Just another average day in an average dying world, sea levels were rising, disasters ravaged the world, and politicians were still telling us nothing bad was happening. Now, I don't particularly consider myself a conspiracy theorist, but I am pretty sure global warming was, shockingly, still real and still a problem.

Of course, the only reason this was on my mind at the time was that it currently was nearly 50 degrees celsius in the middle of summer, and I pondered these things as the only logical reason it could possibly be this hot. My tiny dorm, which was actually an apartment but don't tell anyone, had somehow the budget to get everyone who was contributing to society by doing sport and science a nice holiday to a place where snow still fell surprisingly but not enough money to fix a god damn air conditioning unit, I had the paper to prove it to, it was just buried somewhere.

My definitely existing proof was hiding somewhere in a confusing mix of orderly chaos of various research paper that littered my desk in my 'living room' where instead of a TV, I had an excellent $20 desk that because I had a room to myself, thank whatever god is out there, I was able to make my unit as confusing as possible. This meant I had full right to put things in places that actually made sense instead of just looking nice.

No normal person uses a TV anymore; everything is on various streaming channels on your standard phone or tablet, so I saved money on buying a TV with my meager funds and put my desk somewhere lovely and open, so I could look out the nearby window while I work. Doing a degree in history was probably not such a big deal a decade or two ago, but it definitely was now since quite a few things were happening. They wanted people to record the end of the world in as much detail as possible, ranging from societies that collapsed or were in the process of said collapse to the sheer amount of animals going extinct like it was out of fashion.

Even better was the study I was doing for the exams due in a week. History wasn't complicated, at least for me; it just required actually knowing what was going on, carefully considering why or how it happened, then writing it in a way that would make even lawyers jealous to somehow criticise the source, event, or whatever, without actually inserting personal bias or insults.

Basically telling someone they are stupid, why they are stupid, and the series of events that led to their stupidity, without actually telling them they are stupid.

Maths I was ok at, in fact, I was pretty decent or even good at many different subjects, but history is for a reason or the other the subject I excelled at the most. But that isn't what is important right now; what was important was to finish researching how to make knives out of milk since I am currently in the middle of procrastinating, like I mentioned earlier history isn't hard to do if you know what you are doing and to be fair, I was researching not long ago, I just somehow ended up searching what the hell 'jackanape' meant in the dictionary eventually moving to, for some reason, how you can make knives out of milk.

Slowly, I turn towards the window beside my living room desk, to the storm clouds brewing off in the distance. The weather was something I was always interested in, not to say I knew exactly how storms worked, since that was for meteorologists to figure out and I wasn't paid to know precisely how a thunderstorm worked.

Nonetheless, I still always enjoyed watching the sheer amount of different shapes storms can take, from a light rain that covers the whole sky and can last almost a week of rain to an anvil topped gigantic storm that falls in buckets for a few hours before moving on.

The storm I observe from my small corner in my small dorm appears to be the latter, from the fact the storm is taller than wide, being shaped like an hourglass with large lightning strikes flashing occasionally throughout.

I watch the storm for a while longer, carefully taking in its unique shape before turning back to my lounge room, the chaotic yet still organised mess of various papers and sources that fill my coffee table that is adorned with a few unique coffee cups I collected over the years with a few having coffee of different temperatures from hot to lukewarm and a few being empty.

Maybe I should check on my neighbour, visiting society once in a while is a good idea or my tremendous social skills will get rusty. Most people these days only have social interaction during school and work with everything else being online, which twists people a little.

Getting off my chair and admiring my tabs that range in the double digits, I turn to finish off the warmer of the coffee and move to dump the rest, planning to clean everything up while I'm in that mood.

Finishing the coffee with a few large gulps and slight grimace to the cold coffee, I turn a quick glance to the window and frown just as fast when I notice the storm was much closer than before, and by closer, I mean it was practically over my apartment complex.

I sigh, place a handful of my cups on the kitchen bench to wash up later and turn to enter out the backdoor to the balcony, assessing the upcoming storm and massive oncoming headache. My good friend, the fabled neighbour, went out not long ago practically frothing at the mouth for a new VR game that came out recently that he religiously told me was 'the next big thing' since the last big thing.

Games are ok, and I do enjoy playing them now and again; I would consider myself pretty ok at most every game genre but seriously struggle to keep interested in it. However, my neighbour, known as Jacob by more normal people, seems to be able to stay interested and is much better than me at most games, making us a decent team when we decide to game.

My immunity to the addicting nature and gameplay loops of most games seems to be highly beneficial to my bank account as loot boxes can't exactly drain me dry when I don't play their game in the first place. Unfortunately, people also suck in general, so it is hard to enjoy playing against or with online people when the community looks almost hauntingly similar to a twisted Olympics where the worst human being possible wins the trophy of ultimate general unpleasantness.

If there is a competition for it, you bet that out of billions of people, at least one person will try their best at being the best; this includes competitions for being the worst possible person. Compounded by the fact that the world is dying and more than a few people are mildly frustrated about that fact and you have the current internet.

Using my skills at keeping random shit in my pockets, including my phone, I pull out my excellent out of date phone and find Jacob in the contacts, sending the simple message, "It is going to rain soon, might want to get home soon." I consider my social obligation completed and turn to head back inside.

Short-lived is my relatively standard afternoon as I nearly trip after hearing a lightning strike worryingly close and have to fight to keep my balance.

Wait, why am I struggling to keep balanced?

Lightning strikes shouldn't be affecting my balance as much as it is right now, nor should I be feeling this lightheaded. After I quickly throw up all my coffee and mid-day lasagna special, I realise that I feel very unwell as well.

This is some severe bullshittery, fucking hell I feel awful.

I collapse on the concrete on the balcony, doing something in between pushups, a very intimate R-18 scene of man and concrete, and someone who seems to have taken a fist full of drugs and taken a trip to a giant blender.

With what is left of my fading consciousness, I half mentally facepalm and half fumble to get out the phone I just used and try to call anyone who can tell me what suddenly caused all my motor functions to stop working properly, maybe a refund of my coffee while they are at it too.

I don't get far unsurprisingly, as soon nothing is responding to my will or brain properly as I weakly writhe on the concrete, trying to ignore the blazing agony somehow stabbing every part of my body, it feels almost as if my eyes are boiling, my bones are suddenly itchy and radiate an almost constant pain. In contrast, my blood and veins now feel as if someone extremely unqualified wove barbed wire throughout my body in the most painful way possible.

My skin just really fucking hurts in an almost mundane way thankfully, yes it was still agony, but it almost felt like it was not quite there. Similar to it being halfway between skin and something else, a sort of transitional state, if you will.

It didn't last long, I think at least, before my consciousness completely faded away.

It wasn't just our protagonist, or his neighbour Jacob, that experienced a rather unpleasant universe switch as throughout the world. Many people simply rolled around on the ground in agony for a few seconds, or in our protagonist's case a few minutes, before merely disappearing as if they never existed.

But it wasn't just people disappearing.

A little less than half of those people who were rolling around in agony, when they disappeared they almost immediately reappeared, but altered in some way. A few now resembled elves, a few now had cat or fox ears with the accompanying tail, a few became beast-kin as they looked more like an animal on their hind legs than a human with animal features.

Almost every possible intelligent fantasy creature was represented.

Of course, the fact that there was no warning at all before you suddenly became a half-human half-fantasy creature would be daunting enough, that's not even considering that for almost 40-50% of the beginning population had nothing happen to them at all and suddenly having the person you were talking to, or half the conference room start writhing on the floor in agony, having half of them disappear and the rest appear with fantasy-like features was probably very earth-shattering.

In standard human fashion, everyone started panicking, whether you were altered or not. Luckily, everyone was too busy panicking to bother being racist but it wouldn't be long but that started happening.

It was only roughly 48 hours later when humanity got itself a response in the form of a little blue, slightly transparent box.

[ALERT]

Congratulations! Your world has been deemed unsuitable and in the glory of The System, all inhabitants have been selected to be relocated to primary world: (Alfari Nexus)

In preparation, a portion of the population has been reviewed and selected as pioneers while the other portions have been altered to resemble native species. Regardless, all remaining species on world designated (Earth) will now undergo inoculation and examination.

Sealed rifts containing the mentioned worlds hostile flora & fauna will open in approximately 24:00:00 hours, and will continue until ordered by The System.

Prepare, for once the seals open, none will be spared.

The location these rifts opened were not consistent, some countries had multiple while quite a few had none, some were large while some were small, some were even coloured differently from the standard blue-purple that the swirling rifts most commonly appeared as.

As mentioned, exactly 24 hours later, all the rifts located throughout the world opened all at once and 24 hours wasn't as much time to get ready as you'd think.