CH1

With the rising sun

      It has been 600 years since the fall of the world when the first monolith appeared and the monsters started pouring out of it. It took another 100 years for the world to band together to create the nanotechnology that powers the system as we know it, leveling the playing field or so history classes tell kids. Today is Roger Pickled's 18th birthday. For most it’s a passing of an age, towns have big festivals once a year to send everyone to the city for testing to see what tier they will fall into. The tiers are determined by the type of AI you get from the testing. There is an unknown number they all have their own personalities and will help a young diver form their paths. Roger was not one of the kids from a small town he lived by himself since he could remember in the slums of old New York. The only memory of his parents was them hugging him goodbye, his mom was crying, his dad looked scared they left him enough canned food to last a week and he had a water filter that his dad made. It used to make the water taste like strawberries but now it just made it taste funky, his clothes were ragged and he had a pale sickly look to him. He was small with long grimy black hair he had tired back with a bit of old wire he could not remember his last meal. From his window he could see the monolith. The beauty of it was awe inspiring one would never know that it killed 1000s of divers in a year, the mortality rate was worse then the mines. Those were his only two options: he could get his AI and try his hand at delving or he could go sign up for the mines and have his AI reprogrammed to look for the best ore. He would be safer in the mines and he would always have three hot meals and a bed to sleep on, it’s what most slum rats did. The few that choose to try their hands at diving where mostly short lived the lucky few that were not are now counted among the strike teams to clear new monoliths or as most people call them dudgeons. Every town had at least one team bigger areas had more New New York had 6 just due to the population they all had names like the glory griffin’s, the singing harpy’s and the mighty Manicor. Then there was his team the hippogryphs Jake Tammer was from the slums he entered the dungeon which just the clothes on his back and came out 2 months later wearing full samurai armor with a blood red mask to complete the look.he was known as Jake the devil Tammer. He was every slum kid hero. The sun was starting to rise and with it the line to the government AI testing will rise along with it.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

 GAT was always busy there was never a slow day there was only one in each zone, every town sent there 18 and 19 year olds once a year to the city to get tested the trips are hard and even out side of the dungeons monsters spawns are getting worse so some skip a year but you must be tested for your AI by the end of 19 or it can fail to bond there are rare cases where people are found in the wild or something and they don’t have one or even know about them. But those cases are rare.