In District 12, a young man rested on his bike while looking at the giant wound that scarred the world from the sky to the ground.
Sen took a long drag of his vape as he stared up at the breach, and he wanted nothing more than to not be there. Not that he had a chance against his family.
He may be stubborn, but getting to learn almost every day that stubbornness ran in the family was degrading to him. Still, he heard Rain was here, so it was not a bust.
Might as well make full use of him being here. But there was a nagging suspicion he felt about this breach.
It had been here for five years, and it just now happened that someone claimed to have found a high-tier weapon. The news felt more like bait, and the breach itself was the trap.
Still, if he could put two and two together, then he was sure most of the powerful had the same thoughts—and not only them, but even the government.
Yet even if it was a trap, there was still that maybe, that one percent chance people were overthinking it. And in a world like this, where getting power can turn you into a madman, everyone will risk that one percent.
That was how this world worked. Even him, somehow cautious of everything and everyone, was forced here. He took another drag of the vape to calm his thoughts.
There were a lot of things that could go wrong in this situation, and Sen was betting on something going terribly wrong.
He knew life was not always sunshine and rainbows, like his mantra—expect the unexpected and you will never be disappointed.
Or was it, you will always expect? He was not even sure of his mantra, and to him that was a sign.
Sen was a prodigy among many in his family, and for him to forget something said a lot. Or maybe he was overthinking it, but you can never be too wrong.
Just as he thought about this, Sen got off his hover bike and walked toward the checkpoint. The air was murky and wrong, and the ground beneath his boots was just sand and dust.
Sen wore white and black clothes with a long robe that looked like a jacket but reached his legs, and a katana blade hung at a slanted angle behind him.
When he reached the checkpoint, he gave an officer his card number, and after someone cross-checked it, they let him through.
Sen walked forward where people were still getting ready to go in, and he moved closer to the breach as he looked up at the towering tear in reality.
Looking at it, Sen let out a stream of smoke, and the person beside him looked at him. "Let me guess, you came for the weapon here as well, right?"
Sen looked to his side and saw an older man with glasses who smiled as he looked at Sen. "Wow, Mister Steven, you are here as well."
Wow, how gullible can people be, he thought, but he did not dare say it out loud. Steven, a man in his thirties, just smiled. "Of course I have to be. There is no reward without risk."
"But don’t you think the risk looks like a trap?"
Steven looked at the man beside him. "But you are here."
Sen smiled. "Let’s just say I have no choice."
With that, Sen unsheathed his blade, and the blade hummed with power. He smiled at him. "Besides, I do not take risks I do not have plans for."
With that, he used his blade to tear open a spatial rift in front of the breach, took another drag, and jumped inside.
Meanwhile, energy started to flow together into one as it entered a young man who sat cross-legged under a bush.
Orson looked around at the energy. He was so close, but he could sense Corvin was coming, so he stopped.
Corvin entered their makeshift bush base before leaving five more beast cores, and he let out a long breath before looking at Orson and smiling.
"Orson, I just saw a Ravager core."
Orson looked at him with a sigh. "Sorry, I forgot you don’t know about the monsters."
Corvin continued. "Okay, it is really simple to understand. Really, even me myself, I don’t really know much, but they have the information online."
Orson just looked at Corvin. Everything Corvin said made no sense to him. What was online?
"So what was it again?" Corvin thought as he looked at Orson. "Look, dude, try to keep up because I saw some Wreckers as well."
Orson looked at him. "Wreckers? What are they?"
"Humans who also collect cores like what we are doing, but they have the budget and technology for this while we don’t. And if they get to the Ravagers before we do—"
Orson interrupted. "What is a Ravager, and how do they look like?"
"Ravager is not a beast. It’s a rank. Okay, it’s like this. Humans have seven ranking systems, and beasts also have seven ranking systems.
Humans are Awakened, Resonant, Eclipser, Saint—I can’t remember the last three. And for monsters, the ranks are Aberrant, Dread, Ravager, Calamity, and there are three more which I do not know about."
Orson looked at Corvin, absorbing everything he said before asking, "What power is the beast that opened this breach?"
"Him? I think it is a Calamity rank beast, or the one after. I don’t really know. And oh, they also have classes as well, just like everyone’s life gate.
The monsters also have the same classes, I think. The classes are seven as well, like the life gate."
Corvin counted on his fingers.
"I—Crimson.
II—Amber.
III—Gold, and was it green or emerald that was next? Ohh right
IV—Emerald.
V—Azure.
VI—Indigo, and the last one that the Storm Saint was known for,
VII—Violet."
Orson looked at Corvin as he listened, answering how power works in this world. Corvin looked at him.
"Sorry for dumping so much information, but that Ravager is my ticket out of the mines, so you are in or not?"
Orson just smiled. "I’m in."
Meanwhile, a small tear opened as Sen stepped out of the rift into a world where five suns were shining down on him. He looked down at the screen in front of him.
"Hello, Contractor, and welcome to the Eternal Breach of the Golden Sun Realm."