The Villain's Shopping System - Chapter 1 - 0 - Introduction

Chapter 1: Chapter 0 – Introduction

Everything changed on Red Night. It all started that night

In 2050, the world was a different place. The cities glowed with neon lights and technology reached new limits that humanity had always longed to attain. Still, billions of citizens lived their daily lives, unaware of what was going to arrive.

After the sunset of that day, everything changed. A catastrophic event, that became worldwide known as the Red Night, immersed the world in darkness. All the lights in the world went out, and electronic components, industry, and machines, all collapsed as human society fell into this unprecedented chaos.

Every governmental institute was left unresponsive, and voiceless to their peers. As even the most basic radio transmission was impossible as if an electromagnetic pulse of unprecedented length had spread over the entire planet. But it all worsened in the upcoming hours, when the supposed sunrise was finally set free, approaching the different parts of the world on the next day, no light appeared, as if that gigantic sphere of fire disappeared. Instead, in some places of the world we were left with only one thing shining a scarlet light, the blood-tinged moon.

Initially, most scholars theorized that a devastating solar blast was the reason for the fall of the technology, burning out even the most complex circuits, but secretly, the answer was far away from it.

On one of the G7 nation’s territories, the first practical test to seek the creation of a teleportation machine took place. In the computer simulations, everything was going flawlessly, connecting one point of the world to another, and so, those in charge of the test program believed it would be a safe test, which has proven to be far from reality. They indeed succeed in creating teleport technology, at the cost of the release of unknown energy to the world.

Regardless of whether these tests were the cause of the darkness, humanity’s consequences were terrible. Amidst the worldwide chaos, thousands of people died as a result of riots, break-ins, and general fear. Establishments all over the globe were looted, and the government’s loss easily passed trillions.

Seventy-two hours later, the sun was finally back on the horizon again and with the return of the electricity, mankind received a ray of hope. However, the biggest problem that the Red Night brought with it was not technological destruction or even social decay, but something worse.

After a few days, while the government was still trying to understand what had happened that day and how to recover, an unknown portal appeared in the middle of a hospital in southern China. Three of the hospital’s five floors were quickly consumed by purple flames, leaving no trace of the doctors, nurses, and patients on the building. From the rubble of the hospital, a burning humanoid creature emerged. That very night hundreds of similar cases occurred all over the world, and on this day humanity discovered that the Red Night was only the beginning of something much worse than anyone could imagine.

Creatures coming out of mysterious portals were dubbed as Transcendent, for they were beyond anything humanity had ever faced during its entire history, transcending the natural limits of living beings. The nation’s governments affected by the appearance of the Transcendents needed to use all their warlike potential to combat these supernatural creatures in the very first days, and yet this was hardly enough.

These monsters, that were only known as myths, were claiming dominance over our land and slowly turning it into ruins.

A few weeks after the start of the pandemonium with the Transcendents, thousands of people began to be taken to hospitals, as they were suddenly falling asleep.

In the beginning, when the first patients were still coming in, doctors thought that these was just basic cases of narcolepsy, from all the stress and hunger from the days before. But the ones who fell into this deep sleep haven’t woken up since. And after weeks, the cases just kept increasing.

Soon, this symptom of drowsiness followed by the deep sleep became known as Lethargic Encephalitis, a disease with no known cure and so a further danger to the human civilization. As one could not tell how it was spreading, nor how to deal with it.

After two months of the first official diagnosis of Lethargic Encephalitis, the one individual returned to this chaotic world scenario, with even more famine and misfortune ravaging every corner of the earth than when he fell. Just one hour later, 10 more opened up their eyes for no apparent medical reason, these few that returned from that endless dream were called the Awakened Ones.

The Awakenings were sorted as such as they were individuals who, for some reason, managed to wake up from the deep sleep. Following the first year, not more than a few hundred have woken up, and the research into why they were released from that strange state still needed to be carried out by the authorities. After just two months, the first experiment with one of these unusual individuals began, and humanity finally contemplated the dawn of a new hope. It was still far from a cure, but it could be something even better than one.

In Northern Europe, a large horde of Transcendents was moving towards a medium-sized settlement in Norway, and this colony was extremely important logistically as it served as a distribution center for supplies for the entire European Alliance. However, the horde of Transcendent never actually attacked the place, as halfway through, an Awakened jumped out of a plane into the middle of the horde, and completely single-handedly wiped it out in a just few minutes.

Humanity was breathless by that news. The few lucky ones that endured and managed to wake up from the deep sleep were blessed with the powers to fight the monsters coming out of the other world.