It was September 6th, 2024 in Evermarsh. Time was meaningless, monsters were everywhere, and Belgium had never existed–to everyone's relief.
A four-story-tall high school stood near the waterfront behind thick brick walls. A third-year student looked through the window on the second floor. He was trying to pay attention to Miss Jansen’s lecture when his Doom Sense spell sensed an incoming disaster. His lone black eye glanced at the cargo ships sailing across the North Sea. An invisible pressure spread through the air from the west, followed by a familiar, thrumming noise.
It was the first week of Matthew Maruki’s school year, and he already knew that it would be messy.
A streak of violet light swiftly overtook the horizon. The blue sky turned purple beyond the window. No one inside the classroom noticed except for Kari Matsumoto, who occupied the desk right in front of Matthew’s. Unlike him, she pretended not to notice. She would rather bear the inevitable change with stoic acceptance rather than stare it down.
Miss Jansen continued her lecture on the French Revolution, unaware of the danger ahead. “The revolutionary ideas from France found fertile ground among the Dutch Republic, leading to internal divisions and eventually, the Batavian Revolution in 1795. The Patriots overthrew the Stadtholderate with French support, establishing–”
The purple wave overwhelmed the sea, the port, and the school, and soon swallowed them all.
----------------------------------------
“–The Lowland Union by incorporating the Austrian Netherlands and the Duchy of Luxembourg,” Miss Jansen continued. She wore a yellow sweater instead of a white shirt now. “At this point, the Second French Republic has stabilized and seeks to create a buffer state between itself and royalist powers–”
The purple particles disappeared swiftly, alongside the pressure and noise that announced the wave’s arrival. Kari Matsumoto looked over her shoulder and exchanged a knowing glance with Matthew. Both immediately started browsing their history books. The Napoleonic Wars section had been renamed the Republican Wars, the Industrial Revolution had submarines now, dinosaurs went extinct in the twenties, and a picture of Josef Stalin in papal garb headlined the final chapter.
At least they had kept the spaceships.
Matthew closed the book with a sigh. A timeshift always means extra homework, and not just the school kind. He raised his hand to get Miss Jansen’s attention. He quickly succeeded, since he was a quiet student. “Yes, Matthew?”
“Is the USA still at war with Canada?” he asked with utmost seriousness.
Miss Jansen looked at him strangely. “No, Matthew, the United States hasn’t been at war with Canada since the eighties. What does it have to do with the Lowland Union’s founding?”
Nothing, but since the timeshift came from the west, Matthew figured that historical detail ought to have changed. Apparently not.
Kari quickly came to his rescue. “I think Matthew is asking whether the Louisiana Purchase and the following Second Anglo-American war partly motivated the French’s decision to bolster the creation of sister republics like the Lowland Union.”
“In a way,” Miss Jansen said. “Both events show a reorientation of France towards Europe at the expense of their former colonial empire, but there is no causality between them–”
As Miss Jansen lost herself to her lecture and quickly forgot the question, Kari peeked over her shoulder and glared at Matthew.
“Don’t bring attention to yourself like that,” she scolded him with a quiet whisper.
“What?” Matthew complained. “We’re at school. I’m here to learn things. It’s not my fault if history changes once a year nowadays.”
His phone vibrated in his pocket. Matthew wasn’t supposed to check it in class, but he had a pretty good idea of who was calling. He’d been killing monsters for over four years, so he knew the song by heart. Matthew waited for Miss Jansen to look the other way to read his text messages. As he suspected, John sent him a short text.
> Trigger: Butthole, Flyswatter, wanna look for a Dungeon after class? Ten bucks one spawned inside the school.
John was probably right too. A surge of new Dungeons always followed a timeshift, which Matthew was more or less fine with. Few things excited him more than bullying monsters.
Dungeon chasing would wait until after he fulfilled his basic human needs. Matthew couldn’t afford to fight monsters at less than his one hundred percent, and two hours of a now outdated history class had made him thirsty for a drink.
“It’s Misfire,” Matthew whispered into Kari’s ear. “He wants to go on a Dungeon hunt."
“Misfire?” Kari visibly sulked. “John called us names again, hasn’t he?”
Matthew shrugged as the bell echoed in the classroom. He was used to John’s behavior by now, but he gave back as much as he took.
The Dungeon Wrecker Association imposed codenames among its members to avoid getting into trouble with unknowing authorities; Matthew was only guilty of trespassing, breaking and entering, and a bit of occasional property damage, but some of his colleagues dabbled in weapons smuggling, tech theft, and illegal performance enhancers. Anything that helped monsters sleep in the dirt. All members remembered each other’s nickname, except for John Jäger, who relentlessly mocked them instead.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"He's not wrong, we should patrol the school," Kari said. "Just in case."
"Gonna grab a drink first," Matthew replied as grabbed his schoolbag. "After that, I’m all in."
Kari squinted at him in disapproval. "Lives could be in danger."
"Ours will be if we don't perform at our best," Matthew replied wisely. The last time he entered a Dungeon while sleepy had cost him an eye. "We must prepare ourselves mentally and physically for the difficult task ahead."
"You're finding excuses for your laziness."
Lazy? He was the only one on the team to keep passive spells active at all times! He only goofed off on missions when he had power to spare.
"I'll fall asleep mid-battle without a shot of sugar." Not to mention that the next class after lunch would be math, which Matthew found almost as soporific as history. "I’ll be quick, don’t worry."
Kari gave up on the argument and the two of them left class together. A flow of students climbed down the school stairs to enjoy a brief moment of freedom outside. Matthew noticed a few new colors among his classmates’ hair and eyes. Green, blue, red… mankind grew more colorful with each timeshift. All of Europe would transform into an anime convention at this rate.
Kari exchanged a few greetings, and politely declined a daring boy’s attempt to invite her out for lunch. Matt couldn’t blame him for trying. Kari “Crit” Matsumoto was cute and popular, enough to be named class representative. She wore her shoulder-length raven hair in a ponytail and her fair skin only accentuated her gray eyes’ piercing stare. As the fencing club’s star, she was very much in shape under her white sweatshirt and jogging pants; she also regularly topped grade ranks, even without the use of spells. In short, Kari Matsumoto was a winner. Many wonder why she hung out with Matt and John.
Meanwhile, Matt drew the wrong kind of attention, as he always did. Matt was a bit thin and pale for his age, but not gaunt either. He kept his black hair short and liked to stick to yellow shirts and beige pants, with the occasional cap. Some girls used to call him cute once.
And he still was… if one ignored the white surgical eyepatch covering his left eye.
It was quite off-putting to most, though less so than the all-consuming black hole secretly hidden underneath. Humans liked normalcy. When they looked at Matt’s face and saw a single blue eye staring back at them, it reminded them of their own fragility. And they didn’t like it. At all. Most students never said it, of course, not to Matt’s face, but they stayed clear of him nonetheless.
If only they knew he had lost it fighting a monster. At least Matthew could have boasted about his ‘war scars.’
“I’ve found a nifty change,” Matthew informed Kari after he finished checking the daily news on his cellphone. “Universal Pictures launched a vampire cinematic universe.”
“Vampires?” Kari’s head perked up in interest. “How do they look?”
Matthew pulled up a picture of a monstrous, batlike humanoid with a lamprey mouth full of fangs.
“They’re not the hot kind,” Matthew said. “It’s a horror-comedy franchise.”
“Oh.” Kari pouted in disappointment. “Now I’m sad.”
“I can try to grow fangs if you want,” Matthew suggested. “I already do my best to avoid sunlight, so I’m basically halfway there. I just need a quick green spell.”
“You’re adorable, Matthew, but you should go outside more often,” Kari replied with a giggle. “Besides, I'm only a few months away from donating my blood anyway.”
Most students had left for the cafeteria—Friday was burger and fries—so the path to the vending machines was clear. Nobody would watch. Nobody without powers.
“Can you watch my back for a sec?” Matthew asked his teammate.
Kari gave him a disapproving look. “You’re using your Key to steal again?”
“I’m short on funds,” Matthew reminded her. His parents couldn’t afford to give him much pocket change after covering his tuition, and Dungeon hunts, while profitable, carried a lot of expenses and fence-related cuts. “What’s wrong with getting freebies now and then? We're the ones risking our lives for everybody else.”
“That’s true, but…” Kari crossed her arms and looked away. “Never mind.”
With a lookout ensuring no one would interrupt him, Matthew pressed his palm against the vending machine’s glass. A yellow glow immediately surged from his skin.
It had been over four years since Matthew gained those fabulous cosmic powers. Four years spent struggling against the weight of Disbelief. Doc O'Connor coined the term after studying it in-depth: the more normal people observed a supernatural phenomenon, the faster it turned into a natural phenomenon. The Doc believed it was reality's attempt to suppress all Dungeon-related activities.
Mundane crowds of observers often caused Matthew's spells to go haywire. Even when he managed to use them in front of civilians, their minds found perfectly natural rationalizations. He could quote them by heart: that hole was caused by a leak, the crater was always there, the manufacturer ripped us off…
They wouldn’t even believe in the existence of Dungeons. Their victims simply joined the missing persons list.
Without non-Crawler witnesses, his Key ability manifested without fail nor issues. A perfectly circular hole opened on the glass display. Matthew swiftly grabbed a soda can from the rail conveyor, then watched with satisfaction as the hole closed on its own. He had committed the perfect crime.
The Dungeon Wrecker Association didn’t call him Wormhole for nothing.
“At least you’re not stealing the money,” Kari commented, a hint of displeasure in her voice.
Matthew observed the coin dispenser with a fresh new look.
“Don’t even think about it,” Kari warned him.
“I’m willing to share,” he replied.
“The profits go to the student council treasury, which I preside over. Please don’t try to bribe me on my first week.”
What was the point of volunteering for an elected office if you couldn’t skim money now and then? Matthew knew his teammate enough not to push the issue and opened his can the old-fashioned way. The delicious liquid sugar flowed down his gullet and into his veins.
“I’ve found the timeshift’s source,” Kari said as she checked her cellphone. “An earthquake struck the Panama Canal.”
Matthew peeked at her phone and scowled upon reading a Wikipedia page. An earthquake had indeed damaged the region around Panama City hours ago, sinking boats and leaving hundreds either dead or wounded.
“Panama, huh?” Matthew muttered to himself. "Wasn't there a stage-four Dungeon there? Something with goblins and sea monsters?"
"There was," Kari confirmed with a grim scowl. "I guess the local teams failed to take it out in time."
Dungeons mostly fed in secrecy. Like predators requiring meat to grow stronger, each new victim fueled their growth. If allowed to reach critical size, they reached maturity and attempted to emerge directly on Earth. This always resulted in a timeshift as Disbelief changed history to justify the disaster. Monsters became plagues, quakes, floods, or worse.
Dungeons were like weeds; best nipped in the bud.
“Anyway, I’m good to go now,” Matthew declared after stretching a little. His lost strength returned to him. “I’m tanned, I’m rested, I’m pumped. Let’s go Dungeon hunting.”
A text message notification suddenly popped up on Kari’s phone. She frowned and swiftly showed Matthew its content.
> Trigger: Bring your asses (and my money) to the gymnasium ASAP. I’ve found one.