Chapter 1: Chapter 1: Gate SF-98

“Halcyon ‘Hal’ Lin-Andrews,” the Gate guard said with monotony that betrayed his boredom. She pressed a finger down on his time card, stamping it with her mana. “F-rank, low Bronze, miner group 1447 for the new F-class Gate SF-98. Please proceed to your group. The expedition begins in five minutes. Next!”

Hal nodded, gritting his teeth at the casual disregard for the fact that he was about to risk his life again, and he took the time card. It vanished as he grabbed it, passing into the inventory-space that even Bronze F-rankers had.

[Halcyon Lin-Andrews]

[Age: 21]

[Spirit Rank: Bronze]

[Level: 1]

[Path: None]

Skills:

[Basic Cycling 1]

[Speed 2]

[Strength 1]

Inventory (1/1):

[Timecard]

He sighed. Useless.

“Next!” the Gate guard tapped the table impatiently, gesturing for Hal to leave.

He’d never even meant to be a Hunter. His total lack of affinity for a Path along with the fact that his soul had started at the very, very bottom of the rankings had meant that he was much better off pursuing a regular life.

And he’d been happy with that, working day shifts at a library, even if he’d longed to be among the powerful Hunters that showed up on TV every day. He knew his potential was too low.

All that, and yet…

“Ne—“ Hal saw when the woman who guarded this Gate realized. The sudden stop, the way her eyes narrowed, the hand on the chin like she was trying to bring up the memory of the timecard. “Lin-Andrews? Like—“

“I’ll take my leave now,” Hal said, walking away.

Like Sarah Lin-Andrews.

“I’m sorry for your—“

“Shut it!” Hal snapped, picking up the pace. His group was already waiting by the Gate. He was late.

The seven other members of miner group 1447 greeted him with looks on their faces that suggested they already knew. Hal looked away.

He didn’t want their sympathy. He didn’t want that look of pity when they realized that yes, the Empress of Blades, one of the Northern Hemisphere’s three SS-rank Hunters, the sole Archon on the Path of the Soulblade… was his older sister.

Normally, the group would’ve been doing readiness checks on all their gear, but Hal had checked his helmet, daggers, and pick up and down before he’d left. Instead, he palmed his phone.

San Francisco Hunter’s Association Hospital [1 new message]

11/19/2032 06:00 - No change in condition. The Empress remains in a stable coma.

He hadn’t been expecting anything different, but he still gripped his phone tighter, forcing himself not to throw it out of frustration.

“Are we ready?” he asked, clearing the irritation out of his mind and replacing it with cold focus.

“We are,” Gok Jin-Kyong said. The middle-aged Korean man was D-rank with a Gold spirit, which was about the highest that one could get without dedicating their life to becoming a Hunter, so he was their de facto leader.

“Lead the way, boss,” Raymond Li said. He, just like Hal, was half-Asian, and he was also F-rank, though he was much further along the way to getting D than Hal was. The two of them had grown… not close enough to be friends, but close enough to be drinking buddies. Li could handle his liquor.

The rest of the team gave their affirmations, but Hal didn’t bother listening to them. There were three new faces today—the other three from their regular team had wanted to spend the day with their family.

Family. The word left a bitter taste in his mouth even though he hadn’t spoken.

“Let’s move,” Gok Jin-Kyong said. “Chop chop.”

Gate SF-98 was new—the freshest Gate in all of San Francisco, right now—but it was only an F-class, barely worth mentioning even as an afternote, so their group had no competition. The entrance was no larger than a doorframe, but the opening was in midair, unconnected to anything. Even as an F-class portal, the Gate crackled with purple energy, daring anyone to enter.

The D-rank man walked straight through it without a care in the world, and the rest of the group followed, picks in hand. One of the nameless women carried a sledge with her. She was new as well, Hal noted idly.

Hal took the rear. As someone without even a basic Path to take skills from, he was reduced to only fighting with the daggers he had on hand. Thankfully, Sarah had taught him much when she’d raised him alone, but having nothing better than a level 1 [Speed] to power himself made fighting even the simplest creatures hard.

He walked through the Gate without flinching, though he winced as the full-body static shock of the portal washed over him.

This would be his eleventh Gate clear.

The eight of them came out the other end into a vast temple. There were four doors, each of them placed in what Hal assumed was a cardinal direction. They’d come from one of the doors, which meant there were three more to explore. A hundred feet away at the center of the room was a sapphire-blue fountain, raised up high on a small pyramid that had to be eighty feet tall.

If that fountain didn’t have an elixir of some kind in it, Hal would eat his hat. That was a treasure. Even if they bottled up as much as they could, he could get a few sips in for himself.

“Woahhhh,” Raymond said. “This is a hella nice Gate for an F-class.”

“Be on your guard,” Gok Jin-Kyong commanded, wreathing his hands in flame. Hal had learned over beers that Jin-Kyong wielded the Path of the Phoenix. “Every Gate has monsters.”

Hal had to suppress a burst of jealousy, watching the older man use flaming magic power. In order to even attempt a Path, Hal would need a magical artifact, something that an F-ranker like him couldn’t easily get.

Unless, he thought greedily, that fountain can help me. In prior Gate clears, they’d only found cheap loot, barely even covering the gate fees. They’d agreed to sell everything off.

This one, though, was different. He could feel it already.

“Rats!” a woman he didn’t recognize shouted, pointing to their right.

Hal squinted, focusing, and he spotted where she was pointing. There was a hole in the ground that he hadn’t noticed before, one wide enough to fit a man through, and sure enough, a proper swarm of diseased-looking dog-sized purple rats were flooding out of it. Most of them ran towards the door that was closer to them, but nine of them ran towards the Gate that miner group 1447 had emerged from.

“I will kill them,” Jin-Kyong said, snarling. “If you want to sharpen your soul and increase your level, kill them with me. Otherwise, stand back and prepare to gather the treasures they drop.”

The rats hissed as they ran—no, they screamed—and everybody recoiled, the cutlery-against-glass sound piercing their ears.

Hal was the only one to join the D-ranker.

Jin-Kyong didn’t even spare him a glance. “Not you, boy. You’ll get hurt.”

“I won’t,” Hal said, frustrated. He dropped his pick at his feet, drawing two nine-inch daggers from his heavy coat.

This time, he thought. This time, for sure I’ll level up.

The D-ranker turned to look at Hal, meeting his cold eyes. Jin-Kyong gave him a nod that might’ve been one of respect.

And he unleashed his flame.

The nine dog-sized mana-sick rats flooded towards them, and none of them stopped.

Jin-Kyong’s Path of the Phoenix was undeveloped compared to someone like Hal’s sister, but to Hal’s untrained eyes, the fireball that his elder unleashed was more powerful than anything he could ever even hope to accomplish.

The sphere of flame impacted the ground and detonated, sending searing heat and force and light in all directions, and it was all Hal could to do keep himself from falling on his ass.

When the light dissipated, seven of the rats were sizzling husks on the ground, their life drained by the flame. The magic power was such that it didn’t even leave behind smoke.

The two remaining ones were hurt, but they continued on, closing the distance between them and Hal.

“Can you fight one alone?” Jin-Kyong asked.

Hal burned with shame. He was weak, yes, but for someone to think he couldn’t even fight a single rat…

“Of course,” Hal said, refusing to let his emotion show.

He drew on [Speed], and he felt his mana—life force, Qi, energy, whatever, everybody called it different things—flow from his core to the rest of the body, imbuing it with power.

If Jin-Kyong’s fireball had been a bonfire, Hal’s [Speed] was little more than a spark.

But it served his purpose. He was just a little faster, just a little stronger, and he was skilled with the blade.

Hal blazed forward, greeting the rats with death through two blades.

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One of the rats saw what was coming and tumbled out of the way. A sloppy evasion, but he could deal with it after. Instead, he focused on the remaining one, the one that was still charging him head on.

Hal dropped, sliding on the ground. He stabbed forward with both arms, empowering himself with [Speed], and his blades sunk into the rat’s soft underbelly as it failed to adjust for him. He carved through it, spraying black blood all over his helmet, and he rolled to his feet in a single motion as soon as he freed his blades.

Which was when the second rat, freshly recovered, rammed into him from behind.

Hal twisted as he fell, landing on his back, and for an instant he felt sheer terror as he was greeted with the visage of far too many teeth sinking towards his throat.

A gust of flame tore the rat off. A second one killed it.

“You did better than expected, boy,” Gok Jin-Kyong said, but Hal wasn’t paying attention.

He should’ve been ashamed. Terrified, maybe.

But he could feel it. He had to be close to a level-up.

“Boy!” Jin-Kyong shouted. “Hal!”

The elder didn’t leave the group. It was common wisdom. Once a group entered a Gate, it was die alone or live together.

“Hal!” Raymond shouted. “Come back!”

“Hold on!” Hal shouted, and he dove into the door where he’d seen the rats run into.

He was greeted with a chittering mass of flesh. He’d been ready to take on two, maybe three at the same time—with nothing to backstab him, he was sure to win, he reasoned—but six separate rats tackled him at the same time.

Hal couldn’t even scream before he fell to the ground once more.

I’m sorry, Sarah, he thought as ragged claws tore at his coat and sharp teeth sank into his limbs. I failed you.

And then, inexplicably, everything stopped.

The rats that had him in his clutches let go of him, letting him bleed freely on the floor, and stared into the temple-room. Looking upwards. If Hal had to guess, they were looking at the fountain.

And then they all turned tail and ran.

Hal turned back.

“What—“

The world flashed gold, and a crushing pressure descended.

It squeezed Hal, pressing in on him and his skin, and he felt as if he bore the weight of the sky. A vise grip twisted his heart, and he realized that this was a feeling he’d experienced before.

When Sarah had still been healthy.

The unveiled power of a being far, far more powerful than Hal laid its pressure down upon him, and he could do nothing but watch as the room grew ever brighter.

The light faded, and the room tore itself apart. Where there had been a pyramid, there were now only ruins of faded stone. Where there had been a precious fountain, there were now trace sparkles of sapphire fluid.

In the place of the pyramid was an eighty-foot tall titan, still exerting that same pressure. It glared downwards.

With a cold chill, Hal realized what—no, who—was still in the room.

Seven people screamed, and seven people died.

The titan turned its gaze to him, and Hal stared into its eye.

One enormous eye as blue as the summer sky, gazing at him with all the dead emotion of a winter snowstorm.

For the second time this day, Hal resigned himself to death.

He closed his eyes.

---

And yet, when he woke, he was still alive.

“Shit, shit, shit shit shit,” a woman mumbled. “This wasn’t supposed to be here this early. They’re sprouting up too fast.”

“H-huh?” Hal opened his eyes at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, and he saw—an ethereal beauty.

She stood in the center of all the destruction, facing down the titan. She stood over the bodies of Hal’s team, and yet she was—

She was turning towards him.

“Oh, shit, there’s a survivor,” she mumbled. “Fuck. I don’t have time for this.”

Hal blinked, and then the woman was by his side. She was even more beautiful up close.

“Hey,” she said.

Hal forgot how to breathe.

“Oh, fuck, right, my power’s unveiled,” she said. “Ugh. You’d think they’d tell you more, first day in this sector.”

Suddenly, the pressure on him dropped to nothing.

“Ma’am,” Hal said. ”The monster—“

“Not an issue,” she said. “Uhhh. Okay. This is awkward. I’m not supposed to leave any marks here, but I don’t have any convenient memory wipers on hand, and I don’t want to kill you…”

Hal had no idea what she was talking about. “I can always remain silent.”

“Oh! Right, right, you can do that. Uhhh… wait, I have a great solution for this. Here! Take this!” The woman extended a hand to him, revealing something that looked like an ordinary phone.

“This is a cell phone,” she explained. “A smartpone, really, but the point is—“

“I know what a smartphone is,” Hal sighed, closing his eyes. He wasn’t sure if he believed this was real.

“Take it,” she insisted.

Hal took the phone, and he froze. The same static shock that he’d felt entering the Gate enveloped his body once more, except now it was an order of magnitude more intense.

“This’ll keep me watching over you,” the woman said. “It’ll keep things in order, okay? Okay! Great!”

The shock was still pulsing through Hal.

“Anyway! I’m off!” the woman shouted, even though Hal was right in front of her. “Authorization code oh three theta sigma seven seven seven! Code… uhhh… blue! Blue!”

The world around them started to fold, and then—

Hal blinked. He was back outside. Back in the real world.

And he was holding someone else’s phone.

I must be dreaming.

He turned it on.

“Hal! Halcyon Lin-Andrews!” someone was shouting. Distantly, he recognized it as the Gate guard. “There’s a survivor!”

Survivor?

Hal would deal with that when the time came to it.

For now, there was something about this phone that felt right.

He tapped its screen, and the system appeared before his eyes.

Ascended Sign-In System

Credits: 1

Time Until Next Credit: 23:59:59

[Sign in?]

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