Chapter Text
±8 years until the double dungeon incident
It all started to go downhill for us when the Fire Nation attacked and destroyed the American west coast together with our strongest fighters, of which very few survived.
That's at least how I would describe the current situation to a person who was awakening{pun intended} from a coma(not eternal slumber, most likely)if I had been given the job of explaining to them dungeons/gates, magical beasts, what hunters are and why they exist, of course, for as to why gates exist I would have no explanation or answer. Still, I would at least try to make an effort to explain the basics of what happened while they were in a coma ...after I made that reference.
I would explain that two years ago, gates started to appear worldwide in cities, dense jungles, and on top of mountains, even in the depths of the seas and oceans. For the first week, nobody knew what was happening the only thing scientists were able to figure out is that the appearance of gates is more frequent in areas with a high density of population and that no matter what a person does, the gates will not let him thru and that they are some kind of portal which makes electricity not work on the other side this should have been our first red flag.
On the sixth day, the scientific community had a conference. At this conference, they announced that the gates{at the time referred to as anomalies} were nothing to fear and seemed to be just a new way for the world to frustrate and laugh at the scientists and researchers of humanity, this has been a big mistake.
On the seventh day, all hell broke loose worldwide when the barriers around the gates that appeared first started to crack and then shatter with a terrifying silence, and out of them walked, crawled, flew, and sprinted dozens upon dozens of monsters who zeroed on the people taking pictures with the now dungeon broken gates and in seconds became morsel for them.
If they ask how it is that humanity still exists, I will say simply that, yes, humanity survived, but it will never be the same. For humanity to survive, it needed to evolve into what it is now. As a reaction to the invasion, some humans awakened and became human warriors who possess magical powers. Recently, there was talk of shortening the name on the official sites for them, although no one knows to what yet.
Anyway, as I was saying, the awakened humans are the reason why humanity still exists, as conventional weapons had little to no effect even on the weakest, due to this, people were desperate and praying for someone to save us, and somebody did we call them protectors they are the few awakened who at the moment they awakened chose to defend humanity every major city has at least one, at first there were not many of them but slowly the awakened grew in numbers and with them the amount of them willing to fight for the future.
By the end of the first month, most major cities were reclaimed, and the knowledge that awakened could enter the gates before they break spread worldwide during this time, around 6% of the world population was wiped out, the only reason why the number was so relatively small was because gates ranking higher then E-rank didn't start to appear until three months from the first appearance of them. By that point, the scientists were able to create a device that allowed them to measure roughly the amount of mana an awakened person has as well as the mana of a gate, and from this, a system has slowly built over a year.
The gates, magical beasts, and hunters were assigned ranks according to their mana levels, of course, the devices for measuring the mana of an awakened and a gate were vastly different as one measured the average density of mana inside and the other the maximum amount mana in their body(when they're Mp is full simply said).
First, there are the gates, of which D-rank is the most common, followed closely by E-rank gates, then C-rank, and rarely B and A-rank gates. Unfortunately, a new rank was recently added: S-rank gates. I am certain that if I were tasked to talk about the S-rank gates, every one of my words would be traced with strong enough venom to poison an E-rank awakened, at least. Their rank depends on the average density of mana inside it, for example, a gate with a reading of 4370 would be a C-rank gate, and a person should expect magic beasts of similar strength, although there can be variables that affect the reading. A gate with an S-rank reading contains a mana density beyond what we can masseur with technology, so it literally shows as an 'error' message on the device.
Magical beasts{commonly referred to by the public as monsters}are easier to classify due to the presence of essence stones inside them; we simply classified them depending on how much mana is inside the stones and the stone's quality; an average E-rank essence stone when measured has a reading of around 20 to 30 on average and a D-rank around 150-180.
As for awakened, a separate device was created to measure their mana as the ranking is different, and instead of relying on density, it relies on the maximum amount of mana an awakened can have, recently it was theorized that an awakened could make it that it seems like he has a lower capacity as such also lower rank then actually he has although it was proven that it's impossible to fake being stronger than you actually are in the test. An S-rank hunter has a reading that shows an 'error', and the device can measure until it reaches 100 000, which is the upper limit to be classified as an A-rank, the average E-rank has a reading of around 70, and the upper limit for the rank is 200 after which a person is classified as a D-rank awakened.
As for why I am thinking about all of this, it is because of my mother, who died in a hospital when the first outbreaks happened thankfully me and, my father survived and can live and remember her, and one day, I hope that I will be able to help people as she did.