1 No turning back
Indonesia, District V Jakarta City, year 3045.
The blanket of darkness covers the whole city as the sun goes down, Silence started to substitute the bustling city. The city lights started to glow, illuminating the road.
A woman with a neat suit and tie outfit walks down the city road, she has nice long brown hair with beautiful brown eyes staring at her phone, her face Is pale showing the tiredness of her day.
She plays with her phone while walking on the quiet street, trying to distract herself to kill time.
RING, RING!
"Hello? Oh, babe, I'm on my way back home. I'll probably be home in fifteen minutes"
"Why are you working overtime? it's dangerous, Do you know..."
"Ya, ya don't worry sweetheart, nothing will happen to me"
As the woman is talking to her phone, the street lights started to flicks.
The woman stops and stares at the street lights for a moment.
She started to feel scared, she feels something is watching her. She started to walk faster as she looks around panicky.
"Babe, Can you pick me up? I'm scared"
Thud, Thud, Thud.
She sees a black figure flash past behind her. She started to run, and look back occasionally.
To her surprise, the black figure is still behind her chasing her.
"Babe!, Help me there's something! I don't know what it is, I only see a black figure following me"
"WHAT?!! Where are you now?" the other person on the phone screamed.
The woman didn't hear the person and started to run with all her might, her back started to sweat.
"Apuwa, Apuwa, Apuwa"
A whispering sound creeps into the woman's ear, the whisper sounds jarring and heavy at the same time.
"Who's there! I'll call the police!"
Nothing reply for a moment until.
"Come..."
When the woman hears the voice, her eyes rounded, her body freezes. She was shocked!
The voice she hears is her own voice!
Her leg turns to jelly, it cannot support her weight anymore and she falls to the ground.
A black figure emerges from an alley behind her, it has a short and wide nose, a big face, and a wide mouth with black fur covering its whole body. It is quite short around one meter but the fangs that came out of their mouth are scary-looking and also there's three of them!
The red eyes of the black figures stare intensely at the woman, saliva started to drip from its mouth.
"Ya, Ya don't worry sweetheart, nothing will happen to me", The black figure smile with a mocking look on its face.
The woman lost all her spirit as she limps on the ground shaking, the creature is repeating her words while using her own voice!
The three black figures pounce like a flash while opening their wide mouth.
"AAAAAHHHH!!"
The three black-figure ripped her limbs one by one while they're eating it slowly as if they're tasting a luxury food for the first time, blood is dripping from their mouth as they lick it all clean with their black tongue not even wasting a single drop of blood.
"BABE?! What Happened!!, Halo? Halo?"
*Beep* *Beep* *Beep*
The scream reverberated in the silent nights, the last scream of pain was heard through the street before the girl's soul left her body, dropping dead.
The next day.
RING!!
The class bell rang in the forty-eight national high school, the sign of the end of class.
Seventeen years old good-looking boy is murmuring happily, he has pitch black hair and an athletic body, his eyes are beaming with happiness as he takes his bag and sings happily while he walks to his new bicycle.
Today he gets the number one ranking in class for the physical class. His working out at home pays off, he becomes the best among his peers.
He walks past his friends as he casually bid them goodbye because he can't wait to tell his sister about his achievement.
Rudy gets on his bicycle and started to ride back home. His bicycle has a futuristic touch in it, designed to decrease wind resistance, hologram maps, and an autopilot function if he's tired.
While riding, he sees many weird people with weird clothes, but after he attends high school, he now knows that those people are the Seekers.
In this world, humans, spirits, and monsters coexist. The spirits live in the astral world and they are neutral to humans and monsters, while humans and monsters live neighboring each other fighting, but mainly the human is the one hating the monsters while the monsters only see the humans as their food.
The territory that is ruled by humans is called a district while the territory of monsters is called a region, Monsters are sealed within their region by the human's greatest ancestor, he is Raden Bunawarman.
Raden Bunawarman is the first seeker in Indonesia that can stand up to the monsters by making a contract with a spirit, he is the strongest in his era but no one else in his era is as strong as him, not even remotely close. When Raden Bunawarman is dying, he spends all of his spiritual power to seal the monsters in Indonesia because no one in Indonesia can fight the strong monsters beside him.
This case is the same for the rest of the world, all the country have their different story of the first seeker.
Humans, and spirits can form a contract through a ritual called Suanggi Ritual, the ritual will help the humans to call out one spirit that chooses him or her too to sign a contract. The spirit gained through Suanggi Ritual is depending on the place the person do the ritual, places with a higher grade spirit are sacred places that can only be entered with enough authority or money, while other places are restricted because they contain a cruel spirit where they can even influence the humans making the contract but of course, there is always an anomaly.
These people that made a contract with a spirit are called Seekers, they are the protectors of humanity against monsters, and they must be respected.
Everyone can go through the ritual but sometimes people just don't want to go through the ritual because of the ritual itself.
After ten minutes of riding, Rudy finally reaches his home with a bright smile on his face.
He happily opens the door with much energy but was greeted by a sobbing sound.
*Sob**Sob**Sob*
His expression changes into a frown.
'What did he do now' Rudy murmurs to himself.
Rudy's house is a small house with only two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a living room that screamed poor.
He opens his bedroom and saw his sister crying while looking at a paper.
"Big Sister Lestari, what happened? what did he do now?"
Lestari handed the paper over to Rudy and she says, "A group of debt collector" *Sob* " came to our house just half an hour ago" *Sob* " They said that our father loses a gamble big time and beaten up badly and now he is in Mutiara Hospital, he put our house as a collateral and made up things to support his bet" *Sob* " But in the end, he lost everything, The debt amounted to ten billion rupiahs!"
Hearing this, Rudy was shocked, He looked at the paper and there's a paragraph of terms along with ten billion debt and a sign of his father at the rightmost bottom! ten billion rupiahs is not something that even if Rudy works every day for the rest of his life can get.
Rudy felt pain in his heart, 'How could a father do this? did he not think of us anymore no, did he not think of sister!? are we not his children?'
Lestari has been working many part-time jobs in different places to support their father and Rudy, she looks like a corpse because of the tiredness she felt, every day she started to work from seven in the morning and come back in the middle of the night!
Rudy feels like the world collapse, he glances at his sister and saw a finger trace of a burn scar on her hand.
Rudy grabbed her hand and ask, "Who did this?", the anger inside of Rudy is swelling up, her sister is his dearest and nobody can harm her!
"No, it's nothing. I refuse to believe it at first, then the debt-collector snapped me out of it by using his spiritual power" replied Lestari.
"Seeker..." Rudy said helplessly.
A seeker has to be respected, if not, the person will be charged with defamation and prisoned for life.
Silence covers the room, while the duo thinks hard about where do they get this amount of money.
Rudy finally decided to search on the internet after excusing himself to go to his computer.
After a round of searching and clicking his eyes fixed on a notice that is given randomly on the screen, 'Get twelve billion rupiahs here'.
Rudy click on it and a new tab were opened, the headline makes Rudy gasp cold air while his eyes went round.
'Apply for a lab rat, Just fill in the form below. No seekers allowed to apply'
Rudy scanned the form, the form consist of basic things like name, age, where does he live, etc, and also there is a bank account inquiry.
At the bottom, there is a notice saying, 'The payment will be given first before the experiment started'
Rudy frown for a while thinking that it may be a scam, but then again, desperate situations need a desperate solution. His eyes become determined, 'I have to do this at least for sister, no one needs to know, not even sister'
After getting his determination he finally filled in the form not forgetting to put his sister bank account in it and send it.
There is no turning back now.
