“Are you… What?” Rory questioned, taken aback. “No, of course you aren’t. What sort of question is that?”

  “Well, because all we remember is that we were together in the shared lounge at the orphanage, then we were here.”

  “Do you… remember anything else?”

  “Nope!” The youngest amongst them—a thirteen-year-old boy, if Rory had to guess—chirped.

  Yeah, there’s the classic memory loss.

  “Well, to answer your question, you’re not dead. You didn’t ask Apostolos this?”

  “We did,” Irene confirmed. “But he just stuttered and mumbled something about ‘memories’ and ‘don’t want to get in trouble’ or something like that.”

  “Hah, did he now?” Rory raised an eyebrow at Apostolos, who only scowled at him, a small message notification appearing that Rory mentally prompted to appear only to himself.

  I don’t know how to interact with them! They’re kids!

  Rory withheld a snort, sending his own message back.

  You’re not much better yourself. You only feel this way because you’ve spent all your time around me.

  Rory noticed Apostolos’s eyebrow twitch, the only indication that he’d read the notification from Rory as Rory turned his attention back to the kids who hadn’t noticed any indications of the silent message exchange.

  “So… we’re not dead. That’s good. I guess. Being stuck with these idiots for the rest of eternity would have sucked.” Irene said, flipping her hair indignantly. It reminded Rory of how one of his childhood friends’ older sisters had done the same thing when trying to act like she didn’t care.

  “I still don’t get where we are.” The second oldest of the group, a boy of roughly fifteen or sixteen years of age, grumbled. “Actually, I don’t understand anything about you, here, or even us.”

  Rory winced. It had been far easier with Apostolos, who had been so accepting of everything.

  “You’re on a planet called Aelia,” Rory said slowly.

  “We heard, but he-” The same boy thrust a finger at Apostolos. “-warned us to be careful about how we referred to her. Planets aren’t hers.”

  Oh boy, this is going to be fun.

  Doing his best not to sigh in exasperation, Rory held his hand out, hiding a wince as he conjured a glowing green orb that filled in a moment later, a simple glass sphere. “Magic,” Rory said simply as he tossed the mundane glass orb to the boy who caught it with a yelp, eyes wide. “Apostolos is better for demonstrating flashy looking magic, but as you can see, however you believe the world to work, toss it out.”

  It was hard to say how much they ‘knew,’ given Rory had appeared on Aelia with all his memories intact. In contrast, Apostolos had essentially been an empty vessel, only knowing fundamental knowledge that allowed him to operate at an otherwise normal level for his age.

  Unlike Apostolos, the teenagers before him seemed to have a stronger connection with -if not direct knowledge- of at least some vibes of how things were ‘supposed’ to work.

  Going to be a pain.

  The fastest way to get them up to speed would be to give them a crash course in their new reality, with magic being the most obvious method.

  Taking a moment, Rory examined the whole group. Aside from the oldest, Irene, they were all listed without a proper level or tier, still too physically immature to qualify. Irene was listed as a simple A1, level ten.

  “How did you do that?” The boy finally managed to splutter, eyes bugging out.

  “Magic, as I said,” Rory said matter-of-factly. “Now, I want all of you to imagine opening a screen in front of you, a screen all about yourself.”

  “I don’t see what that’s going to do- wow!” Irene was the first to react, leaning back as her interface flickered to life.

  “If you want privacy, you can mentally ‘command’ your interface to appear invisible to anyone but yourself.” Rory quickly added. “That said, no one can see what you’re looking at on your interface even if they can see that you have it open, not unless you share it with them.”

  It was a lesson Rory had learned long ago, and partially a lesson that he had been the cause of, a fond memory of distracting a jackalope by abusing his interface sharing as a distraction, before Eon -then still known only as ‘the System’- had patched that out.

  “This is so-” Irene started to say before being cut off by the second oldest amongst them.

  “-weird.”

  “You did it again, Greg.” The youngest of the group, a boy of approximately thirteen, said with a teasing tone.

  “Shut up, John.”

  Looking between Irene, Greg, the second oldest, and John, the youngest of the kids, Rory finally noticed similarities between them. They all had blonde, nearly silver-colored hair, a California beach tan, and quite the array of freckles dotting their faces.

  “Are you three siblings?”

  “Yep!” John, the youngest of the siblings, announced. “Irene and Greg have the same dad; I’ve got a different dad.”

  “And… what about your dad, er, dads?” Rory questioned, curious if they could recall anything.

  “They,” Irene began to speak before frowning. “Huh. I know me and Greg have the same dad, and I know John has a different dad, but… I don’t know anything else. That feels like it should be odd, but it doesn’t.”

  “Ehh, don’t overthink it for now,” Rory said, waving it off. “So, three siblings. And the rest of you?”

  The other five kids, each looking no older than ninth grade but no younger than an eighth grader, shrugged.

  “The rest of us are unrelated.” One of the four said, a girl with frizzy red hair and shocking purple eyes.

  Wonder if she was one of those designer babies, and when her parents didn’t get exactly what they wanted, they dumped her in an orphanage.

  It was the only thing he could think of, as purple eyes weren’t natural, seen only in kids whose parents had enough money to pay for genetic twisting or whatever they called it.

  “Right. Name?”

  The girl pointed at herself, with Rory nodding in confirmation. “Violet.”

  Purple eyes and was named Violet. Sounds like some asshole parents were aiming for a perfect child. If I remember correctly, not every color translated perfectly; things like purple hair could appear red instead. If I had to take a guess -which I am- her parents wanted a perfect, purple-themed child, got a red-head, and dumped her. Talk about heartlessness.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Letting a secondary thought thread handle any random musings about the children, Rory turned to the next of the remaining teenagers. It was a boy with simple black hair and brown eyes, about as average looking as you could be.

  “Manda.” The boy said with a shrug.

  That's an interesting name for an otherwise uninteresting kid.

  “Marcie.” A blonde, athletic-looking girl said with a sweet smile.

  “Mariah.” The second to last kid and the last of the girls said, large green eyes and chestnut colored hair, her cheeks perpetually flushed.

  Way too many M names.

  The last kid, a relatively short and stout-looking boy, grunted once.

  “What was that?” Rory asked. The boy spoke in a grunted rush as if trying to hide his name.

  “Gimli.”

  “Gimli,” Rory repeated, ensuring he heard the boy correctly. “As in-?”

  “Yah.” He grunted, scowling. “My parents loved that shit. Course they went and named me after their favorite character, and course I ended up short as shit. Hardy, har, har, hilarious, I know.”

  “Well… Gimli. Do you maybe have a nickname you prefer?”

  “Gil.” The grumpy boy huffed. “Gil is fine.”

  “If you say so,” Rory said. As much as he had enjoyed the same films, he couldn’t imagine saddling your kid with a name torn straight from a fictional story, at least not such a notably… non-standard name.

  Giving the small group another once over, Rory nodded to himself.

  “To give you the short rundown, welcome to Aelia. Magic exists, monsters exist, and levels exist. Aside from Irene, you’re all still too young or otherwise physically immature to have a proper level or tier, so we’ll get you set up and teach you the ropes within this here settlement.”

  Rory glanced around their camp, frowning as he considered that they didn’t have accommodations for a sudden influx of teenagers.

  I’ll handle that later.

  “Any questions?”

  Marcie raised her hand, to which Rory pointed at her, feeling like he’d suddenly become a teacher.

  “Is there anyone else?”

  “Sort of,” Rory nodded. “On the planet, there are eight founders, each on a separate continent. I’m one of them, by the way. For each founder, there is a first-generation apprentice.” Rory briefly pointed at Apostolos. “In my case, that would be Apostolos here. You all would be considered the second generation of settlers to appear.”

  “What about the snake?” Manda questioned, rudely asking without raising his hand.

  Oh, God, I really do sound like a teacher.

  “This here is Eia,” Rory said, pointing to the snake. “She’s a tier-five monster, so she can and will eat you if you annoy her. So don’t annoy her.”

  Rory was reasonably certain she wouldn’t; tier-one humans were unlikely to provide much nutrition, but Rory wanted to clear up any stupid ideas before they could form.

  “Is she a monster?” Greg questioned.

  “Yes, but she lives here, so don’t be rude.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I’ve lived here for… over a decade.” Rory gave up figuring out how long it had been; the exact number was unimportant. “It was just me when I first appeared; there was no settlement, no tools, nada. Just me and my wits.”

  And perhaps an abusable interface, but they didn’t need to know that.

  “So… do we live here now?” Mariah asked.

  “Yeah, I suppose so,” Rory sighed. He wasn’t about to kick the teenagers out and leave them to the wolves. While the nearby forest was no longer dangerous to Apostolos, Eia, or himself, it was still occupied by tier-one and tier-two monsters, which would slaughter kids who weren’t even properly tier-one yet.

  “So, you’re like our new orphanage director,” Gil said with a frown.

  “No, not exactly,” Rory replied. “You can think of me more like, um, a team leader?”

  Rory looked to Apostolos for help, but the younger man merely shrugged.

  “Fine, maybe orphanage director isn’t a bad comparison,” Rory admitted. “But this isn’t an orphanage. All of you are your own people; from here on out, you can think of this as your home.”

  It would be a lie to say the teenagers looked ecstatic, but at the very least, they seemed as nonplussed as they could be.

  Time. Everything takes time.

  It was just a shame that, in terms of time, they only had a year until the next Siege Wave.

  The following month passed in a blur as Rory split his time between building several homes for their new citizens and educating them. The good news was that they had more raw resources than ever, between resources they’d accumulated over the years and the influx of hundreds of monster corpses that could be processed in many ways. Some of those corpses went to feed Eia, who gorged herself on the dead monsters. Deceased for an extended period, they provided far less benefit than consuming a still living creature, but that didn’t mean they weren’t without any benefit. Eia was racing through tier five at breakneck pace and would likely reach A6 in half the time it had taken either Apostolos or Rory himself.

  Aside from the mountain of corpses that Rory left for Apostolos and Eia to handle, there was also the matter of the Null Window. Having taken Aelia’s advice, he’d quickly examined it as soon as he broke away from the band of teenagers on their first day.

  Null Window

  Rarity: Extreme

  A shard of reality splintered off from a now-extinct existence. While ordinarily useless, such an object loosens the hold of physical space and time.

  -->

  Partially Energized Null Window (Attuned)

  Rarity: Extreme

  A shard of reality splintered off from a now-extinct existence. While ordinarily useless, such an object loosens the hold of physical space and time. Infused with a potent burst of Ascension Energy, the Null Window has been energized out of its dormant state and has been attuned to the spatial energies of a Bane. Allows for short-distance Spatial Traversal to areas with low-to-moderate concentrations of Bane essence.

  Attunement Location: The Maw

  Was it concerning that only the Maw was recognized as having the necessary concentrations of Bane essence to attune to?

  Yes.

  Was it a problem he would deal with sometime in the future?

  Also yes.

  What mattered was, with the help of Apostolos, Rory had learned that by stepping through the now partially energized Null Window, you’d find yourself standing right outside the Maw. It was incredibly advantageous, making a trip to the Maw take seconds rather than minutes if sprinting or hours if walking.

  And that was for him, a tier-six, much less the un-tiered children.

  In fairness, none of them would have any need to travel to the Maw for the foreseeable future, but it was still handy.

  The only thing he hadn’t figured out was a way to teleport back. Once you teleported to the Maw, you had to take the long way home. Rory felt confident that it should be possible, in theory, given that there was teleportation available between floors of the Maw, so perhaps there was a way to attune that same feature to the Null Window, but it would be a problem for future Rory to handle.

  The only other thing he’d worked on during that time -outside of working with the kids to get them up to speed on the most basic of things- was constructing several homes for the teenagers. He opted for a larger-than-normal house for the three siblings, which wasn’t saying much given how small his own home was. Where his home was a partially living thing, the home he made for the siblings was just a standard-looking home, something you’d find in New Mexico or Arizona with adobe tile roofing and walls. It was large enough for three and a half rooms, albeit small rooms, three of the rooms separate ‘bedrooms’ with a final ‘living’ room. Once more, had it not been for the benefit of quite literally being superhuman, such a construction would have taken months, if not longer, by himself, but in the end, it only took the better part of a week.

  The other five teenagers were given glorified shacks, single-room homes measuring a little over fifteen by fifteen feet. They were slightly larger than his old college dorm room from his freshman year, and given that they weren’t sharing with a roommate, Rory felt they were more than comfortable enough for the kids.

  Six homes, one of them large enough for three kids, in a little under a month, while still taking care of other side tasks and educating the teens, was something that Rory had felt proud about as he’d stood outside the final home, hands on his hips with a smile on his face. The kids were taking care of a few ‘chores’ that he’d given them, most of it simple as helping put some of their resources through processors or otherwise just lugging around some of the monster corpses, with the only one doing anything close to remotely dangerous being Irene who had an actual tier, and was thus given directions on how to prepare the first stages of making some more gems that Rory couldn’t be bothered to do himself.

  Basking in his work, he was alerted to Apostolos approaching him, walking down the main road. It was nothing more than a well-trod path that wound between each home and the entrance, but Rory had plans to make it into a real road at some point in the future.

  “Feeling proud of yourself?”

  “You could say that,” Rory said with a half-smile. “Far from the most difficult thing I’ve done or made, but it's not often you get a chance to work on something quite as… down to earth as just building some homes from scratch.”

  “Heh, finally flexing that Architect title?”

  “I guess so,” Rory chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. That was the other reason he’d been able to build them so quickly and efficiently, even as a generally one-man team. Years ago, he’d picked up a basic architecture skill that had surprisingly not been packaged with the vocation of Architect of the Precursors.

  “So, now what? Surely, you still have a billion other things to work on.”

  “I do, but I was thinking about taking a week break to reassess some of my general times and…” Rory’s words petered out as Apostolos raised an eyebrow at him.

  “Something wrong?”

  “I just got a notification,” Rory said confused, cocking his own eyebrows upward.

  “Well, what is it?”

  “Hold your horses.” Mentally clicking on it, Rory began to read out loud. “It says here that-”

  “Says what?”

  Staring at the notification and accompanying screens, Rory frowned, thoughts turning to his greatest ‘creation,’ Eon.

  “Says what?” Apostolos repeated.

  Finally, exhaling, Rory shook his head, not even bothering to acknowledge Apostolos’s question.

  “Oh, you conniving son of a bitch.”