NOVEL NEXT Chapter 1.1
Chapter 1.1. Prologue
The sky is cloudy and dim even though it is midday. It looks as if it might rain at any moment. Under such weather, a man was walking in the city. He steps on rubble and broken glass and makes a cracking sound.
The streets formerly would have been called streets. Now the glass in the buildings is broken, and the windows on the upper floors are black and have no transparency. The signboard of what used to be a convenience store has fallen, and inside the store, the shelves have collapsed, and the various goods on the shelves are empty and deserted.
The asphalt paved road is cracked and pitted due to lack of maintenance, and weeds are growing thickly.
The traffic lights are covered with plant ivy, and those that do not receive electricity are dark and do not serve their function.
The cars, for which the traffic lights were installed, have been abandoned and are covered in rust. The tires are long gone, the doors have fallen off, and there is no hood, engine, or chair, just nothing. Only the chassis tells us that it used to be a car.
A man walking through these lonely ruins notices a cat in the shadow of a building. It was a dirty black cat. It meowed and stared at the man.
The man looked at it, shrugged his shoulders slightly, and started walking again. It was a young man. He was carrying a knapsack and walking with an expression that made it hard to tell what he was thinking.
“Help!”
He hears a woman scream and lifts his face. At the cry for help, he ran out to the voice.
As he turns the corner, he sees a woman in a dirty dress running dazedly. Behind her, two men in dirty clothes were chasing after her with lowly smiles on their faces and a slow, toying gait.
“Wait, come play with us~”
“Don’t run away. Oi.”
The purpose of the men who were laughing and giggling was obvious. It is also clear that the woman who is looking for help is in for a rude awakening. The young man ponders for a moment. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a black cat.
“Hey, stop!”
The young man decides to help and hides the woman that comes toward him with a shout.
The two men, who appear to be roughnecks, suddenly appear and glare at the young man with grins on their faces.
“Oh, yeah? Are you trying to disturb us? Ahh!?”
“That’s right. That’s right, stop it, you bastard.”
When the young man replied without fear, the ruffians looked at each other, laughed, and suddenly pulled out knives from their waists.
The ruffian suddenly pulled out the knife at his waist and began to slash at the young man. The young man, however, anticipated this action and grabbed the knife held out to him with two fingers.
“Nuh-oh!?”
The ruffian who tries to pull back groans at the unusual force. The young man is not even moved, as if he were being held in a vise.
“Bastard!”
The other one thrusts out a fist, which the young man easily catches with his palm.
The young man’s muscular strength is more than meets the eye. He looks like a skinny guy, but he is strong.
“Damn you, you’ve been working out in the dungeon!”
The young man, smiling with a relaxed smile, was about to open his mouth when the ruffian realized the true nature of his power and began to speak out in an agitated tone.
The young man was about to open his mouth when his body staggered. He turned around to see that he had been hit in the back, and the woman he was supposed to have saved was holding a knife to the young man’s back.
“Why did you do this? I should have saved you.”
The young man said in surprise and without expression. The woman he was supposed to have saved laughed.
“You must be from the inner city to fall for such a classic trap. You’ve been training in the dungeon for a while, so you came to the abandoned town to play the hero, right? Baka!”
The ruffian pulls out his knife and stabs again. The attack caused blood to spurt out like a fountain, staining the women and the ruffians with blood, and they fell.
“Hey, what the hell is this guy? Why is so much blood spurting out?”
The woman, her body soaked with the returning blood, was puzzled, but the ruffians did not care.
“What’s this guy holding? Let’s go check it out quickly!”
The ruffians pick up the young man’s knapsack and start rummaging through its contents. A woman tries to wipe her body with the amount of blood that is too much even for a blood return.
“Give me my share too! You were so close!”
“Oh, I know, I know. …… What the hell is this? What’s this? It’s full of rocks! It’s full of rocks!”
The ruffian, who had been rummaging through the contents of the young man’s knapsack, let out a puzzled voice and pulled out a pebble. He pulls out some pebble stones.
“This one, this one, this one! They’re all pebbles! What the hell is going on?”
Finally, he turned the knapsack upside down. The pebbles were falling like a stream.
“Damn, he was a crazy dungeon maniac. Damn it.”
The man clicked his tongue as he tossed the empty knapsack aside.
“I can’t help it. Just his clothes and shoes would be good. They look sturdy, gulp.”
One of the ruffians sighs and groans as he tries to rip off his clothes. The other looks at the guy and freezes his face, wondering what’s wrong. Suddenly, the ruffian’s face was pierced by an arrow. Then he fell with a thud, bleeding as it was.
“It, it’s the goblin archer! Gagh!”
The ruffian, screaming and trying to escape, was pierced by several arrows, and the man died as he was.
“Cahh! He, help me ……”
The woman cried out for help, but only the green-skinned, waistcoated, club-carrying deformities could catch her from behind the building.
“Goblins!”
The monster that laughed out loud was a goblin. It was about one and a half meters tall. It was thin but did not look weak. A goblin with a crude bow and arrow appeared behind her and then surrounded her.
The hero who was supposed to come to her aid was already dead and lying on the ground, leaving the woman with nothing but despair.
And so the woman’s screams continue to be heard for a while and then cease immediately. All that remained were the goblins devouring the three human corpses. Curiously, the young man’s corpse had vanished as if dissolving into the air, his belongings and nothing else.
“Meow.”
The black cat, which had been watching the sequence of events, meowed once and left the scene.
There was a common scene on this earth. People attacking people, monsters attacking people. The world went mad.