Twenty years ago, our world's common sense was defiled.
With the line between real and fantastic blurred beyond recognition, we lost the ability to foresee the future, however faintly.
"The First Contact" shattered the careful tracks history had laid through time. Cause and effect no longer seemed to hold sway, and the world's logic began to unravel.
Detached from all that came before and responsible for everything that came after, not a single soul alive forgot the words she spoke...
[Congratulations, people of Earth.
I, Catherine, Goddess of the Red Night, have kindly chosen to bless your planet.
Rejoice, for you may now claim your Gifts.
Your planet shall be awakened to its true nature.
You are to be welcomed among countless others.
Revel and celebrate.
Pray, and struggle.
As I have chosen you...
Prove to me your worth.]
The same words echoed in every mind throughout the planet, from presidents to children, from the deaf to the indifferent.
We were given no choice but to accept.
It wasn't mass hysteria.
It wasn't a trick of man.
We knew.
But we didn't yet understand.
Mere hours after her message, we began to learn.
Without an ounce of hesitation or respect for what we had built ourselves, she had fulfilled her promise.
With a wave of their hands, people could mend broken bones.
Air traffic control caught humans defying gravity.
Celebrities were flawlessly mimicked in real time, and athletes lost races to previously sedentary men.
In one day, every person on Earth became a stranger to who they'd been yesterday.
Had it not followed our Goddess' words, each case would be more unbelievable than the last.
How could it be helped that so many felt blessed by these miracles?
How could it be helped that so many felt scared by this new reality?
We tried clinging to what we once knew, not realizing the mistake we were committing in trying to make sense of it.
Catherine was accused of being from a more advanced civilization; her powers and what she shared with us? Nothing more than the product of science beyond our comprehension.
Common sense.
Something that no longer dictated reality.
Rather than "how it was done?", the better question was "what is to come?"
Those quick to embrace the new logic that ruled Earth discovered that by focusing their thoughts on the name of their Gifts, they'd be able to summon screens to their minds.
These screens had different menus, often differing between individuals, but always describing the abilities manifested by their Gifts alongside their stats.
Simple things like strength and speed were measured in this screen.
But also, things much harder to quantify, like luck and dexterity.
The most mysterious concept was mana, but the most alarming was, without a shadow of doubt, levels.
That concept implied one thing.
Progression.
We were late to notice, but we had been warned.
Unfortunately, without a corresponding threat, this warning fell on deaf ears.
There were no monsters in our world.
No other races to war with.
No labyrinths or dungeons either.
Earth still resembled what we knew; only humanity had changed.
While some wasted time debating her existence and nature, her claims continued coming true.
A month after we received our Gifts, it was time for the world to awaken.
Earth's changes were, initially, much more subtle.
Large gates, constructed with a straightforward, old-fashioned design of wood and stone, reminiscent of medieval architecture, started appearing around the globe.
Not many, at first.
Enough that it could be called a prank.
And many attention-seekers reveled in it, claiming themselves as the culprits.
However, the structures continued appearing throughout the world.
Randomly.
Sometimes in acceptable places, near forests and mines.
To the unsuspecting eye, they looked like the ruins of the forgotten, or traces of what was still to be built.
Not long after, these gates appeared in slightly more unusual, inexcusable locations.
Some were spotted floating a few meters above the ground, in the middle of a busy street.
Others mocked their vicinity, appearing in the middle of the ocean, with waves crashing against their doors.
Though people were suspicious, these were mostly ignored.
An entire month went by.
The gates hadn't shown any purpose.
The air around them was colder, ominous enough for passersby to avoid them, yet...
Nothing.
Until, abruptly...
The doors opened.
Fate itself bared its fangs against humanity.
The Gates drenched in blood a day that would forever stain our history.
"The First Reminder".
Acceptance and understanding mattered not.
As monsters poured out of the Gates like a never-ending swarm, humanity found the enemy it never asked for.
We had not yet mastered our Gifts.
We fought.
Or rather, we struggled.
Humanity, as a race, suffered its first defeat that day.
Alongside the countless lives, we parted with one of our core foundations: the pride we didn't know we possessed as Earth's apex predator.
But even if only to tell the tale of our own hubris, we survived.
Worse, we learned.
The First Reminder was a periodic event.
We'd have to contend with it.
And we did.
Brave men ventured inside the Gates, searching for revenge and, sometimes, for ways to stop more tragedy.
They discovered that, unless the Gates were overpopulated, the normal monsters inside them couldn't leave.
Thus, we found a way to prevent their havoc.
Or at least, one of the requirements.
Secret rooms were found inside the Gates.
Entering them revealed creatures far stronger than the monsters outside.
Nicknamed "Boss Rooms", we discovered that under conditions still unknown, the "Boss" and its minions could leave these rooms and freely traverse inside a Gate, ascending or descending floors as they pleased.
They could even invade our world without the need for a "Dungeon Rampage", the periodic event where the Gates opened their doors due to overpopulation.
Having learned how to wage war against our enemy, we sought to win.
The interior of the Gates became known as Dungeons, and to prevent Rampages, adventurers began raiding them, killing as many monsters as they could and facing the Bosses inside their floors.
Lesser Dungeons, or "Easy Dungeons", rampaged roughly once a month, with slight variation depending on their associated "Dungeon Level".
This was the minimum time required.
These different timers meant Rampages continued almost every day after The First Reminder.
While smaller in comparison, they were equally tragic to a scarred humanity.
But scarred didn't mean broken.
Ferocious as the monsters were, most, and especially those from Easy Dungeons, were driven almost completely by instinct.
The weak monsters were rarely stronger than an average, unarmed man.
Against an armed humanity, willing and prepared for the fight, our unwelcome guests learned a lesson of their own.
The first time, they had caught us off guard, and we barely resisted.
We stumbled. Arguably, we fell.
From then on, never again.
For the monsters that would die by fist alone, firearms were doom incarnate.
The societies we were so proud of showed exactly why they'd survived for thousands of years.
It took us years of fighting.
It took us blood that shouldn't be lost.
But together, the armed forces and the people prevailed, taking back our world one city after the next.
For the most part.
Many places remained dangerous and challenging.
Mountains and islands, underground caves, or even the bottom of the oceans...
The sky itself wasn't even an exception.
To this day, in many places, Rampages still occur.
To this day, there are Dungeon Gates that have yet to open for the first time.
Our fight is not over yet.
There are still cities left for us to retake from their unworthy claws.
Monsters still attack ships from underwater, claiming lives and disrupting trade.
Away from cities, it's not rare to see stray monsters roaming around, preying on unsuspecting victims.
To call ourselves victors would be spiteful to those who still shed sweat and tears.
We were survivors.
And to continue as such, the government lifted the bans that permitted only armed forces inside Dungeons.
There were just too many Dungeon Gates. It was impractical.
And above all, the people had been emboldened by the memory of their lost ones, the desire to prove themselves, and their own fight for survival.
Nothing could hold back that determination.
Arguing about our safety and security was meaningless.
Not to mention, unreasonable.
The common people, "Adventurers", started risking their lives to enter the Dungeons, hunting monsters and uncovering the mysteries they could.
We adapted, in great part, thanks to the trailblazers who led them.
These trailblazers found the reason why the governments had been so keen on keeping ordinary people outside the Dungeons in the beginning.
When killed, monsters would occasionally leave a variety of items behind, such as weapons or small stones.
The stones could be used as an alternative energy method and quickly became a valuable commodity.
After their actions to monopolize these "Monster Cores" came into question, governments around the world struck deals to buy them from the adventurers.
Other profitable goods such as minerals and crystals continued to be found inside the Dungeons, and to facilitate trade, offices were built to buy and sell these materials.
The economy suffered from a surge of adventurers, but supply and demand won, and prices eventually corrected, allowing other sectors to even the playing field.
Meanwhile, without a clue for what was still to come and the knowledge that our existence could end in a moment, we walked forward.
I was born 18 years ago.
The only reality I had experienced had already blended with fantasy; to me, it was common sense.
I watched with awe the rise and fall of heroes, never allowed to join myself.
That changed.
Everything changed.
The path I walked would have repercussions so massive that the First Contact and the twenty years that came after would seem small in comparison.
Nothing more than a prologue.