Prologue: The World’s Gone to Shit
The first disaster happened on his father's sixth birthday. The same birthday he shared with the man.
It started with a massive tremor that left the state of Florida in disarray, the tremors turning to an unexpected flooding of Miami beach.
At the same time, tornadoes were appearing all over several countries in Europe as the volcano in Iceland erupted and turned the country into the next Pompei in a single hour.
Hurricanes mixed with tsunamis in Japan. Half of Nigeria under sea. The U.S plagued with every natural disaster the country experienced across several states.
China riddled with earthquakes, smog storms and floods.
East and North Africa affected with sandstorms so large it covered the skies.
That had only been the first five days of the cataclysm. Then came the monsters. Then came the system from the gods, creating the hunters. Humanity, as most knew it, was changed irreversibly.
But like humans always did, they adapted.
Their cities were upturned by the elements, so they adapted to the elements.
The cities sunken to the seas became their own Atlantis.
The sand covered countries unified under a council of leaders and rebuilt themselves into the empire that was known today.
The people from the lands covered with ice learned to live with the cold, while those surrounded by lava learned to get used to the heat.
And so on, and so forth.
The blessings from the gods helped, the system letting humanity adapt easier. Though of course, with a rebuilt society meant the growth of human greed yet again.
Hunters became the new celebrities, and a ranking system was made. They even had livestreams of their hunts against the ever growing presence of those mysterious monsters.
So much had changed, and he could've hardly cared less.
He hadn't been there for any of it and the aftermath was all he knew.
He could recall the stories from his uncle about the time before 'everything went to shit', as the old man put it, but it was so foreign to him. It wasn't his problem and he barely had enough energy to care.
Even if the earth went to shit all over again, he was ready to sleep through the end of times. Gods he was tired, but the fucking alarm blaring from his hunter's visor just wouldn't let him continue his nap.
[ALERT! ALERT! ALERT!]
[HUNTERS RANKED C AND ABOVE REQUESTED]
[RANKED C AND ABOVE CLOSE TO TERRA VERDE DISTRICT REQUESTED]
[AID NEEDED IN THE ERADICATION OF THREE LEVEL 5 MIRE SERPENTS!]
[I REPEAT! ALL HUNTERS RANKED C AN—]
Malik turned down the volume of his visor. He yawned loudly from his laid out position on top of a broken down skyscraper held up by two thick vines.
He went back to watching the clouds pass by, wondering if he'd be able to go back to his nap. A small sneeze from his chest stopped him from closing his eyes again however.
Usually, that would've mildly annoyed him, the fight happening behind him already having put him in a bit of a mood. But it was Nala, so he only found her little action adorable like everything his perfect little girl did.
He removed a hand from under his head to scratch the head of Nala, the random puppy he'd found while on a job. It was fate as far as he was concerned, because if he had walked away from her little hiding spot like he had planned, they would've never met and his life would've been even more bland than it already was.
"Go back to sleep," he muttered to the yawning pup on his chest, ignoring the sounds of explosions and yelling from behind the building.
He'd already done his usual one request a day. There was no way he was doing more than that.
It really wasn't his problem. As far as he and his uncle were concerned, the world's gone to shit. So why fight it?