Aftermath

April 6th, 2034

New York, New York, Sol HQ

I once again found myself sitting in my executive office chair, spinning mindlessly.

The hospital had cleared me this morning. Thanks to health insurance, it didn't set me back much cash but my premium did go up as a result. Fortunately, they were able to heal my leg without any issues, so I was in pristine health.

"And for what does it even matter?" I scoffed. One way or another, I had caused the deaths of 12 people. I wanted to just blame the dungeon—how were we supposed to know it would separate everyone, after all? However, that would just be me running away from my problems.

It was about responsibility. They were my employees. I was the one who wanted to go adventuring, blind to greed. Hell, I was even the one who put Maddy in charge.

Everything came back to me, at the top of my little skyscraper in my comfortable little chair.

To that end, I had already asked Christina to send compensation to the victims' families the moment I got in contact with her. Despite that they may have gotten some financial leeway, they had all lost precious loved ones. A dozen families were shattered.

I continued to spin in circles, lost in thought. I held the ring I had obtained to my face, inspecting it carefully.

It was beautiful, as reflective as any mirror. Encrusted down the middle of it was a line of minute green gemstones, likely emeralds.

I hadn't actually brought myself to open up its basic system description. I felt anxious—was this ring worth the sacrifices, regardless of how powerful its boons may be? It could also just be a trash item not worth anyone's time.

Sighing, I just placed the ring back onto my desk.

With a knock, Christina entered the room. Betraying my expectations, she didn't immediately start talking about the business and how far into the red we were this quarter. She walked over and silently placed a steaming cup of tea in front of me.

Finally stopping the spinning, I gave her a questioning look.

"I don't have the answers you want, Tom. I don't even have advice for you." She looked at me with sad eyes.

Despite her words, I still had to ask. "What should I do now? I'm just fucking everything up. I try to go into a subspace alone and I almost die. I try to go with a group and I still almost die, but now 12 people are dead as well.

"Should I just go find Wrath and apologize? Make my fucking peace and let myself get killed?" Now screaming, I picked up the chair and threw it at a wall.

"God damn it! I'm just throwing a temper tantrum now." Hyperventilating, I laid down on the floor.

"What do I do, Christina? I fucked up. I just want to burn everything and forget." I stared up at the ceiling, venting for the sake of it.

"So much has changed in the last 2 weeks," she finally spoke in a lull of my rambling. "You've gone from a self-centered egoist to whom I consider a respectable man, just in that short time. It's like you fell off of that pedestal of 'Divine' and joined humanity again.

"You're a smart guy, Tom. You just need some time to work things out." As she finished speaking, I heard the door to my office close shut.

I blankly stared at the ceiling, reflecting on her words. With some deep, rhythmic breaths, I tried my best to calm down.

I had fallen off my pedestal, was it? And what a pedestal it was.

I couldn't refute her words even if I wanted to. When was the last time I had referred to myself as Divine?

Groaning, I dragged myself off of the floor and picked up the chair I had tossed. After placing it back behind my desk, I pocketed the ring and went down the elevator. I walked for a bit, still lost in thought before eventually finding myself on the Queensboro Bridge.

I looked down at the island below, seeing families still living their lives.

"And so, life moves on," I said with a sense of finality.

"It will. Forever." Streya's soft voice spoke to me for the first time since I had left the subspace. "As always, time is ruthless. It shall march, leaving those without a path behind."

"If you're speaking up now, does that mean it's time to move on?" I asked out loud, ignoring the passersby. "Are you going to tell me to stop pitying myself?"

"It's not about confrontation. You're my sensory—I've felt every emotion you've felt, just as raw as you have, over the last 24 hours. That's why it was pointless to say anything; we would just end up screaming at each other."

"I'm sorry I put you through that."

"It's part of the deal and until I learn to dampen the sensory effects, I just have to live with it. I'm speaking up now because it felt like we're finally emotionally drained enough to communicate. I know you don't want to hear this, but it's time to identify the ring."

I twiddled my fingers around the ring in my pants pocket, thinking about Streya's words.

"Okay," I spoke after a few moments. I slowly pulled the ring out of my pocket and gazed at it in my open palm.

"Let me do it." With Streya's words, I felt my mana pool start to drain. In my hand, the ring was reflecting the floating cloud of blue mana now circling around it.

I paled as I saw that she had used over 300 of my mana to just identify the ring. But, true to her words, a detailed system box was hovering over my hand.

—Identified: Stone Knight's Ring—

[Crest of Lord Haymarch] (Ring, Abyssal)

+45 Mana.

+35 HP.

+15% damage when using abyssal spells.

Description: A long-lost crest of the Haymarch bloodline, signifying the status of knight within the family's ranks. The ring's enchantments reek of the Abyss—it would prove as a good magic focus if one wished to reach such a place.

I felt momentarily happy seeing the ring's rarity and power. Abyssal signified that the equipment was equivalent to something made of abyssal ore, approximately. It just so happened that this ring was actually from the Abyss.

Before I had the chance to get too excited, though, images of Sera's corpse flashed in my vision. Waves of guilt washed over me and I leaned off the side of the bridge, expecting to throw up.

After painfully dry heaving a few times, I pulled myself back and slammed a fist into my chest. I wasn't allowed to be happy—not yet, at least.

I asked Streya, "What is the system trying to tell me? Does it want me to go to Hell to fulfill some sort of atonement?"

"I doubt it's that sentient," she groaned, also suffering from my nausea. "It probably just determined that information is the most valuable to you."

I continued to twirl around the ring that was likely worth millions of dollars. It felt truly surreal to even be holding the thing after identifying it. I eventually slipped it on and took one last look over the river before heading back to the office.

…

It took over an hour, but the walk back ended up being much more peaceful than I had expected. Streya and I ended up just chatting about insipid nonsense to keep our minds off of things.

By the time we had arrived at the building, the world was already looking a bit brighter.

I decided to let the R&D team know that I was probably going to ask to make a portal to Hell soon. I took the elevator down into the basement and looked around for either Macy or Gerrath.

I ended up finding Macy lounging around the mana-conversion machine, typing something into her phone. Without a word, I just took the ring off and showed it to her.

"Boss! You're up. What's this?" Macy instantly slid her phone into her pocket and grabbed the ring from me.

"Ideally, our ticket to the Abyss. The system says it'll be a good magic focus. If I were to ask you to make a secure portal there, how long would it take you to figure out a time quota and set a project budget?"

"Uhh…" She seemed to be dazed by my ridiculous request. "Give me, say, 2 days? I should be able to figure out everything needed by then."

"Great." I took the ring back from her in the meantime. "There isn't too much rush; I'm not strong enough to even think about going there right now. But, it's a good goal to start working towards."

"On it." Macy nodded her head diligently. "And, we have something for you. It's a prototype, but we were able to get a rudimentary form of that enchantment you gave us working. One second." She quickly rushed off into a different room before returning seconds later with a pair of familiar shoes in her hands.

"Miss Christina gave us a spare set of your shoes to experiment with," she explained. "Here you are."

I received the shoes and gave them a look with the default system description. I didn't need to be drained of the rest of my mana right now.

"Shoes of Minor Distortion. Grants a 6% chance for an area-of-effect attack to miss the wearer."

Pleasantly surprised with the good results, I accepted the gift and returned upstairs for dinner.

With everything going on, I wasn't too hungry and I found myself daydreaming while eating. I had a few ideas I wanted to put into motion now that my brain was starting to work again.

Emotionally exhausted from the volatile day, I went to bed early and slept hard. Tomorrow would be much better, I decided.