One Last System

"Urgh…" a small moan escaped through my lips.

My entire body screamed with unwillingness. Despite sleeping in a simple hole in the ground, I somehow ended up extremely comfortable.

'I really don't want to…' I complained in my mind, feeling a wave of repulsion move through my entire soul.

And yet….

'But I need to wake up,' I told myself, slowly pushing my body through the fog of drowsiness. And then, after a long struggle, I finally opened my eyes.

The inside of the ground hole was relatively dark. Only a tiny bit of light fell inside through the small hole I left right below the ceiling.

Yet, as little light as it was, it proved that, beyond any doubt, the day was already starting.

"Why was the world created in a way where waking up is always a damn pain?" I whispered to myself.

I felt the extreme need to voice my complaints out loud. Yet, as I started to move my lips, I felt a sudden wave of cold air hitting my face.

'Woah,' I twitched when the sharp contrast between the cold air of the early morning and the coziness of Mia's body warmth created a dissonance in my mind.

I took a deep breath… and started to tense my muscles up. And after a mere minute of this simple exercise, I warmed myself up enough to force my body up.

Once I got moving, I used my momentum to keep on going. And by the time I stood up in the hole and reached out to remove the man-made ceiling, I managed to cast most of my drowsiness away.

"Mhhmmm…" Mia muttered, still unable to move on from the sleep herself. "Just a little bit more," she whispered, struggling to wake up just like I did before.

"We should…" I was just about to help her wake up… When I simply decided not to.

There was no greater will behind this decision, no elaborate plan.

When I removed the lid over our hole and allowed the morning light to shine inside, I was faced with the sight of Mia cuddling at the very bottom of the hole.

And it was that sight alone that melted right through all my motivation to do anything but lie down and cuddle her up.

I sat down at the bottom of the hole and reached out, grabbing Mia by her waist before pulling her on top of my lap. Even though my moves weren't as gentle as I hoped they would be, Mia didn't show any signs of waking up, acting more like a cat than a human.

'That's better,' I thought once I could properly hug the girl, warming up my chest by cuddling her upper body up.

​ "Hmmm?" Mia muttered a moment later, slowly prying her eyes open.

"Good morning," said, running my hand along her waist. "Did you sleep well?"

"Mhmm…" Mia continued to use the language of the gods to speak with me, moving around on my lap and within my embrace to find a more comfortable position. Yet, as her attempts continued to fail, she finally opened up her eyes properly.

"Is it a day already?" Mia asked while straightening her back and stretching her arms to the side while pushing her chest forward.

'This damn temptress…' I thought, unable to tear my eyes from the glorious peaks that I used for a pillow through the night.

She simply stretched out. Yet, that alone was enough to get a rise out of me while giving birth to an immense desire to reach out and grab those glorious peaks of hers.

"It seems like it is," I replied to her question, keeping my hands to myself only with the utmost effort and full engagement of my willpower.

"Then, shall we get going?" Mia then asked, gracing me with a gentle smile right as she got up to her legs before reaching out and offering me a hand.

"Yeah," I agreed, accepting Mia's hand before pretending to use her help to stand up myself.

We then spent some time fixing our clothes, removing all the problematic parts that during the course of the nights started to reveal more than they were supposed to. Then and only then did we climb out of the hole.

And only when we crawled out of our temporary home did we face the true scale of the disaster outside.

The bodies were lying all over the plain. Not a single person stood up, making it feel like we were in the middle of a recent battlefield rather than a makeshift camp.

"Cover your ears," I whispered to my girl before taking a deep breath. "EVERYONE!" I then shouted from the bottom of my lungs. "WAKE THE FUCK UP!"

My voice traveled all over the plain. And judging by the number of corpses that suddenly reanimated and started to move, it was quite effective.

All in all, it took the cultivators roughly half an hour before they properly woke up. Then, another thirty minutes went by before a line was formed by the bridge and the process of moving people to the other side of the river could recommence.

"Sir, there were no accidents during the night," a report of the night's watch quickly reached my ears when the cultivators responsible for it approached my side.

"Good," I muttered, throwing a suspicious look toward the river.

Just from the geographical point of view, the river was the only potential source of danger right where we were camping. And as it appeared, there were no unforeseen events taking place during my rest.

'Was I worrying too much about it?' I asked myself, unable to tear my eyes away from the river.

Yet, this seemingly peaceful force of nature didn't volunteer any answers to me.

In the end, after the experiences from the day before and after resting for an entire night, the rest of the cultivators managed to pass the bridge in only about half the time I expected them to take. And before I could even prepare myself for it, the last of the cultivators stepped down from the bridge on the other side of the river, leaving only me and Mia stranded behind.

"Now then, shall we?" I asked, reaching out and grabbing Mia by her waist.

"What are you doing?" Mia asked, not offering even the tiniest resistance despite the clear confusion on her face.

"Huh?" I twitched, taken aback by her question. "I'm going to fly us over," I then explained. "Even if your aura isn't big enough for the aquatic monsters to care… I just can't take any risks when it comes to you," I explained what I perceived to be the problem Mia had.

"Oh, right," Mia smiled while her cheeks turned slightly red. She then looked away and muttered, "I kind of forgot you could fly."

"Then, it's a good thing I remembered," I chuckled before ensuring I held Mia properly. And then, with a single burst of mana powering up the formations attached to the soles of my feet, I took to the skies.

If someone were to watch my actions from outside, they would hardly call it a flight. To say I simply jumped far higher than a man should be able to before gliding down to my destination would far more accurately describe what happened.

And just like that, my legs touched the ground, announcing the end of the unwelcome obstacle on our path to what would soon become our new home.