Max felt like a kid on Christmas. He had returned to his hotel room after eating lunch and already started playing with his new smartphone. Despite the world still being under attack by monsters and some countries no longer existing, cell phone technology had still progressed quite a bit. Now Max could reap those benefits.

  Of course, he had paid for the jump with lost time.

  Most Returners spent quite a bit more time in the Quartet than the time that they missed on earth before coming back. For most, it was two or three times as much. In Max's case, it was the exact opposite by an extreme amount. He hadn't even spent a year in the Quartet, but several years had passed on Earth since the first monster attack.

  Once he was back in his room, and now that he had a smartphone with appropriate apps to maintain privacy, he began doing the internet searches that he hadn't had time for, or hadn’t wanted to do on a hotel computer.

  Most of the general news he saw was more of the same, but he was able to learn more specific information, especially about Challengers in general. It turned out he had been right about most Challengers effectively being above the law…to a point. He’d also been right about inevitable friction between Challengers and regular people. The friction helped explain why some Challengers took it upon themselves to pursue vigilante justice against other Challengers. After all, plenty of people, despite any new power, still had a strong moral code, and still others found it extremely important how the public viewed them and Challengers as a whole–whether for personal or professional reasons.

  Some of the biggest new celebrities among Returners were those who had engaged the most in retribution against Challenger criminals. A few of them became internet streaming, super-powered bounty hunters.

  Max drank a soda while he spent time researching events over the last few years, time he was gone from Earth. It was all interesting, but eventually, he couldn't put off his filial obligations any longer. The truth was, he was a bit scared too. If his parents had died while he was away, he knew he wouldn't realistically be able to avoid feelings of guilt, no matter how illogical they were. But luckily, when he checked his email for the first time since he'd been back on Earth, he saw email after email from his mother over the years, sometimes more than one a month. The last time she had emailed him had been a week ago. Max grinned and responded. A mischievous streak almost led him to send his mother a joke email about how he was dead or caught in limbo or something, but better sense prevailed. He just sent her a simple message that he was back on Earth and asking her to keep his return secret for the time being. Max also explained he had a new phone and asked for her number.

  Less than half an hour later, he got a return email without any words, just a phone number. Max's heart stuttered a bit as he dialed the number on his new phone.

  ***

  Max made a horrified face and blinked in shock as he slowly lowered his phone. He had just ended, no, endured, an hour-long call with his mother. The happiness he would have felt while talking to her again after so long had been torched in the face of a series of rapid-fire questions between otherwise terse and emotion-laden back and forth. What was meant to be a conversation had been more of a confrontation.

  But thank God he hadn’t fumbled that email.

  There were several things Max had done in his life, or not done, when viewed in hindsight, he had emphatically thanked himself for not being stupid or doing something for some short-term amusement he would have regretted. This was definitely one of those times. If he had been dumb enough to send a joke email to his mom, the conversation he just had with her would undoubtedly have been even more uncomfortable.

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  It had been uncomfortable enough already.

  He shook his head and realized how foolish his expectations had been. After all, he had just been pondering phone technology an hour ago, about how the years had marched by on Earth. To Max, not that much time had actually passed. But for his mother, years had passed, years where she hardly heard from him at all, years where she feared he might not ever come back. And the years had not been kind to his family.

  It turned out his sister had another child right before his brother-in-law was killed in an accident, and Max's brother had awakened as a new Challenger but was still wrestling with whether he should actually work as one. Of course, Max's mother was entirely against it but feared that Max's brother was going to join a guild despite her wishes. The raw emotion from the guilt she felt, knowing that if he fought monsters, part of his decision would be to help her and the rest of the family, had come through loud and clear on the line. Max felt the distinct feeling that at least part of his mother resented him now, and part of her hated herself for that. It was a complicated situation.

  Max had already felt like he was under the gun to solve some of the problems on Earth because, in the grand scheme of things, his most important, highest priority goal was to get stronger. If he didn't, when the Quartet adjudicators or whoever else came for him eventually– and he had no illusions that they would– would kill him. What's worse, if they still used the same scorched earth tactics as they had back in Ancilla's day, there was a high possibility that they might just destroy this planet as well.

  But now he’d moved, “get rich,” much higher on his list. He needed to help his family ASAP.

  The eventual arrival of outside, murderous forces was still the biggest problem and always would be, though. Max went back and forth, wondering if he should inform the world about it, but there were two problems with that. First of all, nobody was going to listen to him right now as a low-level Challenger who didn't even officially have a guild. In order for more people to take him seriously, he would need to have a certain amount of fame. Unfortunately, with fame came danger, and it might also actually hasten the appearance of his enemies. But even if he had the credibility, all the Challengers were already trying to get stronger, faster, to the best of their abilities. Telling everyone they needed to get stronger might not have much of an effect.

  The other option he had, to take immediate steps to fortify the Earth, would mean taking responsibility to teach a massive number of people Albion Western Wind style. But that wouldn't help either. Every warrior had inherent talent for different paths, and the Mana Swordsman Path had several walls that practitioners had to overcome. To repel invaders or overzealous bureaucrats, the Earth needed quality, not just quantity.

  Max knew he wasn't strong enough yet. He was desperately hoping that the Earth's S-Rank Challengers were stronger than he was envisioning right now, but he had a bad feeling about it. With that in mind, he settled himself on the floor and began breathing easily, but concisely as he started working on his mana body. The experience of handling mana was like night and day compared to the Quartet.

  In the Quartet, he’d felt like a man catching a single drop of water on his tongue from a ceiling every few minutes to try slaking his thirst. But now on Earth, it was like he was floating in a pool of the clearest, cleanest water imaginable. Even though he was constantly thirsty, the sheer volume of easily available, drinkable water meant there was never any discomfort in the process.

  Max stayed absolutely still, just manipulating mana like this for hours until he finally broke out of his trance and stood up. This had been his first chance since his reincarnation to actually try building his mana body again in a mana-rich environment. He had experimented a little bit the first time he had come back to Earth, but he had been on such a time crunch back then that the idea of spending a few hours just sitting on the floor working on his mana body was laughable.

  "This is fantastic," he muttered out loud. At this rate, if he could get a few really good, long sessions in, he could actually even imagine himself ascending to a four-star mana body in a week or two. It was far faster than he had hoped for, and the realization helped offset some of the queasy stomach he had gotten from talking to his mom.

  One of the biggest sticking points with her, and one of the biggest reasons she’d stayed angry at him, was his insistence that she not tell any other family members that he had returned. Of course, the reason he asked was for their protection. If Max started making waves, the less his family knew about him, the better. It was only going to be a few weeks until he either fixed some of the problems he had to address on Earth or died trying. Of course, it was that latter part that his mother intuited and was the most angry about.

  With frustrated steps, Max made his way to his hotel room’s bathroom and splashed water on his face, practically and ceremonially cleaning himself to stop worrying about things outside of his control. There was already plenty of stuff he had control over to worry about. And with that thought, he prepared to open the Bone Gate in his room and finally have a discussion with his strange talking dagger.