Spearbound

Kade materialized back on the freeway, right where he had last remembered being. The first thing he saw were hundreds of abandoned cars.

“What the hell happened here?” Kade asked himself when he saw some cars with open doors, as if the owners had to run. He noticed something strange on the side of the freeway.

The top of a tree.

Kade stared at it in shock. He had gotten stuck on an overpass. There was no way a tree could reach this height. It would even be taller than the ones he saw in the Rift Zone.

He went to the edge of the freeway and looked over the barrier to the ground. Apparently, the Amazon rainforest took over the outskirts of Chicago.

Kade swiftly turned around to look at the city. His jaw dropped when he saw that an actual jungle had overtaken the concrete jungle.

“What happened to my planet?!” Kade assumed the worst. He couldn’t see anyone willingly abandoning their cars like this. He was trying to fear that there were no humans left.

The system didn’t reply, so he quickly tried to pull up the interface to see if it was still active.

Kade Beckett

Arcana Level 19

Kade dismissed it, not interested in seeing the rest of the status. The interface still existed, but the system didn’t reply.

Maybe it only replied for the duration of the first Rift Zone.

He would be furious if that was the case since he would’ve bombarded it with questions. Not that there was anything he could do about it now.

Kade tightened his hand around his [Soulrend] and opened the door to his pickup. He underestimated his own strength. The door ripped off its hinges, and the truck looked like it was about to tip over from the force until he pushed it back.

He stared at his totaled pickup in shock. “Well, fuck.”

Kade dropped the torn-off door with a wince. At least the key was still where he left it. He leaned his [Soulrend] on the pickup before he was about to enter it.

It would be nice if the [Soulrend] could be ‘unsummoned’ without penalty.

His heartbeat jumped when the [Soulrend] faded away until he saw the interface appear.

You have stored your Soulrend. You may summon it again without incurring any penalties.

Kade did precisely that to test it. He sighed in relief when he didn’t sense his health reducing drastically. He stored the [Soulrend] again and got in the pickup.

He soon realized the reason behind all the abandoned cars. The pickup didn’t start. He checked his phone and saw that it was dead, even though its battery was full before being whisked away to the Rift Zone.

Kade pocketed the phone and left the pickup. He hadn’t developed too much attachment to the vehicle, but it was his first large purchase. Thankfully, the ripped-off door helped him feel better about leaving it.

“Now what?” He asked out loud.

He wanted to go to his house, where most of his friends were, but it was too far away. The other option was to go back to the city and check on Matt.

Kade didn’t have any family to worry about, one of the few times he was happy about that, but having to choose between friends didn’t feel great. He ended up choosing the more practical option and returned to the city.

He hoped everyone was fine, though the changes to the world didn’t give him confidence.

Kade heard a loud alert.

This is a planet-wide alert!

Humanity’s vanguard have completed their assignments!

The first [Warrior], [Mage], [Healer], [Rogue], and [Scholar] have each destroyed a Rift Zone within 12 hours!

We have made recordings viewable to the public to familiarize you with future tasks. We will not take such recordings again in the future.

Earth will now have low-level monsters roaming outside the Rift Zones. We recommend using them for practice as you wait for Rift Zones to become available.

We will alert you when Rift Zones are open to the public!

He had thought the ‘system’ had disappeared leaving only the interface for standard messages, but apparently, it just refused to reply to him.

The injection of Arcana has terraformed planet Earth.

Kade felt surprised until he remembered it was the answer to a question he asked. “What’s with the delay?”

We have limited focus allocated to this planet. There will be times when we must prioritize other matters.

He accepted it and watched the recordings, his expression turning ugly with what he saw. “Why does this make me look like a lunatic?!”

The system didn’t reply.

Every recorded example showed Kade about to jump into a battle with a manic expression. The worst was the last one, where he was fighting the lesser troll.

No human could look more miserable, but he still had an ecstatic grin as he battled the lesser troll.

Kade shook his head and dismissed the interface. He was almost in the city.

***

“Where did you come from?”

He didn’t expect to be held at arrow point before he stepped into the city. He had to resist the impulse to summon his [Soulrend] and run it through the wild-eyed boy. He couldn’t do that. This wasn’t a monster.

Kade had to remind himself that the world as they knew it ended, and it wouldn’t be uncommon for people to be panicked.

“From a Rift Zone,” Kade said calmly. “I’m the Warrior that you can see in the recording. Put the bow down and—”

“You’re one of those!” The twang of the bowstring’s release was sharp to the ear.

Kade hadn’t been ready for the sudden attack.

It didn’t matter. He caught the arrow and stared at it in surprise as he heard the boy ranting.

“You beasts have gotten trickier!”

He was out of patience. “I’m not a beast,” he said in a calm tone as he approached the boy. “If you reach for another arrow, I’ll—”

He paused when he heard rapidly approaching footsteps. The boy before him got tackled by someone who looked to be an older version of the boy.

“What the hell are you doing?! I told you to stay put in the building!” The man wrested the bow away from the boy. “Let’s see how you try to escape when I handcuff you!”

Kade looked away from what was probably a family matter and saw a good amount of people staring at him warily. More surprisingly, they were all armed with odd choices. Most had baseball bats, but some had compound bows like the boy.

“Since when did so many people in the city know how to use bows?” Kade asked loudly, noting how nearly all of them twitched like they had to stop themselves from attacking.

“Since guns disappeared.”

“What?” Kade blinked and turned back to the man/boy duo

“The guns,” the man repeated. “They’re all gone. Ever since the world went to hell. Not just guns, but anything that might be explosive or of any help. All of them gone.”

Kade could feel the anger in his voice. “System, is that true?”

Yes. They were removed during the prospect protocol. Hot weapons are crutches that can only help against the weakest of monsters. The most potent weapon humanity possessed would have hurt a lifeform at Arcana Level 50, but no higher.

… I’ll be more powerful than a nuke after level fifty?

“Are you talking to that thing that turned our world into this?”

Kade blinked and stared at the… man. He was tired of not knowing the guy’s name. “Who are you?”

“… Finn.”

“Right, Finn. I get that you’re confused right now, but the faster we accept this is our new life, the better chance we have to live.”

Finn looked like he still had trouble believing it.

“You’re that guy on the recordings!”

Kade turned to see a middle-aged man pointing at him with wide eyes. “I am. And let me tell you that everything I did on the recording is what you can expect. You will become powerful as long as you survive.”

“How do we know it isn’t all edited?” A girl barely out of high school questioned him.

He rolled his eyes. This was already wasting more time than he wished, so he was about to do something simple. Seeing a human demolish a road with a punch would be enough to convince them.

Kade paused. He heard thousands of tiny legs skittering towards him from behind.

“Dammit! There’s more of them than before! Archers, fire at will!” Finn ordered the group.

He turned to see a horrifying sight. It was worse than anything he encountered in the Rift Zone. If there was one thing he hated most, it was bugs.

Oh, hell no.

Kade summoned his [Soulrend] instantly. Hundreds of human-sized bugs left the densely wooded area around the city. Several of them already had battle scars, with some even having arrows stuck in their exoskeleton.

He didn’t care. He just wanted them dead.

Kade’s [Soulrend] rocketed to the center of the invading group. The moment the Soulrend made contact, a massive eruption of flames burned every bug to ashes. It didn’t stop there. The flames were so hot that instead of spreading into the forest, they burned the surrounding trees so thoroughly that there was no chance of a wildfire.

He summoned the [Soulrend] back with a satisfied smile. Anytime he got rid of bugs was a good time. It was a pity that they were so feeble that the interface didn’t bother to display the number of kills.

“… Holy shit.”

Kade forgot he had an audience. They were staring at him with a combination of fear and awe. He shrugged and stored his [Soulrend]. “That should prove the recordings are real.”

“Join us,” Finn stared at him intensely. “Please. You can protect so many people. What do we need to do to convince you?”

He genuinely thought about it for a moment. He thought he wanted this when he was in the Rift Zone. The adoration of others.

Now that Kade had it… it sounded like the worst thing ever. He didn’t want to babysit others. Not what it meant that he would need to forgo challenging Rift Zones in favor of keeping others safe. Besides, it would just mean they would never grow to their full potential.

“That won’t happen. Practice on those bugs, then go to the Rift Zones like the system told you. You likely won’t survive for long if you have to depend on someone like me to protect you.”

Kade ignored their protests and left them behind to enter the city proper. It was out of the way from his workplace, but he had to see how the inner city was affected.

You have entered Chicago, Safe Zone #197.

The top 800 population centers are designated as Safe Zones, providing protection from monsters within their boundaries.

Periodically, monster waves will attempt to breach the city limits. These waves seek to break the Safe Zone.

Failure to repel all invading monsters will result in the loss of Safe Zone status, leaving the city vulnerable to monster horde threats and allowing the nesting of monster eggs within the city.

Contribute to the defense of your Safe Zone!

He read the interface with a raised eyebrow. The system was doing everything possible to push humanity along. This explains why the group guarded that spot.

Kade continued on until he reached his destination. It was strangely beautiful to see vines and other unknown plants creeping up the sides of the skyscrapers. Trees sprouted from the cracks in the pavement without looking as wild as the overgrowth outside the city’s borders, as was common throughout the Safe Zone.

There was a far larger concentration of people in the area. He hadn’t see any signs of looting as he expected, but neither had he seen any organization other than the small group fighting the bugs at the edge of the Safe Zone.

Surprisingly, it was different here. There were organized patrols comprising small groups with makeshift melee weapons were near the entrances of every building. He could see plenty of disheveled people with lost expressions in the glass lobbies of the guarded buildings.

Unlike the group defending a small part of Chicago’s border, everyone within the city only gave him narrowed looks without approaching him. He could see recognition in most of their looks. They had seen the recording.

It’s only been twelve hours. Most will soon start adapting. They’ll have to.

Kade ignored them all and turned down a street that took him back to edge of the Safe Zone. That’s where his workplace was located. He wasn’t sure what he would do if he found Matt, but that was something to deal with when it happened.