Chapter 39

312.4.63.

With everything they planned to do on the island already accomplished it was time to head home. All that was left to do was wait for their scheduled flight to depart.

According to the original plan they should have left a couple of days ago. But that only applied when there were three of them. Their plane was already full so they had to refund their tickets and look for a flight that had enough room for all four of them.

In their extra days, Peter tried to pass time with some amateur investigation regarding the other day's crab attack. It mostly consisted of him going up to anyone who seemed even remotely knowledgeable about such things and asking them directly.

Most people he asked had no idea what he was talking about and even those who did, all said the exact same thing.

"They are still investigating."

There wasn't much else Peter could do. He tried sneaking down to the beach but even at night time the coast guards immediately spotted him. However, he did get to see that since his last visit, the number of crab carcasses on the shore has significantly increased.

Unfortunately, with barely any new information gathered, he could only guess what was happening based on what he already knew, which also wasn't a lot. His best guess based on what he heard and what Anthony told him was that something big that was supposed to happen in the near future was happening sooner than it was supposed to.

While that was a reasonable explanation, the problem with it was that in its current form it was a reasonable explanation to almost anything ever. He was still thinking about how to make more sense of things when they were already on the plane and about to take off.

Shortly after, his thought process was interrupted by a message that he forgot to turn off.

[Shared message.]

[Achievement unlocked: Use every method of travel!]

[Reward: STR +0.05, AGI +0.15, STA +0.1, MGC +0.05, EXP +50]

[Remaining tier 1 path achievements have been locked.]

[Level up!]

[On demand identification authorized.]

He thought about the phrasing of the achievement name because something was clearly wrong with it.

"Wait! What about spaceships? I can't imagine Drake would have ever been on one of those."

[What the users tend to call airplanes and spaceships cannot be meaningfully differentiated from each-other.]

He wanted to retort, the statement being clearly absurd but then decided not to. For all he knew, in the cosmic eyes of the interface they might be more similar than for an almost ordinary person like him.

Setting that thought aside, Peter looked up from the notification to check on Drake who tried to remain composed but excitement was clearly visible in his eyes. He himself just smiled and went back to the interface to change a thing or two.

At that moment, every notification received by Drake would also be sent to Peter. For example, when they were waiting outside of Sir Edward's office he was sent the same warning notification twice. The sound effects that came with the notifications were also heard by him, which could quickly become annoying, so he wanted to turn off anything unnecessary.

He ended up getting rid of the identification messages and most things that were sent on a regular basis like the previously mentioned warning notifications, with the reasoning that he could use the identification himself and whatever automatic messages Drake received would be sent to him anyway if they were important.

After he was done with that, he started looking over the path achievements that his friend could get. With the boy's metal eating ability it was basically inevitable for him to get a disproportionate amount of endurance which would make him flightless sooner or later.

He asked both of his companions for their opinions but other than him only Sarah, who as it turned out also finished her path, could contribute substantially. Together, after a lengthy discussion and a lot of time spent looking at the path achievements available, they came to the conclusion that, while the two of them got really useful all-around paths, those wouldn't be that good for Drake.

He needed something that would give him an increased amount of agility with as little endurance as possible. As it turned out, there was a tier three achievement for flight which would be ideal for their winged friend.

The rest of their journey was pretty uneventful. Back home however, they got to hear an important piece of news from James. As it turned out, most of the children from the institute learned to read shortly after the twins left and the secret of the interface eventually got out.

Since then, the government spent a considerable amount of effort on gathering them back together and they also reignited the abandoned research projects related to them. A couple of agents also came for Sarah and Peter but James sent them away with the excuse that the two of them died alongside Anthony.

It was a great excuse, since not only was it believable, the twins barely existed in the legal sense and at that moment there was also no chance of their presumed death being disputed.

The agents also knew about Manda, somehow. They were however, quickly chased away by Helen who, after learning about what they wanted, started swinging at them with one of her disposable guns while shouting vague threats about their department being torched.

When the topic of Helen came up, the original travelers expression became grim as they had to face the uncomfortable conversation they were about to have with her.