She finished the vodka bottle and threw it away. “You really have no idea how glad I am to see you. I'm Francesca Amoretti, formerly the only living human in this apocalypse, or whatever is happening.” She bowed slightly and fell over.

  I walked to her to help her up, but she immediately jumped to her feet.

  “Jesus, you're bleeding!” she exclaimed and stumbled towards me. “Show me. I'll tie it up with something.”

  “I'm fine,” I said reflexively, though I didn't know if I wanted to stop her from looking at my injuries “I'm Peter.”

  "Takezo," Takezo added from across the room. “The dead demons will likely attract more, so we should get away from here.”

  “But I haven't found any food yet... or good booze.” Francesca protested and examined my bitten leg. "You're bleeding a lot, though. Not that I know much about bleeding, but this doesn't look good. I'll take you to my hideout, and I'll pour something on it there. Or tie it up with a tourniquet. I don’t know what’s better." She giggled and set off with a staggering step towards the stairs. “Wait, I don’t have anything for a tourniquet, so we should go to my hideout.”

  She moved surprisingly fast. We exchanged a glance and followed her.

  "It's just a short way from here." Francesca hopped through the destroyed building and ran into another one.

  She moved extremely irregularly, looking as if she was about to fall over at any point, but she maintained a good speed, and as we ran after her, my leg didn't stop bleeding. Rather the opposite, as my boot already squelched with blood.

  Francesca ran through two more destroyed buildings and then uncovered a hatch on the floor.

  It was heavy, made of steel, but she lifted it without help. “There you go!” she pointed into the opening and staggered around it.

  I was starting to feel a little dizzy, so I just climbed down the ladder.

  Takezo jumped down after me and turned on the light.

  Francesca fell down but still pulled the hatch closed in the process.

  We had entered a metal shelter, an unbelievable mess of one. Dried blood stains were everywhere, and in the distant corners towered two piles. One of empty alcohol bottles, the other, smaller, of full bottles. Next to the supply of full bottles lay a pile of blankets, duvets, and furs.

  Two weak, fluorescent lights shone under the ceiling, and two exits led from here.

  Francesca squeezed between us and staggered towards the full bottles pile. “The toilet is over there,” she pointed to one exit. “And over there is some control room or something... I don't really understand it at all. It’s all in Chinese or something.” She knelt down to the pile of bottles that looked like booze, and rummaged through it. "I was saving this for a special occasion." She pulled out a bottle of tequila, opened it, and took a deep swig.

  I sighed and sat down against the wall. I had enough, and it looked pretty safe here. Tiredness hit me like a truck. I couldn’t move.

  Takezo left through the doorway to the control room. His steps soon faded in the distance.

  I smiled at Francesca. She seemed to be a bit starved, but otherwise healthy. All the blood on her was from the demons.

  She had long, light blonde hair, green eyes, and a tanned face, visibly s touch starved. Apart from jeans and sneakers, she wore a t-shirt with the name of a Japanese metal band.

  "How long have you been here?" I asked.

  "Two weeks... maybe three. I’ve lost track of time ever since my phone died." She sat down next to me and offered me the bottle of tequila. "It's not chilled. I have neither salt nor lime, but it's drinkable."

  I took a small sip, and it pleasantly warmed my throat. While I was doing that, Francesca leaned down to my leg and sprayed something on it. It stung like disinfectant.

  She laughed. "Wow, it's foaming so nicely." She burst out laughing. "Sorry, I should have told you about that."

  “It's okay.” I barely felt the pain now. “How did you get here?”

  She shrugged, took the tequila from me, and rewarded herself with a good sip. "I was drinking, as usual, and hiding from my father's henchmen in my grandma’s attic. I remember an orange light that fascinated me from afar, so I went to check it out. I found the portal in a ravine hidden among the fields. But I played a bit too much around it and fell into it. Then, I couldn't get back through, and the demons appeared, and I had to hide. I didn't find any edible food, but the alcohol here is good, and the demons don't go for it, so it’s the only thing I can loot. How did you get here?"

  "Also through a portal," I said, just as she poured disinfectant on my remaining injuries. They all stung, and it didn't hurt much. Well, it was supposed to hurt, but my senses were already dulled. "And I can leave, so I'll try to take you with me."

  Francesca's eyes widened, and then they welled up with tears. She took a bigger sip from the bottle than before. "What if I don't want to go? Yeah, it's like the end of the world here, there are demons, but no one wants anything from me here. There are no animals or phone games or sports magazines, but I have enough booze to drink without having to steal money to buy it."

  I turned serious. She had to be kidding me. "So you want to drink yourself to death here?"

  "I've been trying to do that for six years," she whispered and downed the tequila. There was almost nothing left in the bottle. "Sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I'm too drunk."

  Takezo returned with a brisk step. "We have to go. Now."

  I tore my gaze away from Francesca. "What happened?"

  "This is a private nuclear bunker, and it has radiation sensors outside. The entire area is contaminated with radiation, and unlike me and Francesca, you don't have shields that can block it. You've already almost certainly received multiple times the amount of a lethal dose."

  I took the tequila from Francesca and downed the rest. I coughed a little and got to my feet. I looked at Francesca. "Come on. We'll finish talking back in our time."

  She looked at me and didn't seem like she was about to get up.

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  I offered her my hand. "At least come accompany me to the portal. You can always return here."

  She put her hand in my palm and let me pull her to her feet. Light sparkled as our hands touched, her shields likely protecting her from the radiation clinging to my skin. She staggered, unable to stand straight, so she leaned forward and took a few steps before Takezo grabbed her by the shoulder.

  "Focus," he commanded. "Have you ever seen a floating ship here? Something like a twisted steel cathedral floating in the air?"

  "Hmm... no. Something can be seen above the clouds when the wind blows, but it's not a ship." Francesca doubled over and started vomiting.

  Takezo helped her sit down against the wall. "We'll come back for you."

  No. I went to Francesca and pulled her onto my back. "Let's go."

  "Let me go!" Francesca tried to wriggle out of my grip, but I held her tightly, and she didn’t fight back for real. I wrapped her legs around my torso and pulled her arm over my shoulder to secure her on my back. Her mouth exploded in vomit, which she carefully aimed at the back of my collar, so it got under my shirt.

  Great.

  I ignored it and started climbing out of the shelter. Takezo overtook me, running up the wall as if it were nothing, and opened the hatch.

  I climbed out and followed Takezo. I assumed he was leading us to my portal. Rather, I hoped so. “What actually happened here?”

  “Originally, I thought that only the old Hell Gate System got reactivated, and demons flooded into the city from the Void. But that's not what happened. If it did, wild demons would have come in through the gates, and those would be of all six types. But we’ve been here for a while and we’ve only met a single type of demon, the Kallisto demons.

  “What must have happened is that Kallisto’s demonic armies penetrated our world. The secret societies confronted them and lost, but during the confrontation, they also used nuclear weapons. That’s the only logical explanation why this entire city is irradiated."

  I realized that it was the first time his voice didn't sound calm. In fact, it was quite tense, on the edge, like a drawn bowstring. “I understand about a third of that.”

  "Have them explain to you demonology at home. What's important to tell the chihuahua is that this future is less than three months away from the present day, to which you will return. My estimate from our today to the start of the demon invasion is six and a half weeks. On behalf of the Yamato Syndicate, I offer preliminary cooperation to stop the problem before its inception. Lucielle Legal might not have a branch in Tokyo, but a demon princess invasion is an apocalyptic threat to the entire world, not just the first city she visits."

  Three months, and this could have been going on for a month already, so the problem with the demons could have occurred in one to two months. Moreover, the fact that they were in Tokyo didn't mean they weren't anywhere else. At least we knew about portals in the USA and Italy, from where I and Francesca came, respectively.

  My head started spinning, and Takezo had to help me stay on my feet.

  Francesca, meanwhile, passed out on my back.

  "I'll take care of it," I said.

  We passed through a collapsed building, and my portal came into sight. No sign of demons.

  “One more thing,” Takezo said. “My offer of refuge in Tokyo stands. Right now, it is imperative for you to relay my message to Isabella, but afterwards, you can come here and go to Tokyo. My portal is about half a mile south from yours.”

  “Thanks.” I relaxed into a smile and wobbled, so he had to help me stabilize. “I’ll think about it.”

  We reached the portal. My head was spinning really badly, and I could barely stay on my feet. At least Francesca remained unconscious, so she was easy to carry.

  I stumbled upon the orange glow of the portal and stepped into it.

  But on the other side, I came out alone. Isabella was still sitting on a folding chair opposite me, and as I passed through, she put away her phone and pierced me with her gaze. "What happened, and who is that over there?" She pointed to the portal, where Francesca was getting up from the ground on the other side.

  I didn't see Takezo. "Francesca," I said. "I have to carry her through." I turned and stepped back toward the portal.

  Isabella's hair turned into chains, grabbed me, knocked me to the ground, and turned me toward her. "First, you must not die. You're without strength, half-bled out, and more irradiated than you would be if you've taken a stroll through a nuclear reactor." She pointed with her finger at a device hanging on the wall, which was glowing red, and a number was flashing on it that I couldn't read. “That’s a wide-range dosimeter.”

  I exhaled and struggled in the chains. I had to get Francesca through.

  "Yellow is a problem," Isabella noted and looked to the side. "Simon, fetch the foam. Marge, free a tub for me. Now."

  Marge bolted from her seat and ran to a side. Meanwhile, Simon approached Isabella and handed her a box.

  She took it, opened it, took out two large pills, stood up, and came to me. She grabbed my face, pressed her nails into my jaw until the pain forced me to open it, and stuffed the pills into my throat, all the way past my mouth. "Swallow."

  I gagged on her fingers, unable to control my throat.

  Simon brought her a bottle of water. “It would be easier for him to swallow without your fingers in his mouth.”

  With a dissatisfied grunt, Isabella withdrew the hand from my mouth with a wet pop, and to my gratitude, she started pouring water on those pills so I could swallow them.

  I finally did.

  Her hair lifted me up, and moved me across the room, where she slammed me into a large, steel bathtub. This one most likely served for experiments, and it was not comfortable.

  “Marge, leave,” Isabella barked and strolled to me. “You don’t have the shields for this. Simon, bring the foam. Now.”

  I grunted with pain, and my vision started blurring. Everything burned, and exhaustion flooded my senses.

  Adrenaline must have vanished from my veins, and my body realized it was dying.

  Isabella towered above the tub, and her hair reached under my clothes. It turned into thin wires and tore apart all my clothes, shredding it from me to the tiniest pieces of fabric.

  I blushed a bit and covered my crotch. I tried to speak, but my throat only burned.

  “Really damn cute,” Isabella remarked, accepting a small-sized fire extinguisher. “Take a deep breath.” She immediately pulled the device’s trigger and started releasing foam on my legs.

  I took a deep breath. The fire extinguisher had a radiation symbol printed on its side, and some text I couldn’t read due to blurry vision.

  Isabella had her hair hold the extinguisher and kept covering me with foam. She grabbed my hair with her hand and pulled my head up. She lowered her lips to my ear. “If you’ve got any stat or skill points you can spend, dump everything into endurance.”

  “Why?” I squeezed out of myself.

  “Because you took about a hundred and twenty thousand micro-Sieverts of radiation. Chernobyl was six thousand. There’s absolutely nothing other than the System that can save you.” She pushed me back down and sprayed the foam all over my torso and face.

  Damn it.

  I closed my eyes.

  Shadow.

  The world froze around me, and Shadow appeared towering above Isabella like death made manifest. “Oooh, you’re really dying this time around. Naked and in a steel bathtub. Kinda fitting, if I might say so.”

  I couldn’t move, once again, so I said through my mind, “I just need you for the time stop… unless you can help me somehow.”

  “You’re too low level for that. The level twenty skill, system intervention, can get you out of shit like this. But you aren’t even halfway there, Lowbie.”

  With a mental sigh, I conjured up the stat table.

  Level ten, fifty stats, twenty in endurance, thirty free for use. I wanted nothing more in the world than to allocate thirty points into shields, so I got passive shields, which would have protected me from everything.

  Except that the radiation was already inside my body. Shields couldn’t do anything against it, so I kissed goodbye to the dexterity and willpower build I wanted to live and put every single point into endurance.

  At fifty points, that unlocked a perk, resistance to status effects.

  Irradiated better be a status effect.

  I confirmed the point allocation.

  Shadow laughed. “There we go. Now, pick up a bunch of skills, so you can finally start having a build.”

  No. I have been forced to give up on the stats I wanted, but my build was going to be my own, chosen by me and me alone, without any pressure. “You’re dismissed.”

  Shadow vanished, and time started moving again.

  I exhaled and watched Isabella cover me with foam.

  Simon brought her two large sponges, which she grabbed and started rubbing me with. To my surprise, she didn’t use her hair for that. Yes, she held me with them to position me, but she actually did the scrubbing with her hands.

  Meanwhile, Simon collected the shreds of the clothes from the floor and gathered them into a steel bucket, clearly to incinerate them.

  My vision started blacking out.

  Damn it.

  I pulled on all the strength I had left and said, “The portal leads to Tokyo three months from now, with an ongoing demonic invasion. I met Yamato syndicate’s agent there, Shinmen Takezo. They want to cooperate.”

  My consciousness left me.