"Ruth! Leave your brother alone!" I called after the 3 foot tall monster as it chased Claws.

  It's been a few months since the monster vet visit, and I had succeeded in taming them over that course of time. I laughed as they played, snarling, biting, and scratching the shit out of each other. When they first played, I didn't know what it was. I had wrongly assumed that they would be like animals in that regard.

  Nope. Their play involves a lot blood and noise. When they do fight for real, and they've done it only once, it's a silent fight. I theorized it has something to do with them being young and not wanting to attract attention in the forest. I've no idea if I'm right or wrong though, because the adult I ran into on that fateful day was quite loud. Or maybe it was loud because it was big?

  Monsters are weird.

  Tackling Ruth, she yowled and hissed as she tried to claw at my face. Jimmy was too strong for her knife like claws, so she never got through my visor. I chuckled while I played with her face, grabbing her lower jaw as she bit down on my hand and shaking her head.

  "Alright that's enough, time to eat." I said and Hedge stopped trying to sneak up on me.

  All three of them immediately started doing that weird mix of hissing, meowing, and growling. Demanding to be fed and pushing up against my legs.

  "Of course that got your attention." I pat Hedges head, and cast the Low Healing Skill I had Jimmy absorb a while back.

  The scratches on Ruth and Claws sealed, and I lead them to their dedicated bowls to eat. Putting a bunch of meat cubes in each large bowl named after them, With 20 points of Energy put into the Tasty Treats Skill for each cube. I found that was the best combination, due to the large amount of meat.

  The city was nearly complete, about a week left of construction. The only thing left was the 50 story tall wall that surrounds the entire city. Of course, no one lived here still. There was a couple of dedicated housing for my Guildmates, but I haven't seen them in so long.

  I pet along Claws back as he ate. He growled around a mouthful of food but made no effort to stop eating. I probably should have waited to name them after I found out their genders, because Hedge was a terrible girl name. Claws was a pretty good name for both male and female, at least in my opinion because Sally-1 disagreed. Same thing with Ruth, but it is a bit more male leaning I'd say. So it matched pretty well with Ruth, as he was a male.

  Two were male, one was female.

  These past couple of months have been pretty boring. I threw myself into taking care of the 3 runts I picked up, and they've gotten much healthier and larger because of it. Hedge had this nice dark gray on red fur color, with the red being horizontal stripes running along her body. Ruth was full black, but he did have some tiny red highlights here and there if you looked hard enough. Claws on the other hand, was more orange with black accents. Think mutated tiger, and that's pretty much what he looked like.

  I lounged about as I watched them eat. I still needed to find a monster to turn into cattle, and I wasn't sure if I was comfortable with turning my 3 goobers into such a thing. I'd have to come up with some kind of plan.

  Just as I thought about it, I slapped my head.

  "Why didn't I just order some cattle from a station somewhere? Fuck, I'm stupid." I rubbed my visor with both hands as I groaned at how dumb I am.

  ...

  --------- Some Admin of The System ---------

  Life is good.

  The System is running without any flaws, the universe is in order, and I get to sit back and rake in crazy amounts of money by doing nothing.

  At least, that's what was supposed to be happening.

  An alarm blared. Not some dinky "Oh something unexpected happened, I need your attention please!" but a "WE ARE IN TROUBLE!!!" type of alarm.

  A dark blue light engulfed my office as the alarm sounded. It was so sudden, that I didn't even know how to react for a moment. Then time froze.

  Time only stops when things are REALLY bad.

  "All Administrator staff are to report to the conference room. IMMEDIATELY." The voice of my boss, whom I have never heard speak in such harsh tones before, summoned everyone in my sector.

  I was on my way, walking out of the office and into the hallway. The species in charge of The System, my species, were very large. On average, we were about the same size as 3 or 4 stars stacked on top of each other. So the hallway was less of a hallway and more just the blank void of space. Our offices were clever little pocket dimensions, bigger on the inside than the outside so we can work in somewhat close proximity to one another.

  Several black languid shapes, fluid like oil and in the rough shape of whatever we want to be, floated toward the conference room.

  Once inside, hundreds of us all gathered around a singular massive table. No one was up and speaking, there was only the large projection showing some kind of crack in the center of the universe. It was still growing within frozen time. Slowly, but still growing.

  "What the hell is that?" I heard one of my colleagues whisper, and the cacophony of whispers throughout the room were all the same.

  "People, that is a growing fissure in space and time. It appeared roughly 34 seconds ago in relative time, and only 1.56 seconds in real time." My boss spoke out above the crowd.

  "Only 1.5 seconds, and it's already that large?" A murmur to my left.

  "It's still growing in frozen time? How?" Another to my right.

  "We have never seen anything like this, and there are no records of anything popping into existence unexpectedly on this scale. The System has already tried to close it, but did nothing. We are here to speak on what to do next." My boss spoke once again, and the room devolved into conversations about the fissure.

  Minutes passed in relative time, and we were taking too long. I could see it growing more and more. Ideas were thrown out, tried, and discarded. Over and over again.

  "Look! Something is coming out of the hole!" A voice called out, and everyone snapped their attention to the projection.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  A bipedal figure, with pinkish white skin and brown hair, wearing white robes walked out of the fissure. It had perfect white bird wings on it's back, and a halo of light above it's head. It continued to move within frozen time as if everything was normal.

  The System sent out an identification ping to it, and immediately it snapped it's head toward our view. It smiled, and the projection abruptly ended.

  All eyes stared in disbelief at the projection field, where it now said "Error".

  After a few moments of shocked silence, the identification results replaced the projection.

  "Human? What is that?" The murmurs came back, but I knew what a Human was.

  "Does anyone here know what a Human is?" My boss called out and I really didn't want to speak up, but it seemed like no one else knew.

  "We have, or had, exactly one Human in this universe. It's in The System, but we know next to nothing about it's species." I stood and spoke. There was no need to yell over the murmurs, as I knew my boss could hear me.

  At my words, they started interfacing with The System and I sat down. The projection changed once again and now we were looking at the files we had on the domestic Human.

  There was a stark difference between it and the one we had just seen. This one didn't have wings, nor did it have a halo. It was also taller, lankier than the breacher. I already knew everything in the file, but everyone else was freaking out.

  They hadn't seen the video of the Human Azurath destroying an abandoned planets surface at level 4. Their panic made sense. If a level 4 of this species could do that, then what could one do at 9999?

  We've never seen anything at such a level, and it could theoretically be as powerful as one or two admins. We are exempt from the leveling system, because we have full control over it. That might explain how we lost sight of it.

  "Alright, all hands on deck! Snap out of it. Everyone, get your battle gear out of deep storage. We have a possible universe ending threat, and we have to intervene." My boss yelled out, silencing all the talks.

  We all did as they said, getting old weapons and armor out from before The System was fully optimized. Powerful artifacts ranging from all kinds of shapes and sizes. From magic foci to swords, and even more tech savvy options like guns and experimental reality warpers.

  In mere moments, we were ready for war. No one was afraid of dying, as we had erased the very concept from our species. The very laws of the universe upheld this fact, making us an outlier from every other species. Of course, it came at the cost of not being able to breed anymore. The universe needs balance to function after all.

  "We have eyes on the Human now." A voice spoke, and we all turned back to the projection.

  The Angelic Savior was flying around in space, looking for something. It hadn't located this view point yet, so we were able to watch it safely. Someone wondered out loud if the viewpoint would remain hidden as long as we did not send out any pings, and I had to agree with that assessment.

  The Angelic Savior's head locked onto a direction, and it sped off at multiple times the speed of light. We only knew that it moved instead of teleporting because The System detected it as so. The view changed again, and it was now hovering above some planet.

  "It's found the other Human." I muttered out loud, recognizing the AP as Azuraths domain.

  My boss must've heard me, as cross references flashed across the projection. Proving me right.

  "We're moving. Now." My boss stated calmly, and we all braced for combat.

  Instantly, all 496 of us, teleported in a circle around the threat.

  "Ah, there you are little flies." It spoke with malicious derision in our native tongue. Something that should not be possible.

  "What business do you have in this universe, invader?" My boss called out to it, and it sneered.

  "My business is my own, but if you must know I have come to collect something I have lost." With those words it turned toward the planet once again, ignoring the several hundred beings many thousands of times larger than it.

  "Is it the Human child on the surface of this planet?" My boss spoke to it once again, and the Human sighed deeply.

  "You admins are all the same. You just don't listen." The Angel flicked it's wrist lazily, and my boss screamed.

  A simple spell had been cast. Just a tiny fireball. It traveled so quickly I only saw it for a fraction of a millisecond before it collided with my boss, and expanded into a full star.

  The flood gates holding back the fight were thrown open as everyone, including me, began to battle the threat.

  Light and sound became meaningless as the mass of our bodies slammed into each other. This does not hurt us, and we combine into a singular sphere of death. Our attacks focusing inward to snuff the target.

  And yet the Angel dodged and moved as if it were swimming gracefully. Plasma erupted through the space it was merely less than 0.01 seconds the Angel was before it moved.

  Attacks of so many types and specialties targeted the threat, only for the angel to vanish and reappear somewhere else with a smile.

  It was toying with us.

  This thing was much stronger than us. It acted like it knew how we would attack exactly. As if it had seen this song and dance thousands of times before.

  Doubt began to crawl it's way through my system. Then came fear as the minutes grew. Nothing we did could harm it.

  "It's been fun, but I think it's time to end the show." It spoke, and it's smile was replaced by indifference. Almost boredom.

  It waved it's hand languidly, and every single one of us was pushed back. The sphere of death broken so easily.

  The angel pointed to one of us.

  "Eeny." It spoke, and the pointed lost an arm.

  "Miny." It pointed again, and I heard a scream as a hole appeared in an abdomen.

  "Moe." Another scream, more damage dealt.

  "Oh forget it, I'll just select them all." It smiled again, before spinning wand pointing with both hands.

  We started falling apart as massive holes tore through our bodies. Just as the threat was about to point to me, my boss called for the retreat.

  The System teleported us all back to the conference room, and we were a mess. No one had died, but we had lost.

  We lost.

  People were already regenerating lost limbs and damage, but we were mentally broken.

  "What do we do now?" Someone asked, an unknown voice in the crowd and noise of pained groans.

  "All we can do now is watch and see. We need to come up with a plan to fight that thing." My boss said, and so that's what we would do.

  No one was happy about it, but there's nothing else we could do.

  We settled in to watch the projection, and the threat began to descend to the planet.

  ...

  --------- Greg ---------

  Time was frozen for some reason, and Jerald wasn't able to tell me why.

  "I don't know. It worries me." Jerald spoke, sounding strangely nervous.

  "Well what about why I can move around just fine?" I asked, walking through the city.

  Time stopped as I was playing with the kuppens, but I had this odd feeling that I wasn't supposed to be aware of this.

  "I don't know. If you were supposed to be able to do this, then that would mean The System wanted it, but it's not here! I don't understand this." Jerald was starting to freak me out with how worried he sounded.

  "Shouldn't you be more pissed off that I can do this?" I asked while I observed the Rob's frozen bodies. One of them had dropped a beam, and it was stuck in midair.

  "I would be, but for time to be frozen for this long and you are not the cause? Somethings wrong." If Jerald could pace, he would be.

  That made sense.

  I was walking along the empty streets of my city, one of the completely finished blocks, and I got this sense of deja vu. My walk slowed as I frowned at everything. Then it hit me.

  "I've been here before..." I muttered as my eyes widened and that weird tingly feeling shot up my spine.

  "Yeah? I mean it's your city so of course you have." Jerald didn't know what I meant.

  "No, I mean I've been in this exact scenario before! I had a dream about this moment a while back." I looked around with new found interest.

  "What? You can have seer dreams now too?" Jerald seemed exasperated.

  "Kind of? It's a rare occurrence, but it's not that uncommon for my people. This is exactly what I dreamt about, minus the weird angel thing that had... my... face." I slowly stopped walking as I felt something descend from the sky behind me.

  Turning around, I saw the same thing I did in that dream I had oh so long ago.

  A perfect smiling angelic version of me floated down from the skyline.

  "I've finally found it." Was all he said, before everything went black.