Ican’t believe you were willing to do dungeon runs for parts. It’s perfect. Thank you, Matt.” Was this the first thank-you that Lucy gave to Matt? No. But did it move him? Yes.

Matt and Lucy were relaxing on top of the bunker, enjoying the view to the extent they could. It had taken time to excavate the thing, and eventually, Matt had even tunneled underneath it. That was a pretty dumb idea. It seemed smart at the time though.

Every so many shovelfuls of dirt, he’d look at the system screens to see how much it would cost to move the thing. It was still prohibitively expensive, and Matt’s labor was free. But it was cheaper than before, going from the “probably never” category to the “maybe someday” category. Plus, Lucy had an absolute blast ordering Matt around for the week.

Matt didn’t mind being ordered around. Making a death-maze with Lucy was oddly like giving a kid a horsey ride. She had fun directing him and he had fun being directed, especially since it was also a nice change of pace. It was wholesome, non-lethal-for-now fun. It was great.

“We have to do those dungeons anyways. Pretty soon, we’ll be ready to challenge higher-level dungeons. We can always catch up,” Matt said.

“We aren’t on a schedule,” Lucy reminded Matt.

“We aren’t,” Matt repeated.

They sat for a bit, enjoying the world.

“Matt?”

“Yeah?”

“You know my favorite part of the murder-room?”

“What’s that? The rocks?”

“No. It’s that it’s stupid. We will never, ever use this thing for anything. It’s a giant trap for nobody to ever use. And with the door closed, it will last forever.”

“So it’s beautiful, in a dumb way?”

“Yup. It’s my favorite thing on this planet, besides me.”

There was a concept from Earth called “island time,” where on most small islands, the culture had evolved to not care much about scheduled meeting times. If you had a party at six o’clock, people might show up at seven or eight. It wasn’t a big deal. Resting on Gaia was like that. You didn’t need to stop for some predetermined amount of time before moving on, you could just rest however long or short you wanted to, sleep for however long you slept for, and be off the clock. It was probably what retirement felt like and it took some getting used to, but Matt liked it.

After a while, they moved on. The plants didn’t need much tending, but they had been away for a while and they were probably at least thirsty by now. They were about halfway home before they spotted the weird light.

“Matt, what in the hell is that?” There was a bright, visible glow coming from the direction of the estate. It looked like their house was on fire, with the exceptions that normal fire didn’t burn blue and there wasn’t nearly enough flammable material on their property to make a light that bright.

“No idea. Should we check it out?” Matt hesitated.

“I have no idea if it’s dangerous. We might …” Lucy’s thought was cut off as the light suddenly flared and spread, snapping outwards to cover twice the area it had before. Then, the light flattened somehow, hugging the ground as it raced outwards at an alarming pace. Both Matt and Lucy flinched as it washed over them, still flattening and accelerating outwards. As it reached a paper thin layer, the light suddenly organized itself into various lines, curls, and whorls, covering the ground in a complex and almost artistic pattern.

“That’s pretty,” Matt observed mindlessly.

“Yes, very pretty. Matt, those are runes. This is one big-ass enchantment. I have no idea how it’s lasted this long. Anything that the Gaians left running should have fizzled out a long time ago.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“It depends on what it does. Matt, if it’s for attacking, we’re dead men walking. But it might just be the Gaian Fourth of July, for all I know.”

Ding!

A new window—in a color Matt hadn’t seen yet—popped up. Shocked, he read through it as fast as he could.

Sarthian Defense System Announcement

Alert Level: Amethyst

An outside threat has been detected within the borders of the continent, one that our automated system deems to be a threat capable of harming a large proportion of the current Sarthian population. We are issuing an all-citizen alert calling for any and all information on the threat.

All citizens are urged to look for landing vehicles and individuals that might be connected to the threat. Unusual visitors to your area should be reported, especially if they are armed. Do not attempt to talk to or contain possible threats yourself—report them to the appropriate nearby authorities.

Remember: An enemy force need not be numerous to be dangerous. Exercise caution and avoid and all threats until help arrives.

“We probably can’t count on that help arriving, huh?” Matt asked.

“Nope, probably not. The threat’s from the system instance?” asked Lucy.

“Probably,” Matt agreed.

Ding!

Demon Lord Defense

It’s probably been easy for you to think of yourself as the only special reincarnator, right? Big, empty planet and little, lonely you. Just trying to survive and slowly grow. And that’s probably part of why you felt special enough to disobey specific system commands and make my life much, much more difficult than I want it to be.

Well, I have news. You aren’t the only reincarnator. In fact, you aren’t a very good one. Do you know what a full Combat class is actually capable of? What someone with actual training can do?

You might have noticed a dearth of achievements lately. I’m not going to keep them from you forever. After all, the system will follow his own rules. Enjoy. You’ll need them.

Ding!

[Trapper Keeper]

You’ve created hundreds of traps, but never before did you create one to save for later. Between your new intermediate level, your increased experience with traps of all kinds, and a weird obsession with the art form that now extends to building traps you don’t actually intend to get triggered, you’ve moved on to a new phase of your work.

It’s a weird phase, but that’s on you.

Rewards: +1 DEX, Trapper Keeper skill

Trapper Keeper (Skill)

The Trapper Keeper skill does not level, and is instead keyed to the level of your Survivor’s Instincts skill. At the current level, Trapper Keeper allows you to store one trap of your choosing in an interdimensional space. The trap can be deployed instantly, allowing you to cover hasty retreats or to settle arguments in an unusual way.

Trapper Keeper will keep a preloaded replica of your most recent trap. Once this trap is deployed, the skill is disabled until another trap is created and stored.

Dig, Dug

You’ve undertaken a massive excavation project, and succeeded in not conveniently dying in a cave-in. Even more weirdly, you did this all at level one of the skill. Did it not occur to you to start with a smaller project, just to make sure you liked it? You could have done this so much faster.

Anyway, it was a big, big job and this is the combined result of several weird digging-related achievements you would have gotten out of the same amount of work if you had approached the job like a normal person.

Rewards: +1 VIT, +1 STR, Advancement of Survivor’s Digging to level 3

Survivor’s Digging

At level 3, Survivor’s Digging scales with your stats even faster to create optimal shoveling outcomes. In addition, each shovel stroke now has a 10 percent chance to move 10x as much dirt.

In addition to the important messages, Matt had dozens of more mundane achievements, all giving him small amounts of class experience and not much else. What little equipment did materialize was pretty boring, low-end stuff. It looked like the system was still holding out on him.

But at the end of all that, one quest stood out above the crowd, even competing with the system instance’s joyful “Demon Lord Defense.”

Life to the Lifeless, Lifelessness to the Living

By now you’ve probably thought, “Man, I just want to plant plants and have fun. Why is this system instance so serious about this? Does he hate plants?” And you know what? That pisses me off. Because if you had just wanted to raid dungeons and have a little garden, we could have worked that out. It would have taken time, but I would have eventually contacted the main system somehow or other, and we might have made things right for you.

But no, you wouldn’t have it. Your system guardian tells you that you have system authority, and you want to know about that. I tell you not to, and you make jokes about that. I offer you a deal that guarantees your exit out of here, and you don’t care. You just want to look into the stuff I say not to look into. And you know what? Fine. No more deals.

So now I don’t play nice. Yup, you got all your little plants going. And you know what? I’m happy. Because right now, you’re telling yourself, “I brought life back to Gaia.” And you feel great about that. Good. Because once you die, what happens to those plants? They die. They wither and die, just like you will.

And I’ll laugh. My only regret is that I can’t spit on them as they go.

Enjoy your tokens. You won’t get a chance to spend them.

Reward: 5,000 Estate Tokens

“Lucy?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s the system instance.”

“So that’s your big plan? To talk him out of it?” asked an incredulous Lucy.

“It’s probably our best shot. If he really is a Combat class, especially if he’s overleveled? He’s going to cut me to pieces.”

“No offense, Matt, but you aren’t the most persuasive person. I didn’t listen to you until you commanded me.”

“But I got you eventually.”

“Sure. I doubt this guy is going to give you months of bonding time in this wasteland.”

As they walked back towards the estate, Matt was trying to put himself in the shoes of the supposed invader. It was possible the system had shot straight with the new guy and told him that he was going to murder some poor guy on a nothing planet who was only trying to grow root vegetables. But Matt doubted it. This was a guy who probably thought that he was facing some different threat, something more clearly evil.

If that was true, Matt felt like he had a pretty good chance of just talking the other reincarnator down. He would explain what was going on, all the way back to his first day on Gaia if he had to. If it were him on the other side, that would work. He just hoped the system hadn’t pulled a homicidal murderer off some death planet.

And then something Matt didn’t expect happened. As they approached the estate, the other reincarnator was already there. That was pretty easy to explain. The reincarnator had probably seen the same light and headed towards its origin point.

What Matt didn’t expect was what the sight of another flesh-and-blood human would do to him. This was an adult person, as near as he could tell. He was wearing a helmet, sure. But he was a human being, standing there in all his glory like it wasn’t even a big deal.

Matt didn’t even mind that the new guy was stepping on the plants that much. He had to fight against a surprisingly strong urge to run up to the man and hug him.

The man’s back was mostly turned as he walked around the estate, jabbing things with his sword. Matt managed to get pretty close, preserving just enough presence of mind to stop before getting too close and cut in half on accident.

“Okay. Here goes,” Matt whispered to Lucy.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.” Matt took in a breath, then yelled across the distance between him and the armored man, “Hey, over there! I’m Matt! I know you are here on a quest, but before you do it, could we just … talk for a bit?”

The armored man froze for a moment when Matt yelled, then wheeled around to face him. It was hard to tell with the helmet in place, but as Matt stopped yelling, it appeared that the man was perhaps thinking through something. He looked down at the ground in a way that made it seem like he was making a decision.

Oh, please, armored man. Please just talk to me.

The armored man looked up, then drew his sword. Activating some kind of skill that made his entire body glow, he charged.