly.

  Albert nodded, serious. “Yeah. He said if he can get a cloak that lets him glide, he’s set.”

  Raime covered his face with his remaining hand.

  The gnawing hunger was still there as he finished the cookies and drank the milk. Not gone but more manageable.

  “Alright,” he said, lowering his hand. “Tell me the truth—no jokes. How are you actually doing?”

  Albert hesitated.

  For the first time since Raime walked in, his expression cracked a little.

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  “…Scared,” he admitted, voice low. “It’s fine during the day. But at night… it’s different. The noises. The dark. Even with my affinity it’s—”

  Raime reached out and ruffled his hair.

  Albert flinched automatically, then relaxed.

  “You’re doing well,” Raime said. “Better than most kids would. Better than a lot of adults. And don’t worry about the night, as soon as I recuperate I will be able to sleep while monitoring the surroundings, and Varuk will be here too, we have it covered. If you can manage to get permission from mom, I’ll bring you both hunting tomorrow.”

  Albert swallowed hard, chest puffing slightly at the praise, then yelled a “Serious!?”

  “Of course, nothing will manage to touch you with me around, and you’ll be able togain some experience fighting monsters and level up. Honestly it will be better if everyone came to level up, but don’t forget to improve technically too. I learned by experience that attributes are powerful, but most of the time we don’t really use their full potential.”

  “Oh-ok! I swear I’ll do my best!” Albert eyes were shining while thinking about going out hunting, his mind already formulating the best speech to give his mother to convince her to let them participate.

  Raime looked toward the window.

  Beyond it, the morning light was rising, clean and gold instead of Ithural’s endless lavender haze. The air outside felt peaceful, calm, uncomplicated.

  This world is so… quiet.

  It didn’t feel real.

  Raime forced himself to refocus.

  “Go and call mom and dad for me,” he said. “I’m going to need both of them to bring me up to speed. What changed, what didn’t, and what kind of situation we’re dealing with. I’m sure there is much to do.”

  Albert hesitated. “Are you… sure you’re okay to move and all that? You look like you lost a fight with a wood chipper.”

  “Two wood chippers,” Raime corrected casually. “One of them psychic.”

  Albert stared.

  Raime sipped his milk.

  “Go call them,” he repeated.

  Albert darted out of the kitchen with a quick, “I’ll get mom and dad!” and the moment he was gone Raime reached for a second package of cookies.

  They floated into his hand—milk trailing after them in a lazy arc from the bowl—before forming into a neat little setup on the table.

  He tore into the cookies with unashamed enthusiasm. I need calories…Not just meat, Real food. Fat, sugar, carbs—things he had lived without during his time in the Rift.

  He definitely planned to go hunting for snacks later. His stomach’s endless protests were a perfect excuse.

  While he ate, his thoughts drifted back to his brothers.

  Albert and Victor… two completely opposite affinities born from the same set of parents. One leaning toward radiance and order, dreaming of becoming a paladin. The other with a flicker of shadow that could grow into something dangerous and subtle. Day and night in twin form.

  And Albert has light too… like me. A high affinity too from what he says.

  That meant potential. Maybe one day he could actually learn from him. And maybe he could teach them at least a few mental tricks or fighting techniques when he was fully operational again.

  But first he needed to recover.

  His core was new and he was not apt at manipulating his own energy. His channels were nonexistent—he’d have to carve them, shape them, fill them. And on top of that he was still planning to form a second mana core and eventually fuse everything into a unified system. That alone was months, maybe years, of work.

  He needed a Class too. Needed to stabilize his foundation before the System threw something new and insane at Earth.

  Because new challenges were coming. That he was sure of.

  Neimar’s warnings and what little Raime had read had made that much clear. Earth’s integration wasn’t just a local event—it was a planetary one. The kind that shifted history, civilizations, and maybe even the changed things even outside of Earth.

  He had no idea if he alone could shoulder what was coming. Probably not.

  So he’d share what he knew, guide governments, spread information, give Earth a fighting chance.

  One step at a time.

  Footsteps approached. His thoughts snapped to the present just as his parents came into the kitchen.

  His mother’s eyes immediately fell on the two empty cookie packages sitting beside him.

  She didn’t say a word.

  He saw the worry flash across her face, the brief tightening around her eyes, the part of her that was trying not to ask How hungry are you really? Do we have enough food? She swallowed them, but he saw them. Felt them.

  He forced an apologetic smile and told himself he would go find more after dealing with the morning’s business.

  “Good morning,” Raime started, laying back in the chair. “I need an update. How are things? Where are the portals? What do you need me to know?”

  His parents exchanged a look before his father sighed and answered first.

  “How are you feeling?” his mother asked, sitting beside him. “Before anything else.”

  Raime nodded slowly. “Better than yesterday. Still… not great. But functional.”

  They explained what they knew, the challenges the city was facing, the System quest prompting them to create a safe zone. They told him about the monsters, the disruptions, the volunteers, the small attempts at organization. The martial law instituted just before the lines went down, and the total absence of anyone who could enact that law. There won’t be support from the government, not it their little town at least.

  They also told him, firmly, that he didn’t need to jump into danger immediately.

  He’d just come back. He needed time. They were handling things.

  Raime shook his head.

  “I’m fine,” he repeated, more certain this time. “And I’m going to spend the day checking the town myself. I need to see the situation with my own eyes—the monsters, the density, the types. I’ll start thinning them out in a day or two. We need to organize things fast if we want a safe zone.”

  His mother opened her mouth, worry sharpening her expression, but he cut gently through her rising objection.

  “Look,” he said, leaning back. “I killed a Tier III at Tier zero.” He mentally sent them his System achievement.

  They both froze.

  Even saying it out loud felt surreal. But it was the truth. He didn’t need to even move anymore to deal with the local threats. He told them so. Promised he would train them all once he had a handle on his new energy.

  Their conversation wrapped up with more worry from his parents and more reassurances from him.

  Finally, Raime pushed his chair back.

  “I’m heading out,” he said. “Alice is still asleep, Victor too. Varuk’s close, but he’s doing his own thing. I feel restless and I want to see things for myself.”

  His father nodded reluctantly. “Be careful.”

  Raime offered a small smile. “I will.”

  He stepped outside and followed the familiar road toward the river.

  The air tasted different here than in Ithural—less charged, less sharp, more familiar. But his senses were sharper than they had ever been. With a single thought he lifted off the ground and glided forward, hovering above cracked asphalt and broken fences.

  His father had mentioned that monsters coming from the portal near the river were gathering and blocking parts of the town. So that was where he was going first.

  As he flew, he let part of his mind analyze the area. Every street. Every alley. Every broken window. Every flicker of movement.

  People spotted him and reacted in varying degrees of panic—some pointed, some swore, some ran back inside their homes. He couldn’t blame them. A floating, strangely dressed man with a glowing eye and a missing arm wasn’t exactly comforting.

  Every time a monster crept into his perceptions he eliminated it instantly. He didn’t use any of the weapons he had in the ring, he had more from the Royal Treasury, but he needed the practice, and he didn’t feel like using a weapon anymore, he started enjoying using his own power and after Thunk and the Tetra Unum shattered the idea of wielding something else didn’t appeal to him.

  He drifted over empty houses, cleaned-out shops, broken doors. Inside, he scavenged. Cans of food, tools, batteries, blankets,—anything useful went straight into his spatial ring.

  Why leaving good stuff around when you have a spatial inventory? Feels like the good old days playing Skirim.

  The cube hung securely from his sash, pulsing faintly. A reminder. A weight. A responsibility.

  He kept flying, kept scanning, kept annihilating whatever crawled too close.

  Many times salamanders or other monsters were mindlessly roaming around in the city a moment before, and then they fell dead on the ground with a twisted neck, a deep cut or a hole in their head. Raime was experimenting with his powers again, he was starting to get the difference from before, his control now was more will than any real direct manipulation, it should be much easier than before actually, but he developed habits that were making him having a harder time to use his powers. He noticed that his energy flowed much better and responded at the speed of thought if he just didn’t clamp on it so hard as he did with pure psionic energy before.

  So he took his time and started with simple shaping exercises, little constructs of light twisting around him while he perlustered the area, basic techniques were used to kill the monsters, like a single beam of light or a flashbang like flare for disorientation. Raime noticed that his energy was part mental, but it was light attuned too, courtesy of the Seed without a doubt, but the noticeable thing was the sheer damage that a sliver of energy could create. With the same amount of energy he used for creating a blade of telekinesis strong enough to cut in two a monster, he was capable of creating a dozen rays of light with the same amount of power.

  That’s why I was able to kill the abomination that Orrhal created with a single beam to the head…My affinity enhance the energy somehow, if I only had more control over my core yesterday… maybe things would have worked out differently. No, I can’t think like this, the past is the past. Neimar will reprimand me if he knew I was having these stupid thoughts.

  Raime was saved by ulterior thoughts as he was already upon the river.

  The moment he approached, he saw a gathering.

  A cluster of men and women—maybe twenty of them—were huddled near the bank, arguing heatedly. Some carried rifles, others improvised weapons. They were stressed, and exhausted.

  Raime descended silently.

  He looked toward the water.

  A swirling portal hung just above the surface—light blue mixed with sea-green, turning slowly like a whirlpool suspended in the air.

  And around it?

  Hundreds of salamander-like creatures. Maybe a thousand.

  Definitely too many for the group. Even well-armed civilians couldn’t take that horde. Not without casualties. Maybe not at all.

  He floated closer, and his presence snapped their argument apart.

  Weapons were raised instantly.

  Rifles. Makeshift shields and spears. A katana. Someone held a couple of hunting knives. They formed a loose semicircle, not attacking but definitely ready.

  A little old man in a patched jacket stepped forward, left eye squinting suspiciously.

  “Hold it right there, Superman,” he barked, voice surprisingly strong for his age. He pointed his rifle in Raime’s direction. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

  Raime stopped, hovering a few centimeters above the ground, calm and unreadable—scarred, glowing-eyed, missing an arm, and utterly unfazed.

  A dozen muzzles pointed at him.

  “Mister Rinaldi,” replied Raime. “I’m Raffaele, Alessandro’ son.”

  At that, Rinaldi showed a bewildered expression and lowered his rifle, some people lowered their weapons slighlty too, but most were still weary.

  “So you manage to get back from that portal… good, good, but you still didn’t say why are you here.”

  At that Raime smiled slightly, “I’m just here to take out the lizards. Thought I’d handle the infestation before lunch.”

  His gaze drifted over the hundreds of salamanders, then back to the humans without a flicker of concern.

  “Give me five minutes.”