Bon finished his last exam and walked out of the hall, sighing to himself. The exams didn’t matter any more. As a Player he would have to defend his home against the monster invasion. He was not destined to have a safe and cushy job. He had already written to the company that had wanted to recruit him, telling them that he couldn’t take up their offer. He met up with his friends in the cafeteria, after they had finished with their exams.

“How was it?” Toby asked, after they had collected their food.

“Easy,” said Bon.

“Pointless,” said Phil. He had been quite cranky since coming back. It was obvious that he was missing Siobhan, who lived far way in Boston.

“Fun,” laughed Bojana. “I came up with some creative answers.”

“The world has changed. It’s not like any of us are going to use our degrees for anything now,” said Phil. “I should have just skipped the exams. It was a waste of time.”

“We worked so hard to get our degrees before we went into the Tower,” Bojana pointed her finger at Phil. “Writing a few exams to finish it off once and for all was worth it.”

“I think I’ll skip graduation,” Phil scowled at her and then took a big bite of pasta.

“And do what instead?” asked Bojana.

“Train.”

“We should all train together,” Bon nodded. “Phil, didn’t you say your uncle has a cabin in the woods? Can we go there?”

“Sure, I’ll ask him,” Phil nodded. “I’ll go there ahead of you guys. Once you finish with your useless graduation ceremony you can join me.”

“I can’t come,” said Toby sadly. “I need a job. I’ve got student loans to take care of. Maybe I’ll become some big shot’s bodyguard. All these rich people are looking to hire Players.”

“I’ll lend you the money,” said Phil. He was rich. His family was in the shipping industry. “There are more important things going on. You’ve got to set your priorities straight, Toby.” He looked around at the table. “That goes for all of you.”

Phil seemed to be in an especially bad mood today. Nobody took it to heart. Graduation was in a week’s time. Bon thought he would take it easy till then. After saying goodbye to his friends he went back home and watched the news.

There was trouble in the Middle East. Two mages, Gideon and Sharif, had fought each other in a small town the day before. The entire town had been destroyed while they fought in the sky. Both men had learned the Flight skill, and their fight had been recorded. Two distant figures could be seen levitating in the air, amid a dazzling light show. Their battle was so fierce that it had affected the weather. Despite the sudden thunderstorm, they fought on. They were both equally matched, and only retreated when a fleet of fighter aircraft began firing warning shots at them. A mage had low HP, and nobody was sure if Players could withstand missiles and large caliber bullets. Their mana pool must have been drained as well.

Things were tense in the region after that, but a fragile peace was maintained. With conflict ready to break out any second, Bon wondered why humans could be so cruel to each other. Couldn’t they see the bigger picture? Maybe humans would destroy the world before the monsters even came. Whenever there was conflict, it was always the common man that suffered. Thirty two had died in that town and there were over a hundred injured.

Bon looked at the news feed on his phone. Several Players had posted online videos of them doing all sorts of things. A priest cast an invisible shield over himself while someone with an M4 fired at him. A mage tested his destructive power in a desert, throwing fireballs through various thicknesses of steel. A gunslinger set a new long distance record with his sniper rifle. Summoners got together and staged fights between the monsters they summoned in isolated locations. Druids showed off their transformation powers. Fighters, rogues, paladins and berserkers demonstrated their skills by sparring with each other. There were tens of thousands of videos, all tagged ‘hero.’ Society had been divided by socioeconomic class for a long time. With the coming of the Players there was now one new type of division. He finished scrolling through the videos and then closed his eyes, wondering how he could make a difference to the world.

Errel and Sarah arrived at his flat a few hours later. They had been busy trying to synthesize the pill Wheeler had given him.

“I can help too, you know. I’m free now and the Tower granted me herbal and alchemical knowledge after I leveled up those skills,” Bon ruffled Sarah’s long brown hair. She hated it when he did that. Her green eyes were staring daggers at him. She stood on her tip toes and ruffled his hair with aggression.

“Now you know how it feels,” she grunted.

“I kind of enjoyed it,” Bon grinned. She rolled her eyes at him.

“About your cultivation,” he said. “It’s taking too long. I have a plan. Wheeler gave me a ring with a world within it. Time moves faster inside. We can use that to speed things up, so that you’re able to advance to the next stage quickly.”

“Show me.”

He equipped the ring and tried to pull both of them into it. There was something wrong. It vibrated a little, but didn’t transport them to the world within. Had it gotten damaged when he broke through to peak Nascent Soul? He would have to find someone to fix it. He wondered if there was anyone on the world who could. Tian Bu Ru had been from Earth, so there had definitely been cultivators here. The problem was how to find them.

“Never mind,” he said to Sarah. “It’s not working. How’s the lab work going?”

Sarah sighed, “Infrared spectroscopy gave me a lot of data, but it’s hard to analyze. Errel was able to determine a bunch of different herbs that made up the pill, but half of them don’t exist on Earth. He says the mana is too thin for them to grow. Will the thin mana affect your abilities?”

“It shouldn’t affect Players. The Tower modified the bodies of everyone to better resonate with mana. This mana is coming from another dimension. I’m not sure how it works for planets. Wheeler didn’t mention it. That’s a bummer about the herbs, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out. Send me a copy of the test results.”

“You won’t be able to understand it.”

“I can try.”

The three of them sat on the sofa and watched a show. Errel was fascinated by anime, so they watched Demon Slayer. Sarah wanted to watch Kiki’s Delivery Service, but she was overruled.

While they were watching, Errel received a phone call on his new phone. Bon and Sarah stared at him, wondering who it could be.

“Greetings,” said Errel. “Yes. Yes. I’ll think about it. Okay. Fine. Farewell.”

“What was that about?” asked Bon.

“The Director of the Department of Public Health,” said Errel. “He offered me a job in a hospital he’s setting up to be run by priests.”

The government had tracked down Errel’s new number pretty quickly. Bon wondered if all the Players in the country were under surveillance. He spread his qi to scout the surroundings and found two people sitting in different cars who looked suspicious. As long as they weren’t causing him any harm he would let them be. Mana Sense didn’t work as well as his qi on Earth.

“You should consider it,” said Sarah. “Work part time for a few weeks and see how it goes. Don’t commit to anything long term or with long hours.”

“Yeah,” said Bon. “We have to train together too, and prepare for the invasion.”

“What about Siobhan and Al?” Errel asked.

“They’ll come here eventually, along with their families. That’s what they’ve told Phil anyway. He’s already found some places for them to rent,” he replied.

They finished watching an episode and then he made dinner – a salad and mac and cheese, nothing special.

The next day, another piece of news startled the world. There had been an attempt on the life of a Chinese industrialist. Luckily, the assassination attempt had failed. The industrialist had hired a rogue as one of his bodyguards who killed the assassin just in the nick of time. One would think that rogues would make the best assassins with their Stealth, but this example proved that druids were much better at it. The druid assassin had flown into his target’s hotel balcony as a falcon, and charged into the room in the form of a bear. His claws had been a single swipe away from ending his target. Bon sighed as he read the news. He had been sighing a lot lately. He wished there was something he could do about it. Even with all his power he felt helpless. He wanted to knock some sense into those people’s heads.

A week passed and Bon was finished with his graduation ceremony. Sarah was getting closer to figuring out the chemical composition of the pill. Errel was having a fulfilling time healing people in the hospital. Bon’s father, with Bon’s assistance and training, was now teaching Cultivation to some of his more gifted students. Bon had thought that if more ordinary people learned to cultivate qi, there would be far less chaos in the world. Even if they couldn’t get past the Qi Condensation stage they would still be much stronger than before. If his father’s classes proved to be a success, he would expand his operations throughout California. Bon also put up a scanned copy of the cultivation manual online, along with some demo videos of his father’s super strength, but it did not get many hits. There was only one comment for the video and it said, ‘Fake.’ He needed to get some big people involved before it could go viral.

That weekend, Bon, Errel and Sarah joined Phil, Toby and Bojana in the cabin in the woods. It was a pleasant three hour drive to the cabin, even with all the traffic in the city. Errel liked to watch the people on the streets, so Bon drove slowly. Once they reached the cabin, they found the rest of the gang standing by the gate waiting.

“You’re finally here,” said Bojana. “Put your stuff in the cabin and let’s start. Quickly.”

“What’s the rush?” asked Bon.

“Phil’s been training like a mad man, and beating us up in the process. It’s time we got some payback. Train him hard,” Bojana smiled wickedly.

“I plan to train all of you hard,” Bon grinned. “We’ve relaxed enough. It’s time to get serious.”

They all gathered in the clearing in front of the cabin five minutes later. Sarah watched with interest as Bon and Errel equipped all their armor and weapons.

“How do I look?” Bon asked her, swinging his sword.

“You boys and your toys,” Sarah’s eyes sparkled with laughter.

“Ignore her,” Bon said to Errel who was scratching his head. “Let’s start. I’ll summon some golems and control them to attack all of you. Let’s see how you do.”

“Bring it on,” said Phil.

Bon summoned two level two hundred stone golems. They were slow, but strong. Without Siobhan, the party’s firepower was heavily reduced, so Bon decided to display just 50% of the golem’s power.

One of the golems hit Toby and he went rolling backwards and hit a tree that fell on him.

“Bon,” Sarah shouted, “What are you doing? Do you want to kill them?”

“Relax,” Bon laughed. “Toby can take a beating.”

“No I can’t,” Toby grunted as he got up and ran back to the group.

“You were careless,” said Phil. “Pay attention to its movements.”

“Don’t lose focus,” added Bon.

Bon felt he had overdone it with that first hit and controlled the golems more carefully. As usual, Bojana was swift and agile, backstabbing the golems repeatedly. Her daggers moved so quickly that they were a blur. Toby went Berserk at the very beginning, showcasing all his power. He was going for a mighty initial burst of damage, which was a bad strategy to use against a golem. He probably wanted to finish one off quickly and move to the other. Bon would have saved his Berserk skill to use at a more effective time. Phil was doing well with his spear, chipping away at the golems’ rocky exterior. Errel healed them all every few minutes.

It was a battle of stamina. After three hours they finally managed to turn the first golem to rubble. In another hour the second golem fell.

“You all realized your mistakes after a while, so I won’t say anything,” said Bon. “We’ll now have to increase the difficulty. I’ll show you the full power of a level two hundred stone golem.”

“Let’s eat first,” said Bojana. “I’m hungry.” Phil’s uncle was a conspiracy theorist and thought that the magnetic poles of Earth would reverse, causing widespread devastation on the planet. He had stocked the storehouse near the cabin with enough food and fuel to last a year.

While they were eating Errel suddenly said, “During the battle, I discovered a new way of using mana. It increased my MP by 30%. Do you want to learn?”

“Of course we want to learn,” Toby said happily. Out of everyone, he had the most problems with his low mana capacity.

Errel then drew several different pictures in a notebook and explained the process. It basically involved forcing mana into the spinal cord region, increasing overall storage capacity.

“I call it Spinal Tap,” Errel said proudly.

“Nice name,” said Bojana and gave him a thumbs up.

“It sounds a little scary,” Toby massaged his back. Toby may have been big and fierce looking, with his large frame and long red beard, but he was usually very timid.

Bon practiced what Errel had taught him. Wheeler had said that mana skills and items wouldn’t work to their full effect outside the Tower. It all depended on one’s personal capacity. Bon did the calculation in his head. A 30% boost for Errel was only a 0.02% boost for him. He used to have 3,709,120 MP. With this new method he now had 3,709,862 MP.

“Bon,” Sarah suddenly said, staring at her phone. “There’s an alert. We have to get out of here quickly. There’s a wildfire that just started, and it’s close by.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” Bon walked out of the cabin and flew up into the sky. He used qi, since it was faster and easier to fly using qi. The mana skill ‘Flight’ wasn’t as good. He soon spotted the wildfire, and flew upwards. He cast Ice Storm up in the clouds, making sure to spread it across a wide area, and nullifying the damage. With a thought, an illusionary blue box appeared before him, describing the skill.

Ice Storm LVL 5 Form an ice storm within the targeted area causing Blind and dealing damage. 750 magic damage is dealt for each shard of ice that hits the target Mana Cost: 1,000 Duration: 15 seconds

.

The Tower’s skill descriptions hadn’t changed, even though most of the information was now redundant. The status ailments and the damage dealt by skills were not fixed quantities any more. It all depended on who one was fighting. The mana cost of his modified Ice Storm was 500,385, it lasted for more than ten minutes and covered over three square miles, just to be safe. The Ice Storm turned into sleet as it fell towards the ground and the wildfire was soon put out. When he got back to the cabin, Sarah was gaping at him.

“Why didn’t you tell me you could fly?” she asked.

“Do you want to fly too?” Bon asked. “I can take you.”

“Who do you think you are?” Sarah laughed. “Superman? No thanks. I’m no Lois Lane, and I’d probably get acrophobia after the experience.

Bon was disappointed. “Where’s your spirit of adventure?”

“It’s locked away in the laboratory.”

They then continued training. His friends were beaten black and blue by the golems until the training was halted for dinner.

“I don’t think I can even eat,” said Bojana. “After all that, I think everything in my stomach is going to come out.”

“Not in the cabin,” warned Phil hurriedly.

“What do you all think of what’s happening around the world?” asked Bon, trying to change the subject.

“It’s all a mess,” said Phil. “There will probably be some kind of regulations for Players soon. There will definitely be Player guilds forming in the coming months. We should join one. Our training will become more efficient, and with our skill and equipment we’ll be able to become top tier members.”

“What about joining the army?” asked Bon.

“I value my freedom,” said Bojana, and I’m not even a citizen.” She bit her lip as she thought of something, “They offered me and my family citizenship. It might be safer here than in Serbia. There are some Players in Belgrade according to the online data, but not many. I’m tempted to take their offer, but I won’t join the army.”

“I’m not cut out for the army either,” said Toby.

“Al’s the only one who might join the army,” said Phil. “There’s a big difference between the army and a guild. We might get to choose our assignments with a guild. There’s no way they’ll allow that in the army.”

“Then we’ll stay together and join a guild in the city,” Bon decided after a moment of silence.

On Sunday afternoon, the group finally graduated from stone golems to demonic swordsmen. The demonic swordsmen looked like zombies, but were fast and agile. The group struggled but eventually managed to kill them late at night. Sarah left the cabin and drove back to the city, while Bon and his friends formulated their next training plan.

The days passed quickly. The team was improving at an astounding pace. Even Bon was learning new things while controlling his summoned monsters. He hadn’t appreciated the mana circuits in a monster’s body until he started controlling them like a puppeteer. Bon realized that the monsters in the Tower had not fought to their full potential. He figured out different ways to make his summoned monsters stronger. He injected more mana into the summon space to open it for a longer time period. He explored the other dimension with both his qi and mana to find brand new monsters, learning to shackle them, and bring them out into the world. He had never tried modifying his summoning skills before this.

The team now had to face various types of monsters that had been enslaved by Bon. The more complex the monster’s thoughts and behavior, the harder it was to control them. It was like projecting your emotions onto another being, and forcing them to obey your every command. The stupider monsters, like the golems, could not resist him at all. The more intelligent ones needed more mana to chain down their wills. Bon nearly lost control of a mist dragon and had to forcibly expel it from the world. It would take some time to learn and master the path of a Summoner. There were so many new things that he hadn’t tried, either because he hadn’t thought of it before, or because he was too busy cultivating at the time. He also didn’t dare trying out some of his more dangerous skill modification ideas. He summoned some monsters to practice by himself while he gave the monsters fighting his friends more autonomy.

They practiced everyday until their whole bodies were sore and their minds too exhausted to think. Every weekend, Sarah would visit them. Bon would drive Errel to visit the hospital on Wednesdays, when the whole team took a break.

Months passed and the team decided it was time to go home. A guild called ‘Hunter’s Paradise’ had started recruiting in the city. They all planned to apply. While on the drive back, everyone got an alert on their phones. The monster invasion had begun.