Again, this novel is going to be rewritten, including this, there are 4 chapters left before 'Re: The System's Harvester' will be posted

  So far the rewrites are amazing

  Late Afternoon - Early Fall : Topeka, Kansas | Earth

  -----

  - Shaw Alfson ~

  -Please be friendly... Please be friendly... Please be friendly...- Running across the field, keeping my eyes locked on the bck objects poking out of the top of the wall like cannons, I did everything I could to try and stay calm and ignore the rumbling steadily approaching from behind us.

  As we got closer and closer though, my prayers hoping the city's people were friendly turned into hoping they were alive.

  On the lower parts of the wall, deep gouges from cws, cracks from horns, and blood could all be seen; remnants from previous battles where the wall had become weathered with time.

  "Oi! Is anyone there?!" Yelling out as loud as I could, I hoped to see someone pop their head over the wall.

  But rather than seeing a face, I watched as several of the cannon-like installments shifted down at our faces.

  To most, it was likely a threatening sight, but after waving my hands in the air, I felt nothing but relief. "Don't shoot! We're mercenaries!" -System, broadcast panel information!-

  Watching Chris's face light up as my system information appeared in front of him, I continued toward the wall simply hoping I didn't get my head taken off.

  However, even as we reached it, we didn't get a response from anyone... -That's a bad sign...- But with how there wasn't a single monster corpse around us, I thought there had to be people. -System, use Broadcast spell.- *Vwoom* Feeling a tug on my reserve, a bright rune rapidly formed in front of my mouth before I looked up again and yelled. "If anyone can hear me, we need help!" Looking down as my voice, amplified with magic, echoed for dozens of kilometers, I rushed to come up with some sort of alternative to just running around the wall until we found a hole or a gate, but time was far more limited than we thought.

  With the constant rumble from the stampede behind us only growing closer, we didn't have the luxury of time.

  "Fuck..." -To think I'd actually have to use this shit again..!- *Vwoop* Pulling two metal gauntlets out of my inventory, I quickly tried to work my calloused hands into them.

  "Are we really gonna try and scale this thing?!" Chris, yelling out with a mix of fear and disbelief, looked up the nearly hundred-meter-tall wall. "This isn't the Ice Shard! It won't be so easy to dig into!"

  Knowing he was right as I looked at the stone-like grey wall, I grit my teeth.

  Exactly as he was saying, I had my doubts.

  However...

  *CR-R-R-RACK* "RAAAHHH!" Hearing the roar of a drake rip out from behind us as it plowed through the trees at the edge of the clearing, our time was running out.

  "JUST FOLLOW ME UP!" Pulling back my bronze-colored gauntlet, I smmed it into the grey material with every bit of strength I had.

  But... *CLANG* Feeling my fingers nearly break as I barely even dug my nails into the wall, exposing a blend of metal and cloth meshes inside the stone, I felt time slow.

  In that instant, knowing I was faced with death, my mind accelerated to an unfathomable extent. -System, use reinforcement, twitch, and pain nullification skills.- *Vwwom* Feeling another small tug on my mana, I pulled back my hand while my pupils dited.

  *CLING-CRRUNCH* Smming my fist into the wall with everything I had, I felt the impact rip through my shoulder before digging a small hole into the wall, just enough for you to get a careful grip.

  But it would have to do. Pulling myself up with it, curling my fingers into cloth meshes in the wall, I quickly punched another hole above it. *CLANG-CRUNCH*

  I was creating a dder of sorts, holes in the wall we could use to climb and, at the least, get above where the drake could reach.

  It was wishful thinking though. Feeling the drake get closer and closer as we rushed to scale the wall, we weren't going to make it.

  And while one drake wasn't too much of a problem for us if we turned and tried to fight our way out, the next time I looked toward it, I didn't see one, but rather five. -What the fuck is this world?!-

  "Shaw!" Hearing Chris yell out at me, I quickly looked down to see him looking out toward the drakes with a thin gaze. "Keep climbing! I'll buy us time!"

  "WHAT?!" Watching him drop off the wall without another thought, I felt his presence fluctuate from the activation of skills before he changed some of his gear to be as fast as possible. "YOU INSANE BASTARD!"

  But, knowing he wasn't pnning on sacrificing himself, I bit my tongue and started climbing, no longer thinking about what was happening behind me and purely focusing on scaling the wall.

  And before I knew it, I was nearly eighty meters off the ground, nearing the top. "CHRIS!" Yelling out again with my broadcast spell, I looked down again to see Chris, covered in his own blood, narrowly dodging the attacks of the drakes with his speed, while other monsters started closing in. "GET UP HERE!"

  Almost immediately, he made a break for the wall, only for me to find a massive wolf, nearly five meters tall, closing in behind him.

  -Oh, no you don't!- *Vwoop* Instantly pulling an old nce out of my inventory, I dug my feet into the wall before leaning out and pulling it back. "Chris! Duck!"

  Finally reaching the wall, Chris started scaling it in a heartbeat before finally seeing what I was doing and gluing himself to the wall.

  "HYUP-!" *WOOM* Hurling the giant nce as hard as I could, it pierced through the air so fast it hummed before the wolf, finally reaching the wall, turned up to lunge at Chris, only to find the tip of my nce between its eyes. *CRRRUNCH*

  The echo of bone being crushed instantly echoed out like the ring of a bell, signaling Chris to continue up the wall with all his speed before I made sure nothing else was trying to follow us up.

  But we were still on a time limit.

  Seeing Chris profusely bleeding from gashes in his thigh and shoulder where the drakes nicked him, I pulled myself back into the wall before pushing through the st twenty meters of wall with grit and adrenaline.

  It wasn't until I reached the top and helped pull up Chris that my nerves finally started easing.

  "Phew..." Letting out a breath of relief, Chris quickly sat down away from the edge of the wall and began applying first aid to his wounds. "That was way too close..." Speaking with a bit of shakiness from the overdose of adrenaline still pumping through his veins as he tied a series of bandages around his leg, he gave me a worried look. "Are you alright as well..? How are your hands?"

  *Cnk* Falling down next to him, I id back to try and not let my dizziness get to me before taking my gauntlets off to see that my hands were nearly purple. "Hah.. they're pretty broken.. but..." Laying out completely as my head rushed and the sky spun, feeling my pain nullification spell starting to wear off, I wanted to smile. "We're alive..."

  *Crackle* Tearing some cloth with his teeth, he quickly pushed it, damp with medicine, deep into the gash in his shoulder with a wince before spitting a bit out to the side. "We aren't totally out of it... If anything that can fly comes, we're fucked up here..."

  And sure enough, right as he said that, a loud but distant pattering met our ears, and we turned around to see a bck thing flying toward us over the space inside the wall.

  Not taking any chances, I immediately tossed up my shield before using the camoufge skill on it and hiding beneath it. Thankfully, with how uniformly grey the wall was, we would be able to hide perfectly.

  At least we thought.

  As seconds ticked by, it grew closer and closer, with the pattering growing louder and louder before it eventually got close enough to blow surges of wind over us as it slowed to a halt right over our heads. -You have to be kidding... It knows we're here?!-

  But it wasn't even remotely what we thought it was.

  "Hey!"

  *Pat* Seeing the feet of a humanoid nd next to us, speaking some sort of unknown nguage, I quickly activated the transtion system.

  "What the hell were you doing outside the wall here?!" *Pat* Reaching down and lifting up the shield, Chris and I both found ourselves staring into the bright blue eyes of an older elven man.

  Not seeing any kind of weapon in his hand we both eased in a heartbeat. "W-We are System Mercenaries, sir. We just got here." Quickly putting my massive shield back on my back and undoing the camoufge magic, a constant bst of wind started ripping over us before we looked up to see a sleek bck.. thing.. hovering over our heads.

  "Ah, I see! We were coming to pick you up, but we were running te because of a sudden wave on the east side of the city!" Motioning his hand down, a number of people quickly jumped out of the vehicle hovering over us to help us up and apply first aid. "We were expecting three mercenaries with your group! Did the other one not make it?"

  I was quick to nod as Chris's and my expressions fell dark.

  "Alright then." Trying to speak up through the wind from the flying vehicle, he spoke loudly. "You should be thankful you guys made it out! Most mercenaries we've gone to retrieve tely have been dead by the time we arrived."

  -No kidding... We were on the higher rank for people taking this quest.. and even we nearly died the moment the gate let us out.- But there was no point in dwelling on it. Now that we were here, we were stuck.

  "In any case," Motioning down the vehicle, it slowly crept down, revealing compartments in it like a huge flying carriage before coming to a stop right off the ground. "Hop in! We'll take you into the city and get you guys up to speed!"

  Getting up with the help of the mix of humans, elves, and demihumans treating our wounds, Chris and I slowly got up and into the thing we would come to know as a helicopter before the doors closed and the deafening pattering from its spinning bdes quieted down. *tssss-click*

  "Sir, please let me see your hand." Asking politely, a female priest of some kind started gently taking my hand and administering more detailed treatment.

  But we didn't have much time to rest. "I apologize for our.. less than ideal first impression, but my name is Allian." Bowing his head slightly from his seat, the well-geared elf that first met us spoke like a noble.

  "I'm Chris..."

  "And I'm Shaw."

  "I see. It's a pleasure to be able to meet you both." Quickly tapping around on the screen of a device on his p, he seemed to be logging our information.

  But we just went along with it.

  Being asked questions as if we were being interrogated, we were flown over a vast, grey city filled with people and vehicles the likes of which we had never seen.

  "Csses?"

  "Padin and Rogue."

  "Levels?"

  "356 and 354"

  "Hm... I guess it's better..."

  According to Allian, this pce was Earth, in a city called Topeka.

  From what we could tell, it was an extremely technologically advance world, simir to what we knew in myths and legends, but that technology only helped them so much.

  In their words, Earth was in a really bad spot, with monsters growing stronger individually and in numbers day by day, leaving them further and further behind. They had originally hoped that this growing gap would be thinned by the introduction of more system mercenaries, but for the most part they were even weaker than us, mostly being around level two or three hundred, with only a handful touching the low 400s.

  "What levels are you guys looking for?"

  "In the high 400s would be nice... You two are on the higher end of those we've retrieved, but you still will have the option to do humanitarian quests rather than hunting."

  Tilting our heads at the unfamiliar terminology, the elven man was quick to eborate.

  "It will, of course, be up to your decision, but you will be able to either be assigned and complete quests reted to people, such as helping evacuation efforts, delivering supplies, and assisting with construction or, if you wish, you can complete hunting quests where you will be asked to go out and kill monsters, then if possible, retrieve their parts."

  -I see...- They weren't actually unfamiliar concepts in other worlds, just known by different terms.

  But we weren't so fast to make our decision.

  Continuing with a lengthy expnation about the situation Earth was in, expining the rank-up, excessive number of monsters, and limited manpower, they expined that if they didn't start getting more hunters and the existing hunters didn't start getting stronger, cities would start falling like they were in other nations, and the popution would only continue to plummet.

  But to Chris and I, it just all sounded.. off... "So if hunters are being encouraged, what's the experience bonus?"

  Typically in other worlds, monsters would have multipliers on them determining how much experience mercenaries could get from each kill. Typically this value was somewhere around .05, with .1 being high.

  But this world was different. "Although it wasn't always like this, it was recently changed to .7, but is tuned down depending on your aptitude with mana. Typically, it nds somewhere around .1 or .2."

  -WHAT?!- It was the highest I had ever heard of.

  But we quickly came to know that it was because of how under-leveled the citizens of this world were. From what Chris and I could tell, the administrators were trying to raise the levels of fighters above all else, as typically a lower kill experience multiplier meant rger sums of experience offered for things like material retrieval, or what this world called 'humanitarian efforts'.

  Generally speaking, this led to a huge influx of inner conflict since the hunters would inevitably get so strong there would be no one to keep them in check, and it would lead to wars and race battles.

  However, after learning that this world had insane sums of experience tagged on other quests as well, we just went silent, doing our best to wrap our heads around the insanity of this world, learning about the recently-formed mana storm in Siberia, and being taught about both technology and international retions over the span of a few days before finally being granted our hunter licenses, and let out of the massive containment facility we had flown to after being rescued off the wall.

  For the first time since we arrived in this world, we had been let go to do our own thing, told to head to the guilds to look around for quests to pick up.

  -Thank goodness we had some gold saved...- Having bought newer equipment of a quality we couldn't have imagined before, Chris and I were eager to pick up a quest or two and get blood to our legs again.

  Even though a few days had passed already, neither of us could get out minds off the death of Johann, and we hoped fighting would help.

  However, the moment we stepped out of the compound we were being held in, us, as well as everyone we could see, had their faces lit up red.

  But.. the panels were bnk. -What the...- "Is it bnk for you too?"

  Chris was quick to nod. "It looks like a warning panel. Did someone use an exploit and break something?"

  Not sure what to think of it, we asked around a bit before just trying to ignore it. "If its something important, I'm sure it'll popute in a minute... In the meantime, let's just head to a guild."

  After all, what was the point of waiting around if nothing was going to happen?

  So we ended up just following the crowd, joining the few people who just started continuing on with their day after about a minute passed.

  We didn't get far though.

  *BEEEP* Getting our ears blown out by a beep from the system, everyone flinched and instinctually closed their eyes...

  Only for us all to open our eyes and watch as countless gates opened in the streets, releasing a mix of smaller monsters, and before anyone could react, the cracks of bone, roars of monsters, and screams of humans flooded the air.

  In the blink of an eye, the city, peaceful and at ease, fell into chaos. The streets were filled with cries and blood, and the monsters who had just dropped out of the gate feasted on citizens as if starved.

  And despite just being released with no obligation to fight, we were on the front line, forced to fight and try to save whoever we could.

  Little did we know, it wasn't just us experiencing camity.

  All around the world, cities and countries were thrown into chaos by the sudden appearance of colossal monster poputions, in and out of cities, with some getting luckier than others.

  It was the coming of the second Great Split.. a camity that previously sent Earth into the darkest era of its history.

  And Chris and I were on the front lines.

  -----

  Rewrites are avaible on Patreon now!

  Read up to 5 weeks ahead of schedule, and get early access to artwork on My Patreon!

  (In case Embedded Link doesn't work: https:///TDOD )

  -------------

  Also, please feel free to check out our discord for all updates reted to TSH releases! https://discord.gg/Dv7G5bQD4v

  All are welcome!