1 The discovery and the start
A group of five people came to clear the tutorial dungeon, that was nothing strange or out of the ordinary. After all it is the Apocalypse Era where the world is in disarray, some lone city with high and thick wall are still undamaged by the outside world. The city we'll be speaking of is named "New Light City".
Why?
Because it was built next to the tutorial dungeon entrance and the city itself is a huge university of Awakened and Transcendent. (Look in the info chapter for more info)
During their third year of attendance both Awakened and Transcendent need to clear the tutorial dungeon. Let's return to our five people party that entered earlier, there is two Awakened and three Transcendent, two men and three women.
The men are named George and Andrew, while the girls are named Suzanne, Aria and Marie. They are around 22 years old and come from different places.
With their great teamwork they quickly arrived at the last floor of the tutorial dungeon, but also before the door to the secret room disappear.
Seeing this door that isn't even on the map they got curious about what could be behind it, after entering the room the only thing they see is a man sat down on a throne.
Blue flames are the only source of light but strangely they can see as if they were outside in broad daylight.
Slowly coming closer and closer to the man they realize that he isn't awake and is sleeping. The three girls of the party find this man quite handsome and attractive.
Before they could enter the 10 meter range of the man they were interrupted by his eyes suddenly opening and a pressure was put on them, more precisely an evolution rank gap pressure that naturally appear when the opposite party is at least 2 evolution rank ahead of someone.
"Do not take any more steps toward me." Say the man on the throne.
The shock of the sudden word of the man made them all stop their movements and actions.
Until Aria decide to ask : "Why can't we take any more steps toward yourself?".
"Because you will die" Answered the man with a serious and nonchalant face.
Before Aria could speak again George took another step and the next second he could see his own body without his head, the horrifying sight of their friend and companion being beheaded before them without anytime to react, made them think twice about why they followed their greed and curiousness to enter this room.
"Wh ... Who are you ?" Ask Suzanne.
"I am only the shadow of the past and the light of destruction of the future." Answered the man.
"What do you mean by that ?" Ask Andrew.
"You don't seem to understand how work this world... Young ones would you listen to the story of my life ?" Said the man with a nostalgic and sad face.
This sentence stunned the remaining members of the party, to the point where they looked at each other and used their system to speak between them.
[Suzanne : what do you think he mean by those words ?
Marie : No idea.
Andrew : He speak as if he lived what we are currently living.
Aria : I will ask for his name. ]
Not even a minute after the last message of Aria, she asked "What is your name ?".
"... My name ? I have long forgotten, but I still remember being called Ash." replied the man.
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From now on the man on the throne will be addressed as Ash
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All four members of the group started to ask themselves about how long as Ash been in here without any interaction with others intelligent creatures for him to even forget his own name.
Suzanne then asked "How long have you been here ?"
"I... I have been here from the end of my Era until now.
I don't know how many years or centuries, maybe even some millennium have passed. From the moment I found the truth, I was punished to not die nor live freely until the end of the cycles." Answered Ash with sorrow and pain.
"We will listen to your story, Mr. Ash" said Aria.
"Oh? Good then I shall start by telling you that I have seen a great number of people die and a lot of beings that you would never think of meeting." Ash said.
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From now on the narrative will be done from Ash speech and point of view.
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Everything started on a sunny day of spring, it was a day like every other day when suddenly the sun disappeared, the clouds turned red and the sea green. Water became poisonous in certain quantity, we couldn't drink normally by fear of the poison a cup of water bring death.
Then animals started to mutate and evolve bringing monsters, the corpse started rising bringing zombies and unknown objects fell from space bringing aliens, all with the goal of taking over the world.
At the start of this new Era, we couldn't resist those new threats and when everything started to stabilize about 95 percent of the world population had already died. All of this leading to what we called the Era of the Fortress Cities (EFC for short).
At the start of the EFC we had about 50k or so fortress cities, well I think you saw it come at the end we had only 10 fortress cities still standing and fending off. Oh by the way maybe I should have said it earlier but we survived for three Era which was the longest any species survived, we named them :
- First : The Era of the Fall.
- Second : The Era of the Fortress Cities.
- Third : The Era of Awakening.
The fourth Era doesn't have a name for we didn't survive long enough to name it, but if I had to name it, I would name it The Era of the Gods and Demons.
But well I don't have that much information on it so this might be too much. Well If I had to say we received great damage during the third Era and didn't recover our strength that led us to our fall when the fourth Era started.
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Hey guys,
First thanks for reading this first chapter,
Second I'm not English and that's a challenge that I gave myself to write in English, so I hope you won't beat me in the comment for my bad grammar.
Third but not least, comment to give me feedback on my writing.
Finally I hope you will stay till the end and enjoy.
ヾ(^▽^*)))
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