A World in the Palm of my Hands: A LitRPG Apocalypse

As they landed gently on the ground, Mark’s disheveled appearance became clear to Lily and Aurora.

“Big brother Mark? What happened to you?”

Mark breathed heavily and kneeled on the ground, almost kissing it. “Talal and Noah were just being a couple of as…” He then looked at Lily’s bright, innocent eyes staring right at him and swallowed the word that he was going to say. “Astounding people. Yes. A couple of very astounding people.”

Lily’s confusion only grew at that, but then she noticed how nice and soft Talal’s plume of feathers looked and she became distracted. She walked closer to Talal’s massive body and asked, “Um, big brother Talal, can I maybe touch you feathers?”

Talal looked at her with understanding on his face. “Of course, child. I understand how it must be to lay your eyes upon such majestic plumage.” He waddled closer to her and shrank to a more manageable size so that she could reach his feathers with little effort.

With wide eyes filled with wonder at the spectacle that Talal showed, she asked in quick succession. “Can you change your size any time you like? Can you become the size of my hand? How big can you get?”

He shrunk down to the size of a sparrow and jumped into her tiny hands. “I can be as small as a sparrow.” He then flew up into the sky as he transformed into his hulking form the size of an airplane. “Or as big as an airplane.” He then shrunk down to the size of an eagle and said. “But I prefer this size best.”

“Wow. Will I be able to do that someday?” She asked with sparkling eyes.

Talal looked at the young child in front of him, transformed back into his human form, and pat her head with a gentle smile on his face. “With the system now with us, I can’t even begin to imagine what’s possible in this new world. But Lily, take it one step at a time. Noone becomes strong overnight, okay?”

“Okay! Hehe.” She giggled as her head was being patted and was about to turn around to go play with the boars when Noah cleared his throat and closed his book on runes. He got up, went over to Lily, and patted her on the head. “You’ll get strong too kid, just stick with us!” He said as he pointed his thumb at himself, trying his hardest to emulate confidence in his voice.

“Oink! Oink! Oink! Oink! Oink! Oink! Oink!”

It was then that the piglets went up to Lily and urged her to come back and play with her. So, she left Noah to his weirdness, turned around and went with the piglets.

“Pfft.” Mark couldn’t help but laugh at that as he saw Noah visibly deflate. “Don’t worry little shit, stick with us and you’ll get strong too.” He imitated Noah’s pose and said.

“Ha ha. Very funny. Now, let’s go and level up!” He then looked at Talal and asked. “Talal, want to join us?”

“Maybe next time, I hit level fifty, you see, and I’m finally going to evolve.” He said with barely hidden excitement.

“Can we watch?” Noah asked.

“Hmmm. I’m not sure if you’ll enjoy it, to be honest. Aurora just said that a white glow would envelop me and that’s pretty much it. Do you still want to watch?”

Noah looked expectantly at Mark, who nodded and said. “It’s not every day that we get to see an evolution, so hell yeah, we’re going to watch!”

So, they walked to the building and went up to the tenth floor. When they got there, they were awestruck. Even though they had had peeks of the tenth floor through the door from the stairs, they’ve never been inside before now. All the walls were knocked down except for a few key pillars to support the roof and keep it from collapsing. A few beds were also made into two makeshift nests in the middle of the tenth floor.

“Love what you’ve done with the place!” Noah exclaimed. “I never realized how big an entire floor was until now. It kind of makes me want to blow the walls down on the rooms next to mine just to have one really big room, but I that might just compromise the structure if I do it.”

“I can do it for you. I studied structural engineering and a couple of other courses in my lifetime.”

“How old are you anyway, Talal?” Mark chimed in and asked.

“I’m closing in on two hundred. We’re all pretty long lived relative to humans. Aurora is even older, but don’t tell her I told you that. She can be a little touchy when it comes to age.” Talal replied and then transformed into his roc form the size of an eagle and flew to one of the bed-nests. “Anyway, I can’t wait anymore. Let’s get this done. I’m excited to see what additional abilities I’ll get.”

He then settled into his nest and calmed himself down before turning to his status screen and mentally pressing the glowing “Evolve” button. Then he felt it. It started as a warm feeling in his stomach. A moment later, it turned into itching, itching that wouldn’t go away even when he tried to focus his mind elsewhere. Without any other option, he began to wriggle and squirm like a worm on his nest.

Noah and Mark, who were watching, felt perplexed. They traded glances and Mark couldn’t help but voice out what they were both thinking. “Talal? You alright there?”

Talal just continued to squirm and didn’t reply. That was when Aurora came out of nowhere and started laughing. She laughed so hard that she lost control of her shapeshifting magic and transformed back into a griffin. In her griffin form, she laughed and laughed. Forcing herself to stand became a struggle as she collapsed on the ground with her feet raised to the sky. “This is GOLD. I just wish cameras still worked so that I could record this. HAHA!”

This went on for a few more minutes until Talal began emanating white light, which was replaced by shadows almost immediately.

Aurora stopped laughing and began seriously looking at Talal as he was wreathed in shadows, a stark contrast from hers where she was only bathed in white light. “Oh? Interesting, this is quite different from mine.”

A few minutes later, the shadows slowly receded and gave way to a new and improved Talal. Although he still retained his previous shape, his feathers were now much darker and as if they were made of shadows themselves, they devoured any light that approached.

Talal emerged and flew around the tenth floor and spoke into their minds. “HAHA! Finally! This new system is quite literally, a godsend! This feeling of overwhelming power is truly intoxicating!” But then, a powerful gust of wind blew him off course and made him slam into a pillar.

Aurora started laughing again. “Not so tough now, huh?! HAHA!”

“Hey! I still haven’t paid you back for that humiliation you subjected me to! You better hope I don’t surpass you in level or I’d…”

“Or you’d what?” Aurora looked at Talal directly, as if to challenge him.

He shrunk back and looked away. Upon seeing this, Noah and Mark gave each other a knowing look as they let the two bicker as they slowly backed away from the situation. When they reached the door, they immediately went down the stairs and went to the room where the boars and Lily were. When they got there, they sat down and as per usual, Mark put one of the piglets on his head and grabbed one for each hand. “I’m ready.” He said.

Finally settling down, Noah brought up his notifications and was greeted with two level ups for both his classes giving him forty-eight stat points to work with which he of course put all of them into intelligence. Making it reach three hundred and fifty-two points and his mana reaching over seven hundred. “I’m getting close to one thousand mana.” He thought, as he looked at his mana bar that filled him with pride and a hint of amazement at how far he’d come since the apocalypse. “I can’t imagine how strong I’ll be a year from now. Maybe I’d be able to teleport around by then, or maybe do something more ridiculous.”

Noah then moved on to loot. Because of the bomb incinerating the bodies of the six gnome shamans along with their robes, the only things that survived were the staffs.

“Well, that’s a little underwhelming. Though I guess it would have to be used along with the other staffs for maximum effect.” So, he sold them all and got two thousand four hundred low grade mana stones. “Aaaaand we’re rich again. Hehe.” Then he thought of his artifact and figured that it was time to do something else with it. So, he told Mark that he was going in before sending a stream of mana into his necklace.

Inside the now brightly lit world of his artifact, the image of Gaia in her translucent form greeted him, making him blush. “I really need to get used to seeing her without blushing every goddamn time.”

“Hello Noah, what would you like to do?”

“Hi! I was thinking of doing some things with my mana stones now that I’ve saved up some. What can one creation point usually do, anyway? You know, when they’re not special, first ever creation points”

“One creation point counts for one cubic meter of creation. Which means you can do anything in that space, only your level and understanding is the limit.”

“And by understanding, you mean what exactly?”

“The Dao”

“You mean the ones in those web novels? Man, can’t say I’m surprised seeing as there’s cultivation, but damn…”

“Yes, would you like me to suggest something?”

“By all means, Gaia, I’m pretty lost in what to do, to be honest.”

“I suggest that you first gather all the fruit-bearing trees, berry bushes and crops you can find and transfer them into the artifact. Although the outside world is a B rank planet, its mana core has only been reawakened for over a week and has not had enough time to fill the world with mana at that density. So, for now, the inside of the artifact has much denser mana which will result in faster development for all flora.” Gaia still saw a confused expression on Noah’s face so she continued. “Which means fruits, berries and crops with special effects.

He gawked at that, and the first thing that came to his mind was super coffee and chocolate. Then he felt his mind explode. “Super mocha…” He had always been a fan of mocha but thinking about how much tastier meat was now, he couldn’t imagine how much better super mocha would taste. He started salivating, then wiped the drool off when he remembered that Gaia was watching him.

“Okay, I’ll get right on it! Super mocha here I come! Exit!”

Outside, Noah immediately searched chocolate and coffee to see if they were in it. Unfortunately, it looked like no one had sold any to the store yet. He did see a bunch of trees from other worlds though; they were all pretty expensive as they were all tier two and above. “Damn. Guess that puts it on pause until I can travel at a decent pace.” Then he had an idea. “Wonder if I can actually fly like the avatar with a glider. Surely there’s a glider in the store. Hmmm…” He then searched through the store and there were indeed gliders for sale. There were even some tier ones available for a pretty cheap price, so he got up and started heading outside.

“Where are you going?” Mark asked

“Oh me? Nowhere, just going to see if I can fly like the avatar. Hehe.”

“Then I’m definitely coming with you. You’re probably going to need the healing.”

“You have such little confidence in me?”

“Yup.”

Noah raised his finger and wanted to retort, but no words came to mind. “Okay, that’s fair.”

With that, they went outside and Noah bought the glider. It was much bigger than the glider in the cartoon; it was much closer to a hang glider. “Bigger has to be better, right?”