The first thing Louie noticed when he opened his eyes, was that he was back in his bed and that somebody was asleep on the couch next to it, again.

'Damn, this is getting to be a habit.'

Thinking back to his encounter with King, he silently groaned as he thought of all the mistakes he had made, all the things that he didn't but could have done.

He remembered that when he realized King was afraid of the dark so he used dark spells on him instead of just using which would have silenced the glorified bard and ended the fight nearly immediately.

'Shit, I should have just killed the fucker when I first saw him, not tried to monologue with him...damn, would that have caused the orb to shatter? Too much, where is the day that you could just shoot the bad guy and not have to worry about releasing some super strong magical being that wants to destroy the world?'

He closed his eyes and groaned loudly as he leaned back into his pillow.

"Hi, how are you feeling?"

Sher yawned and stretched as she turned to Louie.

"Morning, I assume it's still morning?" He peeked at his HUD and saw it was just after 11:00.

"Yes, it is. How are your hands?"

"My hands? What about my hands?" He removed his hands from under the blankets.

"What's wrong with my hands?" He looked more closely, "I don't see anything wrong with my hands."

"Huh, strange, your hands up to your elbows were covered in tiny black and red runes."

"Yea that is strange, but I don't see any runes now, maybe it was some aftereffect of the damage done by the Orb."

He opened his status page and started looking for any status changes but all he found was the usual from his bedding.

Bed set (Peaceful sleep)

Regeneration enhancement if used for longer than 6 hours.

+100% health regeneration while asleep.

+100% mana regeneration while asleep.

+100% boost to all stats lasts for two hours.

+10% The subtle smell of flowers.

"Nope, no debuffs. Thank Goddess." He closed his eyes as he leaned back against his headboard.

"I really thought that I wouldn't make it out of that space." He closed his eyes and thought of the pain as his hands were burnt to a crisp and regenerated over and over again and again.

He shuddered and tore his mind from those memories and focused on something else

"How are the sisters?"

"They are well, resting at the moment."

"I'm sorry about that, I grabbed the first thing that I could find to dump the power of the orb, took a moment to realize that it might kill them, and then redirected the power into the Tree and Dungeon."

"Yea, that scared a lot of people, the Tree was glowing like it was covered in green neon. It's bearing fruit now."

"Huh, it is an ash tree, they don't bear fruit, or do they?"

"They do, but not like this, it's big, like some kind of papaya, the spiders are harvesting the fruit."

Sher removed a big neon yellow fruit from her inventory.

"Wow, that's not a nice color."

He analysed the fruit.

Isithelo Sempilo (Ukuphila)

Upon consumption, this fruit will grant a 50% boon of safe and painless childbirth. Fruit will stay fresh till consumed. Only one fruit can be consumed once per harvest, fruit from the tree can only be harvested once in every 5 years, when the fruit is consumed it will grant a once-off attribute increase.

+1 to intelligence

+1 to Luck

+1 to strength.

"Fruit of Life? The name literally means life. Can I have this?"

"Yes, we are calling it the Uku fruit, that one is yours. I got a hundred in this bracelet, you can have them, you never know when the boon will be needed when you travel on your quest."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes there are thousands of fruits, the leaders will hand out one to each of the residents of Paarl. Talking about your quest, are there any updates?"

"No, still just the vague feeling whenever I look in a Northwesterly direction, so maybe I must go to Wellington or Malmusbury maybe further."

*sigh* "I won't be able to go with you when you leave."

Those words hurt Louie more than he thought it would, he would like to have her with him when he goes, but he wasn't expecting her to tie herself to his coat strings, she wasn't supposed to come with him from Starter Town in the first place, but he was happy with her inclusion in the team.

"I will miss you, but I understand that you have your own destiny, and with the Temple here, I'm sure you will make a great head priest or is that archbishop of Gaea?"

He chuckled as she threw a punch at his shoulder.

"That's still just Gaea's Druid."

She looked off in the distance. The Tree needs people to help and take care of its environment, I need to train some druids, then I'm going back to Starter Town and Mountain Holm to train some there and that new River Hold, got to start a settlement there also. We need druids wherever there is a shrine to Gaea."

Louie whistled softly.

"That's a big undertaking. Let me know if I can help in any way."

"Talking of leaving, who are you going to take with you when you go?"

*sigh* "The sisters, I must find a way to sever the bond between us before I accidentally kill them. I got that skill cube that might help but I can't see how it would work. I will have to think about that a bit. I'm going to go check out if there is a portal under the Tree and if it's there then I'm going to Starter Town for a couple of days to my Tower and have a look at the Dungeon, I want to see how the power that the Orb released affected the Dungeon, and from there I will see how it goes. About the Dungeon, any news on the missing dungeon here?"

He took out his tablet but it still just shows a translucent red circle covering nearly the whole of the new town.

"No, no new development on that front, there is an active quest on the quest board for news and location on any nests, lairs, and especially the Dungeon."

"Good."

Hesitantly he asked the question of which he dreaded the answer most. "How's BOB?"

He could feel his pet through his bond but that only supplied him with emotions and not visuals, so even if he could feel that BOB seems ok, he had poured a lot of power through the bond, and the chances that it might have changed him was huge.

Sher nodded in the direction of the corner, out of his sight. "He changed but seems ok. He shed all his spines and grew a mane."

He turned and looked over the headboard at the back corner of the room where he saw BOB laying on his poof.

"He now looks like a mixture of a lion and Riddick's hellhound."

"Riddick's hellhound?"

"Aah, I keep on forgetting that you missed all the latest movies, Dogs that have scale-like skin and are used on a prison planet, except they are orange and not black with red highlights."

Louie noticed that there was a faint burnt smell in the air every time that BOB breathed out.

'Wait! What? Since when does BOB breathe? He is a Golem.'

"He is sleeping, and breathing, I have never seen him do either. I got him the poof and I know he likes to lay on it and lay next to a fire sometimes, but I have never seen him actually sleeping. He is a golem."

He quickly pulled up BOB's status page and shared it with Sher.

Status:

Name:

BOB (god of dogs)

Race:

Dungeon Born, Lvl 9

Class:

Pet

Titles:

Reborn. Soul linked. Baptized in Fire.

Affinity:

Fog, Air, Fire

"His Race says Dungeon Born, not Golem, does that mean that he is now alive and not a construct anymore?... What? How does he have three affinities? How the hell does that work and Baptise in Fire, is that from the Orb?"

"Damn." Sher gave a soft whistle.

Louie sighs as he closes his pet's status page, "I will ask Kurt and see what he can tell me about BOB's status."

He sat back down on his bed.

"Did you guys get everybody out of the building?"

"I think so."

"You think so?" *Sigh* 'Shit I got to stop sighing, I start to feel like an idiot.' "Of course, they are still going through the rubble."

She shook her head. "There is no rubble."

"What do you mean, there is no rubble?"

She shrugged. "The explosion or whatever that was, created some kind of implosion, it ate all the rubble, leaving behind a big hole where the building stood."

"Shit. I got to see this."

She left him to get dressed and waited for him just outside his door.

He left BOB to catch up on all his missed sleep and looked in on the sisters to make sure that they were okay.

He was all to go look at the site but Sher stopped him as he stumbled out of the tent opening.

"Breakfast first, your healing took a lot out of you so you need to eat."

He wanted to argue with her but his stomach chose that moment to betray him as it gave a loud growl.

He looked around sheepishly as Sher laughed before he agreed that breakfast sounds good.

He and Sher left for the tavern and a healthy breakfast before they went to the site where Kings' building once stood.

They found Leon and a couple of Guards, who was patrolling the perimeter of a big hole, while some people were down at the bottom looking through the basement openings that were exposed when the building imploded.

Louie stopped next to Leon and stood on the edge of the crater where the building should have been and couldn't believe that it was just yesterday.

The crater looked like somebody had taken a giant ice cream scoop and scooped out a hole in the ground, a perfect circle cutting through steel reinforcing and concrete alike, leaving half-open basements to the air.

"Morning, are you feeling ok?" Leon asked.

"Morning, yes thanks for asking."

He squatted next to Leon and ran his finger along the edge of the concrete slab left by the event.

'Hmm, smooth and straight as if cut by a knife.'

The hole reminded him of something that he had seen somewhere, then he remembered.

"This was no explosion or implosion, this looked more like the crater left behind when Arny first appeared in the Terminator movie."

Leon scrunched up his face as he looked at Louie doubtfully.

"Time travel?"

"Maybe, maybe not. But I think that there was some shield here that cut through everything and then everything inside was displaced."

"There was a loud bang and then the building was gone." Leon looked out over the crater, "you think that the building might appear back in the crater?"

"No I don't think it will appear, I think it went somewhere else, you say there was a Bang then the building was gone or the building disappeared then the bang?"

Leon thought for a moment, "I believe it was the latter."

Louie nodded, "I don't know what it's called but I think that the air rushed in to fill the giant vacuum left as the building was displaced. If it was just displaced in time then I think there still would have been some kind of effect here. I think it's gone."

"What makes you think that?"

"I read some books once about a sword stuck in a giant crystal that displaced it two minutes into the future, it left a distinct feeling where the crystal was."

"You base your theory on a fantasy book you read once?"

Louie looked at him. "Don't you think that this new reality is based on some fantasy?"

Leon's shoulders slumped. "Yea, So, you think that the Orb did this?"

*sigh* "Yea, or the Afrit that was trapped in the Orb."

"That's not good, any idea where the building might have gone?"

Louie shook his head, "no, I have no idea, might be a kilometer or a thousand kilometers away, even to one of the other planets."

They both looked at the sky. "Damn."

Then Leon caught on to what he said.

"Say what? An Afrit? I thought you tried to stop an Orb from exploding?"

Louie shared the BB of the Orb with him.

"Shit, do you think that this thing broke out and it took the building with it, wherever it went?"

"Yea, I just hope it went to one of the other planets."

"Yea, I hope so, last thing we need now is some powerful entity that wants to destroy Earth running around."

After some silent contemplation, Leon looked at his friend squatting on the edge of the hole.

"What you going to do now?"

"Can't do anything about this now, so I guess I'm going to do some training, trying to improve my skills."

Louie looked around at the young soldiers walking around the crater in pairs.

"Damn, they look young.

"They are young, Arnold took all the kids that are orphaned by the pulse and is giving them basic training, even if their status page hasn't unlocked yet."

Louie stood up, "I think I will head over there and see how he's doing with the new recruits."

"I will stay here a bit, see you later."

"Later Leon."

Louie and Sher started walking in the direction of the new barracks that the builders erected for Arnold.

They found Kotche addressing the latest batch of recruits, some as young as thirteen, while another batch of kids was off to one side dressed in cast of clothes.

*****

Kotche looked at the fifty-three teens and young people that were all lined up before him.

"After I am done you will each fall out and receive a bowl of porridge, a bun, and a cup of coffee." He saw that most of them perked up after hearing his words, some of them looked like they hadn't had anything to eat for days.

"You have thirty minutes then you will fall back in, after which you will each step forward and receive your uniforms, there are two sets of them, you will wear nothing but your uniforms, every minute every day, you will sleep in them, the only time you will not wear them is when you take a bath and a shit. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?"

"Yes sir!"

"I'm not a sir, I'm Sargeant Kotche and I work for a living."

Kotche made his way down the rows of recruits, finding fault with each one of them.

"Do you call that standing at attention?" Kotche yelled in a recruit's face.

"Shoulders back! I said, shoulders back!" The recruit struggled to move her shoulders further back.

“Head up, chin down. Heels together! What? Do you want to cry? Do you want somebody to come hold your hand? …"

Louie toned out Kotchs' words as he thought back to his days back in basic training.

The girl made some small adjustments, trying to figure out how to get the Sergeant to move on to somebody else.

Louie actually felt sorry for her, not that her stance was terribly wrong, it's just that he remembered that the Sargents will find something wrong with everything the recruits does, even if there were nothing wrong, it's just their job to break the recruits down and then build them up again till they follow orders without hesitation. Hesitating in a fight can cause your or your teammates death at the wrong moment.

He heard her sigh as the Sergeant moved on, unfortunately so did Kotche.

He was suddenly back in her face screaming at her before all the recruits were sent running around the parade ground.

After they were back in formation, It took ten minutes before they had dressed everyone in the square to their satisfaction.

“At-ease! Now, those last ten of you from your run, give me twenty push-ups!” Kotche ordered.

The ten groaned as they dropped to the ground and started to do push-ups.

“Stop groaning, you are not children anymore, now start over, count them off!”

“One … two …"

"The rest of you stand at attention with your eyes forward unless you want to join them!”

"You, get down and join them." Kotche poked a recruit between the shoulder blades as he slumped a bit.

"And since you got somebody joining you, we need to start over." "From the start, One ... two …"

"Nineteen … twenty"

"Alright, now that some of us are warmed up, let’s loosen the rest of you up. One lap around the parade ground. Move it!"

Louie left Kotche and the recruits as he Sher and Arnold took a walk through the barracks while Arnold explained the training schedule that he is going to put the youths through

The dormitory was one big room with a dividing wall running down the center and rooms at the end of each for the corporals and at the other end were showers and bathrooms with toilets.

"Mixed accommodations?" Sher asked Arnold.

"We had thought of making the sleeping arrangements separate for males and females but decided against it, the showers and toilets have cubicles with doors, not like when I was in the army, but it was made clear that any sexual harassment will be severely dealt with."

Arnold explained that training will start with a jog for 30 min then breakfast at 05 til 05:15 then more running till 06:00 then an hour working on brain teasers puzzles and sudoku, after that its an hour PT, then 3 hours of survival training with Dan and the scouts, including learning from the bestiary and from the trap kids on setting traps, then its lunch after which its an hour PT again with two hours study, which included ordinary schooling, but also included thinking outside the box on ways to use spells and skills. From four till six its weapons training then supper till seven and two hours training in meditation and imbue.

*****

Louie wasn't happy with the conscription of the children but at least they will receive training and be taken care of even if it was only for three months, then they will have the option to stay in the guards or join the parties that hunt the creatures around town, if their status were unlocked. If not then they will be placed with a crafter to learn till it does.Now there were just the kids younger than thirteen to take care off.

Walking back from the barracks Louie realized that he had nothing to do and he decided to use his time and see if he could improve on his skills. He headed to the forge, intent on seeing if he could learn more about the armor crafting process and about the different materials while trying his hand at crafting some weapons to improve his knowledge and in so doing improve his skill with and

According to the skill trainer that taught him his skill, the more he knew about the material that he worked with the better his final item would be when restoring items with his skills. This new reality isn't like in the video games where you wave your hand and pull a magical item out of your ass. Ow, you can do that, but the item would be totally sub-par, like the fact that he still can't figure out how to create armor with his that will have passive abilities instead of having to actively circulate mana through the armor to activate its abilities. Like he forgot to circulate his mana through his armor while struggling with the Orb, and now he is left with nothing but scraps that used to be his armor.