“NOAH ARE YOU OKAY?!”

That was all he heard before Noah slipped into the dark, inky, blackness of unconsciousness.

While he was passed out, Noah dreamt of a war. A war where he, by his lonesome was standing up against a whole army numbering in the millions yet, he wasn’t losing. He cast spells repeatedly as if he had an infinite mana pool to draw form, he cast a fireball the size of a two-story house that decimated the enemy by the thousands. He cast tornadoes that wreaked havoc on the enemy formations. He cast an ice wall akin to the great wall of China that forced the enemy army to funnel in from a limited number of points where he cast massive firestorms and lightning strikes.

He felt like a God among mere mortals, invincible and yet, he felt that he was missing something. That’s right the blue marble, the pseudo-planet that popped out of nowhere and came into his hands. He summoned it and out came an army of his own, an army composed of humans and beasts of all shapes and sizes. But then he heard something “Noah!” he looked around but found no one who was calling out to him, as if on cue, he felt something shake, it started with his vision but he then felt the earth beneath his feet quake “NOAH! WAKE UP!”

Noah woke up with a start and immediately sat up to see Mark struggling on the ground with a wolf on top of him trying to bite his head off. “Mark what the fuck is happening?!” Noah said as he blinked repeatedly, his newly woken up brain still processing what was going on.

“NO TIME TO EXPLAIN, GET THIS WOLF OFF OF ME” Mark shouted back at the top of his lungs

“OKAY, OKAY. FIREBALL!” Noah hurriedly tried to cast the fireball spell but nothing happened except a small spark that petered out and disappeared as soon as it came. ”WHAT THE FUCK”

“THIS ISN’T THE TIME TO FIGURE OUT YOUR POWERS JUST KICK IT OFF AND SMASH ITS HEAD IN” Mark screamed

Noah hurriedly got up and kicked the wolf off of his cousin and continued kicking its head in, a moment later Mark got up and joined in on the beatdown. Blood and brains flew as they kicked and grunted, not stopping until both were entirely sure that it was dead.

Noah and Mark both stopped mid-stomp when the notification appeared in their vision. They were breathing heavily after having beaten the poor wolf when Noah said “Mind explaining what just happ…” he didn’t get to finish what he was saying when another notification appeared in his vision.

Noah and Mark looked at each other as if to confirm that they were seeing the same thing, they both nodded with a tacit agreement to discuss later after viewing their statuses. After that, they practically said at the same time “Status”

“Okay my intelligence and regeneration are through the roof! I’m really well and truly made to be a mage, no doubt about it. But I wonder why I couldn’t conjure that fireball earlier hmmm, let’s try this then”

“Skills”

“I guess that answers that question, although I have the manipulation skill, I don’t have the fireball skill itself so I still need to discover how to do it myself, how hard can it possibly be?”

Noah activated the fire manipulation spell and conjured a flame on his hand the size of a flame from a small lighter, he checked his mana pool and saw that it decreased by one point. He tried imagining and projecting his will on the flame, mentally telling it to form into a ball shape, it worked and waited but no notification came. “Okay how about I increase the amount of mana going into the ball” and he did just that, he gradually increased the amount of mana, constantly checking his mana pool when finally on the tenth point of mana he finally got that oh so sweet notification.

“Cool now that I know how to do that the other basic elemental spells should be a breeze”

Noah was just about to continue tinkering with spells when he remembered that they just killed a wolf that somehow got inside of the apartment building. He looked to his cousin and started speaking “So Mark what uhh, happened back there? How did that wolf even get in here? I didn’t even know that there were wolves in this part of the world”

“Beats me” Mark said with a shrug “I was just watching over you while you were asleep because I was worried, that’s when I heard scratching at the door, I opened to check what was making all the noise when that wolf just pounced on me, the rest of the story you can pretty much fill in yourself since you were awake at the time.”

“How long was I out anyway?

“Around 3hrs total I guess? I’m just going off how long it felt because the phones stopped working after that whole ordeal earlier and I don’t have a watch”

Noah hurriedly checked his phone and sure enough it wouldn’t turn on. Then he noticed that despite the bright moonlight coming in from the window the light fixtures in the room were all off “So I’m guessing the electricity is out too?”

“Yup, pretty much anything electrical looks like. Probably because of the whole, I don’t know, the FUCKING apocalypse” Mark said with an annoyed yet tired sigh “I was supposed to be a doctor you know, well I guess I became the next best thing, I got a healer class out of all that, an uncommon version of it anyway. That’s what I was going to say when you asked before we were rudely interrupted by that blue marble that popped out of nowhere. What was that anyway?”

Noah thought about what he was going to say, could he just come out and say that he’s now the proud owner of a whole pseudo-planet. What was he going to do with a planet anyway? Throw it at people? He vaguely remembered his dream where his very own army came out of the small marble but was that even possible? Was it all just a dream, or was it something more? In a world of magic, anything was possible so maybe that really was a dream about the possible future. “Fuck it, I’ll just come clean, he’s family after all and if you can’t trust family, who can you trust?”

“Well, it’s kind of complicated but basically, I’m now the owner of a whole planet… ehem… pseudo-planet to be exact. That’s what that blue marble was anyway, still don’t know how it works or what I can even do with it. I was a bit busy absorbing the information that, we just saw the world end, expand and got classes then I passed out so I didn’t really have the time to examine it any closer.”

“True, too much has happened today” Mark said incredulously “But still, a whole planet huh… wonder what else is possible in this new world”

“Yeah, but first, let’s make sure the main entrance down stairs is closed before we discuss more so that we won’t wake up tomorrow to some random beast knocking on our doors again.”

Noah and Mark went down the stairs and made sure that all entrances whether it be doors or windows were all closed and locked before they went back up to the tenth floor and chose the room furthest from the stairs. They pulled two chairs in front of each other then sat down.

“Okay, let’s lay everything out and summarize so we can decide on our priorities. First, the apocalypse, we’ve apparently got an alien invasion from some “Old Gods” but the system or whatever it’s called contained the invasion gates and turned them into dungeons so it might be safe to say that the System is on our side or at the very least, on the opposite side of the Old Gods. Then the Earth transformed because of the mana core activation thing. Then we received classes, I got the EPIC rated class Elementalist by the way and can pretty much manipulate the 4 elements like in Avatar but I have to discover the specific spells before I can cast anything, that’s why only a spark came out when I said fireball earlier with the wolf”

“Then you got a planet” Mark said with a smirk, trying to lighten the mood

“Then I got a planet” Noah said with a smug smirk

“Anyway, an EPIC class huh? Guess I’m sticking with you because from my experience with games, a healer can’t really solo anything, especially the apocalypse.” Mark said self-deprecatingly

“Come on don’t say it like that Mark, you’re probably going to save my life one of these days. Remember that wolf had a level? I’m guessing that humans aren’t the only ones that can level up now so having our own healer is going to be MASSIVE for us and our survival.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m just… It’s just so hard to absorb all this…” Mark said with a sigh. He noticed that he’d been sighing a lot lately but what could he do except sigh and accept the situation? At least he has an ally, no, he had family, in this new world where society has collapsed, having someone you can trust with your back was going to be priceless. He could only imagine what kind of atrocities his fellow humans would do to each other now that the old world’s law and order has gone down the drain. “People did some fucked up shit even before the apocalypse, how much more now?”

Noah looked at his cousin sigh for the nth time today and couldn’t help but also sigh. “Come on Mark, I know the world as we knew it is over now but think on the bright side, we’ve got magic now and a new world full of…, yes, it may be filled with dangers but it’s also filled with wonders, wonders we can only imagine.” He said with a bit of hope and a twinkle in his eyes.

Mark chuckled at Noah’s expression and said “Yeah, you’re right. With how random mountains just grew out of the ground around us, we can only imagine how much the rest of the world changed”

“There are probably a new set of places in the world more beautiful than the past seven wonders of the world with how everything is so much… more… now that there’s mana. If games and novels were anything to go by, who knows, maybe there are floating islands out there, can you imagine that?” Noah excitedly said, wanderlust practically oozing from his words

“Woah there cowboy, I completely understand where you’re coming from but I’ve got blood and brains all over me. First, let’s take a bath then turn in for the night and discuss more tomorrow.” Mark said while looking at the blood and bits of brain matter with a disgusted look on his face

Noah glanced at his blood-soaked shoes and pants with distaste and said “Yeah, let’s do that. You go first, I’ll keep watch out here in case some random thing comes and tries to eat us again”

“Good idea, we should probably sleep in the same room too so we can react in a more timely manner if ever the worst happens, anyway I’ll shower first then” Mark went to the bathroom and turned on the shower but nothing happened “Crap”

“Is something the matter Mark?” Noah called out

“Yeah, there’s no running water”

“Crap”