John’s chest swelled with grim satisfaction as he soared above the broken streets of Watford.

  He’d returned to the previous strategy he’d employed before the survivors he’d found had interrupted his crusade: fly high, scan wide, and annihilate monsters with extreme prejudice. His Dragon Wings carried him in wide arcs over Watford’s ruins. Below, another wave of monsters surged through the streets, a black tide of chitinous bodies that reflected the hellish red sky.

  John made a fist, and a small part of the world turned white. The sphere of pure annihilation expanded in the centre of the horde, erasing dozens of insects in an instant. The perfect spherical void left behind glowed like molten metal, superheated tarmac bubbling at its edges.

  +8000

  Even with his attempts to shake things up, the diminishing returns were really starting to hit hard when he had no one around to witness his might directly. The System wanted novelty and escalation, and even an explosion as hot as an expanding star lost its lustre if repeated enough times.

  He could and would give it that, but he had higher priorities at the moment. His search required him to cover every inch of this godforsaken town in a grid pattern, using Clairvoyance to peer through walls and rubble, searching for anyone still alive.

  He banked east, his enhanced vision sweeping across row after row of demolished houses. Empty. A shopping centre with its roof caved in. Empty. A primary school that made his stomach clench. Empty, thank God.

  Mana Sense guided him toward the next concentration of monsters, and he eliminated them with another Gravity Bomb, then moved on. The pattern repeated. Fly, scan, destroy. Fly, scan, destroy. It was almost meditative, in a horrifying sort of way.

  But before he encountered any survivors, something else caught his attention.

  A church stood at the end of a residential street, its stone walls scorched but still standing. And there, blocking the heavy wooden doors, was a shimmering barrier of translucent blue.

  A portal.

  John circled once, twice, three times, Clairvoyance probing the area for any signs of life. Nothing. The church was dead silent, and the surrounding street was clear of monster presence for now.

  He touched down in the small courtyard, his boots crunching on broken glass. The portal filled the church's entrance completely, and through it he could make out the suggestion of pews and stained-glass windows. A modest church, nothing grand.

  Should I even bother? Part of him wanted to destroy every portal, but how long would it take to clear them all? How many people would die while he fucked around in pocket dimensions fighting bugs?

  If I destroy them all, then there’ll be no more spawners to populate the monster waves. That makes it worth doing, at least.

  And if he was honest with himself, the thought of leaving a single one of these things active, continuing to spawn monsters into the world, made something ugly twist in his gut.

  John stepped through. The transition was disorienting, as always. One moment he was in a small courtyard under a burning sky, the next he was standing in what should have been the modest interior of a neighbourhood church.

  Except it wasn't modest at all. The space stretched before him like a cathedral from a fever dream, columns rising toward a vaulted ceiling that seemed impossibly distant, painted with frescoes that depicted insectoid monsters tearing apart babies. Very subtle. The walls extended into shadow on either side, and ahead, the nave seemed to go on forever, rows of pews marching into the distance.

  From somewhere deep within, organ music echoed through the vast space. Except it wasn't quite right. There was a buzzing quality to it, a vibration that felt wrong in his bones. Like a swarm of bees was trapped in the pipes.

  John didn't waste time. He activated Accelerate and launched forward. The first insects appeared almost immediately, crawling from beneath pews and feeling off from the paintings above to drop down on him. Blue souls, all of them. Beetles the size of dogs, flies with wings that hummed in that same disturbing frequency as the organ, ants with mandibles that clicked in perfect rhythm to the unholy hymn.

  He carved through them without slowing down. Even the lesser Spells in his repertoire would have been enough to deal with these pleb enemies.

  A beetle lunged at him from the left; he bisected it mid-leap. Three flies dove from above; Hurricane sent them tumbling into the walls, where they splattered like paintballs. The ants tried to swarm him; Draconic Inferno reduced them to ash before they got close.

  It was laughable, really. Whatever threat these creatures might have posed once upon a time, they were nothing now. Obstacles to be cleared, not enemies to be fought. He didn't even have to think about it anymore, his body moving through the combat like it was choreographed, every action flowing into the next like it was predetermined.

  The organ music grew louder as he approached the altar, the buzzing undertone becoming more pronounced. The nave finally ended, opening up into a chancel area dominated by a massive altar carved from what looked like the material of a wasp hive.

  John found the hidden passage easily enough, a set of stairs descending into darkness beneath the altar. When he opened it, the faint sound of a hymn drifted up on a cold wind. He stepped in, and it grew louder as he descended. It had none of the buzzing quality of the organ, but there was a droning tone to it, too thin to be a real human voice.

  The crypt at the bottom was packed with more insects. Hundreds of them, all swaying in time to the unholy music, their movements almost worshipful, many of them singing along in whatever ways their insect forms could.

  John didn't give them time to react to his arrival. He swept through like a scythe through wheat, Aurora Blade singing its own song of destruction, Spell after Spell reducing chitin and ichor to scattered remains.

  And when he emerged into a larger chamber at the end of the crypt, there it was.

  The portal core hung in the centre of the space, a massive sphere of translucent blue with the usual hourglass iris fixed within. It stared at him with alien intelligence, and John felt the weight of its regard, his hairs standing on end.

  Below the core, perched on a raised dais of the same wasp nest material as the altar above, was a cicada. But where a normal cicada might be the length of a finger, this thing was easily the size of a van. Its wings, folded against its back, were translucent and veined, catching the light from the portal core and refracting it into sick rainbow patterns. And it was singing.

  That horrible droning hymn was coming from this creature, its body vibrating so hard the air around it shimmered like a mirage. Its eyes fixed on him the moment he entered the room, and its unholy hymn started increasing in volume until he could feel it in his bones.

  He didn’t have to active Soul Vision with his new Enchanted shades: this fucker was a red.

  John didn't give it a chance to do anything else. He raised his hand, visualized the sphere of annihilation forming directly around the portal core, and clenched his fist.

  The world turned to white light and fury. The portal core vanished within the miniature sun, and the hymn cut off mid-note. The shockwave nearly knocked John off his feet, and he had to brace himself against the sudden rush of displaced air—he’d never set off a Supernova so close to himself before, and certainly not in an enclosed space. Life and learn.

  In the explosion’s wake, silence crashed down. He just had time to spot the cicada monster stumbling drunkenly around in the aftermath of his attack, its carapace glowing the same cherry-red as the stone, then reality started to unravel.

  +20000 Aura

  +3119 Souls

  The portal world collapsed around him, the walls folding in on themselves, shadows rushing in to consume the light. John barely had time to register the sensation before he was spat back out into the real world, stumbling slightly as he found himself in the church courtyard.

  He took a breath. Shook his head to clear the ringing in his ears. Looked at the church doors, now standing open and empty, no trace of the portal remaining.

  One down.

  It took him a little longer to find any more people, but there were plenty of portals to choose from.

  A hospital came next. The building was a gutted ruin, most of the structure collapsed, but Mana Sense led him to a basement area that was still intact. And there, blocking a doorway that once led to an operating theatre, was another translucent blue curtain.

  Inside the portal world, the hospital had transformed into something from a nightmare.

  Endless corridors lined with hospital beds, each one occupied by a giant insect. Bed bugs, his mind supplied, because of course they were. The fuckers running the show wouldn’t miss an opportunity for a bit of macabre humour. They were grotesque things the size of ponies, their flat bodies pressed against stained mattresses.

  John moved through like a ghost, Aurora Blade flashing in the fluorescent lighting that had no source, cutting down any bug that stirred. The portal core turned out to be in the morgue, naturally, surrounded by even larger specimens. Gravity Bomb took out the portal before the red-souled cockroach guarding it could even react.

  +18000 Aura

  +2968 Souls

  After that, a cinema. The portal was at the ticket booth, and beyond it the normal lobby stretched into a twisted maze of concession stands and arcade games, all of it covered in that familiar oily black chitin. He fought through crowds of insects that scattered before him, their blue souls winking out one after another.

  The actual screening rooms were the strangest part. Each one was full of insects sitting in the theatre seats, watching the screens with rapt attention. The movies playing were recognisable enough, except every actor had been replaced by giant insects. A human-sized mantis in a tuxedo, a beetle in a ball gown, spiders doing a dance number that would have been impressive if it wasn't so deeply insulting.

  This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

  The portal core was in the last screening room, of course. The giant fly dressed like a stereotypical usher of olden times actually managed to get quite close to him before Supernova destroyed the core, which made him wonder if it had been given advanced warning.

  +14000 Aura

  +3012 Souls

  Then a car park. Green portal this time, which made him pause, but only briefly. Inside, the parking structure extended without end, level after level seeming to spiral up and down into infinity. And the vehicles weren't cars anymore. They were insect-themed monstrosities, giant beetles with wheels, centipede-bodied buses, ant-shaped motorcycles.

  And they were all moving, racing around the structure in endless loops, engines roaring with that same buzzing quality he was beginning to associate with Watford’s portal worlds. Some tried to run him down. He dodged or destroyed them as needed, working his way up level by level, eventually figuring out that he was supposed to get in one of the cars to actually progress..

  The rooftop opened onto a racetrack, because of course it did. More insect-vehicles racing in circles, and in the centre of it all, the green portal core sat like a grotesque finish line. John simply flew over the entire spectacle and dropped a Supernova on the core from above.

  +11000 Aura

  +2483 Souls

  To his relief, he located some more survivors shortly after destroying the green portal. With Clairvoyance sweeping through every building he passed, it was impossible to miss the two people blockaded in the attic of a modest semi-detached house a little ways from the town centre. They were sitting on opposite sides of the space from each other, facing away.

  He banked hard, diving toward a residential street that looked slightly less destroyed than its neighbours. He touched down in the front garden, which was more rubble than garden at this point, and approached the house.

  The front door hung off its hinges, but John had no intention of going inside. His success with Vincent's group had given him a bit more confidence in dealing with people, but not enough to risk a face-to-face encounter with strangers in an enclosed space.

  Clairvoyance extended his senses into the house regardless. Two figures in the attic space, a man and a woman in filthy clothes, both blond, maybe in their thirties. The tension between them was palpable even through his magical perception, something in their body language, the way they angled themselves away from each other.

  Leaning on Ventrilloquist once more, he projected his voice between them in the attic. “You two, in the attic,” he said. “I’m here to help.”

  Through Clairvoyance, he saw the man's head turn toward the woman.

  "See? I told you someone would come," the man hissed. "If you'd just listened to me and stayed quiet…"

  "Oh, so this is my fault?" The woman's voice was cutting. "You're the one who insisted we hide up here in the first place!"

  "Because you kept saying we should stay in the living room, right by the fucking windows where anything could see us!"

  John blinked.

  "I'm serious," he called up again, louder this time. "I can get you out safely. I'm clearing the portals and monsters, and I have a team who can help you."

  "And whose idea was it to come to Watford in the first place?" the woman continued as if John hadn't spoken. "Oh, that's right, yours! 'We'll be safer outside London,' you said. 'There'll be fewer people, fewer problems.' Look how that turned out!"

  "How was I supposed to know it would end up like this?" the man shot back. "I was trying to protect us!"

  "Protect us? You've done a shit job of it!"

  "If you two are done," John said, trying to project his voice with enough force to cut through their bickering, "I really need you to get moving."

  "Oh, and let's not forget whose mother we had to spend Christmas with last year," the woman continued, her voice rising. "That was a delight. Sitting there while she made passive-aggressive comments about my career for four hours straight."

  "She was just trying to be helpful!"

  "Helpful? She called me a 'secretary' when I'm a fucking project manager!"

  "You're being oversensitive!"

  "Oh, I'm oversensitive? That's rich, coming from the man who still brings up the time I forgot our anniversary once.”

  "Of course I do! That shit was hurtful!"

  "And it was twelve years ago!"

  This was absurd. John clenched his jaw, feeling the situation slipping away from him. They were digging into old wounds now, petty grievances that had nothing to do with survival or the apocalypse or anything remotely relevant to their current situation.

  It seemed insane that a power could force people to do this, to make them tear each other apart with words. But then again, he'd seen Systems that forced people to act sexy, pretend to be an anime character, and worse. Why not one that enforced constant conflict?

  Maybe they'd just always been awful to each other, and the System had simply given them a supernatural reason to never stop.

  Or this was nothing to do with their Systems, and they were just arguing because that was who they were.

  Either way, he wasn't going to stand here and listen to it.

  John reached out with Geomancy, taking hold of the house's structure. The roof was damaged already, tiles missing, the wooden frame weakened by fire and impact. It barely took any effort.

  With a thought and a gesture, he ripped the roof off.

  The couple's argument cut off with twin shrieks as their shelter was suddenly torn away. Debris rained down around them—thankfully not on them, as John had been careful—and they stumbled backward, staring up in shock.

  John hovered there above them, his dragon wings beating, silhouetted against the burning red sky. He kept his face expressionless, his voice cold.

  "I'm evacuating the town. You're both leaving. Now."

  +1000 Aura

  The couple exchanged a look, eyes wide.

  "And if we refuse?" the man asked, though his voice trembled now.

  John met his eyes. He didn't want to do this, didn't want to threaten people he was trying to save, but he also wasn't going to leave them here to torture each other until they died.

  "Then I'll carry you out," he said flatly. "Unconscious, if I have to. Your choice."

  +1000 Aura

  The woman's eyes were horribly said. She said quietly, "You can't…"

  "Yes," John said, and let a fraction of his power leak out, just enough that the air around him shimmered with heat. "I can. I've killed thousands of monsters today. I've destroyed multiple portals. I can level this house with a thought. So believe me when I say I can absolutely drag two argumentative humans to safety, whether they want me to or not."

  +2000 Aura

  The fight went out of them.

  "Okay," they both said meekly.

  John sighed. Job done, even if he felt like a dick.

  ~~~

  The next few survivors he found were variations on the same theme.

  A man hiding in a collapsed office building, his System forcing him to catalogue and organise everything around him, to create neat piles and lists even as the building crumbled. He'd been trying to sort rubble by size when John found him. It took ten minutes of argument to get him to abandon his "important work" and leave—John hadn’t been able to bring himself to make threats.

  A teenage boy in a petrol station, compulsively stealing things and hiding them in his jacket pockets, even though there was no one left to steal from. He cried when John told him he had to leave, convinced he'd be arrested for all the things he'd taken. The kid didn’t seem all there, to put it mildly.

  A woman in her fifties who kept trying to make jokes, forced to be cheerful and entertaining even as she sobbed between punchlines, her System demanding she be the life of the party in a dead world. She kept apologising for not being funnier, and it broke something in John to hear it.

  How those types of people had even survived this hellhole, he’d never know. Maybe the system found it more entertaining to keep them alive.

  Through it all, he kept moving. Destroying portals between encounters, annihilating monster hordes that got in his way. The Aura kept flowing in, numbers that would have seemed impressive a few days ago now barely registering.

  Hours went by, and the monster presence was starting to thin out, he noticed. The great sweeping hordes weren't appearing as frequently. The streets were emptier. He was winning.

  But it didn't feel like victory, somehow. There was no triumph in seeing just how thoroughly this horrible place had broken people.

  As he flew, John found his thoughts drifting.

  This was going better than he'd expected, in some ways. The resistance he'd met had crumbled before him. The few hostile groups he'd encountered had taken one look at his power and decided cooperation was preferable to annihilation. People were leaving. The portals were being destroyed. The monster presence was diminishing.

  He'd expected more pushback. More sadists and bullies who'd embraced the death game, deciding that the apocalypse was their chance to indulge their worst impulses. More people who wouldn't back down, who'd make him prove his threats.

  But so far, nothing. Everyone had folded. Everyone had left when told to leave, fought when told to fight, obeyed when told to obey.

  It's going almost too well.

  The thought nagged at him as he swept over another residential area, Clairvoyance probing for survivors. There should have been someone. Some psychopath who'd carved out their own little kingdom in the ruins, some wannabe warlord who'd collected followers and wouldn't give up their power without a fight.

  Had all the bastards left town already, spreading out to search for more prey?

  He couldn’t help thinking he’d jinxed himself when Clairvoyance picked up two people arguing in the ruins of a nightclub, and he immediately recognised them.

  A man in flowing white robes, shouting in the face of a man in red armour. Beside them was a portal, bathing them both in sickly green light.

  John's wings faltered for a moment before he caught himself. He knew those bastards, though their trio had evidently been reduced to a duo at some point. The same fuckers who'd betrayed him in the school portal. Who'd deliberately triggered the Headmaster's appearance, knowing it would likely get John killed.

  "She’s not dead!" Daniel was bellowing in Marius’ stoic face. "We can’t just fucking leave her alone in there!"

  And with that, John had a pretty good idea what their little spat was about. Was there irony in it? Some poetic justice? He was no literature buff, so he didn’t know the precise word for it, but there was something in him that briefly revelled in their distress before he caught himself, grimacing.

  If I’ve already decided to give out second chances…

  John descended, falling through a gap in the ceiling and landing a few metres away from the two, coat billowing around him. They fell silent at his appearance.

  John kept his voice flat. He didn't trust himself to show any emotion right now. "Fancy seeing you two here."

  +2000 Aura

  "John!" Daniel took a step towards him. "Please, you have to—"

  "Shut the fuck up," John barked. "I’m going into that portal and destroying it. When I come back out, the both of you—and Farah, if she’s alive—are leaving Watford and fucking off somewhere else. Got it?"

  +1000 Aura

  Daniel’s lips were thin. "If you can get Farah out of there, I’ll do whatever you want."

  "Great." John stepped towards the portal.

  "Don’t you want some intel on what’s in there?"

  "Do you think I’ll actually trust anything you say?" John replied. He shook his head. "I don’t need shit from you, Daniel. This portal will go down either way."

  +2000 Aura

  John gained way too much vindictive satisfaction from seeing the guy flinch. "Stay out here. If I see you inside, I’m dropping a nuke on your head."

  Then John stepped into the portal without waiting for a reply.