The Discarded, Half-Eaten Apple Core New Life
Wait. I think I know these people from somewhere... It's on the tip of my tongue...

Right as I approached the bunker I left in Atlanta, I sensed three faint divine auras. Blackjack Six landed and I went the rest of the way on foot. Casting a beacon, I connected to the bunker's Domain and looked inside. People were crowding the armored building, a lot of them coughing. As I entered the cleared area around the bunker, the auras moved toward the nearest exit. They were aware of my presence.

I looked at them with my Domain. Two women, around their late twenties, If I was reading correctly. A redhead and a tanned brunette with... pure white wings. The third aura belonged to an emaciated pale gray horse that looked like it could eat a few pounds of oat.

"The magic of the bunker is awake. It seems our mysterious benefactor has returned," the redhead said.

"I'm telling you, Cat. This is a Dungeon. For some reason, the Dungeons of this world are not contained in pocket dimensions," the brunette retorted.

I Replicated a speaker ahead of them but out of the range of their aura. The brunette had a very faint aura and I suspected she was containing it. But the redhead was very, very strong. Strong enough that I think she could take on a Boboyote solo.

"Greetings, ladies. I am afraid you are both correct. My name is Garfield Babbage, and I am both the creator of this bunker and a Dungeon. I mean you no harm. I recently became aware of this bunker's survival and came to check. I counted almost eleven thousand people here. It means my other bunkers have another thousand people in total."

"Hey, a robot voice!" The brunette said.

"Greetings, Mr. Babbage," the redhead looked around.

"Mighty nice of you to set up these bases for people with automated air filtration rather than, you know, murder us," the winged lady snorted.

The redhead glared at her partner but said nothing.

"I'm not your ordinary Dungeon. I was human once."

"That explains a lot. Anyway, you have our thanks, Mr. Babbage," the redhead replied politely.

"I have an offer for the people in the bunker. I have potions and fruit with healing properties. I also have a shelter where I'm currently hosting half a million people I rescued from all over the world. They can go to this shelter if they want to. And yes, it is a pocket dimension, though the System calls it a Demiplane."

The brunette whistled. "Half a million?"

"That's almost all that's left of humanity, I'm afraid."

"On Earth. There are people up there in orbit," the redhead informed. "Say, Mr. Babbage, how did you get electronics to work after the Apocalypse?"

"It's my Class. I can create what basically amounts to enchanted electronics that emulate the devices we had before. I have a team of technicians and mages and enchanters trying to replicate it for years but so far they had no success."

"Told you! System bullshit," the winged woman sputtered and chortled. She recovered quickly enough. "Well, can we see this shelter of yours?"

"Sure. I'm entering the bunker now."

*

*

We met and introduced ourselves.

"Nice Japanese TV armor replica, by the way." The winged woman said.

"Yes, it was inspired by these shows," I replied. "I can move you to my shelter now. You can see for yourselves how the people I have in there are doing."

"You take Cat with you. I'll stay here and keep you company," the brunette threatened.

I moved the redhead to Speranza and let the greeters know she was a VIP. Then I focused on the brunette. She was hiding her powers. I needed to confirm what she was. Not a Valkyrie, that was for sure.

"I assure you I mean you no harm. But I sense a spark of divinity in you. But you are not a Valkyrie. May I ask what are you?"

The woman laughed again. "Do you really want to know? this 'spark of divinity' you sensed," she made air quotes, "is because I'm a Nephilim. My father was an angel. My mother was a human. I'm half-celestial."

"Wait, from the Christian mythos?"

"Actually, it is the Abrahamic mythos. Christianity, Judaism, and Islamism share a common root. They won't admit but they basically worship the same deity."

"But Ragnarök..."

She grunted. "Loki really fucked us up. Pulled the wool over entire pantheons. You should see how pissed the Greeks were when they were forced off-world."

"Greek... pantheon?"

"Yeah. Zeus was bitching more than a Karen at your local Costco."

"Anyway, what about the green horse?"

"That's Chloe. She's my bond. She's the Pale Horse." The woman smiled like a Sphinx, daring me to figure her out.

"Green is not a color often seen on animals. But, when magic is involved..."

"Any bullshit flies. Like magical computers."

"Yeah. That's pretty much it."

"Can I ask one thing?"

"Sure."

"I sense another lifeform inside you. What is it?"

"Oh. It's Larry. He's my bond."

"Nice. What is it?"

"A platypus."

"Can I see him? I promise I'll be nice!"

*

*

The winged woman went crazy about Larry and the two struck out into a chat about... stuff I don't care. I wasn't jealous. No. Some time passed and the redhead, Cat, inspected Speranza, talked to people, and then asked to come back.

"Well, Mr. Babbage, you seem to run a pretty nice operation there. I must say I was tempted to move," she told me, then looked at her partner. "What is that?"

"Who!" The brunette protested. "This is Larry, he's a genuine magical girl mascot!"

"Oh, my God! Hi, Larry! I'm Cat. Say, how does this magical girl thing work?"

"Hey, Hello there," Larry waved a paw at the redhead. "Magical girl... it's very personal. It is the awakening of a girl's inner magic, her heart made manifest in the world."

"Can I be one?" She teased.

"I'm sorry but I already have a contract. And you can't be a magical girl."

"Too old?" Cat laughed.

"No, your soul is that of a man," Larry stated. "Sorry, I didn't mean to pry. But I can sense it. Your body is female, but you are a man inside."

It was time for the winged woman to guffaw. "He got you there, Cat! Oh, ho ho! Nothing gets past Larry! What about me? Can I become a magical girl if I found the right mascot? Besides the age thing, I mean."

"Yes, but you would be in one of those Battle Royale magical girls shows where most of them die horribly," Larry joked with his brattish voice.

"Ouch." She feigned being hurt.

"It seems he saw right through you too," Cat snickered.

"I should go back to my contractor," Larry said. "Or he'll get even crankier than usual."

"Sure! We don't want a cranky Dungeon. That way leads only to trouble." She returned Larry to Blackjack Six's cockpit but peeked inside before I could close the doors. "Hey, a ruby apple! Neat ribbon!" sᴇaʀᴄh thᴇ NʘvᴇlFɪre.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of nøvels early and in the highest quality.

I ignored the clear bait. "Where were you the first time I came this way? Florida?"

The brunette snorted, "Pfft. No way! Florida is sheer insanity. The Bermuda Triangle opened up, it has portals everywhere. Even backward in time. But let me tell you, nothing good comes out of time travel. Stay in one timeline or you'll be sorry!"

Her last advice was rather serious.

"We were in another world, trying to rescue a friend of ours that was kidnapped," Cat shared. "She's resting downstairs with Sara's dogs and her own pets."

I checked with my domain. Yeah, it was a veritable zoo of magical creatures down there.

"And Mr. Mouser."

"And Mr. Mouser."

"Everyone has pets! Hooray!"

"I'm fine being a pet," Larry mumbled to himself.

"Well, let's go," Cat urged. "Let's see who wants to join you in your Dungeon utopia."

*

*

I spent the next day in the Atlanta bunker. I met their friends, two other ladies with weird magical auras, and their plethora of magical animals, some not even from Earth. At their request, I expanded the bunker into the underground by doing a clever trick. I created Dungeon walls as double panels very close to one another that went around a huge chunk of the underground but only the inside of the two panels counted as Dungeon. The area completely walled-off by these panels was "outside" the Dungeon by a technicality.

I also added sandwich panels to divide the underground area into floors, and set the bottom half panels (the roof of these underground floors) to light up following the day-night cycle. The second rule I could set on the DCSC was to keep air quality. Speaking of the cloud servers, I increased the number of them to 100 and charged them, at a cost of 2,350,000 DM (a thousandth of my daily budget if I kept connected to the base in Australia). That would allow this bunker to keep going on its own for more than a century.

I also left a lot of computers and tablet PCs with them, which was much appreciated. Turns out all these four women were Apocalypse survivors and had magical powers way before that. It allowed them to slow down their aging (and in the brunette's case, her mixed heritage made her virtually immortal). I gave the people staying behind vehicles, weapons, and spare parts for repairs. Of the survivors, only five hundred decided to stay behind. Most of the original Atlanta survivors had changed their minds once they saw how well their acquaintances were faring in Speranza.

I went around the other bunkers and collected the people there. Speranza's population climbed to about 612,500 people.

Then I created another Saturn V and flew back to Australia.

*

*

I got one nice piece of information from the redhead woman. There are thousands of people living in space. The files the System gave me were all from the 2020s but Ragnarok happened a decade later. Humanity had already started space colonization when Earth went to shit. The burst of magic from Ragnarok killed all satellites in orbit and most space stations had to be evacuated when their computer systems failed.

Fortunately, the magic receded back into the atmosphere, allowing the rescue ships from the moon to come and pick up the stranded survivors. But all attempts to land an orbiter back on the planet ended up in catastrophe. One daring entrepreneur businessman that owned a space travel company managed to launch an unmanned rocket after the world became magical. The rocket exploded once it left the Manasphere (the area around the planet where magic was a thing).

Ordinary magic and magic-infused objects could not exist in space. Without the pressure from the magical field surrounding the planet, the magic stored unravels and explodes. But the dragon Goddess was flying into space without exploding. Perhaps she could create her own personal Manasphere and keep the energy contained.

On my flight back, I kept dissolving the smog (which was rather pointless but not much to do when you're flying a space rocket sideways) and checked on the Armagellykulls. The one going north would reach Alaska in a few weeks. The one fighting in Florida was doing fine. Hope it doesn't explode and wreck the Bermuda Triangle. The one in Panama was on its way to South America, the one in Hawaii was dipping its tentacles in lava, and the one in Japan was fighting a dragon. A freaking oriental dragon, miles long. Someone gathered the Dragon Balls, I guess.

I had no idea where the others were. That was a lot of world-ending monsters unaccounted for.

Anyway, I absorbed the rocket when we were flying over Australia and I flew the rest of the way back home.

No more going around the world running errands. We were prepared to hunker down and defend this damn tree to the last man.

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