King Baal's Legatee

Chapter 1: Stefano Hawkin

December 31, 2150 was the day that humanity faced a real terror in their hearts. All of the sudden, the Earth shook and the Sun turned black out of nowhere. Huge  pillars came out of the ground around the world. When the pillars stopped, vortex appeared in the middle of it. Then tons of monsters came out and killed anyone it its path.

Humanity almost got wiped out, even military equipments were no use. Guns, lasers, grenades, tanks, and etc. All were useless, it cannot penetrate the skin of the monsters. Days, weeks, and months of survival, half of humanity got wiped off from the face of the earth.

Doom was near and the humans lost all hope to survive. They can no longer hold out until one day, something weird happen to the people of age 14-50. They somehow all got the title of "Hunter" in front of them and a card. In the card, it shows them their name, level, skills, status, and etc. It was totally like a game. But others cannot see your status if you do not show it to them.

It seems that only Hunters can see the Name and Level, that's all. But when they got the title "Hunter" it feels like they got a huge power up. They can now slowly fight the monsters, it would take 10 hunters to beat 1 monster. And there are over thousands of monsters in every country while the Pillar with a vortex or so called Gate was now slowly closing and monsters rarely come out.

Day by day, weeks by weeks, month by month, and until it took them 5 years to finally annihilate all the monsters in the surface. Humanity finally got back on its feet again. Tons of Hunters are now very strong that a single monster is like an ant to them. The "Hunter" has now established a Guild which will protect each state of a country.

In America 52 Guild Branch was formed, one in each state to protect in case of another monster outbreak. The Pillars are now called 72 Demons of King Solomon. Why? Because each Pillars has a sigil on the front before you can get inside, each sigil represents the  72 demons that King Solomon evoked. But something was shrouded in mystery, only 71 Pillar came out and 1 was missing. This had caused a huge commotion to where its location.

Another 20 years had passed by just like that, new hunters rises, more monsters become stronger. Guild Branches are the Hope of humanity. And once a year, monster outbreak happens. Now humanity has created a place where everyone is safe. They made an underground space where people would stay there for the mean time while the Hunters wipe out the monsters.

Hunters were categorized by rank based on their achievement and strength. F-rank to S-rank was the way it was organized, so far only 10 made it to S-rank around the world, while there are thousands of A-rank, millions of B to F-ranks.

Almost everyone aspired to be a Hunter, aside from getting tons of money from selling the things that the monster drop. Hunters are paid a huge sum of money when they join a Guild and can be guranteed a good life for the whole family. Aside from wealth, they gain fame. Even the lowest ranking of hunters can easily kill a regular human. Hunters at the lowest rank are 5x stronger than regular humans.

And one of those aspiring to be a hunter, Stefano Hawkin, was one of them. He is now 16 year old, he was born during the 4th wave of Monster Outbreak when his mom was giving birth to him. He look up to those hunters and wanted to become one of them. But that expectation was crushed by reality. Almost every Hunter he meets looks down on him as if he is lower than an ant.

Hunters had become arrogant, if they kill a fellow hunter, it would be a huge crime but if they kill an ordinary human. They would just pay a sum of money. And money was not a problem for hunters, even new hunters can get a good equipment that was being sold in the Market by other Hunters.

Stefano always wanted to awaken his Hunter potential so he can help his mother who single-handedly raised him because his father was killed during the Monster Outbreak. They had financial problem, his mom owes a lot of money. His mother is very pretty at age of 34, she still had a very nice body which others always try to take advantage of her by making her owe money but of course, she refused all of that. She had suffered a lot, he wanted to atleast carry some of her burdens. She works almost 18 hours a day of having multiple jobs. She goes here, then there, then to there, and so on just to get some money.

My mom and I lived in America, at Los Angeles, California. Good thing is that my mom inherited a house from my grandma or else we would be staying in an apartment and pay for it. LA rent is very expensive, 3k$ for a single bedroom. My mom rarely makes 3k a month.

"Hmmm?" he wonders why before they moved here in this house. He never went down to their basement since his mother told him it was full of things and it might collapse on him.

Curiosity killed the cat is indeed true. I never expected going down here would make me discover something unconceivable. There was a stair leading all the way down beneath our basement and before you can even go down. There was a huge Golden Sigil sign on the entrance. My heart raced like as if it would explode any moment. This is a motherf****ng Pillar!!! What is it doing here?!?
Stefano was unable to grasped the situation and started to panicked and was sacred that monsters might come out so he rushed back up to his house and went straight to his room.

Few minutes had passed and Stefano was now calm but was still in shock, he quickly researched more about the 72 Demon Pillars and found each and every location of it except that last one was a question mark. That means, the Pillar on his basement was the last Pillar that everyone has gone crazy looking for it.

This is a huge thing, I need to grasp the situation first. Should I call the government right away, or keep it hidden. This could get me a huge sum of money as a reward of finding it. But first, even if its dangerous, I must try to go in.

Stefano grabbed the biggest knife in his kitchen. It was a butcher's knife, he also had his man made armor of woods in his chest and a biker's helmet. He always trained his physical body, he also competed in Martial Arts for ordinary humans and won some of them and now he will face a battle of his life as soon as he gets into that dungeon.