God… What kind of fucked up world is this? I rubbed my face, feeling both annoyed and lost.
A part of me wondered why I wasn't panicking yet, because I knew I should be panicking right now, but then I remembered about Gamer's Mind.
Oh, so that's why I am not panicking. I always wondered what it would feel like to have Gamer's Mind in my past life. I always wondered how it would feel to have your emotions muted.
However, I was wrong.
My emotions weren't muted at all. After all, I had forgotten that I had Gamer's Mind until now.
However, what it did was to force me to remain calm even in ridiculous situations.
Now, since I didn't have to worry about something pesky like panic, I decided to move on and inspect my Reward for completing the mission.
Though before that, I looked around just to make sure that someone hadn't seen the metal box appear out of thin air. That would be highly awkward to explain, I believe.
After ensuring that nobody was watching me, I opened the box and found a flip phone, a passport, an ID card, a driver's license, and two bundles of hundred-dollar bills.
I checked the ID card, and as expected, it belonged to me. It was the same for the passport and the driver's licence.
Now, I no longer have to worry about not having an identity anymore…
I quickly counter the money. It was a good thing that the bills were in order. The System definitely knew how to win me over. In total, I had twenty thousand dollars.
The amount was nothing to scoff at. I was glad that money was included in the Starter Pack.
After shoving the bundles into my jacket, I opened the phone, and I was surprised to see the modern-looking UI. It wasn't Android or iOS, but it was clearly running on some kind of WebOS, and not just that, but it had internet access.
However, it didn't just stop there. The phone was also built like a fucking brick. I could probably crack a head or two with this thing before it finally stopped working or snapped in the middle.
If all the cellphones in this world were built like this, then I would need to be careful since everyone on the street was carrying a blunt weapon with them.
After I was finally satisfied with the build quality of my brand new cellphone, I decided to see if there was anything useful in there, and that was how I came across the app named Hunters' Daily.
It was a community app, but that was exactly what I needed…
…
…
After dropping 20 bucks in the donation box of the library, I left the library, but instead of returning to my apartment, I decided to head to a park. I just wanted to sit down in an open spot so that I could observe the people, just to see how different they were from the people in my past world.
I always loved watching people… I couldn't cold-read people like Sherlock Holmes could, but the people always told me a story. The people in this world seemed to be in some kind of rush…
Yes, some of them looked happy and cheerful, while most people looked like they were simply going on with their lives, while some looked sad, but there was a sort of urgency in all of them. It wasn't noticeable at first, but after watching them move around for hours as I continued my research, the signs were obvious.
"Young man, can you scoot over?" I was broken out of my reverie when an old woman spoke to me.
"Ah, yes. Of course" I quickly acquiesced to her request and moved over.
The old woman smiled brightly and sat down beside me. "You are new to the city, aren't you?" The woman asked.
"How could you tell?" I asked curiously.
"You got that look on your face… The way you were looking at the city, I could tell that you are new here" The woman explained with a nod.
Was I being that obvious, or was she some kind of hidden powerhouse?
"The people in this city might look happy, but they are jaded. After all the Gate breaks…" The woman trailed off while shaking her head with a solemn look on her face.
"Does it happen often? I mean, Gate breaks?" I asked, making the woman grimace.
"It was a regular occurrence at first, when we knew nothing about them. The army was quick to cordon the Gates when they first appeared, but… but then the first Gate broke…" The woman trailed off with a haunted look on her face as her hands trembled before she regained herself.
"I was there, you know. When the first Gate broke…"
"It was just like any other day. I was with my husband. We were on our way to the dentist when everything came to a screeching halt"
"And then there was fire everywhere… So much fire everywhere, but that was just the beginning of the nightmare"
"I still remember holding on to my husband for my dear life. We didn't dare to leave the car, but then they appeared… They were as tall as children, but they were made of fire… They were burning everything"
"They were setting everything ablaze. The last thing I remember of that day was fire all around us while my husband kept promising me that everything was going to be alright"
"That was the last time I saw my husband. According to the soldiers, he died trying to pull me out of our burning car…" The woman finished wistfully.
Ah… Now, I feel bad for asking her about Dungeon breaks…
"I am sorry for making you remember something horrible" I quickly apologized.
"No, need. It's alright. I have come to terms with his death, and he wouldn't want me moping around. I am an old woman already; it won't be long before I leave this world to join him."
"Ahh… Silly me. You asked me about Gate breaks, and here I am, torturing you with my sob story" The woman laughed. "It was a regular thing at the beginning. Everyone lived in terror, knowing that a monster might appear out of nowhere and kill them."
"But then the Mutants appeared… Apparently, they had been living among us since the beginning of time, and now that the world was finally coming to an end, they stepped out of the shadows to save the world."
"Without them, the city would have been lost, but soon the Hunters appeared too. I won't say we are back to normal now, but it is probably the closest we can get to normalcy."
"Things might be decent now, but the people still remember those times. It is not something they can forget so easily. The fear we lived in during those days is not something we can let go of" The woman finally finished with a solemn smile on her face.
Damn! I didn't know what to say to that… Honestly, after hearing the story, I felt bad for them, but that was the only thing I could do. I couldn't understand their pain… I wasn't here with them.
I didn't experience the despair and horror they must have experienced in those times…
I didn't even know what to say after that. I mean, I could offer my sympathy, but anything I say might come out hollow since I hadn't experienced what they had. So, I simply leaned back and decided to enjoy the silence.
The old woman also seemed to agree with me as she too leaned back, and started to bask in the silence…
…
…
Hours later, I finally returned to my apartment, feeling tired, but it was all worth it since I had managed to learn quite a bit about this world.
The first thing I looked up was the so-called 'Gates'. From what I have managed to learn, it was straight out of the world of Solo Levelling.
The first Gate appeared 3 years ago, and the first year had been especially brutal since conventional weapons didn't work on the monsters. Not just that, even the nukes and nuclear power plants became completely inert after the appearance of the first Gate.
For the first time ever, humanity was completely helpless, but then the Mutants finally came out of the woodwork from all over the world and helped humanity. It gave humanity the hope they needed to not only survive, but also fight back.
And yes, Mutants were a thing in this world, but thankfully, this wasn't a full-blown Marvel comic Universe. This place drew quite a lot of elements from the comic Universe, but at the same time, it was quite similar to the Cinematic Universe.
However, that did not mean that the world wasn't fucked up…
After all, the Brotherhood of Mutants were Heroes in this world. Yep, that's right. They are Heroes in this world. If that is not fucked up, then I don't know what is.
I had to stop and rub my eyes when I read that…
However, that did not mean everything was sunshine and rainbows. The Gates were appearing all over the world, and even with new Mutants joining both the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants, it was simply impossible for them to close all the Gates, especially when they didn't know just how dangerous those Gates were from the outside.
Millions of people died during the initial wave of Gate breaks, but then the first Awakener finally made his debut, with more Awakeners showing up after him. The Awakeners possessed superpowers just like the Mutants, but they were not Mutants.
Unlike Mutants, they didn't possess the X-Gene, and their source of power remained a secret for a whole year, until Stark Industries came along and made the first breakthrough regarding the Gates.
The biggest issue was, it was impossible to tell just how dangerous a Gate was from the outside, which led to the deaths of quite a lot of Mutants and Awakeners. So, Stark Industries discovered a device that could measure the threat level of the Gate by somehow measuring the amount of energy being released by a Gate.
Then they divided the Gates into six categories: E, D, C, B, A, and S based on their threat level, with E being the easiest and S being the hardest…
Thanks to the discovery, humanity could finally measure the threat rating of a Gate from the outside. The number of Fatalities dropped drastically, and humanity started to grow again, but the trials of humanity were far from over.
With that discovery, an issue reared its ugly head that nobody could have expected… Someone realized that the energy exuding from the Awakeners was eerily similar to the energy coming out of the Gates, and the issue only snowballed from there.
The next thing we know, people started to blame the Awakeners for the appearance of the Gates. It was monumentally stupid, but the people just wanted to blame someone, and the Awakeners were just a convenient target.
Thankfully, the issue was squashed before it could grow into something really ugly…
The Governments from all over the world finally started to crack down on anyone who tried to incite any unrest using this excuse. It was borderline tyranny, as some of the news outlets claimed, but the majority of people supported the Government's decision, so the Government was able to uproot the issue.
Later that year, Stark Industries revealed Prana Tech. Until then, the energy exuded by the Awakeners and the Gates didn't have a name, but the world ran with it, and later the energy was officially named Prana.
As for Prana Tech, it revolutionized the world… Stark Industry had managed to find not only a way to harness the energy from Prana Stones from inside the dungeons, but they also found a way to use monster materials to create various types of equipment.
Apparently, the Iron Man suit was completely made out of monster materials, while the suit ran on the energy harnessed from Prana Stones. However, the advancements didn't stop there; only two months after the Prana Tech was revealed, an Awakener discovered that they could grow stronger by absorbing the energy inside Prana Cores, which could be found inside every monster.
However, that too came with its own drawbacks. Absorbing too much too quickly might lead to a phenomenon called Monsterification, where an Awakener loses their humanity and turns into a Monster themselves.
Finally, I was able to find something different from the world of Solo Levelling…
I had managed to gather a lot of information, but it was much less than I needed to know… Yes, the internet was helpful, but a lot of information was not available publicly, and I didn't dare to search for anything that didn't show up on its own since I had no idea who could be watching.
Now, I just needed to decide what to do with this new life of mine…
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