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Ch 76 (Shifting to Tom BRIEFLY)
🕑 Added 2025-03-21 01:02:57 +0000 UTC(Tom’s perspective)
Tom walked his patrol route, boots crunching against the dirt road. The sound barely registered. His steps were mechanical, moving in rhythm with the others, but his mind was somewhere else. Somewhere fifty-two days ago.
Fifty-two days since the world fell to shit. Tom kept the days etched onto a wall in the basement of the home Jordan had “gifted” him. He counted every single day of this waking nightmare.
He hadn’t always felt this way. When the world shifted, he was excited at first. Before the change Tom was a software sales manager. He lived a comfortable life. Just him and his wife.
Tom worked from home while his wife would go to the office as a clerk for a small insurance agency. Things were good. Or at least that's what he thought.
Two months before the induction Toms wife confessed she had been sleeping with one of her coworkers. It was one of the worst nights of his life, but they agreed that they would try and work through it. She quit her job and they were spending more time together.
Tom was doing his best but he couldn’t help the need to peek at her phone when she wasn’t looking or constantly ask where she’d been. Then the world changed. He chose the fighter class and gained skills and a weapon. Maybe this would be the fresh start that he needed. His wife didn’t feel the same way. She was scared she didn’t want to do the trial she wanted to wait. Tom tried to convince her and he felt like he was getting closer.
Then he met Jordan.
Jordan explained to Tom that his wife didn’t want to do the trial either. That there was a group of men whose wives wanted to sit it out. He convinced Tom that everything would work out, the world wouldn’t be that cruel. Tom was on the fence but Jordan made a great case and so he listened.
They entered the trial. Jordan was a natural, using a rapier–he never tired. While others slagged in exhaustion, Jordan became energized, the fighting seemed to invigorate him. They gained levels, added stats.
It felt good. Once the trial was completed they returned home to find their wives safe and sound.
With the trial behind them–Jordan began getting system notifications that only he could see, about finding and completing dungeons. There were still a lot of people who hadn't even started their trial yet and Jordan, Tom and a few others were already seeking out dungeons. They found and completed their first dungeon just a couple days later.
Then they found the second dungeon, this time more people asked to join. Jordan's band was becoming an exclusive group, they were the strongest and most capable and others saw the potential. Tom felt special and Jordan relied on him. Everything was going so well–until day five came.
Tom was just arriving home from the second dungeon–he was still riding high from his new levels. He swung open the door to tell his wife about his new gains. What he found still haunted his dreams.
His wife was laid out on the couch in their front room as if taking a nap. Her body was so disfigured and destroyed he didn’t recognize it. It was so bad he couldn’t face it. He left her body and stumbled to Jordan's home.
He didn’t even knock, just barged in. Jordan was in his sitting room with two other men smoking a cigar. When he saw Tom he waved him into the room. The memory of the conversation played in Tom’s head as he walked.
“Tom, is that you?! Come in, join us!” Jordan was smiling.
Slowly Tom closed the front door. Laughing echoed down the hallway as he inched his way to the sitting room. How could they be laughing? Maybe they didn’t know?
How would he tell them? Eyes all turned to him when he entered the room.
“The uhh–trial timer…” He looked over his back toward the door.
“The trial.” He coughed feeling the tears start to build in the corner of his eyes.
“My wife, she–”
The three men in the room shared a look. Then Jordan stood up and crossed the room to put an arm around Tom.
“Alright Tom, come on in. Why don’t you take a seat in here.”
Tom allowed himself to be led, feeling numb. Jordan sat him down between the two other men on the couch. He grabbed the sitting chair facing his fireplace and turned it to face him.
“Now. Why don’t you slow down and tell us what’s going on?”
Tom took a deep breath in a vain attempt to compose himself.
“It’s been 5 days, the system–it took her.” Tom’s buried his face in his hands. “My wife is gone.”
Tom couldn’t hold back the tears anymore, shock fading to realization. With his hands still covering his face he sensed more than he saw Jordan leaning forward in his chair.
TWHACK!
Stars exploded behind his eyes and a second later he found himself looking up at Jordan from the floor.
“Come on Tom!” Jordan said with fire in his eyes. “You're gonna waste your tears for that bitch?”
Shocked Tom just stared up at the man. His hand moved reflexively to massage the ache in his jaw.
“If I remember right.” He said, as he loomed over.
“You told me that skank slept with her boss.” Tom flinched as Jordan leaned down and pointed.
“Right under your nose. And you come to my house to cry over her getting what she deserved? Come on.”
Jordan sat back down. “Get him up.”
The other two men complied, and grabbed Tom under the arms and dragged him back up to the couch.
Tom’s mind was racing. This wasn’t the Jordan he knew. What was going on here?
“Tom, wipe that stupid look off your face. You knew what you were signing up for.” He shrugged.
“Pretending otherwise won’t make you feel any better.”
“No I–” Tom tried to defend himself.
“Enough of that! You were in the trial, you knew it was coming.” He chuckled and shook his head.
“At least your wife wanted to avoid it. Mine took practically all my convincing to finally decide to stay behind.”
“I don’t understand..” Tom muttered.
“Yes you do Tom. You wanted to cut those shackles just like we did.” He said waving at the two on the couch. They chuckled softly.
“Cut my shackles?”
“Tom, we’ve been given a gift.” There was an edge to his voice. A sharpness. “As soon as I heard the voice I could feel it in my bones, this world is mine for the taking.”
He leaned in really looking at me. “Every level, every stat. The strong are going to rule this world. Control it.”
"You feel it, don't you? That weight off your shoulders? You're free now. No more obligations, no more attachments. Nothing tying you down."
Tom opened his mouth—to argue, to deny. He wanted to put Jordan in his place, to set him straight. Then he remembered how he felt when his wife had confessed to screwing her boss, how small it made him feel.
“She got what she deserved. Now stop whining and just enjoy it.” He opened a box on the coffee table and pulled out another cigar offering it to Tom.
Tom eyed the cigar. He felt numb. Yes he hated what his wife had done.
But she didn’t deserve to die. Not like that. Not at all.
But then why did he feel... lighter? Why did some part of him—some tiny, ugly part—believe Jordan might be right? His fingers twitched. And before he even realized it, he was reaching for the cigar.
That was just how things went with Jordan. Tom would keep drawing lines and Jordan just kept making him cross them.
Some of the people in the faction became frustrated with Jordan. They didn’t like the way he ran the faction, the way he always seemed to have all the best opportunities for him and his friends.
Jordan couldn’t stand the dissent.
“Why can’t people just be grateful?” He would say. “We keep them safe, protect them and all they want to do is complain.”
At first he tried to tolerate it, but then it grew louder. So Jordan made a plan. He had to quiet the dissenters. But he couldn’t just kick them out. No that would never really be enough for Jordan, they deserved far worse for questioning him.
The problem? He couldn’t just outright kill anyone who questioned him, people would get suspicious. So instead he had Tom and his most loyal followers start abducting people from their homes in the night. He would disguise his real purpose by creating a larger problem.
Tom didn’t want to go along with it, but he had learned a long time ago not to argue. Jordan would make it seem like it was always for the greater good.
“We can’t have a house divided,” he’d said. “We can’t allow for a weak splintered faction during the apocalypse.”
So, he and the others went along with it. Jordan had them target the younger woman in the faction along with the dissenters. The men? They were killed. Jordan forced every member of his inner circle to take part.
The man Tom had killed was someone he knew, a man with a family. He had pleaded for his life. That didn’t stop Tom. By this point he was in too deep, and he knew what Jordan was capable of.
As he cut the man’s throat he begged the heavens to forgive him, or to give him a long enough life to make up for this atrocity.
As bad as the men had it–the woman had it worse. They were taken to a cave with a narrow entrance and wide interior cavern that Jordan had found while searching for dungeons. It was here they kept the woman.
Even Jordan's most trusted men weren’t allowed to enter where the women were kept.
Tom wasn’t sleeping. Everyday felt like a nightmare. The worst part? Jordan’s plan worked like a charm. People were terrified, and that fear drove the reliance on Jordan even more.
Then they found the second faction. And by then Jordan had already perfected a plan he knew worked.
All they needed to do was create panic, find them in a time of need and then be the sympathetic newcomer who just wants to help. They hadn’t even planned for the faction leader title to pass to Cassie–that was just the coup de gras. Jordan had called it a sign from god that they were doing good.
It hadn’t been much longer after they had moved Jordan's new expansion into their territory that the strangers showed up.
Tom had hoped that they were just a group of random wanderers. He was shocked by their look. The young boy in the grey robe looked normal enough and seemed friendly but his companions were another story.
The human-like deer was definitely unsettling but that wasn’t what had bothered him the most. The other young man with his hood up had terrified Tom. He had peered into that hood and saw two black pupils that appeared to oscillate like smoke. To Tom, the boy seemed like a demon, come to take his soul for his sins.
But as bothered by the boy as he was, he knew that if he didn’t stay composed and stay in control Jordan would let him have it later.
So he stayed calm and ushered them to Jordan’s home.
The meeting was so strange. When Tom had heard that the young man in grey was a faction leader he groaned inwardly.
Yet another fly had wandered and become snared in Jordan's web. His feelings went from bad to worse as he watched Jordan's manipulations work. The boy was naive and careless, just the type of victim Jordan loved.
Soon enough Jordan’s empire would grow to incorporate Layton's. Tom just hoped Layton would survive the takeover.
