Global Survival: I Have Endless Skeletons

Listening to the question, Lorwen’s expression did not falter. She had expected Thoren to ask this sooner or later.

"That’s the question many have asked in private," she said, pausing to arrange her thoughts.

If Thoren had been an ordinary awakener, someone unable to influence the situation, she would not have explained any of this to him.

There would have been no reason to.

The less an ordinary awakener knew about the Federation’s internal affairs, the safer they were.

But Thoren was not ordinary.

He alone was becoming a force that could no longer be ignored.

He might have only just conquered the second floor, still far from the strongest awakener in the Federation, but the speed of his rise was something none of them had seen before.

It wasn’t only his strength that set him apart. It was how quickly he had built his influence. It was the powerful undead under his command.

And most of all, it was the fact that he had returned from the second floor alive after barely a month there, when even the Knight Order’s own leader on that floor had needed far longer to make it back.

Thoren had done what most people considered impossible. For someone like him, hiding the truth was no longer useful.

Lorwen leaned forward slightly, her expression growing more serious. "Since the descent of the Abyss, ordinary humans have lost their right to speak," she continued, her voice grimmer with each word.

Thoren’s eyes narrowed slightly.

She continued before he could respond. "The Suncrest City Base might look balanced, and the people here might still hold onto rights from the old era, but that’s only because this city has stayed far from the worst of the Federation’s chaos." Her fingers tapped slowly against the desk.

"In many cities, human lives aren’t even worth protecting anymore." She paused. "The people ruling the Federation now are little more than parasites, and only a few of them still care about this world at all."

There was no anger in her voice, and that was what made the words land so heavily. She wasn’t complaining. She was stating what she had witnessed.

Thoren said nothing.

He had already seen enough since returning to the surface to know something was deeply wrong with Suncrest City.

But according to Lorwen, this city wasn’t even the worst of it.

"As for where it all began, you can trace it back to the Abyss," she said. "The first awakeners who descended into it have become the sole dictators of our world."

Thoren’s expression shifted slightly. "The first awakeners?"

"Yes." Lorwen nodded. "They were the first to discover the true power hidden inside the Abyss, and once they returned from it, they were no longer ordinary humans." Her voice grew heavier.

"Back then, humanity was still trying to understand what had happened to the world. The Abyss changed everything. The awakening changed everything. That first generation became the strongest people in existence." She slowly clenched her hand.

"And their strength never stopped growing."

Thoren listened carefully.

"Those above Level Ten hold power ordinary humans can’t even comprehend," Lorwen went on, looking directly at him. "They could flatten our entire city with a casual palm strike."

Thoren’s eyes narrowed but she didn’t stop there. "Their words have become law."

The office fell silent.

For several seconds, neither of them spoke, and even the distant sounds from the underground complex seemed to fade.

Thoren’s mind worked through everything he’d heard.

Level Ten.

He had already understood there was a massive gap between levels, but from the way Lorwen described it, the difference between ordinary awakeners and those above Level Ten wasn’t something numbers could measure.

They existed on an entirely different plane.

He frowned slightly.

He had expected the Federation to be divided, expected powerful awakeners to control key resources, even expected the strongest families to wield influence far beyond ordinary people. But he had never expected the entire world to have fallen.

For the first time since entering the office, a trace of disbelief crossed his usually passive expression, though it vanished almost as quickly as it appeared.

He had learned long ago that there was little value in dwelling on shock after the fact.

What mattered was understanding the situation and deciding what came next.

Lorwen watched him closely.

She had expected a stronger reaction, anger, disbelief, maybe even fear.

Instead, Thoren settled back into his usual calm, and that only left her more unsettled.

She had spent years dealing with awakeners and knew how rarely weaker awakeners managed to stay composed after hearing something that shattered their understanding of the world.

Yet Thoren seemed to absorb even the most absurd information after only a moment’s thought.

She took a slow breath. "You were wondering why we didn’t stop the two factions." Her voice turned solemn.

"It’s because the strongest awakeners are backing them." She paused. "Those above Level Ten are backing them."

The words settled heavily over the quiet room.

Thoren’s eyes stayed fixed on her, and now he finally understood. The Knight Order hadn’t stayed silent out of unwillingness to act. They had stayed silent because they couldn’t afford to act carelessly.

The enemy wasn’t merely a collection of families or ordinary awakeners. Behind those factions stood beings powerful enough to level Suncrest City without effort.

Even an organization dedicated to protecting humanity had to weigh the consequences before making a move.

That was why Lorwen had brought him here.

Not to complain about the Federation, but to make sure he understood the situation before she asked anything of him.

Thoren leaned forward slightly, his expression calm but his eyes sharpening.

For the first time since he’d entered the office, Lorwen felt the pressure around him intensify again, and she instinctively held her breath.

The young man before her no longer looked like an ordinary awakener freshly returned from the second floor.

He looked like someone who had already begun standing outside the rules that governed everyone else.

Lorwen slowly released the breath she’d been holding.

She had a feeling the Federation’s balance had already begun to shift, and that whether anyone wanted it or not, Thoren Starfall was about to become one of the people standing at the center of that change.

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