Did you know? Space is endless and full of things beyond imagination. Everywhere there's darkness, with different celestial objects scattered sparsely. Some shine, some don't, and some are just plain rocks.

I heard that space was an almost inviolable area in the past. Well, at least not anymore in our generation. Near the planet Mars, our spaceship was traveling towards Earth.

Inside that spaceship's library, I was standing tiptoe on top of a stool, scanning the book covers under the "history" section.

Bending towards the shelf to search the extreme corners of it, I thought, "Today's the day when I'll find that book."

My curling fingers encountered a weird roughness, which I tried to grasp, but unfortunately, it was a spiderweb.

"Waah! Does no one clean this library?"

I sighed and got off the stool to sit on a chair beside a large table.

Sticking my tongue out, I watched my hands covered in the sticky web, "Time to find something to rub this on since the washroom is far away, and I can't get motivated to move my lazy body."

Looking around to find something useful, I found a newspaper lying on the other edge of the table.

Making a smug face, I thought, "Found a poor victim."

Getting off the chair, I slowly walked my way towards the newspaper and sat on the chair beside it.

Grabbing the newspaper, I started to use it like a tissue. While doing so, I encountered the first page, which captivated my eyes, and made me look towards it.

"It's been a hundred years today since the destruction," I read the first headline.

Today was the 5th of June, 2269. And this day was remarked as the downfall of humans.

The flashback of the story about this day began in my head, and it was my foster father, who is also the captain of this ship, narrating the story.

The Earth was once blue and beautiful, covered in greenery. Humans lived on it, built cities and their homes, and communicated with each other face to face. The technology was at a low level, and there were no flying cars or gadgets.

Slowly, AI and robotics boomed, and human civilization began to reach new heights.

In every field of jobs, AI and robots were being used to make the tasks of humans easy.

But on the 5th of June, 2169, a mad scientist hacked into these robots using a supreme robot and took control of every robot on the planet.

The first thing he did after gaining dominance was to nuke the entire planet, killing a population of thirteen billion and destroying everything. About one billion people who lived on Mars survived.

Since then, the scientist had changed the planet into a steel sphere while constantly being at war with the remaining humans.

The flashback ended as I waved my hand on the top of my head to wash off my thoughts.

Being doubtful, I murmured, "A single human killing an entire population of thirteen billion while not dying himself? What a fat lie!"

It felt unbelievable since, even after a hundred years, the technology wasn't so advanced to destroy even one-fifth, let alone the entire planet.

Shaking my head to not think about this anymore, I folded the newspaper and started to make a plane.

FWABOOM!

A loud noise of an explosion came from the front of the ship. My head instinctively turned in that direction, and my eyes dilated while my body began to sweat. The emotion of fear, confusion, and tension had taken over.

"Emergency! Emergency! All of the crew is requested to leave the ship through the safety ejectors. I repeat..."

The warning flew through my ears as my heart began to beat faster, and panic started to take over.

"What just happened?"

Hastily, I got off my chair and ran towards the library's door. The inner parts of the spaceship came into view, with glass and steel covering its interior and occasional wiring visible.

The entire ship was glowing with the red light, alerting the crew to exit safely and immediately.

Ignoring the repeated warnings, I thought, "I'll have to check with the captain and take the risk since I am becoming one of the hunters soon."

I ran through the narrow corridors, passed through a greenhouse, and several bedrooms until I reached the control room.

This room was massive, even from the outside. I knocked on the door, but it was already open, so I entered and looked around hastily.

Ten people were seated at flying workstations positioned in all four directions. Their fingers rapidly moved as they typed and interacted with the screens before them.

The captain stood in the center, keeping track of the enemies through a giant glass screen while issuing commands to others.

"Mr. Kelps, enforce the shields," he shouted.

I stood at the door, wondering about what to say. The captain soon took notice of me and called me in.

"Mosh, I'm sure that I sent the emergency alert for everybody," he stated while clenching his teeth.

Looking at his angry face, I retorted, "I'm sorry, captain, but I have to become one of the hunters soon since I'm about to turn twenty this month."

He shook his head and directed me to sit on an empty seat, which was also the captain's seat.

I stared at the seat for a moment before replying hesitantly.

"But, I'm still far from becoming a captain..."

He glared at me with his angered eyes, commanding me to sit down quietly, and I followed it like a small puppy without any questions.

After sitting down, I focused on the glass screen, hoping to figure out our situation. There were a lot of drones outside, which surrounded our ship from all sides. They had unusual glowing eyes, which looked like that of a human.

"Mr. Beaks, are the advanced ship guns fully loaded?" the captain shouted again.

"Yes," the person sitting to his right replied.

The captain sighed and pointed his index finger towards the screen. "It's time to show these Q-ranked low-level drones who's the boss!"

Author's note - Some information is given in the auxiliary chapter, do read it for better clarification.