Chapter 1 - Losing Everything

Several ages ago, in an ancient world, during a lost era... 

There was fire, there was chaos, there was destruction... 

In the midst of it all, Kazuya opened his eyes, waking up from unconsciousness. His aching head caused bells to ring in his ears, and the ringing was so loud that he almost forgot the events that occurred before that moment. 

What he saw after blinking his eyes a few times was utter destruction. It was his imagination's peak at describing what hell would look like—except that it wasn't in his head; it was as real as he was in that world, and it was in his home. 

His sudden awakening had caused him to inhale deeply, but it seemed that was a mistake, as the place he was at was filled with smoke, and he had just inhaled a dangerous chunk of it. 

He tried to get up but felt a sharp pain coming from his leg. So he looked behind him and saw a huge chunk of heavy debris resting on his left foot, as it had been crushed by the weight of the debris. 

The place he was at was his home, but not as he remembered it. What he remembered was serene and peaceful, but now, all that he saw was crumbling in flames, and he was in it. 

About every flammable substance in the house was on fire. It was not a large house, and so at this rate, everything he owned would be consumed in a short time if he didn't do something. The pieces of wood and lumps of hay on the roof were crumbling, and as they fell into the house, everything they fell on would erupt in flames almost instantaneously. 

He looked behind him and could see the part of the house that was mostly destroyed, and he found a large cannon ball that was covered in tar and set ablaze. He looked up at the roof and saw a large hole, most likely formed by the canon ball falling against the house and bringing fiery destruction along with it. 

Kazuya briefly wondered what would have been responsible for this—who could have been responsible for this? Blazing Canon balls don't just fall from the sky—this was an attack from someone, somewhere, for some reason he didn't know of. 

It was a small house, so it was no wonder the small house was destroyed by one blazing cannonball. 

Kazuya struggled to sit up, trying to check if he could lift the large debris off of his crushed foot and hopefully find a way to crawl out of the house. But it was at that moment when he thought of his safety that two of the most important people in his life flashed across his mind. 

His family...

His wife and child... 

"Damn it!" he swore, "Emi!... Haruno!" He cried out loud until his voice became sore. He was choking, and at this rate, he would die of suffocation before getting consumed by the growing flames. But his safety was the least important right now, as he needed to find his family. He needed to make sure they were safe, but the sudden incident had caused him not to remember where they were or if they were at home to begin with. 

With his family as his motivation to live, he reached down and lifted the large debris off his foot, and after doing so, he took up a piece of wood that had not been consumed by the fire to use as support for his crushed left foot. He managed to stand up, and then he looked around, noticing that the home was irredeemable at this point, and hoped the same thing did not apply to his family. 

"Haruno! Emi!" he called out to his wife and daughter, but there was no answer. He limped across the small house but could find no hint of them anywhere. However, as he looked around, a lost and important memory came to his mind. 

He saw the broken clay pots and burning baskets littered at the other end of the house, and he remembered that his wife had left with their daughter to harvest grain from the village's farmlands, taking a clay pot and a basket with her. 

Kazuya almost sighed in relief as he remembered this, as it meant his wife and child were not in the house with him. Now he could focus on his safety above anything else. So he limped over to the crumbling door of the house, partly consumed in flames. 

He struck the door once with the stick, but it did not budge. He could feel his consciousness slowly leaving his body, as he had inhaled a lot of smoke and was barely standing. But with the little strength he had, he kept hitting the door over and over until he managed to get it open. 

As the door swung open, Kazuya was relieved to feel a sudden rush of fresh air blow against him, one that almost revitalised him, but along with that came distant and nearer cries of people as if in deep pain and turmoil. 

So he stepped out of the house, walking like an old man with a stick, even though he was young and strong. He looked around and saw that it was not only his house that was attacked. He could see other homes also crumbling in flames, and he could see people running out of their homes but immediately getting shot by arrows from some distance away. 

This was shocking to see people from his homeland falling to the ground and getting slaughtered by arrows coming from dark places, while their houses were set ablaze by incoming cannon balls. 

But the village's destruction wasn't the shocking part of it all; it was the culprits of the event that shocked him the most. It wasn't people who were responsible for this, but rather, small sentient creatures he thought only existed in folklore and legends... 

"Goblins?" Kazuya whispered to himself as he saw the creatures firing arrows and cannons from various distances with almost impeccable precision. 

From what he could tell, they were little green creatures barely four feet tall; the way they growled at each other showed that they were incapable of making a proper speech for communication, yet their attack methods showed they had great intelligence, which rivaled that of the average human, and that was what made them dangerous. 

"What have you been doing in there?" "What were you doing while your family called out for you?" a man asked, crawling on the ground beside the entrance to the small house.

Kazuya looked at the man speaking and widened his eyes when he noticed the man's state—he had been shot with multiple arrows and was lying on the ground helplessly. 

Kazuya recognized the man almost immediately. 

"Bunji?" he called him, wanting to come to his aid. But the man refused to be comforted, and with the last bit of strength he had, he pointed in the far direction in front of the house before giving in to his death. 

He looked behind the man and could see a long trail of blood drawn on the floor from a far distance to where he was, right in front of his house, dead. 

He looked in the direction the dead man was pointing at. It was the path his wife usually takes with his daughter to go foraging in the farmlands—the same place his wife said she was going to earlier that day. 

Kazuya's heart skipped a beat as he began putting the pieces together. With his stick, he walked as fast as he could. He got close to the farmlands but ultimately couldn't move as fast as he was trying to and fell to the ground as they couldn't keep up with his momentum. 

He tried to get up again, but when he did so, the walking stick broke, causing him to fall to the ground again. 

But then he heard a familiar sound, a familiar cry, and he could tell whose voice it was in a heartbeat, as it was precious to him—it was the voice of his little child, Emi, crying out in pain. 

It was nighttime, and there was no moon visible in the sky, so the area was very dark. 

Kazuya looked around, breathing heavily as he tried to trace the source of the sound, and when he located the source, based on a disturbance noticeable among the many paths that weaved the large farmlands.

"Emi!" he cried out. 

He crawled to where the sound came from as fast as he could, as he couldn't stand. The agonizing pain from his crushed foot was not enough to stop him from moving. 

As he couldn't run, the best he could do was to crawl as fast as he could, and he did so with abandon, as his family's safety was all that mattered to him. 

Slowly but surely, his daughter's screams faded into obscurity, and this scared Kazuya, as he rightfully feared the worst. 

"Emi!" he cried out relentlessly, "Emi!" 

He got to where his daughter's cries were coming from, and when he saw what was there, his body went limp for a moment, and his heart skipped a beat. 

Right before his eyes were his wife and child, who had now been eaten alive by about a dozen of those strange creatures, whose mouths and faces were now covered in their blood as they feasted on the two victims like it was a buffet. 

At that point, something in Kazuya's head snapped. A sudden rush of anger filled his soul. His eyes turned bloodshot as his breaths became deeper, and saliva dripped from his mouth as each deep breath came with a groan. 

He tried to get up, but his crushed root failed him again as he fell back to the ground. 

He was powerless to do anything while his wife and child were being eaten right before his eyes. He tried to crawl where they were, wanting to stop this, wanting to take them away from their half-eaten bodies with his bare hands if he had to—but he knew he could do nothing, as he was powerless. 

Who was he kidding? He couldn't even stand to his feet on his own, let alone stand a chance against a dozen armed goblins. 

Deep down, he no longer wished his family was safe, as that would be pointless now; rather, he wished he had the power to do something about this, that he could at least avenge his wife and child somehow. 

It was at that point that a large holographic image appeared right in front of him, with a brightly lettered statement that read,

"WELCOME TO SCARLETT ONLINE"