The black hole contracted at the same time it always did, drawing the dark veil back into itself until the eastern sky showed nothing but the familiar hellfire glow of burning atmosphere. John watched from the windows of the royal suite as the last wisps of false night receded, plunging the world back into its perpetual crimson daylight.

  Morning, such as it was.

  He'd been awake almost the entire night, all things considered, maintaining a watch schedule with Doug and a handful of others while the resistance tried to get what sleep they could in the cramped confines of their new home—the Enchanted Rest mask got lots of use, but plenty of people refused it. The black hole's recession meant it was roughly 6:30 AM, time to start the day's work.

  Which meant it was time to deal with the cargo warehouses.

  John turned away from the window, his long coat swishing around his legs as he moved through the suite's main lounge. The room was packed with sleeping bodies, people curled up on couches, wrapped in blankets on the floor, heads pillowed on backpacks and bundled clothing. The sound of even breathing was punctuated by the occasional snore or whimper from someone caught in a nightmare.

  He picked his way through them carefully, mindful not to wake anyone. They'd earned their rest. The march from Micklefield Hall had been brutal, and being surrounded by a sea of monsters probably hadn't done wonders for anyone's stress levels.

  Lily was waiting for him near the entrance, her crossbow slung over her shoulder, her expression alert despite the dark circles under her eyes. Chester stood beside her, his massive frame somehow managing to look both imposing and anxious at the same time. His fingers kept drumming against his thigh in a nervous pattern.

  "Ready?" John asked quietly.

  "As I'll ever be," Lily replied. Chester just nodded, his jaw tense.

  John nodded to himself, fighting a grimace as his eyes strayed to the small group stood just outside the doors.

  The plan had been for John to go out alone and handle the warehouses himself. But Lily and Chester had insisted on coming with him, and their vehemence had been impossible to ignore.

  He hadn't been able to think of a good reason to refuse them that wouldn't sound like he was trying to protect them or, worse, didn't trust their abilities. So he'd agreed.

  And of course, Vincent had overheard their objective.

  The young man with spiky blond hair and mismatched anime cosplays had latched onto the plan with the enthusiasm of a golden retriever spotting a tennis ball. His eyes had literally lit up, and he'd immediately launched into a speech about the importance of training under a master's tutelage and how he wouldn't let this opportunity pass him by.

  John had died a little inside during that speech.

  Tomoyo had joined next, her kimono immaculate despite the apocalypse, her fan snapping open as she'd declared in her haughty aristocratic tone that she "could not in good conscience allow Vincent-san to represent their group without supervision from someone of proper refinement." The fact that she'd added the honorific to Vincent's name while refusing to let him use her given name still seemed to frustrate the anime protagonist to no end.

  Aisha had followed because, in her words, "if Vincent's going to die doing something stupid, I might as well watch it happen so I can say I told you so." Her goth makeup looked freshly applied, her black lipstick perfect, her aura of despair fully engaged.

  Simon had bounced into the conversation with manic energy, his clown costume looking even more garish in the crimson light filtering through the windows, declaring that he was "so excited to go on an adventure" with a grin that looked physically painful to maintain.

  Antoine had stated flatly that he was "definitely not interested in ensuring his comrades survived" and would "absolutely not be joining them".

  And Pete had volunteered because he actually knew the layout of the airport. He'd spent days hiding in the Royal Suite, but before that he'd been all over the terminals and surrounding facilities. His knowledge would be invaluable.

  So instead of a solo mission, John found himself organizing a nine-person expedition.

  "Everyone ready?" John asked.

  Chester seemed to suppress a shudder, jerking his chin over his shoulder towards the doorway. "Vincent's been doing some kind of motivational speech for the last five minutes. Pretty sure he's waking people up."

  John suppressed a sigh and headed toward the indicated room. Sure enough, Vincent's voice carried through the doorway, full of passionate conviction.

  "—and that's why we must seize this opportunity with both hands! To train under Master John's watchful eye, to learn from his incredible strength—"

  "Please stop calling me that," John said as he entered the room.

  Vincent spun around, striking a pose with one fist raised toward the ceiling. "Master! Your humble student awaits your guidance!"

  +000 Aura

  John felt his eye twitch. The System apparently appreciated Vincent's commitment to the bit, even if John found it excruciating.

  The rest of the group was assembled in various states of readiness. Tomoyo stood with perfect posture, her fan held delicately in front of her face, only her eyes visible above its edge. Aisha leaned against the wall with her arms crossed, projecting an aura of doom that seemed to darken the space around her. Simon bounced on his oversized clown shoes, making squeaking noises with each movement. Antoine stood perfectly still, his form somehow hazy and difficult to focus on directly, like he was slightly out of phase with reality.

  Pete stood apart from the group in his studded leather jacket and combat boots, his mohawk flopping to one side. He gave John a small nod.

  "Alright," John said, pushing down his internal cringe at being called "master" and forcing himself to adopt something resembling a leadership tone. "Here's the situation. We're going to clear out the nearest cargo warehouse. It's labelled IAG or something. Can’t miss it. The building's about two hundred meters from here, full of monsters according to my Mana Sense. Hundreds of them."

  "Hundreds?" Chester's voice climbed half an octave. He cleared his throat. "Right. Hundreds. Sure."

  "This is a training mission," John continued, leaning into the mysterious badass teacher persona that Vincent had thrust upon him. It made him cringe internally, but it was also strangely nostalgic, reminded him of those early hours when he'd first met Jade, Chester, and Lily, when he'd acted as their supposed mentor while having no idea what he was doing. "The goal isn't just to clear the warehouse. It's for all of you to gain experience, to level up, to get stronger."

  "Yes!" Vincent pumped his fist. "The path to true strength is paved with countless battles! Only through facing adversity can we forge ourselves into warriors worthy of standing beside you, Master!"

  +1000 Aura

  "I will not be doing all the fighting," John said firmly. "I'll be supporting you, keeping you alive, handling anything that gets too dangerous. But this is your chance to push yourselves, to test your limits."

  "A trial by fire," Tomoyo murmured. "How very... traditional."

  "This is going to end badly," Aisha said with a soul-deep sigh. "We're all going to die horribly. The monsters will feast on our corpses. Nothing matters and everything is pain."

  "Oh boy, oh boy!" Simon spun in place, his rainbow wig bobbing. "I just can't wait to get torn apart by monsters! It's going to be so much fun! The best day ever!"

  "I'm definitely not ready for this," Antoine said flatly.

  "Pete," John said, turning to the leather-clad young man. "What can you tell us about the IAG warehouse?"

  Pete straightened slightly. "It's one of the smaller cargo facilities, maybe forty thousand square feet. Single story, high ceilings, lots of open floor space with some office sections along the north wall. There's a main vehicle entrance on the south side, a few personnel doors scattered around the perimeter."

  He paused, his expression darkening. "I scouted it a few days ago, before I holed up in the Royal Suite. There were monsters inside even then, but they weren't as aggressive during the day. Don't know if that's changed."

  John nodded. "Mana Sense is picking up a lot more activity now. The black hole's recession might have triggered something, or the System's just ramping up the difficulty. Either way, we're looking at a significant hostile presence."

  "Excellent!" Vincent's eyes blazed with determination. "The greater the challenge, the greater the glory! We shall face these monsters with courage burning in our hearts and the power of friendship—"

  "Vincent," Tomoyo interrupted smoothly, her fan snapping shut with a sharp click. "Perhaps save the speeches for after we've actually accomplished something."

  "Of course, Tomoyo-chan!" Vincent immediately bowed low. "Your wisdom shines like the sun itself!"

  "Maeda-sama to you, mongrel!"

  John fought the urge to massage his temples. "Let's move out," he said. "Stay together, stay alert. Listen to my instructions. Don't do anything stupid."

  "Define stupid," Lily said with a ghost of a smile.

  "Anything that gets you killed."

  "That's a pretty broad definition."

  "Then it should be easy to avoid."

  +1000 Aura

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  They filed out of the Royal Suite into the crimson morning, stepping onto the tarmac that stretched between the royal suite and the cluster of cargo warehouses visible in the near distance. The burning sky cast everything in a red tint, giving the abandoned airport a strange vibe of fire and blood.

  John kept Mana Sense active, filling his mind with the positions of thousands upon thousands of magical signatures for kilometres all around. The monsters were still there, packed into the terminals like sardines in a can, crowding the underground tunnels, swarming through the hotels and buildings that ringed the airport complex.

  But none of them were moving toward the group. Not yet.

  The IAG warehouse loomed larger as they approached, a massive rectangular structure with a sagging roof and walls pockmarked with damage. The vehicle entrance stood half-open, a gap of darkness that yawned like a mouth. Through Mana Sense, John could feel the monsters inside scattered throughout the space, and many of them were surging towards the entrance.

  "Here they come," John called out, and the party rushed inside.

  Vincent immediately surged forward, a fiery aura flaring to life around him. It wasn't just visual—John could feel the heat radiating off the young man, see the way the air shimmered around his form.

  "The flames of determination burn within my soul!" Vincent declared. "No monster shall stand before us! Together, we are unstoppable! Believe it!"

  Tomoyo drew a katana in one smooth motion, the blade appearing from somewhere within her kimono's folds. It was ice-white, beautiful and deadly, frost already forming along its edge. A chilly haze rose around her, contrasting sharply with Vincent's heat.

  Aisha formed an absolutely massive scythe made of shadow. The weapon was easily six feet tall, its blade wicked and serrated, black as midnight. Her goth makeup seemed to deepen, the shadows around her eyes spreading until her entire face looked ghoulish in the crimson light.

  "Death awaits us all," she intoned, her voice heavy with doom. "The monsters, us, everyone. Nothing escapes the grave. Nothing matters. We're just delaying the inevitable."

  Simon started bouncing, his oversized clown shoes making cartoon sound effects with each impact against the tarmac. He moved faster with each bounce, building momentum, his movements becoming almost too quick to follow. His painted-on grin remained fixed, manic, terrible.

  "Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!" he chanted, his voice climbing in pitch and speed. "This is going to be so great! I love fighting monsters! Nothing makes me happier than mortal peril!"

  Antoine's hazy form flickered. Monsters would lunge at where he appeared to be, only to strike nothing as he manifested elsewhere. He didn't seem to have a weapon. Instead, he simply touched the monsters, and they would seize up, paralysed, before collapsing dead for no apparent reason.

  Chester waded into the fray with a spiked mace, intermittently glowing with the radiant light that drew monsters to him, and the darker haze that steadily corrupted them. He wasn't as fast as the others, wasn't as flashy, but he was solid, reliable, a wall of muscle and determination that monsters broke themselves against. His fear was still visible in his eyes, but his hands were steady, his strikes true.

  Lily stayed at range, her crossbow singing as bolt after bolt found their marks. Her shots didn't miss. Every bolt struck a vital area, bringing down monsters. A bat monster swooped down from the rafters, and Lily's bolt took it in the eye, dropping it from the air.

  Pete fought with theatrical, over-the-top brutality that would've looked ridiculous if it wasn't so effective. He struck poses between strikes, made exaggerated motions that somehow translated into devastating attacks. His fists glowed with crackling energy as he delivered what looked like a wrestling-style clothesline to a slug, sending it flying backward in an explosion of gore.

  "Is that all you've got?" Pete snarled at a cluster of eyeball creatures, his voice pitched low and gravelly in a way that was obviously forced. He cracked his knuckles one at a time, the sound echoing unnaturally loud, then launched into a spinning kick that looked like it came straight from an action movie.

  John watched with a growing sense of recognition. He knew that style. Not the specific moves, but the why behind them. Pete was playing a character just like John’s. The difference was that Pete had optimised for a different strategy: he was going for maximum cool points from the fights themselves rather than from having an audience.

  It was actually kind of brilliant, in a depressing way. Pete didn't need witnesses to gain from his System. Every badass move, every theatrical flourish, every over-the-top demonstration of power probably rewarded him regardless of whether anyone was watching. He'd been alone for days, forced to maintain this ridiculous persona even with no one around to see it, because the System demanded it.

  John felt kinship with the leather-clad young man. They were both trapped in the same prison, just serving different sentences.

  John watched it all, his mind cataloguing every movement, every mistake, every moment where someone nearly got overwhelmed. His hand twitched toward action more than once, the instinct to intervene almost overwhelming. But he held back, forcing himself to trust in their abilities.

  This was their fight. He was just the safety net.

  A cluster of green souls emerged from the office section, skeletal creatures in tattered airport security uniforms, their bones yellowed and cracked. They moved with unnatural coordination, flanking around the main group to attack from the sides.

  "Left flank!" John called out.

  Vincent spun immediately, his fiery aura flaring brighter. "I see them! The bonds of teamwork shall not be broken! Formation Delta!"

  John had no idea what Formation Delta was, and he strongly suspected Vincent had just made it up on the spot, but Tomoyo disengaged from the blue souls she'd been fighting and shifted position, moving to intercept the skeletons from a different angle.

  The two of them hit the skeleton group simultaneously, fire and ice combining in a catastrophic elemental reaction. The sudden temperature differential shattered bone like glass, and the skeletons came apart in a spray of fragments and necrotic energy.

  "Yes!" Vincent pumped his fist. "That's the power of true cooperation! When allies unite with pure hearts, nothing can stop us!"

  A yellow soul dropped from the rafters directly above him.

  John saw it coming, saw Vincent's attention elsewhere, saw the massive bat-thing with its slavering jaws opened wide to engulf the anime protagonist's head.

  The world lurched. One moment John was at the back of the warehouse, the next he was directly above Vincent, his katana already drawn and swinging in a horizontal arc that bisected the bat-thing before it could close its jaws. The monster's corpse hit the ground in two pieces, already dissolving into gore.

  John landed lightly beside Vincent, who was staring at him with wide eyes.

  "Situational awareness," John said flatly. "Never assume a fight is over until every enemy is dead."

  +1000 Aura

  Vincent's eyes went even wider, then filled with something that looked uncomfortably like religious fervor. "Yes, Master! I understand! Your wisdom is infinite!"

  "Pay attention to your surroundings, not me," John grumbled, already moving back to his observation position with Flash Step.

  +1000 Aura

  The fight continued. Blue souls fell by the dozens, their weak defences no match for even the least experienced member of the group. Greens proved tougher, their gimmicks and requiring sustained effort to put down. A cluster of mummy-wrapped things stumbled out of a cargo container, and Aisha's scythe work made short work of them, though she had to cut them apart multiple times before they stopped trying to reassemble themselves.

  "Even in death, they persist," Aisha intoned, her voice heavy with theatrical despair as she hacked apart another mummy. "A metaphor for existence itself; futile struggle against inevitable decay. We're all just corpses that haven't stopped moving yet."

  The yellow souls were the real challenge. A massive stone golem pulled itself from a pile of rubble near the north wall, its body composed of cargo containers welded together with some kind of necrotic corruption. It was easily twelve feet tall, and when it brought its fist down, the floor cracked under the impact.

  Chester took that fight head-on, glowing like a beacon. He traded blows with the golem, flashing between different attention-arresting auras to put the monster off, make it stumble, confusing it, then responding with strikes that sent chunks of stone flying. It was brutal, exhausting work, and John was three-quarters of the way toward intervening when Chester finally brought the thing down with a strike to what passed for its neck. Purple veins of corruption spread from the point of impact and quickly widened into fissures too large for the golem to maintain its structural integrity.

  The big man stood over the dissolving corpse, breathing hard, his mace dripping with ichor. He looked over at John, and for a moment there was something fierce in his expression.

  John gave him a small nod of acknowledgment. Chester had earned it.

  A yellow soul slug the size of a small car emerged from the office section, leaving a trail of acid that ate through the concrete floor. This one was Lily's target. She switched ammunition and fired a bolt that erupted into chains of lightning upon impact. The electricity arced through the slug's body, cooking it from the inside out, and the monster convulsed before collapsing in a heap of charred flesh.

  Simon handled a pack of rats with his speed alone, moving so fast that he was effectively untouchable. The rats couldn't land a hit on him, and eventually he bounced off the ceiling hard enough to drop down onto them from above, his clown shoes somehow delivering impacts that crushed skulls like they were made of papier-maché. The combination of honk and crunch was one of the worst things John had ever heard.

  The whole time, he kept up his manic commentary. "Best day ever! Love fighting for my life! Nothing could be better than this!"

  Pete took on an eyeball creature twice his size, one of the few remaining flying threats. He couldn't reach it with his fists, so he improvised, grabbing chunks of debris from the floor and hurling them. When that didn't work, he started jumping, using cargo containers and equipment as platforms to launch himself higher. Finally, he managed to grab onto one of the steel rafters and swing himself at the eyeball like a wrecking ball, his energy-charged fist punching straight through the centre of its pupil.

  The eyeball exploded in a shower of vitreous humor, and Pete dropped to the floor in a crouch, landing hard but intact.

  Soon, the fighting began to wind down as the team went about picking off the stragglers. The warehouse floor was a charnel house, covered in dissolving corpses and pools of various coloured ichor.

  And through it all, John had barely lifted a finger. He'd intervened exactly once, and even that had been more of a teaching moment than a genuine necessity. His ‘disciples’ had handled themselves admirably.

  "Clear," John called out, his Mana Sense confirming that no more hostiles remained in the warehouse. "Everyone good?"

  A chorus of affirmatives came back, though they were all breathing hard, covered in monster gore, visibly exhausted. Even Vincent's fiery aura had died down to nothing more than faint embers around his hands.

  "Nothing serious," Lily reported, wiping gore from her crossbow. "Few scratches and bruises, but those are easily handled."

  Chester had a cut on his forearm, but it was already closing, some kind of regeneration effect activating. The others had various minor wounds, but nothing that looked life-threatening.

  "That was awesome." Vincent grinned. "Did you see that combo attack Tomoyo and I pulled off? The elemental synergy was perfect!"

  "It was... adequate," Tomoyo said, but there was a hint of satisfaction in her tone. "Though your form remains sloppy, Vincent-san. We shall need to practice."

  "We're all going to die anyway," Aisha muttered, but even she sounded less doom-laden than usual. "But I suppose dying slightly later is acceptable."

  "That was so much fun!" Simon's grin was manic, strained. "I definitely want to do that again! Soon! Like, right now!"

  "This combat experience was definitely not valuable," Antoine said. "I learned absolutely nothing."

  Pete stood apart from the group, his chest heaving, his fists still glowing faintly with whatever energy his System granted him. He looked shell-shocked, like he couldn't quite believe what had just happened.

  "You did well," John said, addressing the group as a whole. "All of you. That was a solid first engagement."

  "First?" Chester's voice climbed an octave. "There's going to be more?"

  "Many more," John confirmed. "This warehouse is clear, but there are dozens more just in this section of the airport. Not to mention the terminals themselves. If we're going to make Heathrow defensible, we need to clear out every monster nest we can find."

  He paused, letting that sink in, then added, "But you've proven you can handle it. You worked together, adapted to threats, and most importantly, you survived. That's what matters."

  +8000 Aura

  "Master's words fill my heart with determination!" Vincent declared. "With training like this, we shall become unstoppable! The monsters of this world shall know fear when they hear our names!"

  Tomoyo's fan snapped open, covering the lower half of her face. "Indeed. Maeda-sama is... not displeased with this performance."

  John suppressed another eye twitch at being called "master."