As Aron stepped out of the hospital, the world around him felt foreign and unrecognizable. That morning, the atmosphere of the city was vastly different from his memories of ten years ago.
Where was the hustle and bustle of people rushing to work and the vehicles speeding along the paved roads? Now, all he saw were dusty dirt roads, sometimes muddy after the rain, and simple buildings that looked fragile.
What existed now was merely a city with a few basic residential structures, a hospital, and a military school—or one could say a military camp.
The city, spanning about fifty square kilometers, felt small and isolated amid the great changes that had swept across the world. Since the event of December 12, 2012, a doomsday prediction that many had dismissed as a joke had become a reality.
Not a dramatic apocalypse with mountains flying and oceans splitting, but a great tremor that changed everything. Mountains erupted, the ground cracked, and tsunamis struck. After that disaster, the world seemed eerily quiet, but the roar of monsters began to echo across the land.
Suddenly, monsters of sizes and shapes never seen on Earth began to enter the city, destroying everything in their path.
All kinds of monsters with strange forms started to emerge everywhere, wreaking havoc on anything they encountered. Some even reported seeing a giant bird larger than a Boeing airplane engulfed in flames appearing in the sky. Then came dragons and mythical creatures that had never been seen before, emerging one by one.
In the chaos, humanity began to experience a drastic decline. But that was just the beginning of a tragedy.
Superpower nations mobilized their military forces to exterminate these creatures. However, how could humanity contain the chaos when their modern weapons could not harm these beasts at all?
In the end, the leaders deployed heavy artillery, including tanks, fighter jets, missiles, and even nuclear weapons to fight back. However, it was like adding salt to a wound. With the deployment of these destructive weapons, some creatures that had previously remained still began to move.
Destruction and chaos became uncontrollable; battles and wars that no one had ever imagined finally occurred. The already chaotic state of the Earth worsened, and humans who had initially survived the initial tremors could no longer endure.
In just two years, about seventy percent of six billion people perished and could no longer die. Meanwhile, the remaining thirty percent had to continue fighting just to maintain their survival.
But how could humanity fight back when the strongest weapon they had, nuclear weapons, could not kill all those giant monsters?
Moreover, after four years, when humanity was reduced to only thirty percent, divisions among humans began to occur. It started when some of the remaining humans began to evolve and become something else. Some transformed into half-human and half-animal, while others became extremely intelligent and incredibly strong, with some said to be able to fight evenly with the foreign monsters.
Ideally, with such power, these chosen humans should have fought for the survival of the others, but the opposite happened.
No one truly knows the depths of the human heart!
These people went mad and exploited their abilities for their own interests. Killing and plundering fellow humans was no longer taboo but had become commonplace. One could say that with the threat of monsters and humanity, those who did not experience evolution felt what true apocalypse and hell were.
At that time, humanity was truly on the brink of extinction. Fortunately, God still showed mercy.
Just when humanity was reduced to only twenty-five percent, a god, goddess, savior of humanity, or whatever it was, suddenly appeared and stopped the chaos.
In just one year, someone whose gender was unknown completely halted the chaos that had persisted for five years. Even more remarkably, this savior did not use violence at all, so humanity no longer experienced a decline.
It was said that when someone saw this savior, anger, hatred, complaints, and other negative feelings suddenly vanished into thin air. Even if it was a monster, just by seeing it and hearing a few words, everything became peaceful.
In the end, under the leadership of one person, humanity reunited and was reorganized. The war ended, chaos subsided, and territories began to be divided between humans and monsters. From that moment on, the Earth was no longer solely owned by humans but was shared with monsters that came from who knows where.
Since then, humanity was no longer at the top of the food chain but rather the lowest link in the food hierarchy.
Fortunately, under the careful leadership of the early hero, humanity began to develop its abilities and fight back. Although they could no longer dominate the Earth's resources as they once did, at least humanity could still survive and thrive.
Even though there was no such thing as a nation, president, monarchy, or constitution, under one person's guidance, human cities were finally built and became civilizations protected by the strong.
The City of Clouds, where Aron resided, was one of them. Now, ten years after the initial chaos, everything had returned to normal; children could go back to school, and life resumed its usual course.
However, at this time, only those with special abilities were valued, while people like Aron, who had no abilities at all, could only wait to live and be buried.
"Why was I born in such an era?" Aron sighed and began to lament his situation.
Moreover, for the past ten years, he had struggled just to survive. After all, before Jia Chen, Aron's sister, experienced the same strange illness, their mother had gone through it first. After five years of not knowing what the illness was or what the cure was, their mother passed away.
Now, after their mother, Aron's sister was experiencing the same thing, and even more so, it had been four and a half years. If no miracle occurred, Jia Chen had only half a year left.
As for Aron's father, he had died while fleeing to the City of Clouds, and as the head of the family, he had fulfilled his duty to bring his wife and children to find a place to live.
So, for the past ten years, Aron had become the backbone of the family. At the age of just ten, he had struggled to support himself, his younger sister, and even cover his mother's medical expenses.
Time continued to pass, and he still had to fight for his sister's life, and even the medical expenses for the past two months had to be paid. As for the money he had...
Aron rummaged through his pocket and found only ten Marks.
"Hey..."
He let out a long sigh, trying to shake off the despair gnawing at his heart. With determination, he stepped onto the path he knew, seeking a way to earn money for his sister's medical expenses.