Chương 33: Insomnia

I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. My own bed, in my own house, with my own dogs sprawled around me. Zelda had the pillow nearest my head, of course, while Riley was snuggled against my leg, his head resting on my shin. The weight was comforting in its familiarity. Bear was curled into a tight ball at the foot of the bed, sulking. She didn't want to be in the bedroom. Most nights, she preferred to roam.

Despite the abundance of cushions and comfy dog beds in the house, her favorite spot was the rag rug by the kitchen door. But I wanted her with us tonight. After Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida as a Category 4, most of the folks who'd been waiting for it had a little window of time where we got to say, okay, that wasn't so bad. Whew. Glad it's over. And then the news started coming out of North Carolina. Devastating flooding. Hundreds missing. Billions in damage. The worst disaster in the state's history.

I felt like I was living in that little window of time again. The moments after the disaster when the disaster didn't seem all that bad, when ignorance was something like bliss. Home was... home. Apart from the dead squirrels in the front yard and the weird glowing spot in the back yard, everything seemed relatively normal. Supposedly the mana rifts would start disrupting current technologies, but the red light glowing from the power strip across the room let me know that I still had electricity.

On my last check, right before getting in bed, I had cell service, running water, and the internet, too. And no real idea what to do with any of the above. At some other point in my life, I would have been on the phone right away. The second I popped out of the challenge scenario, I'd have been calling my boyfriend, my husband, my dad, Jules, someone. But I'd broken up with my last boyfriend when I moved home to take care of my dad. My husband had been an ex for almost ten years. My dad had been dead for two.

And Jules didn't pick up. If she'd been closer, I would've kept refreshing that call over and over until I got through. But she was living in California, and there was nothing I could do to help her or Toby from three thousand miles away. Our call would be a goodbye. I'd try again, but I'd never cared much for goodbyes. Meanwhile, I should've been doing something, right? Jack'd said we should make a plan, figure out our priorities for when we made it back to reality, but had I done so? Of course not.

Instead, I took a shower. I fed the dogs. I opened the fridge, stared at the contents, closed it again. Then I made myself a mug of tea, changed into my favorite pajamas, and went to bed. Now I was paying the price. It was the middle of the night, and there was nothing to do except think about all the things I should have done. I probably wouldn't have rushed to the grocery store, even if I'd been thinking straight. Sure, stocking up sounded great, but getting caught in a crowd of frantic people didn't.

Plus, my pantry shelves were already full. When you live in the middle of nowhere, in a climate where natural disasters are a when, not an if, it makes sense to be prepared. Assuming you have the resources, of course, which I did. But I could've worked on the house's defenses. Maybe boarding up the windows, as if I were actually getting ready for a hurricane. Or taking stock of the non-food supplies. I knew we could eat for a good long while, but I didn't know how much duct tape I had on hand.

Maybe I should've been downloading some reading material while the internet still worked. I bet some prepper's handbook out there could tell me exactly how to survive the next few months. And then there was the real issue, the one keeping me awake. I wasn't superhero material. But at the moment, I was probably stronger than anyone for miles around, with a class called Thorn's Edge Guardian. Should I be out there, you know, guarding people? Protecting them?

Fighting the monsters that were probably trying to kill them, right this very minute? Obviously, if I came across a monster attacking someone, I'd jump into the fray. I felt sure of that, even though twenty-four hours ago, the thought would have been absurd. By now, though, I'd slammed enough goblins upside the head to know I wouldn't hesitate. A fleeting memory of the blood spurting from the neck of that Level 14 Goblin Wizard made my stomach turn, but I stuffed the image away. The memories wouldn't stop me.

If I could save someone, I would. But did I have to go out looking for people to save? Was it my responsibility? The question of what I owed the world wasn't one I'd ever asked myself before. Oh, maybe back in high school when I was young and idealistic, before my brain turned against me and started stabbing me right in the future goals and aspirations. (Metaphorically, obviously. No actual stabbing was involved.) But lofty dreams like the Peace Corps, medical school, military service, all derailed on the train of bipolar disorder and its assorted side effects. Sure, I recycled, voted, paid my taxes. And I tried not to break any major laws. But I didn't worry about "giving back" or "being of service." Did I have to now? Because, honestly, it did not sound like my thing. It wasn't that I disliked people… Oh, wait. I kind of did. Not as individuals, usually, but as a whole? People were exhausting.

Dealing with them might not be hard labor in a penal colony, but cruel and unusual punishment? Yeah, sometimes. That said, people were gonna die. People probably were dying right this very minute. And while I didn't want to make small talk with them, I'd rather they stayed alive so I could avoid it guilt-free. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. I knew I couldn't save everyone, though.

I probably couldn't even save enough people to make a difference. Eight billion people in the world and the System would only save us if 7, 999, 000, 000 died. The numbers were unfathomable. I tried to do some basic math in my head, just looking for a way to visualize the numbers. Sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, twenty-four hours in a day. If people were seconds, a day's worth would be a pittance, less than a hundred thousand. A month would be well over two million.

A year, thirty-two million or so. If one human being died every second, it would be literal centuries before we reached that final million. System Chelsea hadn't mentioned a time limit on our deaths, but for almost eight billion people to die in, say, the next ten years, we would have to be dying at the rate of… I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to do the math in my head… twenty-five people every second? Fifteen hundred a minute? Could that be right? I tried to double-check my math, but it was pointless.

Whatever the number was, it was too big. Obviously, any person I saved would be grateful. I wouldn't let the futility deter me from helping if I could. But instead of wandering around central Florida looking for people in need of rescuing, it would make a lot more sense for me to tackle the problem at its root—the rifts spewing monsters and mana on our planet. How convenient that System Chelsea had given me a rift in my backyard. It was almost as if she'd known.

I sighed and rolled over, burying my face in Zelda's fur and trying not to kick Bear. Riley lifted his head when I moved, waited for me to settle, and then put it back down on my calf. I scootched back until he was pressed against my leg again and took a few deep breaths. In for three, hold for three, out for three, taking my time. What had System Chelsea said? Something like, for local populations, tame rifts were beneficial and overflow events disruptive?

So I guess my goal was to prevent overflow events, whatever they were, and keep the rift tame. I almost choked on a laugh before stifling it into my pillow. That laugh had a definite edge of hysteria, and I knew I couldn't give in to that feeling. It would lead too easily to panic. And there was nothing to panic about. Millions of people were probably panicking right now, all across the world, with plenty of reason, but I was already a [Thorn's Edge Guardian: Level 10].

In fact, I could probably become a [Thorn's Edge Guardian: Level 11] if I felt like it. Or maybe even higher. I'd killed a lot of goblins at the end of the scenario, paying no attention to my notifications. Maybe my insomnia made it a good time to look at all those things I hadn't considered before? With a thought, my status sheet opened up. The first thing I saw was that I had new titles.

Titles: First Defender, Preliminary Challenger Top 1%, Rift Keeper First Defender had been there for a while, but Preliminary Challenger Top 1% was new, and so was Rift Keeper. I looked at them long enough for a tooltip to open. Back when it was just First Defender, I hadn't realized the titles would have tooltips. Who needed an explanation for a title? Turns out I did. My First Defender title said: First Defender: Granted in recognition of early active engagement following System integration.

You were among the first million Earth inhabitants to successfully neutralize a mana-afflicted entity. Congratulations! You didn't wait to be told what to do—you just did it. Title Award: +3 Serendipity I stared at that bonus number for a minute. Jack had been pleased with his initial Serendipity score. I think he'd said it was 5. But my original Serendipity stat was 3. Then the System had added points to it in my forced "adaptive attribute allocation," bringing it up to 10.

But if the First Defender title had added three points to my Serendipity, then my original Serendipity stat had been zero. Honestly, that explained so much about my life. Zelda gave a sleepy whuffle on the pillow next to me, and I touched the tips of my fingers to her warm back. Okay. It didn't explain everything about my life. But it explained a lot. I moved on to the next title: Preliminary Challenger Top 1%. Top 1%? Seriously? That was…

well, it probably said more about the incompetence of the rest of humanity than it did about my own strengths. But I couldn't help feeling a little flicker of pride. I waited, eyes on the title, until the tooltip popped up. Preliminary Challenger Top 1%: You rose to the occasion of Earth's first challenge, and then you kept on rising.

As a marginal viability candidate, the scenario was an opportunity for you to gain experience, levels, improved stats, and a taste of potential rewards, so you'd have a fighting chance (and some motivation) on your return home. But you not only survived, you succeeded. Nice work. Seriously. Title Award: +10% to all stats. Huh. That sounded as if the System had expected me to die. I wasn't sure whether I should be annoyed by that.

I mean, if you'd asked me ahead of time how I was going to do in a battle against a bunch of real-life goblins, I would have laughed at you, so it's not like the System was wrong. But still… I moved on to the last title. This was the big one, the one that mattered. The one that was going to shape my future, like it or not. Rift Keeper: Throughout the Multiverse, rifts are both infrastructure and opportunity. They are connections between worlds, sources of resources, and pathways to power. Many individuals use them.

Some harvest them. And then there are the Rift Keepers. These unique individuals have the authority and tools to claim, stabilize, and control rift environments, shaping them into assets rather than hazards. Based on your performance in Challenge Scenario #004328, a rift has been assigned to your location and your Rift Management Interface has been enabled. Further privileges may unlock with responsible usage, demonstrated aptitude, or multiversal catastrophe. Good luck. You're gonna need it.

And that didn't sound ominous at all, did it? I don't know how long I stared at the last lines of the Rift Keeper description, thinking about multiversal catastrophes and luck, before I finally sighed and closed the tooltip. Flopping onto my back, I stared at the ceiling I couldn't see. I guess I should be grateful that the System had forcibly added +10 to my Serendipity stat. That was more or less the same thing as luck, right?

In fact, if luck was what was going to keep us alive, maybe I should put all those free points I'd been hoarding into Serendipity? I opened the Attributes section of my status sheet. I'd advanced to Level 10 while I was sitting in a tree with a sprained ankle, hiding from the Acid-Spitting Stalker. Needless to say, I had not carefully considered my stats at the time. I'd been too busy trying to remember to breathe. They looked a little different than I remembered, though.

Physical Strength: 5 (+10%) = 6 Agility: 5 (+10%) = 6 Endurance: 5 (+10%) = 6 Mental Intelligence: 5 (+10%) = 6 Perception: 22 (+10%) = 24 Resilience: 16 (+10%) = 18 X-Factor Presence: 3 (+10%) = 3 Serendipity: 10 (+10%) = 11 Will: 22 (+10%) = 24 Free: 3 So the System rounded up. That was nice.

All of my Physical stats would need another five points before the percentage boost added a point, but if I put those three free points in either Perception or Will, I'd actually get another point from the boost because of the rounding. That made it seem like a smart move—why turn down a free point, right? But did I really need more Perception or Will? I tapped away from Attributes and into my notifications. Man, I really had killed a lot of goblins. I scrolled. I yawned. I scrolled some more. So many goblins.

My eyelids fluttered shut. Just for a second. I'd rest them for a second, and then… I woke up to the feel of sunlight on the bed and the sound of something crashing downstairs.