Another earthquake hit the city.

  It shook the single-story hospital Eric was standing in. He cursed under his breath as dust drifted down from the rafters.

  Well, this is both good and bad. More injuries means more milestones for the newbies, Eric thought.

  There had been more farming-equipment incidents in the past few days as the tremors became more frequent and intense. Good fodder for the newer healing-focused Classes to grow in power, though at the cost of others being injured.

  Still, the hospital was of an older construction and he did not want people inside at risk of being crushed. No amount of healing would help with an injury like that.

  Better if I get them all up and out of the building. We can refill the beds once we are sure the roof won’t cave in.

  He activated one of his most powerful healing Skills, Lifeweaver Surge, and a wave of gold-white, fluorescent light surged from his body. It traveled through walls, floor, and ceiling: a soothing tide of healing energy that swept over every person in a three-hundred-foot radius. All of the injured and sick were immediately revitalized to the peak of their physical health, barring age-related maladies and afflictions.

  One of his Sigils, a floating halo over his hand, vanished at the Skill use.

  “Everyone, get outside!” Eric shouted, opening the door leading to the street. The other Healing Mages and staff ran past him and onto the stone boulevard. Once they’d all gathered on the streets, he activated Heaven’s Pearl, surrounding the whole group in a powerful protective barrier that shimmered white.

  Unlike the previous earthquakes—which shook then ceased—this one did not stop. The buildings around them continued to shake, and stones began to fall. Wood splintered and cracked. The street itself buckled and tore asunder. Eric felt a slight satisfaction knowing his instinct to clear the building had been the correct one.

  He also felt a deepening worry, as they had never experienced this type of sustained tremor.

  “To the fields!” Eric pointed to the closest edge of town. “Get away from the buildings!”

  The group of just under a hundred people moved through the crumbling city, aiding others along the way. Eric assumed the earthquake would stop eventually, but it only grew in intensity, consistently challenging their footing.

  As they ran frantically, Eric poured mana into the magic bracer on his wrist, which had several functions. He tapped the floating icon for communication. It successfully linked to Naomi, the only other surviving Summoned from the Kingdom of Trok.

  If anyone had answers, it would be the Tinkerer.

  “Naomi! What in the depths is going on?” he yelled. “This earthquake—”

  “I don’t know,” she replied curtly, her no-nonsense tone cutting through the sound of collapsing buildings. “But it’s happening everywhere.”

  “What do you mean everywhere?”

  “The world.”

  “The world? As in—”

  Eric was thrown to the ground as the shaking intensified like never before, reaching a crescendo. It was at a point where he couldn’t stand even if he wanted to.

  The road heaved three feet up, sending him lurching before slamming back down. Ahead, the paving stones tore asunder. A line of cracked earth raced toward him. He tried to activate the teleportation function on the bracer, but to his surprise, this time the device didn’t respond. The line of splintered ground reached his prone form, and he helplessly plummeted down into the crevice with a cry.

  Desperate, he spent a Sigil and activated a second use of Heaven’s Pearl to stack the protective effects on top of one another. The sphere of white protective magic cocooned him and the people who had joined him in his fall as they plummeted into the ever-deepening abyssal crack.

  Roiling, red magma surged up from the depths, lanced with violent lines of purple and blue mana from a natural Ley Line that should have been deep within Elyndor’s crust. The waves of empowered magma cut through rocks like hot water poured on freshly fallen snow, splashing and sloshing as more earth and stone melted to join the mass.

  But his shields held.

  Eric figured they would. Just in case though, he spent twelve more of his dwindling Sigils to re-use and layer the barrier Skills atop each other.

  He was in the middle of a literal rift in the earth, which only grew larger as the crucible he was within widened as the magma field beneath him grew gargantuan in scale. He could no longer see the ground in any direction, since the entirety of creation was bathed in glowing annihilation that bubbled and hissed.

  The fuck is going on?!

  A massive hand the size of a skyscraper shot up from the depths. The violent waves of magma that resulted in its sudden emergence rolled up and through the shields.

  Eric’s barriers couldn’t negate all the resulting ungodly heat, but thanks to a passive Trait amplifying the effect of barriers placed on himself, he had enough time to reinforce his protection with even more mana and yet another Sigil.

  Unfortunately, the other ninety-eight protected by his Skill could only let out brief screams before they were silenced forever by the waves of molten fire. His Traits that empowered those shields only worked for him—they did nothing for the people he had known for years.

  He felt a pang of sorrow, and regret momentarily flickered through his thoughts; he could have expended more Sigils to protect those people further.

  But regret would do nothing for him right now.

  Eric quickly schooled himself into a calm flow state. The same mode that he could switch his mindset into during high-intensity and stressful situations. Something that had kept him alive since tumbling into this new world. In situations like this, against an unknown threat, conserving Sigils was paramount. He took stock with a glance at the back of his left hand.

  Only fourteen left. Ley Lines below, how in the fuck did my barriers pop that easily? They should have persisted for far longer, or maintained their shape, form, and durability against greater damage than fucking lava—I’ve been teleported into an active caldera for fuck’s sake and a single one held up!

  A basic Heaven’s Pearl should have held up to all damage except something truly incredible, like a whole mountain collapsing on top of the magical barrier. The heat rolling off of the roiling magma had to be hotter than anything Eric had ever faced.

  The mana must be amplifying the heat to an insane degree.

  As if confirming his thoughts, one of his barriers shattered from the heat, and Eric’s sorrow turned to fear. His trump card, his seemingly impossible-to-pierce shell, was being shattered by a force seemingly beyond nature itself. This was pure destruction amplified by raw mana surging out of the gash in the earth deep beneath the magma field that he floated atop.

  Before he could come up with any other options, Eric began to ascend, carried aloft by the enormous palm he sat squarely in the center of—the ridges of the creases of the skin were akin to mountain ranges. The entire magma field, the whole rift he was in, was raised to the heavens.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  He went racing up far, far up into the skies. The wind slamming into his shields was as strong as a battering ram thanks to the speed of the ascent. The onrush broke against his barriers, not making a single dent despite the sheer speed that would shred skin from muscle if exposed to open air.

  Eric racked his brain for a solution to his predicament. The atmosphere within his bubble began to grow suffocating as his breathing sapped away all the trapped oxygen. He was now in the stratosphere, still close enough to Elyndor to be kept from floating off thanks to its gravity, but far enough away that he could see the curvature of the world.

  He watched with fascinated dread as a figure’s body rose from the planet’s cracked crust. A head soon towered over him, belonging to a godlike figure who was humanoid yet alien. Its sheer scale and existence belied comprehension and rational thought. It stared down at him like he was an insect. He had no clue if it was actually looking at him, or just at its palm and he happened to be on it as the massive entity examined its own fledgling form. Eric was less than an insect to it.

  Something had hatched from within the planet. It was holding him, and Eric knew that it was gazing at him. Those eyes bored into his, and he felt a pressure against his temples as something tried to gain entry. Eric’s mental barriers cracked, and a deep, masculine voice echoed through his mind, uttering the phrase;

  “One way or another.”

  Enormous fingers began to curl inward as the shimmering, silvery skin of the creature warped and flexed. Every enormous finger around Eric inexorably curled in.

  He could not run, he could not hide, and he was going to be crushed by the mountains of flesh that closed in on him from all sides.

  Oh fuck that! Eric thought back against the invading presence in his mind, who did not think anything in return.

  Primal instinct took over as Eric reacted. He spent every remaining Sigil at his disposal to fuel re-applications of his barrier Skill, and expended all of his remaining mana on protective Rotes. The white barrier glimmered gold, then prismatic, as he exhausted any possible resource he had.

  Those massive fingers curled in on the palm, and Eric felt intense pressure all around him. The shields held.

  But only for a moment.

  He saw the coruscating energy of his shields dissipating faster than he’d ever seen. Then, just like they had earlier, the outer parts of his protection cracked, and the sphere of protection bent inward.

  I’m going to die.

  All at once, his remaining protective shells splintered and shattered, and Eric was crushed.

  Eric waited for an eternity, unable to think, just a consciousness that felt in an infinite void. Fear, anxiety, and sorrow roiled through him in an endless cascade that kept him in a constant state of uncertainty. Every emotion he had previously dealt with and resolved came bubbling to the surface once more.

  Guilt for the death of Luciana, who had perished during the war in the backlines with him while they were healing injured soldiers. She had shown him what love actually meant, and while he had physically loved again, the emotional scar her loss left on him had never fully healed.

  Regret for not going to clear the floors of The Twilight Depths with Peter, who’d gone on a solo dive and vanished forever. His loss was another deep wound that cut like a knife, as he was reliable, if distant, and would have made a huge difference in the war.

  Sorrow for never finding out what happened to Shannon the night she’d disappeared, after the war started. He never knew her. Eric should have tried to get to know her better. She was so scared upon their arrival, and he was just too distracted by his own wants and power in his fingertips.

  Pity for Naomi, who had seen Elyndor’s final moments and doubtless was thrown into the void of space by its demise. He wished he could say he was sorry to her—sorry for not keeping her safe, and sorry for not preventing her multitude of injuries that led to her solitude.

  Above all of that, Eric felt despair at his current predicament of being trapped in a liminal state between death and a possible return to life. He had been here before, but this time stretched out longer than it ever had before.

  Thousands of moments replayed from his lifetime. Every decision, every choice that he made, all of them with their corresponding emotional traumas pummeled him, like a boxer strung up on the ropes under a dizzying assault of haymakers from a welterweight champion.

  He was helpless against the barrage, and this had never happened before. It was as if all of the memories stored inside of the Paths Within were let loose and allowed to fire off at his psyche in a relentless barrage of crossbow fire while he was strapped to a wooden stake in front of a city wall.

  The tether tugged him up again, but there was resistance. The rope was straining, and the knot at the top that was eternally out of view held firm against death that sought to drag him down.

  His soul was in a tug-of-war between the immense powers of The Paths trying to bring him back to life to activate his Trait, the passive and always active ability from his Exarch Class, and the inexorable might of death trying to smother him with its inky blackness.

  Words appeared in the grey above him. White-gold script against the inky void. A female voice accompanied them. One that he had never heard before; it was a far cry from the normally near mechanical, almost robotic voice of the mana construct that had spoken with him when he accessed The Paths. Her tone was deep, her speed frantic, and her voice terrified.

  [Time is short. The Paths are vanishing.]

  [You can stop Elyndor’s destruction.]

  [Resurrection failed. Restarting the cycle.]

  Eric blinked.

  He found himself standing in a dim room. At the center of the round chamber was a huge, square stone covered with intricate writing that he didn’t understand but immediately recognized. One of five Summon Stones spread across the world.

  The ceiling above was studded with shimmering, yellow glowstones casting a pale luminescence that barely lit the entire space. He knew a door behind him led to the guard room that was hidden adjacent to the throne room and next to the small council chamber. The bare walls were a testament that spoke the truth to his mind.

  He had returned to the beginning.

  Eric’s heart began racing just as fast as his mind.

  Why am I back here?

  The message he saw in that infinite void replayed in his memory.

  “Restarting the cycle”. . . Did I go back in time? That’s the only possibility that makes sense. And what was that weird voice?

  He glanced down at his body and felt both excited and uncomfortable. It was his, all right, the same body he’d had when he had first arrived here, a far cry from his mid-thirties. Nude, because for some fucked-up reason, whoever or whatever had made the Summon Stones had decided that clothes were optional.

  I regressed. . . but kept my memories.

  His mind suppressed the expected emotions as he raced through the possible scenarios and landed on the most probable.

  My body was destroyed, and Self-Resurrection defaulted to the next-best thing. It shot my consciousness back through time.

  That Trait had been with him ever since he’d discovered the Exarch Class. Once per year, he could come back from death . . . as long as his body was mostly intact.

  This meant that he’d have to start again as a baseline human: level one, no Body Enhancements, no Class upgrades, no gear. No contacts or connections. Everything was back to square one. Eric could feel his heart pounding from excitement.

  He had a second chance. He could do all of the things that he knew would set him up for success. A second chance meant a genuine opportunity to fix everything before it imploded. A chance to assuage the guilt he felt for his failures. He could do so much more—be so much more. He was giddy.

  Okay. Game plan. Whatever that thing was, no one is going to believe me at face value. I was pretty keyed into politics, and I didn’t hear of any kingdom that knew or had an inkling that the world was about to be destroyed.

  But now I know something is literally inside the planet and will destroy it in the future. I have to figure out how to stop it.

  I have to get extremely powerful to have a chance at killing something that powerful. Make allies, build a coalition or alliance to stop it, leverage everything I know about what is coming—I just hope this new chance and timeline play out the same.

  I’ve got so much intel on people. Foresight is one dark depths of an advantage.

  He let out a sharp laugh at his incredible fortune, and the sound of his young voice caught him slightly off guard.

  Ley Lines below, I forgot what I sounded like. Getting reacquainted with my body is going to be disconcerting. By the depths, acting the age I look is going to be a pain.

  He’d have to act like an eighteen-year-old, and not the thirty-three-year-old war veteran he really was. That would bring its own problems, he was sure—

  “Where the fuck are we?!” a deep, masculine voice shouted out. “Who’s laughing? Why am I naked?”

  Eric ignored the man for the moment. He was deep in thought and knew everyone nearby would be trapped in the room until the Summoned’s handler opened the doors. His analytical, tactical mindset pushed aside all emotions as he focused on making a battle plan with all the knowledge of future events he had accumulated over fifteen years.

  I need to make some different choices.

  Last time, he’d focused on hitting milestones in The Paths through studying, practicing healing magic, and developing medicine. It had provided for a safe means of progression, though it had also kept him sheltered.

  The only times he had progressed quickly was when he’d been drafted into the war and had had to serve the Kingdom of Trok’s interests. Then, after that conflict, during his travels to flee bounty hunters, mend diplomatic relations, seek out allies, and heal those needing help. Of course, when traveling, he would occasionally clear a dungeon or lost ruin with some adventurers.

  Aside from those experiences? His advancement in his Class had been slow and measured.

  He had been very reactive with his Path, going to heal when someone needed healing or protecting others when they needed a guardian. Progression in his first Path had been locked behind mending and barriers, rather than allowing him to proactively chart his own course.

  That needed to change.

  This time, he would need to take the initiative, acquire assets and resources, get into the most hidden and secure vaults to dig up whatever information he could about this imminent threat to Elyndor’s existence, and align himself with people who had the sway to make a difference. He would need to be proactive.

  Eric had to become something greater than the last time.

  He had a second chance, and he was not going to fuck it up.