When he'd had enough of feeling sorry for himself, John sat up and took stock of his situation. Mana Sense told him there were monsters in the area, but nothing particularly close by and, most importantly, the bulk of the pack that had been chasing him was nowhere to be found. Through his amazing deductive abilities, he came to the startling conclusion that moving around outside at the apocalyptic equivalent of nighttime wasn't such a good idea, and decided his best bet was to wait the night out in whatever house he now found himself in.

After double-, triple-, and quadruple-checking it was safe, he made his way out of the bathroom and went exploring. Ninja kicked in, directing him on how to keep to the shadows and remain unseen. He indulged it, despite his Mana Sense telling him there was nothing nearby. Forming the habit could only be a good thing.

The house turned out to be the largest he'd been inside in his life. It was better described as a mansion. Even the bathroom he'd hidden in was larger than his childhood bedroom. With multiple expensive-looking cars in the drive and a huge door that was probably meant to slide open, but had been battered so hard it had split in two and crashed to the ground, the place had probably had cost more than he would have earned in his lifetime. The door was so heavy it had left a dent in the marble floor.

The sight of a broken-down front door seemed to be a very common one. John paused, wondering about that. Had the monsters gone from house to house, breaking in and taking the occupants off guard? It had a coordinated, guided feel to it. Routine, almost. Like the forces of hell had been unleashed on the world, but this wasn't their first time bringing the end to a planet.

The patrol-like monster movements going on now would fit with that theory, he thought with a grimace.

Boasting seven massive bedrooms, whose smallest was bigger than the upper floor of his childhood home, a swimming pool, a games room, and a home cinema, it was the fanciest private residence he'd ever stepped foot in. He found himself wondering about the people who'd lived here, and how they'd accumulated such wealth.

But he didn't linger on that for long. Instead, he found his way to a half-opened safe room attached to the master bedroom, multiple blood stains pooling around its entrance. The door was a good foot thick slab of metal. The outer face of it was painted to blend seamlessly into the wall. It probably would have protected them, if they'd managed to get inside.

The safe room itself contained a wall of monitors showing various angles of the house's exterior, as well as some of its rooms. Bunk beds and a toilet rested at the other end of the room, with storage boxes filled with supplies lining the area between. The walls were covered in sound proofing, save for spaces left aside for a large TV and what appeared to be a comms unit.

Only after John had managed to secure the door to his satisfaction did he consider spending any time in here. Once that was done, he considered what to do next. His watch read 8:12PM.

Upgrading his stats with his Aura had healed him and wiped away some of his physical fatigue earlier, but there was more to tiredness than the physical. For more than six hours now, he'd been rushing through a situation that went miles beyond stressful, and the last hour especially had been an ordeal. It turned out that the literal end of the world was quite exhausting. On the mind, as well as the body.

Part of him screamed that he needed to get out there and grind more. He was going to have to gain tens of thousands of Aura points if he wanted to have any hope of surviving this apocalyptical trial. Every moment he wasn't gaining strength was a waste. The heightened danger of the stronger monsters was just another obstacle to be overcome, and the best way to never have to feel like he had during that chase again was to become powerful enough that he didn't have to worry about rampaging beasts at all.

Another part knew he couldn't keep going like that indefinitely. That way led to burnout. Burnout led to mistakes. When facing murderous monsters, mistakes led to death.

The truth was, he was a perpetual shut in who'd never been subjected to anything like this before. Today had marked his first real fight. He still hadn't really processed the things he'd seen, or the implications of all that was happening. A few hours to rest seemed like a good idea.

And besides, he was pretty sure he'd have a goddamn heart attack if he went back out there right now. He needed to decompress, relax, and recharge.

Searching through the storage boxes only turned up essential supplies like first aid boxes and whatnot. Not what he was looking for. His disappointment only lasted until he switched on the TV and realised it was connected to a media centre of some kind, and it had hundreds of movies stored on it.

A few seconds of scrolling through menus yielded what he was looking for, and he breathed a sigh of relief so long it left him feeling like a deflated balloon.

One of his happiest childhood memories was of his seventh birthday. Mum and Dad had arranged for a day out at the cinema with his 'friends' from his Year 2 school class, and he'd initially approached it with dread. He hadn't had the heart to tell his parents that none of the kids they'd invited liked him. It was too embarrassing.

To his surprise, they'd been nice. Whether they'd been instructed by their parents to behave or simply appreciated a trip to the cinema didn't matter, no one was mean to him that day, and his school life improved for a long while after.

Monsters vs Aliens wasn't the greatest film ever, but it had become something of a comfort for him, since then. As a kid, he'd watched it dozens of times, wanting to relive that memory. He'd grown out of the repeated rewatches later, but it was still his go-to film to fall asleep to, just because he knew it so well it could fade to background noise. It was like a lullaby, lame as that sounded.

Time passed. He listened to the familiar words. He could've mimed along to them, but figured that would cause an instant Aura deduction. No badass superhero had the dialogue of a kids' movie memorised.

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Its effects were mitigated today, anyway. He found himself staring up at the upper bunk bed, thoughts swirling, and found he could barely even follow along the familiar story. No matter how he tried to block it all out, the turmoil in his mind wouldn't rest. How could it? Few people could settle into a zen state when the world was ending at the hands of bloodthirsty monsters. And John wasn't one of them.

But he could cheat. That was one thing he could do.

Rest unlocked!

-200 Aura.

Now seemed a good a time as any to find out what the Level 0 Spell did. Mana flared, zapping some more info into his mind, as usual containing only the instructions on how to activate the spell and not precisely what it did. Simply enough, he just had to get comfortable, close his eyes, and think: Rest.

Warmth radiated outwards from his mana sphere in soothing waves that matched his heartbeat. Soon it suffused him, lulling his body into a Zen state of relaxation. John's body slipped into nirvana, and he offered no resistance as oblivion reached up to claim his mind.

For a while, he was keenly aware of his own soul. Blue as the sky on a summer day, it mimicked the shape of his body. Within it, he could see areas that were somewhat fuller than the rest. His brain. The sphere in his navel. Much of his musculature. These were what the places the Aura system had enhanced, he reckoned.

It took him way too long to realise he could stand up in this place, directly taking control of his soul like it was his own body. There wasn't much to see, though. Just the void and his body.

Looking down at himself was a surreal experience. Especially since his body seemed to be experiencing time much faster than his current consciousness was. His chest rose and fell multiple times a second. His face twitched rapidly in the throes of sleep. He rocked from side to side constantly, his movements jerky like he'd been put on fast-forward. Weirdest was the prismatic cloud around his head displaying vague images, like a 3D movie projected through hazy smoke.

If he focused, John could see the dreams his body was experiencing. He didn't really need to. These dreams were nothing new to him.

John stood next to his body for a long time, watching it, trying to process the day. Somehow, he knew the Aura system wouldn't be watching him here, in this place that wasn't a place. It was a world only for him. The inner sanctum of his mind.

And so he screamed. Voiceless, he screamed and screamed and screamed with a throat that would never go raw no matter how long he spent raging and despairing at the unfairness of the world. Without tear ducts, he cried for all the people who'd been slaughtered for nothing. Alone and bodyless, he hugged himself, desperate for any tiny bit of comfort he could find when the world had gone completely insane, and he was forced to be insane along with it if he wanted to survive.

All he wanted to do was live a quiet life away from other people. Video games were enough to pass the time, and the guys he played occasionally were all the company he needed. Other people, with a few exceptions, had only ever hurt him. He was fine alone.

It was only inevitable that the one day he'd been outside—travelled all the way into London, even—had seen the apocalypse arrive. He should've just found a house in the middle of nowhere and stayed there. The hermit life seemed good to him.

But no. Not only was the world ending, but his best chance of survival was to go out and act like some gigachad superhero badass. It was only inevitable that he was going to have to do it in front of other people. He'd avoided it so far, but there was no way he could keep that streak going forever. There would be other survivors out there, and he would act like a goddamn tool in front of them, and he'd fuck it up a bunch of times because talking to other human beings normally was beyond him, let alone being charismatic.

Fuck, he was going to have to grind so much Aura to offset it.

John couldn't hope to guess how long he spent silently raging. The Aura system would have surely deducted a million points if it could see how he'd just acted. It was cathartic, at least.

But Rest didn't last forever. A good thing, nominally. The waves of warmth massaging his soul started to recede, gradually drawing back into the mana sphere in his navel. As it did, he felt his connection with his body reestablish.

Tingly sensation returned to his extremities bit by bit, and soon his eyes opened to a world where his body had gone through the best night's sleep it had had in years. He'd turned on his side, facing the wall. The movie had finished, and the TV had gone into standby mode. His watch read 10:17PM. He hadn't thought to check the time before activating the spell, but 8:17PM felt about right for when he'd gone under, and so he mentally labelled Rest as providing two hours of good sleep. That was about a quarter of the recommended time, and he felt good.

Turning over, John slipped out of bed and stretched himself out. Thinking about it, Rest wasn't actually ideal in this scenario, because now he had to wait hours until sunrise with nothing really to do.

Or so he thought.

The moment he saw the scenes unfolding on the wall of security monitors, he froze, eyes widening.

"Where the fuck did all you come from?" he whispered, suddenly filled with dread for more than one reason.

Three people crouched behind the bar in the house's games room, and it seemed they were experiencing their very own horror movie in real life. Two girls and one guy, all kitted out with a wide variety of armour ranging from sporting gear to medieval shit that looked like it should've been in a museum.

The guy was built like a brick shithouse, but the camera picked up on his wide-eyed terror beneath his modern army helmet as he clutched a spiked mace close to his hockey keeper's body armour. One of the girls was a small, mousy thing, but her eyes were hard, and the full suit of medieval armour combined with the machete made her look like a force to be reckoned with. The other girl was taller, her face partially concealed by a motorcycle helmet, and she wielded a legit-looking crossbow while decked out in a chainmail overcoat thing that went halfway down her thighs with thick trousers beneath.

He didn't know whether to be more frightened of them or what they were clearly hiding from.

The monster stalking around the games room was relatively mundane, compared to some of the shit out there, but that didn't mean a giant centipede with glowing red eyes wasn't terrifying. That would have been bad enough on its own. But he could see other, stranger things moving around on the other cameras. The eyeball from earlier stood at the end of a long corridor, staring through the window into the world beyond. A skeletal monkey creature hopped through a hallway. Something glittery made a camera labelled 'bedroom 2' distort with lens flares. A gaseous red cloud lingered in the kitchen. Outside, a giant stick bug monster like the one he'd avoided earlier scratched at the back door with its face.

There was even, to his fury, one lingering outside the door of the safe room, staring right at it. The monster looked like a tattered black sheet had been thrown over an emaciated man who could float in the air, its face hooded. It seemed to sway in an unseen wind.

"You assholes," he growled. "You fucking pieces of shit."

They'd brought an entire pack of monsters to his hiding place.

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