PS: This Chapter will be 1st Person POV....
...
[THRONE OF KNIGHTS SYSTEM INITIALIZING...]
[Soul synchronization: 3%...]
[Soul synchronization: 67%...]
[Soul synchronization complete.]
[Host identified.]
[Welcome, Chosen Sovereign.]
[Your throne awaits.]
[The world has entered an age of monsters, magic, and war.]
[Humanity requires heroes.]
[You have been granted the authority to summon them.]
[You have been granted the authority to summon HER.]
[Female Knight Summoning Function unlocked.]
[SUMMONING...]
[Target acquired.]
[Name: Vanessa Fencer]
[Race: High Human]
[Class: Saintess]
[Rank: A]
[Potential: SS]
[Unique Ability: ###]
[Loyalty: 0]
[Would you like to summon this knight?]
[YES] [NO]
...
Flashback...
Just as the system said, the world has entered an age where magic, monsters, and war are the current norm. My name is Raphael Matthews, and I’m an inhabitant of the current world.
My story is nothing short of amazing. But the beginning of any great story isn’t something amazing.
Why?
...
In a world where people awakened all sorts of attributes, powers, what have you, I was still a normal human. No power, no element, no attribute, and not even the power to summon the weakest F-Tier beast.
I was just... a human. And in this world, being human wasn’t enough.
About three hundred years ago, the first Gate appeared. Nobody knew where it came from. One moment, there was nothing. The next, a massive crack in space had appeared above the city of New Avalon.
Something came through- a monster. Then another, and another. Within hours, the city had become a slaughterhouse. Governments deployed their armies. Scientists tried to understand the phenomenon. Religious organizations called it the beginning of the apocalypse.
They were all wrong.
It wasn’t the end of the world. It was the beginning of a new one.
The appearance of the Gates changed everything. Mana began flowing into our world, causing animals to mutate and plants to evolve.
Dungeons appeared beneath cities, inside mountains, beneath oceans, and sometimes in places where there shouldn’t have been anything at all.
Then came the Awakened, humans who could manipulate mana. Some awakened fire. Some awakened ice. Some could control lightning, earth, wind, shadows, beasts, or even stranger things.
A few awakened abilities which could bend the laws of reality itself. Humanity eventually created a ranking system.
F-Tier, E-Tier, D-Tier, C-Tier, B-Tier, A-Tier, and at the very top, S-Tier. Those people became celebrities, soldiers, adventurers, nobles, politicians, and even kings. They were the people who could walk into a dungeon alone and walk back out carrying a dragon’s head.
They were humanity’s heroes.
And people like me? We were the ones hiding behind them. I wasn’t ashamed of being powerless. At least, that’s what I told myself.
I had grown accustomed to it.
When children around me awakened their abilities at fifteen, I smiled and congratulated them. When my classmates showed off their fireballs and summoned their spirit beasts, I applauded. When my best friend awakened as a B-Tier lightning user, I bought him a cake.
And when I failed my awakening test for the third time, I laughed. What else could I do?
Being powerless wasn’t a crime. Unfortunately, the world didn’t care about that distinction. The strong received opportunities, the weak received warnings, and the completely powerless? We were told to stay indoors whenever a Gate appeared.
That was the only reason I survived as long as I did... until that day. The day everything changed. Or, more accurately, the day everything ended.
It happened in the city of Elysia.
A Gate appeared in the middle of downtown. At first, it was classified as a harmless F-Tier Gate. Then the Gate’s color changed to blue. Then purple, till it ended in black.
The emergency sirens began screaming across the city.
[WARNING!]
[DANGER LEVEL REVISED!]
[GATE CLASSIFICATION: UNKNOWN]
People ran.
Awakened rushed toward the evacuation zones. I was one of the thousands trying to escape. I remember the smell of smoke, the screaming, the sound of glass shattering. Then I remember looking up.
Something enormous was crawling out of the Gate. It had six arms, a body covered in black scales, and a pair of crimson eyes that seemed to look directly into my soul... A monster.
No.
A Calamity.
I had seen creatures like it in documentaries. They were the kinds of monsters that required entire armies to defeat, and one had just appeared in the middle of my city.
People around me froze. Then someone screamed.
"RUN!"
Everyone scattered. I ran too. I ran until my lungs burned. I didn’t look back. I didn’t need to. The explosions behind me were enough.
Boom! Boom! BOOM!
Buildings collapsed; cars were thrown into the air. The streets became a battlefield. Then, I heard someone cry out.
"Help!"
I stopped. I shouldn’t have. Every survival instinct in my body told me to keep running, but I still turned around. A little girl was trapped beneath a fallen piece of concrete. She couldn’t have been older than eight. Her mother was lying several meters away, dead. The girl was crying.
I looked around. There were no heroes, and no Awakened. No one. Just me.
"Dammit..." I ran toward her. I had no powers, no weapon, and no chance, but I ran anyway.
"Don’t worry!"
I grabbed the concrete. It didn’t move. I gritted my teeth.
"Come on..."
But still nothing happened. I pushed harder till my arms trembled, and my muscles screamed. The concrete shifted by a few centimeters.
"Come on!" I screamed. "Move!"
The slab finally lifted enough for the girl to crawl free. I grabbed her and pulled her away. She stared at me with tear-filled eyes.
"Mister..."
"Run."
"But-"
"Run!"
I pushed her toward the evacuation zone. She hesitated. Then she ran. I smiled. At least one person would survive.
Then I heard it, a low growl. I slowly turned around.
The Calamity stood at the end of the street, its crimson eyes fixed on me as though I had stolen its food. I froze, my blood running cold, while sweat literally gushed out of my pores.
For the first time in my life, I understood what true fear felt like.