Heroes and Calamities

"Were those who returned from the Abyss heroes, or disasters?"

One year, Dawn City's official examination included a question like this.

After years of education and propaganda, most people believed that the Abyss explorers who returned were heroes.

They had sacrificed their own safety, using their mortal flesh to confront the unknown Abyss and devoting their meager strength to the pursuit of humanity's future.

Although humanity had always tried to avoid the Abyss interfering with normal technological development, the course of human civilization had still uncontrollably tilted toward the Abyss.

Humanity no longer explored space. Instead, it looked toward that deep, vast hole and the bizarre worlds within it.

Technology companies led by Abyss Heart Technology recruited talent on a massive scale, ignored official warnings, and mixed technologies brought back from the Abyss into humanity's normal technological development, using Relics and Abyss Creatures to "magically modify" conventional technology in every possible way.

Humanity's technological level consequently underwent an explosive leap forward, and those who had risked their lives in the perilous Abyss to bring back technology and Relics were naturally regarded as heroes.

Unable to stop civilization's course from shifting, the authorities could only step in personally, using their remaining influence to bind the various technology companies together and employ that already modified technology to prevent the Abyss's influence from spreading further.

Humanity had compromised with the Abyss. Only through compromise could it prevent the entirety of human civilization from sliding completely into the Abyss.

Over the past fifty years, the authorities, technology companies, and the Abyss had formed a stable triangle. None could shake the others, and human civilization had flourished even more in that stable environment.

Yet the authorities remained wary of every "hero" who returned from the Abyss.

They were heroes, but they were also disasters.

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