Chapter 2: Current State of Earth
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Sung Jung woke up to the sound of her alarm, today was a Friday. Her automatic electric curtains opened to expose the grand garden, or it was a grand garden a hundred years ago but was now just barren land.

Sung Jung was currently living in the center of Seoul, the capital of South Korea. The date is January 10th year 2315. The population of earth has increased to over 28 billion, not being able to keep up with the rapidly increasing population, the food and energy industries have struggled to keep up with demand. Due to the desperate burning of fossil fuels to create enough energy had led to the current situation.

A huge brown cloud covered the sky blocking out most of the sunlight causing all plants to stop growing naturally. Half eroded away statues stood in the centre of the garden, the rain that fell is acid rain which had caused widespread damage to property across the earth for the past 100 years.

Sung Jung inherited her father’s vast fortune when he died 5 years ago from lung cancer. This has become the most common disease that people suffer from due to the terrible air quality found across most of the world. Sung Jung’s company which she is now the acting CEO of is famous for manufacturing air purifiers. Like air conditioners, they bring air from the outside but instead of changing the temperature, they clean the air from pollution. Every modern home and office building has at least one installed.

Breathing the air from outside not only causes major health problems and violent coughing fits but also smells awful. It's like smelling exhaust from a 1980s car. This way of life however was completely normal to Sung Jung as she was only 25 years old. The world had apparently been like this for the past 100 years so not many people alive remember the days of clear blue skies and lush green trees growing in the cities.

Sung Jung got out of bed and got dressed in her normal black suit, made of the most premium materials possible. Before heading downstairs to make a cup of coffee and grab some food, she checked on her mother. Her only remaining relative. She was lying in bed with a life support machine humming quietly in the corner.

The blinking lights from the machine illuminated her pale and sunken face. She was suffering from an unknown illness for a few months now. Her body just suddenly seemed to age 100 times faster than usual, in just 3 months she had turned from looking like a middle-aged woman to that of an 80-year-old on her deathbed. No matter how many famous and expensive doctors came to visit, none could diagnose the cause of her body’s rapid deterioration.

Sung Jung has the same net worth of some small countries, so she lives a life of luxury. She can eat meat and fresh vegetables every day without restraint. This cannot be said to be the same for most people on earth. Vegetables are grown in huge greenhouses where the sunlight is artificially created. The air and water also must be purified as most “freshwater on earth has become lakes of acid water instead which cant be directly drunk without the acid having been removed.

Since the food used to feed animals has to be raised in this way as well the cost of raising and feeding a single cow is easily 10 times more than it was 100 years ago. With the rising population and demand for food being so high the companies can charge any price they want.

This caused just a simple sandwich with a slice of ham and some lettuce inside which could have been worth as little as 3000 won ($2.71) 100 years ago, to now worth 10 times that at 30,000 won ($27).

Not just the cost of eating has gone up because of the pollution. The cost of housing has also increased. The houses must be constructed from expensive materials which do not erode due to acid rain and need maintenance more often. The cost of running water and electricity have also increased.

The governments around the world have found the only solution to the current problem. Nuclear power plants. They produce large amounts of energy without creating more pollution. Since water has turned acidic hydroelectric power plants are too expensive to build and maintain, solar power is ruled out due to sunlight not being able to pierce through the thick brown clouds. Wind power is possible and used but it does not generate the power required to support 28 billion people.

Every country around the world started mass building nuclear power plants to satisfy their nations power needs. This was fine for many years until the uranium shortage happened. Kazakhstan produced 42% of the world’s uranium from their mines but they got exhaust from years of insane demand. Once the mines had been completely dug out and no more uranium was found in the countries borders, Kazakhstan turned from being a world superpower that many countries relied on and respected, to being a 2rd world country practically overnight when they announced that no uranium was left.

This left only Canada and Australia left to try and supply the world’s uranium needs. Causing an insane rise in price for the previously abundant and cheap power produced from the many nuclear power plants. Half of all power plants had to close as there was not enough uranium to go around. This caused a global power shortage and caused many coal power plants to be quickly built and fired up. Environmentalists warned that this would only worsen the air quality which was already at the time causing many health problems but governments had no other solutions and decided to ignore them, leading to the current problems.

Walking downstairs and turning on the news Sung Jung ate a piece of white bread with some eggs on top and drank her coffee. Although a simple meal the total cost for it was around 22110 won ($20). The Korean women on the television was reporting the civil unrest of the citizens complaining about high food prices. Riots were common especially in expensive cities like Seoul, Tokyo or London.

Sung Jung headed into the air lock that separated the outside and the inside of her house. This was a feature many high tech and expensive homes possessed. To make sure when the door is opened no polluted air entered the property a simple airlock was used. It was not as advanced as one on a spaceship since it did not need to be perfect, but it greatly reduced the amount of polluted air that could get into the property. It was basically just two doors with a small room that vented out the air before the inside door could be opened.

Grabbing a black gas mask from the wall and closing the door behind her, Sung Jung prepared to step outside. Although the walk to her car was short, just a few breaths of the city’s polluted air would cause her eyes to water and cause her to start coughing. To protect her health and since she could afford them Sung Jung opted into using them whenever she was outside.

Sung Jung decided to take her jet-black Lamborghini to the office today. After sitting in rush hour traffic for an hour she finally arrived at the headquarters of Guardian Technologies. This name was chosen since the company focuses on producing products that guard humans against the toxic polluted air.

The company was highly valued at around $500 billion on the world’s stock market. But little did the shareholders know but business was not going so well. Competition was tight and the market size was only shrinking every day. This was because the products were so well designed, they did not need to be replaced for many years. Because of this demand for new air purifier units was going down. The demand was still high as new buildings were constantly being made to deal with the increasing population. But there were so many other companies also making air purifiers now, trying to follow the success of Guarding Technologies which had become the 3rd highest valued company in Korea.

Sung Jung was in desperate need of finding a new product to sell to keep the company as being valued so high. While these complicated thoughts spun around in the 25 year old CEO’s head she opened her car door and got out onto the black tarmac of the company's executive car park.

It was still early in the morning and the board of directors meeting will not start for another hour. The sharp cold winter breeze swirled around her bare legs and caused her long black hair to sway from side to side. If Sung Jung hadn’t become a CEO she was thinking of going into the modelling industry. She was a natural born beauty who had no need for makeup to shine brighter than any jewel. Her unusual red coloured eyes gave her a mysterious but sexy look and worked well with her black suit.

But on this day she would be first to witness a world changing event first hand. On the other side of the car park a loud bang emitted out and a cloud of dust filled the air. A terrorist attack? Sung Jung thought as she went to take cover behind her car and watch the situation.

Nobody else was around this early in the morning including the guard that would usually be stationed at the entrance to the car park. Grabbing her phone she dialled the emergency number for anti-terrorism.

Eon had casually selected planet Earth as the destination for his dungeon, while waiting for the synchronization process, he played around with the dungeons setting some more. He was able to customize just about anything he wanted. He could change the scenery inside the dungeon to a tropical forest if he wanted to. Another option was what kind of monsters he wanted to fill the dungeon with.

He had unlocked a new option after selecting earth for scenery called “apocalyptic urban city”. Not knowing what urban or apocalyptic meant he decided to select it. The previous cave transformed before his very eyes into an apocalyptic cityscape with destroyed buildings and roads everywhere. Although Eon wasn’t sure what the buildings were made from after using a status check on them he discovered a new substance called concrete. He felt a small bit of sadness at the fact his home for the last three hundred thousand years had disappeared! All his fond memories… Ah well change is always good. Eon was incredibly bored. Having spent so long trapped in this cave and focusing on only one goal to kill the dragon, now that is completed he felt empty.

Eon looked at the dungeon menu for some possible entertainment. Since earth was considered as a low levelled world apparently he could only spawn low level monsters. He picked zombies and rats from the limit selection to fill his dungeon.

[synchronization process complete]

Usually, a dungeon master would not be allowed out of their dungeon since the dungeon would only stop spawning monsters and close once the boss was defeated. If the boss was able to run away outside of the dungeon and escape, then the dungeon could never be closed!

But Eon is a god. A simple restriction like that was not going to stop him. Punching through the gate with all his might he managed to escape its pull and exits the dungeon. Eon walked out and took a deep breath of fresh air. Ahhh he thought this is the first time I’ve seen the sky!

This is what Eon had expected to happen when he finally left the dungeon but instead he was greeted with nothing but disgusting smelling air and no blue sky to be seen!!! WTF IS THIS?? Eon didn’t know any way to deal with the bad smelling air so he frantically looked around.

Is that a human? Eon locked his eyes on a black faced creature with a long looking nose hiding behind some metal contraption with wheels. What Eon was actually looking at was Sung Jung hiding behind her jet black Lamborghini while wearing her gas mask which was causing the confusion. Eon was incredibly lost; he had no idea what kind of planet he had ended up on but decided to ask his new friend.

“ARE YOU A TERRORIST?!?” shouted Sung Jung at the silhouette emerging from the dust cloud. The shape looked a little too small to be a terrorist… thought Sung Jung. Although Eon had the body height of an average 15 year old boy in his medieval era world, here in the modern world he was only around 160cm which was considered below average height for a 15 year old boy. Instead his height was closer to the average for a 12 year old boy. Deciding that there’s no way a teenager that young could be a terrorist she decided there must be another explanation for the loud explosion.

Eon finally emerged and started walking towards the creature hiding behind the car. Using Status he could see she was only level 1 and her race was human despite her appearance. She was shouting some kind of language at him but he didn’t understand. He activated his level 10 language ability. It allowed him to quickly learn a language that was spoken near him but a certain number of different words had to be said before the skill could grant him the knowledge of the entire language.

Although annoying there was no other way so he continued walking towards the woman called Sung Jung with a confused look on his face because of this bizarre looking human before him.

To Sung Jung an unbelievably beautiful boy was walking towards her. His sharp golden eyes looked lost and confused and was wearing scrappy looking clothing. He didn’t seem to understand what she was saying and he wasn’t wearing a gas mask and she could see discomfort on his face.

Opening her car’s door she reached inside and grabbed her spare gas mask and reached out to give it to the boy. Eon just stared at it. He was using status to look at its name and functions of the gas mask:

[Gas mask, common, used to filter out the polluted air]

Without being able to react since he was busy reading the status screen, Sung Jung assumed he had some issue with putting the gas mask on himself, so she decided to put it on him herself. Once the mask had been secured Sung Jung locked her car and led the young boy towards the clothes shop across the street.

While walking towards the store she asked many questions to Eon to try and understand his current situation, but he just stared at her with a confused look and kept following. Eon decided that the woman was being friendly towards him since she gave him one of these gas masks. Eon had checked her status and saw she was still level 1 so even if she turned out to have evil intentions Eon was confident that he could escape.

Eon followed Sung Jung into what he assumed to be a clothing store and just watched as she seemed to be explaining the situation. Sung Jung had told the store clerk that the boy was her little brother and had got his clothes ripped while playing outside and needed some new clothes. She decided to hide the truth for now as it was too troublesome to explain.

Sung Jung helped Eon pick out an expensive looking light green hoodie with a pastel purple coloured inside liner. He also got some black tracksuit bottoms and new trainers. Although this would usually be considered designer clothes to others, for the extremely rich CEO Sung Jung this was hardly worth mentioning.

She led Eon to the changing rooms and intended to wait outside to see how he looked in the clothes she had picked out. But Eon seemed to be struggling to undo the zipper on the hoodie and looked at the laces on the trainers with a look of deep confusion.

Does he have some sought of learning disability? Thought Sung Jung while watching Eon struggling. Well, it would be bad to just leave him like that, he’s only a young boy so it should be fine if I help him right? Feeling like she had justified her actions Sung Jung proceeded to assist Eon.

She lifted his ragged cotton t-shirt that looked like it had been made hundreds of years ago. This exposed his chest which Sung Jung had expected to look like any normal boys’ chest but she was taken aback by what she saw. His muscles looked like that of a god’s statue carved out of marble. They were so dense and perfectly shaped that it looked like a work of art instead of a possibly 12-year-olds chest. Blushing slightly Sung Jung quickly pulled the hoodie over his head and helped him tie his laces on his trainers.

Paying for the new clothes Sung Jung looked at her watch and realised she did not have time to send Eon to the police station right now, the meeting would be starting in 20 minutes. Walking back across the street, Sung Jung noticed a large commotion outside her office's car park. Remembering that she had called the anti-terrorism unit Sung Jung walked up to apologise for the false report.

Instead she was blocked and told there are dangers up ahead and was asked to state her business. Sung Jung explained she was the one who made the report and that she was the CEO of the building currently being surrounded by armed soldiers.

The confused Sung Jung and Eon were led to the front of the crowd of soldiers and reporters and she could now see a bright blue door of energy at the far end of the car park. She was looking at the entrance to Eon’s dungeon but did not know that yet.

Scientists were approaching the portal holding scientific equipment properly to try and understand what they were looking at. The scientists were surrounded by armed soldiers in case something came out of the portal.

Eon watched silently from the side, unlike the nervous and scared faces of those around him he showed no reaction. Do these people not know what dungeons are? Why are they so scared of a D ranked dungeon?

The army demanded all citizens evacuate from the area and go home. Sung Jung couldn’t get to her car, so she decided to call her family's butler to pick her and Eon up from the office.

This child called Eon was too mysterious and she sensed that it would be a waste to send him to the police station right now.

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