“Ah, don’t worry,” I said. “What I want to ask and discuss with you shouldn’t go against the oaths your swore. What I really want to know about is how to prepare the country—and the world—for the coming apocalypse.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well—to make a long story short—magic is coming to the world. What I can do, everyone else will be able to do, too. Which is great and all. The problem is that monsters will also be coming. Think really angry monkeys with magic, that kind of thing.”

  “Like goblins and orcs?”

  “Exactly like goblins and orcs. How the hell can I help get the world ready for that? I’m doing what I can on the magic side of things, but the governments of the world need to be ready.”

  “I have some contacts I can lean on,” he said. “Other than that, I don’t know what to do. Certainly don’t go showing off your magic to the government. They’ll try to lock you in a room somewhere to experiment on. No, I’ll pass the word along so that we can all be ready.”

  “Awesome,” I said, giving him a thumbs-up. “Oh, and you don’t have to now. I was asking for the next time I come back in time. I still have work to do on getting the magic thing working right. Which leads me to the other thing I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Please don’t get mad at me for this one, but it’s the only shot I have to test everything for next time. Can you promise that?”

  I used System Contract with my words to see if a verbal contract would work.

  “Alright,” he said.

  I checked my experience and saw that some of it had disappeared. That was good information to know—and extremely exploitable.

  “In order for me to make magic work, let’s say that—hypothetically—I will need to kill damn near every living thing on Earth.”

  Grandpa Joe made to stand up, but the contract glassed his eyes over and he sat back down. As he took back control of his body, he looked at me with what I assumed was as close to anger as he could get away with. I held up my hands.

  “Let me explain, first,” I said. “Killing humans doesn’t help. I wouldn’t want to, anyways. That said, I would assume that many will die as a consequence of my actions. The good news—if you can call it that, is that I will return to before any of that happens, so it will be as if it never occurred.”

  “And the thing you did that made me sit back down?” he questioned me in a harsh tone.

  “Another test,” I explained. “It was a verbal contract for you to not get mad at me. I didn’t know that would work. Now that I do, I know what I need to fix for next time. Those contracts are really exploitable. Sorry for using you as a test dummy.”

  “I guess I can understand that. But please, don’t do it again. It’s… not very comfortable.”

  “I won’t.”

  “As to your statements—I didn’t hear a question in there—well, I think it’s a bad idea. In fact, I know it’s a bad idea. It’s insane! On the other hand, I’m also not a time traveler, so I can’t say you’re wrong, only that it seems like a very bad idea that would—as you pointed out—get a lot of people killed—hypothetically, of course.”

  “Well, the question—I suppose—is about how to cause ecological mayhem without anyone figuring out it was me. While I am rather strong and tough for my age, I don’t think I’d do particularly well against bullets and stuff.”

  “Again,” he told me, “I would caution you against doing that. It’ll only bring untold pain to the world. That said, if you believe you must—and it seems you do—then you’ll either need some form of disguise to launder money and resources through, or you’ll have to be very careful to not leave any traces of what you are doing. If magic can do that, maybe that’s something you’ll need to address in the future.”

  “Right. There probably is. I’m doing this partly as a test, but also because I’m running out of time. Traveling back in time is way more painful than you think. I don’t think I can do it after the next time. This one was already pretty rough.”

  “Now that makes a lot more sense,” he smiled. “Because before it just sounded like you were out for revenge against the world or something!”

  “Sorry, again,” I said. “I’m not very good at this. I spent the last fifteen years being a farmer, I didn’t talk to people too much.”

  “Well, don’t be a stranger, ok?”

  “Sure,” I shrugged.

  “Be safe and good luck,” he told me. “I’ll see what my contacts say and let you know for next time.”

  We both stood. I gave him a great big hug as the Soundproof field dropped around us.

  “I’ll see you soon, I hope,” he said.

  “Yeah. I’ll see you.”

  I forced a smile before walking inside with the bag that contained the laptop and book.

  Predictably, Dad won the lottery a day later. This time, I’d given him the full prize as I trusted him to handle it better than Mom. She’d get her bit in the divorce, but for now I was in a safe place to use the funds from Grandpa Joe to get the money ready for whatever I needed.

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  As I went through the motions of getting everything ready, I considered that Grandpa Joe might try to stop me from doing what I needed to do. Even if it wasn’t him directly, there was a good chance he would tell some of his friends about it. From there, I would be watched. For now, though, I didn’t have anything to hide. If I wanted that, I knew magic could shield me from them. I would see what happened if it came to that. I would be watching.

  With the winnings from the lottery, Dad was able to stay home with me. That allowed me to stay out of school and work on building up my nest egg. It started with Dad calling me in as sick for the first week, then formally withdrawing me from school to be homeschooled. Like last time, homeschooling was the best option for me to have the freedom to do what needed doing. I could take the tests when necessary but otherwise just do my own thing.

  The arrangement worked for a few weeks until I woke one morning to Mom pounding her fist on the front door.

  “Milton!” I heard her yell. “Get your ass out here! I can’t believe you’d do that to our son!”

  Dad’s feet thumped towards the door. Mom’s voice became even louder when he opened the door.

  “Stop yelling!” he exclaimed.

  “No! I won’t! You took him out of school. How could you?”

  “Because it was the right thing to do! I won’t be screaming his secrets to the world, so either come in and talk like a fucking adult or otherwise fuck off!”

  “Fuck you,” she screamed. “I will see my son. Don’t you stop me, Milton!”

  “Not with that attitude,” Dad stated.

  “I will get a fucking court order!” Mom exclaimed.

  She stormed out of the house, but not before I heard the sounds of objects crashing into the kitchen.

  “Sorry, kid,” Dad called up after he was sure she was gone.

  “It’s fine,” I said back. “It could be a problem, though. Might be time to get a lawyer.”

  “True that.”

  I rolled my eyes and tried to return to sleep. I failed. The ruckus had caused me to be up and ready. I had breakfast with Dad—avoiding the broken objects that had been thrown—before returning to my room to build my fortune.

  Having done it once already, the trades were easier to remember this time around. And with more time to memorize the path, I would be able to reach the amount I needed sooner. It helped that I didn’t need nearly as much. I wanted to invest the money into businesses directly for the experience. I didn’t need much to see my other plans though. The skills I had available would take care of that.

  Though I planned on killing as much as I could, I held off for the time being. I wanted the businesses to have some time to prosper. Otherwise, what was the point of making the money if it would just go to waste in only a year or two? Well, a year or two was probably too ambitious, but that was besides the point. No, I didn’t need to get the skills yet because I wanted to be set up first. I would need to know how to navigate the maze next time so that everything would be ready as far in advance as it could be.

  Two weeks later, what I had hoped for was torn away from me. Mom had obtained an order from the court where I had to go with her on certain days. The way it had been last time was the way I needed it. That is, do what I had to do without interference. Seeing as it wasn’t going to be the case now—at least not without intervention—I was rather unhappy.

  She picked me up from Dad’s for two days at her place. As soon as I got in the car, she started venting.

  “I can’t believe your father would take you out of school like that!” she exclaimed. “School is so important to your future. I’m going to put you back in as soon as I get custody.”

  “No, Mom,” I said. “That’s—”

  “You heard me, Milton. I’m your mother, so you will listen to me. School is really important. It’s not something you can just get out of!”

  “Mom! Stop!” I yelled.

  “Listen to me!” she screamed over me.

  At that point, I decided I’d had enough. I cast Soundproof around her head, leaving room around her ears so she could hear me.

  “No, Mom,” I said. “You need to stop. I came back in time to save the world. I can do magic, and I will not be wasting my time in school, ok?”

  I could see her screaming into the little bubble around her head.

  “Ah right,” I laughed. “You can’t say anything because of magic. That should suffice for proof, I think. If not, I can shoot fire from my hand if you’d like.”

  After I finished saying my bit, the bubble finally wore off. I was immediately inundated by the shrieks coming out of her mouth.

  “How dare you do that to your own mother?! I was the one who gave birth to you and this is how you treat me?! You’re an ungrateful little—”

  I was just done with this. In other circumstances, there might have been better ways to handle it. But I had testing to do, and this was as good a time as any to try it out. I cast Dominate Mind. It was a strange feeling—like having my mind split into two pieces. One piece felt like home—that was my mind—while the other was decidedly unwelcoming. I guessed that was hers.

  Although it was hostile towards me, I could feel instinctively that I could implant thoughts directly for a short time. The first one was obvious. Calm. I needed her to calm down so we could communicate rationally. The second—and the real test—was to force her to agree with what I said next. I was very glad I would be resetting the world one more time because doing what I was doing was gross.

  “Mom,” I said, when the suggestion time ran out. “Will you agree to listen to me and do what I ask?”

  “Yes,” she droned.

  The experience cost was massive. A little over 250,000 in total. On the one hand, that was a good thing—I wouldn’t want that kind of thing to be cheap. On the other, it was something I didn’t want possible at all when the system went live in the future. For now, I needed to test its limits, even if the test subject was the current iteration of my mother.

  “Good,” I said. “So like I said, I came back in time and have magic. You’ve seen it. You’ve felt it. You probably don’t like me very much. I don’t care. You stole from me before I came back in time, and this is your punishment. I need to test things, so you were a convenient option. That said, I’m not going to do anything crazy.

  “What I want you to do—and the only thing I’ll ask of you that would seem strange—is that I want all of the experience you generate. I know you don’t know what that means, and that’s ok.

  The other things I ask of you relate to school and the divorce and all of that stuff. I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t drag it out. I will not be going back to school. It was fucking boring the first time and there’s no way I’m doing it for a third time. Ok?”

  “Ok,” Mom said.

  I could see the glassy look from the system contract on her. That meant—to my eyes, at least—that she was trying to resist it and was being forced to follow the terms as I’d intended them. I had to correct that, otherwise she’d be a zombie for years. That would be less fun.

  “Mom, you can just follow the spirit of what I’ve asked and otherwise live your life as you want. There’s no need to fight it like that. You’ll feel better and won’t have your body taken over.”

  Mom’s eyes returned to normal moments later. She glared at me.

  “How could you?!”

  “You were yelling at me and I needed to test that so I know the limits of it. I’m sorry for that.”

  “Will you undo it?” she pleaded.

  “No. I need to test it, and I have to make sure you don’t betray me like last time.”

  Mom opened her mouth before he eyes glassed over again. I sighed. There were some features and skills that would need to be banned or at least heavily restricted. I’d just used two of them on my own mother. Well, at least she wasn’t the real one.

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