High above the city, the black void of the first official Gate opened.
Below it, the city woke up to a nightmare it couldn't comprehend.
People were wailing and running helter skelter.
Rio stood in the center of the dried-out stone fountain and just watched.
SCREECH!
The black void above the park finally released some unknown beings.
Small, green-skinned shapes began to rain down from the sky, hitting the pavement with wet thuds.
They were Goblins.
They were the scouts of the Apocalypse, ugly, twisted creatures with jagged teeth and rusted daggers.
Behind them, larger, hulking shadows began to step through the rift. Orc-scouts, three times the size of a man, carrying axes made of crude black iron.
In the old timeline, this D-Rank Gate had been a massacre.
Because there were zero Awakened hunters on "Day Zero," these weak monsters had slaughtered hundreds of civilians before the military even arrived with tanks.
This may seem like the beginning of the apocalypse to them but if only he could tell them that worse was coming.
The park has become chaotic as families who had been out for late-night walks were being hunted.
A group of teenagers was cornered near the swings.
The only sound heard was that of tearing flesh and high-pitched, guttural laughter.
While everyone was running away, desperate to find a building to hide in, Rio began to walk towards where the chaos was happening.
Then a Goblin, its eyes glowing with a feral yellow light, saw him and the first instinct was to attack Rio.
It shrieked and lunged, its rusted blade aimed at Rio's throat.
As the Goblin made to slice him with his blade, Rio's passive mana-shroud of the [God-Tier] rank flickered.
The rusted dagger shattered into a thousand tiny metallic splinters.
The Goblin's arm snapped from the recoil of hitting Rio's aura, and the creature was sent tumbling backward, its chest crushed by the mere pressure of Rio's presence.
Rio's gaze shifted to a scene fifty yards away.
A young mother was trapped and a heavy piece of a fallen billboard had pinned her legs to the pavement.
She was clutching a small child to her chest, her face white with a terror that Rio knew all too well.
Standing over her was a particularly large Goblin, its tongue licking a jagged blade. It raised the weapon high, ready to shove it into the woman's neck.
The woman closed her eyes, waiting for the end.
Then Rio reacted. He simply stepped forward. But his base speed, multiplied by the 1,000x factor of the [Sovereign's Heart], made the concept of "distance" irrelevant.
To the mother, and to the monsters, Rio simply ceased to exist in one spot and appeared in another.
He moved so fast that his movement was invisible to the human eye.
He appeared directly behind the Goblin.
The creature didn't even have time to turn its head before Rio reached out a hand, simply extending his index finger.
With a casual, bored motion, he flicked the back of the Goblin's head.
[Action: Casual Flick.]
[Force: 0.5 Newtons.]
[Multiplier Applied: 1,000x.]
[Energy Pressure: 500 Newtons concentrated on minimal point on opponent's body]
The sound was like a suppressed gunshot, a sharp pop that echoed through the park.
The Goblin's head evaporated.
The little pressure of the flick turned the bone and brain into a fine, green mist.
The headless body of the creature stood still for a second, the rusted dagger still raised in the air, before it collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
Rio looked down at the mother. She opened her eyes, gasping for air.
She looked at the green mist, then up at the young man standing over her in a worn-out hoodie. His eyes were glowing with a soft, violet light.
"Run," Rio said.
His voice was calm, but it vibrated like that of a god, making the woman tremble.
"Go to the subway tunnels and don't look back."
He reached down and gripped the edge of the massive metal billboard that was pinning her.
With a single hand, he tossed the three-ton piece of steel twenty feet into the air as if it were a sheet of cardboard.
The woman scrambled to her feet while clutching her child.
She didn't say thank you because she was too stunned to speak.
She turned and ran as her footsteps echoing in the dark.
Rio turned around to look at the park.
The only living being around was these ugly and terrifying monsters
Over a hundred Goblins and dozens of Orcs had poured out of the Gate.
They had seen what happened to their scout. They stopped their slaughter and turned as one, in order to attack Rio in unison.
A massive Orc, the leader of the scout party, stepped forward. It roared, a sound that shook the leaves off the trees, as it raised a black iron axe that was tall as Rio.
Behind it, a hundred rusted blades gleamed in the violet light of the rift.
Rio didn't try to get a weapon for himself because he didn't have one.
He just stood there, his hands in his pockets, as if he was bored from looking at the goblins.
"One hundred," Rio murmured, his eyes scanning the horde. "I wonder... how many of you it takes to make me break a sweat?"
The Orc-scout charged forward, and the horde followed their leader.