Title: The Code of Survival Book Three
Subtitle: Reflections
Description: **New Quest: Compete in the Multiversal Championships for bragging rights and amazing prizes! A portal will appear in one week at all town hall locations to take competitors to the event. The minimum level requirement is 25. The portal will remain open for one hour. Prepare yourselves!**

This strange message appeared to the world ten days after the system arrived. Now, the Balder's must compete to earn prizes... and to keep their world from being overrun... Who will be their competition? How will they overcome the challenges that face them?

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the multiverse...



Master Chief Petty Officer Lee Balder (Chief to his friends) was pissed. Those last monsters hadn't given any decent loot and he was running out of supplies. He'd have to head back soon.

After he had retired from the Navy he had moved to Gilbert, AZ to settle into a nice cushy job working for Amazon as the Director of IT for the western region. He had a few girlfriends in the years since, but nothing had ever stuck. He had one kid, but they didn't talk. He was up in Idaho or Washington somewhere.

Fortunately, he had kept up on his cardio and strength training as this damn system had shown up and ruined everything he had built. However, now he was the Chief of Balderville (he had renamed Gilbert when he became its Lord.) So at least that was something. He had set up the town headquarters where the former police station stood.

The people he assigned to manage the day-to-day were barely passable though to the chief's exacting standards. At least they were all prior military or police, which made it much easier to order them around and for him to go out and kill monsters and get stronger.

As he got close to his base, a notification appeared:

**New Quest: Compete in the Multiversal Championships for bragging rights and amazing prizes! A portal will appear in one week at all town hall locations to take competitors to the event. The minimum level requirement is 25. The portal will remain open for one hour. Prepare yourselves**!

**************************************

Sami (Marie was her stage and middle name) had just shown up in Gilbert from Hollywood, somehow having made the long and dangerous trip. It was a tearful reunion with their mom, sisters Z and Lexi, and her husband Bob. Their father had died on the first day from the wolf that dove through the front window of their house.

Nothing would ever be the same without their father. The last few years had been very rough with Lee's declining health, Jack taking a cooking job to help make ends meet when his dad had to retire from his job. Marie sent money often, as she had become a successful actress.

Jack, Lexi, and Bob had managed to get a group of people together and turned Gilbert into a town and it was surviving. Jack had even become part of the City Council as the Crafting Leader as he had chosen the class of Battle Chef.

Jack had no idea how she managed to get here all the way from Hollywood - it was insane to even think about. But she had come, and the two, along with their older sister, would be inseparable from now on.

The family was sitting down for a meal when the notification came:

**New Quest: Compete in the Multiversal Championships for bragging rights and amazing prizes! A portal will appear in one week at all town hall locations to take competitors to the event. The minimum level requirement is 25. The portal will remain open for one hour. Prepare yourselves!**
Subjects: LitRPG, Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic, Fantasy fiction
Places: Gilbert (Ariz.), Albuquerque (N.M.), Dereth
People: Asheron Realaidain