The convention center had been rearranged. Instead of being broken down into places for tournaments to take place, it was set up for each school to have their own location. Dad left me in the care of Master Chang.

  “Today you can do what you like,” he said. “Check out the other schools and get a lesson from one of the other masters. Don’t forget to join one of the meditation sessions.”

  Master Chang looked at us with conviction. It felt like he’d be able to know if we didn’t do what he asked. I didn’t want any issues, so I made a note in my mind to do that.

  “Why are you still here?” he asked. “Get going and have fun!”

  I walked away from him. There were so many options and opportunities. I wandered around for nearly an hour just trying to get a lay of the land. There were several meditation sessions available, so I had my choice there when I decided to do it—probably after lunch. The choice of masters to learn from was vast. I saw a ton of styles for various weapons and even more for hand-to-hand. Given that I’d yet to do any weapons training, I decided to start there. The first stop was at a school that was offering basic lessons on the staff.

  “Can I join?” I asked the person who looked like the school’s master.

  “If you can wait ten minutes, I’ll be starting the next short lesson,” he said.

  I nodded before sitting down to wait.

  The wait wasn’t too long. Before I knew it, I was standing on the mat with five others, staff in hand. The staff was a little too big for me—they didn’t have any in my size—but that didn’t really matter. Though a little unwieldy, it was sufficient for learning the basics—or so the master said.

  “The first thing I want you to do,” the master said, “is to do a basic strike.”

  He demonstrated stepping forward with his right foot and bringing the staff down in front of him at the same time. It reminded me a lot of the basic punch—only using a long stick to extend my reach. I did my best to copy him and found that it was rather easy.

  After ensuring we knew that strike, he added first one more and then finally a third. The second was a strike from below on the left side. It was a good way to go for the unprotected bits to help win a fight.

  “You don’t fight fair,” he reminded us. “In a real fight, you fight to win.”

  The third was a devastating overhand strike with both hands. Strong, but left the attacker vulnerable.

  The last thing he showed us was how to block with a staff. Each strike type had its corresponding blocking motion. There wasn’t nearly enough time to get any real skill with the weapon. Instead, it was a good taste of what was out there. I considered learning more in the future.

  After trying out the staff, I moved on to swords, nunchucks, and finally sticks—which were the short cousins of the staff. Of those, I liked the staff and the sword. I didn’t have a chance to use a spear, but I assumed it would be similar enough to the staff that I would want to try it in a future restart.

  I bought lunch in the cafeteria with a couple of the other students from my school. It wasn’t great—a pre-made sandwich—but it was filling enough that I didn’t complain. Well, I didn’t complain too much. Afterwards, I decided to try the whole meditation thing.

  The master—or sensei, as he preferred to be called—in charge of the meditation group walked us through how to meditate. I found it incredibly difficult to clear my mind of stray thoughts. Giving myself something to focus on—like the chakras or whatever weird, esoteric thing the sensei prattled on about—helped. It didn’t help much, but it did help. With that focus, the time passed more quickly than I had feared. Even so, I was glad then the half-hour was up.

  For the rest of the day, I wandered around. I tried out some of the different hand-to-hand styles. Aikido and judo were interesting. The rest I could take or leave. They were generally similar enough to the style I was used to from Master Chang.

  An hour before dinner—and the close of the event—Grandmaster Li ordered everyone back to their school for the closing ceremony. It was basically the same as the opening one, except in reverse. Finally, I was released to go home with Dad. It had been an eventful few days and I was ready to move on to the next thing.

  The next several years passed. In that time, I made black belt and competed in more tournaments. I did well—though not always as the winner. Every year in the spring, I planted with Grandpa Milton. And every year, I harvested what I could in the fall. The amount of experience I gained was good.

  I decided to put off metalworking and woodworking for when I had more money and could dedicate real time and effort to them. I could get the basics out of the way, but that didn’t feel right to me. I wanted to learn both as well as I could, rather than just dabbling in them. I needed more than just surface knowledge.

  Mom and Dad eventually got remarried. Though I attended the weddings, my heart wasn’t in it. After all, I was unlikely to see any of these people again. When I restarted, things would go back to how they were before they’d met—to before the divorce was finalized. I couldn’t bring myself to care—which I knew was just an excuse to avoid emotional pain.

  Even if it wasn’t true that everyone was going to die, going back to how they used to be was equivalent in my mind. I was going to murder billions in order to save as many people as I could. I wasn’t going to do this once. Nope. I was going to do it as many times as I had to. The more I numbed myself to the reality, the better off I’d be mentally. Giving up was not an option—even if I wanted to, from time to time.

  As the years went by, I noticed that it took longer for puberty to take its course. I grew as tall as I had the first time around, but I didn’t hit my peak height until I was sixteen. I remembered that I stopped growing taller around the time I’d turned fifteen the first time. I had a few guesses as to why—most revolving around the system—but I couldn’t place a reason on anything in particular. It was a mystery I hoped to solve eventually.

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  It was when I was seventeen that I set up a small get together with Mom and Dad alone. This turned out to be a hassle. Both of their spouses demanded they be involved. While we trusted them to some degree, I decided it was too much of a risk. Instead, we met over the computer when we were alone. Sneaky—yes—but also necessary.

  “So, how much will you have to work with?” Mom asked after pleasantries had concluded.

  “Around two million,” I said. “That’s a rough estimation, but it should be pretty close.”

  “What’s your plan?” Dad asked.

  “Well, I need Restart I for sure,” I said. “Then get Milestones II and Hidden Milestones II. That makes Milestones II half price at the cost of not being able to give experience directly.”

  “So, how would it help?” Mom inquired.

  “I’ve found that the Milestones family gives experience when completing certain tasks. This—in turn—unlocks the ability for the Quests family to give quests related to those milestones.”

  “I see,” she said. “That makes some sense, right Milton?”

  “Mhm,” Dad agreed.

  “And then—because of how intertwined they are—I am thinking of Quests II as the next option.”

  I could see Dad’s head nodding.

  “How much does that leave you?” Mom asked.

  “1.2 million, give or take,” I said with a chuckle. “I’m rounding.”

  “What about the experience ones?” Dad asked.

  “Good question,” I said. “I want all of them—well, I need all of them, eventually. Which one I pick is debatable.”

  “Well, you have done a lot of farming with Grandpa Milton,” Dad said. “So maybe Harvesting?”

  “That’s a good option,” Mom said. “But what about Economic? I know you plan on making a ton of money early on, so that would be good experience, right?”

  “Both of you are right,” I nodded. “That’s what makes this decision difficult. I might have a solution, though.”

  “Oh?” Mom said.

  “Yeah. I’ll have enough for one or two of the ones that come with Restart I. There’s one to bring experience with me, one to bring items with me, and one to bring people with me when I go back. I was considering Experience Vault—the experience one. I could also see taking the one for people at least once to bring one of you back with me.”

  “Definitely not,” Mom said. “I don’t want to have a hole in my heart where Ken used to be.”

  “I agree,” Dad said.

  “Alright, that’s out then. What about Experience Vault?”

  “With that, you’d be able to use experience right away,” he pointed out. “You’ll have access to all the personal versions of whatever you don’t pick up from the start instead of having to save up, which takes time.”

  “Good call,” Mom agreed. “I think you should do that. If you’re taking that route, I’m not sure that the choice of which experience one to go with actually matters. Might as well roll the dice at that point.”

  I laughed.

  “So, what’s the plan in general?” Dad wondered. “Other than the unlocks, I mean. What do you plan on doing next time, once you have all the money?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I’m open to suggestions.”

  “You’ve been getting a lot of experience from farming with Grandpa Joe, right?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Why not scale that up? You’ll get Harvesting and Economic experience all over the place that way. After you found out that you planting and doing some of the work allowed you at least a portion of the experience when it was harvested, I don’t see why you wouldn’t want to make the most of that discovery.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “That makes sense, I guess. I’ll do some research on the historical yields and costs and stuff like that. Foresight being 20/20 and all.”

  “Ha!” Dad chuckled. “I think your mother’s got a good idea there. Too bad you didn’t study agriculture when you went to college.”

  “How was I supposed to know?” I asked.

  “I know, I know. Just a shame. Your foresight might be 20/20 now, but it wasn’t back then!”

  Dad had to mute himself after laughing so hard he coughed.

  After we talked for a while longer, I went through with the dice roll. It chose Crafting Experience and so that is what I would pick when the time came. I floated the idea of not picking anything until after I went back, but that idea was shot down.

  “It’s better to have something secured now than bet it on the unknowns,” Mom pointed out.

  Two months before my 20th birthday, I was sitting at 1,958,880 experience. Crafting Experience, Quests II, Milestones II, Hidden Milestones II, Experience Vault, and Restart I came out to 1,950,000 experience. I had just enough. With two more months, I’d have enough extra on the side to get at least the main features taken care of. The skills and stats and stuff would have to wait a bit, more than likely.

  I took the opportunity to talk to Grandma Rose before I purchased everything. I was nervous about it after everything Grandpa Milton had told me. At the same time, I had an out by returning to the past—just in case.

  “Grandma Rose,” I said to get her attention.

  She was baking Christmas cookies—which smelled great. I noticed her hand had a bandage on it.

  “Yes, dear?” she said.

  “What happened to your hand?”

  “Oh, the doctors had to remove something. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  She humored me by putting her hand out towards me. I Healed her hand. As soon as I had, she recoiled like I’d hit her.

  “What did you do?” she demanded.

  “I healed you,” I said.

  “Get out of my house, you devil worshiper! You’re a witch! How many babies did you kill for this?!”

  Grandma Rose threw things at me. I took that as my cue to leave. I knew it would be hard—but I didn’t expect it to be like that! Grandpa Milton called me later to tell me that she had kicked him out because he knew and didn’t tell her. Thankfully, it never went beyond some murmuring from an old woman that others tended to ignore. I didn’t think the time travel bit would go over well either.

  All in all, it was a good lesson about people. I couldn’t be sure how everyone would take the coming apocalypse. I guessed most people would manage somehow, but there would definitely be people like Grandma Rose who would react in a horrible way. Most of them would die, I figured. It’d be hard to survive if they didn’t take advantage of the system.

  After dinner on Christmas Eve, I retired to my room. I added all of my purchases together. I took a deep breath and hesitated. This was it. I hit the button.

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