Over 140 years ago, a war between mankind and outer dimensional abominations occurred on Earth. At first humanity was losing. Countries were getting destroyed, society was on the edge of crashing.
Horrors - creatures which came out of portals which randomly appeared on Earth. These creatures varied in sizes and appearances and had one thing in common. They possessed different abilities which made them a deadly scourge fallen upon humanity. However, when humanity was at the very lowest and was about to lose, someone discovered that people could also learn these abilities from horrors, to fight them. Using the very abilities learned from the creatures, humanity managed to win the war which lasted several decades, close the tunnels and rebuild the society with the new gained abilities.
It is now 2145. Humans had rebuilt. However, to avoid mistakes made in the past, there are no countries left. The one government which controls all. No territories are forbidden but are controlled by different groups of people.
After the war had ended, those who had most power, created clans and different organizations to control the tunnels. Tunnels are no longer a threat but still continue to appear on Earth.
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A hot summer day, Atlas, a 16 year old boy, is lying on the roof of a random building. The city was not a major one, so it does not have any tall skyscrapers and this very particular building opened up quite a good view of the city.
“How boring!” Atlas screamed in his mind “This sh*tty little city offers little to no entertainment!”
He was lying on the roof of a 3 story building, looking at the river bank.
Taking out his phone, he hoped to see something exciting on the news.
Discount prices for meat and pasta at the local store makes old people happy!
A boy who saved a kitten which fell into the river was awarded with a medal and 10 kg of rice. Read more…
Town of Ameli’ is celebrating its 100 years, visit the town square today!
“Wow, this wannabe town is a century old already, would not believe it if I was told, to be honest” he thought, reading the news headlines “It was named after one of the war heroes, if I recall correctly”.
The town Atlas is living in is a small town built on the river. It was a quiet and calm town with nothing much going on. It was by no means a rural place, since it had every piece of comfort a large town had, but the population was about 100000. It was still bigger than most of the other towns out there, but Atlas disliked it nevertheless.
The quality of a city is determined by many factors, but the most important one is tunnels. It was an important criteria for hunters to settle around. The more high level tunnels there are in the city, the better. Town of Ameli’ only had one low level tunnel. Even though it was created by one of the war heroes - Amelia Bellarosa.
“Then why on Earth is it so small and unpopular!”
He screamed and sighed.
“Nothing is really going on here…”.
As he was to finish his sentence he heard a loud boom somewhere down on the streets.
“Alright, someone is definitely reading my mind” He was obviously surprised by this turn of events.
Looking down the building, he saw two people fighting against each other.
“Fight between two hunters? Interesting.” He was somewhat excited since this was not a common occurrence.
“Fights are usually resolved before they become somewhat interesting due to high level police, but since this is a small town, there might be a chance this will escalate somewhere.” Atlas thought.
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“I will make you pay for your words, don't you dare speak of us in that tone ever again!” one of the fighters shouted. He had his hair styled back and for some reason they were green.
His opponent was much more modest with his appearance.
“I only said the truth, you are the one making a fuss about your beloved Montcalm family” the second fighter answered as his hands started to spark. He immediately pointed his hands towards his enemy. Short clapping sound was heard along with the bright flash. Green haired man no longer had his hair back and now they were pointing up.
“Spark, a low level ability mainly used to stun an opponent. It is rarely used as an offense. Mediocre at best. Why was I expecting some cool abilities to see?” Atlas was a bit disappointed, as he was expecting to see some high level abilities.
“Although for me any ability would be a blessing”.
Atlas did not have any ability, since he was not a hunter, nor had any of his relatives being hunters. The only way to get an ability was either to absorb a Horrors power core (a special organ of horrors, which controls their aura distribution. There is a small chance of killing the horror and not damaging its power core) or to mimic the aura of a horror, a very hard and long process which is still quite unknown to people.
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While his opponent was stunned for half a second, Spark user ran towards him and made a hard uppercut on the stomach. The hit was hard and it looked like the green haired guy was done for good. He fell onto his knees, holding his stomach.
“You are as weak as your family, it seems like kneeling is the only thing you are good at.” mocked the winner of this fight.
“Go to hell!”. It was the only thing a green haired person said, before a strong heat wave hit the spark user. Milliseconds after the heatwave, a large explosion appeared out of nowhere.
This explosion was very loud and it already caught the attention of other people. However unlike most explosions, this one was without any smoke after.
“This at least should’ve made him faint” thought the green haired guy. “there is no way he…”
not having time to finish he was grabbed by the throat.
“Now you really got me angry,” spark user who had part of his clothes burnt said. It was quite visible that he was very irritated but there was no visual mark of wounds of any kind. “Let me teach you two lessons. Lesson number one:” he said it as
He punched a green haired guy in the face. Blood splattered all over his fist
“this pathetic parody of an attack will result in nothing, since every decent hunter has a strengthening ability”
Although Atlas could not hear what they were talking about, he could see that the explosion had no effect despite looking very strong.
“He must have some kind of strengthening ability”
There was no clear limit of how many abilities one could obtain. It varied from person to person, but the maximum known number of abilities was 7. It was quite a large number, especially if all those were high level abilities.
As the spark user charged his second punch he said “Lesson number two, know your goddam place!” Second punch was much stronger than the first one and resulted in more blood splattering.
He kept punching his already defeated opponent more and more. Although people around did not like it, they didn't have the guts to stand up to a strong hunter.
“This is awful!”
“How cruel”
“Someone stop him!”
“Is this what will happen to the weak? To us?”
All the different thoughts that were not said occurred in the mind of people watching this brutal scene.
As the hunter was about to punch the poor guy one last time to finish, suddenly, a small bang was heard and water splashed all over the hunter's head. Shocked hunter looked down to see what had hit him. It was exploded by an impact water bottle. Someone threw a water bottle onto his head. Already angry, now furious, the hunter looked up to see a boy on the roof of a nearby building.
“Get the Hell down here!” He demanded, trying to charge his spark and shoot it at the boy.
“Well, I am pretty sure I angered him, but I should be able to escape to the next building and hide. Pretty sure I know the place better than him. Plus, he doesn’t know my name, does he? Hope the other guy is alive…” Atlas planned his moves with precision, a precision a 16 year old boy could achieve.
“Is that Atlas?”
Someone from the crowd said out loud, looking at the roof of the building.
*Atlas?* The hunter thought *Well, you are dead meat, just you wait*
Although the guy who got beat up didn’t run away while the hunter was focused on Atlas, the hunter no longer had any mood to finish him off and just left.
“Why did he leave?” Since Atlas was not hearing what was said down there, the situation was quite strange for him. “Well, I guess he just could bother”.
Relieved by the ignorance, Atlas jumps to the next building, fleeing the scene.
“That is the most I can do, the most weakling like me can do. I wish there was a chance i could grow even a little bit stronger, I wish there was something bright, at the end of the tunnel I am going right now”
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Authors note:
This is the first work of mine, I hope some of you will find it somewhat interesting and will travel with me this new journey.
Thanks for reading, end of chapter one.