Retrospective Outlook (1)

Looking at the ground a young teen picked up a shiny piece of crystal before putting it in his bag. This was the fifth accelerator crystal that he had found in the dungeon.

Usually finding something like this would be thought of as good luck, spoils of battle. Something that a ranker would pride themselves in, however the teen knew that this was just a wistful dream for him.

He was just part of the dungeon recovery team, anything that he'd collect would just find itself within the hands of the guild anyway.

"Hey Adam, hurry up we have to get more crystals otherwise the section boss won't be happy"

Adam turned around to the large burly voice of a middle aged man. The man had dark wrinkly eyebags that was a testament to his age, his hairs were growing gray by the day, increasing in volume every time that Adam saw him.

From his appearance you wouldn't think that this man would carry a radiant smile and be nicknamed the smiling dictator. Within the crystalline force he was the only person who maintained a positive aura.

"Yes,group leader Khan don't worry I'm on it", Adam responded quickly.

He had to agree with the group leader on this one. If they didn't collect enough crystalls his pay would be docked and he'd get a bellowing at. The sector boss and his outrageous temper, everyone in the crystalline team knew about him.

Adam himself had felt his wrath before.

Releasing a small grunt the teen continued scavenging for the accelerator crystals.

Ever since the dungeon outbreak 500 years ago, about 0.001% of the population started wielding superhuman like powers to combat the dungeon monsters that appeared. Powers such as these over generations mixed in with the natural human race and the potency reduced leaving the latent potential in all of mankind.

The majority of the people couldn't notice and awaken the power inside them. They just thought of the lucky people that could to have a blessing from God. Others thought that it was the hope and determination that humans had to save their species that triggered a forced evolution within some humans to generate these powers.

Well Adam knew that the theories weren't complete in their execution . Him coming from the branch family of the Hagiyaki clan, a well known spirit power using family, he knew what the average person didn't.

'Mana ode acceleration'. That was the name of the phenomenon that had bestowed humanity with their powers. The mana that was released from the first calamity where multiple dungeons spawned all across the word was responsible for the release of a massive influx of mana. Although, it was unknown what caused the first calamity the amount of spiritual mana energy released was immense.

This mana when absorbed by humans lead to some of them to develop so called superpowers. This time was hailed as the golden age of rankers as the mana was so thick and dense that the power and strength of individuals far surpassed that of today.

Of course all was not well as 95% of humanity died of mana intoxication poison. However, the remaining remnants of humanity that had the capability to withstand a baseline of mana needed survived in the environment.

Once again humanity evolved and thrived, resulting in the population growing again, yet still currently it was only a 1/20 of its original size. Furthermore, the land in which humanity occupied was now reduced to the 5 major continents, the continental 5. The rest of the land in which humanity lost became known as the forgotten continents, plagued by monsters and other dangers of unimaginable scale.

These were the words his father had taught him when he was younger, although back then he didn't realise the true potential of these powers, not until the night of the incident.