Apocalypse Redux

As he walked out of the school, he briefly looked into the offered [Class].

Rare. Which was good, likely a reflection of the fact that he’d been working hard in the hope of improving his starter [Class], but he could do better.

In fact, while the school hadn’t really been too focused on teaching [System] stuff beyond “don’t pick anything before you’re done reading through all the choices” and “getting advice from experts is a good idea,” he did know there were two more rarity tiers beyond rare, namely, epic and legendary, and they were, rather obviously, much better.

And while there were few ways that guaranteed [Classes] better than rare being offered, at least not outside doing something extraordinarily dangerous, reckless, and stupid and then inexplicably and against all odds surviving the experience … he was just fifteen. He had a lot of time to work on things.

Yeah, there were the sayings about “perfect is the enemy of good,” wasn’t there also one about “good enough is the enemy of good?” Or something?

Deciding to not accept a [Class] and therefore locking himself out of the [System] until he got something legendary might lead to him dying a preventable death of old age in a century or two from now … but he could always change his mind if things seemed to be going that way.

For now, he’d wait.

Yet when he dismissed the [Class] prompt, another one showed up.

Congratulations on unlocking your System and gaining access to the locked portions of the Bloodline of the Hellborn Survivor!

You may now freely wield Lesser Hellfire; the full pain resistance capability of your bloodline is active, and regeneration no longer scales with the severity of the injury, rather, it is under the user’s control and can function at full capacity at any time, so long as sufficient mana is supplied. So, full access, huh?

Bloodline of the Hellborn Survivor (legendary)

The legacy of a warrior who lived through countless battles, countless injuries, countless tragedies, someone who came through it all completely intact. And that is what this Bloodline represents.

As its first holder was a High Human, all others also gain this powerful Race. In addition to this, it grants countless Skills useful for surviving attacks.

Firstly, it comes with extraordinary regenerative capabilities, which even extend to injuries to the brain, a separate mana storage to power said regeneration, and the power for organs to take over the function of other, damaged ones. And when all of that proves insufficient, the body will temporarily gain the power to ignore nearly all injuries. Starting once they have reached the age of majority, they also gain significant resistance to pain.

Secondly, the holder of this bloodline has the ability to phase through solid objects, granting them the mobility needed to escape all confinement.

Thirdly, it automatically grants a preternatural level of skill with all bladed weapons, as well as stealth.

In addition, this Bloodline makes analyzing its holders nearly impossible.

However, there is more to this Bloodline than mere survivability. Its holders may wield the very Hellfire that forged its progenitor, but only in the most dire of circumstances, with their parents’ permission, or if they have reached the age of majority.

Lastly, anyone in possession of this Bloodline is able to use it to signal distress to anyone else who holds it once a year.

Basically, what he’d already known, spelled out for him. So he dismissed it … and was faced by yet another window.

The Fast Travel window.

That hadn’t actually been a part of the [System] from the start; in fact, it wasn’t even a part of it in the general sense, beyond that it had been earned by summoning a [World Boss], the Earlking, slaughtering him, and then using the earned World Item, which happened to be one that helped everyone.

Congratulations! Due to having sufficiently grown up, you also gain the standard ability to use all current, open-access World Item effects!

Available Effects:

Inner-System Fast Travel (1st-4th Earlking’s Labyrinth)

Traveler’s Anchor (5th Earlking’s Labyrinth)

Humanity had slain every World Boss in its summoning list at least once. Most of their World Items had had single-use effects that had either been already used or were being hoarded for the future.

However, the Earlking’s Labyrinth had had an effect that could be persistently utilized; all of humanity was on its whitelist, and every decade, the monster had been slain again and its item used to expand the capabilities of the fast-travel system, allowing it to be stacked up to five times.

Though it hadn’t been without cost. Not only in lives, but also as well … apparently, there’d once been a ninth planet in the solar system by the name of Pluto. Or maybe it hadn’t been a planet, just a big celestial body, and it had been a big argument one way or the other, but said arguments had died when the poor, abused rock had finally cracked like an egg.

And then, the [System] threw one final message at him.

Warning! The following message was input by the user of the World Item; the System takes no responsibility for its contents!

As a citizen of the Solar System, you have been allowed access to the Solar Fast Travel System, which covers the entirety of the inner system (inwards from the orbit of Mars).

Twice a week, you may travel to any point you have previously visited from any other point, provided both points are within range.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

(This effect may not be used while in combat, to commit a crime, or when under arrest in some form. If you aren’t free and clear to walk somewhere with your own two feet, you cannot fast travel there either.)

Finally, when exploring beyond the bounds of the normal fast travel area, after one decade of not using fast travel, the user may teleport to the Solar System. After another decade of not using fast travel, the user may teleport back to the full extent of their explorations. The user may also take a reasonably sized vessel with them, but this increases the cooldown to a quarter of a century.

Huh, he’d been wondering how fast travel wasn’t a huge security risk, all around. Question solved, he supposed.

But now that he could use it … Derek pulled out his phone, typed out a quick message to Mom so she wouldn’t worry, and triggered the inner Solar System’s Fast Travel for the first time. Because why not test his abilities in an appropriately impressive environment?

***

Mars was supposed to have been an alien planet, red, dusty, and lifeless.

Supposed to be.

And that description had only been accurate until little under a century ago. Because that was when another World Item, the second ever, in fact, had been used to terraform it.

The Primordial Essence of Ymir, gained by killing a [World Boss], like all other World Items, purchased with countless lives. And that battle had been, supposedly, the start of Pluto’s destruction.

But because the [System] could be quite the pot-stirrer when it wanted to be, it had directly given the World Item to the person who’d contributed the most to the fight and, as per usual, it had been his brother who’d gotten it, but rather than risking calling down a whole lot of trouble onto himself, the item had gotten used on Mars in exchange for Isaac getting Olympus Mons. All of Olympus Mons, the gigantic dead volcano, whose crater contained an area comparable to a sizable chunk of Germany.

His parents had actually taken him there on holiday a few times, a couple of weeks at most, and he’d been under the impression it had been a really fancy vacation rental.

Yet when he’d learned it was actually the “family home,” aka something Isaac had built for their parents, Derek’s reaction had been that of a brat, demanding they move here from the “small” house he’d grown up in, the one that all his siblings had all been raised in, a regular middle-class home.

In his defense, he’d been eight, and the “family home” was huge, a mansion in every sense of the word, but his parents, his mother in particular, had put their foot down, and that had been that. So he’d used some words he probably shouldn’t even have known at that point in his life and gotten grounded.

And for the longest time, that had been that. He had to live there, hadn’t been able to see why his parents wanted to live in the comparatively tiny home, but known better than to make an issue of that. Again.

Then he’d met someone “like him.” The scion of a powerful family, pampered and empowered since the day he’d been born. And Derek had never seen a more punchable face in his life.

Long story short, he’d been grounded for a month, his parents had been furious, and both his sisters had been amused and praised him when they thought Mom and Dad weren’t paying attention. Tanja had even snuck him a congratulatory can of cookies.

But ultimately, the thing that had really stuck out to him were two facts:

Firstly, he never wanted to grow up like that douche.

And secondly, puberty had trashed his self-control in the face of assholes.

Though somehow, the “I’m going through puberty, my brain is literally being rewired” excuse had never actually managed to get him out of trouble.

Either way … either way, he was here now, in the “living room,” with a vast wall of windows overlooking the inside of the crater, two more walls lined with bookshelfs tall enough one needed to be able to fly or use telekinesis to reach most of them, and the final one fading off into the distance as the roof sloped down, the open floorplan of the room laying bare both the kitchen and dining rooms.

Before, when he’d been a kid, they’d needed to go ahead and take a starship to get here; now, he could teleport here on his own … and now he had the place all to himself, at least until his text was read and his parents showed up.

Not that he didn’t like them, the older he got, the more he could see what might have happened to him if they’d indulged him the way all kids wanted to be indulged. You know, the usual: no bedtime, infinite desert, pizza for every meal …

One of these days, he might even be at a point where he’d tell them that.

As he walked towards the crater-facing balcony, a book caught his eye.

“Raising the Young Master: How to Screw up your Kid in Ten Easy Steps”, by Maria Thoma.

Heh, Mom wrote a book about parenting. That sounded about right. They didn’t have a copy of that back home, though, and he hadn’t seen that one around any time he’d been here either … she’d likely hidden that every time they’d come here on vacation.

Proud, but not wanting him to learn her “playbook,” yep, that sounded like her. Actually, sounded like the twins, too, and perhaps even Isaac as well, though Derek was yet to actually meet his oldest sibling, as he’d gone off to explore the galaxy fifty years ago.

That was actually what Derek was planning on doing, too, eventually.

Right now, he had access to his mana, but he just couldn’t increase his pool without leveling, which would, in turn, require him to accept a [Class].

With his mana fully unlocked, he’d be able to use items that required it, finally access storage rings, and also deliberately fuel hellfire, so he … ahem, so he should move this somewhere else, somewhere less flammable.

Like the training room in the basement. It wasn’t capable of withstanding the likes of his siblings when they cut loose, that would have been prohibitively expensive, according to Dad, but it had been designed to allow for the safe practicing of smaller-scale techniques. And since all six of them could use hellfire, fire resistance had been one of the priorities during construction.

There were also several fire extinguishers neatly stacked outside the door, for the same reason.

And while Derek sincerely doubted he had the power to actually meaningfully ignite anything in that concrete box, he was heading into … not bringing one would probably be dumb. So he grabbed one, entered, and … and now what?

He slowly turned in a circle as the heavy metal door automatically slid shut behind him, trying and failing to find any semblance of a control panel. He supposed it would have been kinda creepy for those TV shows to actually be accurate about what this room looked like on the inside.

Perhaps, just maybe, watching “documentaries” about his own family, what had happened over a century earlier, nearly a century before he’d ever been born, had been a bad idea, destined to give him the wrong idea … but once again, problem for later.

Derek raised his right hand, palm facing upwards, in a motion he’d done … it had to have been hundreds of times, each time imagining black flame bursting forth, the power he’d felt once, just a single time, returning.

A dream that had, of course, failed to manifest.

Until now.

The fires of hell exploded from his palm, black tongues of plasma lashing out every which way, their edges only visible due to the white shimmer that wreathed them.

For a brief instant, that was all Derek could see, his head, perhaps even his entire torso, swallowed by the energy … and then it winked out as his mana pool hit rock bottom.

He was left blinking spots out of his eyes. How could literal darkness be so freaking bright? At least the “immunity” part of the [Skill] had worked, protecting both his body and clothes from damage.

In his current state, he couldn’t directly check on the state of his mana pool, as even the character sheet was locked behind picking a [Class], but he could feel it, the magical gas tank that was properly empty for the first time … well, ever, really.

He’d drawn upon it a couple of times in the past, the healing portion of his bloodline triggering automatically, but that had almost entirely happened below his conscious awareness.

Derek could feel its level twitch upwards, filling ever so slightly, and he cast [Lesser Hellfire] once again, the [Skill] failing in an instant yet nevertheless sending black sparks dancing across his palms. And a few moments later, he did it again. And again. And once more for good measure, over and over until his phone dinged, letting him know that not only had Mom read the text, but she’d also decided to “come over” with dad.

In the end, he decided to head up to meet them right then and there, rather than hiding out in the training room, not that they were likely to let him get away with that for too much longer anyway.