Chương 3: Interlude 1 — The Internet Discovers Mana Stones

The internet did not break on Day One. It simply compressed. Billions of independent conversations, arguments, celebrity scandals, sports debates, political fights, and local concerns vanished beneath a single subject. For a few hours, humanity had only one conversation. By early morning Eastern Time, Reddit's front page had become a wall of nearly identical headlines. [MEGATHREAD] Unknown Blue Structures Appearing Worldwide — LIVE UPDATES NewsJunkie99: NYPD just barricaded three blocks around one in Manhattan.

LondonLad: Military vehicles rolling through Croydon right now. It's not just the US. TokyoWatcher: Police completely sealed the ones in Shibuya and Shinjuku. Nobody is getting close. TexMex55: Bro there's one on my uncle's farm. Middle of a cow pasture. BargainHunter: THERE IS ONE IN THE WALMART PARKING LOT ON 4TH STREET. RoadRage: I-95 is shut down. One of these things appeared directly on the highway. SkylineViewer: I can see one glowing from my apartment window. What the fuck am I supposed to do?

RationalAdult: Stay inside. Do not approach it. Wait for an official statement. Beneath the practical information, panic had already evolved into theory. SciFiGuy: Alien invasion. Obviously aliens. This is exactly how every alien invasion movie starts. LogicUser: If aliens wanted to invade us, why would they build glowing doors in Walmart parking lots and then not come out? SciFiGuy: Teleportation relays. Atmospheric processors. Vanguard structures. Pick one. Anonymous image boards skipped uncertainty entirely.

THE PORTALS ARE GOVERNMENT TECH. WAKE UP. Anonymous: US military hologram experiment. Anonymous: CERN merged us with a parallel timeline. Anonymous: Project Blue Beam. Fake alien invasion. One-world government. Anonymous: Chinese secret weapon. Anonymous: Simulation admins patching the server. Anonymous: Book of Revelation. Repent. Anonymous: Did everyone forget the solar flare yesterday? One post appeared between the shouting. Anonymous: What if they're literally game dungeons? The response was immediate.

Anonymous: go back to playing MMOs Anonymous: touch grass Anonymous: Yes anon, God installed World of Warcraft in real life. Shut up. Hours later, someone would dig up that screenshot. On r/MMORPG, nobody had confirmed Levels, Jobs, or anything resembling a coherent System. That did not slow anyone down. IF THESE ARE ACTUALLY DUNGEONS, WHAT CLASS ARE YOU PICKING? HealPlz: Healer. I am not taking aggro in real life. ShieldWall: Tank. I'm already big. ShadowStep: Rogue. Stealth in real life? Easy choice.

FireballSpam: Mage. If you choose swordsman in a world with AR-15s, you're statistically a moron. FiveFiveSixEnjoyer: Exactly. Why would a sword ever beat a gun? That comment would not age well. On TikTok and X, humanity's survival instinct failed its first stress test. A teenager danced in front of a gate. A man held his golden retriever toward one like Simba. Several college students threw a slice of pizza through the blue surface and screamed when it disappeared. CloutChaser_01: 1000 likes and I'll go inside.

Replies alternated between: Please don't. and: DO IT. Then someone actually did. A man in the American Southwest crossed a police line with a rifle and kept his livestream running. The chat exploded when a small green humanoid appeared. The streamer fired. The creature fell. USA USA USA ALIEN INVASION CANCELLED SECOND AMENDMENT WINS AGAIN Then the goblin stood back up. For half a second, the chat stopped moving. wait WAIT why is it getting up The man fired again. The impacts knocked the creature backward.

It still came. The camera spun. Stone floor. Screaming. Then darkness. Stream ended. The chat moved more slowly afterward. Is he dead? r/guns spent the next twenty minutes trying to explain what had happened without leaving the boundaries of known physics. BallisticsDad: Bad shot placement. BackwoodsHunter: Unknown anatomy. Could have natural armor. Buckshot4Breakfast: Shotgun. BigBoreOrGoHome:. 50 cal. Then one user slowed down the footage. FrameByFrameFrank: No. Watch the second burst. The bullets are hitting.

The impacts physically throw it backward. But it's barely bleeding and doesn't seem proportionally injured. ConfusedShooter: If it gets thrown backward, that's damage. FrameByFrameFrank: Physics is happening. Momentum is transferring. I'm saying the creature isn't being injured the way it should be. RaidMechanic: So... like hitting a boss with an attack the game doesn't register? Nobody had useful vocabulary for what they were seeing yet. Then the machete video appeared. A different group. A different gate.

A handgun failed. One terrified man grabbed a camping machete and swung. One hit. The monster dissolved into gray ash. The internet lost its collective mind. WHAT THE FUCKING MACHETE??? BULLET BAD KNIFE GOOD??? REALITY IS USING MMO RULES Someone cross-posted the video to r/MMORPG beneath FiveFiveSixEnjoyer's earlier comment. Why would a sword ever beat a gun? SwordMain1988: This aged well. KnightLife: SWORD MAINS WE ARE SO BACK. FireballSpam: I formally apologize to the melee community.

Around the same time, a new account made a post. GateGuide Normal firearms are not dealing meaningful damage. Knockback is not the same thing as killing the target. If you absolutely insist on entering, use handheld melee weapons. Knives, axes, machetes, spears—anything you can keep physical contact with. Do not assume something is dead because bullets knocked it down. The first replies were predictable. SourcePlz: Source?

TutorialNPC: bro thinks he's the tutorial character NewAccountDetective: account created TODAY lmao RifleGuy1776:"meaningful damage" bro thinks reality has a combat log Then someone checked the timestamp. TimelineWatcher: Wait. He posted this before the machete video started spreading. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. A thread appeared almost immediately. Who the hell is GateGuide? Military researcher. Government employee. Early survivor.

MMO nerd who guessed correctly. ARG marketing account. Alien. AI. Then: ChronicallyOnline: Time traveler. NormalPersonForOnce: Least insane theory today. For the first time that morning, the correct answer appeared as a joke. Then people began posting blue crystals. Thousands of photographs. One on a dashboard. One beside gray monster ash. One held in a work glove. Nobody agreed on a name. Blue rock. Portal crystal. Loot gem. Monster stone. Mana crystal. Dungeon rock. MMO_Veteran: Currency.

Save them until somebody finds the vendor. Then: IntrusiveThoughtsWin: Eat it. The replies immediately became variations on: DO NOT EAT THE MAGIC ROCK. WHY WOULD YOU EAT IT. STOP TELLING HIM TO EAT IT. Then GateGuide posted again. He called them Mana Stones. More importantly, he posted an identification result. The internet immediately stopped reading it as one block of text and began tearing individual lines apart. Rarity: Common LootGoblin: COMMON??? MinMaxedLife: If there's Common then there's Rare.

LootTableTheory: And Epic? Legendary? Why does reality apparently have a loot table? Then: F-Rank PowerScaleAddict: F is the bottom right? AlphabetEnjoyer: YOU DON'T KNOW THAT. PowerScaleAddict: Okay but if F-rank does this I would still like to know what A does. Then: Purity: 68% ChemGradNoSleep: 68% relative to what? LabRat_404: What constitutes an impurity? Can it be refined? Does purity affect conversion efficiency? Then: Mana Capacity: Low PanicMode: LOW????? DoomScroll: If this is LOW what the hell is HIGH?

HalfFullGlass: Hopefully expensive. Then people reached the important line. Type: Material / Energy Source GridEngineer: Wait. A minute later: GridEngineer: Stop reading this like a fantasy item for five seconds. It says MATERIAL / ENERGY SOURCE. Resource. The conversation changed. Not all at once. But enough. The stated effects made it worse. Heat. Electricity. Physical force. DeadPhoneDaily: PHONE CHARGER ROCK. WeekendSurvivalist: Portable heater. BadIdeaFactory: Can I use the telekinesis part to throw knives?

AccountantWithAnxiety: Why is murder your first use case for the priceless magic battery? Then came the inevitable misunderstanding. FreeEnergyTruth: FREE ENERGY. PleaseReadWords: IT LITERALLY SAYS FINITE. THE ROCK RUNS OUT. READ. At the bottom of the identification result was the Flavor Text. That attracted an entirely different kind of attention. As the gods punished Prometheus for stealing fire from the heavens... MythNerd: Why does whatever created these things know Prometheus?

TheologyGrad: Interesting wording.

"The gods," not God. SecularHumanist42: The magic rock containing authored lore text is a bigger issue than the theology. LinguisticsThrowaway: We don't actually know whether this text objectively exists in English. GateGuide said his Unique Skill identifies things. It could be translating information into concepts he understands. AncientAliensUnironically: Ancient Greeks encountered dungeons first. Prometheus was historical. SkepticPrime: Source? AncientAliensUnironically: Vibes.

Nobody had an answer to the actual question. Who wrote it? The internet demanded proof. GateGuide responded. GateGuide: Fine. He uploaded one continuous video. The details were immediately dissected. One liter of water went into a stainless-steel pot. A blue Stone pulsed. The water boiled almost instantly. Then a phone battery climbed: 34%. 56%. 81%. 100%. Finally, a spoon lifted several inches above the counter. BurnWardNurse: DO NOT TRY THIS WITH EGGS. BatteryNerd: No. Forget the water.

What the hell just happened to that battery? CompressionNerd: No obvious cut during the battery test. No visible charging cable. Could still be staged, but not cheaply. NeverBelieveAnything: fake The next problem for the skeptics was replication. Someone in Arkansas tried the heat effect on coffee. He used too much. The coffee erupted upward in a geyser of steam. The cameraman laughed so hard he nearly dropped the phone. EspressoEmergency: HE SAID BOIL NOT CREATE THE SUN.

RaidMechanic: mana control skill issue BaristaMain: F-rank Barista build is not going well. Then came more demonstrations. Different users. Different Stones. Different countries. Heating. Charging. Moving small objects. The question was no longer whether GateGuide's Stone worked. The question became why all of them did. Then one video changed the discussion again. A middle-aged woman who had never entered a gate used a Stone her brother brought home. The frying pan heated normally. ClassLocked: WAIT.

YOU DON'T NEED A CLASS??? MageSupremacy: Why can a normal person use mana? EngineerX: Because you're still thinking like a gamer. It's not equipment. A second message followed. EngineerX: It's fuel. That word changed everything. Scientific communities stopped joking quite as much. MaterialsScientist: We need controlled tests. Mass before and after depletion. Calorimetry. Output versus purity. Output versus remaining charge. ThermoActual: If Mana is stored energy, conservation may still hold.

"Mana" is a label. It is not an explanation. ElectricalEng: Can output be regulated mechanically? Can multiple Stones feed one load? Does human intent remain necessary? NeuroLab:"Responds to intent" may be stranger than the energy conversion itself. What exactly is detecting intent? A university account posted cautiously: NorthCentralMaterialsLab: Our department has obtained a specimen through local authorities. Preliminary observations are consistent with publicly circulated heat-generation footage.

Controlled testing is underway. No paper. No peer review. No consensus. Just scientists discovering that their textbooks had acquired a new footnote overnight. The energy industry noticed next. GridPlanner: IF these Stones are recoverable in useful quantities, and IF their energy can eventually be extracted through relatively simple hardware, this could remove large parts of the conventional fuel-combustion-turbine chain from some applications. Those are two enormous IFs. But they're worth paying attention to.

Then WallStreetBets arrived. TickerHunter: WHAT DO I BUY? WHICH COMPANY OWNS A DUNGEON? MarketAdult: NONE. THEY APPEARED THIS MORNING. GoldRushBoomer: Sell the shovels. Axes. Camping gear. Boots. Protective equipment. DarkHumorETF: Funeral homes. CryptoBroAlpha: ManaCoin presale— The replies were nearly unanimous. FUCK OFF. YOLO_Trader: Short oil. MarketAdult: DO NOT SHORT THE GLOBAL PETROLEUM INDUSTRY BECAUSE A GUY ON REDDIT BOILED WATER WITH A BLUE ROCK. The warning arrived too late to stop the retail panic.

Pictures appeared of sporting-goods stores with empty axe and machete racks. SuburbanDad84: WHY IS HOME DEPOT OUT OF AXES? DungeonEconomist: Dungeon economy. SuburbanDad84: THE DUNGEONS HAVE EXISTED SINCE THIS MORNING. Then property law discovered the Dungeon Era. r/legaladvice Gate appeared on my ranch. Do I own it? RancherTex: Can federal agents enter without a warrant? If resources come out of it, are those covered by mineral rights? Does mineral-rights law apply to another dimension?

TenantFromHell: Portal appeared in my basement. Landlord says "all dungeon revenue is property income." He also raised my rent. Please help. HOA_Prisoner: HOA says the blue glow from my neighbor's gate violates exterior lighting rules. I wish I were joking. The most-upvoted reply came from a verified attorney. ActualPropertyLawyer: Nobody knows. Do not sign anything. Do not let random companies onto your property. Hire a lawyer. Then someone said the phrase that would define the next several days.

CasualObserver: If these things drop from monsters, and one F-rank Stone can do that... why are we treating the gates like disaster zones? Isn't this a gold rush? Replies came instantly. Prospector69: Gold doesn't boil water. BlueScreen: Blue Rush. RaidCapitalist: Dungeon Rush. WizardInvestor: Mana Rush. NamingPolice: Please stop naming it. An economics student added the necessary caveat. MacroEconGrad: IF the gates continue producing resources. We don't know whether monsters return.

We don't know whether drops replenish. We don't know whether gates are permanent. But if they do? Then "gold rush" may undersell this. Different countries reacted very differently. In the United States, the combination of private property, civilian weapons, internet fame, and the possibility of getting rich proved difficult to contain. People were entering unsecured gates with baseball bats. EuroPoster: Americans are monetizing the alien portals before the safety briefing is finished.

FreedomFighter1776: skill issue Japan looked different. Urban gates remained behind police barriers and tightly controlled government cordons. On 5ch, that became its own argument. [Is the World Ending?] Mysterious Blue Gates Appear Worldwide — Thread #84 Anonymous 034: LMAO Americans are already clearing dungeons. Anonymous 041: They're not clearing anything. They're trespassing and dying. Anonymous 067: Classic Japan. Everyone else acts while we hold meetings. Anonymous 072: People are literally dying in there.

Keeping civilians out is obviously correct. Anonymous 103: Did you see the GateGuide Mana Stone video? If that's real, the situation changed. Anonymous 118: There are independent replication videos overseas now. Still haven't seen Japanese civilians with an actual Stone. Anonymous 151: If it's really an energy resource, the government will lock all of them down. Anonymous 169: Better than letting streamers get eaten by goblins. Then the discussion drifted. Anonymous 221: Forget the energy for a second.

Who wrote the Prometheus text? Anonymous 228:... Yeah. That's actually bothering me. Anonymous 251: Maybe the identification Skill translates the original information into concepts GateGuide understands. Anonymous 259: Okay. Then who wrote the original information? The thread slowed. For a few seconds, nobody posted. Then: Anonymous 267: I liked this better when we were arguing about axes. The joke did not entirely work. GateGuide posted another warning afterward.

He asked users to send clear photographs or videos of unknown drops and monsters. He also explicitly told people not to eat unidentified Dungeon loot. Naturally: InternetHistorian: The fact he had to say "do not eat unidentified drops" means somebody is absolutely going to eat one. Three minutes later: RegretfulUser: too late The replies arrived instantly. WHAT DID YOU EAT WHAT WAS IT ANSWER US RegretfulUser did not respond. No one knew whether that was ominous or whether he was simply enjoying himself.

Images continued flooding toward GateGuide. Weapons. Monster corpses. Crystals. Bottles. Objects humanity had not possessed names for that morning. Some users began reporting his answers. ChopShopHero: GateGuide says mine is a Chipped Hand Axe. Required Level 1. RatProblem: He identified the rat thing as Level 1. PotatoCamera: Mine came back partial because the picture sucked. Use better lighting. Someone created a public spreadsheet.

COMMUNITY DUNGEON DATABASE — DAY ONE Location Gate Appearance Monster Description Approx. Level Drops Mana Stones Weapons GateGuide Identification Casualties Source Links GateGuide had not created it. He had not requested it. He had simply become one of the first reliable anchors around which people could organize Dungeon information. The crude ancestor of the future Dungeon Wiki had appeared before most governments had even decided whether dungeon was an acceptable official term.

Naturally, people immediately began arguing about GateGuide himself. PraiseTheGuide: GateGuide hasn't been wrong yet. TouchGrassAgain: He's been posting for like four hours. PraiseTheGuide: FOUR PERFECT HOURS. TouchGrassAgain: You're building a religion around an anonymous guy with a magic rock. RifleGuy1776: Okay. I hate that I'm saying this. But he might actually know what he's talking about. CableNewsHater: Character development. Official media remained cautious.

News anchors replayed Mana Stone footage beneath banners reading: UNVERIFIED KitchenReplication:"Unverified" my ass. I heated soup with one. SciencePlease: Your soup is not peer review. Government accounts were more direct. DO NOT ENTER UNIDENTIFIED GATE STRUCTURES. DO NOT HANDLE UNKNOWN MATERIALS. CONTACT LOCAL AUTHORITIES REGARDING RECOVERED OBJECTS. The replies were not cooperative. MagicRockOwner: You want my rock. FedDetector: nice try FBI LibertyAndMana: I found it. I fought for it. It's mine.

Marketplace listings appeared anyway. REAL MANA STONE — $50, 000 The photograph showed aquarium glass. GlassCollector: That's decorative glass from PetSmart. Another listing: F-RANK MANA STONE — VERIFIED — $5, 000 Nobody knew what verified meant. GateGuide's inbox filled with strangers asking him to authenticate blurry photographs before they sent money to other strangers. A market was attempting to exist before anyone had determined whether the underlying resource could legally be owned.

One economics thread tried to make sense of the direction things were heading. If Mana Stones are real, what happens next? MacroEcon: Governments secure gates. Property and extraction-right disputes begin. Companies attempt to buy access. Specialized labor emerges to retrieve resources. Insurance follows the labor. Markets form around the resources. Regulation arrives late. CasualReader: So... dungeon miners? FantasyNerd: Adventurers. Three replies below: RoadsideKnight: Delvers. The word sat there.

Nobody marked the occasion. Nobody declared it official. A seed had been planted. The GateGuide speculation returned one final time. ReceiptsGuy: Let's review. He knew guns weren't killing the monsters properly. He knew melee worked. He used "Mana Stone" before the name existed publicly. He has some kind of identification Unique Skill. He knew they were energy sources. He knew how to use one immediately. He already had Dungeon loot. Either he has inside information from whoever created the Gates...

or he's from the future. SarcasticReply: Finally, a sane theory. ArchiveEverything: Saving this screenshot. At almost the same moment, another user uploaded a photograph. A small red crystal glowed between two fingers. LuckyLooter: Found this after killing something that looked like a wolf. Anyone know what it is? The replies arrived instantly. EatTheLoot: Eat it. PleaseStopHim: STOP TELLING PEOPLE TO EAT THINGS. RaidScholar: @GateGuide BlueRockBeliever: send it to GateGuide A minute passed. Then another.

LuckyLooter posted again. LuckyLooter: Sent it to him. For several seconds, nothing happened. Then: GateGuide is typing... The thread exploded. WHAT IS IT HE KNOWS DOESN'T HE DON'T USE IT UNTIL HE ANSWERS WHY DOES THIS GUY KNOW EVERYTHING The typing indicator remained. By noon, the global trending page looked like the search history of a civilization having a nervous breakdown.

#BlueGates #Dungeon #ManaStone #GateGuide #IRLMMO #GoldRush #WhyDoKnivesWork Buried beneath millions of terrified, greedy, analytical, ridiculous, and increasingly ambitious posts, one ordinary user summarized the morning better than anyone else. AverageGuyAtHome: This morning I was sitting on my couch terrified that the glowing blue portals were going to end the world. Now my neighbor is at Walmart buying a camping axe because he thinks he's going to get rich mining magic rocks.

I don't think anyone has any idea what today is going to look like in the history books. One reply sat beneath it. HistoryMajorWhoShouldStudy: Day One.