NOVEL NEXT Chapter 1 – When the World Changed
Everything started in the year 2031.
Around the world, children with supernatural powers started to be born. Some of them could control electricity, others could control flames, others could fly.
This situation caused a stir throughout the globe. Many governments were unable to make heads or tails of the situation, and the opinions of the public were divided about what to do with the newborn superchildren.
Six months later, the cause behind this phenomenon was discovered. Scientifics reported the existence of a new kind of energy around the planet. The energy, called by the scientist as ‘biologically-reactive energy’, and known to the general populace as ‘mana’, could be easily manipulated by human beings, giving some newborn children the ability to wield it in different ways.
Later, the scientist discovered that some adults could wield this energy too, but they had to go through a quick procedure first.
This procedure was known as ‘Awakening’, and the superpower-wielding people were called ‘Awakened’.
But this was just the start of everything. Ten years after the first [Awakened] appeared, a spatial singularity occurred in one of the cities of the biggest country in the western continent.
The spatial singularity brought with it thousands of terrifying monsters that ravaged the land and killed thousands of people mercilessly. It was a massacre.
D-Day. The start of the nightmare.
It was called as such by later generations.
When the army was finally able to control the situation, half of the city had been completely destroyed, and the number of victims exceeded four hundred thousand people.
The second incident occurred six years later. This time, the spatial singularity occurred in a vast jungle. Thus, it was only detected when the monsters had long left it.
And as it could not be contained in time, the damage was much more spread and much worse.
By the time the last monster was killed, three months later, more than two million people had died.
Since then, the incidents occurred faster and faster. The third incident occurred four years after the second, the fourth incident one year after the third, and the fifth incident seven months after the fourth.
Soon, humanity was seeing spatial singularities every week.
Dungeon breaks. They were called like that.
Occasionally, extremely strong and violent monsters emerged from them. Some monsters were so strong that normal weapons were useless against them. When calamity-type monsters started to appear, only weapons of mass destruction could kill them.
However, the hope of humanity appeared at that moment.
[Awakened]. The chosen ones. They used mana to fight against the monsters and repel them. Moreover, they could enter the spatial singularities before they erupted to destroy them, stopping the dungeon break that way.
But when it seemed that the situation was turning for the better, humanity's greatest enemies appeared.
From the spatial singularities, beings just as intelligent as humans, and even stronger than them, appeared, invading the planet and destroying countless countries.
War after war, battle after battle. Humanity quickly lost ground, both to the monsters and to the invaders. The powerful human awakened died one after another, filling humanity with despair.
Soon, of humanity's five populated continents, only one was left, and one-third of this continent had already been lost.
Under the attacks of the monsters and the invaders, the defenses of humanity crumbled like sand.
The remaining countries formed an alliance, combining their strength under a unified command, with the only goal to bring hope to the despairing humanity.
However, it was useless.
It could only delay humanity's end.
But when the invaders were attacking the last bastion of humanity, and when the monsters wandered the streets killing people and eating human flesh freely, he appeared.
[The World’s Strongest].
[The Ultimate Sword].
[The Protector Duke].
With a sword slash, thousands of invaders were annihilated, with the second sword slash, all the monsters in humanity’s lands were slashed into two, and with the third sword slash, a boundary was created, and humanity’s last bastion was declared off-limits to the invader races.
[… Consider this the rent for my stay.]
These were the words he said the day he appeared.
Nobody knows his origins, or why he only appeared that day. However, he was definitively a human.
Thanks to him, humans managed to retain a part of the world to develop.
And thus, the World’s United Government was established, allowing humanity to face the foreign races.
But although no many people knew about it, the day the Protector Duke appeared, a young child was standing in front of a monster, protecting his little sister who was too scared to move.
The boy’s legs were trembling, his body was filled with burns, and his eyes were covered in tears. However, he stood firmly in front of the monster.
And when the monster attacked, and the boy was about to die, a sword slash fell from the sky, cutting the monster into two.
The boy looked at the sky, engraving the blurry appearance of his savior on his mind.
This was the year 2067, thirty-six years after the first superhuman appeared.
Ten years later, the boy had turned into a 16-year-old young man.