You want to know what it was like right after the System started running?
What good does knowing do you?
...It's not exactly a pleasant story, you know.
You still want to hear it?
Hmm. Well, just a little then.
To put it in a word — it was hell.
That about sums it up.
Hell, plain and simple.
Apparently, everywhere you looked, it was like some kind of nightmare.
I was so wrapped up in my own problems that I only heard secondhand what was happening in other regions.
But I can imagine.
First off, any nation that had relied on MA energy as its primary power source was completely helpless.
Think about it.
Imagine if all electricity suddenly vanished in modern-day Japan.
Might as well throw gasoline off the table too, for good measure.
The energy they depended on was simply gone.
And since their entire way of life had been built on it, society naturally fell apart.
On top of that, dragons had been rampaging everywhere, so everything was already in ruins.
As if refugees fleeing devastation weren't enough, now they couldn't even use energy. A double blow.
Recovery was out of the question.
Just surviving each day was a struggle.
The hardest thing for me was food.
In a situation where we barely had enough to eat each day, my constitution required me to take in far more nutrition than an ordinary person.
My companions would prioritize giving me food, but even that wasn't enough.
Children younger than me would hold back their own hunger and offer me what little they had.
I felt so pathetic. So guilty. I wanted to die.
Honestly, I thought about it — seriously — more than once.
But every time, they'd stop me.
"You heard what
I ate while crying.
Even so, it wasn't enough. I chewed on sand to dull the hunger, and I'll never forget the taste.
We lived like that for a while, but then fights started breaking out everywhere.
The cause wasn't so much the System itself as people clawing over the few resources that remained.
Like I said, the food shortage was devastating.
People fought and killed each other over it, and gradually the violence escalated.
If they had that much energy, why not cooperate to break through the crisis together?
Because people prioritize the present over the future. That's just how it works.
They couldn't think of anything beyond grabbing what was in front of them.
The children from our orphanage tried to avoid the fighting, fleeing from place to place.
But sooner or later, you get dragged in no matter what.
Back then, I was nothing but dead weight — I didn't have the strength to fight at all.
Even though the Status corrections existed from the start, they only enhanced what was already there.
When you spend most of your day bedridden, even with Status boosts, you're still below average.
There was nothing I could do.
Then, there was one time when things got truly desperate.
That was when Gobgob and the rest of the guys went off to fight.
We were all survivors of
But just because you survived didn't mean you could live a normal life.
Gobgob only had a few years left to live.
The whole point was supposed to be research to extend lifespans, but what they got were children with green skin whose lifespans were far shorter than normal humans.
Can't really blame anyone for calling them failures.
"I can't really live much longer anyway," he said.
And off he went.
So I gave him my favorite pressed-flower bookmark and told him: "You like this, right? So bring it back to me when you're done."
In the end, he just gave me a vague smile and never came back.
What a coward he was.
Putting on a brave face at the very end like that.
What an idiot.
...What an idiot.
After that, we kept running from the fighting, but it seems the nature of the conflict gradually shifted from a scramble for food to a war between humans and evolved humans.
We were just being tossed around, so I don't know the details of how exactly that transition happened.
But before long, a pattern emerged where humans were attacking the evolved humans.
The evolved humans — what we'd now call the Demon race — had superior physical abilities and better Status stats.
But they were far fewer in number, and initially they had no unity among themselves, so they were on the receiving end of one-sided attacks from humans.
What happened to the food problem, you ask?
Well, between the fighting and the killing, the population dropped, which meant less food was needed. But the biggest factor was the appearance of Monsters.
Monsters? Why Monsters?
Just listen.
Nowadays, Monsters reproduce and multiply on their own, but in the beginning, they just appeared out of nowhere.
I think D probably set them up.
Normally, that would have caused total chaos, and it did to some extent.
But by the time Monsters started appearing, people had already gotten the hang of using Status and Skills.
As a result, Monsters weren't that big of a threat.
The Monsters back then were prototypes too, so they weren't particularly strong.
Monsters would come charging in, but people could take them down easily.
Ironically, other humans were more frightening back then.
And these easily defeated Monsters?
Naturally, you could get meat from them.
You can guess what happened next, right?
Monster, freak, whatever — if you could eat it, nobody cared.
Ironically, the very threat that Monsters posed ended up being a salvation rather than a crisis.
Well, once people had that breathing room, the movement to suppress the Demon race began.
The cornered Demon race was driven north on the Kasanagara Continent, where they united and counterattacked.
And from there, as you probably know, that's where the long history of conflict between the Human race and the Demon race began.
It did take a considerable number of years to reach that point, though.
And the quagmire of warfare before that was truly awful.
I may have mentioned this before, but the first Demon King was a vampire.
This Demon King was terrifying — he wasn't that strong himself, but he used the unique abilities of vampires and cunning tactics to amass followers and attack the people.
It was like he was out to slaughter every last living thing.
If the Human race and the Demon race had united, history might have turned out differently. But unfortunately, it became a three-way free-for-all.
Well, not even a proper three-way — nobody knew who was a friend and who was an enemy.
The children from our orphanage eventually split apart too.
There was a faction that believed they should help people, following Sariel's teachings.
And a faction that believed they should fight to rescue Sariel as quickly as possible.
Like I keep saying, all of us from the orphanage were survivors of Potimas's experiments.
Some of us were complete failures like me and Gobgob, while others were partial successes — half-successes, if you will.
Some had superior physical abilities or special talents.
Combined with Status and Skills, they could outperform ordinary humans.
We'd been children during the days of fleeing, but we grew up over the years.
Huh? I didn't grow?
Ha ha ha. What on earth are you talking about?
Look at me — I've grown up splendidly!
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Ahem!
Anyway, back to the story — the orphanage children split cleanly in two and went their separate ways.
Did you know? The first Hero and the first Saint both came from our orphanage.
Of course, none of them are left anymore. They either died in battle or passed away peacefully.
Most of them, in their final moments, made a sacrifice.
They refused Reincarnation and offered their entire souls as energy to the System.
Every last one of them disappeared like that.
What an idiot.
...What an idiot.
Think about those of us left behind for once.
Unlike you people, I can't fight.
I can barely manage just staying alive.
And while I was lying in bed, they all just... vanished.
And the one who was left at the end was a useless thing like me. How does that even make sense?
On top of that, for reasons I don't understand, I've stopped aging.
Whether it was the System's influence, or Potimas's research quietly bearing fruit in the background.
Or maybe both.
I don't know the truth, but I stopped aging right from the start of the System.
That's why I'm still alive today.
And the constitution that tormented me for so long has been overcome by Status and Skills.
With the Gluttony Skill, I can eat anything, no matter how much. The toxins in my body are broken down by the System and cease to be produced.
My Status has been climbing slowly over the long years — from ordinary, to above average, and then further still.
And that's how I am today.
I'm sure Potimas must have been furious that the one he threw away achieved the immortality he'd been aiming for.
"If only I hadn't discarded her back then!"
I bet he was thinking things like that.
On that one point, serves you right!
Hmm? What was Potimas doing right after the System started running?
Search me.
He vanished from the public eye for a while.
What you'd call laying low.
Just when I thought he was finally staying out of trouble, suddenly the new race known as Elves had permeated all of society.
Completely out of nowhere.
That kind of behind-the-scenes maneuvering — that's the one thing he was genuinely brilliant at.
Well, that's roughly what the aftermath of the System's activation looked like.
So?
That wasn't exactly a feel-good story, was it?