500 years ago people started awakening with special abilities all over the world, at first people thought that it was the start of a new age of human civilization powered by these magical abilities. But they could not be any more wrong.
5 years after the first humans awakened, portals started to open up in areas that were densely populated, with these portals leading to alternate spaces that had to be cleared of the various beasts and monsters that inhabited it. If left alone for too long, they would start spilling into their world.
At first people didn't understand this objective, but by the time they did it was much too late. The population dropped to only a few hundred million from the previous 10 billion. Continents became uninhabitable very quickly and humanity was forced to the brink of extinction.
Thankfully, 150 years after the first awakening, a brave team of awakened, tired of reactively dealing with these portals, took the initiative to enter one of them that opened near their base of operations. And what happened inside truly shocked them.
The monsters inside these portals were many, many times weaker than those that would come out of them and clearing it was easy. But as they were about to leave the way they came, they were suddenly teleported to another world that was rich in resources, monsters and a fresh, clean environment. Unfortunately they couldn't bring any of these out with them, but they could go and come back at any point in time, returning to their previous location, with just a thought.
Using the resources they built a stronghold in this new dimension that they dubbed the new world and announced their findings to the rest of the world. Their actions were the catalyst for the rise of humanity and with more and more people entering the new world and getting more and more powerful, continents that were once lost were reclaimed and the population was on the rise.
But there was still a major problem, at this point most people that were alive were awakened who were strong enough to take advantage of the New World, but with more and more people being born, the ratio of awakened to mundane would quickly shift leading to shortages everywhere.
Mundanes could become cultivators, enhancing their physical bodies, or mages, doing the same but to the mind, but it was extremely difficult to do either. These non awakened power houses were few and far between.
Fortunately, a solution appeared 10 odd years later. A truly powerful man named Adrian Alexander, now known as Supremacy Alexander, broke through a bottleneck that was plaguing him for decades, and with his new found strength he could forcefully pull items out of the new world by making portals of his own and using them to develop the broken Old World.
Many people after him attained this ability and at this point, clear and precise divisions in strength were necessary, ranging from 1 to 9 and talents being rated F, E, D, C, B, A, S, SS, SSS and Legendary rank, with the highest one could get through awakening being S rank. Anything beyond that would require training of the talent.
With the F rank being even rarer than S rank, Ray truly had the luck of the gods to manage to awaken the mythic F rank. If E ranks were the beggars on the street, F ranks are the slum rats that even they despised.
And with how difficult it is to increase your rank, most low ranks wouldn't even bother. It was better to live like a dog than die like one. With both skills and equipment out of their reach, they were stuck in a cyclone of misfortune.
They were too weak to hunt for them themselves and no one was going to waste their items on them because they were too weak. Getting equipment from the New World was expensive and learning skills was either time intensive or expensive.
If he was normal, this rat's life would be what awaited Ray. As he slowly regained consciousness he found himself looking up at a very familiar ceiling. Looking around he saw that he was moved to his apartment after passing out, but whoever moved him here didn't even bother trying to be somewhat orderly.
His door was wide open and barely on its hinges, probably due to him not being awake to open the door as his soul-signature is required to do so. The entirety of the room was in shambles with even the lightbulb hanging down loosely.
The fridge was on its side, the TV was gone and the desk and chair that were in the middle of the room converted to splinters. Much of his possessions were missing, obviously stolen, and he was crudely shoved onto his mattress that was now sitting on the floor.
Who even was assigned to move him hear was clearly not happy about it.
As an underaged individual that was being provided for by the state, all of these would normally be government owned so no one would try stealing them. No one wants to commit a felony for basic household items.
But now that he turned 15 and his talent was preemptively awakened, all of these were technically his and they didn't care if theft was illegal as he was an F rank, no court would ever rule in his favor. For awakened, the strong ruled and the weak had no choice but to follow.
He got up and picked up the fridge and checked inside it, of course it was empty.
'I regret not eating this morning, even if I was nervous I should have still eaten something. I'm so hungry now.'
He picked up the apple they left behind for some reason and walked over to his computer. In this day and age, conventional personal computers or smartphones were a rare site, more like relics of the past than cutting edge technology. Every person could purchase a personal communicator that fit on your non-dominant ring finger and it replaced any form of hand-held or stationary devices that were once used.
They were so outdated that the robbers didn't even bother taking it, even if they also took the TV which was just as old but had some sort of value. A personal communicator was many times more powerful than a commercial computer but everyone had something to do every so often that needed a larger screen.
He was going to use his computer to file a complaint but quickly decided against it, among the awakened, who had the last say was determined by rank and there was no one lower ranked than him.
No normal mundane would dare steal from an awakened person even if they are just an F rank and any random awakened person would be many times stronger than him. The police wouldn't even listen to him as the minimum rank to enroll with them is C rank, as an F rank they would probably attack him for even daring to speak to them.
As he moved to look up some information on the weaker monsters that would pay the most, as this is what he was going to have to do for the rest of his life, he saw two new messages that he promptly opened.