Alex and his friends had returned to their camp for the evening, planning to help where they could and make sure everything was still running smoothly. With them always out fighting, there wasn’t much of a command structure left. It made Alex worry that someone would take advantage of everyone else while they were away.

  As it turns out, Alex had a good reason to worry.

  That evening went relatively normally, for being in a tutorial from a cosmic system filled with magic and monsters. Alex helped out where he could. He used earth magic to assist with cave terraforming and outer defenses, spoke with some of the newer people to make sure they had everything they needed, and relaxed with his team and even Durgan.

  He liked the dwarf. He was straightforward and seemed like a good person, if a little rough around the edges. It turns out Durgan used to be a blacksmith, so if they ever found a way to choose professions, he would be a good person to know.

  Alex did hear about a few more issues that arose throughout the day. Specifically related to the new camp resident, Richard Debagge, or as Alex likes to call him, Dick Dbag. Apparently, the man felt quite entitled and kept trying to swindle everything extra he could from others. Extra blankets, food, the best bedding, everything. And if someone refused, he took it by force with his followers, saying he was the leader here and it was his due.

  He knew he needed to take care of the asshole; he was already acting like a mini-Chad, and planned to do so first thing in the morning. Alex really didn’t want to deal with it. Some of his old introverted self was leaking out. He just wanted to relax, talk to his teammates, train his skills, or go fight monsters.

  Is it so hard to ask everyone to get along? It's the damn end of the world, and this guy insists on being an ass.

  After everyone had gone to bed for the night, except for the night-watch and patrols, Alex sat outside on the wall with Sam. He liked Sam; they got along well and joked around a lot. They both liked similar things before the integration; now that it's here, they both like mana manipulation.

  When they practiced together, it sometimes turned into a game to see who could conjure the craziest shapes with their spells, or it became a teaching moment. While Alex was better overall at mana manipulation because of his racial abilities, Sam was a natural and had way more insight into fire, specifically. He had been able to show Alex things about fire mana or magic he hadn’t known before. While Alex was able to teach him about mana in general. Being able to see and feel all mana was a boon for Alex, and he tried to pass that knowledge on to Sam.

  So entwined with their training and knowledge-sharing, the night passed quickly. They didn’t mind, though, being Bronze rank Alex had noticed he didn’t need as much sleep as before. He would be fine with only a few hours.

  During the late hours of the night, they were startled by an explosion. An explosion that didn’t happen outside the camp walls, but happened inside the cave.

  Alex quickly channeled his wind magic enhancement on himself and Sam, while they turned and ran towards where it happened. When he entered the cave, the first thing that caught his attention was the heat and smoke. It burned his eyes and assaulted his senses, but he did his best to ignore it. Next, he saw a group of people standing around Richard Debagge, all in front of Alex’s room. Which is also the location of the explosion.

  The explosion had been massive; it affected multiple rooms near his. Those rooms were where his partymates slept. Worried about them, he maxed out his Eyes of the Cosmos and looked for their shapes in the stone rubble. The room beside Alex's had been Sams and luckily it was empty. The next one was Derek's and since he was a Bronze ranked tank, Alex could see he was fine. It looked like he slept in his armor, and it was keeping him from being crushed, though he was pinned.

  Sarah, in the next room, seemed trapped beneath the stone. But she had her Barrier of Protection up, and it was holding the stone from caving in on her. Korgrith and Rykos were fine. The explosion hadn’t affected their rooms much, and they were walking into the cavern.

  Seeing they were fine for now, he finally noticed the blood and body parts thrown around the cavern. There were many bodies lying around. Most had wounds from weapons. Slit throats, disemboweled, chest run through, crushed heads. And the people holding the weapons that caused them, covered in blood, were standing right in front of Alex.

  “Sam, put out all the fires, please, and can you do anything about the smoke with your fancy new class? Korgrith, Rykos!” Alex called out to them, “Get an earth mage to help you. Derek and Sarah are trapped under the rubble. Focus on Sarah's room, her Barrier won’t last long.”

  “What about you?” Sam asked.

  “I've got some trash to clean up,” Alex replied, staring at the culprits.

  “Hey, Dick Dbag. Were you really too stupid to make sure I was in the room before blowing it up?” He asked him while waiting to make sure his friends were taking care of the explosion.

  “What? I didn’t do anything, and that's not my name!” He replied, face turning red in anger.

  “Technically, it's true you didn’t cause the explosion. But your right-hand man beside you did. I can clearly see the mana used in the explosion roiling off of him. Not to mention your weapon and all the weapons on your followers here are covered in blood.”

  Dick Dbag clicked his tongue and smiled a wicked grin, finally letting his facade fade away.

  “There he is, there's the real Dick Dbag,” Alex said to him.

  “I’ll make you regret not dying in that explosion like you should have. Now it’ll be slow and painful. And that’s not my name!”

  Alex was barely holding back his rage. This asshole had tried to kill him and his friends and had killed several people who trusted him to protect them.

  “You all are fucking idiots. None of you has fought a bronze rank before. Do you even know what one is or have you heard that term?” Alex asked, in pure disbelief at their stupidity.

  “I don’t fucking care what a bronze whatever is. You’re only level 10. We can take you down with our numbers, you can’t beat us all.” He replied with a snarl.

  “Morons. You’ll die because of your arrogance and stupidity. But mostly, you’ll all die here today because you went against me. I can deal with you trying to kill me, but you put my team at risk and harmed those who belonged to me. I won’t abide people like you in this new world.” Alex said, channeling mana as he withdrew his sword. Still enveloped with wind enhancement, he added it to his blade. He didn’t want to use fire inside the cave; there had been enough of that already. His debuff from using space magic the night before had finally fallen off a few hours prior, so he was excited to be at full power again.

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  There were 7 of them in total, counting Dick Dbag. Their levels all ranged from 4 to 6, relatively low considering they had a dungeon that people could power level in. Though most of the new residents didn’t know that yet.

  Right after Alex had drawn his sword, they moved forward to attack. Three of their people were mages and had channeled magic to attack him. They were all different basic mage elements–fire, wind, and water.

  Ooooh, a water mage. Rare. I don’t know why people aren’t picking it. We only had one or two water mages before the new residents came. I think I’ll use this opportunity to try and get it too.

  When they flung spells at him, Alex didn’t block them. He let the basic spells come close, and then he used [Celestial Control]. The wind and fire, he mostly ignored. Just slightly changing their trajectory to miss. They were from weak level mages, a grade lower than him. It was easy to manipulate them.

  While the water spell traveled towards him, he studied it intently, as he had with previous magics he acquired.

  Before the water ball collided with him, he seized control of it. It was child's play for him to do so. There was a vast difference in power between him and the caster. Inspecting the water ball for a moment, he sent it towards the warriors coming at him. Before he sent the water ball away, though, he compressed it a little, curious about the outcome.

  The water ball collided with a warrior, like a wrecking ball. It crushed his chest, causing him to fly across the cavern like a rag doll.

  Interesting... The water just becomes harder, almost solid, but not quite. A super dense water. I wonder if I could make ice and learn ice magic, too? Assuming it exists.

  Alex then summoned wind blades and sent them towards two of the warriors. He made the blades slightly longer than usual. They easily cut the unarmored warriors in half. Their corpses dropped to the ground in pieces.

  The only remaining warrior was Dick Dbag. Alex summoned earth magic and wrapped the warrior's body in it, stopping him in his tracks. Only his head was uncovered. Sadly, it allowed him to scream and whine more than usual.

  He then refocused on the three remaining mages. One had turned and tried to run, the fire mage, however, Rykos didn’t let him. He quickly disemboweled the caster with his claws before he got more than three steps.

  Before they could do anything else or shake off the shock, Alex sent a wind blade at the wind mage. It felt poetic to kill him with his own element. It cleanly cut his head off.

  The final person left, aside from Dick Dbag, was the water mage. He was trembling and leaking water from between his legs.

  I don't think that's a water spell...

  “Don’t kill me, please! I didn’t want to help, but he forced me to help and kill people! I didn’t want to!” He begged, falling to his knees, now sitting in his own waste.

  The mage was crying and tried to speak again, but before he could, Alex put him out of his misery with an earth spike to the back of the head.

  Damnit, I wanted to play with his water magic more. I’ll need to find one of the water mages around to help me out. Alex quickly thought, unfazed by the brutal killings he just dished out.

  All of the side dishes dealt with, Alex turned back to the main course. “Dick Dbag, you really do live up to your name.” He said, standing in front of the man encased in stone.

  By this time, earth mages had come to help extricate Derek and Sarah from the rubble. They hadn’t been freed yet, but Alex could see they were close. Sarah would be the first one out. Over a hundred people were standing in the back of the cavern now, watching Alex. He didn’t care. They needed to see what was happening because he wouldn’t let this happen again.

  He already had a plan for dealing with Richard. He was going to make an example of him in the morning, in front of the entire camp. If people thought he was a monster for it, then so be it. He wasn’t going to let innocents die because some asshole wanted to grab power for himself. But he also knew inside that he wouldn’t allow anyone to take what was his, and this camp, definitely was his.

  The dumbass encased in stone was spouting nonsense, things about sharing power, how they should work together, and that he could help Alex rule.

  “Shut up, asshole, I’ll deal with you in a minute.”

  Alex had been watching his friends to make sure they all got out of the rubble safely. When Derek and Sarah finally got free, they were shocked to see the dead bodies all over the cavern and the man still talking, stuck in stone up to his neck.

  Sam had walked over and was filling them in on what happened. Derek looked at Alex and nodded in understanding. Sarah, on the other hand, looked a bit sick from the sight of the bodies. She turned and walked away, not wanting to look any more.

  Near where Alex’s room was, he created a cage with earth magic. He only needed to hold him until morning, but he still put a lot of mana into the cage and compressed the stone as much as he could. He couldn’t risk the prisoner escaping.

  Dick Dbag had watched him make the cage. He seemed a little upset about it, but Alex didn’t care. He walked over, shattered the stone off of him, but then, of course, the moron tried to fight back.

  Alex simply slapped his sword aside and punched him in the face, knocking him to the ground. Teeth were sent flying across the stone floor. The difference in their strength stat was pretty large.

  He grabbed him by the foot, dragged him over to the new prison cell, and tossed him inside before creating bars to close it off. “Whu th’ hell ah yoo doin?? Yoo can’t imprithon meh. Thih ih wrong!” The new prisoner mumbled out through a broken jaw and missing teeth.

  “Wrong?!” Anger threatened to overwhelm him. “LOOK AROUND YOU!” He screamed, restraining himself from reaching through the cage and grabbing him. “You fucking killed innocent people, and FOR WHAT?! Some power? Because you wanted to be in charge? You wanted a bigger bedroom to hide from the goblins in? Or maybe because you wanted to be rich?”

  Alex reached into his Soul Vault, pulled out a handful of System Coins, and threw them into Richard's face. “Take them!” He said with tears in his eyes. “Those coins, those bedrooms, the power to command others? NONE OF THAT WAS WORTH THOSE LIVES!” Alex almost lost control right there, both physically and emotionally.

  His mana began to pour out of him, waiting to be directed into a spell. But he stopped it, barely. He took a deep breath. He kept seeing images of his little brother again; he swore he would never be too weak to help others, and yet here he was, failing that promise already. Those people were his responsibility, just like his brother was.

  Calm, almost as if he was a different person, he spoke again. “Those people were under my protection, and you’ve turned me into a liar for saying I would protect them. People like you, who step on others that you deem as lesser, don't deserve the air that's in your lungs.”

  Finishing that sentence, Alex wiped a tear off his cheek and decided to use the mana he had already let out. He pulled the air away from Richard, not allowing him a breath. He wanted to forcibly rip all the air out of him, but wanted it slow.

  He saw it in his eyes when the man realized he couldn’t breathe. He started to clutch at his throat, trying to find air anywhere around him, but there wasn’t any. Alex was burning mana at a prodigious rate to do this without creating some kind of vacuum, but he didn’t care anymore. He wasn’t thinking. He was wrapped up in the emotions of the moment, of his past, and of the lives that had been taken for a stupid reason. Always more death.

  When Dick Dbag collapsed to the ground and Derek put his hand on Alex's shoulder, startling him. “That’s enough.” He whispered, so no one else could hear. “He’s a prisoner now. It wouldn’t be right unless you do it publicly, like a trial. I know it's difficult, but you need to restrain yourself.”

  Shaking his head clear, he released his magic, allowing the air to return to the cage. The prisoner was unconscious, but Alex could see he was alive. “You're right. I almost lost control, I’m sorry. And thank you for stopping me.” He replied to Derek.

  “It's okay… I’ve been there too. It's difficult sometimes not to give in.” Derek said solemnly. They both nodded in understanding.

  Alex knew Derek understood. While he didn’t know the details, he knew Derek had been deployed a few times to war, and he had seen how Derek handled himself so far in the tutorial. The man wasn't a stranger to difficult emotions.

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