Twenty years ago, mankind's common sense was defiled.
The line between the real and the fantastic blurred beyond comprehension, and the ability to foresee the future, however faintly, was lost.
Cause and effect no longer held sway.
A single event had shattered the careful tracks history once laid through time.
Detached from all that came before, and responsible for everything that came after, "The First Contact", as it came to be known, unraveled our world's logic.
Even now, not a single soul alive has forgotten her words...
[Congratulations, people of Earth.
I, Catherine, Goddess of the Red Night, have kindly chosen to bless your planet.
Rejoice, for you may now claim your Gifts.
Your planet shall be awakened to its true nature.
You are to be welcomed among countless others.
Revel and celebrate. Pray, and struggle.
As I have chosen you...
Prove to me your worth.]
Were it isolated, we might've dismissed it as mass hysteria.
Yet, the same words echoed in every mind, from presidents to children, from the deaf to the indifferent.
We were given no choice but to accept.
And we did.
Humanity knew this was no trick of man.
But despite our acceptance, we still lacked understanding.
Merely hours after her words, that began to change.
People discovered their Gifts.
Without an ounce of hesitation or respect for what we had built ourselves, Catherine fulfilled her promise.
News of healers capable of mending broken bones with a wave of their hands spread like wildfire.
Unidentified flying objects caused all sorts of problems for air traffic, only to reveal themselves as humans defying gravity.
Celebrities saw themselves flawlessly mimicked in real time, and athletes lost races to sedentary men.
Each person became, in a unique way, a stranger to who they had been the day before.
From minor physical enhancements to supernatural powers, had it not followed Catherine's message, each case would be unbelievable.
No wonder so many felt blessed by these miracles.
No wonder many felt so confused, so scared.
Humanity couldn't trust what it had yet to comprehend.
Even though we were forced to accept a new reality, we would spare no effort to explain it.
We clung to the world we once knew, searching for answers to bridge what was and what became.
One leading theory claimed Catherine was a being from a more advanced civilization.
In this scenario, her powers and those she shared with humanity were not the product of magic, but science beyond our comprehension.
Popular as it was, and influential as it remains, ultimately, it had the same flaw as most other explanations.
It relied on a common sense that no longer dictated reality.
Furthermore, to those who had lost no time to embrace the new world, "how it was done" was less of a concern than "what is to come?".
As the similarities between our reality and certain games became more apparent, this question became more pressing than any other.
People discovered that by focusing their thoughts on their Gift's name, they could summon a screen in their mind.
This screen had different menus, one of which always described the person's Gift and its effects, while another quantified various stats like mana, magic power, strength, speed, and most importantly of all, levels.
These concepts were all staples of the RPG genre and familiar to anyone who had played them.
But the last one inferred something special.
Almost universally, levels imply progression.
If the similarities to RPGs were more than a coincidence, this meant only one thing: Combat.
We failed to notice, but this was a warning.
One that, without a corresponding threat, fell on deaf ears.
There were no monsters in our world.
No other races to war with.
No labyrinths or dungeons either.
For a brief time, this was the reality we almost grew accustomed to.
However, the self-proclaimed Goddess had already spoken about what was to come.
While humanity debated her existence, her claims kept coming true.
We had experienced what they meant for humanity.
A month later, we experienced what they meant for the world.
Much more than what happened to humanity, at first, it was subtle.
Unusually large gates emerged, constructed with a straightforward, old-fashioned design of wood and stone, reminiscent of medieval architecture.
Initially, too few in number for the general public to notice their existence, with what the world had become, most attributed them to a prank by another Gift user.
Many attention-seekers revealed themselves as the culprits, but the structures continued to appear across the world.
Randomly.
Sometimes in odd, but acceptable places, such as forests or mines.
To an unsuspecting onlooker, it was as if something had been planned to be built, but was left abandoned.
No more than the ruins of something that would once be, or once was.
Although not long after, gates appeared in slightly more unusual, inexcusable places.
Some floated in the middle of the air on a busy street.
Others defied their vicinity, appearing in uninhabited lands, sometimes, even on the ocean's surface.
If absurdity itself hadn't been redefined, these would've been enough to disturb minds everywhere.
While mostly ignored, people at the time were already suspicious.
The Gates had shown no purpose, but the air around them felt colder, giving them an ominous feeling.
Passersby would take routes to avoid them, even when they didn't interfere with their path.
For an entire month.
Then, abruptly, the doors opened and fate bared its fangs against humanity once more.
The Gates drenched a day that would forever be known as "The First Reminder" in blood.
An eternal stain in our history.
Acceptance and understanding mattered not.
Only the fact remained.
That day, humanity found the opponents it had been searching for, as monsters poured out of the Gates in waves.
Whether they had been used for good or bad, at the time, no one had mastered their Gifts enough.
Humanity fought.
Or rather, struggled.
It was our first defeat, as a race.
Among the countless lives, we lost a core, intimate pride we didn't know we possessed until then.
Still, even if only to tell the tale of our own hubris, we survived.
Moreover, we learned.
The First Reminder was a periodic event.
For as long as we lived on Earth, we'd have to contend with it.
And so we did.
The first step to stop the Gates from releasing monsters was found by brave men who ventured inside them.
They discovered that unless the Gates became overpopulated inside, the normal monsters inhabiting it couldn't leave.
Thus, by keeping their population low, we could prevent havoc on Earth.
For the most part.
Aside from normal monsters, the adventurers who risked their lives discovered secret rooms inside the Gates, where a stronger variety of monsters waited.
Known as a "Boss room", we discovered that, under conditions still unknown, sometimes, the "Boss" and its minions can leave their room.
Not only that, unlike normal monsters, once out of their room, Bosses could freely traverse the insides of a Gate, ascending or descending floors as they pleased.
They could even leave the Gates and invade our world without the need for a "Dungeon Rampage", the general term we created for when a Gate opens its doors due to overpopulation.
In essence, we learned how to wage war against the Dungeons.
We had to kill as many monsters as we could inside the Dungeon, and if possible, defeat the boss, preferably inside its room, before it could cause problems.
With time, due to the Gates' ability to imprison monsters within, their interiors became known as Dungeons.
Estimates vary, but over the years, it is believed that the Dungeons have claimed more lives than the First Reminder itself.
The Lesser Dungeons, or "Easy Dungeons", depending on preference, rampaged roughly once a month, with slight variation depending on their associated "Dungeon Level".
This was the minimum time required, and thankfully, more difficult Dungeons had longer periods between Rampages.
Though that carried its own problems.
Rampages continued almost every day after The First Reminder, due to the delayed appearance of certain Gates and their different timers before allowing the monsters out.
These Rampages were smaller in comparison, but to a scarred humanity, they were equally tragic moments to remember.
Yes.
Scarred.
Not yet defeated.
Ferocious as they were, most monsters, and especially those from Easy Dungeons, were driven almost completely by instinct alone.
Further, these weren't much stronger than an average, unarmed man.
Armed with whatever they could, willing and prepared for a fight, our unwelcome guests saw the odds turn against them.
The first time, we barely resisted.
We were caught off guard.
It was a tremendous surprise attack, a hard hit to take.
We stumbled, arguably, we fell.
But we didn't stay on the ground.
And that, perhaps, was their first reminder.
They were dealing with a race that had fought and conquered every other species in the world.
Hunters by nature, conquerors by will.
We learned we had to fight to survive.
Our enemies learned they had a price to pay.
Firearms spelled doom against the weak monsters that even fists alone, without special abilities, could kill.
When all of humanity had a collective opponent, we showed the reach of our greatest weapon: the societies we were so proud of, and their ability to endure.
It took us years.
It took us blood.
But the armed forces and the people, together, took back our world.
For the most part.
Many places remained dangerous and challenging.
Mountains and islands, inaccessible places such as underground caves or the bottom of the oceans...
Even the sky wasn't an exception...
To this day, in many places, Rampages still occur.
Our fight is not over yet.
There are still cities left for us to retake from their unworthy claws.
Monsters still attack ships from underwater, claiming lives and making maritime trade incredibly expensive.
Away from cities, it's not rare to see stray monsters roaming around, preying on unsuspecting victims.
To call ourselves victors would be spiteful to those who still shed sweat and tears.
It took us a while to figure out, but we were survivors.
And the only option the government saw to ensure we'd continue to be was to allow people to raid Dungeons.
Initially, only the armed forces were allowed inside, but there were too many Gates.
It was impractical to contain every single one using just a select few.
Firearms, while impactful, were only effective against monsters below a certain level.
Although above all, the people had been emboldened by the memory of their lost ones, the desire to prove themselves, and their own fight for survival.
It was impossible to hold back that determination.
Arguing about our safety and security was meaningless.
Not to mention, unreasonable.
Thus, unable to guard every Dungeon, the government gave us permission to take the fight to them, and a new job appeared.
Adventurers started risking their lives to enter the Dungeons.
They hunted monsters inside and uncovered the mysteries they could.
We adapted, in great part, thanks to the trailblazers who led them.
Although apart from the initial motivations, another incentive was quickly discovered.
One that explained why the world's governments were so prohibitive in the beginning.
Monsters, when killed, had a chance to leave a variety of items behind their corpses.
Most commonly, weapons or small stones.
The stones, in particular, had an interesting quality.
They could be used as an alternative energy method.
That brought many questions about the government's actions, and how monopolizing they felt after this revelation.
"Monster Cores", as the adventurers called them, became a valuable commodity, and the government itself struck a deal to buy them.
Not only that, other goods found in the Dungeons, such as minerals and crystals, also became items the government was willing to buy.
They had value as research material, and theories said that, like Monster Cores, perhaps as something more.
Thus, to facilitate trade, offices were set up to buy and sell the materials obtained inside the Dungeons.
For a while, this caused a surge in adventurers.
The workforce exodus even strained the economy.
Supply and demand at its finest, however, caused prices to correct themselves, and other incentives eventually evened the playing field for all professions.
With no clues as to what could change next, all we were left with was the knowledge that our existence could, in a moment, change completely.
Since reality and fantasy were closer than ever, the only certainty became uncertainty.
As for me...
I wasn't part of that story.
I was born 18 years ago.
This fantasy-like reality was the only one I experienced. It was my common sense.
And it was the stage on which my story began.