Rampur village,
After the earthquake occurred, the house the Pandit family lived in, collapsed with Maruti being inside.
"" Marutiiiii!!!! ""
Everyone screamed at once.
The whole family, without a care rushed to house which has collapsed completely, and now is covered in dusts that filled the atmosphere.
12.05 am, the earthquake stopped,
They all screamed the name of Maruti while taking out debris with hands.
"My son, My son" Urmila wailed while not caring for herself and taking out big blocks of debris in hope of finding her son.
Pandit pulled her and held her tight in his arms, shook Her and said, "Wait Dear, our son should be fine, don't worry. We will find him."
Scratch scratch!!
Everyone looked towards the scratching sound, and they saw Timy digging in the debris.
Everyone's eyes lit up,
As they understood that, Timy has found Maruti's scent. Meena ran towarda Timy and asked," Timy is my brother there!"
As if understanding her words, Timy nodded.
And began scratching seeing this, Pandit also started removing bricks and blocks of walls.
Soon 2 mins later everyone saw an iron table under which Maruti was there holding onto the weapon bag.
Urmila collapsed, when Pandit helped, Maruti stand.
Maruti again looked at all Of them and said quickly, "We need to leave, the earth is still trembling, we have to go to open space."
Everyone seemed to understand and ran together.
12.10 am.
They all ran towards the village square
What they saw, made their spine tremble.
Almost everyone was running around in fear. Many. People were layimg dead or gravely injured.
In a certain Corner, a woman who was carrying a 2 year old baby was quickly running out of a street. When a large house which swaying fell.
Crushed!!!
The legs of the woman seemed to freeze with fear fell down on her knees. Soon the house fell on her crushing both the mother and child.
The people near couldn't bear to see the gruesome sight as they couldn't bear seeing all the blood.
Maruti, brought all his family members and stood in the open space and gave each of them ropes, hookes he found before, and a knife each.
"What need is of a knife to this old lady?"
Said Jema,
"Don't ask anything and take these, we have to be careful, who knows what danger we will have to face ahead. Can't you see the whole village has collapsed and the rate at which the Govt had announced before, this seems to be to large scale disaster."
Everyone nodded silently.
Soon the earth trembled again, and sounds of uprooting of trees from the forest, growling of beasts from the forest.
It didn't stop, the air around them felt heavy as they couldn't breathe properly.
Soon their view of the world started to crumble, when they all seem to be moving far from the spot where they previously were.
As if getting what is happening, Maruti quickly tied a rope around all of them and told them. To sit down as closely as possible.
After 5 mins.
What they saw made their hair stand up.
They moved almost 5 kms away from the square.
The most noticeable thing, was the growth of grass, and trees.
Soon around them the grasses grew 15 cm tall and trees started growing visibly larger.
Well as autographs plants are the most advanced lives, as they could create their food from energy itself. So plants adopted the environment rather rapidly and started to evolve.
This continued for almost 10 minutes and finally the world rumbling stopped.
The pandit family fell on their butts held each other and cried.
Maruti, watched them silently with love in his eyes.
***
From the moon, if one saw Earth from Here one could easily notice the change in its colour and size. Earth seemed to be covered in a mysterious mist, Known as Mana.
Soon a voice would Ring up....
***
Maruti's pov:
' Why am I feeling excited in this kind of situation which is undoubtedly unfavourable for me?'
He looked at his left hand, where his wrist watch was , which he found in the house ticking and the time it showed 12.21AM
A splitting headache came. He couldn't help but scream while Holding his head.
And it soon calmed down.
He saw his family were holding their head in pain too..
'What's happening?'
It was not Maruti or his family alone but whole life on planet earth was feeling the same headache and all cried in pain.
Not just their brain they all felt as if choking.
All the earthling felt as if someone has stamped something on their very soul.
***
Soon, a serene voice was heard by everyone
"Hello,my dear children !"
This shocked the whole world, again they all thought they have gone mad, as they heard the voice directly in their head.
" I am Earth.
As you can see I am on the verge of Destruction. The sole reason behind this is that Mana reached me quickly before the expected time. I had to take countermeasures so as to not fall apart and had to take the load of Mana."
The serene voice everyone was hearing had a tinge of pain, similar to a mother's pain when she hurt her child.
"I don't have the power to CONTINUE the conversation with all of you.
I have to complete my duty, my final duty before I regain myself."
The voice paused for a second before continuing,
"Let me Give you a brief introduction about what mana is.
As you could see the faint pink colour mist everywhere, it is nothing but mana.
Mana as you can imagine it's a magical energy that can help any lifeform evolve further into higher species. For that you have to adopt to mana. To help you grow quickly and adopt to the changes, the Gods have given me a method to save myself as well as all of you.
The head ache you all felt was due to the installation of the 'SOUL SYSTEM' into all of you. "
The voice took Its time as if telling all of the earthlings to process the thing it said.
" This Soul system, will grant you certain powers, guidance, and a status window.
You all can level up yourself to survive in this harsh world and by further leveling up you can also evolve into powerful beings.
You can even become what you call superhumans possessing unparalled power.
That's all i have to say.
Now, you can check your status, by saying or thinking the word 'STATUS'.
NOW EVERYBODY GOODBYE AND DO YOU BEST IN SAVING YOURSELVES AND EARTH. "
***
.....
THE WHOLE world seemed silent.
Many nerds, geeks and weebs rejoiced as if their dream came true. While many remained confused. Yet they all started saying 'STATUS' to check their statuses.
Among the many, excited ones, of course, Maruti was somewhat excited without knowing why.
The whole family couldn't understand what happened and they should do. They just got a vague idea.
Maruti didn't even know, why his thought process was so fast and yet calm at the same time still he began explaining the situation to them,
"Mom, dad, Minu and Granny listen carefully, we are given a chance to survive, in this harsh world where everything has been lost. Probably even the govt wouldn't be standing right now.
Let me explain what this status thing is."
After taking 10 mins he explained everything.
Without knowing why he knew all of this or how he knew it, he ignored and blamed it on his superior growth.
" So lil bro you are saying, we can kill animals or mutated animals like You said, to absorb some of their Life Essence. By which we will level up and these numbers that are showing in the screen, will increase and we will become stronger." asked Minu,
The Pandit interjected saying," We could even get skills, items and other things by this process so we will be superhumans rather than humans. "
" Yes, you can summarise it like that, yes. "nodded Maruti
" So how do you know all this? "asked all of them to him
" Well, I don't know it either, it just came to me suddenly and didn't the voice of the earth say similar things. "
" Forget it let's move."
We will get answers,
" Before we all go, check your status correctly.
Think before you do anything and read the instructions. "
Maruti told them with a serious expression
After saying, so he summoned his own system,
" STATUS "
.