I woke up on a day that began like any other. I brushed my hair, which I kept around chin length, and threw on some generally street ready clothes. Just a pair of jeans and a shirt, nothing fancy.

  Drinking a cup of coffee, I had breakfast. While doing so, I took the time to cycle increasing amounts of Qi through myself, breaking apart the last vestiges of sleepiness. The window shutters were down, though faint, greyish sunlight filtered through them.

  Ann dragged herself down to the communal area from our shared room. Marie cooked some breakfast in the kitchen. Liam was munching a sandwich while hanging from the ceiling. Reya sat on the couch, playing some game on her phone. Emilia was dozing off in a plush chair, and Matt brushed a hand through wet, freshly showered hair.

  It was homely.

  Familiarity had become like a warm blanket. I took another sip of coffee and smiled. With my monstrous endurance, the caffeine did very little to affect me, but that was fine. I didn’t need it to. It was more of a habit, really.

  A lot of the world had come down to that, when everything changed. Habits were a comfort in a place so different to how many people were used to.

  Of course, not too many things changed. The air still was horrible to breathe. The world was still ruled by horrible people. But now, well…

  My phone buzzed in my pocket.

  Frowning slightly, I pulled it out. It was a message from Ivan’s work phone. I ran my eyes over the faint letter on my screen, then gave a long sigh.

  “New gate opened?” Marie asked.

  I nodded. “Yep. We’ve already acquired the rights, apparently. It’s an unstable one, so it’ll break soon. Gotta head out.”

  Matt smiled. “You need assistance?”

  “Not for this one.”

  He grinned. “Good. I’d hate to have my breakfasts interrupted.”

  The smug Rat took a gratuitous bite of food, and I rolled my eyes at him. “Yeah, yeah. Gloat all you want. You’re next on rotation anyway. I hope you get a mass outbreak.”

  Our swordsman laughed, then waved me off. “Right, right. Go get ‘em, Fio.”

  Sighing again, though the motion was much smaller this time, I headed outside and got into my car. Most people didn’t like to see superhumans flying through the skies, so when it wasn’t urgent, I didn’t do it.

  Instead, I took the slow and boring path of red lights and somewhat busy streets as people trickled into work. So, after a good amount of slow stop and go traffic, I parked by the side of a somewhat empty street, hopped out, and started walking.

  As was usual, someone stopped me. A dishevelled guy with streaky, greying hair, holding a knife and a broken bottle. Not a mage or a cultivator, but hooked on the usurper’s energy. They called it Echo.

  Because, as humans did, one of the first things that happened when something new came to this planet, was figure out how to turn it into drugs.

  I sighed, again, and looked at the guy. “Gimme- Gimme your money.” His voice had an echoing quality to it, like it was repeating somewhere. Some mages had used it to empower chants before, but this guy wasn’t about to be chanting anything.

  With a gentle motion, I reached out for him. Suddenly panicked, he swung the knife at my arm, but it failed to even draw blood. It was dull, and he was weak, and swung at an awkward angle. With the ambient Qi rising, I was stronger than that, even when I didn’t call upon my full power.

  So, when the knife glanced off, his eyes widened. Then my hand landed on his shoulder, and with a blast of Qi, I cleared out the Echo residue. Bits of orange wisps drifted off the guy, and with a wave of my hand, they dispersed.

  The guy’s pupils dilated a little, and he stumbled back. I’d probably set him on the first step to awakening his meridians, but that was something for him to sort out. With a sigh, I watched as he stumbled backwards. “M-mage…” he stammered.

  I didn’t bother to correct him, just moving on. There was a whole lot wrong with this world. We offered Echo cleansing services back at the guild, and Reya could do a much better job of it than me, but it was what it was. People rarely took us up on the offer.

  Unfortunately, people were free to make bad decisions. I wasn’t about to entirely erase every single alcohol distillery just cuz I fucking despised the stuff. So, with a shrug as he scampered off, I kept walking forward.

  The gate had opened in a warehouse on a hill. The road there was wrecked by a sinkhole and hadn’t been filled back in, so reaching it by car was impossible. All it took for me now was one hop to clear the gap.

  It smelled of dead grass and dust and old iron. Some kind of metalworking place, then. There were a couple scientists in labcoats about. They looked tired and overworked, fiddling with devices that ran half on electricity and half on magic. Mana stone resonance measurements. Core saturation tests.

  Nothing to do with Divinity though. That one was still out of their reach.

  Oh, Neamhan had clerics alright. Ones that carried over from Eden. None of the faiths here were real. There had been no spiritual power. People who proclaimed the power of their faiths and walked into gates ended up dead rather than blessed.

  Reya, right now, was by far the most powerful healer on Neamhan. It frankly wasn’t even close.

  They called her saintess now.

  I shook my head to dislodge those thoughts. Instead, I focussed on Ivan. He wore a shirt rather than a labcoat, and seemed entirely relaxed. Given that he dabbled both in magic and cultivation, the talented fricker, he was right to be.

  Some of these scientists would probably die if even the simplest usurper came out of the gate. Not so for Ivan. He wasn’t powerful, not really, but compared to someone with no experience with magic, he was leagues ahead.

  That was what really called to him. Magic. He only had a hint of Qi within him, but he was already a second circle mage. He was already pioneering new enchantments and alchemy. If only there were more hours in his day.

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  “Hey Bell. Ready to go?” he asked.

  I shrugged half heartedly. “Sure, pretty much.” I reached out and grabbed my spear from my inventory, the fissure in the world being black compared to the white glow of the rifts. Gates, as they’d taken to calling them here.

  “Got a change of clothes?” he asked.

  Damn it. I really liked this shirt. I frowned, and he smiled, handing me one of those military grade bodysuits. “Here,” he said. “Probably easier to manifest your armor on top of, too.”

  With a small grimace, I took it from him. On one hand, yay for not getting my clothes dirty, but on the other, bodysuits were icky. Well. Not that anyone would see me in the gate, I guess. So just a bit of personal discomfort. And it would be easier to manifest armor on top of. “Thanks, Ivan,” I said.

  “No problem, Bell. Go kick them.”

  “Break imminent in thirty minutes,” another scientist warned me, a dark skinned woman hunched over screens.

  “Got it,” I said. “Be done in a few minutes.”

  With that, I stepped through the gate.

  Static electricity buzzed along my skin in echoing, repeating patterns, then faded as I got through to the other side. The air here was thick with Echo. The energy itself, rather than the orange crystals that were sold back on Neamhan.

  It ate at my Qi, wanting to consume it and make it part of itself. That attempt ended poorly. My Qi flared to life, the wellspring in my chest bubbling and boiling.

  The same dimensional sanctions as on Neamhan still applied within the gate, and for something like this, I was unlikely to use the precious minutes of full power I had.

  But I hadn’t neglected my training these past few months. Oh, not even close. I hadn’t yet advanced past wellspring, but my mastery over my Qi was incomparable to before. It roared out of my chest, and [Inexplicable Reinforcement] applied itself very actively to the air around me.

  Golden plates of armor manifested, rippling like liquid metal. They were shiny and reflective, giving me perfect vision all around myself. They were also complex and interlocking, and took quite a bit of focus to maintain, but I got a little better every time I practiced.

  I took stock of my environment first, finding myself rather upset that it seemed to be a lake of blood. “Fucking… should’ve changed into the suit beforehand.”

  Grimacing, I took off my shoes and soaked socks, standing in the air on platforms of Qi. I changed into the stupid bodysuit, and only then, after making sure my armor was in place, stopped wasting energy on floating.

  Feeling the crimson liquid splash against my legs was uncomfortable as I sunk down to my thighs. The ground beneath was a thick mud that clung to my soles every time I lifted my feet. Three crimson suns burned overhead.

  A camera on the bodysuit snapped pictures that the science team would analyze later to try and create a map of the world beyond the rifts. A pointless endeavour, probably.

  Instead of worrying about that, though, I simply waded forward, pushing the horrid feeling of the muck out of my head.

  Unfortunately, that blissful ignorance only lasted until leeches tried to eat at my legs.

  None of them lasted particularly long, but it was like trying to empty an ocean by spear fishing. Useless. Instead of bothering, I simply summoned a ridiculously enormous spear of Qi, carving a hundred of them apart each swing.

  It was an utterly unpleasant experience, but not a difficult one. Rather quickly, I started picking up speed. There were larger, alligator-like things that tried to bite me, too, but Astraeus simply speared each through the head, floating by my side.

  This was like taking a scythe to wheat. If it weren’t time sensitive, it would have been a good rift for some more novice cultivators to train in. Shit luck for this place’s boss.

  Only five minutes later, I sprinted far enough through the open field of blood, that there was a dark patch ahead of me. An abyssal circle where the red of the blood turned dark and black. Where the muddy ground dropped down a blood filled abyss.

  “I can’t catch a fucking break,” I said, grimacing. “Cass. Giving you access to my Qi. Make sure that you maintain an airtight seal if I lose focus.”

  [Alright, Bell.] she confirmed.

  With that, I took a deep breath and summoned a thin, golden sphere around my head. It made my eyes entirely useless, and I could have summoned a more translucent version of the same thing, but it didn’t matter. The sphere was reflective, so I could easily see through it.

  Then, ignoring the grossness, I jumped down into the blood red abyss.

  Suffice to say, my surprise was low when the boss was a centipede, with lamprey-like mouths at the end of each of its limbs. It was the sinking part that disturbed me, having fallen for almost two full minutes.

  When the creature came at me, I was honestly relieved.

  A swift swing of my spear cut it, and the entire stupid cavern in this gross blood-ocean, apart.

  The gate then quivered and soon collapsed into nothing, ejecting me back to the outside realm. In a blood covered bodysuit, with a stupid golden bulb over my head.

  “Ivan. If you laugh, I might just cut your legs off,” I said, calmly and reasonably.

  None of the scientists displayed any amusement as the golden sphere around my head dissipated. Two of them were instantly on me, taking off the camera to see about recovering any footage. More yet were bustling about the drops from the rift.

  When it closed, things spilled out of them here. It wasn’t like that in Eden, but the dimensional covenant must be different here. There were Echo sources, Mana crystals and some Qi cores.

  I let Ivan handle all that, instead grumbling about picking up magic just so I could learn water spells and clean myself more easily. Or maybe enchant some gear to be self-repairing, something I was still hoping people would eventually figure out. Maybe I should just get core bound armor… but it was so bulky.

  “Bell, you can’t seriously be more concerned about what to wear than the state of the world,” Ivan teased.

  “Oh please,” I told him, rolling my eyes. “I can only care about impending doom so much. This is my third pair of ruined shoes in the last month.”

  “Can’t you get them… dry cleaned?” he asked.

  That earned him a long stare. Then, I wordlessly reached into my inventory, pulling out the blood soaked pair of sneakers. “Okay, broski,” I said snarkily. “Dry clean them. Go on.”

  “Fine, fine,” he said, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ll spend some more time on developing the enchantments.”

  “You better,” I said, boxing him in the shoulder with no real force behind it.

  He still rubbed the area with a soft laugh, rubbing it comically. “Right, right. Now, scram before the government gets here and asks for your report.”

  A new voice came from the warehouse entrance. It was a man wearing a pair of thin glasses, carrying a clipboard in his arm. His dark goatee was well maintained, and he cleared his throat loud enough for everyone to hear. “Unfortunately, it is already too late for that. Ms. Bellum will not escape us today.”

  He gave a sly smile, so I dramatically rolled my eyes in reply. “Damn you, Trevor.”

  Indeed, one of the reflectors I’d spent some time with in Eden was now back on Neamhan. And working for the government at that. In fact, he was assigned to me, personally, for a good chunk of his work. He smiled a little wider, then gave me a nod. “Good work clearing out the rift. Anything special?”

  I sighed, and prepared myself to give a report. Still in the bodysuit, still covered in blood. I manifested a golden shirt and pair of pants with my Qi, since I could afford to be wasteful again, then nodded. “Yeah. It was a blood lake. The boss was entirely underwater. Hard countered newbie teams without some kind of water breathing.”

  At that, he grimaced slightly. “Sounds like a fragment of the red ocean, then.”

  “Nope,” I replied. “Three suns, red.” The blood ocean had two, one green and one blue.

  Trevor sighed. “Alright. Usurpers?”

  “Leeches, alligator things. Boss was a lamprey-centipede,” I said, describing them instead of using their names. Diligently, the fellow cultivator noted it down.

  “Right, and what about…”

  More questions followed.

  - - -

  After eventually having finished my debriefing and contributing to the shared knowledge base of humanity, I headed home. As per the usual, there were people from Zinnic outside our guild, asking me to join or sell to them. As per the usual, I gave them all a haircut, then sent them home.

  “Barbarian,” one of them whispered under their breath. I heard them, of course, and stifled a laugh.

  When I came in and heard Matt’s roaring guffaw, that dam broke, and I laughed, too.

  “Barbarian! Hahahaha,” he laughed. “You’re their Barber-ian!”

  Smacking my hand against my forehead, I laughed some more. It was hilarious. Neamhan had been going down the drain, but how was that any different from the last decade? This time we at least had some agency in it. So, yeah. The world was ending, and I’d been having some of the funnest six months of my life.

  And I was not about to let the apocalypse change that.