The Great Calamity

"We live in a world where everyone is a slave to their emotions.

Our irrationality is always a piled-up agony let loose by our deranged minds.

Our sacrifices are an outburst of extreme love disengaged by our hearts.

I did not choose my actions so far, it's just that am tired of always being the victim.

It takes a bigger monster to take out a monster. Sometimes, you will have to scupper a single wolf to protect dozens of sheep."

" So are you saying your actions so far are justified so long as it was for a greater good."

" That's a nice way to put it but I prefer taking out the trash."

"Kortez I am sorry that as a child you should have had better protection and support. Nonetheless, all that you have put in your mind is just an excuse to justify your wrong doings. Having the ability to control electricity also takes a toll on your brain. It fries your sanity and influences your actions. To how many volts have you been able to channel."

" Nope, no, don't you dare start with that. If there's anything, I'll be thanking this power of mine. It's the only thing that's kept me sane. However, if you truly want to know just disable this ability restrictor on my neck and I will gladly show you how much volts I can trigger."

"Hmm, sadly I think the restrictor will remain enabled. Though I get why you say your ability kept you sane. Having the power to protect yourself after being bullied for so long must have felt good. In fact, am certain you felt an overwhelming thrill as you gave them a taste of their own medicine. But Kortez was violence the only way you could handle that situation."

"You call that violence. I call it self-defense. I was just protecting my frail little body from being squashed by three older rankers. Two of them were Mid-Tier rankers (they were actually only Tier 3 bronze) and the last guy though he was a low Tier.

He had that Chuck Norris- like kind of face and body, how the hell does a 19-year-old look that old.

I wasn't letting that kind of person get close to me, he looked like he could break a bone of mine with one tiny snap."

"For a seventeen-year-old boy. You kind of have a way with words. It would have been self-defense if they had attacked you first, however you seemed to have approached them this time. Were you that confident in that power of yours."

" Hahaha, true I approached them this time. They were getting all high and mighty flaunting their power and wealth to the ladies. After all those humiliations they gave me.

It just didn't sit right with me that they could be happy. Someone had to humble the fuck out of them."

"Kortez, do you just know to what extent your grant of humility did to their bodies. And besides those three weren't just anybody do you know what families they belong to.

Evans had two broken ribs. Chris is in a wheelchair having one of his legs fractured. And as for Dylan what the hell did you do to him to send him into that state. You are lucky he didn't die. He just woke up from coma and his been having psychiatric help ever since."

"Whoa, this is the best news I have heard so far, after been locked up here for here for a whole month. It can't get any better. Or can it. Haha."

"Kortez… Your mom died when you were 10 rights. Imagine how she would feel to see you in this state. How she will feel to hear these words you are spouting. Her frail heart will be shattered. And do you know how your sister would react if she knew you were here."

"Don't speak about my mom like that. Don't bring my mom into this. And don't you dare get any close to my sister."

"Then review your past actions, correct your present behavior and try your best to see how to become a better person. You will be leaving here very soon. But even after you leave, the ability restriction device on your neck won't be removed. You may be a Mid-Tier, nevertheless you are still below the power level that can be restricted. We can't have you going on a rampage at least not now. Maybe if you are lucky and the government no longer finds you a threat to your mates then you might have your ability back. This session is closed. I'll be here same time next week."

"Wait you can't expect me to survive out there without my power! Hey, wait, where are you going. Listen to me!"

***

{Some few months ago}

Have you ever wondered why some people seem to be stuck in a cycle of poverty, weakness, or failure, no matter how hard they try to break free?

Why do the rich keep getting richer, while the poor struggle to make ends meet?

Is it all predetermined by fate, or maybe there's a natural order of things that can't be challenged.

Well, the truth is….

I have no idea either.

I've spent most of my life at the bottom of the heap, so I know what it feels like to be overlooked and ignored.

But something happened that changed everything, something that no one could have predicted.

The first time in human history that the natural other of things changed.

And to clarify something, I wasn't actually there when it happened, I had yet to be born.

But according to school and the people around me.

The sky turned red, and clouds became pitch black. The moon also had an unusual color that day, as if it was bleeding. Its azure color reflected grimly as it hovered around the planet. (That's how the sky got its red color, I think).

Anyways, nobody thought it was a big deal. All they felt was neither terror nor fear; they were amazed by the spectacle before them.

Some took pictures of it, and others streamed it on their Newtube.(an online platform where people share content. It allows users to upload, share, and view videos on a wide range of topics).

The only people that had a bad feeling about it were the government and a few mad scientists who began to research it.

It was 2025, and the world had already undergone a pandemic that had killed a lot of people.

What else was happening right before them?

This continued for a week, and still, nothing had happened.

The government still didn't know what was going on.

It was something beyond science, beyond what the past scientists like Newton and Archimedes had documented in our college textbooks.

The strangest thing about all of that was the fact that every single country was seeing the same bloody moon, even though they were on different hemispheres.

How was that possible?

If every country was seeing the same bloody moon, the only logical explanation was that there were two moons.

But how is there another moon rotating the earth, and how is it coordinating so well with the other moon that no country was able to see two moons at a given time?

They hadn't found their answers when something else happened.

A fortnight after the two moons appeared, the world had gone into a state of economic decline due to the unavailability of sunlight, when it was hard to find food to eat, and when electricity was barely stable.

When no one thought it could get any worse.

Monsters spawned from the cores of the earth.

Monsters of different kinds, something you might only see in a Web novel and marvel about but seeing it in real life wasn't worth an astonishment.

Even the weebs of that world tucked themselves away, hiding from what seemed to be a massacre, a total annihilation of humankind. (TN: I said "that world" because the world still has weebs, just entirely new ones with new fantasies.)

They manifested something out of the ordinary, something one would only see in books and movies…

MAGIC

. Yeah, they had freaking magic.

Orcs, Centaurs, Golems, Cyclopes, basically any mythical creature you could think about in an average fantasy book became reality.

They surfaced from deep under the ground from what came to be known as Caverns, Underworld Caverns in full.

guns, bazookas, grenades and nuclear weapons all those were useless.

Nothing worked on these strange creatures except for old fashion hand to hand weapons.

Okay now it couldn't have gotten any worse I mean Orcs, Goblins, Minotaur's there was actually nothing else. Nothing else except ...

DEMONS!!

Demons, yes, you heard me right. These humanoid creatures were beings of utmost intelligence comparable to mankind, and they commanded all creatures under them like kings.

Their ability to harness mana was like no other.

Agility, Strength, Skill, Intelligence they had it all.

It was as though a mysterious entity grants them these buffs.

The world was doomed.

The Great Calamity as it was come to be known had destroyed everything.

Everybody seemed to have lost hope.

How could they stand against something immune to bullets and nuclear weapons.

Beings that could flip tanks and could pull down a skyscraper.

Entities that controlled an army of monsters.

However, something unexpected happened.

People stood up to these monsters.

With a power that rivaled that of the demons.

Telekinesis, Pyrokinesis, Shadow magic, Cryomancy and Geomancy.

The first ever powers to emerge from the first ever S Class Rankers.

Yes, they called themselves 'Rankers' so cliché, it seems the world couldn't throw away the previous fantasies they had.

They had to just imbue it into this new world.

Well back to the tale, this 5 people of which somewhere from poor backgrounds and some who were already wealthy before the whole disaster happen were flawless.

The Great Five, that's what the people called them.

They Passed down their abilities to their families creating a hierarchy where they controlled everything.

Well, it wasn't before that when other people started awakening.

Different abilities emerged most that were incomparable to that of The Great Five. Others were worth noting.

These rankers used their abilities to fight these calamities and pushed the demons and their armies back into the Caverns.

You know demons and their big egos. It just didn't sit right with them, that we could now protect ourselves so even after they left. They've been occasionally sending their armies little by little creating new Caverns and waves and trying to invade us. but we had fought ever since, A never ending War between the Human race and the Demon race.

Let's begin with an introduction. My name is King Kortez, a sixteen-year-old nobody from the slums of the new world.

If you are wandering what kind of ability I possess, then am sorry to disappoint you but I haven't got any.

Among all the cool powers that emerged, I don't even have the ability to warm my water.

Or even a torch that shoots from my eyeballs would be cool too.

But this world had to bring me into a family that got nada.

Well, I wouldn't be living on the slums if I had awakened.

Awakens were very important in Century 11. (TN: Century11 is the new collective name of all the countries that used to be in the old world. The Great Five gave it a common name and divided it in-terms of Precincts. To initiate a new world order.)

They had privileges beyond your wildest dreams even an E class ranker would be sent to live in a high Precinct like Precinct 12.

You see I stay in precinct 5, a low Precinct where neither of us have abilities.

We usually have Caverns opening here and there but the Rankers take care of them usually not too early at the cost of a few lives being loss.

From Precinct 11 upwards are where the top dons lived. Those that had awakened and call themselves rankers.

We over here strive to stay alive and not mess with anyone beyond us that might get us killed.

It was long school day and I had just finished brewing my tea.

I had a bunch of movie genres in mind, but I felt like going a bit old school.

And shoving in some Kdrama in.

I have always wondered why it was called Kdrama but I could never figure it out.

The old world was so complicated.

I stumbled upon a Disc amidst a pile of rubbish on my way back from school, however, my initial excitement was dampened by the cringe-worthy title: 'My Heart That Fell from a Star.'

Despite my reservations, I decided to give it a chance and plugged it in.

To my surprise, the movie was quite enjoyable, and I savored it while sipping on bitter coffee like a boss.

Sigh, soft life.

I can't get enough of…

~BOOM

~Crash

The whole place was blank.

For some time, I could see nothing but darkness.

Pain surged through every inch of fiber in my body.

What is this, I have never felt something like this before.

Slowly my vision was returning.

But my ears still kept on ranging.

Like a siren a never-ending melody.

I couldn't see much clearly but I could deduce the situation.

A ranker is fighting some kind of monster and might have smashed into my room.

This wasn't a first.

Situations like this often happened in this Precinct.

It could have happened to anyone.

Well, there were hundreds of houses aside mine on this Precinct.

And yet it had to be me.

Am I dying.

But am still a virgin.

Arghh, I just wanted to watch a romance I know I would never have.

What's with all this action.