The Earth After Rebirth

By the looks of things around the village, they\'d lifted the curse or at least Kiro got what he came here for. The villagers were slowly leaving their hiding places with the fog gone.

Thin and sickly, it looked like their bones would break under their already reduced weight. Even the children dragged their feet, everyone was hurrying, as fast as they could, to the food storage.

"Aeron, we need to hurry back to our base. Sorry Viktor, but members only." He would\'ve grabbed Aeron\'s arm if he didn\'t act quickly to follow him.

Ding!

[Congratulations on getting rid of the tower of death. You\'re rewarded with two billion EXP and hundred thousand coins. These rewards will be split three ways.]

Even with the 2 billion exp divided three ways, Kiro didn\'t level up, not even once. The expressions of the two though said otherwise.

"There was no tower!" He shouted to the system before he could stop himself.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Viktor didn\'t seem to take what Kiro said seriously because he was jogging right behind them. Not missing a step.

"Dude, don\'t make me knock you out again!" He didn\'t have the patience, not anymore.

"No need to be so rude Kiro, seriously. You can just lock me up in your cellar, I\'ll be fine to wait there."

He wanted to argue but took a deep breath instead. He\'d be a guardian and soon enough, he\'d have to know the truth behind it all. He may aswell share the burden right now.

If he was honest with himself, he didn\'t know how to break it to his team. Would they believe him without much proof? Even he wasn\'t sure that what he went through wasn\'t a hallucination the tower caused — the game was big on hallucinations afterall.

\'No. Its real, I know it is. It feels different from the hallucinated nightmares of the labyrinth, it feels way too different.\' He shook off the doubts he was trying to plant in his mind.

He was surprised with himself though, he was taking this better than he gave himself credit for. He couldn\'t wait to see the different reactions from his mates.

Kiro opened the doors to their base, he didn\'t realise how much he was holding himself together. He breathed a sigh of relief that nothing happened on the way, his muscles relaxed a bit.

"Where are the rest?" He asked Hiro who was still in his shop, doing whatever craftsmen did.

"Not sure." He shrugged, not looking up once.

"Can you call them?" He said, biting his nails, thinking of ways he could prove to them what he\'d seen back there.

\'Maybe I could use the reality warping skill? But that will set me back a couple of more months and with the situation as it is, I don\'t need that setback. How would I even use the power anyway!\'

"Look, Kiro, I\'m busy. Go play with your beasts or something." He shooed him away.

"Hiro? This is important."

It was in the way he stopped pacing, giving him a deadpan look that made Hiro to finally pay attention. He was about to ask what happened, but Kiro walked away.

"Wait, dammit..." He followed right behind, calling Ishaan. He hoped they were nearby, mostly he hoped they were all together.

"Kiro is calling a meeting, he says its urgent. Please be here within ten minutes."

\'Tch. Who does he think I am, his secretary? Why did I even agree so easily to make this call when he could\'ve made it himself?\' He was a little mad at himself, hoping he wasn\'t reverting back to his old self.

"But we\'re about to run a dungeon?" He complained, not sounding happy.

"I\'m not happy either buddy, but Kiro sounded serious about this. I don\'t know what it is, but he seemed very nervous too, now I know you know not many things can shake him up like that. So get your ass over here."

He hung up before he could even counter. He was also dragged away from his work, he wasn\'t in the mood to go back and forth with them.

"Kiro, what happened?"

He waited for a while for an answer, only to realise that he was fast asleep. He looked to Aeron and Viktor for answers, who shrugged.

"We only went to the market to buy some beast meat when this guy attacked us out of nowhere!"

"Hey, it\'s bad when you say it like that."

"Of course it was bad, because of his stunt we were almost arrested but the guard told us to take up a quest to make up for it."

They told him all about the village and the tower, but they couldn\'t remember how they managed to release the tower\'s curse. One moment they were fighting, the next they were outside the tower staring at each other.

Hiro nodded, there was no way this was what frightened Kiro to such an extent. Luckily, that\'s also when the rest of After Dark filed into the room.

He could feel them through vibrations, so he opened his eyes and yawned, stretching his limbs. He hadn\'t realised how mentally exhausting going back to the past would actually be.

He\'d seen things, both good and bad. He was still a little bitter about Helena Waynworth betraying not just her husband and her kids, but the entirety of their family line. Kiro didn\'t even know her personally, but the disappointment he felt towards her was insurmountable.

"So what\'s up?"

"Yeah, what was so urgent that we had to come back so quickly? You know, we won\'t have time once the tournament starts." Ishaan would never stop being the big mouth complainer.

Kiro was still looking for a much better way to tell them. When he couldn\'t find any, he concluded that he wasn\'t as smart as he thought he was.

He looked at each of them, unaware and blissful in their ignorance. He didn\'t have that luxury, not anymore.