The world up until two months ago was perfectly normal and boring for me. I finished school a few years ago with marks that weren't quite up to the expectations of my family. Not that I found this all that surprising mind you, I never was one much for studying. Instead, I always had my head in a book about some far off fantasy world or playing a game on my computer (PC master race, you know how it is). So, anyway, if at any time I wasn't doing one of the mentioned things that I actually enjoyed in life, that meant I was stuck living in reality. And we all know how fucking boring that is with all the stuff that comes with it. Though to be completely honest, when I wasn't distracting myself from reality with games and books, I was instead busy fantasizing and making a bunch of little plans about how I would do things differently from the protagonist if I was the one in the world of fantasy or post-apocalyptic wasteland. From this brief description of my life, you can pretty much guess that I'm not the most sociable person and if I'm going to be completely honest with myself, I'm kind of a prick. I don't like people and much prefer it when they are anywhere I am not and have nothing to do with me.
Now, as I mentioned, this was only up until 3 months ago when the global phenomenon people are coming to call 'The Pulse' occurred. Personally, I thought it felt kinda cool, imagine that tingling you get down your spine sometimes, but from your feet upwards as if it was coming from the centre of the earth. Which as it turns out, scientists theorise that it did, not sure what caused it, but they are fairly sure something down there caused the world to become suddenly interesting... sorry, caused the mess of the world that we live in today.
Admittedly the world didn't become interesting as soon as The Pulse occurred, it was a slow process. During the first week, everyone thought it was kinda interesting and fun that the whole human population all felt something weird at the same time. All sorts of theories came out, lots of religious signs from lots of different Gods, lots of different aliens or alien parasites that have infiltrated the human race. Even more skeptics that it even was the whole human race on not just a few people and lots of idiots claiming they felt it too just to be part of the fun.
The second week was a bit on the weird side, although nobody connected the incidents at the time. It was a week of unexpected animal attacks throughout the globe, some dog maulings from previously docile household pets. A few hikers going missing or being found dead in the mountains from an assortment of snake or spider bites. We now know this was the preliminary symptoms of animals mutating while adapting to the mana that now permeates the world after the pulse released it upon the world.
The third week was when people started thinking that the pulse wasn't as simple as we all thought, this was the week when some lucky bastards... I mean, people started showing supernatural powers. Videos on the internet showing footage of people manipulating fire or water or moving things with their minds. Cool stuff yeah? Not so much when certain less savory characters got their superpowers and started using them as an excuse and leverage to cause mayhem, kill, rape and generally be massive dicks to society. Of course, not all was lost, the police did their best to maintain order. It was at this point that I convinced my family to stock up on lots of food and water that wouldn't go bad for a long time and started living off rations. Before the Pulse, I wasn't in the best shape, I wasn't fat... but I was definitely overweight. Turns out, living on rations and stress for a period of time really helps slim the waistline.
The fourth week was when we saw the first of what we are calling stage 1 mutant creatures. It was another week of lots of animal attacks, and this time, the animals weren't as easy to put down. Some of these things like the rhino I heard about in the zoo, took a lot more than a few bullets to send to their eternal rest. It was also the week the majority of us average people got our superpowers. Dad got the common grade ability of what people are calling 'Iron Skin'. Pretty simple, an individual finds it a lot harder to get cut by small knives and punctured by small nails, pretty useless against fast moving projectiles like bullets at this stage, but you never know, maybe we can find a way to make it stronger. Mum got Telekinesis, which personally I was a little bit jealous about, because come on, who doesn't want to be able to throw things around the room with their minds. And my little sister got what I suspect to be some sort of animal taming ability, I haven't been able to prove it with anything substantial, but her dog suddenly got a lot more obedient. That thing always was a little shit... As for me, I got an ability I'm tentatively calling Mana Manipulation, though admittedly at this stage its more like mana sensing. I can vaguely sense some areas in my surroundings that seem to have a slightly higher concentration of ambient mana in the air and I am able to locate where in my body my mana is concentrated and can manipulate it to a small extent within my body. Turns out my mana is stored in my brain, no idea at this point if this is the same with everyone, what affect the mana will have on my brain, my whole body, or any other changes that may or may not come with such an ability that I simply have not discovered yet.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Of course, being one of the nerds who spends his time constantly reading about magic and supernatural abilities the first thing I did was try to figure out how best to train and use my ability to my advantage. This culminated in teaching myself to meditate, which is very difficult to do in a world that suddenly became interesting. I wonder if it would have been easier to learn while the world was still boring and there was nothing worth my time and attention doing anyway... Regardless, this took some time to learn, about a week and a half of intensive 6 hours a day sitting doing absolutely fuck all, trying to think about absolutely nothing when people are off learning magic. It fucking sucked. After the eternity it took me to learn meditation, the next step I came up with for my self-training was attempting to move the mana within my body with some modicum of precision, which was even harder than meditation to manage consistently. I ended up spending about half an hour every time I sat down for meditation to slowly attempt to grasp the smallest bit of mana I possibly could and then, after I managed that, slowly move it around my body according to some diagrams that I found on the internet about acupoints and channels or some other mystical shit that I always thought was useless. Turns out, following this was a good way to practice getting mana into every part of my body with some consistency and control. This part of the exercise took me another week and a half before I was confident enough to start using larger portions of mana at a time.
Keep in mind, that at this point none of my exercises had anything to do with spellwork or even getting the mana outside my body to play with which I was getting a little bit pissed about. But I knew that rushing things would not help me and may very well fuck something up ag get me injured. Over the last three weeks that I trapped myself in my room trying to achieve something useful with my ability the world had mostly gone to hell. Small towns and even some cities were controlled by gangs or other such groups of people with abilities banding together to survive what was looking more and more like the end of the known world. This was all according to the radio broadcasts, which was now the only way to communicate with places outside of the safe zone set up by the people in power within the town. Apparently most advanced technology like computers, televisions and more were now useless bits of plastic and metal. Certain old cars still worked due to their level of tech but most were dead on the street and had been salvaged for spare fuel. The town my family and I lived in was, according to my Dad, still at least a bit civilized and not yet overrun by gangs, but things were getting closer to that every day.
The eighth week after the pulse was the week my town, now renamed Johnstown after the local tyrant, got hit by what I'm going to call the week of monsters. Not that the monsters only stayed for a week, I suspect that from now they will be a constant threat of this new world we live in, which is fucking awesome... I mean terrifying. Unlike previously when it was just the natural plants and animals being mutated into magical creatures, sightings came in about what some of the population of Johnstown were calling goblins, ogres, trolls and all sorts of other fantasy monsters.
As for me, in this new world of fantasy, I couldn't be happier. But as excited I was about the magic and the monsters, I suspect that the most dangerous thing around town isn't actually the new things that walk around hunting. No, I think the scariest creature in the apocalypse are the Humans.