The difference between those that shall succeed in the Multiverse, and those that won’t, boils down to one simple factor; Luck.

The Path to Power, By Karima Zilindoff

**

The world was thrown into disarray. Across the entirety of the mainland, those that were once assumed to be people were sloughing down to goo, revealing a hidden monstrous shape as they perished. Confusion and chaos reigned as those in the know cheered and the clueless masses feared.

The reign of the Skin Walkers had finally come to an end.

Due to their existence, a significant portion of the remaining dregs of humanity were slain and devoured, more so than even those that died during that first month following the Tutorial. There was no exact count, or even an estimated one, as very few population centres had contact with other cities, but anyone smart enough knew there wasn’t a whole lot left compared to before.

But it wasn’t all bad news. Now, humanity had time to heal. They had time to rebuild civilisation and grow once more to the dominant species on the planet. Starvation and terror were still afflictions that were found in abundance, but slowly, that too would heal.

Brock knew this, or at least an abridge idea of that due to Mio, and he felt oddly fulfilled knowing he had saved the lives of many. His wound had basically patched itself up in the meantime, although it certainly wasn’t going to regenerate itself back, just stop bleeding. Which he was thankful for, as it gave his headache some much needed reprieve.

Still, he didn’t move in case he reopened the scabbed sides of the gaping hole. From the immense discomfort he felt within, he assumed that his ruined organs had just opted to grow around the hole. I really hope they don’t get tangled…

The so-called ‘unit’ that Mio had called arrived exactly twelve minutes after she had mentioned them, and he had to admit their reactions were extremely amusing. All were sitting at the epitome of 40, yet as they looked over the destruction, they were left awed, if a little queasy at the sheer amount of blood.

“Bout time, huh?” Brock spoke aloud as he rested his hand behind his head to appear as leisurely as possible.

His voice took the attention of the five away from the battlefield and to the man that had caused it all to happen. In rapid succession, their gazes fluttered from the gaping hole in his abdomen to the corpse of Ryan lying limply with a broken blade jabbed between his eyes, then back. They seemed to be in the know about the whole situation, as they appeared to recognise the corpses significance immediately.

There was a brief moment of time where they did nothing. Then abruptly, they sprang into motion, with two rushing over to Brock and the rest seeing to Mio, Carrie, and Jane.

As the duo - a man and a woman, bearing enough resemblance to be related – knelt beside him and overlooked his wound. The shadows rose up behind them and deposited a set of small kits afterwards. Brock had to admit he was impressed by the uniform abilities the clansmen seemed to have.

Honestly though, he doubted there was much their kits could do to patch up a hole except maybe plug it up. Contrary to what he thought, however, the man pulled out a flashlight and began checking his dilations while the woman lifted him up and began to bandage the injured area tightly as to stem any potential blood flow in the future.

They weren’t as shocked as they had appeared earlier, probably on account of seeing his hole had already healed for the most part up close, but still, they did what they could. Satisfied that he was fully functioning, they helped him to his feet, and Brock shook as his balance tried to adjust itself. A stream of blood dribbled out from his nostril, and he wiped it away.

Idly, Brock bent down and pulled his blade from between Ryan’s eyes. He felt a pang of guilt and disgust at his actions. I… killed him.

“Brock Carter?” the man spoke up, his expression portraying something resembling admiration, strangely enough. Brock noticed the brief moment as he started talking where his mouth didn’t match up to the words he was saying.

Clearly, the System was coming in clutch with its translation feature.

He nodded slowly and immediately stumbled backwards, only to be caught safely by the other woman, “Yeah. That’s me.”

The man’s expression brightened somewhat, and a small smile broke out on his face. What Brock didn’t expect, however, was the heartfelt bow that followed that. The woman seemed like she wanted to follow suit but was occupied with keeping him upright.

“Thank you for saving our Young Matriarch.”

Brock licked his lips, “Uh… yeah no problem, mate.”

That seemed to be all he had wanted to say, and he went silent after that, instead joining his companion in helping Brock wander over to the other girls as they were treated. Walking was an extremely difficult affair considering he quite literally couldn’t feel his legs and Brock was pretty sure the spike had pushed it to the side considering how out his posture felt.

As he moved, it felt somewhat like he was floating while he was helped along. Fortunately, he already felt his spine and lower body tingling as his Vitality got to work rectifying the issue.

Up closer, he could see that the ninjas - who were wearing similarly bulky combat outfits to Mio, although of a rather different make and quality – were mostly just checking the conditions of all three women. It seemed Mio had done basically all that could be done for now for both Jane and Carrie.

The process continued for around five minutes as they combed over Jane a stupidly excessive amount of times, something Brock was surprised she stayed unconscious through considering she had never been all that heavy of a sleeper.

Carrie earned herself one last check and Mio was basically fine except for some aura depletion which she had already dealt with herself in the form of a small berry and her broken tibia. The two women seemed quite leery at the sight of him up and moving, probably due to the fact that they could literally see through him and out the other side, but there wasn’t too much he could do about it.

Thankfully though, Carrie seemed to have regained her bearings for the most part and was looking around the landscape with newfound curiosity. Her eyes briefly darted to Ryan’s corpses as one of the ninjas hauled it over their shoulder, and he noticed a flash of disdain and grief cross her features. She appeared to be entirely ignoring Brock’s presence, however, as though she didn’t even see him. He had no idea why.

He supposed the unit of five was fitting, as it left one person for each individual present, if you included Ryan, who was hopefully dead. It was oddly morbid to see him flopping limply about on one of the men’s shoulder, and Brock felt his seed of guilt grow within at his actions. He had killed a human being after all.

They might have been a terrible one, sure, but who was he to judge who died and who lived?

Now was not really the time for questioning his life choices though, and he quickly shoved the thought to the back of his mind for another time.

Their rescuers walked everyone over to the shadow of a particularly large boulder, and the woman carrying Jane stepped forward onto it. Brock had to say, he wasn’t surprised as the shadow began to blacken and rise up to devour them, almost identically to Mio’s shadow teleporting ability. Made him wonder if someone possessed a matching Ascendancy to his own out there.

It’d make discovering more about his abilities far easier.

A few seconds later, they were gone, and the shadow slouched down back into the original splotch of darkness. The next person, a man helping Carrie walk along beside her, stepped onto the shade. It too rose up and consumed them, and they warped away. Mio was next with her own ride, and shortly afterwards she too was gone.

The initial women he’d met hadn’t deigned to let him go the entire time and together they wobbled over to the dark surface of the shadow. Brock watched her nod her goodbye to the man holding the corpse as the cold embrace of shadow stuff began to climb up their legs and torso, before finally reaching up over their head and depositing them in darkness.

It was his second time already, and Brock doubted if he would ever get used to the sensation of falling through nothingness that this ability made him experience.

Abruptly, after what felt like only a single split moment, Brock fell upwards and back onto the earth. It was quite possibly the most disorienting thing that he had ever experienced. His eyes took a second or so to adjust from dark to light, and the ‘teleportation hub’ that Mio had arrived them at the first time revealed itself before him.

Unlike last time, there wasn’t an entire entourage awaiting their arrival, nor was the Patriarch there waiting to greet – scan - them. Only a few people were nearby watching the return curiously, and a few individuals were already rushing up to the pedestal area with a stretcher prepared. They placed it down beside him, and he was helped atop it.

He gave the woman that helped him a curt wave, and she nodded his way. The stretcher ride was uncomfortably bumpy, and there was a guy constantly feeling around inside his hole, which wasn’t exactly the most pleasant feeling. Get your hands out of me, you weirdo.

Brock chuckled to himself. He’d be rating them 1 star on Yelp when the internet was fixed.

He did catch the barest glimpse of the cockhead from before that challenged him over disrespecting their Patriarch, and he found it extremely amusing to see how green his face went upon seeing Brock’s wound. It did, however, remind him to seek out the older man later and apologise. He was a bit of a dick when they’d met.

Apparently, the bumpiness of the ride was due to the sheer speed that these people were moving at, as the surroundings were rendered a blur and they arrived at what appeared to be a hospital only a few minutes later.

There was no admission needed and they just walked him right into the ER. Surprisingly enough, he saw Jane being treated by several people, but both Carrie and Mio were nowhere to be seen, despite the formers similar level of injury. Favouritism at its finest, he guessed. Or perhaps his sibling had just lost far more blood.

Brock looked down at the hole in him. He could see his intestines starting to fall through the thick layer of scabbed flesh. Thank God I’m Jane’s brother.

Medical service was swift, with a group of people rushing up to him, some holding his organs inside while others had their hands enveloped in an emerald glow. His body felt itchy, especially his gaping hole, as his flesh began to knit itself back together. A quick glance inward showed it had no effect on his ravaged pathways.

It took a good ten minutes before the hole and his other injuries were fully healed without so much as a scar, and Brock finally opened the eyes he was forced to close as he resisted to urge to itch. A woman pulled a rag from the table nearby as the healers did one final check over of his condition, and she wiped the drying blood from his once mangled face.

Her eyes widened immediately, “Brock?!”

The man in question looked over and was stunned as the wiper pulled down her mask and revealed a familiar face, “…Kim? Why are you here?”

She seemed at a loss for words, “I… what? I was going to ask you the same thing!”

The surrounding healers appeared immensely confused, and convinced that Brock was going to be fine, they wandered off and assisted the other patients in need.

“You’re meant to be dead!” Kim cried out as her face pulled up real close. She felt his own face a bit too avidly with her hands and spared a glance for the wound he had possessed minutes prior, “…are you a zombie?”

Brock recoiled and slapped her hands aside, an act that was made easy with her minimal Strength, “No. No I’m not.”

He cracked the bones of his spine with his back muscles and began to swing himself out of bed. They’d fixed his out of place back as well, it seemed. Kim looked like she wanted to stop him, but refrained from doing so, “But… are you sure? Carrie said she saw you die…”

“I’m pretty certain, yeah…” Brock sighed but then quieted. That’s why Carrie seemed to ignore me. She probably blames herself for what happened. Fuck, she probably thinks I’m a hallucination…

He sighed once more as he reached for his torn-up jacket that had been resting on the foot of the bed. Oddly enough, they no longer seemed to need operating tables when they could just… heal you directly.

Brock donned his jacket, scanning over the plethora of holes it now possessed sourly, and parted the curtains, revealing a hall stretching either way beyond. His aura still wasn’t fully rejuvenated, and he doubted he’d be able to parse apart all the others and track Mio and Carrie, so he opted to head toward his sister.

The others could wait for the moment.

Kim called out behind him, and after a slight moment of deliberation, chose to chase behind him. Brock was suddenly beset with the extreme urge to just run.

“So how are you alive then?” she asked at his side. She was short, maybe a little shorter than Harry, and her hair net had been removed to reveal a messy bun of black hair. She was pretty, sure, but he also found her exceedingly annoying, even before the System, “Did you die and come back to life? Like a zombie?”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, “Yeah, I got bit by a radioactive mosquito, and it revived me.”

“Really?!”

“No.”

The woman pouted and continued to pepper him with questions, most of which Brock either took the piss out of or actually answered seriously. Unfortunately for him, it left Kim with more questions than she’d started with, and she was all too happy to ask them all.

I wish Ryan won.

He sighed in relief as he finally pulled up to the hospital bed that he remembered seeing Jane lying in, and he parted the curtains. As he expected, his older sister was lying asleep within, her scars and savage injuries healed up perfectly. There were a few thin scars left behind from the more gruesome wounds, but they was barely noticeable unless you focused in on them.

A voice called out from behind him, and Brock’s shoulders slumped in defeat, “Were you the one that saved Jane and Carrie?”

“No. But the guy that did went that way.” He pointed to the left of the hall, and Kim’s eyes narrowed as she realised that he was just being a dick.

She didn’t comment, and instead chose to wait outside the tent to give him some time with his sister. He knew that she and Harry would get along famously. He chuckled, before solemnly turning to his sister.

He didn’t move for a moment, before he leaned down and wrapped his arms around her. He’d missed his family. And in the few short months that he hadn’t seen her, he’d missed his older sister.

And now, he had her back.