Returners defiance, p.1
Returner's Defiance, page 1
Returner's Defiance
Copyright © 2024 by Bruce Sentar
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Cover Art by Yanaidraws
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Afterword
Also By
Chapter 1
The howls of demons echoed in the distance, and I pulled myself through the doors only to slam them shut.
I fumbled with the bar for the door, my hands slick with so much blood that I nearly dropped it.
A part of me had known this would be the end. Bastion was the last human settlement that I knew of in the world. Tonight, it would fall. The fortress protecting it had already been breached and an unmatched demon had shattered our best warriors. With the fortress broken and people had scattered, trying to flee. There was no point, we were surrounded. Even if I fought on, I was just one man. It was too late.
Instead, I turned to my room and the backup plan I had hatched on a desperate night.
Candles lit the room as several unique SSS ranked artifacts floated around the complex inscription formation. One of them I had even specially modified for this. I took in a deep breath and aligned my mana with the formation, flowing into it, even as the drums of war pounded in the distance.
The enemy would be upon me soon, and the fight, everything I stood for, would be all gone.
Humanity would be gone with me. There might be a few other survivors, but there were fewer than a dozen humans left on Earth. We had been so unprepared for what had come for us.
It had been over five hundred years of war since the Rapture. There had been bright spots, times of victory and times of peace, but the demons never stopped. Not fully. In so many ways, they had already won before the war even started. Our world had been infected from the beginning.
Too often through the years, we had found ourselves backstabbed by people we had considered allies, only to learn they’d been working for the demons all along.
I watched as the book at the center of the formation lifted into the air, the time-worn pages unfolding before me, telling me the story of my life. I had dug up my old journal to use as a focus for the inscription I was preparing.
I had one last idea, one last method for trying to defeat the demons.
I was going to send my soul back in time, before the Rapture, and before everything had slowly twisted in on itself, leading to the horrors surrounding me today. It was an ability used to gaze into the past, but with several artifacts to strengthen the connection and an ability from a demon to send my soul back.
Prompts appeared in front of me as things activated.
[Time Vision - You may step back in time for one minute.]
There I was, writing in the same journal I had before me, only I knew nothing of what was to come. Eighteen years old and I was about to go through one of the most trying times of my life.
[Possession - Destroy the soul of another and replace it with your own]
I swallowed. Fear at what could happen, what paradox effect or what-have-you might happen filled me.
Yet I was out of options. This was a Hail Mary. A last-ditch effort to fix everything that had gone wrong. With me, maybe we could avoid five hundred years of fighting, only to lose.
The book landed on a page, the last entry, which was in 2019. That was two years before the Rapture.
My vision fish-eyed like I was pushing through some boundary that I shouldn’t be able to, and everything was stretching, pulling at me to rip me back to my present time.
[Possession F Rank activated.]
I hadn’t used this spell before. Stealing bodies from people was not really my day-to-day life. I had gained it from a demon I had killed, never using it until now.
My past self wasn’t even integrated into the System yet; he had no defenses.
Possession activated and I felt my soul from the present-day rip and pull as I pushed back over five hundred years.
Pain ripped through every fiber of my soul as I pushed the limits of what the system would allow. For a moment I thought that it had failed, that the demons would overtake the world and soon storm into my room and kill me.
My body bled from every orifice and my heart exploded with the pressure of trying to shove my soul back in time. Immortal Body SS was taxed to the point that even it couldn’t keep up with the damage my body was taking, and I felt myself die.
Yet, combat with demons was more than just physical and several abilities to stabilize my soul as I gave it all one final push, there was no going back.
I felt myself snap back at the same instant that my vision switched to normal, a diary sitting in front of me as I sat in a room that had long ago stopped existing.
Letting out a sigh, I focused on my breathing for a moment, I’d done it.
In preparation for this moment, I had read my diary again. It was largely filled with teenager angst and loss as my mother died. The doctors had suggested I start a journal to cope with her death that would come in forty-eight days. She was terminal. It was an ‘atypical’ blood disease.
The doctors had never understood what had caused my mother’s illness, simply marking it as novel. Later, I would learn it was a type of physique-corroding poison, something that meant it came from someone who was part of the System. My mother wasn’t a normal human, and a normal poison would do little to her.
I stood up, tossing the diary aside and waiting for a long minute to see if anything happened because of me breaking what felt like some pretty big laws of the universe.
But nothing came. No heavenly tribulation, no sudden death or excision from the universe. Whatever laws governed time travel didn’t appear to wink me out of existence, so… that was good.
I tried to call up the System menu, a sheer force of habit, yet there was just static for a moment, then nothing.
I nodded. I had prepared for this situation. I wasn’t initiated with this body. So, this body did not have access to the System.
Flexing my hands, I nearly laughed. They felt so weak. They would be nearly useless until I built up my strength. I really needed to get used to my new limitations.
But at the moment, there was something far more important that I needed to do. I grabbed an old sweatshirt and threw it on as I left the two-bedroom apartment and snagged the keys by the door, making sure to lock it on my way out.
It was always best to be careful, and I had grown far more cautious given the dangers of the world I had just exited.
Caution wasn’t being a coward. It was learning to survive in a world far more dangerous than anyone knew about in the present time.
Well, not everyone was unaware. The Clans knew, and there were secret sects hidden throughout the world that would crop up like weeds, growing quickly as soon as the Rapture hit.
I was disconnected from my family with my mother’s death and then my disappearance into a gang and eventually the mob.
The facts of the past life didn’t hurt. They were just facts. The fact that they did not bother me or fill me with emotion let me know that at least part of my soul power had remained with me.
I chuckled at the idea of my whole soul power still being present. If I could find one of those rare soul attacks before the Rapture, I’d be a god. Hundreds of years of demon hunting built a strong soul.
The families and sects were well above mortals at this point in time, but before the Rapture, there just wasn’t the opportunity to grow to the extent I had following the event.
Mrs. Rodgers poked her head out. “Bran, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Mrs. Rodgers. Go back to sleep.” I kept my voice calm as I stepped out of the rundown apartment building and onto the street, turning right and walking forward.
Night had just descended on New Vein. That meant in this part of the city that people started to post up at ‘their’ corners.
I recognized what they were, even if I didn’t know who they were. I
“Hey there, young man.” A night walker waved me down.
I met her eyes and she shrunk away, pulling two other ladies away from me. I nearly rolled my eyes. I needed to tone down my gaze apparently. Whatever she had seen in my eyes involved a history this body had not experienced.
Turning down a side street, I headed towards the hospital that rose above the rest of the cheap apartments on the bad side of town.
“Don’t move.” A scrappy man, not much more than skin and bones, pulled a gun on me and looked up and down the dimly lit street. The tweaker fidgeted with something in his pocket.
I stopped, not because he wanted me to, but because he posed an opportunity. “I’d put that down, or better yet, hand it over.”
“How about I shoot you if you don’t empty your pockets.” He jabbed the gun at me and took another step closer.
I met his eyes, but they flitted around too much for him to even focus on me. This guy apparently had never heard not to use the product. It was rule number one.
“You deaf, boy?” the man asked.
“No. I’m just waiting for you to make a move so that I can scatter your teeth along the street in self-defense,” I answered calmly.
There were certain principles that I maintained. Killing someone for their things went against them, but if he struck me, then my hands were no longer tied. At some point, principles were something you lived and died by.
He jabbed at me again with that gun.
What happened next was fast by most standards, yet far slower than I expected. I pushed the gun to the side, grabbing his wrist and twisting to point the gun down.
My mind moved faster than my hands and the gun went off. I felt a faint pain in my side before I jerked him out of balance, taking the gun and slamming him down onto the curb.
“I promised to scatter your teeth along the street.” I kicked him in the face, hard.
There was the tinkle of a tooth dancing on the curb. Less than I had been aiming to do, but it would have to be enough. I didn’t have time for more.
I checked the gun. It felt a little foreign in my hand.
Guns were practically relics after the Rapture. Even if somebody happened to make one that was a ranked piece of equipment, it was prohibitively expensive. People who wasted money on something like that didn’t last long.
It had three bullets, no serial number. I put the safety on and stuffed it in my jacket pocket.
“What to do with you?” I murmured, checking up and down the streets to ensure that there were no cameras or people watching. I put my foot on his head, jerking my weight down several times as he started to claw at me to stop. Finally, he stopped moving.
There was no reason to leave a problem behind to crop up later.
The sight of his death didn’t even phase me. He was merely a resource for me at that moment. And he had started the fight.
Around this part of town, the cops wouldn’t even spend more time than filing the paperwork for his body. Hell, some of them might just ignore him because the paperwork was more trouble than a banger’s corpse was worth to them.
I fished through his pockets, finding a wad of cash, a car key, some pills, and a baggie of powder.
The pills and the powder went into the first gutter I saw. There was no reason to try and sell something I didn’t have confidence in. The cash and the gun would go far though.
As for the set of keys I found, they might be of use later. I had my mother’s car, but in the near future, there might be some tasks that I’d want to do and not have trace back to me. Options were always nice.
I continued down the street and lifted my jacket to see where the bullet had grazed me. A part of me expected to watch it heal over as my regeneration activated, but I had no such luck in my current body. But I was headed to the hospital; I could stitch it up there easily enough. The pain was relatively dull in comparison to other wounds I had experienced. But it was a good reminder that I had to be careful with my body. It was far weaker than I was used to.
Integrating with the System was high on my list of things to do, but one thing was at the very top.
The hospital's bright white lights washed out into the surroundings as I stepped up and waved at the front desk. I was fairly certain they would recognize me, so I headed straight up to the sixth floor. It was quiet at this time of night; the only people left here were those who were morose and mourning.
I moved through the halls until I found my mother’s room. Five hundred and some years later, I still remembered the sight as I stepped into the room.
Machines beeped as she lay in bed, completely still in the moonlight. The ventilator pumped as green-lit, little squares reported each and every movement of the machines and her functions.
“Mom,” my voice quaked, and I fell to my knees in front of her.
Death had become another part of my life quickly after the Rapture. Loss was frequent, and I rarely had the time to deal with each one as they came up.
Yet my mother held a certain place that would never be out done. Her death had been the starting gun for a harsh life. Only later did I get a better picture of what had happened. Before then, I had not understood how deep inter-Clan politics went, and how much strife and how many knives there were in the dark between the Clans.
I never found out who had come for my mom, but later when the family checked her body, they confirmed a ranked poison had been used. Given she was poisoned before the Rapture, it had to be someone who was integrated with the System.
With her death, my life had taken a dark turn. I never was formally inducted into the Clan. But later when I learned of them and my connection to them, I was brought on as a servant of the Clan. It wasn’t bad, but far from what it could have been.
And before that, I’d spent time diving into the mundane underworld of Vein City. Though, the mob had done well after the Rapture. They were quick to adapt to the new, harsher realities of the world.
I paused as there was a soft patter of water on the ground in front of me.
I frowned, touching the bed looking for the source of water, only to touch my face and feel the tears running down my cheeks.
Damnit. There wasn’t time for this.
Wiping the tears from my face, I stood and held my mother’s hand. “No use crying, because you won’t die this time around.”
I tried to Inspect her, but all I got was static as the System recognized the request but didn’t connect to me.
I sighed. That was fine. I’d need to integrate with the System anyways.
There were several ways to integrate now. But after the Rapture, everyone integrated at puberty.
As of now, the families and sects all held a way to do it for their people. Outside of that, there were rogue players that got their integration from accidentally having an instance spawn on them or having a one-in-a-million chance encounter.
The latter wasn’t going to be worth chasing down. Yet stepping into an instance was well within my plans. The System even dropped them on people on purpose to get them cleared.
After the Rapture, the Dags, who I ran with, were swallowed up by the Nester Crime Family. There was a bastard son of the boss who told a story of a dungeon spawning on him one night about a week from the present time.
I stood up, a goal in mind as I dug through the drawers in my mother’s room, finding a kit to use to patch myself up. Sewing up a hole, be it flesh or leather armor, was something I was fairly used to doing.
Now it was just time to track down Bobby Nester and become his man. Then, when he stumbled into the instance on one of the coming nights, I’d be the one at his side.
Plans, plans, plans. I’d need to get them into motion quickly. There were only two years before the whole world went to hell in a handbasket.
Chapter 2
Leaving my mother’s hospital bed, I went in search of the vibrant nightlife of the city.
My first step into the underbelly of the world had been a bad loan from an even worse man to keep my mother in the hospital. I had ended up working for the Dags to try and pay that debt off.
The world as we knew it had ended before paying off the debt had ever come close to a reality. Instead, I had just gotten sucked deeper and deeper into the criminal enterprises that scurried about the back alleys of Vein City.
