Two years have passed since the Summoning Era began and the changes have been rather drastic compared to our life before. All I can say is that even this dangerous new existence is far better than what life was like during the war.
We began the New Era with a world population of around a Billion people, made up of all of those who had managed to survive the war so far, with 150 million of those being from North America where Mira and I are from. 12 Monster breaks have occurred since the beginning of the Era, and due to our lack of knowledge and cohesiveness, many were killed in the first few breaks.
The first one was the worst by far, 175 million people wiped out in one day, and the worst part was that many of those casualties were civilians and children killed by monsters who had managed to break through the gates. Mira and I holed up in our house with all lights off and windows curtained to draw as little attention to us as possible, we remained in the dark huddled together hearing the roars of bloodthirsty monsters and the cries of innocent civilians crying out in their final moments before being ripped apart. By the end, after all the remaining monsters had been eliminated, all that was left were; crumbled buildings, bodies of monsters and people alike strewn everywhere, and a river of blood and viscera flowing through the streets.
After the horrendous wake-up call of our new reality, many things changed and we adapted as well as we could. People began to value strength over everything else, organizations and ruling bodies emerged to gather and unify us which served to stabilize society, and to ensure no tragedy occurred like that again monster shelters were built far away from the gate to house the civilians so that they could safely ride out the monster breaks.
As a result of the monster breaks and some infighting, the population is down to around 650 million people worldwide as of now in 2022, with North America only having 100 million people left.
Complete order was established halfway through the first year after the finalization and establishment of the Monster Summoner Association across each of the continental cities. In each continental city was a large guild-like building near the gate which served as the headquarters of the local Monster Summoner Association.
The Association was ruled by a council made up of representatives from each of the continental cities, and together they worked to create rules, regulations, and establish commerce and trade between the cities. The Association mainly served to hand out jobs and bounties, while also buying monster bodies to then sell to any who had use of them, which was mainly the branch organizations of the Association loosely known as craftsmen guilds.
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While cooperation had been established between the continents, many still held grudges from the war and many more were focused on personal benefit rather than coexistence, the only reason the Association came together is that it brought more benefits to share information and goods from across the world than to remain secluded within the continental city.
The craftsmen's guilds are branches of the Association and focus on money, ingredients or monster parts, and information, at the price of a small membership fee they regulate and distribute commerce and instructions/recipes to help benefit society and as a result the Association itself.
The members of these craftsmen guilds can buy ingredients/parts from the guild or post ingredient/part requests for summoners at the Association to fulfill. Many people today are independent summoners who hunt and sell monster cores and bodies for a living, but there are also many who act as soldiers and enforcers for the association during the monster breaks and to keep order within the cities. Many other changes have occurred as well, but those will be mentioned in time as the major changes have already been covered.
On a personal note, all minors, myself included, are required to attend summoner school while also getting an education on core subjects like basic math, reading, and science. The core subjects are similar to the classes before the new era, but with a focus on skills that will be practical for us in this new world.
The summoner portion covers basic skills and information about monsters and summoning, the classes involve; defense lessons, monster and human anatomy, basic monster part harvesting, summon fighting strategies, and a theory class about the many things discovered or declared in these two years about the new world like monster identification, evolution, monster type counters, and developing a diverse summon team. I pay special attention to the theory class and practical lessons all in preparation for when I turn 16 and can become a summoner.
Mira has been working as an alchemist alongside her teacher and has contributed quite a bit too many of his findings. She makes decent money for an apprentice alchemist and collects a portion of the tithes from the recipes she helped discover. Most of the money goes back into her research, you have to spend money to make money I guess, plus we have more than enough to live off of as long as we are relatively frugal and hopefully the situation will be even better when I come of age in a week.
I want an even better life for Mira who has been both my sister and mother figure and hope to repay her by giving her the life she deserves, which she likely would have had if she didn't have to drop out of school to take care of me as soon as she turned 18.
She doesn't work as a summoner due to her weak constitution from overworking herself at such a young age and only keeps her summon around as a companion, so it has remained as a tier 2 smokescreen python. I hope to help evolve it in order to further protect Mira, but that will have to wait until I can provide for and protect myself.