Chapter 138: Abysslon Arrives

The white faded slowly, and it faded into grass.

Logan knew the garden before his eyes had finished adjusting. He knew the smell of it and the low stone wall at the far end, and the particular way the house sat behind the trees.

He had come back to this exact spot after Star Hunters with nothing left in him, and fallen asleep on the lawn before he could make it inside.

This time he was standing.

"Logan!"

Vina hit him at full speed about a second later, and he caught her without thinking, because some things did not require a Speed stat.

---

They were all there.

His mother came across the grass with both hands already reaching for him, and his father a half step behind her, walking the careful way he always walked when he was trying not to run. Alice’s parents stood by the house with Andrivida beside them.

Helen got to him and simply held on. She did not say anything at first.

"We heard," Daniel said, over her shoulder. His voice was not quite steady. "Garen said it went out to every player on the planet. All one hundred."

"All one hundred," Logan agreed.

"First time anybody ever did it."

"First time anybody ever did it."

Daniel looked at him for a long moment, the way he had looked at him the first time Logan came home from a match. He looked like he was trying to find his son somewhere inside a stranger.

Then he put a hand on the back of Logan’s neck and pulled him in, and Logan found out that his father was shaking.

’I made them wait through every match,’ he thought, and the thought landed harder than any Warlord had. ’Every single one, they sat here and waited to find out whether I came back.’

---

Alice was going through the same thing by the house.

Isolde had her daughter by both shoulders and was looking her over for damage with the flat, professional thoroughness of the ninth-ranked player on Earth. Garen was pretending to be calm and failing at it.

"You beat my record for Warlords in one match," Garen said.

"Everybody’s record, Father."

"Mine was included in everybody’s." He was grinning helplessly. "Forty-one. I was proud of forty-one."

"You should be." Alice finally let herself smile. "Forty-one is very good."

"You killed a hundred."

"We killed a hundred." She glanced across the garden at Logan. "He did the ones I could not reach."

---

Then the units came through, and the garden stopped being quiet.

Billy was first, because Billy was always first. He landed in the middle of the lawn in Voidwheel form, rolled a full circle for no reason, and announced to nobody in particular that he had personally helped kill a hundred Warlords.

"You helped with some of them," Terry said, stepping out behind him.

"Most of them."

"Some."

Winsmoke took one look at two families’ worth of people standing in a garden and opened his hull without asking anyone’s permission. Within a few minutes the smell rolling off the kitchen had three neighbors leaning over the far wall.

Sonic took Vina flying.

He did not ask Logan first, which Logan decided to let slide, because his sister’s shrieking was entirely the happy kind and she did not stop until Sonic brought her back down.

"He can fly now!" she yelled at Logan. "For real! Not just floating!"

"I know."

"Sonic said you gave him a dragon heart!"

"Alice gave him a dragon heart."

"Sonic said you did the killing part."

"Sonic talks too much," Logan said, and Sonic had the decency to look pleased about it.

---

The new ones took a while to settle.

Xairon walked into the house and came back out a minute later sliding between four shapes, all of them visibly disappointed.

"The foundations are adequate," it said. "The rest is a very small house."

"It is a home, Xairon."

"It could be a larger home." Xairon looked at the garden with obvious intent. "I am only noting it."

Thessaris found Isolde’s herb beds within a minute and knelt among them without a word. Draventh examined the stone wall with the focus of someone planning to enchant it whether anyone wanted that or not.

Halden stood at the edge of the lawn with his halberd and did not seem to know what to do with a place that was not under attack.

Synthia found him there. So did Tinkerbell, who circled his head twice and then landed on his shoulder plate as if it had been built for that purpose.

Halden looked at the small fairy sitting on his armor for a long time.

"Lord," he said finally. "What do I do here?"

Logan thought about it.

"You stay standing," he said. "Except now nobody is trying to knock you down. See how you like it."

---

Isolde found him once the food had gone round.

"Your parents have been working very hard," she said. "Since the moment you promised them, and the whole time you were gone."

"The breathing rhythm I gave them is meant for people who have already awakened. They have been doing it without anything to breathe into."

Logan looked over at Daniel and Helen, sitting together on the low wall and watching Vina chase Billy across the grass.

"They never said."

"They did not want you worrying about it while you were in a match." Isolde’s voice softened. "They are ready, Logan. They have been ready for a while. They are only waiting on you."

Logan opened his panel.

```

[ Tier Points: 736,500 ]

```

’Two of them. That is all it ever was.’ He had promised this right here, after Star Hunters, and then walked into a match that had tried very hard to make him forget.

’Fifty thousand each, and I could not afford it the last time I stood in this garden.’

"Two," he said. "Please."

Isolde did not answer. She reached into her storage ring and held out two thin cylinders of crystal, gold motes drifting slowly inside each.

```

[ Awakening Pill x2 ]

[ Cost: 100,000 Tier Points ]

```

```

[ Remaining Tier Points: 636,500 ]

```

---

He carried them across the grass himself.

His parents saw what he was holding before he got there, and both of them went very still.

"Logan," Helen said. "Are those."

"They are." He put one in each of their hands. "I told you after Star Hunters. I told you you would become players."

"You did."

"I am a bit late."

Daniel looked at the crystal in his palm and did not say anything for a long time.

"Son," he said eventually. "You are the least late person I have ever known."

They took them together, the way they did most things.

The gold light came up through both of them at once, and Logan watched his mother close her eyes and his father’s hands stop shaking. For a moment the whole garden went quiet, even Billy, even Vina.

```

[ Helen Wolf ]

[ Class: Wellspring Mender (Legendary) ]

[ Talent: Unbroken Hearth (Epic) ]

```

```

[ Daniel Wolf ]

[ Class: Ironroot Warden (Epic) ]

[ Talent: Patient Stone (Legendary) ]

```

Helen opened her eyes first. She looked down at her hands for a long moment, as if they belonged to somebody else.

"I can feel it," she said. "Isolde, I can feel the thing you kept telling us to breathe into."

"I know," Isolde said, very gently. "I told you it would be there."

Vina had come running over and was staring at both of them with enormous eyes.

"Can I have one too?"

Isolde crouched down to her height.

"Not yet, little one. The pill only works on people who are old enough to have failed to awaken. You are still too young to have tried."

Vina’s face fell. Logan crouched down beside her and put a hand on her head, and did not say anything, because he did not know what to say to that and she would have known if he pretended.

’Not yet,’ he thought. ’She has time. She has all the time in the world.’

---

The voice came out of nowhere and everywhere at once.

It did not come through any panel. It came into Logan’s ears directly, and into Alice’s, and into Vina’s.

He saw every head in the garden turn at the same moment. He knew without having to check that every head on the planet had turned with them.

```

[ World Announcement: Two players of your world have reached Tier-10. ]

[ Floor 10 opens, welcoming the opening of Abysslon, the only game of this floor and the final game in this lower world. ]

[ Abysslon is a special floor where all players from Tier-1 to Tier-10 can enter. You can earn Tier Points inside Abysslon and use them to increase your Tier. ]

[ Players who win in the Abysslon can ascend. ]

[ Abysslon is a special game. Once entered, you cannot exit by surrendering. You can either live there forever, reach the end to ascend, or die trying both. ]

[ Abysslon Feature 1: If you enter Abysslon, the people you care for will also forcefully enter alongside you. ]

[ Abysslon Feature 2: Each mini-area of the Abysslon will have multiple Summoning Circles that can summon beings. You can use Tower Points you earn to summon units. ]

[ Abysslon Feature 3: Abysslon longs for love. ]

[ All the best in your endeavours to reach the end of the Abysslon. ]

```

Then it was gone, and the garden was completely silent.

Logan was still crouched beside his sister with one hand on her head.

He read the first feature again. Then he looked down at Vina, who was looking up at him, too young to have understood a single word of it.