Grandpa Joe’s death brought to the fore everything I’d been working on—and everything I’d put off for too long. It lit a fire under me. After all, I was also on the clock. While I knew the amount of time I still had left before the apocalypse hit, it was an inevitability. I knew that I would struggle to gather enough experience to build a truly well-functioning system. It was going to be a lot closer to the edge and involve a lot of compromises to make it work.

  I estimated that I would end up with around two million experience by the time the I went back in time again. That didn’t leave me with many options for what I would be able to afford. That problem was only going to get worse in future lives—there was always something more to buy and not nearly enough experience to get all of it without taking some penalties as well.

  Though I would run any ideas past my parents, I had a backup plan if nothing came together. I would pick up the Experience Vault feature along with Restart I to save all of the experience I’d picked up. That way, I would have more options to start on the right foot instead of having to save up a ton of experience over three or four months to purchase everything I’d need. That might not sound like a long time—and it wasn’t that long—but it represented a loss of at least 50,000 experience. Even if I did get some permanent upgrades, I thought that saving enough on the side to get started would be a good idea.

  At the same time as I pondered what I should get, I started to memorize a lot of data relating to the market, to sports, and even a few lotteries. I had paid better attention this time around, so I was aware of the general trends and could place them by year. However, I didn’t remember the details well enough. I’d been in this life for six-and-a-half years, and that was plenty of time to forget more than I had learned.

  I needed to start early so that I would be able to have a plan of action going into the reset. I would take a long time to drill these ideas into my head so that I wouldn’t forget them when the time came to use them. And I wanted to save the 100,000 experience it’d cost to bring items back in time with me. That meant first finding a good path to get money and what to invest in at what times, then memorizing that path until I knew it like the back of my hand.

  After the calendar flipped over, I learned more about the martial arts tournament from Master Chang.

  “The tournament will have several events,” he told us during one of the advanced classes. “There’s sparring—which most of you are doing—weapons, forms, and team competitions as well. If you’re sparring, you’ll be paired with other students in your age and weight brackets. It’s going to be an all-day thing with some special training after from the other masters who will be there. Expect to be there for three days.”

  I let my parents know and Dad volunteered to take me to the event since his work was still more piecemeal than Mom’s so he could more easily afford to take the time off and not get fired. Being one’s own boss had its perks! Jessica declined to come—like Mom, she worked a steady nine-to-five. Plus, I thought it was better that only Dad came. Jessica was just a temporary acquaintance who would disappear when I turned the clock back in a few years.

  Time passed in a flash. I was sitting in Dad’s beater of a truck—he’d upgraded to a new one when the old one slipped off the highway and into a snowbank. We were on our way.

  “Nervous?” Dad asked when he noticed I was sitting quietly.

  “A little,” I said. “Mostly enjoying the music, though.”

  “That’s good,” he nodded. “You should do pretty well, right?”

  “I should,” I shrugged. “Having more than twice the strength and speed of everyone my size does have its advantages.”

  “I thought it would be the years of training?” Dad laughed.

  “Those helped, too,” I laughed with him.

  We chatted a bit more but fell into silence again. The trip was too long to be considered just a quick jaunt and too short to be a proper road trip. The convention center that held the competition was three hours away. We took our time. Stopping a handful of times to check out whatever caught our fancy. The first was the largest legs in the world—a pair of enormous painted concrete… legs. The quality of the attractions after weren’t much better than that.

  Eventually, Dad parked the truck outside of the hotel we were staying in. It was the cheapest option that wasn’t complete crap. The room we had looked like it hadn’t been updated in a long time. At least there weren’t any bed bugs. I’d checked. The rest of the hotel was bare bones—no bar, no exercise room, no pool. What the hotel did have was a good view of the city we were in.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  It was a medium-sized city where land was not a major obstruction. This meant there weren’t many large buildings. In their stead was a sprawl that extended miles in every direction. The dividing line between city and suburb was blurry enough that I was confident there wasn’t one. Rather it was by town and city boundaries than anything inherent to the city itself.

  At night, the city lights stretched in neat columns and rows up and down the hills. The roads looked like strips of lighted nothingness in a sea of black. Dad joined me in looking out of the windows at the city.

  “Looks nice at night,” he commented.

  I turned to answer but he’d already walked off to put away our luggage. I went after him to help out. Then it was time to sleep. It took a while to drift off—I was excited about the contest the next day. It didn’t help that I needed to be up early to get to the place by eight in the morning.

  Dad woke me at six. He jumped in the shower and I did the same when he was done. We went down to the front of the hotel. They were serving a terrible breakfast. I took a bagel that was too dry even with copious amounts of cream cheese. I immediately missed the much better ones we had back home.

  After breakfast, Dad and I piled into the car. He drove us to the convention center. There was a parking garage next to the convention center so finding parking wasn’t a problem. A short walk later, I was inside. It was huge inside. Calling it spacious was vastly underselling just how much space there was. I saw so many mats for sparring along with some larger areas that I assumed were used for the other events.

  Near the entrance I saw a large congregation of martial artists in their uniforms. There was a rainbow of belt colors represented—though most of them were red, brown, and black. I walked over to see what was going on. On the other side of the mass of people was a large table that had a handful of attendants.

  “Are you here to sign in?” one of them asked me when we made it to the front of the line.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m with Master Chang’s Tiger Academy.”

  “Great! Your school is—“

  The attendant drew out the word while looking through a binder.

  “—in Section B. If you look behind me, you should be able to see banners around marking out the sections. Section B is to your left and about halfway back.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I left to give room for the next person while I looked for the correct banner. Like the person had said, it was near the middle of the left side. Dad and I walked over to it. On the way, I saw several other schools gathering. Not to mention the vendors hawking their wares—mostly athletic or martial arts gear of some kind. When we arrived in Section B, I cast my eyes side to side before finding a smaller banner with my school’s logo on it. Sitting next to the banner was Master Chang.

  “I’ll see you later,” Dad said, pulling me aside. “I know you have stuff to do before competing, so I won’t bother you. I’ll figure out where you’ll be fighting and make sure to support you!”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said with a smile.

  Just the thought of performing in front of people made my stomach do flips. Sure, I did it from time to time whenever I moved up a belt level, but this time, it would be even more people. Especially if I made it to the finals. Dad watching didn’t bother me. It was when there were tens of people or more that I crumpled under the pressure and nerves.

  I sat near Mast Chang with the other students. I was the only one in my age and weight bracket, so I wouldn’t have to fight others from my school. Aside from me, there were around ten others who had made it. I thought there were supposed to be closer to twenty, but I couldn’t remember for sure.

  While waiting for the last few people to trickle in, I looked around the room at the other schools. I saw small groups with matching uniforms in most of the schools. I assumed those people were competing in one or more of the group contests. Then there were the masses of fighters. Even after filtering that down to people roughly my age and size, there were many. I had no idea how many rounds there would be, but it looked like a lot from where I was sitting.

  “Now that you’re all here,” Master Chang said when the last person arrived, “we will be walking in the opening ceremony in another ten minutes. Please line up and follow me when I tell you to.”

  “Yes Master Chang,” came everyone’s response.

  Around five minutes later, I saw other schools stand up and get in formation. Master Chang ordered us to do the same. Someone named Grandmaster Li spoke over the loudspeakers introducing the event.

  “Welcome to the twenty-second annual White Dragon martial arts competition,” he said. “Joining us here today are the students from Mr. Wilson’s Karate of Middletown!”

  The named school gave a short step forward and punch. Then Grandmaster Li moved to the next school. It went on like that for a little more than half an hour before all of them were named. Then we spent another twenty minutes parading around the convention center and back to where we started.

  “Teachers,” Grandmaster Li said, “please have your students go to their events. The first matches are scheduled in twenty minutes. I wish each and every one of you will do your best!”

  Master Chang immediately began to give each person or group of people directions.

  “Eddy, you’ll be going to Section F,” he told me when he got to me. “Your tournament looks like it’ll have around eight rounds. Good luck. Show ‘em what you can do!”

  “Thanks, Master Chang,” I bowed.

  I had a smile plastered on my face while I walked towards the entrance of the convention center. Section F was located on the other side. The masses of other students going this way and that felt like swimming in a river of humanity. I eventually reached my destination. There, I found at least a couple hundred other children around my age.

  The tournament organizers had seen fit to give us a collective ten mats to fight on. Each mat had an official standing by it. At the end of the row of mats—on the wall—were lists of who was fighting who, when, and which mat. I felt the butterflies as I stepped forward to check the list. I scanned the list and quickly found my mat—number three. I was thankful I wasn’t the first bout. I was, however, the second.

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