Returning Home (2)

Kalle took several deep breaths when he stood in front of his apartment door.

He calmed himself down before going inside the apartment to prepare himself.

At first, he was quite afraid that something might have happened to his sister while he was gone.

But after seeing the apartment complex was safe from any of the chaos happening around the area, his sister's shoes on the shoe rack, and his apartment door tightly shut, Kalle calmed down a bit as there was a very high chance that his sister was safe and sound inside the apartment.

However, he still took his time to calm himself down as he didn't know what he would say after facing his sister.

He had left on a bad note and was afraid his sister might have hated him for saying too much before leaving her for his supposedly quick walk that turned to hours.

He prepared himself to apologize to her and he would try to explain his point in a more calm manner instead in a heated tone like before.

After taking several more deep breaths, Kalle finally grabbed the door handle and tried to open it.

However, the door was locked and Kalle couldn't open it.

Kalle was about to search for the spare keys he had in his wallet when the sound of the door unlocking was heard and the door sprung open.

"Kalle!"

Without saying another word, Vella jumped straight into Kalle's arms, hugging him so hard that his chest felt slightly constricted.

Vella buried her face in Kalle's chest and started sobbing, adding tears to the shirt that already had droplets of blood on it.

"Where have you been…?" 

Kalle tried to find the words to answer her, but nothing good came up in his mind as he was still debating whether he could tell her that he had just gone inside a red portal filled with monsters and killed more than 100 of those monsters by himself.

But he didn't have much time to find any answers as Vella finally realized something and asked him first.

When she hugged him close, her nose sensed a familiar yet unnerving smell.

She took a step back and took a good look at her brother from head to toe.

From the tip of his head to the bottom of his feet, Kalle was covered in droplets of blood that spread everywhere.

But the most intense was his shoes which were soaked in blood.

It seemed to have dried out and he didn't leave any terrifying blood trails everywhere he walked, but the sight and the smell of blood were simply too strong for Vella to not notice them.

"What happened to you!?"

Knowing that he couldn't dodge the question any longer, he came up with the best answer he could think of to make her not worry too much about him.

"I kind of got stuck in a sticky situation, but I succeeded in getting myself out of it.

But as you see, it was a really, really, sticky situation."

Vella then ignored him for a few seconds as she took out her phone and searched for something.

She then showed her screen to Kalle.

"Did you meet one of these creatures?"

From her phone, Kalle could see amateur videos of people who filmed the appearance of monsters that came out of the red portal.

There were some people who saw goblins, one that was similar to the ones that he had just defeated, while the others saw a completely different kind of monster.

He saw other creatures that he recognized from the comics he read, like the kobolds, zombies, skeletons, and he even saw animals come out of the red portal.

From wolves to gigantified flies, he saw all those creatures appearing out of the similar-looking red portal that he had gone into about half an hour ago.

'Gilgamesh is right, the world is starting to change…' Kalle thought to himself as he saw the videos on social media.

"Kalle? You did meet one of them didn't you…?" 

Vella asked him, her eyes wavered as she once again stared at the blood splattering all over his brother's clothes.

"Yes… I met a few of those small green creatures when I was trying to run away and I had to fight them to get away…"

Vella stayed silent, her mouth tightly shut as she stared at her own feet.

"Vella I-"

She once again hugged him tight, ignoring the smell of dried blood strongly emitting from Kalle's body.

"Please keep yourself safe, Kalle."

"I don't want to lose the only family I have left."

Hearing her answer, Kalle pushed out all of the distracting thoughts he had earlier and hugged her back.

"Yes. I promise. I will never leave you alone."

Deep inside his heart, he made another promise to himself,

'Even if it costs me my life, I will make sure you will keep living and enjoy a happy and joyful life even if I'm not there with you.'

After spending some more time talking to each other, the two then went inside and Kalle took his time cleaning his whole body from the bloodstains that he got from massacring the goblin village.

As for the clothes that were already littered with blood, Kalle didn't even think about putting them in his laundry as he went to the balcony and burned them.

He was tempted to use the fireball spell to do it, but remembering that his sister was already going through so much seeing him in his current state, he decided to use the good old lighter instead.

Feeling her body tired from all the waiting and worrying when Kalle was gone, Vella quickly went to sleep, leaving Kalle alone as he stared at his own phone.

"Lucky that I didn't bring you outside earlier. Who knows what would have happened to you when I ran around like a maniac, traveling at possibly bullet speed."

The first thing that Kalle did after seeing his phone was to check the time.

When he talked with his sister earlier, she said that he was gone for about an hour.

This puzzled him so much as he remembered himself spending at least half of that much time kiting and killing the 100 goblins.

If he counted the time when he fell asleep for a few hours, an amount of time he knew from asking the staff, he should already be gone for at least 4 hours.

'Does this mean time flowed differently in this world and the dungeon space?'

'Yes,' The ring answered telepathically in his mind.

'That would at least help me make Vella worry less if I decided to go into another dungeon…'

Next, Kalle scrolled his social media, searching for more news about the sudden appearance of the red portals.

After doing a quick search, he found out that his place wasn't the only location where the red portal appeared.

All over the world, the red portals suddenly appeared and brought monsters out of them.

A few countries found it difficult to contain the damage caused by this sudden appearance of portals, but most countries dealt with them quite well.

The monster might be strong against ordinary civilians who didn't have any fighting capabilities or any strong weapons in their hands.

But when faced with firearms, be it guns or missiles, they were still easily defeated by them.

There were videos showing how the military rained bullets on the goblins, zombies, and other creatures that came out of the portal.

Although some places looked like an apocalypse movie set due to the military and monsters, it was still much better than having a real apocalypse where all chaos rained down without humans capable of doing anything.

All governments around the world had the same command for their citizens, and that was to stay home and lock the doors until they gave further instructions.

Not finding any more interesting news, Kalle shifted his interest to another thing that kept bugging his mind all this time.

'Ring, can you explain to me what those dungeon points, legacy dungeon, and contracted slot means?

And also, the words that you told me to say before making contracts with the goblin warrior and the goblin mage, what did you mean by those words…?'

--------Author's Note-------

Since this novel is participating in a WPC, 10 Power Stones in a week = 1 bonus chapter!