Chapter 42 – The Family

An icy shiver ran down Michael’s spine, so intense that it completely overshadowed the faint, residual hum of the energy still radiating from the dark alloy of his newly acquired shortsword. His emotions, which he usually kept under lock and key, suddenly broke their banks, running wild and chaotic through his mind. He could not think clearly.

His plans he had painstakingly constructed over the last few hours were not just being challenged—they had been completely obliterated. This was catastrophic, fundamentally terrible news.

Until this exact moment, Michael’s entire survival strategy had rested on a single, core premise: to level up as quickly as possible and secure a safe, high-ranking position within the new society, fueled and anchored by the knowledge about the Mana Crystals. He had firmly believed that the introduction of Mana Crystals and the System’s internal economy would act as a massive catalyst to shift the existing world order. He had thought about the apocalypse as a possiblity. A revolution that could change the overbearing existing world order. He viewed at it through the lens of an profiteur; a drastic, violent restructuring of society, yes, but one where established nations, governments, and institutional frameworks would eventually adapt, regularize, and enforce a new kind of currency and order. He had positioned himself to be a pioneer in that new market—a ruthless monopolist holding a massive initial hoard of crystals while the rest of the world remained completely oblivious to their true value.

But the brutal reality of the scale of the apocalypse had shattered that illusion. There was no world order left to change, manipulate, or use as a stepping stone to a safe, elite status. The old world hadn’t merely been modified or thrust into a temporary crisis; it had ceased to exist entirely.

Michael closed his eyes, inhaling a deep, controlled breath of the dirty and stinking air. The scent of blood and hundreds of corpses filled his lungs. He could feel the cold, creeping fingers of panic clawing at the edges of his consciousness—the exact same paralyzing panic that had just driven his fellow students into a blind, uncoordinated stampede toward the exits.

Paralyzing panic was a luxury he couldn’t afford. His inherent determination and strong will finally kicked in. With an iron act of will, he forced the chaos in his brain back. He could not afford to lose himself. Unlike the others, he refused to dissolve into blind panic. Panic was an inefficient state of being. It was a fatal system error, and in this raw, unbuffered reality, a single system error meant instant death.

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*We have to restore order,* he analyzed, his eyes snapping open, his gaze instantly hardening. *The government is no longer functional.* If the communication networks were failing, if the police force was non-responsive, and if military command structures had dissolved into thin air within a matter of hours, then the old institutions were nothing more than ghosts. But where the average citizen saw absolute terror in that realization, Michael’s pragmatic mind saw a terrifying, magnificent truth. History was being written right now, on a blank slate.

The collapse of the old world had created an unprecedented, absolute power vacuum. In these critical, early days of global chaos, the traditional rules of law, inheritance, and governance were entirely suspended. Whoever reacted the fastest, whoever adapted the most ruthlessly, and whoever calculated their moves with the highest level of intelligence would seize absolute control. These individuals would not just survive the apocalypse; they would active-handedly dictate the power dynamics and shape the future of Austria—and perhaps, if their ambition stretched far enough, the future of the world itself.

*Austria…* Michael’s lips twitched into a bitter, humorless smile as he looked out over the shattered geometry of the university. *Will there even be a country in the future? Or will everything collapse into barbarism, bandits, and localized warlords ruling over the ashes?* That was exactly what these early days of global chaos would determine. Power was no longer a matter of law or political consensus; it was a physical, tangible substance waiting to be claimed from the skulls and Experience Points of monsters. And Michael had absolutely no intention of sitting idly by while someone else wrote the new laws of existence.

With his analysis concluded, Michael prepared to map out his next immediate, tactical steps. He needed to logistically secure a continuous supply of resources, optimize his EXP siphoning, and systematically farm the surrounding sectors to maximize the utility of his new [Teleportation] skill.

But it was only in that exact fraction of a second, as the heavy, suffocating silence truly settled around him, that a realization hit him like a physical blow to the chest. He froze mid-motion, his hand tightening around the hilt of his shortsword.

Throughout the entirety of the slaughter, throughout the hours of frantic calculation, item evaluation, and combat, he had completely, utterly forgotten something elemental.

His own family.

A cold, heavy knot of dread mixed with a sudden wave of sharp guilt twisted in his stomach. From the very first moment the blue initialization screens had flickered to life in the lecture hall, he had been so profoundly, monomaniacally focused on optimizing his stats, understanding the mechanics of the game-like reality, and growing stronger that he hadn’t tried to contact his family a single time since the apocalypse began. He had operated egoistically only thinking about himself, and had completely ignored his family.

With slightly trembling fingers, he pulled his smartphone from his pocket. The screen was severely scratched but the device still hummed with life. The mobile internet and the network were still running.

As the display illuminated his face, it revealed a catastrophic cascade of notifications: dozens of missed calls and a long, uninterrupted chain of unread text messages.