CHAPTER 29: CH-29- THE REALITY AFTER THE AWAKENING

The lives of ordinary people had never been the same since the appearance of the dungeons.

Overnight, reality itself had been rewritten. Gates tore open across the earth, bleeding forth creatures from beyond and treasures that defied logic. The very foundations of civilization trembled, and humanity had no choice but to adapt or be consumed.

Once, governments ruled with laws, taxes, and the steady rhythm of bureaucracy. They controlled the masses through systems perfected over centuries through schools that taught obedience, through armies that enforced borders, through healthcare and welfare that bound the people’s lives to their mercy. The weak survived because the state allowed them to.

But after the dungeons arrived, none of that mattered.

Artifacts appeared, blades that could split skyscrapers, rings that could heal incurable diseases, potions that defied science. Hunters emerged- humans marked by the System, gifted strength beyond tanks, missiles, or medicine.

The rules of survival were rewritten overnight.

Before, the government controlled through scarcity. They rationed medicine, and the people obeyed. Now, a healer in a guild could cure a tumor in minutes, while hospitals sat empty. Once, armies kept order with guns and steel. Now, a single warrior from a major guild could flatten a battalion before breakfast. Where police once patrolled, hunters strode unchecked, their strength making them judge, jury, and executioner.

The government’s old tools, disease, education, employment, no longer held chains strong enough. Cancer, once a death sentence that kept citizens docile and grateful, was erased with a flick of a healer’s hand. Jobs, once the leash of survival, became meaningless as hunters earned more in a day raiding a dungeon than a lifetime of wages. Education, once the path to power, turned hollow when raw strength could carve open any future.

The law itself twisted. Once, theft, murder, and coercion were crimes. Now, when a hunter desired something, who could deny them? A guild master’s demand outweighed a court ruling. A warrior’s blade carried more authority than a judge’s gavel.

The world had slid quietly into a new age: the survival of the fittest.

Take for instance the city-states where guilds reigned supreme. If a guild wanted land, they didn’t negotiate they claimed it, and no army dared stop them. If a guild master fancied a nobleman’s daughter, the marriage was arranged before the ink of protest could dry. Whole trade routes were monopolized by hunters carrying goods across lands faster and safer than governments ever could.

In the shadows, the people whispered what no politician dared admit aloud:

The governments were no longer kings.

The guilds were.

And while governments scrambled to cling to scraps of authority, the common man learned a brutal truth: power no longer flowed from laws or crowns, but from those who could fight, conquer, and survive.

For ordinary people, the reshuffling was merciless. Yesterday’s doctor was today’s relic cleaner. Yesterday’s scholar now begged for scraps from guild recruits. Families once secure under government salaries now gambled their futures in dungeon lotteries, praying for a spark of hunter potential in their bloodline

And in that harsh new age, where weakness was a curse and strength rewrote destiny, we meet Cisco an ordinary man with no aura, no sword, no strength.

But Cisco was no fool. He understood what others did not: that even in a world ruled by power, there were cracks to slip through.

He was an appraiser, a smooth talker, and a con man with eyes sharp enough to spot fortune where others saw madness.

And when he laid eyes on Baelgor, a so-called hunter who ate like a beast and wore treasures he did not understand, Cisco saw not a lunatic... but an investment.

Before the dungeons, Cisco had been a lawyer. A clever one, too. He had lived in courtrooms filled with rules and order, where words were weapons sharper than swords. Back then, the law had teeth, and even the strongest had to bow before it if they wished to move within society.

But when the monsters came, tearing through cities like storms, the old order collapsed. The law was no longer written in books, but in blood. The first days had been chaos ordinary people huddled together, desperate to survive. For a short while, there was unity, humanity bound as one against extinction. But when the dust cleared, it wasn’t the lawyers, judges, or politicians who rebuilt the world.

It was the hunters.

And with their rise, the law itself rotted. Civil rights? Fairness? Justice? Those words became hollow. The weak could no longer look a hunter in the eye and demand equality. The scales had tipped forever: the strong took what they wanted, and the weak endured what they must.

Influence shifted too. The restaurant owner, for example, dared to argue with Baelgor not because of courage, but because he had ties to a hunter. That was the way of things now: survival wasn’t about what you knew, but who you knew. And above all, whether that person was strong enough to enforce your words.

Cisco had once believed he might awaken. He had prayed for it, dreamed of it, clung to the hope that the System would mark him and gift him strength. He waited, like millions of others, for the day his life would change. But it never came. No aura. No power. No title. Just... ordinary.

He could have crumbled. Many did. But Cisco adapted.

If he could not fight monsters, he would learn their language. If he could not wield power, he would wield perception. He began studying dungeons, artifacts, the treasures hunters carried back in bloodied hands. He memorized their qualities, their names, their hidden functions, until he could identify them at a glance.

And then came the voice. Not magic, not power, just his own silver tongue. Eloquence had always been his weapon, and in this new world it became sharper still. With carefully chosen words, Cisco learned to sell.

Cisco’s greatest weapon was not strength, nor aura, nor even knowledge of artifacts.

It was desire.

He had long since learned that humans rarely purchased what they needed. They purchased what they wanted or what they could be made to want.

It began with observation. Cisco studied the hunters and common folk alike, watching their eyes, their hands, their breathing. He understood that humans craved three things above all: status, security, and superiority.

So he built his trade around those hungers.

Take, for example, the low-ranked hunter who came into his shop with trembling hands, barely strong enough to clear the smallest dungeon. Cisco would place before him a dagger, polished and gleaming. "A blade like this," he would whisper, "has been wielded by men who leapt ranks overnight. Do you want to remain the weakest in your guild forever? Or do you wish to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with your comrades?"

The hunter’s insecurity became need. And Cisco smiled as the man emptied his coin purse.

Or the anxious mother, clutching her child as if the world itself might steal her away. Cisco would show her a trinket, a charm no larger than her thumb. "They say this stone wards against curses and hidden toxins. How many children have fallen to dungeon residue in the air, unprotected? Do you want your child to be the next?"

Her fear became desperation. And she would sell her last piece of jewelry just to buy the illusion of safety.

Then there were the guild elites, strutting like peacocks in human skin. For them, Cisco had treasures wrapped not in utility, but in luxury. "This ring," he would say smoothly, "was once pulled from the depths of a rank-B dungeon. Only a few of its kind exist. Imagine the envy in your rival’s eyes when they see it on your finger."

Their pride became greed. And they would pay ten times its worth just to bask in admiration.

This was Cisco’s art. He never lied outright; lies were too fragile, too easily broken. Instead, he polished truths until they gleamed, then tilted them just enough to cast a shadow where none existed. He whispered stories into the ears of the desperate, fanned sparks of insecurity into roaring flames, and smiled while his customers convinced themselves that they must have what he offered.

In truth, most of them could have lived perfectly fine without those artifacts. But Cisco understood a deeper truth about humans:

They would rather suffer poverty with a talisman around their necks... than risk being caught without it, wondering what if.

And so his business thrived. Not because the artifacts themselves were priceless

But because the desires he created in people made them believe they were.

That was the new economy. Strength ruled the world, but cunning greased its wheels. Hunters brought back the treasures, but men like Cisco made sure those treasures became priceless.

And that was how an ordinary man, denied power by the System itself, carved his place in a world where the survival of the fittest was the only law.