It was a normal Monday like any other.Sdtudents trudged back to school,adults dragged themselves back to work after the short freedom known as the weekend and the world felt comfortably ordinary.My friends and I were chatting about over those two breif days.Jason-my best friend-had spent his entire weekend doing exactly what I did:gaming and binge-watching anime.In fact, I'd stayed up past midnight grinding an MMORPG;roleplaying game called HELLDIVE released by Revolutionary Engines.
By midday,we were seated in class.A handful of students dozing off,others scribbling notes with half-hearted effort.As for me,Menzaki Rin ,I was busy daydreaming about being an Isekai protagonist
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
Three thunderous blasts ripped through the city ,shaking the walls and snapping everyone to attention.we rushed to the windows just in time to see the sky tear open-literally rip like fabric-forming an X-shaped gash across the heavens.
Inside the huge gash floateda single colossal eye, unblinking and ancient, gazing down at us from a sky that had turned a menacing shade of crimson.
Silence fell.Fear,heavy and suffocating,gripped the classroom.
Then the world ended.
A massive pillar of white light erupted from the eye,sweeping across the earth and swallowing everything in it's path.For an instant-maybe a second maybe eternity-there was nothing but blinding light.
When I came to, the world had changed .
Entire sections of our were gone.Dozens of people had simply vanished.My stomach twisted when I realized Jason was amoung them.
I cursed the monstrous eye under my breath for taking
My best friend.
The devastation around us wasover whelming.The school had collapsed into rubble. The city beyond it became wasteland of shattered concrete and twisted steel beams stretching the horizon.Only ruins remained under the blood-red sky,where the gash still hung open like a wound that refused to heal.
The giant eye finally blinked once-and spoke.
''You who remain are deemed unworthy of paradise and are therefore sentenced to elimination as paradise does not need weaklings such as you.However...you may yet serve as a means of entertainment.Be greatful for my boundles mercy weaklings.Very well,it is decide.''
A pulse of crimson light burst forth from the crimson eye's pupil engulfing us once more.
When my vision cleared,the ruins of our former home world were gone.Nowi stood in a white featureless expanse surrounded by what I couldinly assume were survivors -everyone who hsdnt disappeared in the first beam of white light .
A cool,feminine voice echoed all around us.
''Notice:all who are present have been judged weak hence sinful and as such unworthy by he who reigns over this world-PRIMUS.''
A pause.
A hum of statick.
''To earn a chance at paradise,you are required to clear all six hundred and sixty six levels of HELL BOX and obtain the divine key.''