Seventy years ago, the world ended.
Not in fire or flood, not through war or disease, but through a phenomenon that humanity would come to call the Advent, a fracturing of reality itself.
On November 3rd, 1955, the sky above Tokyo split open like torn canvas, revealing a churning void of impossible colors. Within hours, rifts appeared across every continent, tearing through the fabric of space as easily as paper.
From these wounds poured forth nightmares given flesh: creatures of fang and claw, of shadow and flame, of geometries that hurt to perceive.
The first wave killed millions.
The second wave changed everything.
As humanity teetered on the brink of extinction, something fundamental shifted. Men and women began to awaken. Their bodies flooded with an energy the scientists would later call "mana." Their souls were inscribed with what could only be described as a system.
Classes emerged. Warriors who could cleave steel. Mages who commanded the elements. Rogues who moved like ghosts.
Humanity, bloodied and broken, finally had the means to fight back. But the world that survived was not the world that had been.
Tokyo, once a sprawling megalopolis of ordered streets and precise architecture, had transformed into something altogether more chaotic.
Skyscrapers still pierced the sky. Now they stood shoulder to shoulder with crystalline dungeon gates that pulsed with otherworldly light.
The Shibuya Crossing, once famous for its organized chaos of pedestrians, now featured Guild checkpoints where delvers registered for contracts before venturing into the rifts. Neon signs advertised healing potions alongside ramen. Subway stations connected not just districts, but dimensional pockets where monsters bred and treasures waited.
The Guild, formally the International Delver's Association, Japan Branch, had risen to manage this new reality.
They oversaw everything: the classification of dungeons, the licensing of delvers, the formation of parties and clans. They were government and corporation fused into one, equal parts bureaucracy and military operation. Guild towers dominated every major city, their black spires crowned with monitoring equipment that tracked every active gate within a hundred kilometers.
At the heart of this transformed Tokyo, buried beneath the entertainment district of Roppongi, lay the Abyssal Dungeon.
It was Japan's shame and its obsession. A wound in the earth that descended not meters or kilometers, but seemingly without end.
The Guild had been mapping it for forty years and still hadn't found the bottom. What they had found were over three hundred distinct floors, each deadlier than the last, each filled with monsters that had claimed thousands of lives.
The Abyssal Dungeon didn't just kill. It consumed. Nine out of ten delvers who ventured past the fiftieth floor never returned. Their bodies were never recovered. Their souls, some whispered, were never released.
The Guild maintained a permanent garrison around its entrance: a massive complex of reinforced concrete and enchanted barriers, bristling with automated defenses and staffed by elite forces.
Entry required special clearance. Exit, for many, proved impossible.
Yet still they came.
Delvers drawn by glory, by wealth, by the desperate hope that maybe, just maybe, they'd be the ones to conquer the unconquerable.
The Abyssal Dungeon's treasures were legendary. Weapons that could reshape reality. Armor that granted immortality. Skill books containing magic lost to time.
The price was merely your life.
Nozomi Hayashi sat on the edge of her mattress, little more than a futon worn thin by years of use, and stared at the water damage spreading across her ceiling.
The leak had started three weeks ago. She'd reported it to the landlord twice. Nothing had changed except the size of the stain, which now resembled a grotesque flower blooming in reverse, petals of mold spreading outward from a central point of rot.
Her apartment in the Adachi ward was six tatami mats of peeling wallpaper and persistent dampness. The kitchenette consisted of a single electric burner and a refrigerator that hummed like an angry wasp. The bathroom was shared with three other units on her floor. The windows overlooked an alley where the dumpsters overflowed every Thursday and remained that way until Monday.
It was all she could afford.
Level 25. Cleric class. Seven years of delving, and she had barely scraped her way past the threshold of mediocrity.
Her healing magic was effective. She'd saved countless lives, pulled parties back from the brink of annihilation, but it wasn't flashy. It didn't draw crowds. It didn't make the news feeds or attract sponsorship deals.
Healers were necessary but unremarkable, the oil that kept the engine running but never earned credit for the journey.
The Guild paid support classes like her a fraction of what damage dealers received. Her last contract, a three-day expedition into a C-rank dungeon, had netted her forty-eight thousand yen. Roughly four hundred dollars.
Barely enough to cover her sister's medication for the month, let alone rent, food, and utilities.
"Onee-chan?"
The soft voice pulled Nozomi from her spiraling thoughts. She turned to find her younger sister standing in the doorway, wrapped in a blanket despite the summer heat.
Yui was twelve years old and looked like a ghost. Her skin held the translucent quality of fine porcelain, stretched too tight over delicate bones. Dark circles ringed her eyes, eyes that should have sparkled with the mischief of youth but instead held a weariness that made Nozomi's chest ache.
"You should be sleeping," Nozomi said, forcing brightness into her voice that she didn't feel.
"I heard you come in." Yui shuffled forward, the blanket dragging behind her. "How was the dungeon?"
"Fine. Easy, even."
The lie came smoothly. Nozomi had learned to lie about her work years ago, had perfected the art of making hell sound mundane. "Made enough for this month's medicine and then some."
Another lie. She'd have to skip meals again this week. It was fine. She was used to hunger.
Yui's expression suggested she wasn't fooled, but she didn't press. Instead, she settled beside Nozomi on the futon, her small body radiating the fever that never quite left.
Mana Wasting Syndrome, a cruel byproduct of the Advent. Some children, particularly those born near active gates, developed an immune response to ambient mana. Their bodies treated the energy that gave others power as a poison, slowly destroying them from within.
The treatment was expensive. The cure didn't exist.
Doctors gave Yui three years, maybe five with aggressive management. That prognosis had come two years ago.
"I'm going on a big job tomorrow," Nozomi said, wrapping an arm around her sister's shoulders. "B-rank party. They're paying support classes triple the standard rate."
This, at least, was true.
Yui's eyes widened slightly. "B-rank? Onee-chan, that's..."
"I know." Nozomi squeezed her sister gently. "But the party leader is experienced. It's a search and rescue operation, nothing too dangerous. We're just retrieving some lost delvers from the upper floors of the Abyssal Dungeon."
"The Abyssal Dungeon?" Yui's voice dropped to a whisper, as if speaking the name too loudly might summon its horrors. "People die there."
"People die everywhere," Nozomi said, then immediately regretted her bluntness. "But not me. Never me. I promised I'd take care of you, didn't I? I don't break my promises."
Yui leaned against her, the weight somehow both substantial and fragile. "You'll come back?"
"Always."
They sat together in the dimness, listening to the sounds of the city beyond their walls: the distant rumble of trains, the wail of sirens, the electric hum of a world that had learned to function despite the impossible.
Somewhere out there, gates were opening. Monsters were emerging. Delvers were dying.
And Nozomi would join them tomorrow, descending into the dark with strangers who saw her as little more than a walking first aid kit.
But if she came back, when she came back, she'd have enough money to give Yui another month. Another week. Another day.
That was enough.
It had to be enough.
The Guild complex in Roppongi was a study in controlled chaos.
Delvers crowded the main hall, a vast space of polished marble and holographic displays showing real-time dungeon status across the Tokyo metropolitan area.
Red indicators pulsed where gates had recently opened. Green markers showed cleared dungeons awaiting reset. Yellow warnings flagged areas of unusual activity.
The Abyssal Dungeon's indicator was permanently black.
Nozomi pushed through the crowd, her Guild ID badge clutched in one sweaty palm.
She had dressed in her best gear, which still looked shabby compared to the armored figures surrounding her. Her cleric's robes were clean but faded. The enchantments were worn thin by years of use.
Her staff, a simple length of ironwood capped with a minor mana crystal, marked her as exactly what she was. Low-level support struggling to stay relevant.
The party she had been contracted to join waited near the Abyssal Dungeon checkpoint. Nozomi felt her stomach clench as she approached them.
They looked like gods.
The leader, Daichi Kurosawa, stood at the center with the casual confidence of someone who had never known real failure.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, his midnight-blue armor inlaid with silver runes that pulsed with power. Above his head floated his class designation, Bladestorm Warrior, Level 47, in crisp system text.
A massive greatsword rested against his shoulder as if it weighed nothing.
To his left stood the mage, Akane Sato, Level 44, with the title Pyromancer etched beneath her name in letters that seemed to flicker with flame.
She was beautiful in the way fire was beautiful, dangerous and compelling. Her robes were crimson silk, probably costing more than Nozomi's entire apartment. She examined her nails with studied disinterest.
The rogue completed the trio. Kenji Mori, Level 45, Shadowblade. Lean and sharp-featured, his eyes tracked movement like a predator. Twin daggers hung at his waist, their hilts wrapped in what looked like actual shadow.
And then there was her. Nozomi Hayashi, Level 25, Cleric. Invisible.
"You're the healer?" Daichi's eyes swept over her dismissively. "You're smaller than I expected."
"I'm qualified," Nozomi said, hating how defensive she sounded. "I've been healing for seven years."
"At Level 25," Akane said, dripping with disdain. "What have you been doing for seven years, taking naps between dungeons?"
Kenji snorted. "Maybe she's been dying. Would explain the low level."
Heat flooded Nozomi's face. She bit back the response that wanted to claw its way out. She needed this job. Desperately. Enough to swallow her pride and endure whatever casual cruelty they wanted to dish out.
"I pull my weight," she said quietly.
"You'd better." Daichi turned back to the checkpoint. "We're not getting paid to babysit. You keep up and you keep us alive, or we leave you behind. Clear?"
"Crystal."
The descent into the Abyssal Dungeon began at the checkpoint. Guild officials verified their contracts and equipment.
A massive elevator, large enough to hold fifty people, carried them down into the earth. The walls were reinforced concrete embedded with suppression crystals that flickered as they passed each floor marker.
"So what's the actual job?" Nozomi asked. "The contract said search-and-rescue."
"That's right," Daichi said without looking at her. "A party went missing around floor thirty-five. We're going to find them or what's left of them and bring them back."
Floor thirty-five. Nozomi's hands tightened on her staff. She had never been past floor twenty. Most clerics hadn't.
The mortality rate climbed exponentially after the thirtieth floor, where monsters stopped being deadly and became apocalyptic.
"Is that safe? For my level, I mean?"
"You'll be fine," Kenji interrupted. "Just stay in the middle of the formation and heal when we tell you to heal. Even you can manage that, right?"
The elevator shuddered to a halt at floor thirty. The doors opened onto nightmare.
The Abyssal Dungeon didn't look like a dungeon in the traditional sense. It wasn't dressed stone corridors or torch-lit chambers. Instead, it resembled an enormous cavern system.
The walls were composed of some black substance that absorbed light and seemed to writhe when viewed peripherally. Bioluminescent fungi provided the only illumination, casting everything in sickly shades of green and blue.
The air was thick and wet, carrying the copper tang of blood and something else, something ancient and rotten.
They moved through the darkness in formation. Daichi at the front, Kenji ranging ahead as a scout, Akane in the middle, with Nozomi beside her.
The mage stayed several feet away, as if poverty might be contagious.
Small signs of the missing party appeared as they descended. Scorch marks on the walls. Discarded equipment. Dried blood.
They found the first body on floor thirty-three, a warrior whose armor had been peeled open like a can. What remained inside was not suitable for viewing.
"Poor bastard," Kenji muttered, rifling through the corpse's pouches. "Probably didn't even see what got him."
"Shouldn't we…" Nozomi started, then trailed off as Kenji pocketed a handful of mana crystals.
"Shouldn't we what?" Kenji's eyes glinted in the fungal light. "Guy's dead. Not like he needs currency where he's going."
By floor thirty-five, Nozomi's nerves were screaming. Every shadow seemed to harbor monsters. Every sound echoed with threat.
She had burned through three mana potions just maintaining her detection wards, feeling for danger in the oppressive dark.
"This is wrong," she said as they entered a particularly large cavern. Its ceiling was lost to shadow.
"The contract said the missing party's last known location was floor thirty-five, but there's no sign of them. No bodies. No equipment. Nothing."
"Maybe they made it deeper," Akane suggested, though her tone suggested disbelief.
"Or maybe," Daichi said slowly, "they were never here at all."
Nozomi's blood went cold. "What do you mean?"
He turned to face her fully. Something in his expression made her take an involuntary step backward.
"There is no missing party. Never was."
"I don't understand."
"Of course you don't," Kenji moved to flank her. "You're Level 25. You don't understand anything."
Panic flooded Nozomi's system, her instincts screaming danger even as her mind struggled to process what was happening.
"The contract…"
"Was a fabrication," Akane said, examining her nails. "There's a boss monster that spawns on floor thirty-six. Very valuable drops. Unfortunately, it is also very aggressive. Attacks the strongest target first."
"Unless," Daichi continued, "there is weaker prey to draw its attention."
The realization hit Nozomi like a physical blow.
"You're going to use me as bait."
"Smart girl," Kenji said, grinning. "Not smart enough to avoid the trap, but still. It is almost a shame."
"You can't…" Nozomi raised her staff, mana flooding her channels as she prepared to cast something, anything.
Daichi moved faster than her eyes could follow. One moment he was five feet away. The next, his gauntleted fist crashed into her stomach with enough force to crack ribs.
The air exploded from her lungs. Her staff clattered to the stone as she collapsed, unable to breathe, unable to think through the white-hot agony radiating from her core.
"Nothing personal," Daichi said. "But a healer's share of the boss loot versus buying an expendable one? The math is simple."
"Please…" Nozomi gasped, each word an exercise in torture. "My sister… she needs…"
"Oh, this is sad," Akane stepped forward, fire blooming between her fingers. "Should we put her out of her misery first?"
"Where's the fun in that?" Kenji pressed his daggers against her throat. "Let the boss do it. More authentic that way."
They dragged her deeper into the cavern, toward a massive chasm that split the floor.
The drop disappeared into absolute darkness. The air rising from it carried the stench of decay and something else, something that made Nozomi's primitive hindbrain shriek in terror.
"Any last words?" Daichi asked.
Nozomi tried to speak, tried to beg, but her broken ribs made breathing agony and words impossible. Blood filled her mouth, coppery and warm.
"Didn't think so." Daichi nodded to Kenji. "Do it."
The rogue kicked her legs out from under her. Nozomi fell to her knees at the chasm's edge, swaying.
Behind her, she heard Akane chanting, felt the buildup of magical energy that preceded a fire spell.
"Wait," Daichi said. "Let me."
He stepped forward, boot rising, driving toward her chest with lethal intent. She tried to dodge, tried to raise her arms, tried to do anything.
The impact launched her backward, over the edge, into the abyss.
The last thing she heard before the darkness swallowed her was their laughter, echoing like the cry of carrion birds.