After the Rifts opened, all kinds of monsters poured onto Earth. These fantastical creatures seemed born from nightmares; some were feral and lone hunters, while others were organized and strategic.
The world's swift collapse proved unsettling. Survivors developed numerous theories, as the Rifts remained mysterious even a hundred days later. In contrast, rational thinkers considered it an invasion.
The invasion was highly organized; it surgically crippled every global power in a matter of seconds. Even locations not directly targeted by monoliths were swarmed so quickly and overwhelmingly. The White House, the Pentagon, Langley, and Fort Meade were the first to fall in the US, with the White House struck by an off-season frost storm. In Russia, the Kremlin was burned by Dragons, and in the UK, Downing Street was overrun, and a massacre ensued.
The world was dismantled piece by piece in the early hours of the first day, a cataclysm that led to the collapse of global defenses.
Theorists were proven correct when the initially power-awakened humans formed organized groups, assumed leadership roles, and subsequently confirmed their suspicions by capturing Gobzkin Scouts.
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≪ Gobzkin Scouts ≫
[ Monster, Invader ]
Part of The Gobzkin Horde, the green-skinned savages that terrorize, pillage, and kill for sport. Scouts are dangerous in groups but cowardly; if one escapes, it will certainly return with reinforcements.
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The first thing to do when capturing a Gobzkin was to try to find information. Interrogation seemed unlikely as the creature was a savage monster. However, there were patterns of speech in its screeching and shouting, as if calling for help or uttering curses.
Despite that, the creature had to be killed so that paramedics and doctors could dissect it.
Green skin, green physiology, green blood even. It was a completely different biological and evolutionary strain. With the little lab tools available, unusual microbes were discovered in Gobzkin tissues, which heat could neutralize. Given sufficient time and resources, these Gobzkins—even if carrying pathogens or viruses—do not currently appear to pose a threat to human physiology.
Those who, due to food scarcity, wanted to hunt and eat them were now more inclined to do so. However, every aspect of the Gobzkin was disgusting, so only the most desperate resorted to it, yet no records of illness appeared among them.
Conversely, zombies posed a greater threat to human health.
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≪ Host Blighter ≫
[ Dark Host, Invader ]
A survivor's body controlled by a host parasite. The survivor's brain is dead, but the parasite has assumed the body's functions, making it appear alive with a heartbeat and blood flow. The parasite seeks to spread its spores, consume living organisms, and gradually evolve into larger forms, with the Blighter representing its initial phase.
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While most people still called them zombies, they were far from it. The human body was alive, but the brain was hijacked as in sci-fi zombiefications. The hijacker was a tape-like parasite that grows only inside a living body, but once it is extracted and exposed in its true, leafy shape, it dies.
These creatures were aliens that couldn't live on Earth, and they were using humans as spacesuits until they could adapt and evolve. If anything, they were more menacing than the man-eating Gobzkins, and they needed to be eradicated before they spread further.
The Dark Hosts spread through blood contact, so anyone injured had to avoid them. Breathing the air nearby was also ill-advised. The most effective way to eliminate them and their infectious spores was by incineration, using classic Molotov cocktails.
For now, these creatures posed the most dangerous immediate threat to mankind. Aside from them, there were other monsters that were solitary. Large snakes, large wolves, and even giant bugs were some of the most common solitary monsters.
Then came the big ones: the threats that decimated the world, creatures no human could yet deal with.
First, there were the Jotnar, or Frost Giants: titanic figures of varying sizes who appeared with off-season frost storms, their shadowy forms visible at the storm's center. Wherever they went, humans froze to death, armored vehicles stopped, buildings toppled, and humans were taken like loot, disappearing in the storm.
The Jotnar mysteriously appeared in eastern Arabia, freezing the Gulf to cross into Asia and leaving cities like Dubai and Manama utterly ruined. They also appeared in the US and Northern Europe.
The other major threat was the Dragons. Similar to the Jotnar, yet their opposite, they were wreathed in flames. They were twice as aggressive, engulfing the world in a single night and declaring their intent to sow destruction.
The Dragons caused the largest casualties on the first day of the invasion, but they seemed to have gathered and consolidated themselves in Northern Europe, causing great massacres in Russia, Ukraine, and Denmark as they carved out their desired territory.
This is what the most knowledgeable person about the monsters and the invasion knew. His name was Anthony Hendrick, a bioengineering professor from BIT ( Brighthaven Institute of Technology). And he was pondering the things he now knew.
He was one of the lucky ones in this apocalypse, since he was always a solitary man with no family and few to no friends. What he had, however, were his students, who were now suffering in this world of monsters.
He was responsible for over 60 of them at that moment. When the world went to shit, he was the only sane voice they could listen to, and they were all good kids whom he respected. He lost some of them in those abominable three months, but their group was lucky in many things up to that point.
What they were unlucky about, sadly, was that they couldn't get out of Brighthaven City and join the survivors. Their group, after all, was too big, especially after they were joined by so many survivors whom they couldn't refuse. Now, there were over 200.
Keeping that number in check fell upon the shoulders of Professor Anthony and his students. The youthful boys and girls were talented in many things, and some of them were even brilliant strategists. The survival situation renewed the professor's hope every time he saw his students working together as units.
But the thing that weighed on his mind was survival, and surely they all shared his feelings. Resources were running low, and no rescue was in sight. Luckily, the large group of survivors had made it to an old factory building with thick stone walls and iron gates that had fended off many monster attacks up to that point.
Meanwhile, the professor organized scavenging squads of ten survivors that roamed the nearby areas, armed with weapons, looting, and maneuvering to keep the monsters at bay from their hideout.
Three months into the apocalypse, his students were already experts at field tactics. He asked the students with medical experience to limit their movement outside the shelter until they secured more ground and cleared the nearby streets to expand. If they acted strategically, they could finally end the stage of surviving and move into the stage of thriving.
Too many plans, too many factors to consider.
And the knowledge he acquired when he dissected the monsters needed volumes to record.
But the most fantastical thing of all was the appearance of the Runes. Some of his students, who came into contact with certain patterns, started imagining words floating in the air, and they kept calling them System Windows, Character Sheets, and other geek terminology. It couldn't be that those students were hallucinating simultaneously, so he took their words at face value, as they were four of his best students.
This all happened when they acquired weapons and tools from the monsters they killed. Not just any monsters, but those with authority and intelligence over other monsters. This meant that these Runes were the weapon of the enemy as well.
If the situation had been ideal, he would have put more people on studying these runes, but at that moment, the power these runes gave could ensure his group's survival. He sought to know more first, but even he had to abandon caution at times of great need.
Most importantly, these Runes proved that there was a conscious mind orchestrating the monster invasion. This suggested a potentially otherworldly evil, with the Runes System acting as either a counterforce or a neutral entity.
Professor Hendrick rested his back against his chair in his abode, the manager's office in the old factory building. A lot of research papers and monster samples lay around him, and he was near his limits from the work. He was no longer young; four hours of sleep every day for the past hundred days had long since taken their toll.
He could only now lay his head and rest if he wanted, but before he could even do so, fate sent him an encounter he had never accounted for.
His door was knocked on, and he heard news that made him jump out of his chair.
There were visitors…
Not survivors!
Visitors!
Not human visitors!
People from outside this world.