Two days after Christmas, in the year 2XXX, a break in reality happened. From this break, monsters once thought to be the stuff of fantasy flooded into our world.

 

These monsters were immune to almost all forms of conventional weapons. The rules were quickly learned. Every monster had a stone inside of it that acted as a kind of heart. If it is removed or broken the monster dies. So all people could hope to do is get lucky and break that stone and it would die, and the best way anyone found to do this conventionally was explosives.

 

But something else flooded into the world.

 

Magic.

 

And that was the solution that humanity needed. People who used magic were able to hurt monsters. If the damage was done by someone with magic power, it acted like normal damage. A cut or shot acted completely normal, which allowed both the harvest of the magic crystal and parts of the monsters.

 

These people, who would be eventually called hunters, saved the world from the monsters. At that point the origin of the monsters was discovered. All over the world, several different structures were found. They all lead to underground tunnels or structures that didn’t exist before. As they explored them they found a expansive room in each one of them. In that room was a stronger monster. This monster would be called the boss monster and the structures would be called dungeons.

 

After the boss monster is killed, the dungeon stops pushing out monsters for a while. They can start up again if it isn’t cleared for a while. Eventually all of the first dungeons that spawned in the world would be found and cleared.

 

The death toll that would be discovered from this first event would be somewhere around 10 million in the US. And all around the world something similar would be found. About 3% of the human population was killed. But the remaining population would undergo several changes in the aftermath, and about 95% of the remaining population would become awakened.

 

Very quickly, a much stronger world government would replace the UN. They would not take over the countries of the world but they would govern over the rules behind the awakened hunters. They would be known as the World Awakened Association, or WAA. Afterwards, each government would all form their own version of the awakened association.

 

The awakened association was in charge of registering and monitoring hunters, and watching over the dungeons. If something goes wrong in a dungeon they investigate.

 

On the other part, hunters themselves formed their own groups called guilds. Guilds served as more direct support for the hunters that joined them.

 

Over the next few years more discoveries were made about monsters and magic. The biggest was the fact that the crystals from the monsters could be used as a massive energy source. One that far outside the likes of anyone thought cold fusion could do, much less the fossil fuels and coal that most of the world still relied on.

 

But the release of magic also changes the earth's environment. Fantasy-like metals started to appear on earth just like the normal ones we used to mine. Those meals would also appear inside of the dungeons as well so any job lost when the switch from conventional to magical energy was replaced easily.

 

Other things were also influenced by magic and several different job fields opened up as well.

 

✾

 

The easiest way to know the difference between an awakened and not awakened was the existence of the status screen.

 

Every awakened person could open one to look at their stats and abilities.

 

Name:[Blank]

Gender:[Blank]

HP:[#]/[#]

MP:[#]/[#]

Level:[#]

Title:[title]

Strength:[#]

Defense:[#]

Speed:[#]

Intelligence:[#]

Luck:[#]

SP:[#]

Intrinsic Skill:

[Blank]

Skill:

[Blank]

 

All of the stats are self explanatory. The more strength someone had the stronger they were. Stat growth worked by either going up when the person exercises, which gave a good boost for each stat. But they also went up with every level. How much they go up is different person by person, and level by level. How much each stat was used changed how much it went up by. If you spent a lot of time running from stuff while hunting, your speed would increase more. As far as anyone knew, stats and level had no upper limit.

 

Skills were the abilities of the hunters they used to go into the dungeons. They were mostly things like fire magic or swordsmanship. There were also ones that upped the stats of a person, which gave another way to increase your stats, but those were all limited amounts, or helped you get more on each level up.

 

There are 4 main ways to receive a skill. Intrinsically, from a skill book or taught, from a skill orb, or bought from the skill page.

 

First, the intrinsic skill is innate to a person from when they first awaken. They can range from basic swordsmanship, to a unique skill that only one person has.

 

Second is to learn it from either a skill book or another person. Skill books appear in dungeons every now and again. They include the directions to learn the basic level of a skill. From there some people will then teach that skill to others, creating a kind of school. Most of those are through the hunters association.

 

Third are skill orbs. Much like skill books they are found in dungeons. They are one time use items that instantly gives a person the skill. They are much easier than skill books but also quite valuable, so most people end up selling them. They also install how to use the skill to the people who use them.

 

And lastly was the skill page. Everyone awakened had access to the skill page through their status page. It was a list of skills they could get in exchange for the sp they had. They gained sp by killing certain monsters. SP is also one of the ways to upgrade a person's skills. Each skill had a level that went up either with a lot of use or by using sp.

 

Lastly the level of a hunter went up with enough kills. As stated before this allowed them to get stronger, but it also opened more skills they could get from the skill page.

 

✾

 

Even now, 12 years after the initial incident, no one really knows what happened to lead the dungeons to appear, and magic to emerge into the world.

 

Whether or not those questions have answers isn’t really important to a majority of the world. Very quickly after the incident, the world found its new normal.

 

And for most people, they found life quite enjoyable now.

 

They were able to love, have friends, and even those who chose to risk their lives in the dungeon, they can have adventures.

 

It is pretty common to see kids wish to become hunters when they grow up. The laws enforced by the WAA meant that no one under the age of 15 could enter a dungeon, but every country had their own age they allowed people to become hunters at. The US’s age was 16 for those who took a test to prove they could handle it, or 18 if you wanted to skip the test.

 

There are also two main types of hunters. Those who do it as a sort of side hustle. They mainly hunted on the weekends for a little extra money or to get a little bonus to their strength from the status. Then there were the full time hunters. That group has many different subsets, but for the most part, they are dedicated and willing to put their lives on the line. A lot of them were there during the first outbreak, and a lot of others lost people during it as well. They are the heroes of humanity, from back then and to this day.