Prologue - Hello World

Let's get the exposition dump out of the way to avoid the hundreds of chapters it would take to smoothly 'show' it all before the real story even begins. Trust me, it would be OOC to show it through the MC's thoughts, and it can't be through flashbacks because the MC wasn't even in the world yet when this stuff happened. Good ol' isekai.

Many of the details are shown in small doses throughout the story; this is just to set the stage, so to speak.

All of the old paragraph comments got eaten by posting edits, RIP.

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It is roughly a decade after the final confrontation between superheroes and supervillains, in which the villains won an undisputed victory.

While only a small percentage of the population naturally develop superpowers, even a normal human can cause sufficient trouble. One can easily imagine what disasters these powered individuals caused in the wake of the war.

Over this past decade, the overall population and economy finally reached a point of hero-free stability... sorta.

Current estimates place the world population somewhere between one-fourth and one-third of the pre-war population. Not that anyone would dare attempt a census when you're more likely to get shot than receive an accurate answer regarding who lives where.

Throughout the years, at any given moment, the world has been merely one step of an unsupervised white long-haired cat onto an uncovered large red button away from the surface of the entire planet getting glassed. In the face of this alarmingly likely scenario, the supervillains fell into a cold war of death lasers, orbital cannons, robot armies, and of course, their superpowers.

Thanks to this stalemate, grand displays of power lost most of their appeal. After all, they were no longer unique and could only be demonstrated once.

Therefore, they switched to pursuing more creative ways to flex their prowess. Or, at the very least, amuse themselves.

No few supervillains decided that they enjoy receiving lots of attention. So, they opted to become celebrities with public-facing personas. They are just as likely to cut you as before; they just happily bask in all the praise in the meantime.

An important thing to note is that individual material wealth lost most of its value, while paper currencies completely lost all of their value. This was in no small part due to the rampant counterfeits, as well as the sheer challenge of transporting it from one destination to another without getting mugged en route.

For those with no--or only weak--superpowers, not attracting attention to yourself became one of the best survival methods. As such, flaunting jewelry, fancy clothes, or other such accessories was just painting an unnecessary target on yourself, further reducing such belongings' intrinsic value.

During the shift away from personal wealth, most valuable art, jewels, and artifacts were actually returned to the museums they were robbed from. It was by no means out of altruism, though. It was predominantly because private collections were just so damn unreliable.

This led to capable thieves gaining the entertainment of comparing theft speed runs amongst themselves before they returned their loot within a day or two. In shows of one-upmanship, they would even make security recommendations in order to further challenge themselves and others.

Meanwhile, those villains inclined towards intelligence went on a continuous spree of invention design and problem-solving.

Several mad scientist types effectively went full circle, as chasing solutions to global issues became one of the greatest challenges of all, which provided much-desired mental stimulation.

Of course, just as many of them made new problems, just for the sake of having something to do.

However, due to all of the previous standard currencies being rendered useless, the world as a whole fell into a barter system. This drove the creative types who needed constant materials for their designs truly mad.

Before long, they were infuriated to the point of teaming up with the elites from amongst the thieves to design genuinely secure banks to store precious metals and other such valuable materials to serve as the gold standard behind a new digital currency.

They created a small non-magnetic chip to implant within one's body, in a random location so as not to be readily cut out and stolen. These still-in-use chips served as an ID that replaced easily stolen papers, cards, and account credentials.

Every transaction with them required heavily encrypted multi-step authentication; even if the data were somehow intercepted, it wouldn't be usable for stealing someone's identity.

Once activated, they would permanently deactivate if their immediate vicinity underwent temperature changes beyond an acceptable range.

In the event something unfortunate happened to an existing ID chip, getting a replacement has been hell triple-wrapped in red tape ever since day one.

Once a reliable basis for an economy was back in place, various occupations returned to work in a state mostly akin to how they had been pre-war.

However, barely any customer-facing positions were filled by humans any longer. After all, the majority of transactions would simply lead to murder, regardless of the potential income. Most of these positions were instead filled by robots or other technologies.

There was at least one positive change--beyond technological advancements--that built up during the downward spiral of all previous standard currencies; a large number of people with sufficient resources established the habit of regularly distributing food and medications out of sheer spite. This was predominantly because they were actively opposed to anyone who would want to exploit such essentials for profit during the economic crash.

Even once money and income were rebalanced, these practices stayed in place. Of course, there has been plenty of social stigma behind requiring free assistance ever since the economy stabilized, but it remained a necessity for numerous people.

Everyone always had to take care of junk food, snacks, and specialty diets for themselves, though.

With all of this out of the way, it's time to focus on the present. Enjoy!