The Light That Follows Darkness

It is the year 2501 AD, according to the old Earth calendar. The world was not the futuristic utopia that many envisioned, with advanced technology and interstellar travel.

Why was that you may ask?

It was like that since reality was shaped by human greed, the insatiable desire to progress, innovate, and attain God-like status.

This insatiable thirst for advancement led to a technological boom, resulting in the creation of drugs that extended the human lifespan. However, this progress came at a cost, as resources, particularly energy resources, became scarce.

To address these challenges, scientists embarked on a quest to generate unlimited resources to sustain the ever-growing population's needs for food, shelter, and energy. You may wonder why governments didn't attempt to limit population growth or control the distribution of life-prolonging drugs.

The truth is, they did try, but their efforts were met with strong resistance from the public. People vehemently opposed any restrictions on their right to live longer and healthier lives. They rebelled against governments that imposed such limitations and fought against the elites who hoarded the drugs for themselves.

As a result of these conflicts, the average lifespan of a worker increased to around 200 years, while the wealthy and powerful could live up to 300 years or more.

Why was there this much of a significant gap?

Well, this gap in lifespan between different social classes can be attributed to the influence of money, which has always held influence regardless of the time or place.

It was in the year 2110, and when humanity was on the verge of a breakthrough in energy production, that disaster struck. Scientists had devised a way to harness the power of hydrogen fusion, the same process that fuels the stars. They hoped to create a limitless and clean source of energy for the world.

However, something went terribly wrong. A series of experiments that were conducted simultaneously in different locations around the globe triggered a catastrophic chain reaction. The fusion reactors became unstable and unleashed a massive surge of energy that ripped open the fabric of space-time. Black holes began to appear randomly, devouring everything in their path. This catastrophe would be called the 'Great Cataclysm' by future generations.

The consequences of this phenomenon were catastrophic: half of the planet’s land surface was destroyed by the immense gravitational force.

This is not surprising for those who understand the nature and effects of black holes, but for those who are unaware, this is what happened: a black hole is a region of space where nothing, not even light, can escape. It has such a strong gravity that it can warp space and time around it. When black holes appeared on Earth, they swallowed everything in their vicinity, including land, water, air, and life.

They also caused massive earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis that affected the rest of the world. The 'great cataclysm' was a tragedy that changed the face of Earth forever. Half of the USA, Europe, Asia, South Africa, and South America were wiped out, while Australia and Antarctica were wiped out completely.

However, when humans thought that they reached the end of the line, the black holes stabilized suddenly, abruptly, and without any prior indications, creating interdimensional gates.

It was a miracle! That was what the remaining 3 billion population thought, but it was only the beginning. An unknown energy started to seep out of the gates. The energy affected all living things, causing them to mutate into horrific monsters that fed on each other and on humans. The population plummeted from 3 billion to 100 million in a matter of years, as humanity struggled to survive in this new nightmare.

This mysterious energy that pervaded the world was a source of both wonder and terror for humanity. No matter how much they studied it and experimented with it, they could not harness it for their own use. The only solution that humanity reached to protect itself from total extinction was creating settlements both overground and underground and dispersing them all around the world.

They hoped that by doing so, they could avoid the wrath of the monsters and survive its unpredictable effects. The settlements were as follows: Asian settlements centered around the Japanese islands and the remaining half of the Chinese lands; the South African settlement centered in the remaining half of South Africa; the South American settlement centered in Brazil; the European settlement centered in the UK; and last but not least, the Russian settlement.

These names did not reflect the people's origins, as mass migration had caused the mixing of races and ethnicities worldwide. In addition, the UK was not hit as much as the other places since it did not participate in the hydrogen collision experiment.

Unfortunately, when the animals started to mutate, they were hit by marine monsters and lost a lot of the population and lands to them, leading to the creation of the UK settlement.

The human race lived in perpetual fear of the mutated monsters that ravaged the earth, forcing them to construct fortified settlements and engage in daily battles for survival.

However, a peculiar pattern emerged amidst the chaos: the most formidable and lethal creatures appeared to disregard the humans once they established their territories. Instead, the humans found themselves contending with the more common monsters, which, while still formidable adversaries, were comparatively more manageable.

Some speculated that the reason for this was that humans could not absorb the mutated energy, so they were a useless source of food for monsters that rely on this energy to grow and evolve (Let’s call the mutated energy mana.)

How did they resist and fight if they couldn’t absorb this energy, you may ask? They invested a lot of resources and effort into creating exoskeletons and new weaponry that could enhance their physical strength and resistance.

These devices allowed them to survive and fight back against the hostile environment and the creatures that inhabited it. Yet, these innovations had their limitations and drawbacks.

They were expensive, fragile, and required constant maintenance. They also did not guarantee victory against the most formidable foes, such as boss monsters or other mutated super monsters. These enemies were too powerful and unpredictable for the human defenders to handle.

The most tragic consequence of the monster invasion was the corruption of some humans who consumed the monster cores in a foolish attempt to gain power. These humans lost their sanity and humanity, transforming into monstrous beings that preyed on their former kin. Depending on the type and quality of the core they ingested, they became different kinds of monsters: goblins, orcs, trolls, and worse...

Leading us to the year 2501 AD, where the population stagnated at 100 million since a lot of deaths still occurred worldwide from monster attacks on settlements.

The population was distributed as follows: 40 million people in the Chinese settlement, 10 million in the Japanese settlement, 10 million in the UK settlement, 10 million in the South African settlement, 15 million in the Brazilian settlement, and finally, 15 million in the Russian settlement."