System Change

Silvi stared in front of her at where her portal used to be. It had closed before Derek could make it out. What could she do? Was he even still alive? Question after question poured through her mind as she stared into the distance in front of her.

Derek had saved Allison and Gerard, but he may have sacrificed himself in the process. No, he didn’t sacrifice himself. This was her fault. As Silvi thought of the implications of one of the strongest people on Earth being done in by a portal… by her portal… she shook her head as tears began to build up in her eyes.

Gerard placed his hand on her shoulder. “Is there anything you can do? Maybe he didn’t actually go inside, and he is still battling on the other side. I would be money he could take on every one of those invaders and still come out alive.”

“No…” Silvi sniffed. “He made it inside the portal, but it closed just before he came out. He’s stuck there, alone… if he is even alive.”

Silvi stayed in the exact same spot for over half an hour, enough time for her mana pool to regenerate enough to open another portal. She had a vain hope that when she opened it, Derek would be waiting, and he would just hop right out.

Allison hadn’t spoken a word since she came to the realization that John was gone and never coming back. It would have been hard enough for her to lose Andrea, who was one of her best friends in the world, or to lose John, who she had been with since before the system came, but to lose both her best friend and her boyfriend at the same time… Silvi didn’t know if the girl would ever be okay.

Finally, Silvi had enough mana to use Portal and keep it open for a short time. She stood and wipe at the tear marks imprinted on her face before focusing ahead. In the same exact spot she had previously erected a portal, she summoned a new one.

The portal begin to take form. Wisps of purple mana exploded out as an inky black interior formed inside the portal. She even connected it to the same place it had been connected to before. Damn the consequences if an invader traveled through it.

Silvi waited, but felt nothing. There was no one inside. All the hope she had drained out of her as she realized the truth. Derek Hunt, one of the strongest users on the entire Earth, was gone. He was gone, and it was all her fault.

Silvi disconnected her mana from the portal, and it blinked out of existence. She fell back to her knees with her face in her hands, and she cried. After heaven knows how long, Gerard placed his hand on her shoulder once again.

“There is nothing we can do about it. He saved both Ali and my life. Our lives may not be worth nearly as much as his was, but we can live, so his sacrifice was not in vain. First, we need to go back and report what happened. After that, we will figure it all out.”

Gerard was right, of course. They couldn’t bring Derek back, but they could grow stronger, so something like this never happens again. Silvi wiped the newly formed fresh tears off her face and stood. She turned and looked in the direction of the city. Gerard bent down and picked the unconscious Allison up of the grown.

Silvi looked over at Gerard. He was her protector before the system came, and even now, after the rest of her family was gone and he was no longer being paid to do so, he stayed. She relied too much on the man, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. She gave him a sad smile. “Let’s go.” With that, the broken team made their silent journey back to the city, back to report what had happened, what she had done.

***

Nothing went as planned for Silvi and her broken team. Once the rumors spread, nobody would allow her to join their team. She was considered bad luck, and nobody would have her. Gerard stayed by her side, never wavering, not even when tempted with fantastic offers.

Allison never recovered from the loss of John and Andrea. Not long after they got back, she vanished without a word. Both Gerard and Silvi did everything they could to find her, but they couldn’t. She was gone.

Eventually, an entire year after Derek’s disappearance, Silvi came to terms with her reality. Both she and Gerard had been ostracized by all other adventuring teams, and couldn’t even make a small team with enough people to take a mission. They even moved cities in the hope that they wouldn’t be recognized, but the rumors had spread far and wide.

They couldn’t take on missions, and they weren’t confident enough to level safely with just the two of them. Eventually, they went back to Charlotte.

Silvi spent much of her time researching Portal, the skill that had been the undoing of Derek Hunt. When she discovered the disaster that was called the Void Beast, that the skill could cause, she almost fainted. If she had done the research before, she would have never picked the skill, and none of the terrible things would have ever happened.

She once again fell into a depressive spiral. Everyone in the entire city was lucky to be alive. She had almost gotten an untold number of people killed, all because she didn’t read instructions. Instructions that were provided at an extremely low cost through the system store.

Finally, she gave up. There was no joy left in her life. She couldn’t hunt, she couldn’t do missions, she was a useless person. She tried time and time again to send Gerard on his way, but he would still not leave her. She was a rotting limb that he refused to amputate.

Eventually, she came across an old closed down bar and gathered what scrap she could and, using her remaining system credits; she bought the place and turned it into one of the most mediocre bars in the city.

There, she spent her days like a robot. Mechanically repeating the same actions over and over. Serve drink, wipe counter, clean glass… Over and over, the days past. This was her punishment. Infinite amounts of wondrous abilities, numerous planets that would one day be open for Earthling to explore, and she was relegated to a bartender. A bartender in a dying bar because as adventurers grew stronger, so too did their tolerance for alcohol.

She wondered when she would end up out on the street. But at least she still had Gerard.

***

A bit over a year later…

Silvi stood staring at the door as it closed behind the mysterious man. He had said that Derek was still alive, which meant she hadn’t killed him. A light that hadn’t shown in ages returned to her eyes as she played through everything the man named Kelvin had said over and over.

She had given up before, but now, now that she knew Derek was alive. Where and how he was alive, she didn’t know, but he was. That man was strong. There was no point in him lying about anything.

Silvi turned to Gerard, and for the first time in a long time, she smiled. Gerald let out what could only be considered a sigh of relief when he saw her.

“He’s alive,” she said, and she couldn’t hide her smile.

“It sounds like that,” Gerard answered.

“We need to go.”

“What?” Gerard asked, confused.

“We have to get stronger. The introduction is over, but there are the post introduction bonuses we may still be able to claim. I’m not staying at this bar for one second longer.”

Gerard smiled. “Okay. Let me gather my things.”