Collapse: A Litrpg Apocalypse (Welcome to the Multiverse Book 3), page 1
Collapse
Welcome to the Multiverse
License Notes: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this e-book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Collapse: Welcome to the Multiverse 1
Copyright © 2024
Sean Oswald
Contents
The Story …
Chapter 1- Oh Crap!
Chapter 2- Catching a Ride
Chapter 3- It Had to Be Snakes
Chapter 4- Car Trouble
Chapter 5- Hourly Rates
Chapter 6- Hell on Wheels
Chapter 7- The Cavalry
Chapter 8- Home Team
Chapter 9- A New Ally
Chapter 10- Dormitory
Chapter 11- Proto-Dungeon
Chapter 12- Mouse Trap
Chapter 13- Swarm
Chapter 14- Inside or Outside
Interlude 1
Chapter 15- Finish This
Chapter 16- Time Is Short
Chapter 17- Goodbye-Hello…
Chapter 18- Finishing What I Started
Chapter 19- A Squirrelly End
Chapter 20- Cute But Hardly Harmless
Chapter 21- Choices
Chapter 22- A Start
Chapter 23- The Trouble I Caused
Chapter 24- Deals
Chapter 25- Who’s First?
Chapter 26- Feral Deviant
Chapter 27- Who’s First
Chapter 28- Red Armor
Chapter 29- Fox in the Hen House?
Chapter 30- Brass Tacks
Chapter 31- What’s in a Race
Chapter 32- Homo Inspiratus
Stat Sheet 3.0
Interlude 2- Moving Too Fast
Chapter 33- Away Team
Chapter 34- Boarding Party
Chapter 35- Unexpected Company
Interlude 3- Explosive Outcomes
Chapter 36- Fire in Space
Chapter 37- Blue Wind Dungeon
Chapter 38- Negotiations Part 2
Chapter 39- Duel
Chapter 40- Final Deal
Chapter 41- Consolidation
Chapter 42- Goodies
Chapter 43- Montage
Chapter 44- Heading Home
Stat Sheet 3.1
Chapter 45- Men in Black
Chapter 46- Family Issues
Chapter 47- White House
Chapter 48- Oval Office
Chapter 49- Eye Opening
Chapter 50- The Great Wall
Interlude 4- Next Steps
Chapter 51- New Priority
Chapter 52- Threading the Needle
Chapter 53- Set Pieces
Chapter 54- Preparations
Chapter 55- Kimbora
Chapter 56- Spiritual Realm
Chapter 57- Rare Opportunities
Epilogue- It’s Upon Us
Final Stat Sheet
The Story …
Induction - Book One of Welcome to the Multiverse
We are introduced to Silas, a 22-year-old who put his college aspirations on pause after two years, to help his mom and sister following the death of his father. Lightning struck for them as they learned about an inheritance his mother received from her deceased brother.
It turned out to be much more. They believed Uncle Dan was insane, but he’d been a Forerunner—a representative for Earth in a competition between five worlds. Silas’ father, Mark, was supposed to inherit the position, but the cancer had other plans, pushing Silas into taking over as a Forerunner.
His first exposure to the competition came in the form of an enormous mana-infected squirrel, which went crazy trying to kill him. Silas prevailed, gaining access to the system. He also snagged some pretty cool abilities, including two specific to the squirrel he’d defeated. The first, an aura called Adorably Harmless, caused other people, and even the occasional monster, to view him as cute and a non-threat.
The second, Save For Winter, was a modification of the Forerunner’s standard spatial storage ability. As its name suggests, Save For Winter upgraded items placed in his storage—so long as they were left in there undisturbed. A day in storage would turn a basic item into a common item. Ten days took an item from common to uncommon, a hundred from uncommon to rare and a thousand days to epic. Consumables cut that time in half.
Using a class shard obtained as loot from the squirrel along with some left by his uncle, Silas formed a class combining elements of rogues, mages, and healers. He also gained a pair of titles. As the first non-inducted human to kill a mana-infused creature, he gained One Small Step/One Giant Leap, doubling his stat gains from leveling up. When he finished the fight covered head to toe in the beast’s blood, the system granted his second title, Blood Bather, enabling him to gain additional evolutions based upon the creatures whose blood he bathed in.
Not that it was all dark… or gory. His first mission sent him to the dungeon world of Galen, where he fought for survival, completed a dungeon, and made some friends—Dori the rogue, Nevin the mage, and the warrior Crag. The Galenians looked very much like humans except for their rounded, half-circle ears and the blue tint to their skin. While it was still early days, the four of them became friends at a speed only shared danger could create.
Silas agreed to make the district of Anwich on Galen into a home away from home. He gained a boon of bonus XP for him and his team while there, at the expense of exposure to the political machinations of the interplanetary corporation Transhek, the Adventurer’s Guild, and the locals.
For his second mission, Silas was thrust into a war between two native races, centered around the city of Proximus. The Ceorgi were physically small but gifted with innate magical abilities. The Delmin were the exact opposite.
At first, Silas believed the Delmin to be the aggressors, due to their relentless bombardment of the city filled with Ceorgi civilians. After agreeing to help the Ceorgi, his contact Maelis taught Silas how to better connect with magic. This resulted in his magic becoming 60% attuned to life mana.
Sadly, it turned out that the Ceorgi only wanted to use Silas as a way of cycling ambient mana into life mana, essentially a battery for their shield. They also sacrificed any captured Delmin to feed their city’s shield. Silas took a stand against the enslavement and murder, but in destroying the city’s defenses he was forced to kill several helpless Ceorgi. He had yet to process the trauma.
Amidst all this, during his time on Earth, Silas needed to do something normal. He enrolled at a university and after an inadvertent physical display he was invited to try out for the football team. Yet Silas’ adventures had changed him on a fundamental level. Over the course of a couple encounters with his human peers, he struggled not to take advantage of the power granted to him by the system. His boosted charisma made denying the attention of the cheerleaders a test of his character.
He had brief encounters with three of Earth’s Forerunners—Jiang, Nuri, and Anika. They sought to test him, stressing that Earth couldn’t afford to have an incompetent Forerunner. Earth was in third place, which would result in it becoming a dungeon world. If they fell to fourth, Earth would be destroyed for resources along with its entire population when the induction came to pass.
His last mission was a race on a cosmic track with Nuri, Anika, his Galen team and Urg, the eidolon he learned to summon thanks to an ability inherited from his uncle. There, he met three of the other races who were competing against Earth. The Crembori were the typical little gray men often seen in old Earth science fiction. They were advanced in technology, but last in the competition. The Furlooni were a race of plant-like people, aligned with the elf-like Nargossians.
The Earth team prevailed with the assistance of the Crembori. They destroyed the Furloon vessel, killing all three of their Forerunners, leaving the Nargossians without an ally. They ultimately had to flip their ship around and crash headlong into the Nargossian vessel to interrupt their lead in the race. The battle was intense. Daina, the leader, managed to escape, but the fight resulted in the death of the other two Nargossians.
After the race was over, Silas returned home. He found a note in decorative script indicating that he’d done passably on the mission, but that he needed to train. Whoever wrote it—he assumed either Nuri or Anika—indicated that they would be seeing each other soon. Now, he had to find a way to Paris for a meeting in twelve hours with the other Forerunners from Earth.
Countdown – Book Two of Welcome to the Multiverse
Silas found a mentor in Samvek of the Rayden Clan, who taught him a great deal. Most importantly, the system didn’t tell Forerunners all the vital details about leveling. Under a brutal training regime while clearing a graveyard dungeon, Silas started to make his skills part of him. Abilities were created and bestowed by the system, but his hard-earned combat skills belonged to him. He learned the significance of leveling up his abilities, as well as how to augment his class core when tiering up.
In a close battle with
a banshee, Silas inherited her Spirit Singing ability, which opened a much wider understanding of the multiverse, helping his team finish the dungeon. It took a chunk of Life Mana from the crystal he gained on Proximus to defeat the lich necromancer, but the ultimate victory netted him a huge gain in world points. It also created a mission for his new clan, earning him favors from the clan leader and from a mysterious priest, a disciple of the Sect of Veiled Infinity.
Back on Earth, the Crembori lost their patience and tried to force Silas’ hand by revealing their ship over Washington, DC. Silas flew in to confront them and reached a deal to grant at asylum to the few Crembori on board. In return, they allowed him to study their technology, bolstering his newly obtained Junkman Artificer occupation with their organic metal alloy.
His next mission took him back to Proximus, where he met a new team member, Dejin. He gained knowledge of what would be necessary to terraform Earth, including information concerning the growing and harvesting of plants in desert environments.
On Earth once again, Silas received a new message from his uncle, now that he’d formed an uncommon core. In it, Uncle Dan talked about how he didn’t trust the other Forerunners, and hinted that some of them had nefarious plans. Unsure who to trust, he broke into the prison holding Emil, another Earth Forerunner. He refused to leave with Silas, but used him to release a massive burst of mana into a residential neighborhood in Oslo, Norway. The creatures he unleashed spread across the world, while the people affected by the mana either were left experiencing strange sensations in the best cases, or dead in the worst.
The system didn’t look kindly upon this. It accelerated the countdown to induction by over two hundred days and penalized Earth three million world points, dropping them back into fourth place. Now, with seven days remaining until the Wild Hunt, Silas must train harder than ever, while dealing with new problems cropping up across the globe.
Chapter 1- Oh Crap!
Earth Countdown: 129 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes
I was barely recovered from portalling back home, and my thoughts raced. I paced in my shed, trying to figure out my next course of action. It was still several hours before I could take a mission, and hopefully get to see Samvek. Lightning crackled along my fingers as I let some of my anxiety go. It beat popping my knuckles, and it looked pretty damned cool.
My attention was snagged by a sound that to my hearing might as well have been right next to me. The moment Cece's scream tore through the air, instinct kicked in. I bolted out of the shed and up to the house, flying through the door in less than a second.
Emotion dulled my Perception, or I would’ve sensed the Crembori outside the house. Instead, I was just proud of myself for slowing down enough not to rip the front door off.
Then, a second scream, coming from inside Cece’s room. It sounded like Cece was stuck in there with an axe murderer, but knowing my life, it was more likely that some mutated bunny was in there trying to nibble her head off. I yanked on the doorknob, and the lock gave way, the door coming off the frame with it. I tossed it across the room, hard enough to knock over the couch.
Cece spun as I burst through the doorway, stopping a foot into her room. I was incredibly grateful that she managed to keep a hold of her towel as she spun, because there are some things that no brother should see. I’ve fought banshees and bathed in the blood of mutated squirrels, but that was one nightmare I didn’t need.
That thought rushed through my head like a bullet train, but it was enough to ground me for a moment. I looked out the window and saw Dan’Or staring into her room. Cece’s mouth was still gaping as she stood rigid, her head like an oscillating fan moving from Dan’Or to me and back again. Eventually, she decided the alien peeping Tom was more terrifying. Her face drained of color as she clutched her towel with white-knuckled force. Her eyes, wide with terror, fixated on the window.
Words stumbled out of her mouth, “How…? What…? Who…?”
I slid around her faster than she could perceive, and put my back to her. “Get behind me.” Not like she wasn’t already, but I was playing a part here. Protective older brother was natural to me, yet I was using more of a superhero voice, as though talking to a nameless citizen.
As the seconds ticked by, Cece finally managed to form a complete sentence. One of her hands grabbed my shoulder. “What is that thing, Silas?”
Her voice trembled, reminding me of when we’d shared a room as little kids. She’d been afraid of the dark and seen odd shapes and shadows more than once, forcing me to wake up and convince her that they weren’t monsters. The problem now was that there were monsters, even if they weren’t under her bed.
“Run to mom’s room. Get the gun out of the safe. I’ll keep it busy.”
I didn’t know if she had it in her to move, but I needed to get her out of the room. I barked louder, hoping to shock her into action. “Now, Cece.”
She obeyed, but slowly, unable to pry her eyes off of the thing in front of her. Of course, Dan’Or chose that moment to speak. He phased through the window into the room, which I had to admit was some pretty cool tech, but I’d geek out about it later. I’d been able to perceive the precise moment where he excited the molecules of the glass and passed through them, while somehow still keeping them together. There was so much to learn from the Crembori.
He raised his three-fingered hand with its oddly long fingers and said, “Take me to your leader.”
It sounded funny coming out of his mouth, like I could make out the words, but they were off. I didn’t know if he was trying to make a joke or was going out of his way to upset Cece. It pissed me off.
"Dan'Or, this isn't the time," I growled, not sure if the irritation in my voice was more for the alien's untimely appearance or the fear he'd instilled in Cece. Auto-translation turned my words into Crembori, and Cece gasped. I glanced back at her. She’d made it as far as the shattered doorframe.
“Run, Cece.”
For once in her life, my sister listened.
Dan'Or cocked its head in an eerie mimicry of human confusion, then the implant in the back of his hand flared with light. With a pop, the Crembori vanished.
The urgency of the situation didn't diminish with his departure. I felt the disturbance from where Dan’Or had disappeared. The glass of the window looked solid but was still vibrating oddly. The fact that I could feel those vibrations without touching the window spoke to how different I’d become.
But more worrisome, I felt an odd mana in the room. If I was pinned down, I’d have called it Fire Mana. Was it related to Cece? Had she been affected by the mana leaking out of my portal? I wasn’t sure if I should be more worried about her forcible induction into the system, or if the mana indicated something else had been in our house.
I must’ve stood there, lost in thought for a few seconds because when I turned, Cece was wearing one of mom’s oversized robes, holding one of Dad’s handguns Mom had kept around, pointing it directly at my head.
Her hands were shaking. “What are you? What did you do with my brother?”
I tried not to laugh, and was nearly successful. That only made her more tense. I guess looking at it from her perspective, I could see why she might wonder about a body snatcher situation. Now I had to figure out how to comfort her when the system wouldn’t let me tell her anything about, well, the system, or my induction, or magic. The list was restrictive, and I didn’t want to risk getting punished by the system for slipping up.
I raised my hands in a gesture of peace as I tried to come up with the right words. After everything I’d been through, the gun pointed at me didn’t even register as a threat. It could probably hurt me, but a 9mm wasn’t going to do much damage to me with my Durability. It was more the fact that it was my kid sister with her finger on the trigger. The fear on her face cut me to the quick.
"Cece, it's me. I haven't been taken or replaced. I'm your brother. Remember the summer we built that treehouse with Dad? Or the time we nearly set the kitchen on fire trying to make pancakes?" I recounted more assorted memories, hoping the details would anchor her back to reality.
Her grip on the gun didn't waver, but I saw recognition flash across her face. She blinked rapidly, a sheen of sweat on her brow. I noticed it again—the faint trace of Fire Mana seeping from her, invisible to her but clear as day to me. It was like watching heat waves rise from sunbaked asphalt, distorting the air around her.
