1 Changing Ownership

On a quiet afternoon with the sun beating down hard, a young man who was still in his maladjusted school uniform returned home to find a two people - a man dressed in an official looking black suit and a woman in a black OL dress waiting for him at the door.

"Are you Mel Smith, age 17 and resident of this house?" The woman in the OL dress asked in a voice of sadness and concern as well as hints of pity.

Mel nodded affirmatively as he replied. "Yes, ma'am." Though the hints from the two people's body language gave him a bad foreboding and his body tensed up.

"Mel... I am really sorry, but your entire family has passed away in a tragic accident caused by an 'emergent phenomenon'." The woman continued.

"You... what.... what do you mean? My family was out travelling on vacation... 'emergent phenomenon'?" Mel's face changed rapidly from befuddlement, to shock, to horror and finally tears.

.....

A few days later, in the high school second year class. The students were all murmuring and pointing towards Mel as he sat quietly on his seat with a blank look. A few students even broke down in fear, while others had an ugly face.

"His entire family passed away because of the dreaded 'emergent phenomenon'... This isn't even the first time, just what is our government hiding?" A student murmured with a tightly clenched fist.

On that day, all the televisions, computers and smart phones in schools and homes and offices switched to an emergency broadcast.

"This is your president .....

I have convened this emergency broadcast to reveal a few important changes taking place in our world now.

Unnatural activites, code named Emergent Phenomenon, have been occurring across the world. These are precursors to the expansion of hidden pocket dimensions that are being termed dungeons.

The occurrence of these events has caused a change in the physiology of living beings on our planet, including all of us humans..."

The sudden and shocking broadcast immediately stunned all people on earth. A new website Dungeon Crawler had opened up with details about dungeons.

It said that each human had the possibility of awakening an ability and some could even awaken multiple. The government had determined a awakening process through their research and all humans who wished to enter and explore dungeons would receive help awakening their ability.

A new age of exploration had begun with the emergence of the dungeons. The first since the colonial rush in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. New worlds lay at the cusp of being explored.

All through this period of upheaval, Mel turned quiet and even self absorbed. He stopped attending school, answering his friends and eventually even ended up dropping out of school. In ordinary circumstances, Mel's sudden catastrophic downfall would raise alarm bells, however society in general was in a terrifying state of upheaval.

Protests against dungeon exploration, counter protests, rise of companies and fall of others as well the rise of powerhouses who could rival super weapons had suddenly emerged chaotically creating a rapid change in the environment.

In this time, Mel simply shut himself in his house. He barely went out and spent most of his time at home browsing on the computer.

Five years passed by and time forgot about Mel as well as all the people who knew him. Mel got up to continue his continued life of a shut in, however, he realized that all the insurance money he had been living on had been used up.

Mel had become a bearded drunkard with hair turned awry. For five whole years, he lazed his way through life, his eyes dead from the inside. Today he saw his balance reducing into the hundreds and realized that he had reached a breaking point.

He sat down on the gaming chair, blankly looking at the computer. At that moment, Mel remembered the details of the will left behind by his grandfather.

He started crazily searching across his debris laden room until he found a dusty brown packet hidden in a drawer. He opened the packet to find a letter with one sentence.

"For the times when the world changes, you must sell your way to power!"

Along with that letter was a key. It looked extremely ancient and had occult looking symbols carved over it. Mel sighed when he saw the garbage letter and the absurd key, he had hoped for some property papers which he could mortgage to gain some money.

Disgruntled, he picked up the key. But the key was extremely old and layered with rust, Mel ended up grazing his skin and bleeding because of the key's sharp and grainy surface. The moment blood came in contact with the key, it glowed brightly before disappearing into Mel's body.

[Binding with the host....]

[Completed]

[Activating Dungeon Merchant System]

[Task: Clean yourself and try to look like a human.]

Mel blankly looked at the HUD like lines of text appearing within his line of sight. His eyes had a slight scene of surprise, but nothing beyond that. This world had drastically changed in the past five years, having such kind of powers was not uncommon. There were also a group of humans who had their powers awaken in the form of systems that allowed them to plan and advance their growth.

However, Mel hadn't heard of a system that gave tasks. He tried seeing his status, but he didn't seem to have any luck with that. Mel yawned. He felt this system was useless anyway, a merchant system. Depressed he went back to sleep.