Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
Blue skies... the bright yet annoying heat rays of the sun... and the apparent distinction between day and night had long since ceased to exist.
Not that someone had purposely erased these mundane concepts... but they just seemed to have lost their meaning.
As for when everything started, no one was really able to pinpoint it. Those who were able to were long since dead... and even if some were still alive, they were probably trying their possible best to survive.
Dark clouds, which were once white and beautiful, rolled about turbulently in the skies. The land of Earth was barren compared to its once-upon-a-time vitality. Trees were dried up and scarce across the land.
All in all... the world seemed like a dead waste that was once meant to house humans.
Seeing corpses had become a normal thing for everyone.
Animals that were once classified as domestic and wild had now become so menacing and dangerous that the simple word wild could no longer describe them. It was like they had evolved into something scarier.
But so had the humans...
At least those that were fortunate enough.
Because survival itself now depended on luck and the will to live.
And the reason why they all still held onto the thought of surviving in this dead piece of the world...
was because of the very thing that had brought such catastrophe upon their world.
Something called God's Essence.
Prestigious families... social distinctions... all of it was now something of the past.
Everyone had to fight for food and natural space.
It was almost like humans had become the very animals they once observed in the wild. They had studied those animals, given names to their behavior, and thought themselves different from them.
Now, humans behaved the same way.
Food was something they had to fight for.
Even poisonous things had become consumable. Some people died eating them. Others had somehow adapted.
For some, it was thanks to God's Essence.
It was something they couldn't see or touch, almost like oxygen, though in a sense, it was far more valuable.
It was simply there.
Perceptible.
Yet not everyone could perceive it.
There were those who, against all odds and perhaps through sheer luck, became capable of sensing the strange energy surrounding them. They learned to absorb it, allowing their bodies to undergo an overall enhancement.
They became stronger.
Faster.
More resilient.
And, with enough time, they could survive things ordinary humans couldn't.
It was one of the few reasons families could still travel across the lands of their home and have any hope of surviving.
But the harsh state of the world had also forced people to establish rules that were never formally written down.
The smaller a family was, the better its chances of survival.
Food could run out.
Terrain could shift without warning.
Disasters could happen suddenly.
And families were constantly forced to move.
Having too many people meant having too many mouths to feed, too many people to protect, and too many lives to lose.
A large family was no longer simply a family.
It could be a death sentence.
Some families had even permanently banned childbirth.
...One of those families that still roamed the ruined world to this day was a once prestigious family...
The An family.
...Even in this ruined time, they still had some sort of recognition for having one of the eldest humans amongst them, the An patriarch... an old man who had seen the best times of Earth before its eventual decay... but even he couldn't remember when it all started.
The An family was one of the families that still roamed Earth... and one of the families that had adopted the unspoken rule of banning childbirth.
In their midst, there weren't any kids.
The youngest could be thirty years of age.
It was something they had all agreed on a long time ago, and the patriarch was made to oversee and enforce that rule.
However... just today, as the family was preparing to pack their belongings and move to another area due to the patriarch having sighted a pack of wolves that no one was sure could still be called wolves coming towards them...
news spread throughout the small family.
Anera, the wife of one of the patriarch's great-grandsons...
had actually been pregnant for nine good months...
and was just about to give birth.
The news itself wasn't particularly devastating or disturbing...
but its implication was.
The unspoken rule that not only their family, but also the world, had adopted had been broken.
Anera was pregnant with a child.
And if the child should be successfully birthed, it would mean a new mouth to feed in the An family, when even the present ones were still struggling.
How could a new mouth be tolerated?
.....
"What insolence!!"
A tall, gaunt man with a head full of white hair shouted after hearing the news that had been brought to him.
His long white beard flailed in the wind... and even while simply standing there, he exuded a sense of power and raw fierceness.
"What does Mye-ra mean by this?... He got his wife pregnant even when he knows the rule... and had the guts to hide her pregnancy from me..."
The old yet obviously more physically sound man paused.
A ridiculing and annoyed sneer appeared on his face as he looked at the man who had come to deliver the news.
"Tell everyone to halt the packing. I'll have to deal with this matter before we can move."
He ordered, and the man immediately left to relay his order.
The old man remained where he stood for a moment.
Then, with a cold expression on his face, he muttered...
"...Why are you the rebellious one, huh, Mye-ra?"
