Two days later, Aki was forced away from his date by the third zone opening up. Turns out, Kira was a marvelous dancer thanks to her battle style and image, and she also loved doing it, so they were in a recently opened dance classroom so they could learn a farvit traditional dance that involved a lot of flowing movements and a few very large pieces of fabric flowing around.

While he really wanted to keep goofing around as he waited for his own work to pile high enough, it seemed that he'd met another one of the reasons for his day to be mostly free.

As his girlfriend, she was a bit irritated at his excuse to ending their date quicker, but the irritation wasn’t exactly directed at him as much as the consequences, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t promised to take her with him when he went delving for the time dilation effects so they could spend some more time together. Having gone to buy her new clothes was also an immensely fun new experience they had together, so she could at least appreciate him trying to make her more comfortable in his own society

The concept was new to her, as it referred to neither a lover nor a pursuer, more like a person who was openly courting another who was also openly courting them so they could get to know each other better, which made a bit more sense in the society that her boyfriend described before the system, though she still had her doubts and questions about that fact of his.

While she had never been given the chance to learn much of her people’s story except that one time that she started exchanging favours with an elder of her original clan, their accounts did not reach any point close enough to suggest that the system had not always been there. It was unlikely that someone had caused this intentionally as it’d once been suggested to her by their strange new ruler however, as gnolls had always been scavengers and survivors, which was exactly how they had been the only ones that survived the great calamity in their planet. There was plenty of history lost even before that, so the impact in their societal form and culture wasn’t nearly as deep as he seemed to think.

Since Aki was not there anymore, she decided to take a teleport pad, she would never get tired of using those, back to her own tribe to help with the cleanup of the great gorge. Only after they gathered all the materials remaining there would they start preparing to leave for this side of their new reality.

Besides being spoiled with whatever she wanted and being taken on romantic dates, Kira was also happy to see that another benefit she gained was that her village would be one of the first ten to cross over. Those were her people, so she was more than happy with occupying herself with taking care of them as well.

Share your blessings and all those strange sayings from the humans.

She was pretty sure the surprisingly young male was smitten with her, and she really couldn’t say the same, but just hunting together, talking and learning from him were all rather delightful to say the least, so she could not exactly pretend she’d not fall for him either.

…………

There it was. A tall wave of dark water after another hit Lea, yet her fire did not extinguish, instead leaving burning circles of white flames to be thrown into the depths of this dark ocean. In the middle of it, there stood a smiling man. Mid twenties, caucasian, slick black hair, sharp eyes and jaw, a swimmer’s body with taut muscles exposed by his lack of clothing pieces except for a rather revealing swimming trunk.

*Slurp*

Suddenly, the pressure he released seemed to still before it normalised again as the man’s smile went away and he turned towards Aki, ignoring the burning bird right behind him, who stared at him like a hungry beast.

“I take you’re the one I was supposed to look for.” Said the unknown man, not doubting himself for even a moment. This was the first person that could stand while in the presence of his aura after his training was completed. "No matter how much of a genius you are though, did you seriously think you'd be able to beat anyone that mattered without even having a class? Or did you think that finishing a danger zone this quickly was something that only you could do?"....

And he kept talking, the younger of the two frowning more and more as a bunch of exposition about power levels, factions, the Nexus and the real powers behind all of that were dumped onto his head. By the end of it, the man was excitedly pointing a black spear towards Aki while panting in excitement.

"Senior, I come asking for a spar." Aki said while bowing slightly towards a completely different direction than the one the mostly naked man stood at. He questioned the younger man’s sanity, hurled insults at him and even threatened horrible things to his loved ones simply due to being ignored, but not once did he seem to get his attention back.

When the self absorbed idiot finally attacked, he was inside of a pitch black wave, dashing forward at mach 2 spear first and screaming much more than a human should be capable of. Moments before collision, the image of a small smile appeared, shattering the inflated idea of an abyss charging forth as even without Aki simply phasing, the spearman that kept going forward was nothing more than a dead body, his soul collapsing from the backlash of his image shattering and releasing all the compressed aether that was ballooning it from inside.

Unfortunately, it seemed that it was not to be. Moments after the puppet died, the great presence he felt dispersed.

Clicking his tongue, Aki fealt massively unsatisfied. He’d neither been able to fight someone above level 100 nor had he even talked with them. Fortunately the only thing he’d revealed about his image was that it was prideful, so there's no way that'd go over his control.

He wanted to go back and keep to his date! He'd even cut a paradisiacal spot in the tropical woods of the farvit so they could go for a swim in a clear water lake! Now it'd get used as a hook up spot for Septima and her vacation with who knows how many people!

"If only I'd called for a date on the same day maybe we could've gone for a swim with the stars." He sighed, enhancing his eyes and preparing massive projectiles to fire like falling meteors.

While there seemed to be a few spots with villages around, that guy had clearly not formed a force to help clear out monsters spawning outside of his grinding spots, meaning that despite having taken his time to reach even that level of power and the amount of loot boxes on his trunk pockets, because of course somebody would make something that stupid, most of this zone was completely screwed due to the high monster population overwhelming most defenders.

"Maybe I'll even unlock some artillery mage path or the like. I haven't used my lance spell since it evolved, so I might as well abuse it's new properties." He sighed as Lea also fell into a slump thanks to his own feelings, which earned him a slap on the back of the head and a feeling of being admonished about losing focus.

Doing what he'd hoped to be wrong about the most, the duo went on and exterminated a great deal of the zone, bringing down several thousands of monsters with their images, skills, spells and even presences.

Only after destroying three broken Nexus terminals and clearing four low leveled dungeons did he have the time to go and organized those that survived, which meant enslaving a lot of corrupt and animalistic people who did not agree with him on how the powerful should act.

For once, that also meant a whole tribe of orcs thanks to their extremely xenophobic tendencies. They weren't even racists or anything, just savage enough that they worked more like a pack of wolves or something.

Apparently, tribes that everyone considered batshit crazy existed in all but the alfar's world, so that added even more cultures he was going to be extinguishing to his list.

While he was aware that some part of him likely made him unable to care for those things properly, it remained a fact that many traditions from the old world were simply idiotic or inefficient even when in a peaceful society, nevermind after the apocalipse and the introduction of the races into an even more complex game of dick measuring and oil sucking.

Coming from Brazil and being raised by people with their own interpretation of cristian and spiritist beliefs, he himself could not exactly imagine what people with more religious outlooks to life were thinking, but it wasn’t like their faith suddenly became useless either, as humans were actually known in the multiverse for raising geniuses in faith and death aligned stiles of magic.

That and being cockroach-like-hard to exterminate from the face of existence as they were everywhere and appeared again with time.

Now the problem was how to turn those flaws into strengths. Those with extreme jihadist beliefs, christian crusaders or even budhists and xintoists that thought themselves as the only good guys around and other such bullshit, none of those would be allowed to survive under his watch as they were definetly going to be creating some kind of stupid group trying to conquer the Nexus, underestimate their invaders, try to throw away the other races like they were monsters, put some kind of weak asshole with ilusions of grandeur in comand or even just completely ignore everything and try to hole up in some kind of dimentional bunker to start a new society free from the system.

Fortunately governmental and economical traits could be adjusted without directly guiding the growth of several generations, but he knew for a fact that it was not going to be a fun ride to make this world come into it’s new reality without several generations of stupid tirants that thought their acumulation to be enough.

He was honestly hoping that the chinese could at least offer another reasonable political pole now that the americans proved that Washington thought their secret bullshit was enough to deal with everything, because if need be at this point, he’d even form an in-name alliance with whoever currently commanded Pyongyang just to create an alternate command to his own and establish proper governance without putting himself as the ultimate tirant.

Seriously, why would anyone be so confident about Earth? Had they never watched a movie or read a book? Did they think that the whole planet was Vietnam and they’d be able to out maneuver their invaders and win through guerilla and fighting spirit? There’s no way that no government or random rich people didn’t actually get any warning about the world going upside down, right? He had several bombs, warheads, and black tech that said America was most certainly preparing for something!

Sure, that was the first country whose capitol he’d seized, but it couldn’t be that all of them were filled with doomsday preparation and weaponry ready to take down giants?

Unless the statue of liberty was an actual mecha sent by the french through some bullshit steampunk or the russians had a giant of steel, he would not believe that. Next someone would tell him that area 51 had actual espers and… Wait, that second one was probably true considering that if he counted himself, he knew three humans with special abilities.

That would actually explain some of the bullshit he’d seen in his rapid purview, like that gun that made people get a random disease or the weird fish creature that looked like a complete human nervous system.

Actually wasn’t that an SCP? Let’s hope he was not in the same reality as the devourer of worlds, but otherwise he should be fine as long as… Actually, Lea could probably deal with most Sarkic anomalies considering her powers, so even if he had to purge a country or two due to some weird infection it’d be fine. Perhaps he’d even be able to eat Jupiter if he lucked out! It was anyone’s guess whether the thing would still be alive when it was transported so far away from the gaseous giant or if it’d even come with Earth, but he’d probably not need to deal with the Black moon, The moon prison or any other such either.

The only thing that he would really need to check for potential dangers were some prison towers in London and any more cultist activity. And probably stop himself from nerding out like this again while doing his rounds, as he seemed extremely weird at the moment, especially since the people around him had spent the last five minutes trembling in absolute fear, which was going to be another pain to deal with later.