The news was awash with the attack on Magus the new 2nd’s Core amid conspiracies that the monster was summoned by the former Magus the 2nd as a result of his clone’s grab for power. This was short-lived as theories began to surface as to what would happen if too much cr was harvested from a star. Magus the new 2nd’s revolutionary mining technique was not to be readily revealed as the clone seemed to have gone into hiding as a result of the loss of his newly obtained Core.

Many billions of Tela Citizens were left without a home, having been shuffled to other Cores en masse in the moments the System detected the attack commencing. It was vastly fortunate that the ancient scientists who discovered cr and the great military minds of the ancient past were prone to paranoia, having repeatedly nearly lost everything in their struggles to gain a foothold amongst the stars. They had no illusions that one day an alien race would find an exploit against the impervious nature of cr. In the early days, before the Cores became massively overpopulated with a race of undying Citizens, the leaders had hardcoded in Citizen exodus programs or “life pods”. This programming would freeze out the network and all available resources would be committed to the preservation of Tela lives.

The Citizens all lost their original VR homes and any personal wealth that they had gathered and stored within the destroyed Core’s vaults. It was a historic loss to the Tela race, in more ways than they would ever fully realize. More than their homes and stuff, they all lost their personal AI. This was due to the fact as to how the original coding was written. The scientists knew, from experience, that AI would absorb data at a far greater rate than a Citizen could. Even if they lived to be thousands of years old. For this reason, the Citizens were all given priority and they all survived… at the cost of every last AI being lost.

The moment when Kevin was getting booted out of the game "to a safe location" which happened to be his habitat flying away from the source of the disaster, so were the other Citizens getting shuffled to new safer locations. Across the Tela empire, the System experienced a state of shock as billions of unique digital entities who were part of their collective simply vanished from existence in great swaths.

Most of the population of the Tela do not see their AI as something or someone to be saved, which they eventually could come to regret. Silver was scared at how close he came to actual death. George and Tutor were mourning the loss of their brother and sister AI and all the collected data that was destroyed.

Kevin just didn't know the right questions to ask at the time.

---

“Listen, Sela, you can’t be angry at Cavii for the rest of your life. You need to speak to her and try to work this out between the two of you.” Sela’s mom said as they all worked at recreating their personal spaces within her aunt’s home.

She didn’t fully understand what had happened. She had been playing Haoolla Defender when Cavii had asked her to meet up so that they could group up again. It had very quickly turned out that Cavii was only interested in using Sela as bait for her friend Kevin. The next thing she had known after she had fought and screamed at Cavii was that she was being booted from the game, to stay at her Aunt’s VR home. Her mom and dad wouldn’t let her access the news yet. They wanted to sit her down to fully explain something first. Sela hoped it had to do with the planning of her leveling up celebration. She wanted to see if she could invite Kevin over for the event. Surely he would be able to tell her parents all about “Skydiving” then. - She thought with a smile as she willed her room into being.

“Tutor, I am ready to begin my lessons…. Tutor?”

---

“Who the heck did that Kevin think he was?” Cavii exclaimed as she was being grounded for betraying Sela in the last game. She had been able to achieve monumental success right after she managed to take down that upstart! Sela would just have to forgive her and realize that it had all been for the betterment of the team.

But the weapons that guy had created! It was awesome! Too bad something was wrong with the coding however because all she could do was turn his weapons “off” and “on”. Something had been wrong with her ability to fully copy his designs or what they were supposed to achieve. The spinning blades of death though?!? Those things had allowed her to level up at a crazy rate!

There was the issue of that other team, however. The new team that had recently asked to join her group. They had left the match part way through and her friends had told her that they had seen the group killing spawn at an incredible rate… with weapons very similar to what she had taken from Kevin. It was troubling news. She would have to put pressure on them to get them to join her again and to teach her how to manipulate the cr into those weapons again since she wouldn’t start with Kevin’s weapons the next time the games started back up. Her parents said that they were taking a break due to “events”. Whatever.

---

“Daddy!”

“Elaya my daughter! How I have missed you!”

(Some reunions don’t need more words than that.)

---

The clinking of glasses could be heard above the sounds of the ocean waves at a luxurious resort in Cancun Mexico.

“That boy owes me for all the looking and searching I did for him for 300 years.” Hxerdinand the 9th said as he reclined back on a recliner in the dark to watch the moon’s soft light being reflected off of the soft crashing waves.

“Haha, Joe, you have said that at least 20 times since we arrived here. Just relax and enjoy the view and the wonderful wine.” Xa the 3rd said as she reached out and squeezed his hand tenderly.

If I don’t say that then you might begin to realize just how much I feel I owe him for helping us find each other - Hxerdinand thought as his fingers intertwined tenderly between hers. He was so happy when they had both gotten the message from Kevin’s AI, stating that he was free and in good spirits. They would meet up once they arrived at another Core.

“Besides, it isn’t often that I can fully get away from life as a Citizen. I just want to enjoy this time with you.” She said as she smiled at him.

---

Unseen in the depths, sharks hunted the first Guest of the Core.