Jake hadn’t been back to his own universe for over three years, and if he was being perfectly honest, he wasn’t looking forward to what Haven had become during his absence. He was afraid it had changed more than he liked, and he especially feared learning what had happened with his good old lodge. He was pretty sure Miranda or someone else had taken care of it during his absence to make sure it wasn’t too horrible, but what if they had turned it into a tourist destination or something? Fuck, maybe someone had constructed a viewing deck overlooking it!

He could totally see that happening, especially with Miranda gone for Nevermore herself. Actually… who was even in charge of Haven right now? Lillian and Miranda were usually the ones doing everything, but neither of them were there. Maybe Hank? Jake sure as hell hoped it wasn’t just some random person who Arthur put in charge.

These were just some of the thoughts Jake had as he went through the void. The only change he knew of for sure was the teleportation circle back in Haven allowing him to teleport back there directly. Those snakes in Scarlett’s former territory had improved their special magic circle significantly to the level where Jake could easily teleport to most regular teleportation circles back on Earth. From how Jake understood it, it was a bit like a phone forwarding a call, with the call, in this case, being someone teleporting through the void with a shrunk-down cosmic worm on his shoulder.

A few seconds after stepping on the teleporter back in the Order, Jake was back on Earth, the void treating him nicely this time around, with no eldritch beings wanting a chat during his travel. He was actually a bit surprised to see how Sandy wasn’t at all affected by the warping space, despite using space magic on themselves, but he wasn’t going to question how any of that worked.

”Home sweet home!” Sandy said with glee as they appeared within the large basement complex beneath Jake’s lodge. Through his sphere, he naturally saw it all, including that nothing had really changed down there. Honestly, seeing it made him feel kind of bad when he remembered all the work Hank had gone through to make it, only for Jake to never really use the place.

The facilities are still pretty good, though… considering I just need a cauldron to do alchemy, I should stay here more, Jake reckoned. Plus, there were some actual benefits to doing alchemy there due to the Pylon of Civilization – an often forgotten aspect of how cities on Earth now worked. It was also a bit more private, with no one able to contact him as easily.

Looking at the Pylon Jake owned, he saw it was still there, though it had changed slightly as expected. It had grown denser with more energy as Jake and especially Miranda had grown in power. Standing there, he also felt the slight increase in mana regeneration he benefitted from within the borders of the Pylon. There was also that minor increase in experience earned for non-combat activities. However, Jake didn’t even think that worked anymore. It was just an early incentive to make people seek out cities outside of the safety they offered.

Shaking his head, Jake smiled at Sandy’s expression of being happy to be home. ”Good to be back, indeed.”

Making his way up to the lodge, he felt quite nostalgic. Especially when he entered the lodge itself. Everything looked as the day he left, even the bed Jake had dragged from the Tutorial Challenge Dungeon way back in the day. The rest of the furniture was also mostly the same that he had dragged with him back then.

”Looking cozy,” Sandy said, wiggling a bit around. ”Not much to eat around here, though… except for that tree outside.”

”It’s not a tree,” Jake quickly corrected the worm.

”It looks like a tree.”

”But it’s not.”

”If it looks like a tree, smells like a tree, and sounds like a tree, it’s a tree,” Sandy insisted.

”You literally don’t have eyes,” Jake pointed out.

”And yet I can see it’s a tree,” Sandy said in a disappointed tone. ”Look, I can test if it also tastes like a tree, and-”

”I’m going to give you a full lesson about the difference between a musa and a tree if you keep this up,” Jake threatened.

”Oh, it’s a musa? You should have just said that from the beginning!” Sandy quickly stopped arguing as the two of them walked outside to the clearing. Going down the steps from the porch, Jake took in the sights as everything here also looked very much the same. The trees had maybe grown a little, and the grass was definitely due for mowing, but besides that, things were serene, with no tourists anywhere to be seen. No viewing decks overlooking the valley either.

Jake purposefully held himself back from using a Pulse of Perception to allow him to take in everything a bit at a time. Looking at the banana musa, Jake went over to it for a quick inspection. There were a few bananas growing on it, and the magic circle Mystie had placed a long time ago was gone with time. Size-wise, the musa was pretty much the same as it had been the last time he saw it, though he did feel that it had grown at least a little.

He considered the manure he had received and if he should use it right away but stopped himself, as it was definitely better to have someone with gardener skills to do it for improved effect. However, he did do something incredibly smart.

Taking out all of the bags, he placed them not far from the musa. That way, they would serve as visual reminders whenever he was there so he wouldn’t forget!

”That soil stinks,” Sandy commented. ”Wait… it’s not soil, is it? Did you really just take out literal bags of poo?”

”It’s called manure and is a very common aspect of farming,” Jake defended the bags that he could see come off as disgus-

”Can I have a little taste, pretty please?” the worm asked in a pleading tone while wiggling.

Jake looked at the worm for a moment before shaking his head.” Sorry, it’s for the musa, maybe if there are some leftovers, but that will depend on who I find to help spread it and what they say.”

”Fine… Tom would have let me have some…”

Ignoring Sandy entirely, Jake went over to the small pond and waterfall as he felt something within it. Looking down into the water, he saw a lot of small eels swimming around, making him smile at how serene it all seemed… until he used Identify on one of them.

Yeah, that’s a D-grade, Jake quickly confirmed. Actually… nearly all of them were D-grades. Looking down at them, he saw a few stare back up at him. He stood there for a few moments before just turning around, shaking his head.

They didn’t seem aggressive in the slightest, and using his sphere, he saw an underwater tunnel lead down deep into the ground from the pond, likely connecting to the underworld of the planet. No need to complain about a bunch of nice eels guarding his little pond.

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Jake checked out the exterior of the lodge a bit more before he decided it was time to head out into Haven proper. But, before that…

”Hey, Sandy, do you have a good stealth skill? I want to go explore a bit without attracting the attention of half the planet,” Jake asked the cosmic worm.

”Eh… kind of? It’s not really a stealth skill, but I can disappear,” Sandy answered as the worm wiggled a bit before suddenly popping out of existence. Yet, as Jake felt a bit deeper, he felt as if something was still there…

Before he could understand what Sandy did, the worm popped back into existence. ”I can just enter Sandy’s Sand World and hide there while putting an anchor on you, and don’t worry, I can still feel and smell stuff while in there!”

”Do I want to know what Sandy’s Sand World is?” Jake questioned.

”According to people who claim to know a lot about space stuff, it’s apparently what subspace is called or something like that… or was it what I called something called subspace? Either way, it’s like space but different. Gotta be there to understand it,” Sandy non-explained, yet Jake got the gist of it.

”Well, it works, so go hide in the sand, and let’s explore,” Jake said as the worm did as he asked, and they left Jake’s lodge after Jake engaged his stealth skill. On the way out, he did notice the addition of more magical barriers to keep people out and to stop them from peeping, so that was nice to see. The old sign telling people to keep out also remained.

Walking outside, Jake made his way into the city proper… and was more than pleasantly surprised at how little things had changed. Haven had always been a small quaint place with tree houses, and wooden structures spread relatively sparsely around the foresty city. None of that had changed, and the natural vibe fully remained.

The areas with a few more buildings – such as a small street for shopping – were buzzing with activity as Jake walked through the non-paved roads of Haven. Looking toward some of the larger buildings, Jake saw even more activity in those, especially the building that had served as the home of Miranda for the longest time. It was more of a large office rather than a home, and since Jake’s last visit, it had expanded both into the ground and onto nearby trees as a few satellite buildings were constructed.

When it came to the people, all that had really changed were the average levels. People had gotten stronger, especially those who lived in Haven. It had been considered a city for the elites for a long time, and that showed as Jake spotted more than a few C-grades, with most average folk in D-grade. Of course, there were also those weaker, such as the family members of the strong people who settled there or the original residents of Haven. As far as Jake knew, it wasn’t as if you got thrown out if you had a low level or anything like that.

Considering so many had left for Nevermore, the number of C-grades was honestly impressive, and based on all the statistics Jake had heard about how strong people from newly initiated planets usually became, Jake got the feeling Earth was well ahead of the curve.

Overall, the vibe of Haven was as great as usual, with there not even being an expanded population, which genuinely did surprise him a bit considering all the people that had come to Earth due to his little Chosen ceremony. There was also the fact that an influx of people would have come once they all learned Jake was the Chosen… but it appeared like Miranda had handled everything incredibly well.

Walking around a bit more in Haven, Jake just took everything in before he decided it was time to check out the other part of what many called Haven but that Jake usually called the Fort. He had definitely expected that to expand quite a bit… but Jake really wasn’t prepared for what he saw when he flew up over the treeline and looked in the direction of the Fort, or at least where he assumed what had once been the Fort still was, somewhere in the middle of the massive bloody metropolis that had shot up.

Jake took a moment as he wondered if he had really gone to the right place… but on a closer look, he did spot the dome that was Arnold’s workshop. It was a bit off to the side and had a cleared area all around it, but it was still effectively surrounded by buildings and not the small stone buildings Jake had gotten used to.

When he called it a metropolis, he wasn’t just talking about size but also representation. High rises that looked straight out of huge cities pre-system shot up by the dozens, making a respectable skyline. Many of them even surpassed the heights possible before the system, with a lot of the architecture physically impossible if not for the system.

Looking below the highrises, Jake saw apartment buildings and well-paved streets everywhere, but there was also stuff like flight lanes. It was far from as advanced as the world Temlat had come from within the Nevermore Challenge Dungeon, but it was clear what had once been the Fort was developing fast into a proper megacity.

Luckily Jake did see that a strip of plains had been designated as a no-build zone between the Fort and Haven itself, keeping the two of them pretty separate. Even so, the city was at a size that went beyond Jake’s wildest imagination.

The large plains that had once been there to make the Fort a better defensive position had served as premium space for the real estate market to expand into. Outside of the large city center, suburbs could even be found, and while Jake didn’t want to be a peeper, he saw more than his fair share of fully inhabited family homes.

There was still a tent camp, too, but what had once been one of the biggest areas of the Fort was now just a small district at most.

”It’s gotten pretty big, huh?” Sandy said, apparently still able to talk to him from within Sandy’s Sand World.

Jake just nodded as he kept looking out at the city. How in the actual fuck all this could be built in three years was beyond him. One thing was for sure, he had seriously underestimated the capabilities of builders and architects. He also had to consider that people had come representing major factions, and some of them maybe had some valuable skills to help. Oh yeah, and the high-grade teachers who would be projected even from other universes to help teach the Earthlings.

Glancing around, he spotted more than a few notable buildings, including one he partly recognized, though it was now a few times larger than the last time Jake was there. A massive cathedral had been constructed near the city center, with a large garden in front, taking up quite a lot of space. The entire building looked overly fancy. When he looked a bit closer, he saw it had a total of twelve towers, with each building having a statue at the top. Statues Jake quickly recognized as representations of a certain twelve gods.

That’s…

Finally, Jake decided to use a Pulse of Perception to get a proper look at things, focusing specifically on the cathedral. Instantly, he saw why the hell it was so large because even with its massive size, it was filled to the brim. However, he also spotted two things that sent a shiver down his spine.

The first one could be seen when Jake narrowed his eyes and barely looked through one of the windows as he spotted a person on a podium within the cathedral. It was a recognizable figure that instantly gave him flashbacks to the worst parts of the Chosen Ceremony… Felix, the sculptor.

[Human – lvl 286 – Divine Blessing of the Eternal Servant]

Ignoring how the fuck the man leveled so fast, it looked like he had changed career tracks a bit, as he now looked more like a priest or a preacher. However, this part of what he saw wasn’t what was truly nightmare-inducing… no, it was what was behind him.

Center-stage in the entire cathedral was a certain statue. One that made Jake seriously consider ”accidentally” shooting an arrow at the building. But, he feared that not even he would be able to easily break the monstrosity that was the mythical rarity statue Felix had so proudly presented to Jake. It was the True Vision of the Malefic Viper’s Chosen, and for some fucking reason, people were staring at it with reverence.

Yeah, I’m never going to visit that place, Jake swore to himself. The only times he would ever go there was to extract the Vision’s Venom, and that was luckily only every ten years.

Shifting his attention elsewhere, Jake took in the many sights of the city. It pretty much had anything one would expect of a metropolis, including some form of floating train. If Jake had to give an estimate, he would definitely put the population in the double-digit millions, if not even more than that. By now, this had to be the largest city on Earth, if not at least very close.

After looking around a bit more, he decided to find someone he could actually talk to who could tell him a bit more about what had been going on over the last few years. Scouting a bit, he found the building that Miranda used to use when managing big-city stuff while at the Fort, though it had now been remodeled into a highrise, so it really wasn’t the same building anymore at all.

Anyhow, Jake used his Pulse to search through the building until he found someone near the top within an office larger than the others, so he assumed this person had to be one of the ones in charge. Plus, when he got closer, Jake actually felt a bit surprised as he felt an aura that wasn’t even all that weak.

”We should totally prank the guy,” Sandy interjected as they were just outside the building.

”Not sure what that would accomplish,” Jake muttered. ”Outside of making him less willing to talk.”

”So pranking time it is!”