Chapter 2

Trust no one.

That was the first lesson I learnt at the start of this apocalypse. With things in disarray and everything out of order, it was only a matter of time before people started showing their true colours. Friends turning on each other, families taking sides and communities broken up over arguments. I watched it all happen from the side.

The law was now non-existent and this new world was governed by those who were strong. Literally.

Days after the monsters invaded, humans around the world started 'awakening' supernatural abilities believed to have been gifted to them as a means to combat the monsters. I don't believe I was an awakened because I never received that strange light like others but I did notice my physical abilities increasing at a certain rate.

When monsters are killed, your abilities supposedly increase like a video game. Plus, they had drop items useful for survival. It was the same as me except I didn't have any special abilities so the monsters I killed increased my physical strength.

There was no law and order and the earth's population was reduced from over seven billion to three billion within that same week the apocalypse began. The human deaths decreased as more and more people started awakening and fighting the monsters. Many people started forming groups and hunted as a team while those confident in themselves hunted alone. Unfortunately, this meant that the unfortunate percentage of people who had not awakened any special abilities were left to fend for themselves and most of the time got killed in the process.

I would've been in the same lot had I not been immortal.

I was never one for making friends nor did I have a family so I had no desire to communicate with other hunters unnecessarily. With the unbalancing of power, many hunters and hunter groups became greedy and prideful. They started plundering other humans in hopes to collect better drop items and some converted the powerless to mere slaves. Young women were popular victims of this.

It was disgusting.

This was also why I chose not to associate with them but at the same time, I wasn't a saint who would rescue the slaves voluntarily. If they asked for help then I might consider it but otherwise, I couldn't be bothered.

My life as a hunter was quite different from a lot of people because unlike them who would need to plan and maintain cautiousness, I had the luxury of diving in recklessly being someone who couldn't die. I thought I should get powerful while I still could in case my immortality ran out.

At first, I was living in recked train stations and abandoned buildings but once I had accumulated enough drop items and levelled up, I decided to move away from the city. The monsters were being hunted nearly every day so they too had decreased in number significantly and they started retreating to certain territories.

This all happened in a span of two years.

Outside the city, I built a small cabin and settled down there by myself. My lifestyle consisted of farming, hunting, eating, hunting and sleeping then repeat. Around me in the world, those small hunter groups slowly turned into what they named guilds and solo hunters became known as rogues. There were new rules and regulations put in place and the world became that of like a fantasy novel.

You could accept quests to hunt monsters and deliver drop items and carcasses to guilds in exchange for money. Small towns were rebuilt and those with mass resources built twenty-story buildings for themselves. A hunter ranking system was put into place and so was a monster ranking system.

Hunters teamed up with researchers to document different monsters and took note of their special characteristics, weaknesses and strengths. This information was thankfully made free to the public.

As for me, I wasn't sure what my rank was but what I did know was that I was still immortal. I didn't let my guard down and continued training and hunting and before I knew it, I had accumulated quite a bit of wealth and resources. The carcasses of monsters I kept and ate while the venomous ones, I removed the poison packs and coated my weapons with it. The leftover carcasses were used for bait.

I never once stepped back into the city and lived a peaceful life out here in my small cabin.

There was no need for me to expose myself nor did I want to because I was content with this life. Of course, being by myself for so long changed my personality a bit in the sense that if I killed a human, I wouldn't feel any remorse or guilt.

How do I know? A small group of hunters attacked me in an attempt to steal my loot but I beheaded all of them. When I stared at their headless, lifeless bodies, I felt numb. It was like; oh well, too bad for them.

This did cause me some worry so to preserve what little conscience I had left, I steered clear of densely human-populated areas. In other words, I continued doing what I was doing and kept to myself. You know, like fighting poison with poison.

And slowly, a year passed, then another year, and another year and eventually I lost count.

The area around me had been transformed into a thick forest and the monster numbers dwindled by a lot. With my immortality, it was still very much active so I came to the conclusion it was a forever thing. I think I should be around 30 or 40 now but I still didn't look a day over twenty.

My strength had increased to the point where I could easily take down a level 10 monster, the third-highest level, and not break a sweat. Was I proud? Was I happy? Hell yeah. Was I bored? Kind of but not really because I have grown to love farming. Get it? Grown to love farming.

Ahem, in other words, farming was a hobby of mine when I wasn't hunting and had nothing to do.

....

Occasionally my mind drifted back to when I first drank that weird drink and wondered whether someone had planned all of this. It just seemed too coincidental that a few weeks after receiving that package, that an apocalypse happened. Someone was definitely behind all of this but was I going to find out? Nope. Not while I have no reason to. Such things were too troublesome and to sum it up, I was too lazy.

If, by chance, I was affected by something from this new world...something that would be a threat to me, only then would I start looking for answers but for now...YOLO.

...Hmm maybe that saying doesn't apply to me.