Chapter 53 - Reunion

Alex stumbled out of the Rift and into the small opening in the woods. There was snow on the ground, and even though the Rift had been chilly, it wasn’t nearly close to freezing.

Sam sat a few steps away. Blood from his clothes had smeared onto the undisturbed snowfall. Despite the horrific scene, he sat halfway up. His waist was still strapped down to the shield while he wrestled off the weakened threads around his upper body.

The two of them made eye contact and there was a tense moment as they both tried to come to grips with the fact that they were finally out of the Rift. The tension was broken by an exuberant call from Val.

“Mana!” The little wyrm yelled happily.

Alex looked to Sam’s side to note that the two had a tendril of mana connecting them for communication, but at the same time, Val glowed. Through Alex’s mana sight, he could see the funneling mana from his threads to his companion, a telltale sign that he was using [Mana Siphon] to eat the threads.

Both humans burst into laughter. All the tension from the last month that had built up to their assault on the Firstborn spilled out of them. In a rare moment of joy, Sam called out with a victory yell.

“Woo!” He called into the forest.

Alex paused, unused to seeing the quiet boy make any noises. He laughed harder and then yelled his own excitement. He stumbled toward the teenager and ruffled his hair.

Wow, that snow looks comfy.

Sam nodded into Alex’s hand with a smile. Alex tried to get his rapid breathing under control. He’d gone from combat to laughter in the span of a few minutes, and he needed to catch his breath. He put a steadying hand on Sam and then let himself fall down to the snow.

He winced as the poison pulsed through his body once again the healing spell seemed to do its best to combat it.

Sam, can you use [Cure] on me?

The boy shook his head.

Alex groaned and pulled one of his last two Mana Stones from his spatial pouch and tossed it to Val.

Eat this. You deserve it. Can you give Sam any more of your mana?

After Sam got more of Val’s mana and used his [Cure] skill on Alex, he fell back into the snow and let the cold environment cool him down. Several minutes passed as the two laughed and felt victorious, especially as Alex had a blue box appear telling him that he’d completed his Hidden Personal Quest. He didn’t accept them immediately, instead dismissing the window and deciding to look at them once he got to his apartment. Alex knew they needed to keep moving. He felt exhaustion creeping in, and his muscles could begin to lock up if he didn’t keep moving.

The two got up after Val finished eating away at the threads and consuming the Mana Stone. Val rode on Alex’s shoulder, and the two limped through the forest in their torn robes. Alex returned his jian to the sheath and put the bite-marked leather strap back over his shoulders. He used Sam’s staff as a walking stick and supported them both as they made their way through the forest.

When they arrived at his car, it took a moment for Alex to even think about pulling out the key from his spatial pocket. It was a manual key, so he knew it wouldn’t be damaged from the Rift, but the car just seemed so odd and out of place. There was still stuff in his front seat from when he’d gone to the store last and when he’d packed up his camping bag at the Voss Estate.

Sam looked like he was about to fall asleep while walking, so Alex ushered him into the back seat. When he got into the front seat himself, he turned on the car and turned up the heat.

Turning to Sam, who was already sprawled across the back seat, Alex addressed the boy.

Sam, where is your home? Do you want me to drop you off at your house?

Sam’s eyes opened wide, and he shook his head. He grabbed onto Alex’s robe sleeve and shook his head again.

Are you scared? I’m sure your parents want to know where you are.

“No. Stay with you.” Sam sent along feelings of determination and a feeling of safety.

Alex sighed, but they were both too tired to argue about it. Alright, you can come back to my place, but we’ll have to talk about this, eventually.

Sam didn’t say anything. Instead, he closed his eyes and continued to hang on to the back of Alex’s sleeve. Alex let go of the mental connection to let Sam sleep and keep his thoughts private.

I guess it doesn’t really matter. We’ve been living together for the last month and spending every waking moment together. I’ll figure out who his parents are later.

The car hadn’t even fully heated up before Sam was asleep. Alex smiled and began the drive back to his apartment in Hoboken. It was an hour and a half drive from where they were near the base of the mountain, and Alex found himself getting antsy.

He hadn’t sat still that long with his thoughts since before he entered the Rift. There was always a next step and something else to run from or train toward. Suddenly, forced to keep his body still and think about the experience, he felt relieved and exhausted.

The radio was a blessing, and he loved flipping through the channels to listen to different music. He almost always had something playing around his apartment or in his headphones on the subway, so no electronics for two months felt odd. There was some initial frustration as he struggled to find a station that wasn’t talking about Rifts and how some famous streamer or celebrity was going to be going into a Rift on their livestream next week.

Guess a lot did change in the week I was gone. They’re not trying to hide this stuff anymore, but who would have thought someone like this influencer would be trying to go into a Rift to prove it’s real? Do they not realize electronics won’t work in there?

It was interesting to him that talk shows and radio stations were talking about what a social media influencer was doing and how they thought things would play out, rather than actually talking about the Rifts or Awakened.

Haven’t seen something this hyped since an influencer challenged a famous boxer. Wonder if this’ll be a flop too.

Valtherion cooed sleepily in his mind.

Knowing that it wasn’t something he could focus on, he dodged the political stations and found a station that was playing music and enjoyed the melody as he drove toward the city.

When he got closer to his apartment and entered the city, Alex found himself laughing again, more than once. The first time was at a car that honked its horn, which caused Alex to jump. The second time was as he was merging off of the interstate and a car cut him off and tapped their brakes. He just couldn’t stop laughing at the absurdity of it all. Such a thing would have made him mad at one point, and there was a satisfying moment where he imagined the sheer power difference between himself and the person who was likely driving that pickup truck. At one point during his laughing fit, Sam woke up, but after feeling his emotions, the teen fell back to sleep with a weak smile of his own.

The busier parts of the city seemed oddly deserted to Alex, and he saw several areas where there were military personnel stationed as if a parade or public event was taking place. He couldn’t tell what was happening or if they were a part of the Hunters Association. Too much felt like it was changing, and he began to feel overwhelmed. He’d wanted to return to the comfort of his everyday life, but it felt like there was a tension hanging over the city.

When they got to the apartment, Alex felt that his reality was slowly coming back. The neighborhood was familiar, and he couldn’t wait to get inside and take a hot shower. Alex also desperately wanted some shitty modern food. He’d been eating lean protein and rice for weeks.

Alex let Sam sleep for a few more minutes in the back of the car as he gathered his thoughts and prepared for the next step. He knew what came next and knew that it wouldn’t be easy. Turning on his phone, he put it in his lap and leaned his forehead against the cold glass of the window as he waited.

At first, the phone vibrated once. Then it began to vibrate continuously for the next minute or so. When it stopped, he picked up the phone and flipped through the notifications. He closed all of the pointless ones, like emails and work notices. He had five missed texts from Mark and 15 missed texts from Sarah. There were a few missed texts from Olivia as well. As he kept scrolling passed the text section, he got to the phone calls and found more missed calls from Mark and Sarah. Mark had left a series of voicemails that popped up as he was reading through some of the texts.

Looking at the date and time on his phone, he noted that it was Sunday, November 15th, in the late afternoon.

I guess that makes sense. I spent almost two months inside of the Rift, and Epic Rarity Rifts have an eight-times time dilation effect. So it’s only been seven days.

He let out a sigh and realized that his friends thought he’d been ignoring them, then ran away, and then the last few texts were a lot more subdued. They read as if they were sending a text and didn’t expect a response. Sarah must have shared his Awakened status with Mark, which led them to believe he died in an accident.

They thought he died.

Reading the text translation of a few of the voicemails, he saw somewhere Mark was cursing at him, then one where he was reminiscing about college. It hurt his heart to see how keeping the secret from his best friend had hurt him. He felt shitty and knew that he’d been a lousy friend.

Alex sent them both a text, telling them he was alive and at his apartment. He apologized and told them to both come over and that he would explain everything.

He read through Olivia’s texts and saw that she’d sent him a few texts, but without a response she sent one or two that made it seem like she thought he was ignoring her. There wasn’t any drama or vindictiveness in her texts, but she seemed a bit put off that he would ghost her.

The text he sent her was similar to the one he’d sent to Mark and Sarah. Alex figured that if there would be time to explain it all, he might as well do it all at once and let the two sets of friends meet each other. A more selfish part of him didn’t want to wait to see her.

Next, he woke Sam, and the two walked up to his apartment. There was an odd moment as his neighbor, Ashley, saw the two of them coming up to the entrance. She was staring with her mouth partially opened and in the shape of an “o.” It wasn’t until Alex was up the stairs and unlocking his door that he realized his face was uncovered, so his eye and the scar on his face stood out as extremely abnormal. And that’s assuming she wasn’t completely put off by the fact that the front of his robes was cut and torn from Naraka’s Fangs, and he and Sam both had a fair amount of dried blood on them.

Oh, don’t forget the weapons. Those aren’t normal, either.

He chuckled and couldn’t bring himself to care. As soon as they were inside, Sam looked around. When he spotted the couch, he walked over and flopped onto it, ready to sleep some more. Alex stopped just inside the door and leaned against the door frame. He took a full minute to just breathe in the familiar scents and feel the climate control temperature.

Home at last.

“Home.” Val echoed. The mana wyrm uncoiled itself from Alex’s shoulder and flew over to coil up on Sam’s chest and take a nap as well.

While Alex knew he needed to rest, there was something calling his name even louder than his couch or bed. The shower.

A hot shower sounds so good.

He looked at the clock over his stove out of habit. The electric lights seemed a bit out of place to him now. Doing some quick mental math, he guessed that he had at least ten or fifteen minutes before Mark or Sarah arrived. He wasn’t sure when Olivia might get there.

Setting his phone on the countertop, he stumbled over to his bathroom and got in the shower. He took a moment to admire his changed physique in the mirror while the water warmed up. Without a mask on his face, he looked like a completely different person. His body had been changed drastically by his increased stats. All of the muscles in his upper body were well-defined and larger than he’d ever seen them. He now had a scar running down his chest, two differently shaped scars on both of his shoulders and a horizontal scar across the bridge of his nose. In his opinion, the colored eye looked out of place, but it wasn’t drawing his eye as much as the scars, facial hair, and abnormally long hair.

Alex took a deep breath and stepped into the hot shower. The pressurized water felt heavenly, and he leaned his head forward to let the water run down his face and shoulder blades.

He got to enjoy the feeling of the shower for a few minutes before the relaxing moment was shattered. He heard Mark, and instantly, he knew things were about to get out of hand.

“DUDE!” The door burst open and from the other room, Alex could hear it slam back into the wall as it flew open. “Where the actual fuck have you bee- Wait, who are you?”

Alex could hear his friend talking and began to panic as he knew Sam wouldn’t react well to Mark’s volume. He got out of the shower as quickly as he could, almost slipping on the tiled bathroom floor. Before he could wrap a towel around his waist, Sam yelled in fright.

“Ahh!” Mark yelled back, “Wait, what is that? Hey, no, no, no. What the fu-”

Alex turned his corner and saw Val glowing at the edge of the couch, facing Mark and growling. Sam sat up, and his hair was sticking up at an odd angle as he pushed himself against the far edge of the couch to get away from the large Polish man.

“Mark?” Alex paused in the doorway. His own appearance wasn’t the only one to change since he’d been gone. His large friend looked to have put on at least twenty pounds of muscle on his tall frame.

“Alex?” Mark asked. He kept his hands held up defensively toward Val, but stopped as his eyes took in his best friend.