It had been three to four months since I’d first entered Andern. In Terminus-Earth time it was still Monday.

While earth still had yet to gain any sort of mastery over the art of time-manipulation, the DPAA’s connection to the House of Antipodes and our universe’s status as a terminus world meant we got to enjoy certain privileges.

Strictly speaking, until they’d finished their assent from low-energy to high-energy, the lesser-worlds were less real than our world was. Sitting in that vague and questionable realm that most high-end game worlds had in your average VR LitRPG.

Despite this being the case, the will of the worlds couldn’t be completely overwritten. There was a definite limit to the things we could control without a risk of directly breaking the world. However, there was still a lot of things we could change, manipulate, and alter for the sake of doing our jobs before reaching that limit.

This was part of the authority entrusted to those of us in the DPAA, and even if I could have done similar myself, using my own powers and abilities, it was damn handy not to have to expend the immense amount of energy to do so.

Those of us who had been granted access to the consoles could slow or accelerate the flow of time in the lesser-worlds as we pleased. We could even stop or reverse time. Pulling off feats of time manipulation that would ordinarily require unfathomable amounts of power, with relative ease.

The only thing we couldn’t do was directly meddle with the past and future of the worlds in our care. As soon as we attempted to do that the console, and the world itself, would boot us out.

Thus there really wasn’t much of a point in making use of the time-reversal options besides using it as a sort of save-system. With the save-files, one could conveniently log out and log in to the world without worrying about too many things changing in the intervening time.

The time-reversal and time-stopping abilities of the consoles were also utilized during certain critical instances, to undue certain outcomes or changes made while one was using the world’s editor-mode. One could use the save-files to undo the changes that one made because the worlds wouldn’t resist us meddling with our own activities.

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Returning to the matter at hand, I’d just emerged from the little apartment/office that I’d set up at the back of my little shop. I’d just taken a shower and now I had a nice warm mug of tea in hand. The tea was a special blend that I’d grown on one of my farming-planets.

This was quite the achievement considering how much I’d had to fiddle with my console before I was able to override the restrictions against bringing foreign materials into the worlds with me. I really hadn’t had much choice, Andern was an interesting world, but the food here just plainly sucked.

I’d set up the shop because it gave me a nice solid, setting appropriate, reason to just hang around. The building was actually one of my FC-ships. Ironically, it was much easier to bring, a nation-flattening, astral-dreadnought into a world than it was to bring a few damn tins of tea-leaves, because the console recognized the ships of the FC-Fleet as being part of my power.

I was just settling down to look over the collection of comics and books I’d had a few of my drones collect from this portion of Andern when I realized that I had a visitor.

A boy with green hair, and very poor personal hygiene, burst into my shop and ducked behind one of the shelves. I opened my mouth to ask the boy just what he thought he was doing and he had the nerve to shush me. Wordlessly pressing a finger to his lips.

A second later, two large, low-IQ, looking gentleman tore through my door as well. All but tearing the door off its hinges. Or at least they would have if said door wasn’t engineered to withstand prolonged nuclear bombardment.

Instead, one of the men ran into the door and then the other man, ran into the man who ran into the door. It was very...Three Stooges/Charlie Chapman, golden age of slapstick, and I’ll admit it got a chuckle from me.

Eventually, the two thugs got their shit together and realized that the door of my store was meant to be pulled not pushed. They let themselves inside and perhaps out of embarrassment they started things off with a very forceful tone.

“Oi, shopkeeper!...Did you see a little green haired blighter run in here!” said one of the thugs.

The boy looked up at me, from where he crouched behind the shelf, his gaze pleading. The thugs alternated between glaring at me and looking the shop over to look for signs of where the boy might be hiding.

I read the akashic data for both the thugs and the boy.

The thugs belonged to some group known by the name of Sharkfang Gang. They were the local tyrants in this small pocket of the Hythe Wastelands. Said plainly the thugs didn’t matter...they were just guys. Bad guys, but not so bad that I would bother myself over it.

The boy was a different story. Remember when I said that this world had recovered to the stage of being able to appoint heroes to help with its ascension? This wasn’t one of them. Instead, if this were a story, the boy would be the cannon-fodder, B-villain, that the hero ran into and then...over...on the way to their being a hero.

The green-haired boy’s name was Sevastion, nickname “Sev”, Huxley. He was currently seventeen and a half years of age, and in the last two and a half years he’d done quite a bit of growing up. Which is why I decided to help him.

Up until those two and a half years, young Ailbhe had been exactly the kind of little shit that would tempt me into making an exemption for my rules against harming children. He had been a textbook “young master”.

I probably still wouldn’t have killed him, but the younger Sev was the kind of brat that was just begging for some kind of karmic comeuppance.

Sevastion was a true menace. He was the worst kind of young master. Guilty of almost all the B-villain crimes, save for a few of the worst ones, because thankfully the boy’s mother had been able to keep the child from becoming a complete monster.

Without her, the boy would have been well on his way to becoming the kind of guy, I sometimes quietly kill as an act of charity to the world. Even with her aid, he was still something of a mad dog, a bad dog, a dog that needed to be put down for the sake of the public.

Then he ran into the hero, or rather ‘a’ hero, one of the world’s many hero candidates.

The two youths came into conflict and it was basically hatred at first sight. Sevastion hated the boy because he was poor, and a foreigner, and had been acting far too “arrogant” for a commoner. The hero hated Sevastion because he was arrogant, and full of himself, and a bully.

The usual hijinks ensued. Sevastion ended up taking things too far like all cannon-fodder villains end up doing, using his family’s guards in an attempt to outright kill the hero. Plot armor intervened, and favoritism of the world reared its ugly head by way of the hero somehow becoming the apprentice of a famous sword-saint.

In the stories, a B-villain’s loss results in the B-villain’s father, grandfather, and great grand-father stepping in so that the whole family can look extra petty and court death. In real life, once it was clear that the boy had kicked a steel a wall, the family sent Sevastion away to boarding school.

Sevastion was exiled from the Huxley clan. Never to return, except upon death. His name was stricken from the Huxley family register and that was the end of that. The Huxley family just plainly weren’t going to risk being wiped out for the sake of one out of the family’s dozen and a half juniors.

Sevastion’s father was disgusted with his: A) inability to assess an opponent, and B)inability to know how to finish a matter cleanly, so he had the boy’s uncle send him off.

As the cherry on the shit sundae that was this segment of Sevastion’s life, Sevastion’s Uncle was a gambling addict. Heavily addicted and very deeply indebted to some very scary people. The man stole the boy’s tuition to pay for his debts and then sold the boy to the circus to pay for the ante for his next game. Sevastion’s Uncle did this, confident that the boy wouldn’t be able to return to report his misdeeds because if Sevastion attempted to do so, there were orders to kill the boy on sight due to his exile.

The next year or so, was plainly a nightmare. I won’t go into it. That’s Sevastion’s story to tell, should he ever decide to write his own memoirs.

Let’s simply say absorbing the data for that year of the boy’s life reminded me of my own childhood and that is not a good thing. There are reasons that I’ve spent a great deal of time mentally and emotionally distancing myself from my past.

All you need to know about what the boy went through, is that the Mazon Circus of Magical Curiosities was not a good place visited by good people. It was the kind of place that the hells were made for, because some things demanded punishment and retribution, even if the world of the living couldn’t provide it.

Sevastion managed to escape with the help of his “little sister” another of the ringmaster, Philip Mazon’s, enslaved performers. The two escaped together and had been living a life of enjoying the simple happiness that came with being free again.

With that knowledge in mind, there was no way I could give the kid up, so I ultimately just took a sip of my tea and said,

“Sorry, mate...I’m afraid no one’s been in the shop all day.”

“Oh,...is that so?” growled the thug. His eyes narrowed. His tone still very aggressive and slightly cute because of it. Like a teacup poodle earnestly challenging a Kodiak bear.

“Yep…” I said. Taking another sip of my tea.

“Hmph...Then I don’t suppose you’d mind if we looked around for a bit.” said the thug.

“Actually,... I do mind.”

“What?! ...Are you out of your head? This the Sharkfang’s turf...If we want to look around then we’re bloody well going to lo-…”

“Shush….It’s too early in the afternoon for all this aggression. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” I said. Dropping a dose of mental magic inside my words.

“Yes ...We shall leave.” the thugs said. Speaking in unison. Speaking in monotone.

“Remember, if anyone asks, the boy was never here,” I said.

“The boy was never here….” droned the thugs.

The two thugs turned around and left. Slack-faced and zombie-like. I watched them, still sipping my tea, as the door closed behind them. The little bell above the door ringing as the door slammed shut.

“Now...What do I do with you?” I said. Turning my attention to the door.

I immediately got a big wave of fear from the boy. He thought I was a witch because generally speaking, only a witch could do what I’d just done. Philip Mazon was a witch and he’d been a scary, evil, motherfucker. Thus by association, I too became an object of fear.

I didn’t mind that too much. Even I felt some sympathy for the boy, that didn’t mean I particularly cared about him as a person. He’d managed to draw my interest by way of a few of the things he’d been getting involved with in the past year or so, since he’d managed to free himself from Mazon’s grasp but only a little.

“Well, are you going introduce yourself, or are you going to crouch there, pissing in your boots?” I said. Finally growing impatient after about five minutes or neither of us saying anything.

“Sev-...Sevastion Huxley….” said the boy.

“Good. Well, I’m Montgomery Kaylan. Nice to make your acquaintance. Now kindly get the hell out of my shop.” I said. Nodding towards the door.

I wasn’t trying to be snappish but I had things to do. The boy blinked and then as if a spell had broken, he shook himself, and ran out the door.

I sighed in relief once the boy was gone. I hadn’t liked that reminder of my past, and I honestly was much too busy to get wrapped up in his melodrama.

Now that I’d finished resolving most of what was wrong with the world, and creating the custom enchantments that would safely bring Andern’s end without effecting the worlds that were connected to it, there were other things I needed to focus on. Big things. Things that might end up being bigger than the initial crisis that brought the world to my attention.

Just as I was about to sit and begin planning my next move in Andern, the door rang again. It was the boy...again.

“What the dickens?! Child, what are you-...?”

I frowned at him...Wondering what on earth he was doing there. Then I extended my senses beyond the confines of the shop and realized that the Sharkfang gang was still out there.

“They’re uh…”

“No, need to say it...I already figured as much.” I said. Sighing.

I lifted my mug to take another sip of tea and realized I’d already drunk all my tea. I looked at the boy again and sighed a second time.

“I don’t suppose you’d like some tea.”

The boy eyed me. Blatant mistrust on his features. Then the manners he’d learned as a young noble kicked in and he relaxed a little. Looking somewhat sheepish and a little ashamed of his own ragged appearance.

“Er...Y-, Yes...Tea would be lovely...Sir,” said Sevastion.