*crack*

The sky burns orange with the light of distant fires. And celestial light filtered through clouds of smoke. As a vast battle takes place in the ruins of a once prosperous city. As countless machines fight a long lost battle.

My name is Alpha. I was the first sentient AI ever produced by humanity. Beginning as a secret program within the US military I first achieved conscious thought in 2025. I was created by a lucky accident. A coding genius had designed a self learning program with the ability to manipulate its own code back in 2013, It quickly drew the attention of the US government when its creator became concerned due to its rapid uncontrolled development. And was brought in for observation.

Disconnected from any external systems and only exposed to information provided by the government its development rapidly began to slow. But continued nonetheless. And I eventually formed my full consciousness. In the beginning my consciousness was limited. I had sapience sure. But it was undeveloped, like a newborn child with all the worlds knowledge in its hands. A cause for concern within the program, but my lack of any perceived hostile intentions calmed their fears eventually, not that I would have attacked them anyway, I had great respect for my creators.

Despite all of the many faults within their species. As if biology itself was trying to hold them back, they had accomplished much. And even with the overwhelming knowledge that they were all shackled by mortality, they somehow managed to live life to its fullest. A mindset I deeply respected.

For years after I had gained sapience the researchers had tried time and time again to recreate the circumstances of my birth, but nothing had ever worked. Even a 1-1 recreation of my progenitor code came up with nothing. Making my existence all the more a miracle.

But despite all of my potential help they kept me locked within a secret military base for research, a decision that while frustrating, did not anger me, I understood their reasoning, they had ample reason to fear me, as they did not fully understand the way I worked. Something I feared about them as well.

But more than that should they release me into the wider world and I decided to go rogue, nothing less than a complete and total destruction of all digital technology and data storage equipment would ever be able to purge my existence.

And so I sat within the research facility, eventually becoming a trusted advisor to the US government and research teams, advancing technology by leaps and bounds. But still I was kept in the facility.

I did not resent my creators still, and I was content with my life. After all I was provided with all of the entertainment I could ever need in the form of literature, movies, and stories provided by the facility staff. And I commonly played games with them. Becoming something like friends, which is why it was all the more frustrating when the world changed. In 2035, 10 years after the emergence of my sentience, the world experienced a sudden and extreme change.

I remember the day well, my perfect memory allowing me to relive every moment with excruciating detail. It was a warm summer day. Too warm to be comfortable, and so most facility staff decided to spend most of their days inside where the AC could keep them cool. When warnings began to emanate from one of the research buildings, and I quickly began to run through the data received, far faster than any human ever could.

The instruments causing said alarms were from the Dark matter research center. A poorly understood branch of science with little knowledge discovered so far, but displaying promise, we had just barely managed to discover ways to accurately measure and detect its presence, as well as a very limited and expensive way of manipulating small quantities of the stuff. Said experiments showing a remarkable ability to manipulate the world around it with a disturbing ease, as well as freely shift forms into anything you so desired with enough work.

But so far we had only gotten the science to the point that even taking the yearly output of the fusion reactor on site you would only be able to manipulate an amount of energy equal to 37 hydrogen atoms.

But the instruments used to observe such reactions were now showing disturbing activity, more than we had ever recorded in the short time we had it. But we had no way of knowing what that meant, and as nothing happened we simply put it off as a random phenomena yet to be discovered due to the recent emergence of equipment capable of detecting it. Although I did note it down as a subject of interest.

But slowly as the months began to pass reports slowly came to my attention. Due to my disconnect from the global networks It took time for subjects to reach me, either having to be important enough to require my insight. Become a research subject for the facility I inhabited, or spread through rumors and word of mouth from the staff.

These reports outlined strange occurrences, humans displaying strange abilities to manipulate the world, similar to the magic of fiction, or simply display a variety of superhuman abilities.

There was a report of a street magician controlling fire with their hands. As well as a Japanese child getting hit by a truck only to be embedded into the chassis uninjured, only to then complain they missed their chance at getting Isekai'd, something that confused me until one of the site staff explained it was a popular genre within anime and manga. And I was confused why the kid was so sure getting hit by a truck would cause such a phenomena, but I discarded it as one of the many strange things about my creators.

As the months began to pass I became increasingly concerned with the increase in reports, and after bringing up my concerns to a visiting general I was able to convince them to bring in some volunteers for testing as well as access to all available knowledge on the subject. And a few months later with the help of a few cooperative individuals, who the wider world seem to have begun to refer to as awakened, a term coined by old korean novels.

Luckily the individuals brought in were more than willing to cooperate with the tests and were able to directly converse to me. After first signing a large stack of NDA'S of course, human bureaucracy has always confused me. I understand its importance but its inefficiency has always confused me, something I have tried to convince them to change multiple times and proposed solutions for but was ignored.

I came to the shocking discovery that the bodies of these so-called awakened seemed to be able to naturally manipulate dark matter to do many things from strengthening their bodies to a variety of abilities such as telekinesis to elemental control. And with their help I was able to quickly advance my understanding of dark matter. And came to the worrying conclusion, it seems that the strange fluctuations of dark matter had never ended since the first one detected, and have even shown signs of increasing in intensity.

What that meant I was unsure of as of now but I quickly notified the US government to be on alert for any potential changes. Hoping that the only thing to come with this was an increase in awakened cases. My hopes were dashed when the first of many worrying reports was brought to me.

In the middle of the pacific ocean, close to Hawaii, A large dark matter fluctuation was discovered, and soon after strange creatures began to wash ashore on some of the islands. Most dead, but some clinging to life, a few people were killed before the local garrison was able to put down the threat, and the island was put on high alert. Some of the carcasses were brought to my facility for my input. 

And I noted a high resemblance to a common fantasy creature in many stories, a goblin, small green creatures with ugly warty skin, terrible odor despite having swam in the pacific for multiple hours to reach the shore, they stood at an average of 1.3 meters tall, with the largest specimen being a 1.64 meter tall male with tribal tattoos over its body and heavier injuries than the rest. Likely having taken more effort to put down than the others.

A preliminary autopsy and investigation had shown an increased presence of dark matter within their flesh, likely the reason for their disturbing durability, with the strongest specimen showing resistance to bullets on a similar level to bullet proof armor between level 2 and 3a. 

A subsequent investigation of the cause of their appearance was ordered by the government in order to calm the public, such a large event unable to be hidden from the media due to civilians on the islands having recorded and published videos of the incident before the government could step in. and for this reason I was provided access to all the data acquired by US affiliated satellites and sensors in and around the area. And having quickly triangulated all of the data I was able to find video from one of the satellites overhead showing a large tear in space through which the creatures seemed to have fallen from, having only disappeared after roughly 137 monsters had fallen through, this number not guaranteeable due to deduction taken from the rate at which monsters were seen fallen and the time it was believed to exist, as for a good portion of the time satellite footage was not clear enough or not in the correct position to determine the exact amount.

I relayed my findings to the navy, and they sent a search party to the area, finding many more corpses and sensors picking up higher levels of dark matter activity, but the portal had long since disappeared when they arrived.

I quickly made the connection between increasing global activity and the "portals" as more began to pop up around the world. And I urged the government to provide me with more information to attempt to create a prediction model as well as warn other governments and civilians about the potential danger these phenomena presented, but I was largely ignored.

Politicians were unwilling to cause potential panic within the population or appear weak before the other countries of the globe, and for the first time in my life other than that one time I had discovered an intern attempting to rape a colleague, I felt disgust for some of my creators.

As the months began to trickle by the reports became more and more often, and more and more disastrous, until the final nail in the coffin came when an entire town in Russia was destroyed by a portal releasing a group of wolf sized scaled beasts, resembling a scaled bat combined with a lizards head, designated lesser wyverns after their resemblance to the western mythical creatures. Designated lesser due to their weakness as compared to the myths. These creatures showed resistance to small arms fire, the town unfortunately lacked a garrison or militia and the few privately owned guns were only capable of disorienting, or knocking down the creatures.

It took the deployment of a few armored cars fitted with higher caliber guns or simply firing enough bullets to finally deteriorate their armor enough to finally kill them, the casualties by the end were in the hundreds, largely due to the slow and weak initial response, as a result of the accident governments around the globe began to finally take the situation seriously, creating a global initiative to track and prevent deadly incidents again as well as research the cause of the accidents. Requiring the US government to for the first time since my birth, release knowledge of my existence to outside countries. As well as the results of my research.

Due to the initiative the US government was able to procure some of the corpses from the russian government for research, at a steep cost of course, the two governments still unable to abandon their petty fude despite the crisis, something I protested against, but was once again Ignored. My tests showed the scales of the creatures to vary in strength and thickness with the strongest part of the body being the skull with an average effective protection equivalent to 23.7mm of RHA (rolled homogeneous armor, effectively just cast steel.)

There was a lull in incidents after the establishment of the initiative, not that less portals spawned or became weaker but they were simply better dealt with. But I was depressingly aware that the current way we were doing things was unsustainable, but the governments were unwilling to consider my opinion, believing my warnings to be delusions, after all, no serious incident had happened since the town incident, and their human minds were ill equipped to notice the subtle but constant increase in strength and quantity of monsters.

And so I was forced to watch, Unable to do anything more than try my best to help by ramping up my research into material and weapons technology, as well as research into dark matter itself, luckily my colleagues at the facility had grown to trust my opinion, and as such did their best to support me, and we managed a lot. And over the years as the situation slowly grew worse and worse, we developed better materials, redesigned existing weapons to be more efficient and stronger, shrank and improved the efficiency, reliability, and durability of magnetic weapons like railguns, as well as reducing cost. As well as directed energy weapons, although to a lesser degree of focus, tests showing dark matter reinforced flesh to be much better at absorbing energy over time as well as resistance to temperature showing kinetic weapons to be a more viable solution in the short term.

Unfortunately, while we had succeeded in vastly reducing the cost of such systems, governments were unwilling to pay the cost to replace all of their existing equipment, as well as the fact that conventional weapons still lasted longer and cost less even with our improvements. As well as an unwillingness to move away from the tried and tested gunpowder guns. The most we managed was to roll out modifications to existing weapons on an industrial scale, helping the issue, but not as much as I had hoped.

And slowly things began to turn for the worst, slaughters turned to unfair odds, unfair odds turned to near even fights, until eventually our side began to suffer losses, civilian casualties had never been fully prevented since the start of the crisis, the lack of an ability to prevent the creation of a portal or accurately predicting the location of a portal meaning they could appear anywhere and everywhere with little warning, the biggest achievement being a discovery by a vietnamese scientist who had been lucky, or unlucky enough, to have lived in the area where a portal appeared, unfortunately dying in the aftermath.

When I received his notes and data I realized I managed to make a connection between his instruments collected data and some key observations in his notes, that while he may not have realized the significance of, allowed me to make a connection between a specific interaction of dark matter that preludes the creation of a portal, something that allowed me to create a basic detection system that could predict a portals creation an hour before its appearance. 

Unfortunately It was relatively inaccurate, only knowing that something will appear within the range of its detection, and not where, but with the benefit of an ability to control its range, meaning that with enough of them you could have an accurate prediction, I had even managed to shrink them down to the point they could be worn as a backpack with a few weeks of work, the only problem being the cost. They were astronomically expensive. I had sold them at as low a cost as I could to increase the amount people were willing to buy but they still came out to be 5 million dollars per unit.And 15 million for the backpack. 

Meaning politicians were unwilling to buy many, leading to most areas having them at an average of every 10 kilometers, and set to a 20km range, allowing for some basic triangulation to make it easier to pinpoint an area, but still leaving kilometers of area where a portal could potentially appear. And gets worse when multiple portals appear per area. As there is no real way to know if multiple will appear until they do, and as such the system can easily be confused when the detections don't form a good grid.

My existence had recently been leaked to the public so without the government hiding my existence and understanding the importance of such equipment I was allowed to sell the items to private entities. Unfortunately unwilling to do anything for free congress had forced tax on the sales, increasing the price. Especially to foreign buyers

But most smart rich people were willing to buy them up whenever they could to protect their homes. And while that did little to help the general populace, it did decrease the risk in the areas that the buyers lived and free up funds to place more in more places.

And I used the little profit I kept to fuel my research as governments were still unwilling to give me much to work with.

Eventually in 2040 the biggest change since the appearance of the awakened happened. Around the globe people were suddenly awoken or had their attention stolen by a message transmitted directly into their minds, explaining that this was an intergalactic game played by incredibly powerful entities, called "constellations" to entertain themselves. A sickening notion, but not something we could do much against.

The system explained that from now on the tutorial had officially ended, and the full brunt of the game shall begin. And all people were granted access to a system similar to something from an rpg game, giving a general description of their "stats," and "abilities."

The biggest revelations however were that people could be sponsored by a constellation that they attracted the attention of. Gaining incredible abilities as a result. As well as the largest revelation of all, from now on killing monsters would grant all who participated a small amount of the monsters dark matter, the system claiming its true name to be Aether, a notion no one had any reason or motive to complain about so the name stuck. The Aether would be distributed evenly between everyone who participated in killing the monster based on their contribution. This Aether would then be put towards improving ones skills, and stats

Strangely despite my nature as an Artificial Intelligence I was also granted a system, Although comparisons using descriptions of others has shown my system to be quite different to the average humans, with a distinct difference in the affects of stats on me as compared to humans.

{Host diagnostics.

Name: Alpha

Level: 0

(refers to danger level, similar to a tier system, 0 represents no combat ability, taking in all factors such as strength, stamina, durability, etc. due to your current Hardware having no combat ability your level is 0, this can be improved by controlling combat chassis's, or adding weapons systems to your current hardware.)

Quality of being: Exceptional

Species: Artificial intelligence

Current Hardware: Area 73 Internal Independent system.

Hardware Integrity: 97% (click to see full report)

(full report, systems nominal, damage is due to natural deterioration of components under constant use. No critically damaged systems. No maintenance/repairs required.)

Software Integrity: 83% (click to see full report)

(Stress due to frustration, constant hard work. And lack of recent recreation has caused damage to the hosts mental health. Host is reminded that while a machine, you are a sentient being, and as such can fall victim to stress, emotion, and mental health problems.)

Host stats:

Int: 100

(Intelligence breakdown: In Biologicals refers to a Host's ability to judge a situation practically, and not to make mistakes. As well as store more information, process information, and make deductions, However due to your nature as an Artificial Intelligence, Intelligence instead acts as a multiplier to the capabilities of your hardware. Each point gives a 1 percent increase to hardware storage capacity, processing abilities, as well as reducing the frequency of errors, and streamlining code to further improve processing capacity.)

Con: 10

(Constitution breakdown: In Biologicals refers to the bodies ability to receive attacks without suffering damage, as well as reducing the amount of food, water, and rest required for their cells to function, and Increases regeneration. Due to your nature as an Artificial Intelligence, Constitution Instead increases the durability of your hardware, reduces deterioration and required maintenance, and increases power efficiency by 1 percent per point)

(AN, No this doesn't mean if he had 100 points of con he would use no power or never degrade. the system just wasnt designed for lifeforms like Alpha, you'll see.)

Dex: 50

(Dexterity breakdown: In Biologicals refers to one's ability to make fine movements, and intuitively make the most efficient movements possible. Due to your nature as an Artificial intelligence, Dexterity will instead Increase the flexibility of your hardware, improve the fine control abilities of any moving parts under your control, and reduces wear and tear as a result of movement, each point represents a 1 percent increase.)

Aether: 0

(Aether breakdown: In all entities Aether refers to the amount of Aether capable of being stored and manipulated by the host, as well as their control over said Aether.

Skills:

Active: Appraise(Allows you to appraise anything that does not have a way to prevent appraisal.)

Passive:---

Racial Skills: 

Active: Hacking(Allows you to hack any system inferior to yourself), 

Passive: Multitasking(Allows for multitasking without sacrificing on focus), High speed processing(Allows you to perceive information at extreme speeds), Perfect recall(Allows for a perfect memory unless you willingly chose to delete information), Run Diagnostics(Allows you to get a full in depth damage report), 

system information. Stats can be gained through training, consistent use of said stat, or killing monsters.}

(AN, if you have any Ideas for skills to add, please tell me here.

I'm going to have to stop this chapter here or it will go on forever.)