Return of the last survivor

Merlin spent some time to meet everyone. Although it had been only a year for them, it har been nearly 10 years for himself. Although he seemed completely fine, this was not something he was used to.

His psychology had always been fragile since the day his mother died. I gradually became increasingly fragile up until the Apocalypse came the first time.

Those 7 years had greatly strengthened his mind. However, that is what Merlin thought. In reality, those seven years had simply encased his mentality in a layer of concrete called being ruthless.

And as all things man-made, concrete breaks to time. And that is what was happening to Merlin's mentality after 10 years of solitude.

What Merlin did not realise was that below the concrete was not shattering glass, but a bullet-proof barrier called memories. He did not realise when this had formed, and he did not know it existed, but it did. And there were two distinct layers of this glass which were slowly merging together into one.

The truth was that these bullet-proof glass panels were actually the two anchors he had formed within the two planes. Anchors were not meant for location only, they also had a multitude of other functions. One of which was strengthening the mentality of a growing being.

He first met with Jack, Alex, Alex's parents, who were like an uncle and aunt to him, Alice and her sister, with this particular meeting being rather awkward since Alice had not met Merlin too much before.

In all, Jack had reached the peak of Tier two along with Alex and Alice. Alex's parents and Alice's twin sister Rosie were also almost at peak Tier 2. Most of his direct subordinates had reached Tier 2, excluding a few, who clearly did not have the talent. However, Merlin did not remove them from their position as direct subordinate to himself, nor did he remove the soul control over them.

Every human alive was one extra human to fight against the enemies. He could not have them turn against him. This had happened to a particular group during the 4th mana burst.

The Tyrant-like leader of the group of 30 Tier 3s had loosened his grasp over those who could not reach peak Tier 3 to reduce the pressure on his own soul, however, it backfired as he was left with only around 4 Peak Tier 3s, who could clearly not defeat 25 other Tier 3, despite their level being lower.

Within the same Tier, numbers usually trumped individual level. Naturally, exceptions existed, the biggest one being Merlin himself.

Merlin then returned to one of the central bases and called for a meeting through video call for all peak Tier 2s under him.[1]

A few minutes later, everyone had appeared on the magic screen.

"The second mana burst will begin in 29 hours. This will be a far greater mana burst. Not only will the zombies become tier 3, but a new threat will emerge."

Hearing the leader's solemn words, everyone was silent. They understood the severity of the words 'a new enemy will emerge.' These words meant that an enemy group as strong as the zombies would appear.

"This mana burst is not an ordinary mana burst. It will be renamed the beast tide. As the name suggests, all living non-sentient creatures will directly evolve to Tier 2 with a random selection of 20% evolving directly to Tier 3."

[1] Zoom sama has entered this novel. The sheer might of zoom sama is too powerful for the limits of the novel to restrict. The author is failing to keep up with zoom sama and the person within saying, "Keep your camera's on!". Sad Shadow noises. College is hard… On top of that, my college has introduced a competitor to zoom sama. His name is the legendary Google meet San.