Chapter 21: Other Side

Michael Santana wasn't having a good time.

He finally made it in life, finally became rich and succeeded in life after growing up from a poor household.

Michael started to hustle with all types of work since he dropped out of high school and tried to save money to invest in whatever that was popular to invest in or starting businesses that seemed to be promising from what he heard people talking.

He failed plenty of times and finally succeeded in the real estate industry when he bought a damaged property for cheap with his savings and renovated it with the skills he picked from the various jobs he did.

With the property renovated, he was able to rent out that property and increase the property's worth, and with that done, he was able to borrow money from the bank with that as collateral to buy more properties as the rent was able to cover the monthly repayment plan and more.

Then he took more loans and bought more properties, it was like a virtuous circle of money.

He was able to do all that by being bold, brash and taking risks.

He always thought that nothing could be done by playing it safe and a soft spoken, considerate boy.

And becoming successful only made him believe those convictions more.

So why was having a bad time even though he became rich and made it in life?

It was because all of his hustle was for nothing. He lost everything within a few hours.

Him and his girlfriend Mia, his cousin Julio, who worked as an accountant for him, and his girlfriend were taking a well deserved vacation in the Bahamas after working for so long.

Then suddenly, monsters that looked like they came out straight of a movie, started to slaughter people left and right.

Michael's group were in the pool when everything began and they had to flee back to their but Julio's girlfriend got caught by wolf and died after being bit on the neck.

Everything happened so fast and they could only go back to the safety of their room.

It took Michael a whole day of cooping in his room and watching the news from his phone to know that it happened everywhere and no help would be coming to save them.

Something clicked in his mind, he knew he couldn't stay put in his hotel room and do nothing.

It wasn't the first time that Michael lost everything although it was just some saving before.

But it didn't matter, if he could rise to the top once, he could do it again.

He talked to a guy named James and learned the situation at the hotel from him, on how a few guys that hadn't grown pubs yet succeeded in cleaning the hotel of monsters with the help of superpowers.

Michael knew he had to get his hands on those crystals so came up with a plan of convincing everyone else in the hotel to be on his side so they could pressure those brats to cough up some crystals for them.

That was easy to do with how every single of them wished to gain super powers too.

Putting pressure on those brats was a success and they got some crystals but it was too few.

Michael knew those brats were playing him and deliberately only gave one or two crystals each time.

Those brats looked down on him and acted arrogant just because they had powers.

It didn't help that Michael felt that the powers he obtained were trash. The ability to conjure daggers made of blue was nothing impressive.

But that didn't put him down as it wasn't the first time he dealt with disadvantages at the start.

This was no different than him being dirt poor at the beginning.

Michael would bid his time and with the people behind him and viewing him as the leader, it wouldn't be long before those brats also submitted to him.

Michael finally founded his own team and was confident of hunting their own crystals even though some received useless powers.

Then that whole ideal with the orc's invasion happened where he lost a member.

However, that didn't stop Michael from wanting to finally go out to hunt for crystals, instead, this gave him more sense of urgency in getting more crystals.

He was sure with seven members, their team would easily hunt any dumb monsters as long as they had the number.

Sadly, the hunt didn't go as well as he hoped.

A member of his team died on their second day of hunting. One of their augment, Jason, got careless as he didn't intercept the wolf so that wolf ended up in their backline where it killed a woman that served as an attacker who could launch magic spears.

She was one of their biggest hitters so her loss was quite tough for the team.

She wasn't the only one who died as on the third day, Michael lost another person to some dwarf cyclop. It was someone that just received their powers that day and joined in their expedition.

Michael did successfully shift the blame on those brats instead of having the people under him think that his leadership was lacking.

The brats said that the wolves were easy, clearly they weren't.

They said those dwarves could easily be killed once restrained but those dwarves could still shoot their spears even after Julio restrained it, which led to the second death of their team as he failed to dodge it.

"Babe, you're too stressed, relax." Michael's girlfriend Mia rubbed his back.

She always knew what to say and do, that was why Michael liked her.

"Everything is going too slowly, we need more crystals."

Michael was exasperated and he didn't how those brats were doing now with James' death, except that they were way ahead of him.

"Don't worry babe, everyone here trusts and listens to you. Just a bit of time and we'll get what we want." Mia said

"You're right babe, I need to be patient. Everything will fall into place once we get enough crystals."

Michael would bide his time so he could absorb as many crystals as possible for his ambition.

He really didn't want to give any crystals to those brats but they would have to this week as he was nowhere near strong enough and they wouldn't be able to win a fight.

He already knew there would be a boost of their powers at ten crystals absorbed.

Everything would be easier after he obtain more crystals.

"Don't forget about me babe, I want crystals too."

Mia hugged and kissed him.

"Oh you'll get plenty alright, enough to make you the queen of sweets."

He kissed her back and copped a feel on her curvaceous form.

This wasn't the right timing since they were out on an expedition but Michael didn't care.

He would always get what he wanted in the end.

Michael's new ambition was to become the leader of this little group and eventually, the king of this island.

Nobody was going to stop him, whether it was human or monsters.

***

Charles Dumond came from a wealthy family that owned a mid-sized investment firm in New York.

Everything in his life was falling into order for him.

He had a great and well paying job by working in the family's company, a beautiful fiancee that perfectly complemented him and a great family which he was close to.

He was driving to work when creatures came out of dimensional gates like the usual trope and plot that his brother liked to watch and those monsters looked like they came out straight from the alien movies.

It turned to chaos in just a few minutes as a lot of people died and Charles even ran over one of those creatures while driving.

He had no idea what was going on but his first instinct was to ensure the safety of his fiancee and his family.

Thankfully, every single of them were fine and made it to safety at the end of the day. They all went to hide in his father's house, which had a basement, until the military who were deployed took care of those aliens.

Everything was going as well as it could be the first few days for their family, except the fact they had lost contact with his brother who went to vacation in Bahamas with his friends.

The military came out and put down those monsters in a day but more than five hundred thousand people already died in New York alone and it was still unknown how many died across the US.

It took them a couple to fully control the situation but they weren't the greatest army on earth for nothing as most threats in the biggest cities were taken care of and would slowly put their effort on the less populated towns next.

The situation looked like it would return to normal soon even though some people started to develop superpowers.

As for people with superpowers, the military banned trading of crystals that gave them that power in all forms and those people were urged to go to their military clinics for a check up.

Charles wanted to get his hands on one of those crystals in order to get superpowers but the military had a tight control of it and did their best to prevent it from spreading.

In his opinion, the people would certainly start to protest if the military wanted to impose a monopoly over it as the temptation of easily getting comic-like superpowers was too good to pass up for the masses.

Unfortunately, everything became worse in New York City a week after the first monsters appeared.

New monsters came out from the gates in New York.

They had four spider-like legs and four arms that were equipped with gauntlets.

And those gauntlets were the doom of the US soldiers as they could shoot beams out of it.

In addition, small caliber bullets couldn't hurt those new aliens and only the big guns and missiles did any meaningful damage.

The military suffered big losses on the initial spawning of those new aliens as they fell to the beams from the new aliens without being able to fight back.

A wide order to evacuate was announced to the citizens of New York as the numerous new aliens rampaged through the cities as even tanks failed to stop them.

The military needed to regroup after a big loss of personnel and only airstrikes were the most effective solutions so they needed to evacuate the zones.

Charles' family had to evacuate toward New Jersey where they took refuge under the rules of the military who managed the city.

However, the refuge wasn't a charity as everyone was put to work.

The only good thing was everyone that fell into the right age range was given a crystal so they could awaken their power before they were dispatched in a division that was suitable.

Out of Charles' family, only his fiancee, his sister and him received crystals.

His fiancee could temporarily boost the strength of someone so was affected as a support in a combat team.

His sister could produce threads that were as tough as the toughest threads on earth so her responsibility was just to produce as much of it as possible.

While Charles himself received deceleration.

The ability to reduce the speed of a target by 20% for 5 seconds.

Charles was also assigned into a combat team due to that even though he never held a gun before.

He went through some basic training before he was given an automatics rifle and was ordered to go hunt some monsters that were sighted in New Jersey with some other rookies and two experienced officers.

The military were stretched thin across the whole country so pushed civilians to the battlefield too.

"God… I nearly pissed myself." Charles muttered in shock after they just killed some plant monsters.

The monsters in New Jersey were different than those in New York.

There were plants that had vines as limbs with flower heads that shoot seeds. Those seeds could seriously hurt them if not careful.

Along with those plants, there were giant bats-like monsters that couldn't fly but they could jump quite high and were very strong physically although they couldn't take bullets head on.

"You did fine, son."

Gerard, the team leader of Charles' team, patted his back, "I know it's hard for you civilians to go on the battlefield but it's tough times and tough decisions must be made."

"I don't know if this is god's punishment for humanity but the motherf*cking United State of America won't go down without a fight! And as citizens of the motherf*cking United State of America, it is your duty to defend your country!"

Charles knew that Gerard was trying to instill some patriotism in them and lift up their morale but that he didn't feel comfortable in a battlefield and would rather stay at the base doing any work other than this.

But democracy was thrown out the window in times like this as even his parents had to contribute at the base.

He only hoped that his family would live through this ordeal.

And also hoped that his little brother Frank was still alive.

Charles wondered what was the situation on his brother's side as his team patrolled the area to see if there were more monsters.