The Guardian System: The strongest Summoner's quest to save his family-Chapter 388: A City Like a Corpse (5)

The map didn't say it; plus, all the information it gave about the various cities was superficial at best. It was mostly names, which was why Reidar came here. For the diary, which could give him information.

Reidar folded the map and put it away before turning back to the materials. They were useless for opening a portal, but they might still be useful for crafting, which was why he reached into his inventory and started collecting everything.

Then he saw the book.

It sat on the table near the edge of the room, and he walked over to pick it up.

It was surprisingly light. The cover and pages were made of a flexible material, and a plastic-like substance that had resisted decay, fire, and time covered it.

The language was a series of angular glyphs, but it didn't matter because the system translated everything for him.

[Translation Available]

The symbols shifted. The characters rearranged themselves into something Reidar could understand.

[Journal of Zhen-Gora Thenn]

Reidar opened the cover, finding more writing on the first page—a title page with the author's name repeated and a subtitle beneath it.

Reidar stared at the name.

<Zhen-Gora Thenn. He must have been a high-ranking survivor if he had been able to stay in this place.>

Reidar stared at the name. This was the first time he had found something personal belonging to the race that lived here.

Reidar hoped to find something that could explain why this world had ended and if Earth could avoid the same fate.

Now he had a journal, a personal account from someone who had lived through the collapse of their world.

Reidar flipped to the next page. The System translated the text as he read.

[Entry 1]

It's been two months since Mana came. I decided to write a log so that… well… I won't be forgotten in case something happens to me. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

It's not easy to explain what happened, really, but I will do my best.

The energy appeared without warning. One moment we were living our lives; the next we lost consciousness. Everyone, every living being on the planet, did it at the same time.

When I woke up, the world had changed.

The laboratory was half destroyed, as if it had been torn apart by a giant.

Outside was catastrophic. Buildings had collapsed or split in half as the ground beneath them expanded. Streets had ruptured, creating chasms between sections that had once been connected. The road I had walked through that morning was now a field of rubble spread across twice or more its original area.

The death toll was unimaginable. Millions died as structures failed. Those who survived the initial expansion found themselves trapped in the wreckage or separated from loved ones by kilometers of devastated terrain.

But that wasn't the worst part.

The creatures appeared shortly after we woke up. They weren't native to our world, or so we thought. Their biology was wrong; their behavior was alien. Some looked like twisted versions of our wildlife. Others were completely foreign.

They attacked on sight. They were fast and aggressive, and they killed anyone who couldn't fight back.

The High Council tried to keep order, but the chaos was too widespread because communication was impossible and the transportation infrastructure was broken, which meant people fled toward the capital, Kilovar, hoping the government could protect them.

I stayed in the laboratory. If I wanted to understand what was happening, I needed to study it.

[Entry 127]

So, we all reached a consensus about the monsters. They aren't animals, at least not all of them, and not anymore. Some of them are completely alien to our planet.

I've dissected many specimens so far. All of them had a biology that made no sense with our animals, but there were many similarities too.

The system explained animals evolved because of mana, so, in theory, these things actually are animals, but we still don't understand how they are able to use… magic? Would this be an appropriate word? Regardless… These animals… these monsters, they kill people.

So, we also figured out that mana saturates everything now. The air. The ground. Living tissue. It's rewriting the rules of physics in ways I don't understand yet.

The creatures grew stronger by absorbing mana naturally, using it to fuel their abilities.

The mana is transforming everything it touches, and I don't know if we will be spared from it.

[Entry 200]

The government sent a message today. Not a message, to be precise, but someone. It was a dude at level 80. How he reached that level in four months is beyond me.

They figured something out about the Guardian System.

Apparently, something was "installed" in our minds while we were unconscious during the first day. We knew that, but the government sent someone to teach us how to survive with it since they had no way of knowing we did.

The message said that the system was designed to help us survive. To give us the tools, we need to fight the creatures and adapt to the new world.

We knew that too, but hey… I guess at least we learned the government was still trying to look out for us.

The High Council's most important advice was to use the system to learn skills and get stronger, as it was the only way to survive. Maybe even those that didn't believe in the system will change their minds.

The High Council was right, by the way, since the people who hadn't figured out the system yet got killed. The creatures are too strong and too swift, which means that without the ability to fight back, we are just prey.

[Entry 201]

A year has passed since my last entry, roughly a year and a half since the system came. The situation is rapidly deteriorating beyond control.

The capital is overflowing with refugees from every city, hoping the government can protect them. The High Council has erected barriers using the system and its vendors.

Right… Aliens… I didn't expect that, but hey… We couldn't be the only ones out there, right?

But the barriers won't last forever. Monsters are getting stronger at a rapid pace. Sure, their numbers are dwindling, and we are getting strong enough to resist them somehow, but killing the monsters is not enough.