With Mom no longer preventing me from doing what I needed to do, I settled into my life. As much as I wanted to get on with the whole destruction project, I also wanted to find out which companies I could gain control of—especially those that would prove beneficial in my final life. That meant getting a good sized nest egg and doing the legal wrangling to get that money working for me. The time it took to make the money I wanted was only four months instead of three-quarters-of-a-year.

  Now that I had enough money, I reached out to lawyers to handle the legal side of things. Unlike last time, the gloves were off this time around. I wasn’t going to mess around by being nice—that had bit me more than once already. No, I was going to abuse the System Contract feature to its fullest. I didn’t plan on forcing people to do horrible things—that’s what I would do, if it came to it. Instead, what I needed most was perfect loyalty.

  After speaking with ten lawyers, I found one sleazy enough to do what I needed. There were lines even he wouldn’t cross, but I wasn’t planning on crossing those, so we struck an accord. The lawyer—Alexander—signed an expensive System Contract to be my lawyer and handle all of the business transactions I would need. He would act as my agent instead of my parents so that I would be insulated from scrutiny. Most of all, he would be unable to spill the beans on any of it. Not the contract, not me, not any of my secrets. It was the sort of contract I would need to use with everyone to protect myself.

  My next goal was to look for businesses that would be important in an apocalypse scenario. People would need food, medicine, housing, and the most important one: weapons. From the visions I’d had, I knew that guns would work somewhat, at least for a while. I also knew that other things—like spears—would be important as well. That’s what I told Alexander when I stopped in his office to drop off a check.

  “I still can’t believe this is happening,” he told me. “But I can see why you’d want to do that. Did you have any companies in mind?”

  “No,” I said. “Just the basic categories. Seeing as this is a test run and all, I want to know for next time which ones will do well and which will fail. I’m willing to put down a lot of money on this endeavor.”

  “Ok,” he said slowly. “I will come up with a list of small to medium sized companies that fit what you’re going for.”

  “Thanks.”

  Alexander did just that. It was a rather extensive list, too. With over a hundred companies to sort through, I spent a month picking between them before telling Alexander my choices and giving him the money to disperse. I asked him to keep detailed notes for me as I would be busy working on other things.

  One of the things I would not be doing this time was the stories. I felt they were a good return on investment, but I doubted there would be many people left by the time the apocalypse arrived. The destruction I needed to perpetrate… well, it was going to be an apocalypse itself.

  By the time a year had passed and spring had arrived again, I was ready to start my tests. The businesses had all been funded, and some of them were already producing returns. And while that was interesting, it wasn’t what I needed to focus on. That was why I’d recruited Alexander to handle it in my stead. I only wanted the information of how each one reacted to the hell I would eventually unleash.

  Saying it like that reminded me that what I was doing was—in fact—pure evil. If it weren’t for the ability to return to a time before any of it happened, I would never do it. As it was, the world was simply a simulation of what it could become. At least, that’s how I thought of it. None of what I did—or didn’t do—would remain when I started over. The truth was that I needed experience, and it was time for morality to sit this one out.

  Now that I had thrown down the gauntlet, it was time to figure out which skills would get me there. I wanted to start slowly to get a feel for how the skills operated. After all, it would be nigh impossible to patch skills I hadn’t tried before. The class I had chosen had a fair amount of options. There were a few I was interested in trying out.

  I picked up the resistance skills because I needed to ensure my own survival against whatever nasty diseases or toxins the other skills created. Disease and Toxin were the primary methods by which the class did damage. There were other options, but those were more obscure. I felt more comfortable trying out a smaller number of skills to begin with. Those five would be a good start.

  I would need somewhere to test—preferably without prying eyes. I considered going somewhere with Mom, but decided instead to test in the bamboo-like forest behind Dad’s house. Picking a secluded spot, I looked around for test subjects. The easiest to mess with were the knotweed shoots. Not only were there an entire forest of them, but they also wouldn’t run away from me.

  I found two shoots nearby. On the first, I cast Toxic. The other got the Disease treatment. I waited for several minutes, only to see no difference. I felt frustration rise within me. After all, these skills were supposed to work! Maybe it was because they were under leveled—it would explain why the reaction was slow or weak.

  Before raising my skills to tier two, I wanted to be sure I wasn’t missing anything. By raising Disease in level, I would also need to do the same for its resistance. The last thing I wanted was to kill myself with these experiments. That would be catastrophic! And not just for me. I enjoyed being alive—and I assumed that went for others as well. My death would doom most of them, so that couldn’t happen.

  Just as I was going to purchase the upgrades, Dad called me in for dinner. I used that as a sign to put off the leveling for another day. Maybe what I had done would show up after a day or two. I marked the two shoots before going inside to have dinner.

  I returned two days later—the day in between having been a wet one. It took a while to find the two shoots I had messed with. When I did find my markers, the change to both was obvious. The one that had Toxic applied to it was completely black. I touched it, and it crumbled in my hands like whatever I’d put in it had weakened its structure completely. The other shoot was no longer green. Aside from the yellowish spots on its outside, it was also drying out. The blackened one was dead while the yellowish one was dying.

  I noted that I didn’t get any experience from the experiment. Well, I had, but that was from learning something new and not from killing the plant. Killing plants—it turned out—gave no Combat Experience like animals did. My next series of tests would need animals to experiment on.

  For the next hour, I looked around for a good candidate. Like with the knotweed, I needed something that was slow moving to cast my spells on. I eventually found a ant hill hidden beneath some leaves. That would be as good a target as any.

  I debated which of the two skills to test first. Disease—I hoped—would spread amongst the ants, causing a chain reaction and netting me a good amount of experience. Toxic—on the other hand—would make the ant hill unlivable and kill the ants more quickly. I settled on Disease as my method of attack. It killed more slowly and might get all of the ants.

  I cast the skill on a couple of ants entering the hill and waited. And waited. And waited. Just as I was about to give up, I got the first ping of experience. Moments later, I got another. Then the experience pings stopped—even when I waited just as long again.

  Frustrated, I kicked the hill. Why hadn’t it spread? What I needed was a way of having the skill cascade and wipe out the entire hive. One or two dead ants was basically nothing! Toxic was next up. I cast it a handful of times. The pings of experience were faster this time. Like the first test, only the ants I’d cast the spells on actually died. It didn’t spread!

  My kicking of the ant hill sent the ants into a frenzy. I chose to make myself scarce out of an abundance of caution. There were always other and hills, so I went looking for one. While I did, I considered all my options. The answer didn’t come to me immediately. Eventually, I decided to try Contagion in addition to one of the other skills.

  I tried first with Disease, casting Contagion on the same ant right after. It disappeared into the ant hill. I waited for a long time. Then the pings started. First slow, then fast, and then slow again. I had definitely killed a fair number, but the pings didn’t keep going as ants went about their business. In all, I’d managed to kill a couple hundred out of the thousands that made up this ant hill. Toxic had similar results—except with faster, but fewer, deaths.

  I was definitely missing something. The most frustrating thing was that I didn’t know what I was missing! Whatever it was, I knew it had to be fundamental to how the system operated. Part of me was thankful that what I was attempting was difficult to pull off. After all, letting people easily do what I was doing would doom all of humanity just as much as I was about to. At the very least, I had the excuse of being able to revert time if I fucked up too badly.

  I shook my head and walked away. I needed time to think. The solution wasn’t easy—whatever it was—or it wasn’t coming to me as easily as it had before. I had time to figure it out. Not too much time, but enough that I didn’t need to tear my hair out trying to force and answer to appear when it wasn’t ready.

  What I needed was a distraction. There were so many things I wanted—well, needed—to test before I went back again. If one was giving me fits, maybe one of the others would be a better idea?

  My mind flicked to the one idea that had been in the back of my mind for a very long time: flight. I hoped that Telekinesis would allow me to fly. Depending upon how the scope of the skill was defined, I might be able to lift myself—or at least push myself off of the ground—thus sailing through the air majestically. Like an eagle… piloting a blimp.

  As a backup, I bought an actual flight skill. I would try with Telekinesis first. If that didn’t work… well, I’d at least have a backup.

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