Volume 5 – Chapter 16 (in-editing v3)

Volume 5 – Chapter 16

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Chapter 17 will be posted soonish (tomorrow likely) and then 18 shortly after (within a day or two).

(17 and 18 are each ~70% written, I'm just working on certain scenes)

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‘So that’s how he did it.’

Micheal’s pulse spiked as he processed Vesper’s words, confirmation of what she told him earlier.

‘That’s how he killed Aaron.’

The Strongest Human.

Despite being the founder of arguably the most powerful human organization on the 7 Layers, there wasn’t much humanity knew about Aaron Bartram, not by the end of the first timeline.

‘Too much was lost to throes of time.’

The 7 Layers were cruel.

‘All we had to go by was the journal he left behind, and the words of the last surviving Round Table Knight.’ Micheal thought, his mind racing as he began to think, his enhanced abilities letting him process things at a superhuman rate.

In that split second, a wave of memories washed over Micheal, as he recalled everything he had read from Aaron’s personal journal, the sole record they had of the Strongest Human’s experience on the First Layer.

.. .. .. .. .. ..

The First Wave

.. .. .. .. .. ..

Aaron blinked.

“What?”

An ethereal, fogscape spread out around him.

He had been in the middle of preparing a financial report, alongside his team at Drell Tech’s California headquarters. It was his fourth year working there, and that meant something. That seniority gave him financial stability, something he was coming to welcome as he entered his 30s. The VP of his company, Jake Edwards, had personally informed him that he was up for promotion this year.

Aaron was damn good at his job, and he knew it. The numbers came easy to him.

It had been a good day, great, even.

He was planning on finally asking out the cute barista, Irene, down at the local coffee shop after he got off work.

Things had been looking up for Aaron Bartram.

“What just happened?”

But now…

He was no longer sitting at his desk.

Instead, Aaron found himself floating in mid-air, right in front of two stationary blue screens, also floating in the air.

His body felt cool, as if he was swimming in a pool of water. It would’ve felt comfortable and relaxing, if not for the flood of shock and fear running through his veins.

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— - Shop — -

Available Points: 300,002

Abilities - Artifacts

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— - Status — -

Name: Aaron Bartram

Points: 300,002

Race: Human

Age: 30

- Stats -

Strength - 9

Endurance - 9

Recovery - 9

Soul - 16

- Abilities - (0/7)

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"Please spend your allotted Points till they are completely used up. You have one hour to choose. After that hour, all unused Points will be discarded, and you will be transported to the First Layer."

An ethereal, feminine voice echoed forth from nowhere.

“Who are you?! Where am I?!” Aaron twisted around frantically, trying to find the source of the speaker, to no avail.

All he was greeted with was silence.

Seconds passed as he breathed in and out, his pulse throbbing.

‘This… this doesn’t make any sense.’

Aaron looked down, staring at the ethereal, blank air beneath him.

“I’m not dreaming.” He grabbed ahold of his left hand, squeezing it until it hurt.

“This is real.” Aaron muttered, a million thoughts flying through his head.

In the midst of his panic, Aaron fell back on what he had learned as a child.

His old man was a pilot, one of the best, running flights from California all the way to Toronto like it was nothing. He’d done everything, from trade deliveries to commercial airlines, in a career that spanned decades.

Growing up, Aaron’s father took him to the sky hundreds of times, sometimes in fancy jets, other times in small, single-engine Cessnas.

But, every time, no matter the plane, his old man had always stressed one thing.

‘When all hell breaks loose, there’s only one thing you can do.’

“Calm down...” He took a deep breath.

“…and fly the plane.”

Aaron forced himself to focus on the present, discarding his confusion and panic.

“This is real.” He reiterated.

“The voice said I had an hour to choose.” He muttered, recalling its words with his perfect eidetic memory.

It was one of the reasons why he ended working in a fancy accounting firm. His perfect memory let him compute and memorize numbers like it was nothing.

“I have to assume that I’m not stuck here, then. I’ll be…” He continued, a frown appearing on his face.

“Transported to the ‘First Layer.’” He had no idea what that meant.

“Okay.” He rubbed his forehead, fighting off a headache as he parsed his situation.

“Let’s do this.”

In a place where other humans would collapse in terror, Aaron shrugged off his fear and adapted.

Roughly 50 minutes passed in the blink of an eye, as Aaron perused the Shop in as much detail as he could afford.

He tapped on Ability after Ability, pulling up their descriptions and trying to understand them as best he could.

‘It’s almost like a weird, messed up game.’ The stuff he read was like something out of a novel, magical powers that went against every norm he had lived his entire life.

‘I just have to assume this is all real.’ His mindset settled.

If this was all some elaborate prank, somehow, taking it seriously would only waste a bit of time.

If this was all real… then it might be a matter of life and death.

 ‘I have 300,002 Points.’

Eventually, he settled on his decision.

‘This one.’

He didn’t have enough time to read every Ability, let alone all the Artifacts, a section he skipped given his lack of time. He could only judge what would be useful based off two things.

Their descriptions… and their price.

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—- Mystic Variant Transformation Type —-

The Mystical Variant Transformation draws upon all of existence, endowing the user with powers suited to their needs.

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‘It’s the most expensive Ability I can buy with the… ‘Points’ I supposedly possess.’ How did he get these Points? He had no idea.

This single Ability cost 300,000 Points, leaving him with a mere 2 Points in reserve. It also had a handy description that, if it could be trusted, sounded like it should prove immediately useful to him.

‘Do I spread out and buy a bunch of cheaper Abilities, or go all in on something pricey?’ Clearly, stronger Abilities cost more Points, at least as far as he could tell.

‘Better to have a strong, singular power, then multiple, weak powers.’ He shook his head.

‘If this really does turn out to be something real, the most expensive superpower ‘suited to my needs’ sounds like the best I could ask for.’

It was a judgement call based on very little information, and who could blame him?

Later on, humans discovered that Shop Ability prices were only sometimes correlated with power, but it wasn’t as if Aaron, or anyone for that matter, was aware of this fact at the present moment.

Only a Regressor would know that.

“I’ve made my selection.” Aaron tapped on the Ability, selecting to buy it.

“Are you sure?” For the second time, now, he heard an ethereal female voice speak out.

“Who are you?” He questioned.

“Can you answer me? Hello?”

He was greeted with silence.

He frowned dourly for a moment before sighing.

‘It’s do or die.’

“Yes, I am sure.” He answered the voice.

"You still have several minutes to decide on how to spend your Points. Are you certain you wish to proceed?" The voice replied.

“Yes.” He repeated, his voice tight.

"Acknowledged. You will be sent through to the First Layer. As part of those Chosen first, you will be given information." The voice replied.

Aaron blinked as bright light swarmed around him, and the world abruptly began to change.

.. .. .. .. .. ..

Aaron’s eyes widened as he looked around, wincing as he felt something incredibly strange happen.

All of a sudden, knowledge was beamed directly into his mind.

“7 Layers? What..?” He got a vague sense of what had happened to him, and now, where he was.

‘I’m on the First Layer… and I need to reach the Seventh Layer?’ He got a vague feeling that he needed to move somewhere, somewhere far from where he was now.

At the same time that he was processing this, his vision cleared, and he began to gather his bearings.

He was standing atop the roof of a towering skyscraper. Around him, as far as the eye could see, stretched tens of thousands of other skyscrapers, glittering glass shining as the sun beat down overhead. It was an eerie, unearthly sight, almost unsettling in how odd it seemed.

‘It’s like one, enormous liminal space.’

“What in the world...”

Some of the skyscrapers he could see were connected to each other, accessible by long rope bridges set with dozens of wooden planks, while others had fancy steel bridges, or sheer wooden beams set directly across.

It was incredibly strange.

‘Am I in shock?’ He thought as he stepped towards the side of the roof he was on.

At the base of the skyscraper, he spotted empty roads, eerily bereft of any inhabitants. There were sidewalks and traffic lights, he could even see a few trash cans lined up… but no one and nothing was present on the ground, at least, not that he could see.

‘Wait, what was that-?’ He saw the flicker of something out of the corner of his eye, a dark figure, something vaguely humanoid, shifting behind a wall before he could catch a full glimpse.

Aaron stumbled backwards, an uneasy feeling settling into his gut, for reasons he couldn’t quite explain.

“Hello?” He called out, scanning the rest of the rooftop.

“…”

He was alone.

This was something that set the First Wave apart from all that followed.

In the First Wave, a million people were Chosen. It was a substantial amount, enough to cause immediate chaos on Earth as people disappeared into thin air, numerous enough that many incidents were caught on camera.

However…

The Fourth Wave saw a billion human beings get transferred to the First Layer, spread across countless Clusters, all filled with towering buildings.

When humans were teleported to the First Layer, they arrived at specific, set locations. There was only so many rooftops available, spread across hundreds of thousands of skyscrapers.

A billion humans was an enormous number, to the point where multiple humans were teleported to the same spot, arriving en masse as a group.

The First Wave, on the other hand…

“There’s no one in sight.” Aaron frowned.

Aaron had arrived all by himself.

For all he knew, he might be the only one that was brought here.

“I guess I’m on my own.”

And so began his survival journey.

On the first day, Aaron stayed within the building he had appeared on top of. He searched through several of the rooms in the building, finding several things of note.

The building was some sort of office space, filled with hundreds of rooms occupied by common office space furniture. Couches, chairs, desks, printers, work stations, it was eerily similar to many places Aaron had seen before.

The only thing odd was the lack of any sort of logo, indicating who had made any of the things he found.

He did, however, manage to find food.

“A minifridge? Really?”

He found a fully stocked minifridge on the third floor below the roof. It looked like some sort of weird break room, with the furniture oddly stacked on one side, and a large table and fridge set on the other.

He stayed there for the rest of the day, browsing through the Shop panel and trying to understand the new Ability he had purchased. Sleeping on a couch without any covers at room temperature wasn’t exactly comfortable, but he made do.

On his second day…

Aaron encountered his first Morenkai.

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