Myself and all the other men in my family were pumped up and ready to go, full of anger, rage, sadness, and every other emotion that could possibly be intertwined with something like this.

  Though that obviously didn’t mean we had to be stupid, especially me. They didn’t know what the situation was like outside of the dungeon. They didn’t know that an entire group of red people and one lava person was guarding the entrance of the dungeon. They didn’t know what I did, that I’m the one who killed them, and I’m not dumb enough to think that all the noise I made activating Ocean’s Maw wouldn’t have gathered the type of attention I didn’t want.

  The best case scenario is that a similar force as the one I was met with was standing guard again, but that was best case. Worst case, or better yet the most likely case, was that instead of the normal red people there was an entire group of the lava ones. I was strong, yes, but I wasn’t some over powered monster.

  Even though I had a limit, and if too many of them showed up, thousands of them like how it was described by the refugees, then that would be an even bigger problem.

  So I explained that in detail to my father and uncles, to not just run out the second we exit the dungeon but to be ready for a battle no matter what is waiting for us and that I would attack first immediately.

  As they always say, it’s best to shoot first and ask questions later, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

  Once we were ready to go, my mother and the others saw us off, thankfully without any tears or fanfare. Grandpa was still unconscious, so there was that, but what we received from them were looks of determination, which was appreciated. Then we left.

  And I did my best not to think about the sight of the only person who didn’t necessarily wish us off.

  Aunt Renee.

  But I did not blame her. She had just lost her husband. She was far too distraught to stand up and give us any type of motivation. That was her best friend, someone she planned to spend the rest of her life with, to grow old with, to raise their kids with, to be happy with, to be sad with, to be angry with, to just exist with. Yet he was gone, and he wasn’t coming back.

  But while I cannot bring him back or Uncle Grant, I can at least make sure the people who did it bleed. And not just them, but just like the oath I swore about those crabs, these red bastards will feel the same thing. Wherever they are, wherever they come from, I will find them, and they will bleed.

  A few moments later we reappeared outside the dungeon, and lo and behold our welcome party awaited us. And unfortunately for us, it wasn’t the best case scenario. About fifty, maybe more give or take, of those lava bastards in their beautiful obsidian scale armor, men and women alike, stood there on guard.

  A few of them were investigating the bodies I left behind, or at least what remained of them. When I showed up with my father and uncles, every single head snapped in our direction, and unlike the smirk the very first one ever showed me or the visage of indifference that the lava woman whose body lay not too far from the entrance gave me upon my approach, I didn’t see that here.

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  I saw a few different things. Anger. Rage. Seriousness. But no more indifference. No more nonchalant attitudes. No more arrogant smirks. And for some reason that made me upset. How dare they get angry? We did not attack them.

  We were just living our lives, going about life how we saw it and dealing with our regular earthly problems, yet they forced this integration on us, and I do mean force. I didn’t forget those messages that popped up across all our faces on day one of this happening

  . And on top of forcing the integration on us, they immediately tried to subjugate us, and it wasn’t like there was ever a discussion or negotiation, or at least none that I was privy to. But my first interactions with them, they tried to kill us, destroyed the boat named after my grandma, and then continued to try to kill us every day after that.

  And now they dare show rage…fucking bitches.

  “Crushing Descent.”

  Once again, a large chunk of my mana left my body and blended in with the surroundings before becoming gravity itself and pressing down on all the lava people gathered before me.

  Only this time I felt a strain that I didn’t know existed, as if forcing all of these people to their knees, or at least attempting to, required far more effort than the first time I used the skill. I don’t know if that meant the more resistance the skill faced, the more strain I would feel, but there was no time for me to think about that.

  Not a single one of them was on their knees, even though this greater pressure was upon them.

  I yelled out to my family, “Run! Get back to the compound and buy the book!”

  None of them wanted to leave. I could tell that easily, but this wasn’t a place to have an all-out brawl, not like this.

  “Run! Right fucking now! Run!”

  Yelling at my dad and uncles like this would have been a guaranteed death sentence not that long ago, but desperate times call for desperate measures. And hearing the gravity in my voice, they seemed to get the picture and took off running.

  And just as they did, I could see small bubbles of lava gathering around some of the people here.

  It was apparently hard for them to move, as all of them were still fighting against the use of my skill as more and more of my mana drained, separate from the first chunk that left. But it appeared that didn’t mean they couldn’t use their abilities.

  Only a couple of seconds passed since my dad and uncles started running. With how much stronger we are than regular humans, those couple of seconds was a long time, and they had already moved some distance away, so I took off running too.

  But there was a problem with that. Crushing Descent wasn’t something that just stayed exactly where I applied it. It followed me. And actually, I couldn’t help but notice the fact that it didn’t affect my father or my uncles. Is that something I did unconsciously, or did the skill know who was friend and who was foe? That will take some more experimentation, but again, not right now.

  As much as I wanted to hit them all with a devastating Ocean’s Maw, I know for a fact I wouldn’t have been able to kill all of them, and I would have been far more exposed than I would have liked after using the skill.

  Now everything after that happened kind of fast.

  Eventually, I had to turn off the skill without claiming a single life that was there before me, but that was all right. I wanted to kill them. I will kill them. But still, that didn’t mean to be stupid.

  Anyway, after Crushing Descent was deactivated, the amount of lava that I saw being gathered behind me was enough to make my heart skip a beat, and not in any romantic sort of way. It just didn’t make sense. It looked like two volcanoes erupting, but instead of a geyser like eruption, they were all working together to make a big lava ball.

  Then they threw it.

  Shit.