[Year 2083 : Frenzy Forest - World Tree]
The forest was filled with goblins.
Dozens of them.
Growling. Screeching. Sharp teeth, sharper blades.
In the middle of it all, one guy was laughing.
"Catch me if you can, you fungus-faced freaks!"
Seo Min Jae flipped over one goblin's head, ducked under another, and moonwalked across the puddle.
Not a single scratch on him.
Yet.
"I'm over Here!... No, here!... Wait—psych! Missed again, suckers!"
He backflipped off a rock, spun mid air, and landed with his tongue out.
Posing as he pisses off the goblins.
"Too slow, you're all so slo—OW."
He stepped on a twig.
A tiny one.
The goblins didn't hit him.
Nature did.
Min froze. Looked down at the stick lodged beneath his sandals.
"...it poked me."
He dramatically dropped to his knees.
"Rieee… I've been wounded. Gravely."
Ahrie Von Creed, their so-called healer, was busy kicking a goblin into the tree.
He wiped the blood off his rapier and looked over. "You're a tank. Tank it Min."
"I dodged twenty goblins… and the earth is what gets me?"
Min clutched his foot like it had been severed. "Why do we even wear sandals in combat?!"
"Good question," Ahrie said, cracking his knuckles. "Let me fix it."
"No, wait—" Min replied.
A dull thrum filled the air. Ahrie's Fist slowly glows.
[skill activated : P.A.I.N. - Physical Aid Initiated by Neutralization]
Ahrie punched Min in the face. H-a-r-d.
The impact echoed.
He was sent flying.
Min's eyes bugged out. "Eh?..."
"WH—WHY DID YOU—YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO HEAL—"
"And I did," Ahrie said, smiling menacingly.
"See…pain gone, right?"
"No! You just added more pain!" Min replied while sulking.
"Deal with, tough guy…" Ahrie said while holding his laughter.
"...damn it." Min sulked, rubbing the bump on his face.
Meanwhile—
On the far side of the battle field, Zhang Lianhua, their calculative mage stood in absolute stillness.
Her eyes were shut.
Her hands raised above her head in an intricate pose.
Her spell shard floated around her like tiny shards of glass, linking themselves to the enemies one by one.
"Plan A. Two more seconds. Just two more sec—"
Something squealed.
Then thump.
Then—
Bonk.
A tiny rock bounced off her forehead.
Her eyes twitched.
"ROCKY"
The squirrel was on her head, spinning like a Beyblade.
"I swear, I will roast you over an open flame and use your tail as a spell brush—!" Lianhua shouted.
"Hey! He's sensitive about his tail" Kokoro Hanabira shouted, the summoner, who sat cross-legged nearby, sipping tea she didn't have ten seconds ago.
"Besides—look."
Rocky launched another rock. It bounced off a goblin's helmet—bounced off into the wall—spun a trap lever—and released a spiked log that crushed three goblins.
Koko grinned at the fourth wall. "Totally intentional. Every bit of that was planned. Hehehe~,"
"Rocky's way is more useful than you think… and Author, if you kill him off, I swear I'll rewrite my class into necromancy and bring him back myself."
She paused, glancing at the Readers. "Also, yeah, I saw you roll your eyes. Just wait, okay?.. Rocky is a chaos genius. You'll see."
Lianhua looked around confused.
She asked Koko…"who are you talking to?".
Rocky turned toward the camera and dabbed.
Lianhua slowly lowered her arms.
"...Plan A failed. Initiating Plan B."
"What's Plan B?" Koko asked.
Lianhua looked at Koko, a wild spark in her eye.
"I'll use my tiny shards on Rocky," she said with a crooked smile.
Back on the other end—
Sylphae Vell'trana, the archer, trembled as she pulled her bowstring.
"One arrow. One shot. Just breathe. Aim. Breathe. Aim—"
A nearby goblin coughed.
She panicked.
"AAAHHHHH—!"
Her fingers slipped. The arrow flew.
It went the wrong direction.
Second later—
The entire forest behind them erupted into a thunderous explosion.
Trees fell.
Birds screamed.
Animals evacuated.
A mountain in the distance cracked.
Everyone froze.
Ahrie blinked. "Uh…"
Slyphae smiled shakily. "Did I hit—it—?"
She fainted.
Min stared at the hole in the horizon. "...Yeah. You hit something."
Ahrie whistled, then shrugged. "Well, at least she didn't aim at us this time."
And in the center of it all–
Rocky sat on a fallen goblin's head, arms crossed, flipping his middle finger off at everyone.
The party of five (plus one squirrel) stood amidst the wreckage of what had once been a goblin stronghold.
Silence.
Chaos.
Victory?
Ahrie stood in the middle, laughing. "Best link ever."
[Year 2029 : The Fall - Earth]
A root appeared.
No warning.
No origin.
Just one massive ancient looking root, alive.
It wrapped itself around the earth.
Cities watched as streets cracked wide open. Mountains shifted. Borders vanished beneath thick, bark-like coils
Across every country, the same questions pop up in everyone's minds.
"What is that?"
By the time the sun rose, it already covered the entire world.
The root's end floated in the pacific ocean.
Something fell from it.
Cracked, glowing, alive.
What it was… no one could say.
[ 12 hour news | Emergency Broadcast ]
"We're live at the tip of what scientists are now calling the root of the World Tree.
The surface is warm, there's steam rising from the impact zone.
And underneath there's a sound. A low rhythm like breathing."
[ CMM News | On-site report ]
"We've confirmed an entrance near the root's tip. Roughly 100 meters wide.
It's too dark to see what's inside, all we can see is the pattern on the entrance, almost resembling a veins."
"We don't know what's inside"
"We don't know if we should go in."
The world paused.
Governments scrambled.
Theories exploded online. A blessing? apocalypse ?, a warning?.
Before anyone could decide which one to believe—
The monsters came.
No signal. No lightshow. No countdown.
They emerged from the entrance. One by one, then all at once.
Running. Climbing. Crawling.
A trickster, small, agile monster with glowing veins and leaf-like ears.
Two to three feet tall.
Their smiles stretch too wide.
"Yo, what is this?" the camera shook slightly as the camera man zoomed in.
"I dunno," the reporter said, half-smiling. "Looks kinda cute though."
Then it opens its mouth.
Not to speak, but to scream.
One pounced
Then another.
By the time the on-the-scene reporters screamed back, it was already too late.
They tore through clothes and flesh, moving in unpredictable patterns.
Blood splattered by the lens.
Laughed while they hunted.
They weren't scouting.
They were playing.
And earth was their new playground.