CRITICAL ALERT: Jackson Rift has been destroyed. Defeat the enemies within the territory in the next 13 minutes to absorb control of this territory and its resources into another Rift within your network. Otherwise, all networked Rifts will become inert.

Noise came from everywhere. There were screams, moans, clanging metal, explosions, grunts, and shouts. Adam didn't know whether any of them came from him or not.

Slowly, Adam tried to open his eyes. One opened. That only worsened the sensation of the world wobbling while filled with fog.

Adam's mind was fuzzy, as well as his senses being overwhelmed. He had trouble remembering where he was or what had happened. Through his overcharged tactile sensations, he knew he was on grass…and in a puddle of sticky liquid. His nose smelled the tang of salt, sweat, and iron. Blood.

His attempt to move his legs failed. Adam looked down, only to notice that his shorts were burned off. One of his legs was charred and stiff, while the other looked broken, with a bone pressing against his skin.

Raising an arm, Adam stopped as soon as it came into view. Almost all the flesh was burned off it, with mostly blackened bone showing. Bones in his hand had fallen off, including two entire fingers.

Adam winced. There was pain, but it was almost as if his nerves were dead, not even letting him feel how badly his body was damaged. When he tried sitting up using his core, he instead felt his muscles fail and wetness run down them.

Foregoing moving, Adam brought up a Rift display of himself. He was a mess, in just as bad shape as ever before. His left side was practically incinerated, with the right only looking better due to no bones showing. There were seven deep punctures in his abdomen and chest, including one that looked like it should run completely through his stomach except for the skin being fried together from whatever had blown him up.

He relaxed for a moment, letting his head fall backwards. His body wasn't usable, so he didn't try to push it yet. There was a slight coolness that felt like it was touching all his wounds, which included almost all of him, trying to heal it. That must be the passive healing skill he got from the Archbishop class. But there was too much damage for that to heal him.

He needed some blood. And to find out what happened.

Using mental control, Adam moved the display to show him his surroundings. What he saw made his jaw clench.

He was about two hundred yards from his high-rise. A large chunk of the top two floors was violently missing. Adam's penthouse was nearly gone, and a few units below it were exposed to the outside.

Then Adam panned the display around. Things kept getting worse. There might be a hundred bodies between the building and where he had fallen. Most had various cuts on them and had bled out. There were also plenty of people fighting, shouting, and trying to get organized while protecting each other.

Whatever enemy they were fighting, there was no trace of them on the display. Humans and Leputi were moving around frantically. They swung weapons and cast spells, looking both terrified and determined. The number of dead on the ground showed that they weren't struggling without reason.

As the view continued to move around the scene of carnage, one body caught Adam's attention. Tom was on the ground, warm blood coming out from several wide gashes in his stomach, made by a weapon that had cut through his armor.

Adam's thoughts froze along with the display.

Tom.

Tom was dead…or maybe near dead. The chest on the body wasn't rising noticeably and there was so much blood.

Then another body nearby drew Adam's attention. He only recognized Joseph by the unique spear in his hand, stomach down as blood pooled around him. The metal armor he wore was shredded, and his arms and legs had been cut to prevent him from moving. His disfigured mouth was still moving, swearing, to indicate that he was at least alive.

Adam felt a chill throughout his body. It was like his blood was frozen in his veins. Or that he had run out of blood, with so much drained out already. This wasn't right. This couldn't be happening!

Part of Adam's mind watched through the display as if it was a TV, denying the reality that he was looking at. Some violent action movie unassociated with Adam's friends.

It looked so far away. A nightmarish drama that some sicko dreamed up. But even in his delirium, he was desperate to search through more of the bodies for ones he might recognize.

Then he saw two more. They were closer to him. One was reaching out an arm towards him, and she wasn't breathing. Like so much of the field around, blood was pooled underneath her.

The second body had crumbled while reaching down to touch the first, probably to heal her. But that body was also pail, and even her wounds no longer bled.

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"No…" gasped Adam in a whisper. "Nononono!"

Andrea and Abbey. Dead. Only a dozen yards from him. Adam's mind was threatening to break on him, and he felt the chill in his body get colder.

The people still alive and fighting weren't near most of the fallen bodies.

Adam forced himself to roll over. He barely managed to turn onto his stomach, and the effort required did not bode well. As he placed one near skeletal hand on the ground to push himself up, Adam couldn't get leverage or control over his movements.

"Damnit!" he swore.

His mind was so cold. His thoughts were moving slowly, unable to coherently come to him, as hard to focus on as the distortion in his vision.

Instinct took over. Adam reached for [Soul and Body Shaping]. He didn't have good control over any part of him, and he slammed the skill open to the fullest. An amount of power and stats that Adam had never been able to survive before rushed into him.

Yet, unlike any time before, there seemed to be no limit to the stats he could take. A full 100% of future Gregor's strength, agility, and vitality filled him. Even with that much power between his soul and body, Adam didn't heat up or have his skin ignite. Like how he was able to take on more of Gregor's strength once he received his Protector class, Adam seemed able to handle it all with five classes shared inside him.

The strength wasn't enough for him to move his body in a normal way, but it was enough for him to get on his elbows and drag himself across the lawn towards the girls.

Screams and shouting were still coming from all around, as more Sentinel Army troops fell while others arrived from around the city, but Adam's focus was entirely on the girls.

His shocked mind refused to accept what was taking place. The destruction of his world and safe haven was unthinkable after he did so much to stand against the invaders while holding his ground. Now, because of something he didn't understand, something outside of his ability to predict or prepare for, everything was falling apart.

As Adam finished pulling himself along the ground, leaving a trail of his own blood, he reached out and touched Andrea's head.

"Andrea, I'm here to help," he whispered. "Abbey, I need a heal."

There was no reaction from the bodies and Adam barely noticed that his already wobbly view of the world became blurrier as tears filled his eyes.

"You guy. It's safe now. I'll make everything better," he cried as his skeletal hand stroked Andrea's hair.

He tried to turn her over but didn't have the leverage to. Placing his hand in front of her mouth also didn't leave him with enough sensation to feel if there was still breath or not. Shaking her did nothing as her body only reacted to his own motions.

"I need you guys," begged Adam, pain clear in his sounds. "You can't be dead. You can't be heroes! I need you all with me!"

As he reached up to jostle Abbey's bend body, it fell onto its side and Adam winced. He tried to apologize, once more shaking her to get a response, but none came.

Reaching around Abbey's head, Adam cradled it as gently as he could. He whispered to them, pleaded with them, even ordered them to answer him, but they were silent in death.

The tears flowed heavily down Adam's face.

It was during that moment that Adam realized. Sixty-eight times. That was the number of lives his predecessor had lived. The number of times he had seen all his loved ones die.

Adam had often wondered how much more he could have done if he had the memories of future Adam's lives as well as the power from the corrupted classes. Now he had his answer. Nothing. That was why future Adam had lived so many lives. Future Adam hadn't won. Couldn't win. All he managed was self-survival.

It had obviously been a rigged game from the start, and though Adam had lasted this long, even bringing his loved ones with him, there was no way to win. Just an illusion of progress. In the end, whether Adam died or not, the world would be destroyed by the [System] and it would have someone else to manipulate to serve its warped purpose.

Adam moved himself a little further and settled down between the corpses of Andrea and Abbey. His head and body hurt so much. His senses were driving him to madness and preventing him from doing much.

He was finally ready to concede. There was no reason to play a game that would end like this. Future Adam must have been insane to play through the deaths of his loved ones so many times. A masochist to keep inflicting this kind of suffering on himself, able to remember every death, every loss, while continuing to pile them on.

Determination couldn't carry you to victory when facing overwhelming power. Being an aberration who could ignore some of the rules didn't matter when the hidden rules could ignore him.

Adam wept. He squeezed his eyes and ears shut to try and drown out the overwhelming sounds of fighting and the silence of the dead. He just wanted…well, he wasn't sure what he wanted in that moment other than Andrea and Abbey.

THUMP!

"Not now!" snapped Adam as heat pulsed through him. The heat wasn't originating from his heart like normal. He wasn't sure where it came from.

CONQUER!

"Shut up!" he yelled at the voice that reignited his soul. "Just let me mourn in my self-pity!"

How had future Adam continued on after so much loss? The man continued to fight as the losses piled up. He had battled during life after life, until he found ways to cheat, found loopholes in the rules.

CONQUER!!!

The voice insisted. Adam's body seized up and shuttered, as if the voice was threatening him.

"I CAN'T!" shouted Adam back at it. "My body's broken! I can't even fight like this!"

CONQUER!!!

"I can't do it! I'M! NOT! HIM!" screamed Adam as wave after wave of heat burned his body and soul.

But that was a lie. Future Adam wasn't a different person. In the end, they were made from all the same things. He might have had different memories and experiences, but they both had started in the same place. Adam couldn't deny that he had even started in a stronger place. And he had no doubt that if it came to self-survival, then this Adam could manage easily. The challenge, as both Adams had found, was protecting those around them.

Conquer, said the quiet voice of two Adams within his soul.

"Fine," sighed Adam in defeat. "FINE!"

Adam reached out a tendril of his soul. He tried to connect to Andrea. There was nothing there.

He checked his soul map and found a diffused and thin amount of energy that was fading. The same was true for Abbey.

If his connection couldn't find purchase because her soul was too faded, maybe he just needed to infuse more energy.

Adam reached into both girl's permanent connections through the [System Conduits] that he had hacked. Then he pushed energy into them.

The responses on his soul map became more substantial, but he could see that they were still fading, the energy no longer trapped within their soul boundaries. Adam simply didn't have enough energy for it. He needed more, and as Adam's body and mind became hotter as heat pulsed through him more rapidly, Adam was determined to find a way.

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