Returning to No Applause, Only More of the Same

What could he do but remove his helmet? He’d been wearing it so long… It was no longer that pristine white it had been before all this happened. No, it was a tainted red, much like the rest of his armour. He’d remove that soon, too. He was home, after all. What need did he have for armour back here?

The gentle breeze caressed his bare face. It was the same as it had been since he was 37, a result of gaining the highest level in the Faith skill. Immortality. Eternal youth. If you could call 37 'young'...

That didn’t matter though. Nothing did anymore.

How had he gotten home? Why had he been returned only now? It wasn’t important! After all, he was home!

That soldier trailing by his side like a meek house mouse didn’t matter either. Nor did the man right in front of him, what with the glasses and slicked-back hair and suit and terrified expression. The people behind him were unimportant, too. And the cops standing by behind them.

They were all in the middle of a street, a large crossroad. Behind him, the portal closed with a dull mumble. In only a minute, all that remained in the crossroad was him, the speckled suit, the party (very similar in age and suit to those he had met inside the cave) and the five police vehicles. Cars. Those were cars. He hadn’t seen one of those since he had been summoned to Owred. Ah, there was also the little soldier behind him, but to Kreig, he was more unimportant than the worms in the ground.

“Who, what-,” the speckled suit said. He had a weak voice. A whimper. For some reason, he seemed completely broken, tears on the verge of falling from his dark eyes.

“Step back, Thomas! We’ll deal with this!” a yellow-haired kid in the armoured group shouted, bearing his spear in a way that could only be described as amateur. Kreig glanced above the boy.

Human, Lv.38

Pathetic. A boy like that shouldn’t be holding a weapon. Even then, Kreig didn’t hesitate to hunch into a pose. Owred or not, he was always prepared to defeat his enemies.

“N-, no, wait, David, don’t attack him!” the speckled suit called out. If it hadn’t been in English, if it hadn’t been in Kreig’s mother tongue, he would not have hesitated. “Just… hold on. We need to-, he hasn’t attacked, see?”

The boy shook his head, burrowing his frenzied eyes into Kreig’s. “You-, you can see his level too, can’t you?!” Or, rather, the way he couldn’t see it. Kreig knew this fact well. It was impossible for a man with the level of 38 to see the level of a man with a level of 999+. Kreig knew how it worked. What he didn’t know was how in the world a man on Earth could have a level of 38 without being a murderer of hundreds and how this man could see levels. It suggested things that Kreig didn’t even want to imagine.

“I… I understand that, that’s why we won’t attack. Please, please remove your weapons.”

“But, sir!”

“Remove them!!” the speckled suit shouted, never taking his eyes off of Kreig. Kreig, in turn, didn’t take his eyes off of the speckled suit. There was a faint solidarity between them. Somehow, they understood the intents of the other. The speckled suit didn’t want a battle, and Kreig… Kreig wouldn’t mind fighting another battle. He’d fought in so many wars that fighting another one was just another chore. He’d just rather it didn’t happen on Earth. “Sir… Do you… Do you understand me?”

Kreig looked down at him. Such a short man. All men had become short after Kreig became strong. “Yes.” After all, he did.

English was a dead language, but through his prayer, he had kept it alive. “Is… is that so-,” the speckled suit smiled a thin, uncertain smile. Then, he mumbled something that Kreig wouldn’t have been able to catch if his senses weren’t inhuman. “Holy shit, he can speak English…” With that said, he tried to give a more robust smile, but it was obviously strained. “Will-, sir, if you will, could you please come with us to the station?...”

The station. The police station?...

“...Yes,” Kreig said. He agreed. It was all he could do, really. He… he hadn’t planned on ever returning. After all these years, he had long since lost the fantasy of returning to Earth, of what he’d do if it happened.

And now that he did return… All he could do was go along with what was happening.

The speckled suit seemed surprised. “You-, you will? That’s, um, great! Just follow me to the car, and-,” and at this moment, the speckled suit noticed the soldier hunched behind Kreig. “Hello? Will you also follow? Please?”

The soldier seemed surprised at being called out to. “Is-, are you talking to me? I can’t understand, please-,” the soldier spoke in German. He must have been from the empire, then. The mere thought made Krieg’s blood boil in that familiar manner, but he supressed it. Here on Earth, he might as well forget his prior grudges.

“Is that-, did he just speak in German?...” The speckled man turned around to face the police and the party behind him. “Uh-, sirs! Anybody-, does anybody here speak German? Please-,”

Kreig couldn’t bother. He turned towards the soldier, who shrunk visibly under his gaze, like a rabbit trying to meld with the floor. “Come along.” And that was all Kreig had to say.

The soldier, meek as he was, followed him.

The Speckled suit looked at him, looked at the soldier, and understood the facts of the matter. “Is he your-, your subordinate or something?” Kreig shook his head gently. “Um, Okay, just… come here, and-,” the speckled suit led Kreig and his follower towards one of the many police cars lined up specifically to halt traffic. The party that had been standing outside the portal followed at a length while the police took steps back as they approached. The speckled suit opened one of the police cars. “H-, here. Get in, please.”

And Kreig did, though with no little amount of apprehension. This thing, this car… It mildly frightened him. The last time he’d been in so much as a carriage was-, was the last time he’d been captured.

Though it didn’t matter now. He sat in the back, and the soldier was seated on the other side.

A deeply reluctant pair of police officers were called for and seated themselves in the front of the car. They seemed more than uncomfortable, but once the car got started, the uncomfortable one was Kreig. And surely the soldier as well. After all, the loud beetle went at extremely quick speeds, was very loud and only seemed a tad bit more modern than the cars Kreig could remember seeing.

He’d been gone for 130 years. Surely the cars should have gotten a bit more modern by now? Then again, the skyline was the same, the language wasn’t extremely altered (he’d seen how the German the Empiricists spoke grew more simplified and more complex over all these years) and apart from the people who could see levels, not much was different. At all.

Might it be… That he hadn’t been gone long at all?...

That all these years had been a mere blurb in time back on Earth? For some reason, the thought made him unhappy. It should have done the opposite. No time had passed. The world hadn’t changed. He was different, as altered as one could be, but the world… the world had barely even turned.

It disgusted him.

A snarl found its way onto Kreig’s face and he barely noticed how the soldier tried to press himself further into the car door on his side. If there was anybody in this car who was more uncomfortable than Kreig, more uncomfortable than the police officers, it was the soldier. Kreig wasn’t sure if he should have killed him, too, along with the other soldiers. Though it didn’t matter anymore.

Outside the window, the world whizzed past. People walked the streets as normal, wearing the same clothes as normal and acting in the same was as normal. Everything was normal except for him.

His muscles were the same as before. His body was still that of a 37-year-old man. Not a 17-year-old kid, like when he’d been summoned.

Something here was very strange, but Kreig figured he wouldn’t be getting answers until they reached the station.

Until they got there, neither the police officers nor Kreig nor the soldier had so much as attempted to say anything. It made sense, sort of. People usually didn’t want to talk to Kreig after he tried to kill them, and especially after he killed their friends and comrades. It seemed to make them dislike him, which was a rather natural thing to do. Nowadays, Kreig couldn’t imagine there was anybody who liked him.

They reached the station. Well there, a few people actually seemed to be waiting for them. Namely a few people wielding weapons and a couple of police officers in more exasperated uniforms.

They opened the car door for him, and as soon as he exited the vehicle, a pair of cuffs were placed on him.

Purely by instinct, he flicked his wrists to either sides, causing the cuffs to snap and break. The armoured man who had tried to place them on him froze in place, staring at Kreig’s wrists. “Um. Uh. Sir, we, er, we need you to, w-, wear cuffs. For safety reasons.” -Alright. He couldn’t disagree with that. If it meant getting answers… Kreig stuck his arms out again, showing that he accepted being cuffed.

The armoured man gave a pleading look to a police officer, who ran up and replaced the broken cuffs with a fresh pair. The soldier was also given a pair, and the two were led inside the station, a gaggle of armoured people following them at every turn.

At the end of a hallway, Kreig and the soldier parted, with a single armoured man following the soldier and the rest following Kreig. Kreig didn’t mind this arrangement and he figured the soldier didn’t mind it either.

While Kreig was led to the highest-security holding cell, the soldier was instead brought to a semi-regular interrogation room.

Good thing many interrogatories are bilinguals.