Planetary

As the mana fields continue to grow, the numbers of mutated, and mana created, aggressive creatures grow right along with them. Max and a group go out to try to find and clear some of the dangers close to their safe zone only to find that there are far greater threats than the carnivorous bunnies that are located close to their walls.

Even though Max is tired of teaching his skill, he accepts one more gig for it, training a double handful of people who have both mechanical and teaching skills. Their job is to spread out and train others in the skill while trying to get the clusters of people they find back up and connected to the rest of the survivors.

While Alex and Mark's guild has put out a call for members, they have a single qualification. Prospective guild members must make it to the guild hall physically in order to join. This leads to a surge in the safe zone population as prospective members arrive to gain membership.

Max hasn't forgotten the dungeon, located where the research labs that started all this once were. It's been a tempting prospect to Max for a while. Finally, he and his group get the chance to go and check it out.

Prometheus' efforts to hasten the spread of mana are bearing fruit. His recovery of radioactive material allows him to keep pushing the wormhole open farther and farther, while stabilizing it to the point that physical objects can pass freely back and forth.

As the mana fields cover the entire Earth, contact is made with the intelligence on the other side of the wormhole. Max discovers that while some of the people on the other side are peaceful, others are highly aggressive. A probing attack is made from the other side of the wormhole with the intent of setting up a beachhead for a full invasion of Earth, although the leader of the men who came through does not follow for fear of the lower mana levels and how they'd weaken him.