Marel could not help but hold his mouth in a state of intense shock and fear, his entire body frozen as if turned to stone. His pupils constricted to pin-like sizes—so small they should have hurt, the muscles in his eyes straining beyond their normal limits.
He let out a series of deep breathing, rapid and shallow, his chest heaving as his mind struggled desperately to accept the intensity of what he had just seen.
And in truth, who would be able to easily accept such a thing?
Seeing a knife materialize out of thin air, summoned from nothingness itself as if reality were merely a suggestion, was not something one would easily be able to ignore or rationalize away. Not to talk about the fact of what his brother—Len Fang—had just told him about the apocalypse, about monsters and death and the end of everything he knew.
The two impossibilities together created a truth too terrible to deny.
Len Fang stared at the rapidly breathing Marel with concern and understanding, and with a shimmer of that same golden light, the knife which was in his palms disappeared as suddenly as it had come, vanishing back into whatever impossible space it had emerged from.
Then, with a slight grunt of effort, he stood up from the chair and walked up to Marel with purposeful strides, and grabbed his hands firmly, grounding him with physical contact.
"You don't need to fear, okay! You just need to follow what I told you, okay?" His voice came out strong and clear, piercing through the haze that had seemed to cloud this youth's mind like a fog.
Marel, with his black and short hair now slightly disheveled from his panic, nodded quickly in compliance, his reaction deeply showing his honesty and trust despite his terror.
Then Len Fang patted his back reassuringly, a gesture meant to comfort, before turning and beginning to walk toward the black bag which was positioned just at the side of the chair where he'd been sitting.
In truth, this entire showcase of power Len Fang has shown just now had cost him something, because now he had a small debt to pay to the system—a price extracted for using its functions.
But compared to the grand plan and what was coming in just a few hours, it was small. Worth it to ensure Marel's cooperation and belief.
In truth, Len Fang had not known that the system had appeared with him, traveling and traversing through the River of Time when he regressed, and so he was naturally shocked when he discovered it out yesterday night after returning from the warehouse.
It had simply been there, waiting, its interface appearing before him as if nothing had happened.
The system gave him the basic function of any system which was the inventory—a spatial storage that allowed one to store things into it, as far as they could fit the space within it, which seemed to be roughly the size of a small room.
And this was where Len Fang had put many of the foodstuffs as well as some weapons for sneak attacks and emergency use.
Because one, not only were the food products in a suspended state of time when stored, frozen in the moment they were placed inside, they also stayed very much in their prime and pristine state when in the inventory, completely sorting out the trouble of spoilage of food which had heavily plagued survivors in the early stages of the apocalypse.
People had starved not from lack of food initially, but from rapid spoilage without refrigeration or preservation methods.
Also, Len Fang knew something important about the system that most people wouldn't discover for days: the system wasn't one that instantly came down to everyone as soon as the apocalypse began, like many shows or novels would depict.
But rather, it came after the very first event, after the initial monster wave, introducing the concept of cultivation as well as leveling to those who survived long enough to see it.
Cultivation and leveling? Well, that was a topic for another day! Right now, survival was all that mattered.
Soon enough, Marel had completely calmed down, his breathing exercises working to center himself. His brown eyes were now back to their normal size, no longer constricted in fear, as his breathing and heart beat had gone back to something approaching normal rhythm.
Meanwhile, Len Fang had gone to put the black bag into his inventory, the outline of a bag taking shape in the golden shimmer before vanishing completely, stored safely in that impossible space.
"Now we need to wait for it to begin, okay?" Len Fang suddenly spoke, turning back to face his brother.
Marel nodded in agreement, his throat too tight to speak.
Then Marel finally found his voice again, the question that had been burning in his mind finally emerging.
"So Len... how do... how do you know all this?" Marel spoke, his voice letting out a hint of curiosity mixed with desperate need to understand.
Len Fang sighed deeply, a sound that carried the weight of sixteen years of suffering, and told him the truth about all of it.
About the apocalypse that had come. About twenty years of struggling to survive. About watching everyone die. About finding the Time Stone. About regression and the River of Time.
And with each sentence completed, Marel's mouth widened even more in shock and disbelief and growing horror.
"You... you lived through all of that?" Marel's voice was barely a whisper when Len Fang finally finished.
"For sixteen years," Len Fang confirmed quietly. "Every day was a fight. Every moment was suffering."
"And its true?" Marel's voice cracked.
Marel was silent for a long moment, processing the impossible truth, before finally nodding with new understanding and determination in his eyes.
"Then we'll survive together," he said simply.
Len Fang smiled, genuine warmth breaking through his serious expression. "Yes. Together."
Then they waited, the minutes crawling by with agonizing slowness as the clock on the wall ticked toward noon.
Len Fang periodically checked his watch, counting down the seconds until the world would end.
11:45 AM.
11:50 AM.
11:55 AM.
The apartment was silent except for their breathing and the distant sounds of the city going about its normal day, completely unaware.
Then, at exactly 12:00 PM, suddenly the sky began to darken outside the barricaded windows.
The change was rapid, unnatural—the bright afternoon sun dimming as if a switch had been flipped, as if something massive was eclipsing it.
The air began to change, growing heavy and oppressive, pressure building like before a massive storm.
Len Fang could hear the voices of others in the apartment building beginning to notice, confusion and concern spreading through the walls.
"What's happening to the sky?"
"Is this some kind of eclipse?"
"Why does the air feel so wrong?"
Marel stood up from his seat, moving toward the window instinctively, but Len Fang grabbed his arm.
"Stay away from the windows," he commanded sharply. "It's starting."
Then suddenly, a voice—mechanical yet somehow alive, speaking directly into their minds rather than their ears—cut through everything.
It was the voice of the system, but not Len Fang's personal system. This was something far larger, far more powerful.
The World System.
[ SYSTEM INITIALIZING... ]
The words appeared in glowing letters before everyone's eyes, visible to every human on Earth simultaneously.
[ FULL ACTIVATION HAS BEGUN ]
[ WELCOME TO THE NEW AGE ]
[ INTEGRATION COMMENCING ]
Outside, visible even through the gaps in Len Fang's barricades, the sky began to break.
Not metaphorically. Literally break.
Cracks appeared in the fabric of reality itself, spreading across the crimson sky like fractures in glass, glowing with sickly green and purple light.
Then the cracks widened, tearing open into rifts—dimensional gates that violated every law of physics and reason.
From these rifts, things began to emerge and fall.
Len Fang pressed his face closer to the gap in his barricade, watching with grim familiarity as the nightmare began.
He could see goblins falling from the sky like grotesque rain—small, twisted creatures with green skin and yellow eyes, their bodies hitting the pavement stories below with sickening wet sounds.
Many were destroyed on impact, their bodies not built to survive such falls, painting the streets red and green with their blood.
But not all fell from the sky.
Even as goblins plummeted from above, Len Fang could see other rifts forming at ground level, tears in reality appearing in alleyways and streets and inside buildings.
From these ground-level rifts, kobolds began to emerge—small reptilian humanoids with scales and crude weapons, more organized than the goblins, forming into immediate hunting packs.
The screaming started almost immediately.
People who had been standing in the streets, looking up at the darkened sky in confusion, suddenly found themselves face to face with monsters.
"Oh God! Oh God, what is that?!"
"HELP! SOMEONE HELP ME!"
"It's eating him! IT'S EATING HIM!"
The sounds of chaos erupted throughout the city—screams of terror, the shattering of glass, the roar of monsters, the crunch of teeth on flesh.
Len Fang watched it all with hard eyes, his expression grim but unsurprised. He had seen this before. He had lived through this horror.
But beside him, Marel had gone pale, his hands shaking as he stared at the apocalypse unfolding before his eyes.
"This is real," Marel whispered, his voice hollow with shock. "This is really happening."
"Yes," Len Fang confirmed quietly. "And it's only going to get worse."
More rifts were opening now, spreading across the city like a plague. The sky was filled with them, portals to places that should not exist, vomiting forth an endless tide of monsters.
Goblins. Kobolds. And soon, worse things would come.
The apocalypse had begun.
And this time, Len Fang would be ready.