A bright purple glow briefly illuminated an empty cave. When the glow faded, the cave was empty no more. In the center now stood a young man, clothed in leather and fur. He was just under six feet tall, with short light brown hair and an untrimmed beard. He stood there in silence, listening to a voice in his head that only he could hear.

“Congratulations on completing all fifty stages of the secret training area! Gaia is thrilled with your success! As your final reward and for being the first to complete this secret training area you have awakened the title Gaia’s Blessing. This title increases all stats by twenty-five percent. Gaia prays for your continued success and the success of Humanity. This secret training area will no longer be accessible from this location.”

“I’m finally back…,” Kyle softly murmured. It had taken fifty stages and over two years, but he had done it. Gaia’s secret training area was complete.

Sarah, I’m finally back. Everyone… I’m coming home.

Kyle would have been worried about his friends and family’s safety if it wasn’t for a skill he had combined, called Advanced Dowsing. The skill allowed him to find out general information about his target so he knew that Sarah was still alive and that she was okay. Having that skill had done wonders for Kyle’s peace of mind and let him fully concentrate on getting stronger and finishing the secret training area.

It had been on the seventh stage that Kyle had come to the realization that he wasn’t getting out any time soon. The stage was set on a snow covered mountain top, and Kyle had to somehow reach the summit whist simultaneously fighting off the cold, the freezing hurricane force winds, and the packs of yetis that could shoot icicles and breathe cones of cold. One of the yetis had knocked him off the side of a cliff and it had only been because of his mental enhancement skills that he had the presence of mind to shield himself, preventing him becoming a meat pancake on impact.

That experience had made him finally acknowledge that getting out at all was more important than getting out ASAP. The secret training area truly was a training paradise so long as death could be avoided, but avoiding death needed to be higher up on Kyle’s list of priorities. But once he devoted the proper effort to staying alive there was not a huge amount of danger. There were some close calls, but Kyle’s skills and title were only enhanced by the resources he gained, and his growth skyrocketed.

The last few levels of the training area, despite being the hardest by far, actually held the least danger. When Kyle had reached the halfway point he was rewarded with a title crystal and the title he awakened, Forced Mana Skill Leveling, allowed him to level up his skills a lot faster, which in turn made him even more powerful and created an exponential growth loop.

Kyle closed his eyes and activated Advanced Dowsing. Finally it showed a proper direction. When Kyle had activated the skill in the training area he had gotten the impression that everyone he targeted was in a different dimension. No matter where he went he would never be able to find them. When he activated the skill now he not only got an impression of Sarah’s wellbeing, but also where he needed to go to find her. She didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger so Kyle reactivated his skill with Mickey as the target, figuring that Mickey would be in Humanity’s city so he was a good target to use as a reference to get there.

Kyle put a large shield on himself and made his way back to the main tunnel. Once there, he started to run. His stats were incomparable to before, and his shield was powerful enough that he didn’t need to worry about anything he came across. He simply ran right through the slimes and the pitfall traps only activated once he was long gone.

Kyle ran through the tunnel with the slimes. He jumped straight over a room full of lava elementals. He breezed past a corridor full of arrow traps. He zoomed straight through a large cavern that seemed to hold thousands of goblin like creatures, ignoring all of their pitiful attacks. He only took a break from his running when the cavern opened up into a deep, narrow valley that appeared to be the home of ten story tall frost giants.

There seemed to be a way to reach the other end of the valley by traversing its sides, which is what Kyle presumed Sarah, Li, and Walt had done to bypass the twenty or so giants below. Kyle guessed that if he had tried to kill them in the past he would have run out of mana before even killing one of them. Large monsters typically had high regeneration, so attacking them without high enough DPS was suicide.

Kyle had ignored the monsters up to this point, not even bothering to loot the ones he had killed. It simple wasn’t worth it in his mind. He had tons of extra skill crystals and enhancement crystals in his extradimensional storage, so he was not really in need of the few more that weak monsters would drop. These front giants on the other hand didn’t seem weak, as this challenge was most likely about passing through the valley without them noticing then fighting them. Kyle decided to quickly kill them and see if they dropped anything worthwhile.

It may seem strange that Kyle was so cavalier about enhancement crystals, but currently they were not all that useful to him. While enhancement crystals could increase his stats, it turned out that there was a limit. Once his stats passed the equivalent of 500 enhancement crystals, so 500 for physical and magic power and 5,000 for health and mana, the crystals no longer always worked. When his stats passed the equivalent of 1,000 enhancement crystals they only worked less than ten percent of the time. The stat points gained from leveling up skills always worked though, which was the main way Kyle ended up raising his stats.

He also found out that there were tiers of crystals and skills. So far he had managed to combine five tier two skills. When those skills reached level ten, instead of giving one stat point, they gave ten points. Kyle finally knew why his title was worded the way it was, as when the tier two skills reached an increment of ten, they gave him an additional ten stat points. His Exponential Growth title truly was a huge boon.

Just like tier two skills, tier two enhancement crystals gave ten stat points, although sometime you would get less if you stats were above a certain amount. Once Kyle got his extradimensional storage skill he no longer bothered trying to use enhancement crystals and just stored them for when he would eventually leave the training area.

So while Kyle had a truly absurd number of crystals stored with his Pocket Dimension skill, there was always the chance of a monster dropping a skill that he really needed, and he would finally have a use for all the extra crystals once he reached the rest of Humanity so there was no real harm in picking up more. He should at least be able to trade them for something if nothing else.

There were a total of twenty-two frost giants below him. They were big enough that Kyle doubted there were more hiding out somewhere, so twenty-two should be all of them. Kyle first aimed at a group of five. Currently, Kyle’s most powerful attack skill was his tier two Advanced Various Mana Bolts. He was able to charge up an extremely powerful bolt of mana, which ended up being so powerful that it instantly killed the five giants that Kyle targeted in one hit. The rest followed soon after and Kyle was left as the sole resident of the entire valley.

The frost giants didn’t drop anything amazing, but Kyle did end up finding something worthwhile in a treasure chest he sniffed out with his Advanced Dowsing skill. The chest contained two combination crystals, which were always useful. Kyle could essentially farm combination points by making sure his skills were all max level before using a point to free up space, but having more points was always better. He had only managed to get one tier two skill by using just one point and the other four had all been him using ten combination points to combine specific skills.

Even travelling at a ridiculous speed it took Kyle over a week until he finally reached a place that gave him more than one direction to travel. He imagined that it would have taken Sarah and the other two at least a few months to get where he was currently. In particular there had been a nasty patch where you had to navigate an underwater maze. If you took the wrong turn you could get stuck and run out of air. But he was past all that now, and in the distance Kyle spotted what looked like his first glimpse of civilization.

The tunnel Kyle just came out of opened up to a giant cavern. The ceiling looked tall enough to fit the Burj Khalifa with room to spare. There were huge columns of stone and large stalactites and stalagmites, although Kyle could never remember which was which. The cavern could have fit multiple football fields, and had a myriad of tunnels leading in and out, some big enough for a small dragon to fit inside and others that looked barely large enough for a human. There were no monsters as far as Kyle could see, but there did look to be some sort of outpost building in the distance. His dowsing skill only confirmed that was where he wanted to go.

Kyle got a better look at the out post as he got closer. It appeared to be a smallish stone fortress which only looked big enough to house a hundred or so people at most. It was built up over the entrance to a tunnel, and had a medium sized wall surrounding some sort of inner compound. As Kyle approached, he was quite literally hailed by someone standing over medieval style portcullis.

“Hail traveler, and well met. I am the gatekeeper of the Flintstone Fortress. Doth thou seek passage within?”

The guard, who looked to be a few years younger than Kyle, then blushed a bit, obviously embarrassed by what he had said.

“Err, sorry about that. I always wanted to try greeting someone like that. My name’s Ryan by the way. Let me go down and open the portcullis for you.”

“There’s no need,” Kyle replied, as he jumped up on top of the wall next to Ryan. The wall was only thirty or so feet high, which was a trivial distance to jump with Kyle’s stats.

“My name’s Kyle,” he said, holding out his hand.

Ryan shook his hand.

It was at this point that Ryan took notice of what Kyle was wearing. While Ryan was wearing metal armor overtop of leather, Kyle was wearing what clearly looked like handmade leather armor, complete with furs and all. There was not a scrap of woven fabric to be seen. Ryan immediately grabbed onto this detail with interest.

“What’s up with your clothes? It looks like you only have leather on. Did something happen to your other clothes and you had to make those? Or maybe you like cosplaying and wearing leather? Are you advertising for a shop back in the city?”

Now that he was closer, Kyle revised his opinion of Ryan’s age as closer to fourteen or fifteen. He was staring at Kyle’s clothing with the blatant enthusiasm only a kid could have.

“I’ve actually never been to the city. I was trapped in a certain area soon after everyone was transported here from Earth and now I am making my way to Humanity’s city.”

“You mean like a secret training area? I heard that there were people who were trapped in secret areas and when they came out they were super strong! Where were you trapped? Did you become super powerful?”

Ryan’s eyes were shining as he looked at Kyle as if he was some sort of hero personified. Kyle wasn’t really sure what to make of it. He had no clue how common secret training areas were, but from the sound of it people knew about them already. If it had not been for the title part of humanity then Kyle would probably have kept quiet, but with the title he saw no harm in humoring the kid in from of him.

“Yeah, it was a secret training area. I don’t know about super powerful, but I am definitely a lot stronger now than when I was first trapped in there.”

“Really!? I wish I could go try and find a secret training area. My parents only let me work out here at a guard post though. Actually if you don’t have an ID card then I need to take you to see the commander. Follow me!”

Ryan then ran off towards some stairs, with Kyle following shortly. Ryan kept up a string of question on the walk through the fortress that Kyle did his best to answer. From what he said, Kyle was getting the picture that Humanity seemed to be doing pretty well. They seemed to be working with a sort of merit based system and working at a guard post was one of the ways to earn points to trade in for crystals. Points earned by working various jobs or trading in crystals seemed to by the main currency, and Ryan made it sound like basic amenities like food and shelter were basically free.

Ryan finally led Kyle to a door that had Commander Jessen written on it. Ryan opened the door without knocking and entered. Kyle followed him inside to greet the commander.

He was met by the sight of a neat office with a large desk that had a striking middle aged woman sitting behind it. She had quite a presence, and Kyle could feel a fairly large mana pool from her. She was wearing shining armor that was clearly enchanted based on the patterns engraved in it, and Kyle couldn’t help but appreciate its beauty. She reprimanded Ryan as soon as they entered the room.

“Ryan, what have I told you about knocking? I could be in the middle of an important meeting.”

Ryan at least had the grace to look abashed before his enthusiasm came back. “Sorry commander, but you told me to immediately bring anyone here who had yet to reach the First City. Kyle said not only has he never been to the city, but he was trapped in a secret training area!”

Commander Jessen raised her eyebrows at that information. “I’m sure Kyle is perfectly capable of telling me his situation himself. You did the right thing by bringing him here, but now you should get back to you post. Dismissed.”

“Aye aye commander.”

Ryan did a sloppy impression of a salute before rushing back out the door. The commander then turned her attention to Kyle.

“You name is Kyle? I’m Commander Agnes Jessen. A pleasure to meet you. Please sit down.”

Kyle sat down in one of the chairs in front of desk before she continued.

“If you really survived a secret training area then you must be quite powerful. It would explain why you haven’t reached the First City yet. Most people who have not been trapped somewhere have long been found already by rescue missions.”

Commander Jessen then got up and brought out a large array of some sort that almost looked like a magical computer.

“Could you please tell me your full name and if anyone might have filed a report asking about your whereabouts?”

“Kyle Anders. I guess my aunt and uncle, Lisa and Carl Anders might have filed one and my friend Sarah Bailer also did one I’m sure.”

Commander Jessen seemed to be staring at something that only she could see as she manipulated the computer-like array in front or her with mana.

“It looks like Carl Anders put out a first level alert for you. Sarah’s name is on there as well. It says here that Carl Anders is on the council for Metal City, which would explain the first level alert.”

The commander then put away her magical computer and turned back to Kyle.

“I’m sure you have a lot of questions, and since you have a first level alert out it is my duty to help you to the best of my abilities. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been through and what you know and I can then fill you in from there.”

Kyle spent the next three hours telling his story to the commander and listening to her tell him about what had happened with Humanity. Humanity in general seemed to be doing quite well, with the only people who hadn’t made it to the city yet being people like him who were in extradimensional spaces. They had even made it to the second tier of the dungeon Gaia had trapped them in and established a small city. The dungeon seemed to be divided into tiers, and the second tier had much stronger monsters and would more often drop second tier crystals and combination crystals.

Kyle learned about the First City and the sub cities within it. Apparently his uncle being on the council for one was a big deal. The commander also told him about how the golems provided plenty of food and there were still large unoccupied sections of the cities so housing wasn’t a problem. In general with the title Part of Humanity people were working together for the common good.

After explaining a lot of the information that Kyle needed to know, the commander, who was really only a commander in name as this was a very out of the way outpost, then took Kyle to get an ID made. It was similar to the one that he had gotten at the dungeon school, except that it would only show his personal information if he wanted it to. It also functioned as a credit card where he could store the merit points he earned and trade them in for various things, like favors or skill crystals.

As someone with a level one alert out for them, Kyle was authorized to use the teleport formation in the fortress to travel to a larger fortress and then go to the city from there. Commander Jessen was shocked when Kyle offered to charge the teleport formation. It required a million mana, and she thought it would take her a little while to charge it up for him to use.

Kyle didn’t waste any time once he had the go ahead and quickly filled the teleport formation with mana and, after a quick goodbye to the commander, left for a larger fortress. His alert level allowed him to then easily teleport to Metal City, and someone even offered to guide him to where his aunt and uncle were staying, although Kyle could have found it by himself with his skill.

He was dropped off before a rather large housing complex by his guide. Kyle could tell with his skill that only Lisa and Mickey were inside, while it appeared that his uncle and friends were outside the city.

I’m finally back. I did it. I finally made it. Carl, Lisa, Mickey, Sarah…

Kyle felt more emotional than he had in a long time. He slowly walked up to the door, his door, and rang the magical doorbell. He was finally home.