Chapter 2

[First Person PoV]

An apocalypse... that's what people from a century ago would have called the state of the world. Portals, which were later known as Gates, suddenly started appearing all over the world.

Monsters of all different kinds sprang free from those Gates and started wreaking havoc on the entire world, killing more than half the human population.

Just when they were losing hope, special humans started appearing, each with individual innate abilities, giving the human race a chance to fight back against their imminent destruction.

The more monsters they killed, the stronger they became, not from experience points or any of the likes but due to the fact that the monsters they killed would, on a very rare occasion, drop items such as artifacts which humanity later found out were graded from F-SSS+.

As more and more people kept getting stronger and accumulating more strength, they quickly regained civilization and remade their society until they killed all the monsters that had escaped from the Gates.

Unfortunately, that didn't stop the Gates from opening up randomly. Because of this, a profession was then created: people who wanted to explore the Gates would be known as Hunters.

These hunters would later start forming groups among themselves, which were later known as guilds.

As the years passed, occasionally monsters would be able to break out of the Gates, which people deemed as a Dungeon Break, resulting in countless deaths.

A solution to these problems: the Guilds and the leaders of each Nation came up with the idea to build schools to train the younger generation, who they learned also had innate abilities upon birth. They would be trained to become hunters, but only if they wanted to, since they knew not everyone was built or had the ability for such a thing.

Futarou Uesugi's life seemed pretty ordinary. He did what most kids did when he was small: he played with his friends, went to school, and helped take care of his younger sister when she was born.

Unfortunately, his little family wasn't happy for long. When Futarou Uesugi was just 10 years old, he was on a field trip to Kyoto, where his mother decided to chaperone, while his father decided to stay with their little sister.

During his trip, he made friends with a little girl who was similar in age to him. They explored Kyoto together, and got to know each other better, she mentioned being on a family vacation and took Futarou Uesugi to go and meet them.

He was surprised to find she was a quintuplet, and met her other four sisters. While they were getting along and playing together, a Dungeon Break occurred.

With monsters spilling out of the gates, everything quickly turned frantic and chaotic. Futarou and the girls ran towards safety in an emergency bunker, which every city had built in case of such emergencies.

An ogre quickly made its way towards them, running with a wooden club in its hands. Seeing that, he turned towards the girls, "Go! Get to safety, I'll stall it!"

"But…" one of them tried to say, but he didn't pay attention to them. He ran away towards the opposite direction of them and threw his shoe at the Ogre.

"Hey, Ugly! Why don't you pick on someone your own size!"

The girls cried and reluctantly ran away successfully.

As he saw the ogre approach, he closed his eyes and crossed his arms in front of him, preparing for the worst.

"Futarou!" He heard his mother's voice calling out.

He opened his eyes, and in front of him, his mother stood with her arms spread open.

The ogre swung his club at her, but all it ended up doing was hitting a barrier she made using her ability.

Looking strained, she looked back towards Futarou, "Go… alright? And make sure to take care of your father and sister for me, sweetie."

Tears rolled down his cheeks as he held out his hand to her.

She grunted in pain as the ogre kept bashing its club against her barrier. A crack soon appeared due to the relentless assault, causing her to yell towards Futarou.

"GO! NOW!"

Her yelling frightened Futarou so much that his body unconsciously did as she commanded.

He bit his lip as he turned around and ran. In the distance, he heard the sound of glass shatter, which shook him to the core as he knew what that meant. He covered his ears and closed his eyes as he continued to run aimlessly with tears rolling down his cheeks uncontrollably. 

A hunter finally appeared and was able to get him to safety, but unfortunately, he arrived a little too late. As he later found out, his mother was found dead. The reports he secretly heard stated that her head was bashed in.

His family was devastated upon hearing the news, which led to their dad spiraling into a deep depression. If it weren't for having a son and daughter to look after and care for, he wouldn't have had the will to keep going.

Due to his mother's death, Futarou made a decision to become a hunter and enrolled in a prestigious hunters academy, which were posted in every major nation in the world. However, he then realized that with his innate ability, he wouldn't have the power to become a great hunter and would only get himself killed, devastating his father and sister, who had already experienced a tragic loss.

So he decided to be the next best thing; he decided to become a civil servant to the government. That way, if he couldn't become a hunter, he would be able to help those who could, and that would be his revenge against the monsters that took his mother's life.

That's why he studied relentlessly. Day and night, he would study endlessly and spend most of his time with his nose in books rather than with friends like he used to. This is why he became such a loner later on in life.

It got to the point where his sister and father were worried about his health, but he paid them no mind as he had a goal to accomplish. But revenge wasn't the only goal he had; he also aimed to provide for his father and sister. Due to his father's depressive episode, they came close to bankruptcy until his father got his act together.

As a result, they started living in a very small apartment with a frugal lifestyle. So to help his family, he studied and studied and studied until his body couldn't take it anymore and collapsed, ultimately resulting in him passing away at his desk as he studied.

"And that's where the memories end. Damn, that's depressing…" I thought to myself as I felt my Hypercognition ability help me digest all this information.

"But looking at this, I finally know where I heard this name, the trip to Kyoto and meeting quintuplets, 'Quintessential Quintuplets'… I'm in a rom-com, but this backstory isn't exactly what I would call a 12-episode romance anime."

I shook my head to get my thoughts straight. "I know I should be focusing on the fact that I'm in a type of anime world, but right now, that isn't important," I thought to myself before focusing on the system… or at least I tried to, as I noticed tears streaming down my face.