Chapter 82

  The plaza was louder than Raime remembered it ever being.

  Not with laughter or music, not with the idle noise of people lingering after work, but with overlapping voices layered with fear, anger, and urgency. Groups had formed naturally, clustering around familiar figures, arguing in tight circles or shouting across the open space. Someone had dragged benches into rough lines. Others stood on steps or low walls, trying to make themselves seen.

  Raime and Nereo walked into it together.

  The moment Raime’s boots touched the stone of the plaza, a ripple passed through the crowd. Conversations faltered. Heads turned. A few people went silent outright. Others only lowered their voices, eyes following him with a mix of curiosity, awe, and suspicion.

  Alessandro was already there, he did a great job in amassing all of these people today, but he didn’t have their attention, no, the only one he was managing to keep in check were a handful of men and women clustered near the fountain. Builders, Raime noted immediately. People with dust on their boots, calloused hands, the kind of posture that came from working hard jobs. His father caught sight of him and paused, relief flickering across his face before being replaced by focus again. He gave Raime a small nod and went back to talking.

  Nereo leaned slightly toward him. “You weren’t kidding,” he muttered. “Looks like half the town showed up.”

  “All the monsters around are a good motivator,” Raime replied.

  They moved forward, and that was enough to break the fragile balance.

  “Hey! That’s him!”

  “Is that the one who flew yesterday?”

  “They say he came back from a portal!”

  Voices rose again, louder this time, directed, sharpened. Someone near the front stepped forward, an older man with thinning gray hair and a heavy jacket zipped all the way to his chin despite the mild weather.

  “So you’re the one making decisions now?” the man demanded. “Just like that?”

  Raime stopped. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to.

  “I’m not making decisions for anyone,” he said evenly. “I’m here to explain the situation and offer a way forward.”

  A woman to the side scoffed. “Funny way of ‘offering.’ From what I hear, you’re already telling people what to do. What can a kid like you possibly know about anything that’s happening when even the government is incapable of doing anything!”

  Yea, the government wasn’t capable of doing anything on a good day…

  Murmurs of agreement followed. A few sharp nods. Crossed arms.

  Raime took a breath, slow and controlled. Then he started floating up in the air, just a couple of meters so anyone could see him. His voice was being amplified enough for all the plaza to hear. I know I shouldn’t push them, but damn if they don’t make it hard.

  “The System gave us a tutorial quest,” he started. “That alone should tell you this isn’t temporary. It’s not a storm we wait out. It’s a new environment, and environments don’t care if you’re comfortable.”

  “That’s speculation,” another voice cut in. “These things could disappear tomorrow for all we know.”

  “They won’t,” Raime replied without hesitation.

  That certainty drew attention. Silence rippled outward.

  An elderly man near the benches—Rinaldi—narrowed his eyes. “And how exactly would you know that?”

  Raime met his gaze. “Because I’ve seen what happens when a world fails its tutorial.”

  The words settled heavily. Some people shifted uneasily. Others leaned forward despite themselves.

  Nereo crossed his arms, standing slightly behind Raime, presence solid and wordless.

  Raime continued, his voice steady. “It is true, that I came back from one of those portals, it is a rift, and it bring you to a fragment of a world that is being used by the System for its own purposes. In our case, as a challenge.”

  Voices and complain erupted again. “How are you so sure? Maybe it brings you to a monster factory for what we know, or you just die by crossing it!”

  “Because I spoke to a being that lived through the integration of his world, and lived through the failing of the tutorial. The consequences of that was the end of their civilization.” Raime voice brought a moment of silence, even the most vocal between the people there took a moment to digest his words.

  So he continued, taking advantage of the pause. “Time inside the rifts pass differently, I fell into it the first day the System appeared and managed to come out four days later, for our time. But I spent nearly two months inside, training and learning all I could to escape that place, the knowledge I brought hime was not something pleasurable to hear, but we all must hear it anyway.”

  “And so, what is this great knowledge that you somehow manage to uncover let’s hear it uh?” Said an old man with a shotgun in his hands.

  “The System,” Raime said. “Won’t go away. Not only that, but we are being integrated in the multiverse, and that means, that even if we can pass our tutorial, our world will be open to any other kind of alien race to come and plunder at their discretion. And we are simply too weak to stop them.”

  “So? We can just shoot some atomics to them no? I don’t see how could they possibly survive that!”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Yea!” Another started, “We may be weaker that the monster but just because we don’t have tanks and war machines, we are not make to kill with swords c’mon, we know that already! But we still are the dominant species on the planet!”

  Many started shouting at that, some in agreement and others in opposition, a young girl with a katana of all things told him. “We are not that dominant anymore don’t you think? Look around yourself, no tank or plane passed through here since the first day the System came!”

  Raime raised his voice again. “Nukes won’t save us when a high tier entity can destroy a continent by itself. The power a single individual can obtain in this new world is unbelievable, Mr. Rinaldi can confirm it, right?”

  The old man in question got startled for a moment at being called out, but then he looked around and begrudgingly said. “In this, the boy speak the truth, I saw him myself kill a thousand monsters by the river portal in five minutes.”

  Gasps and disbelief went through the crowd, some of the people, especially the younger muttered excitedly.

  “Anyone can gain this power, not only that,” Raime looked at the people more influenced by Rinaldi’s words. “We need people with that kind of power, we need to become strong enough to stand on our own. What I wanted by gathering everyone here today was to offer the information, the training and the structure to proceed forward. We need to do better if we don’t want to be swept away by the challenges that await us.” After a pause in which blessedly nobody interrupted him again, Raime continued.

  “The quest requires us to secure the town, build defences, and prevent monsters from entering. That means walls. Controlled access points. Patrols. It also means closing the Rift portals.”

  At that, the plaza erupted again.

  “Absolutely not, if you are so strong why don’t you go to close them!?”

  “You expect normal people to fight those things?”

  “That’s suicide!”

  Raime raised a hand, not in command but in request. It took a few seconds, but the noise lowered enough for him to speak again.

  “For now,” he said, “no one enters a Rift. Not unless they know exactly what they’re facing. Inside, you’ll find Tier I monsters in numbers, and at least a Tier II entity guarding the core. Anyone unprepared will die.”

  “Then why not do it yourself?” a man shouted again from the back. “You can fly! You can kill them from up high! You said it yourself, you can handle it!”

  Several voices echoed the sentiment.

  “Yes,” Raime said. “I can.”

  That answer surprised them.

  “And I will close all the portals inside the city,” he went on. “But I will not close all of those around.”

  Outrage flared.

  “That’s irresponsible!”

  “You’d let people die just to prove a point?”

  Raime felt irritation stir, but he kept it contained. They don’t see the long game yet.

  “If I do everything myself,” he said, “you won’t grow. The System will continuously increase the pressure. Stronger monsters. More Rifts. Higher stakes. If no one rises to meet it, we lose anyway—just slower.”

  A teenage boy near the edge raised his voice, hesitant but clear. “So what, you want us to level up first?”

  Raime turned toward him. “Yes.”

  The boy swallowed, then nodded. “That… makes sense.”

  A few others around him murmured agreement. Younger faces. People who had already fought, already felt the rush and terror of surviving.

  “We’ve been hunting in small groups,” another youth said. “Clearing streets. We’re getting stronger.”

  “Good,” Raime said. “That’s what we build on.”

  Rinaldi scoffed loudly. “This is madness. You’re talking about turning our town into some kind of war camp.”

  “It already is,” Raime replied. “Look around here.”

  That earned a wave of turning heads, everyone or nearly, taking in the state of the place.

  Tents and buildings used to house those still alive and too scared to move back into their own houses, broken windows everywhere and plumes of smoke still coming from the surroundings. The town had building made to collapse to block streets from the monsters and the population was reduced greatly from just a week of getting integrated.

  “We need structure to move forward, and I’ll do what I can to provide a stable starting point, but I can’t be the one doing everything, what will you do if I fall in battle or I’m not here to defend the city? You need to take up arms and improve yourself with the tools the System provide, I’ll share my knowledge and experiences to make us strong enough to survive the tutorial.”

  “You talk like you’re better than us,” a woman snapped. “Like you’re some kind of saviour and pretend you didn’t grow up here like everybody else.”

  Raime’s jaw tightened. What the hell has this to do with anything?

  “I grew up here, yes,” he said flatly. “And I live here. And my family lives here. That’s why I’m doing this.”

  A man near Rinaldi leaned in, voice lowered but carrying. “Or maybe he’s not human anymore. Maybe something in the Rift took him over.”

  The accusation spread like a wildfire.

  “Maybe he’s possessed.”

  “Look at his eye—”

  Raime felt it then, the tension cresting. His perception brushed against the crowd, reading fear layered over denial.

  Enough of this charade.

  He exhaled once and let a fraction of himself surface.

  The aura wasn’t violent. It didn’t burn or crush. It simply was.

  Predatory. Vast. Powerful, at least compared to them.

  The plaza went silent.

  Every person felt it differently, but the instinct was the same. The sensation of standing too close to something that could end you without effort. Hearts raced, breath caught and knees weakened.

  Raime didn’t move. He let it linger for two heartbeats, then withdrew it completely.

  “If I wanted to harm you,” he said calmly into the stunned quiet, “I could. None of you could stop me.”

  Gasps followed. Fear, raw and undeniable.

  “But I don’t,” he continued. “I’m here to give this town a chance, not rule it. To teach, not dominate. Now—who is willing to work together to overcome the challenges we’ll face?”

  For a long moment, no one spoke.

  Then Alessandro stepped forward.

  “We’ll handle construction,” he said firmly. “The walls for the quest… reinforcements. Whatever’s needed.”

  Several builders followed him, nodding, resolve hardening their expressions.

  A group of teens and young adults moved next, some carrying battered weapons, others still marked with fresh cuts. It was a somewhat already organized group. “We’ll fight,” one of them said, a man not much older than Raime sporting no weapons or armour, just a muscular and toned physique. “No more monsters roaming free.”

  Nereo stepped forward as well, planting his sword tip lightly against the stone. “Count me in.”

  A man in scrubs, doctor Pino if he remembered right, cleared his throat. “You and whoever need it will get all the medical support we’ll be able to give. Like we already did before. We’ll set up more aid stations if we can retake the old hospital.”

  A reluctant figure shuffled forward after someone in his group pushed him, rubbing his temples he muttered. “I’m Flavio, we dealt mainly with scavenging for the plaza until now. We are willing to cooperate,”

  Rinaldi shook his head. “We’ll keep doing what we were doing already. We don’t need you to order us around, we were already managing things.”

  Raime nodded once. “Be my guest, I won’t stop you. But if you feel like joining you’ll be welcome.”

  The divide was clear now.

  “Good, Fighters. Builders. Healers. Scavengers, for now…” Raime said, raising his voice again. “It’s a good start. Choose your leaders. Then follow me, we have much to discuss.”

  The plaza buzzed with movement, arguments, hurried discussions. Names were thrown forward. Agreed upon. Questioned.

  In the end, a wobbly structure formed.

  Alessandro for the builders.

  Michele, a broad-shouldered boxing instructor, for the fighters.

  Pino, the physician with the most experience for the healers.

  Flavio, reluctantly, for scavenging.

  Raime gestured toward a nearby bar. “Come, I have something to show you all.”

  Then took Alice’s hand in his and pulled her along.

  “What are you doing?” She whispered.

  Raime showed a faint smirk “Well of course I’m bringing my strategist to the meeting. How should we plan without your expertise?”

  Alice hesitated at his side, colour draining from her face.

  “You’ll do great,” Raime murmured to her. “This is what your class is for.”

  She swallowed and nodded.

  They stepped inside, maps spreading across tables as Raime began.

  “Alright,” he said while making the map he prepared and the notes he took appear magically on a table. “This is the situation…”