https://youtu.be/c6WG7-aa1Ng?si=LGtQOFT_u83WVtOu

(Original opening with lyrcs)

January 1, 2025, Somewhere on a coastal city on Brazil

Chaos, that's how it can be described as the first moments of the day of the later known as the shattering. The moment that tears and bleeding wounds on spacetime were opened all around the universe, in special, in the solar system, especially around the earth, pouring a torrent of monsters and abominations upon the world.

A couple was in a hospital apartment, the husband, a farmer, was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans pants, and the mother recovering on the hospital bed holding her newborn son, she was sick, and the doctors after the labor detected some unexplainable matter inside her body, crystallized matter of unknown origin. The woman was fighting for her life, sweating profusely and in a daze, holding her son, knowing that she might not live to see him grow if the doctors didn't find a cure for her condition. The name of her newborn son was Lucas and he was born a couple of minutes earlier, during the labor, there was a brief flickering of power and a quick tremor, a small earthquake, plus a big commotion outside.

The couple turns on the hospital TV and watches, as the world seems in chaos, all social media and TV seem focused on the mysterious portals of light and tears in space, covering the entire world. They notice the rifts looking through their window and hear screams in the corridor, there's one rift inside the hospital right outside their apartment.

The husband has only enough reaction to close the door, then he hears sounds of something, growling, and screams, something is happening inside the hospital, a few meters from them outside the apartment, screams, the sound of flesh being torn, gunfire probably from the hospital security guard, then silence.

Live transmissions record the phenomena worldwide as people send drones or even some reckless people enter the scars in spacetime and portals of their own accord. Some crazy gun enthusiasts hobbyist fencers and kendo enthusiasts entered the gates. Recording with their go-pros their adventures, some returning. They became the first adventurers, the first wave of the so-called "Players/Hunters".

It was a bloodbath, hours of horror until the military and police forces fought back, together with improvised militias of gun owners and a few brave men, wielding improvised weapons most of the time.

The monsters were mostly defeated, but in the process, 10% of the world population was culled. The world governments noticed the scars in reality receding, and watched as only specific portals remained, several per country, spread around the world.

With the wounds in space-time "stitched" back together, the remaining creatures, mostly retreated to the portals, fled to the countryside, to wild areas high in mountains or deep in caves and abandoned mines., the portals were secured and humanity started to heal.

During the great battle, many humans got into coma, poisoned by the invisible energy leaking from the gates and tears in space, and many awakened, they described the appearance of glowing screens of light, like holograms, that only they could see, in places like Japan and Korea, where stories with similar events were common, many quickly understood what was happening.

Thanks to globalization, many in all other countries understood too, that it was a system, like a game system. The few that awakened it during the monster attack, and understood it fast, managed to discover special abilities, being able to fight the creatures with greater potential. These men and women of great power were known as "Players" or "Hunters", and for the next ten years, they became the guardians of humanity, the celebrities, the military triumphs, the elite mercenary, and the explorers of the gates, the ones to scout the unknown, the labyrinths the dungeons, and the alien worlds connected by the gates.

After the event, baptized as the Shattering, all humanity was bombarded by what the researchers named "magical energy", developing internal magical cores, crystals near the heart, tied to a secondary nervous system made of the same crystalline material.

Less than 1% of the population was unable to resist it, becoming ill, and crystalizing themselves on what was called "the mana plague". Almost 90% of the population developed a connection with a basic system, able to know their stats and level, using certain artifacts, most healthy mana-infused humans are level zero and have human level stats, roughly around 10 on average, never going beyond 20. Around 9% of the population, the ones allowed inside the gates, or the lucky ones to kill a monster outside the gates, leveled past level 1 and awakened. Becoming full-fledged "Players".

15 years later

A teenage boy left his school running, he was going to visit his mother in the hospital. He was lost in thought, as he remembered his early childhood, his mother fought against the mana plague for roughly ten years, before her entire body ended crystallizing and she entered the stasis state, frozen in time, as a human-sized mana cristal.

Lucas PoV

I arrived at the hospital, and the receptionist woman recognized me already and gave me the permit to go to my mother's apartment, it was visitation time.

The cables and sensors that were in contact with her body before her cristalization, are the only proof of her still living state, her brain activity for the last five years, stuck in a dream-like state, similar to a coma.

"I'm back Mom, today the school was alright... I got a bit bullied as usual, and got rejected by that girl I like after my confession, but... Still, the day was not all bad, I mean, I got good grades, and they released the new "Hunter Heroes" game, I got another job as a beta tester on it, and I'm helping Dad with the bills, and not spending all on futilities." I say as I touch the cold crystal with the palm of my hand.

I look at her state, five years, five years since I last heard her voice, crystalization plague is an illness that befell all humans unable to survive the growth of the magic cores on their bodies, according to the few known specialists, the body absorbs too much mana and the growth of the core gets out of control, engulfing the entire person, encasing them on a large magic crystal.

Only 3 cases of it were ever healed in the world, using rare elixirs found in the dungeons, these elixirs had small samples being analyzed, but until now, no way to reproduce them was developed.

The treatment of the plague cases fortunately is paid for by the victims themselves, by the extraction of the excess of external crystals, once a year. Mana crystals are a commodity since they can be processed into magical items or mana potions for adventures, plus, as fuel for experimental magitech.

I am from the first generation born in this new world, born during the shattering, of a magic plague-infected human, my survival and healthy magic core were a miracle in itself.

As a member of the new humanity, I learned early about how to see my status. Since I was not born privileged, and never killed a dungeon monster or crushed a monster's magic core, I never got experience or a level up, plus, my skill never was awakened.

Skills are unique abilities that humans with the magical core can awaken, all humans have a set number of "slots", inherent skill slots, inherited skill slots, taught skill slots, and addon slots. They are divided into one inherent, two inherited, four taught, and eight add-ons. And that's it.

Inherent skill is a skill unique to the user, they are the only skills a human can have that can be rank S or higher. Inherited skills can be received from the parents, they are always one rank below the parent's cap, never being above rank A. Taught skills, are always inferior to inherent or inherited skills, they always cap on rank B. Addon skills are rare claimed from mutated monster cores or special rewards on dungeons, they are always two levels below the original user, unless somehow taught by a user before the transfer.

Inherent skills are skills born with humans, tied to their souls and personalities, most humans awakened with skills have variations of the same skills, with unique twists for them based on their identities, being divided between "common" and "rare" levels, and a select few have "unique skills", that are deemed unique until another person develop a similar one, where they are demoted to "rare".

What does that mean? That means I'm not player material, not by default, despite being a first-generation human and being one of the rare born on a cradle of magic. Usually, people like me, born from a plague victim, due to the massive magical exposure, are born or infected, or with not only massive magical reserves, but a skill already awakened.

I was not, while I have massive magical reserves compared with the average human, I was not born awakened, no inherent skill and I'm still level 0. In my country, all awakened people are instantly registered on the Hunters Association or join the government.

How does someone become a hunter? If you are not awakened by birth, receiving automatic level 1, or suddenly awakened due to magical energy leaks from the gates and luck. You can pay a fortune to get a monster core, to crush, using the xp to get your first level. Be unlucky to be attacked by an escapee monster and somehow kill it and crush the core for a level up, or be brave or crazy and find a new or unknown gate or rift, enter by yourself, and hunt a monster there.

There is a taboo on that too, crush human magic cores from humans with levels that work the same as when done with monsters, so murderers, drug dealers, cops, soldiers, or mercenaries have a higher chance to awaken. All dead humans with magic cores that are recovered, have their cores confiscated by the government. In rare cases, doctors awakened after crushing the core of a dead patient, which created lots of upheaval and media frenzy.

People like me do not have access to most of this, I lost the chance to be born awakened, despite my birth conditions. Until now I did not awaken even being in contact with my mother Crystal daily, and I'm for sure still don't have the money to buy a monster core on the market.

My dad is saving money for it, all leftover money from mom's magic crystals and all that he saves from his work, are being saved for him to awaken himself. I asked him to use it on me, but he did not want me to risk my life in the dungeons. We need to get into the dungeons, since we are not obscenely rich, only going there, only visiting the dungeons is possible to get an elixir to save Mom, still, like most people, we are limited by our social class, we are not poor, but we are not even close from the wealth needed to solve our tragedy. As they say, money moves the world, and even in a changed world, even in a fantasy world full of possibility and wonder, we are limited by our circunstances.