Chapter 1: HOW DID I END UP HERE
How did I end up here, what am I even witnessing? A war between humans and monsters.
Let me tell you how this happened. I am Kaito, a 24 year old guy and the world's most brilliant programmer and undercover the world's best hacker. When I was a kid, I had an urge to code. I saw movies and saw hackers; I thought they were cool, and it stayed with me. But there was one problem: they would always be caught. So, I thought, how to never get caught and decided to be a programmer that no one would suspect would be a hacker.
One day, I was relaxing at my home after I finished my work. I was very tired and didn't notice that some kind of screen had appeared before me and went to sleep.
When I woke up that day, I was in some kind of forest. I thought I was kidnapped and was very scared, but I composed myself and tried looking for a place. As I was exploring the forest, I stumbled upon a big kind of city which looked like it was surrounded by a big wall. I saw smoke coming from there and went there. That's when I saw it, A WAR BETWEEN HUMANS AND MONSTERS.
---------
As I saw the city, a screen popped up. It was the same screen I hadn't noticed earlier.
"Urgent quest: Kill a single monster. If it isn't completed, the person will die."
I wondered what it was but quickly understood that it was serious. I also realized that I wasn't kidnapped.
As I understood my situation, I remembered that I saw an abandoned house in the center of the forest. I didn't go in because it was abandoned, but I remembered that I saw an axe in there, which could probably be my weapon. I laid out traps in the forest leading to the house and started looking for a monster, but I didn't have any luck. All I found was either a herd of monsters or a very big monster that I probably couldn't beat. In all this, I realized I had run a lot. My stamina ran out in 3 minutes back home, but here I planted the traps and explored for like half a day and wasn't tired. I found a lake and looked at myself; I didn't look like my normal self but another person.
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
As I was searching for a monster, I found a big goblin, different from the others I had seen, but since it was alone, I started luring it into the center of the forest, carefully putting it into the traps. Surprisingly, the goblin didn't seem to get caught in any of them.
As the goblin arrived at the center, my original plan had already been ruined because the goblin didn't fall into any of the traps. So my only choice was to fight it head-on with my so-called weapon—the axe.
I swung the axe, my eyes closed. Seconds later, as I opened my eyes again, the goblin had been cut off in half, its blood splashed everywhere.
As I saw the monster's blood before me, emotions welled up inside me. I felt happiness that I survived, guilt that I had taken a life, and fear at my sudden boost of strength.
The screen appeared before me once again, and this time it said, "You have completed the urgent quest and gained 100 XP. You have leveled up from level 0 to 1. Additionally, you have acquired the requirement to be a 'player' and have gained the privilege to travel between the two worlds using the keywords
A notice had appeared at the bottom, stating, "The urgent quest has been changed to a daily quest. The player must now kill a monster every day. Failure to do so will result in punishment. The severity of the punishment will decrease as the player's level increases."
I knew it was serious and decided to do it every day. After this, I used the keyword 'Return' to return back to my world.
[2 weeks later]
On the news: "Breaking news, there have been door-like things that have appeared all over the world starting two weeks ago, and some people have been getting powers since then. Scientists have been studying both these occurrences, and here are some things that they found out: when the doors turn blue, they change into some kind of a big warp, and people can enter. Its size changes according to its strength; You may wonder by what I meant strength: Well inside these warps there seem to be monsters, and these monsters can't get out of this place. So the scientists called them 'Dungeons'. In the news related to the people who got powers, scientists called them 'Awakened,' and they have also been classified to ranks according to the tests the scientists performed on the Awakened. They have classified them on a limit of power they display, the ranks are E-rank, D-rank, C-rank, B-rank, A-rank and the highest of them all with its limit being 'UNLIMITED',S-rank and there have been 2 S-ranks found in the USA already. They are the world's best runner and chef, Alex "Swiftstride" Johnson and Isabella "MasterChef" Martinez."
"Wait, is this somehow related to me, the other world and the screen?" wondered Kaito
CHAPTER END