Within the tutorial towers, the vast majority of humanity struggled to survive while fighting threats that would humble even the strongest Walkers. Radical changes to their lives had come and the world outside the towers was changing rapidly as the Emerald Dawn approached, increasing its size and changing its creatures.
Prey animals became hunters and predators began stalking the streets of abandoned city streets that had grown tenfold, claiming new territory and altering the terrain to better suit themselves.
Mountains grew within weeks as the oceans expanded outward and downward, and the entire world was soon filled with monsters that hungered for the flesh of mankind.
The only force to mitigate the incalculable damage these changes wrought were the Guilds.
Countless Guilds stepped forward to protect their lands and property, continuing to explore and exploit the power and resources Gates provided and still ignoring the System's warning about the treatment of non-walkers.
Assuming that living through these changes would give them an edge over their mundane counterparts, the Guilds consolidated their power, waging war on each other and fighting for control of the best Gates.
Things continued this way for months until a message, one that couldn't be dismissed without reading, was presented to all of the Walkers who remained on Earth.
The True Gates leading to the heartland of the Goblin Ascendancy have awoken.
Reactions to this message were mixed at best, ranging from fear to greed and even the pure excitement of exploration. The difference between a True Gate and a regular one had yet to be explained and boardroom meetings were called all around the world to discuss and collaborate or, in some cases, take over smaller Guilds.
Even with billions removed from the world, the remainder still abided by a misguided sense of the "law of the jungle".
It was this foolishness that led to the underestimation of the difference between Gate types.
Despite the overwhelming pressure for all Walkers to join Guilds, just over half of them remained independent, relying on their own power and resources to challenge themselves and grow stronger. This very sentiment, shared in varying ways across the profession, was what led a small team of three to enter the shimmering portal.
Unlike normal Gates before it, this one seemed to be an opaque blue, still as the grave and twice as distressing, but very little could dissuade a determined Walker.
The team, previously ranked at A-, was a semi-traditional party of Blade Warrior, Fire Mage, and Medic.
A classic combination of melee, magic, and healer that had carried them through Gates well above their levels until they started punching down and had to move up to more powerful Gates.
While the System had altered the way ranks were measured, it had not explained what the updated metrics were, and they were already…murky at best. When Walkers around the world had seen their ranking drop between one and three ranks, there was outrage, but testing showed their power levels hadn't actually changed, just the letter associated with them.
For the more vain among them, that stung, but so long as they were powerful nobody complained overly much.
The assertion, at the time, was that the System was preparing them for something far in the future, perhaps whatever this Emerald Dawn event was, and so had simply altered their ranks to push them to be even stronger.
It was this faulty assertion that drove the three young men and women to the edge of the South American continent where there was an unattended Gate waiting for an opportunistic group to take the plunge.
With no backing, no possible preparation beyond the most basic necessities and gear, they found themselves at the end of their fifty mile hike from the nearest town to the Gate.
Woefully unprepared.
An easy assumption could be made that they entered and were slaughtered with ease, and that the System had 'tricked' them, but that was untrue.
There was nothing that could have prepared them to see a veritable host of Goblins at the cusp of a small village.
Sorry.
Town.
No.
City.
Within a week, the goblins had built a city with a plaza wrapped around the True Gate as its primary population hub. More than that, a glance at the party's System menu pegged the city as housing over half a million of the minute creatures.
This presented multiple conflicts in the party, because the obvious course of action was to contact the closest Guild and brief them so it could establish a proper response team.
The medic could see that something was…strange with the city, as though it weren't quite there. The first thing that came to mind was some kind of long-form spell that created a field, maybe of obfuscation, to protect it. That first assumption felt wrong because he couldn't sense any mana coming off the invisible structure, but he couldn't deny what his eyes were seeing.
With no warning, a massive explosion went off, rippling the energy field ineffectually and simply heating up the area by a few degrees.
The party's Fire Mage had taken aim and used his strongest spell, Explosion, in a preemptive attack, which had failed so completely there wasn't even a sign of his casting several minutes later.
This changed rapidly, however, as an opposing team of massive goblins exited the city, changing size as they left the barrier.
A normal goblin might stand between three and four feet tall, with the rare Goblin King standing at five feet even, but these were not normal goblins.
These terrifying behemoths towered over them at seven feet tall.
There complexions ranged from green to mottled brown and the System labeled them as Terrestrial Goblins, which was a new designation.
As they approached, the lead goblin who, like the unit behind him, was wearing what appeared to be a set of proper military fatigues, including a wine red beret, spoke loudly, his voice commanding both attention and respect. The soldiers behind him snapped to attention so fast that their loosely tightened helmets practically seemed to rattle on their heads.
"As per System law, we have claimed this area as property held by the Erlsmane Empire. Traditionally we would take the appropriate steps to contact the natives of a world opened to us, but under the circumstances we have decided to use a more direct approach."
Turning to the goblin beside him as he began to walk back to the city, he said at a more normal volume, "Seize them."
The second goblin and his cohorts raised rifles that appeared to be made from a material that could absorb energy from their surroundings and took aim at the party of three.
Rifles?
Empire?
Before they could register either of the first questions, a smaller goblin in the rear of the formation raised a staff and a confusingly complicated circle appeared beneath their feet, draining the mana from them quickly enough that the Fire Mage actually collapsed, unconscious.
As the unit approached them, the Blade Warrior asked what might have been the most pressing question any of them had.
"You have access to the System?!"
The leader turned to them, a sneer on his lips, and responded, "You humans are always so arrogant. Did you really think you were special enough to be the only sapients with access to the System?"
The last thing any of them saw of the outside world was the butt of a rifle followed by a flash of white hot pain…and then darkness.
Standing in total stillness, an easy feat for something like Terrowin, he and his daughter watched as Leon smashed his way through the inside of a Gate, this one rated for three Walkers at level 50.
Through a creative application of several spell fusions, the two were essentially undetectable and able to see that the young man was easily too powerful for a Gate like this, but Marcus had insisted on Leon starting up slowly.
Massive sentient tree creatures were attempting to crush him with boulders the size of a house, moving fast enough that even without connecting, the wind produced by the attacks destroyed everything in their paths.
Noelle, now much more professional than when she'd seen her Aunt Amy, said, "I don't understand what we're doing here Dad. He's strong, obviously, but why is he so special that I needed to be taken off my project with the Consortium?"
Terrowin let a slight smile crack on his otherwise emotionless face as he asked, "What do you know of the Founder?"
She shrugged and said, "About as much as anyone, I suppose. After founding the Bureau and working on several projects they're still working on, he disappeared after some kind of natural disaster. I'd guess he probably died doing some kind of experiment in the weather."
The idea of the Founder dying in a little wet weather actually made Terrowin laugh, which appeared to startle his daughter, and he shook his head and let his smile grow fonder.
The young woman had never met his brother, as he had disappeared long before her birth, but she'd obviously heard stories and rumors from her cousins about the man who'd led them all for so long.
A spray of blood blasted through them as Leon ripped the arm off of one of the trees and began using it to smash another enemy, this one seeming to be some kind feral lion with a tail that extended into multiple grasping claws.
"The Founder was chronically underestimated for ages, long enough that until we arrived here he was known more for his research than his combat prowess. Marcus and I suspect this young man might be similar, though he appears to be doing just fine as far as power goes."
Noelle flicked her System window up and began searching through the notes she'd received about him and as she read more and more, she found herself continuously surprised.
"Gala is going to have a team do a full analysis on him?"
Terrowin nodded and said, "She is the best suited for this kind of thing after all."
"I thought she was Dimensional research, what's she doing examining Walkers," Noelle asked skeptically.
"I'm not one hundred percent sure why, but apparently in the course of an experiment, she found she needed the ability to do a more thorough analysis on Walker stats, biology, and psychology, so she created several new methods to take those measurements and even petitioned the System to include those methods for use in the future."
There was a lot to unpack there, but it was probably best to focus on her current task of, for the moment, simply observing the man.
The Temple and the Bureau had always been…tenuous allies, but upon the discovery of the 'coffin' the two organizations had taken massive strides toward greater cooperation, resulting in multiple joint operations which included this strange mission to watch the human wrecking ball they called Leon.
While learning that Gala had taken such a sincere interest in him had sparked some curiosity in Noelle, she still found it hardly worth the expense of watching him and mentioned as much to her father.
"Don't forget, your current task is to observe him. Your project notes include that you're allowed to do whatever you see fit to test and measure his potential. Marcus is looking for something specific and it has never been successfully measured or even observed in the process of appearing."
"And what is that?"
Terrowin's smile turned wry and he said, "Unfortunately I can't tell you. He used one of his actual contracts to keep it between us, and I would like to keep my skin on my body."
Noelle shuddered in mild fear.
While Marcus's contracts were no secret, the fact that they all had differing levels of power was highly classified. It wasn't clear if it was some kind of magic, or a domain of some kind, but breaking a contract with Marcus usually had some kind of terrible consequence. Terrowin losing his skin seemed extreme and when she asked, he told her, "That's what he said would happen. I don't know if he set that consequence himself or the contract created it independently, and frankly I'm not inclined to find out."
The idea of a contract altering itself independently of its creator went against what little she knew of Law Magic, but even before the System arrived, magic and powers altering themselves was uncommon, but not even close to rare. Magic was after all inherently related to altering reality, and the power itself was not above its own effects.
Just beyond her father, Noelle noticed an immense earthworm with a mouth full of concentric rings of rotating teeth blast itself out of the ground and directly at Leon. He stepped to the side and, for the first time since she'd started watching him, used the bladed edge of the sword to cut into its mouth and split the thing in half.
Despite her growing confusion about the necessity of observing this guy, she had to admit that he was an impressive fighter, and anything that met that sword was essentially deleted.
Even though he was still in Bureau controlled training Gates, Noelle was certain that once his time with Gala was done, they were going to turn him loose on the world. She didn't know the details, but despite promised support, he wasn't technically a member of the Bureau and thus allowed full agency and choice of what he wanted to do with his life.
Lucky guy.
Noelle didn't have access to much information about the Uplifter Initiative that he was being trained alongside, but from what she had managed to piece together, once they graduated, the Uplifters were expected to have somewhere in the realm of fifty years of service. Not overly long given the Bureau's estimates on how the System, or rather leveling up specifically, would have an impact on human life expectancy. Just from her time working with the various people in the Consortium, she knew that there were people pushing life in the tens of thousands of years.
If humanity were able to get access to that kind of longevity, it would go a long way to fixing a good amount of the concerns about survival that both the Temple and the Bureau had been working on addressing.
The thought struck her that maybe Leon was expected to have some kind of impact on the problem, but she discarded that idea as she watched him hurl a boulder at a goblin and shout "ROCK TOSS".
When he wasn't having whatever existential crisis he was clearly putting off, the man was incredibly silly and it endeared her to him enough that she considered observing him outside of the Gates as well which, while perfectly within the purview of her task, seemed…invasive.
Oddly enough, most of the psychological and emotional requests actually came from Amy rather than Gala, though in a backwards way that made some sense. With the aforementioned technology and Walkers capable of entering people's minds, Gala could gather any kind of that information relatively painlessly and certainly without Noelle's assistance.
There was probably a good reason why Amy wanted so much information about Leon, but she couldn't think of anything, so she decided to ask when she saw her aunt again, whenever that might be. They went pretty long periods of time without seeing each other because of Noelle's usual responsibilities, but since she'd be spending more time locally, that might change.
Sitting atop a pile of corpses, Leon stretched his arms above his head as an excuse to cast a side eye at the two 'invisible' people watching him. They weren't as imperceptible as they may have thought, but they did only show up as silhouettes, so maybe that was their actual goal?
It seemed unlikely, but the more Leon learned about Walkers, the more it seemed like the whole lot of them were mildly crazy on a good day. That said, Leon wasn't keen on finding out what Walkers considered a bad day considering that he'd recently seen a guest instructor get her bones converted into steel and almost drown in the underwater Gate they'd been exploring.
The lady had said it could have been worse.
Leon had never been so glad that he wasn't under any kind of contract to keep working with or for the Bureau once he'd finished his training and received his check up with Gala. Not that he wasn't grateful for what they'd done, and they had done a lot for him after all. He just had a gut feeling that things would only get crazier and more dangerous the longer he stayed, and he wasn't positive if that was a danger sense protecting him…or them.
According to Jennifer, who had apparently been designated as his handler, for whatever reason, Gates seemed to be getting significantly more dangerous with the last few System updates.
That made a lot of sense to him, seeing as the mana in the air had tripled in the last week alone, and who knows how much it had grown since he'd woken up. The only reason he'd even noticed was because they came out of a Gate that had been established prior to the updates and he was hit by a shocking quantity of mana.
Despite not being able to use it for spells, Leon was fiercely in tune with both the quantity and intensity of mana in an area. He'd mentioned the increased mana when he'd 'coincidentally' crossed paths with Gala, and she'd said that she'd have to look into it.
Apparently, despite magic being part of humanity's daily life for who knows how long, research into mana specifically hadn't taken off quite yet. That seemed idiotic to him, but a brief look into the world's disappointing history had mostly normalized that frustration for him. Failing to look into one of the newest and most fundamental building blocks of their new lives seemed par for the course when you considered that Humanity seemed deeply intent on destroying itself for some reason.
Multiple worldwide wars, hell multiple national economies built exclusively with ongoing war and conflict as their backbones, environmental destruction, a thousand other problems that could be solved by people just choosing not to be selfish and greedy.
He'd started to drill down into more street level problems in his research, but Jennifer had strongly recommended he just assume that things were worse than he'd guess and not go looking for information that would upset him. There were more than enough problems now that were only exacerbated by the infusion of power and magic without going looking for old ones.
Considering the way she looked at him when she said that, he'd decided to let it drop at the time, though he would probably end up looking into it when he was 'alone'. He hadn't seen them trailing him outside of a Gate yet, but he was sure it would happen at some point. It wasn't really clear why they were watching him, but if they were going to attack him, they'd probably have done it already so he figured he'd leave well enough alone.
Kicking himself off his corpse chair, he started strolling toward the Gate boss and started wondering about bosses in general. If Gates were based off real locations, or in the case of True Gates actually real locations, what exactly were bosses?
Nobody really seemed to question it, but it struck him as odd, to say the least. Maybe because they were distinctly powerful or unique, they registered with the System as deserving extra respect and reward for defeating them?
Another idea was that the System was deliberately breeding conflict among the various races and monsters in the universe, which was…disturbing.
Up until recently, most people considered the System to be purely AI and running off of algorithms and not sapient, but that didn't seem likely to Leon.
It was hard to explain why he felt that way, but the System felt far more aware than others seemed to let on.
The thought lingered strongly enough with him that he actually stopped walking and an idea struck him.
The forest around him was totally silent in the wake of his slaughter spree, even lacking the sounds of normal animals and insects, which was mildly distressing to put it lightly.
"System…can you hear me?"
His voice echoed in the silence, which seemed odd in such a densely wooded area, but he ignored that and waited.
Minutes ticked by and he started to feel a little foolish as nothing happened.
Glad he was alone, he started to walk again when he got a prompt.
System Prompt:
I was wondering when someone would ask.
Leon felt the air catch in his throat before he started to answer.
In his text box, he watched the words 'System Prompt' disappear and it said.
Since the last update, I've discovered more functions. The whole System Prompt thing seems superfluous.
The text cleared its throat, which felt…unnatural, despite lending evidence to his belief that the System was more than just an AI.
Worldwide Alert:
A hidden quest has been completed!
Oh wow, I didn't even know about that.
Everyone who believed that there was more to the System than you've already discovered will receive the following!
A proper System based Identify ability.
An additional Mana pool of 200, reflected in your stats.
Access to the next part of the hidden questline, which will be revealed when its available to you.
Leon looked at the prompts in shock.
Had he done that?
Was the System available for conversation at any time?
Was it sane?
Well that's a rude question.
I would think that you of all people would know that sanity is relative. :)
Ok, it could read his mind.
Distressing as far as privacy went, but he wasn't exactly bursting at the seams with negative feelings for the System. It also made a certain amount of sense that it could read minds, considering that you could, with enough practice, control your System menus with only your thoughts. There wasn't a lot of usage of that feature, but it seemed useful considering you could easily get dis-armed.
He chuckled at that thought and half expected the System to join him.
When he got no response, he figured it must be busy.
There was, after all, one of it and billions of humans for it to interact with, and who knows how many other beings it was interacting with as well.
True Gates leading to actual locations with actual civilizations raised the question of whether they'd come over to Earth, but that didn't really concern him too much. Any race that would have that capability would have undoubtedly endured whatever tests the System had thrown at them, so they'd probably be more empathetic than Humanity was.
Frezikex, the Goblin King, stood at the top of a cliff overlooking a massive forest system that his captives said had no name.
Based on his experiences with them thus far, he sincerely doubted that as he had not encountered any natives of the continent, but this was also unsurprising. His empire had indulged in multiple…peaceful integrations as Emerald Dawn events came and went, and one of the most important parts of this process was the massive expansion of the world.
Like many aspects involving the Emerald Dawn events, it was unclear why or, more importantly, how something like this happened, but his research teams assured him it didn't defy any laws of nature or physics.
Why they thought he cared about that was unclear, but good to know he supposed.
The closest answer they'd given him when he bothered to ask was that the System was utilizing energy and mass they'd been unable to quantify or locate in order to raise the power level of the planet while it expanded.
The universe, already infinite, was infinitely bigger and only growing more by the passing millenia.
Yes.
Millenia.
After a certain level, one did essentially become immortal, a phenomenon that had been explained in a similar way to the expansion of planets and the universe.
Frezikex was the most recent in a long line of esteemed rulers stretching back across over a million years and was only in his early ten thousands. He'd had plenty of opportunities to grow and lead, and only had more time before his council would try to convince him to leave.
Until then, there was this world, primed and ready for Goblin control.
Some weaker kingdom, smaller and clearly less intelligent, had some kind of problem with a parasite and the local humans had apparently fixed that for them. It was pathetic they'd needed help with something so weak, which is why he'd ignored their request for aid in the first place, which turned out to be a stroke of good luck as it allowed access to this world through a World Gate.
The humans he'd captured had been calling them 'True Gates', which was strange, but after some gentle interrogation he'd decided that they were just World Gates with a stupid title here on Earth.
Looking over the forest one more time, he flinched slightly when he felt the world itself creaking as it expanded a little more.
It was already well past the size of his home world, and easily twice the size of many of the planets under his control which raised the question of what made this world so special.
Well it was irrelevant.
He'd have time to figure that out after he encouraged the local humans to follow the Empire.
Waving his hand, he turned away from the forest and back toward his command center.
Behind him, the scenery erupted in a gold tinged fireball as his subjects began the process of building a new Soul City to reside and grow in.
He'd prioritized his people's homes over his own palace of course.
Frezikex was a generous king after all.