31 Seeing the State of Earth

When looked around back to my normal height instead of the childlike height I had been stuck in for 3 and half years.

I touched my face and looked at my limbs, there were none of the scars that came from the many life and death battles I had been in.

That was good, I no longer had that terrifying visage with my oni mask and my missing cheeks. I would definitely help recruit members to my group now that I looked normal.

After getting that out of the way I looked at my window to see if the world was on fire and in the distance there was a massive plume of smoke.

I turned on the news and the anchorman said, "... The rise in crime as criminals have gained new powers from their mission has made it hard for police officers to react."

"With the sheer variety of skills that each criminal can now show it has been a nightmare for many to catch the criminal safely and keep them in jail."

"Our town of Brecksville has recently been attacked by such a group of criminals whose leader seems to have the ability to control fire."

Then there was a picture shown of a tall man shooting out fire from his hands as he punched. I noticed the specific way he moved and realized he was probably a fire bender.

Shit well, that was kind of to be expected. Considering how powerful I was after the trip even if someone got a sliver of what I did they would probably feel invincible. Then the new continued.

"The Army and National Guard have been forced to control major population centers like New York, Washington D.C., and San Fransico due to massive gang violence."

"There have also been worries in the international community about heads of state being assassinated after the recent death of the president of Isreal."

I turned off the news. I got a basic idea of the situation. Since there was a time dilation while doing a mission of 1 day to 1 minute my 3 and a half year leave was only around 21 hours here.

Things were already turning to shit in such a short amount of time. This time I went to the internet to gather more specific information.

First I wanted to know what people had learned about the system and its mechanics and there was a massive Reddit community already discussing it.

The big thing that was causing these riots was that when a person died they would drop everything they had in their inventory, as long as they had one.

There was already a famous story where a gangster managed to kill a powerful politician and steal the entire collection of guns he was carrying.

From the clip, I saw I knew that they were a bunch of weapons from the Halo, Starwars, and Warhammer 40k universe.

There was no way he could've gotten all of those weapons so as I had thought, the rich people were buying weapons for money.

Some of them were probably smart enough to know that if the world continued on like this then the value of the dollar would disappear.

So now they were a prime target for assassinations and stealing. I sighed. What else have they figured out?

Ok, apparently some people have brought characters from their fictional world with them to Earth. Apparently, it was something you could buy in the shop but I hadn't been looking for it.

The price seemed to vary from person to person depending on the skills of the person being transported but so far it seems mostly only baseline humans were affordable.

Not only that but the system shop held a bunch of useful stuff like the skill Inspect. The staple of all system fics and an indispensable tool for figuring out your opponent.

There were apparently tiers and variations of it. Some only showed their relative danger level, stats, skills, backstory, or a combination of these things.

That was a skill that I definitely wanted and there were many skills like that like Martial Mastery that increase the damage you with unarmed strikes based on your skill level.

They was also speculation on how many people had failed their mission. Since they wouldn't die when they failed, only be kicked out of the system, it was hard to tell.

In the tutorial, everyone has passed because that was just how it was designed but now the people who were too overconfident and foolish were punished.

Most people seemed to guess that about half of those that entered the mission failed and could no longer access the system. They still had their powers, however.

I then found a page talking about Traits. It was something that I still hadn't received yet and apparently it had to do with changing your body permanently to something not human.

This meant things like the bloodlines from the Naruto world or giving yourself the supersoldier serum seemed to fall under this category.

It seems that a lot of people got traits from the shop giving them bloodlines like being half-giant that increased their strength, vitality, and size.

Most of the traits seemed to be less impressive however like buying a kidney that made you highly resistant to poison. It was interesting and something I definitely should look into.

I then turned off my computer seeing nothing else that I had an interest in. I reclined in my chair thinking of my next move before I heard my phone ring.

It was Mary, the girl who got the Enhanced Recall skill, I picked it up curious as to why she would contact me.

"Hello, Marcus is that you?" she asked.

I replied "It's me. Are you alright? It is rare for you to call me."

Mary said hurriedly, "I know that we aren't that close but I need your help."

I asked, "What seems to be the issue?"

Mary said, "It's my brother, Terrance, he is the one that started the fire after coming back from the mission. He is drunk on power right now and his friends are just feeding it."

"I think he is planning an even bigger attack on the police station later tonight. I heard you have a combat skill I would like your help in taking him down."

I said, "I see. Why are you informing the police of this matter?"

Mary said, "He killed one of the officers in the ensuing fight I think that the police department might want to kill for revenge."

I said, "Isn't that a bit paranoid. I mean I know most of the police officers and they seem like nice guys. Why would they want to kill him?"

Mary said, "The man my brother killed had just been married and had a child and my brother didn't kill the man cleanly. He slowly burned all the flesh of him killing him slowly."

I raised my eyebrow, not that she could see, I now understood why she would think that the police department might want to kill Terrance.

We were a pretty tight-knit community where everybody knew everybody else. So such blatant torture especially on a well-respected policeman would have people baying for blood.

I nodded and said, "Ok, I understand I will get try and help. Where would you like to meet to discuss this more?"

She said, "Under the bridge between North and Sound Gray Street."

I agreed and went off. I wasn't a heartless person and while I wasn't that close to Mary I still grew up with her, I knew her ever since we were kids. That's the effect of such a small town.

I decided that I could probably take Terrance down pretty easily. He seemed to move at only base human speeds so he couldn't even react to my attacks.

I sighed hopefully the rest of his friend group is as easily taken out but I have a feeling that it won't be that simple.

I reached the bottom of the bridge and saw Mary there. I said, "Hello it's me, Marcus, can you tell me more about your brother and his friends and what your plan is."

Mary nodded and said, "I took a pretty high ranking mission so now I have a new ability. I can control and see through the senses of all the insects around me."

"My plan is for me to distract them with the insect and for you to come and knock them out. I can then tie them up with spider silk."

I raised my eyebrows that ability wasn't the ability of Taylor Hebert from Worm. Damn, I had just struck the jackpot she probably didn't even know the potential for her ability.

Excitedly I asked, "How precise is your control over your bugs. Can you control and see through the senses of each individual one?"

She was taken aback for a moment before replying, "I can control and see through the senses of any of my bugs but right now it is hard for me to do precisely."

I nodded it was probably the system nerfing it a bit. She would probably get back to that level after training up that skill to a higher level.

I asked, "What do you know about your brother and his friend's skills. We need as much information as possible if we want to perform a successful operation.'

She said, "I know my brother got his fire manipulation skills from the recent mission. His original skill was called Knife Fighting. For his friends I know one of them has laser vision."

I sighed, Ok not much information, I asked, "How many friends does he have, and can you tell me a little more about them."

She said, "He has 3 friends and I only know Donald has laser vision, I think Zack has some sort of super-strength. I don't know what Ian does."

I said, "Ok we can try and gather more information about them over the course of the day. I assume you want to take him down sometime tonight."

She nodded, "Yes, he was planning to attack the police station a midnight tonight so we have to deal with him before then."

I nodded, "Ok then. Let's get going to their hideout and figure out what their skills are."

We then started walking down the road Mary leading me to them. I hope that this will not turn out poorly because if it does that would suck a lot.