“I could get used to this,” Normann said as he walked towards the Rift. Hands in his pockets, he walked briskly as he followed the red translucent arrow overlaid on his HUD. It pointed directly at the Rift, he assumed, but that it tracked it so well was extremely beneficial. He tested it out, spinning in place briefly and watching it twitch to continuously point at the Rift. Or at least, point to where he needed to go. “never get lost again.”

  The fact that there was clearly gunfire and screaming coming from the same direction helped him know he was in the right. Navigating the city wasn’t hard, and despite the Rift’s arrival, the compass took away much of the needed urgency. Less then ten minutes had passed since accepting the [Core of the Embodiment of Omens], meaning the Rift had only been in existence for just a little more. He didn’t have to rush over.

  Normann hated running. Hated it since he was a kid, and in the hundred and nineteen years of his life, he hated it every single time he had to run. As a conscript, they forced basic training on all survivors, forcing him to run and run until he puked then made him run some more. Beyond starvation and various other ‘non-torturous’ methods of torture, they forced him to run even as his feet bleed when he failed to live up to the expectations like the rest of the conscripted.

  Since his freedom and being part of the Chaos Inkarnate heavy squad with Oliver and Lucas, he hung back. He lacked any movement ability, his Fluidity was terrible even as he ranked up. While others advanced, he hung back and watched, giving the meager support he could. It wasn’t a matter of not wanting to help, but running would mean death for him. He had a better excuse to avoid running. Eventually, it turned to a habit to stand back and do what he could to help all the while a beacon of failures watching over his comrades and allies.

  Coming back hadn’t changed that hatred of running.

  He walked past the beginnings of a community garden stretching across a few lots. It was mid-fall and most of the green that should have grown had turned to a muted beige. The sky was clear, a blue he hadn’t seen in over a decade after a Rift breached in Russia disrupted the Earth’s atmosphere. While there heavy scene of exhaust was scattered in the air, everything felt cleaner than he remembered.

  He walked a brisk pace, his feet gliding along the uneven and broken alleyway. Each step was made with a certainty, and his body shifted in a manner that was just right. His arms swung in time with the cadence his steps set, not one brushing against his body in a manner that distracted him. His clothing didn’t stretch awkwardly on his body, though and his breaths came in a steady tempo that filled him with enough to keep going forward and then some. He wasn’t breathing hard from walking like he remembered he did. Everything about him felt right. Comfortable and smooth. Normann frowned as he continued forward. Everything about his physical body felt right and that was wrong.

  He crossed the street, right past a car blaring its horn at him for walking in front of it, and pulled back up his [Augury Log]:

  “Not that creative, are we,” he muttered as he continued towards the Rift. Normann remembered the video games he played decades ago. When quests were given, usually there was descriptions and details that provided context for it. He expected to receive something similar, but the description was extremely straight forward. The compass he had directing him to where he needed to go perhaps was compromise from the SYSTEM. He always liked the lore aspects of quests. Added something to the games that just blinding running through to the end often missed. Not that he had the time to enjoy the lore or anything else. He did have a job at hand, one he choose to do. Had to remember that.

  Echoing cracks and screams filled the air as he turned the corner of a street, following the compass. A few blocks further down he could see the Rift that breached their reality and unleashed monsters upon the streets.

  Normann walked slightly faster towards the Rift, though hadn’t remembered

  In the simplest ways of looking at the matter, Rifts were holes in reality that led to other planes. As of the current year, these other planes were nothing more than temporary and shallow areas, as if they were scooped out of some larger world and placed next to this one. The SYSTEM provided goals, quests within them that aligned with the reality the Rifts opened into. Sometimes, the quests would be extensive or simple, determining just what type of Rift it was. There were ten types of Rifts, but at the current date, only three were known, one being excessive rare thankfully.

  That his [Augury Log] listed this Rift as a dungeon meant that he would have fairly a straight forward path to follow. At F-Rank.,he should be able to overcome the challenges within if he possessed a full squad, but that depended on the time he had and what his own capacities were. The name of the dungeon was ominous, though.

  He stood in the middle of the street as he observed the normal humans fighting against the initial wave of monsters. The six people hid behind two overturned cars, standing up and firing guns of some sort at the monsters. They worked well together, despite all of them worse every-day clothing. One of them, a lanky dark-skinned man shouted and pointed at the others. He pulled down man down when he stood up and fired recklessly at the monsters. A second later a burst of purple light flared against the other side of the car right where the young man had been standing.

  A leader, or at least someone who had some awareness of the danger they were in and being foolish would get themselves killed. Not as smart enough to run, but at least this guy was taking care of his people. He could respect that.

  Normann cocked his head as he walked over. Guns and most conventional, non-enchanted weapons could hurt the monsters, especially at F-Rank, but it was severely dependent on the type of monster they were used against. He’d need to see the monsters to know if the kids were wasting their time or were actually helpful.

  He stopped right behind them, standing relaxed as he could this close to an active Rift. These guys looked young maybe just out of high school or mid-twenties at the most. They wore similar clothing, extra baggy jeans and large hockey jerseys; some had baseball hats, the brims perfectly straight, with one wearing a torn do-rag, his dreads slipping out with a line blood along his cheek.

  Normann stood and watched as they fired over and over again into the monsters standing in front of the throbbing purple tear in reality. The monsters were humanoid with elongated skulls and jaws, massive teeth hanging out of their mouths, and two sets of eyes on their large foreheads. Their green skin was mottled and the clothing they wore was barely that. These were semi-sentient creatures, carrying sticks and clubs. A few of them looked like they had sharpened rocks embedded into them.

  These monsters weren’t something he faced before, but if they were just F-Rank, then were probably early fodder for operators that he never got to experience. By the time he was conscripted, Rifts rarely produced F-Rank any more, especially in places like Chicago.

  Whatever these monsters were, they had some rudimentary magic. One stood in the back and had a three-clawed appendage pointed at the shooting humans. A purple and pink bolt of energy swirled around its forearm and launched at them, splashing harmlessly against a car door. The monster cried out in some shrill language and waved his arm at the other creatures in front of him. Two stood up and immediately were hit by gunfire.

  The bullets did as Normann expected, slam into both and barely scratch them. But a hail of bullets was a bit more intense than simply two bullets. Six men stood up and unloaded their pistols at the dozen monsters; most missed but enough hit their targets to pierce the surface and slice them apart. Three monsters, plus their skinny leader, were still alive. Though the flashing Rift behind them said more were on the way, and the men didn’t have enough bullets between them to take down all who would arrive.

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  Conventional weapons like guns and bombs weren’t capable of harming the hordes that came from the Rifts, not to any extent that would truly be worth it. At F-rank, the damage they inflicted could be sufficient, but the difference in power levels between the normal-rank guns and bullets being used against an F-rank monster was the same as a human as a car. Sure the car was going to take some damage, maybe, but it would take a decent amount of people to harm the car with their hands. The higher the rank a monster was, the less damages conventional, modern weapons did, including explosions. It took the same energy that created the Rifts, the energy within operators, to deal significant damage.

  The lanky man turned around and stared at Normann. “Mr. H?!” he shouted and waved him over. “The fuck you doing here?” He looked so familiar. Dark skin with a square jaw, the beanie cap pulled down tight on his face, and harsh lines of acne scars and some other injury. This man was familiar, but a distant memory, one that he didn’t even know he had simple because he hadn't thought of anyone from teaching days. Except now, he was teacher again. And this was a former student, apparently.

  “Been a bit, hasn’t it? What, about,” Normann guessed, “three, four years?” That seemed like a reasonable amount of time to have forgotten a person.

  Before the man could reply, another kid held out a hand towards them without looking back. “D, you got clips? These fuckers won’t die.” He was rail thin, gaunt in the face with dreads hanging in his eyes he kept pushing back to see straight.

  “Unless the bullets are rift-grade, they won’t do much,” Normann said. He leaned around D and watched the volley of bullets barely slow down the gathering horde of monsters. One of the sickly monsters leaned back and with a garish scream threw a spear at them. At D, who stood with a shocked look that slowly morphed into terror. The kid finally watched as the spear traveled through the air, completely still with eyes wide as the threat approached.

  Normann reached out and shoved his hand in front of D, pulling him back with the other. The spear crashed into his open palm and crumpled against it, falling into a heap just in front of D’s face. Normann looked at his hand for a moment, not a cut or hole, not blood even. Perhaps it was a really weak spear. Not what he was expecting.

  “The fuck, man?” the kid said and turned to look at Normann. He started to raise his own gun at him, but D pushed it down, eyes staring at his chest, his exposed core. “Who’s this?”

  “This Mr. Hawkins,” D said, “the best teacher I had. “

  “Thanks,” Normann said. He pushed on D’s shoulder gently until he started to crouch down, back under cover. He followed and knelt in front of pair of men. “These mobs look to be pack creatures, seeking the weakest or easiest target. Like someone just standing up when everyone else is hidden.”

  “How’d you-” the kid asked.

  “LT, shut it,” D said and pointed at Normann’s open shirt, his core pulsing in a steady and even beat. “He’s one of them.”

  “One of what?”

  “How’s life been, D?” Normann asked, ignoring the comment. Small talk was always good when meeting people. Beaumont said he was horrible at it, but Normann learned to fact it. The cars provided enough cover that he wasn’t in a rush either.

  “Ummm,” D. glanced between the core and Normann’s face. “Pretty good.”

  He tilted his head as he looked at D. The man in front of him looked torn between shrinking away and standing his ground. What else could he ask? Perhaps about his current life, what he was doing. It would be what was expected of him as a teacher meeting a former student. “Glad to hear that. I didn’t think you lived here. Something about moving away, right” A lie: he had no member of D at all. Even if his face was completely foreign.

  “Just visiting my girl.” D replied with a heavy swallow. He lowered his arm and hid his gun behind his body, while LT glared at him. “Nothing big.”

  “What you doing? He just some white dude.” LT shifted around until he was crouching just behind D, his gun held in front of him but not raised.

  “That’s good,” Normann ignored him and focused on his former student. Needed to make it seem like he cared, so more questions. “Keeping busy? Staying out of trouble?”

  “Yeah, just got off a 12 hour shift at the yard,” D said with a smile.

  “Yard?”

  “Construction.”

  “A trade?” Normann gave a smile that he hoped came off as proud and happy. “That’s fantastic. Trades pay good right?’

  “Yeah,” D nodded and smiled weakly back. “Was just visiting Gina when that appeared, shook the whole street.”

  “D, the fuck?” LT leaned towards Norman and started to raise his gun. “You on the wrong street, teach, this ain’t-” D whipped around and grabbed LT’s gun from his hand before he could raise it any further. His hand covered LT’s entirely and most of the gone. The soft and kind look D had was replaced by a harden glare, one that was familiar to Normann. Strange.

  The gunfire went silent around them, and Normann felt everyone looking at them. “She live around here?” Normann asked.

  “Yeah,” D said.

  “Can’t have you prevented from seeing her, can we?” Normann stood back up. “Let me see what I can do.”

  None of the men sheltered around the cars said anything to him as he slowly walked around to the other side, placing himself between the small horde of monsters and them. He placed his hands back into his pockets and took a step. Then another. And another.

  He walked slowly towards the monsters, seeing them hiding behind their own set of cars in a makeshift barricade. The Rift flared, its magic painfully pressing against his own, and a few more spawned in front of it, immediately taking cover. He knew he wasn’t the same man that could stand with the five greatest operators who ever lived. He also wasn’t a teacher who had rejected the powers that can be used to protect others. Normann Hawkins wasn’t the same man this time around.

  But he had his core; the anima stormed within him, threatening to shred him in an effort to escape. The power he possessed now as more than he had first had as a Penitent.

  The leader growled in that guttural language and his hand glowed with pink and purple swirls. The bolt of energy fired straight at him, spinning like a fast ball. He’d seen what the bolt did, the damage it inflicted upon cars, buildings, and people. The skeletons of two people were scattered against an SUV and the sidewalk just off to his left. Smoke drifted off the collapsed front facade of a nearby apartment building. The bodies of the monsters, riddled with more bullet holes than he thought was possible. Normann walked past a few humans lying on the street; they were dead with either a sickly smoke floating off of charred flesh or a weapon was left embedded in their body. More were scattered around the area, some on the sidewalk, some further down behind the Rift.

  Death was inevitable. The System brought it to the world on a level that no one could expect. The Rifts and everything that came with them also carried the death of 90% of the world’s population by the time all was said and done. The last 10% was just waiting their turn. Coming back gave him the chance to change all of that. He knew the future, the failures that nearly broke humanity and the successes that saved them. He had power now, and he needed to act when he refused before. Coming back was an opportunity to make things right and fix what led to the world ending.

  He couldn’t save everyone. He never really had that type of power. But with the new core and the foreknowledge of so many things, maybe he could save some with what little he did have.