Chapter 2: Chapter 2: Sign-In

Ascended Sign-In System

Credits: 1

Time Until Next Credit: 23:59:54

[Sign in?]

Hal stared at the phone in his hand even though the notifications came from the system like usual—nobody else would be able to see it.

Sign in? He’d never heard of a Path that had anything like this, but there were a lot of possibilities in the world. Maybe that strange woman had a Path that had initiated some kind of delusion?

“Halcyon Lin-Andrews!” the woman that he remembered was the C-rank Gate guard shouted. “Are you alert?”

But no, the blood on his coat was all too real. The memories of seven of his compatriots, two of them people that were—not quite friends, but something close—the vivid images of them being torn apart, turned into otherworldly objects, lost forever, that wasn’t something that could be faked.

“I’m here,” he said, and his own voice sounded distant to his ears. Was that a latent effect of the magic or was his mind just fracturing?

He had to focus.

“The Gate,” the woman was saying. “Get him away from the Gate.”

For the first time, Hal actually looked up.

The Gate guard wasn’t alone anymore.

And the Gate he’d come from wasn’t the Gate he’d entered.

It had been a simmering patch of purple energy before, a mostly serene door of force.

Now, it occupied the entire space where the warehouse had been, and that peaceful surface had turned into a thunderstorm. Purple-black tendrils of lightning struck forth, hitting random objects on the ground.

There were three more Hunters in addition to the C-rank now. Hal had spent enough time in the company of his sister to recognize most big names, and he was surprised to see that there were some of them here.

“The survivor’s alive,” a woman said. “Get Sarah’s brother out of here.”

Black hair with a streak of pure white. A long dress as dark as her hair.

Christine Angler. A-rank. Sapphire. Path of the Neverending Night.

“Carla,” a man said. “Can you move enough to get him out?”

An outfit that one might find in an old spaghetti western. Twin revolvers, each of them glowing red with the mana packed into them.

Ashton Lee. B-rank. High Emerald. Path of the Single Bullet.

“Right away, sir,” the Gate guard said, bowing deeply. “I thank you for your assistance.”

“Don’t worry about it,” the third man said. He was more heavyset, and he spoke through the cigar he held in his mouth.

Jeremy Smith. B-rank. Ruby. Path of the Shattered Star.

The information was all publicly available through the Hunters Association if anyone wanted to see—though the details were obviously hidden—but Hal didn’t need that. He knew them all by heart. Sarah had talked about her colleagues all day everyday, and Hal had gladly listened. Hearing her stories had been like getting a window into a world he’d never be able to walk in.

The fact that none of them even spoke to him hurt more than he’d thought it would.

“Let’s get you out of here,” Carla said, offering him a hand.

Hal declined it. “I can see myself out.”

“I need to get your report on the dungeon first,” Carla said sharply. “It was a veiled one. Do you know when the last veiled dungeon was seen?”

He did, as a matter of fact. “2020. The Great American Gate Breaks.”

“We don’t think this one is at the risk of hitting that level,” the C-rank said. “Yet. The A-rank and B-ranks have come here to be the first line of defense in the unlikely case there is a Gate break. In the meantime, we need you to tell us what happened.”

Hal itched to grab his phone again, take a deeper look at the powerful item that the strange beauty had gifted him, but he didn’t. He was still an F-rank Bronze. Trying to act now would just get him questioned more.

“Fine,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”

---

Ascended Sign-In System

Credits: 1

Time Until Next Credit: 19:32:11

[Sign in?]

Five hours. Five hours.

Hal burned with indignation. They’d heard his story, questioned and requestioned him, searched him, made him wait, and then done it all over again with a different set of people. He’d only ended up able to get out of it all by claiming that he needed to check on his sister, and even then they’d implied that they would follow him to the hospital.

The one saving grace, he’d found, was that the phone had special properties. Well, he’d known that already, but it apparently also disappeared from his body if someone else was trying to take it.

Now, though, he was finally alone in the privacy of his apartment.

At once, he pressed the button with a slight mental effort. A moment later, the “Credits” number ticked down to zero.

[1 credit consumed!]

[Obtained Bronze-tier item: Valley of Purity Elixir]

And suddenly, his timecard was in his hand. Hal was confused for a single moment, then realized what must’ve happened.

Inventory (1/1):

[Valley of Purity Elixir]

As the lowest of the low, he only had a single slot in his inventory, so when he’d received the new item, the timecard had slid out of the space.

If he leveled up a single time—something he was surely on the brink of, now—he would get another spot. If, by the grace of the gods, he somehow managed to hit Silver, he’d start gaining five spots per level. Ten per level at Gold, then twenty at Platinum, fifty at Emerald, a hundred at Ruby, two hundred fifty at Sapphire, five hundred at Diamond… those were all pipe dreams, though.

Sarah had been an Archon, so she’d had more space in her inventory than she’d ever need. That was, in fact, the main reason why he was currently so broke—the supermajority of her life savings had been tucked in her soulspace, and that was no longer accessible.

He put those thoughts and focused on the item. Hal took it out, placing his timecard back into his inventory.

The potion was a murky white liquid, more translucent than milk but with a thicker texture. It was contained in a bottle not much larger than Hal’s hand.

He knew what this was for. He’d feared he would never be able to get one for himself. It would cost too much even for a basic one—they were created through the process of crushing together dozens of monster shards and mixing them with the pure essence of different energies.

Elixirs provided mana—Hal knew that many other Hunters preferred to call it qi, but mana was the American standard, so he stuck to that.

Hal sat down, getting comfortable in a meditating position as fast as he could. Once he’d settled, he uncorked the bottle and downed it in a single gulp, wincing at the alcohol-like burn in his throat as it went down.

Even as weak as he was, his soul wasn’t damaged. Hal knew how to cycle advancement through his spirit, but up until Sarah had fallen into a coma, he’d never needed to. He hadn’t planned on it. After all, he was years behind already, and he hadn’t wanted to get into the habit of asking even more from his sister.

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Now, though, he needed to be strong, so he felt the burning power enter his veins and he cycled, shifting the fiery sparks of cleansing mana through his channels, widening them ever so slightly as he did.

His body filled with the sensation of flame, but it didn’t hurt. Instead, he felt content, his channels flowing with the power that he should’ve always had as a Lin-Andrews.

The primary purpose of cycling was to recover mana, but when one was full up on it—as Hal was right now—then it could also help with advancement.

Hal was no fool. This was a Bronze-tier elixir. While the raging fire in his core felt nice, it was nothing more than a sputtering candle compared to even Raymond’s Path.

Raymond. Hal tried not to think about the way his not-quite-friend had died, falling to pieces. He’d seen true power today.

But he’d seen true power before. Up till now, though, he’d accepted it as the way of the world. Sarah was powerful and he was not, and that was how it was.

Now, though, he didn’t have Sarah and the titan that had slain his few remaining human connections was still alive.

Hal held no illusions that he could even breathe in its general direction without being turned into a bloody mist right now, but this… sign-in system… it was promising. He’d been saved from the brink of death, and that had to be for a reason.

He would grow. He was going to get stronger, compatible Path or no. Strong enough to fight the titan. Strong enough to be recognized by the people that had once been his sister’s friends.

Strong enough to save Sarah.

The newly-introduced mana in his channels flared with his resolve, and something within him shifted.

[Level up!]

[Health restored!]

[+5 skill points!]

The newly level 2 Hal could’ve fallen to his hands and knees in sheer joy, but he continued cycling. He couldn’t afford to waste a single drop of this elixir. The wording on the sign-in system had implied that he could simply get more the next day, but he wasn’t sure how much he trusted the generosity of a stranger.

Of course, he’d get as much as he could out of it, but he had to be cautious.

His phone—not his phone, he realized, this was the strange lady’s—buzzed in his pocket, and he almost lost his concentration.

It buzzed again, but he ignored it. Getting every bit out of this mana was crucial. With this single elixir, he would be able to push himself partway to level 3.

The phone buzzed once more. He refrained from sighing.

Five minutes later, the last of the elixir was gone, the flaming sensation in his channels the only indication it had ever been there.

And then he finally picked up the phone.

“Hiya! I’m sure you’re confused about a few things. I set this thing to trigger once you finally leveled up!” A tinny voice rang out from the phone, one that Hal could just barely recognize as the teleporting woman’s. “As a thank-you for your silence and kind of a reparation for your… really shitty starting point… I gave you this! The principle’s pretty simple. Once a day, you get a credit. You can sign in trade credits in to get random items. The more credits you redeem, the better the item.

“There’s another way to get better loot, of course! The location that you do your sign-in from matters. The more dangerous it is, the stronger the item! I think the best place to do them is from what your world calls Gates.

“Uhhhh… yeah, that’s about it. Alia out!”

There was no more audio. When he shook the phone, trying to find any answers, the message started playing itself again.

Well, she had no reason to lie to him. Unless she wanted him to go into a Gate and die hilariously, of course, but she’d saved his life once. Besides, he had skill points to spend now. He could actually survive a lower-end gate on his own.

Don’t go getting delusions of grandeur. Even with the five skill points, he was still weak. With no Path, he couldn’t spend them on powerful skills—instead, he was relegated to [Speed], [Strength], or something utterly useless like [Cooking] or [Archery].

There was a [Swordfighting] skill that he could unlock, he saw. Hal wasn’t sure what that would mean, since he was already pretty damn good at the art of the blade, but surely it couldn’t hurt to be better.

[Swordfighting unlocked! This skill starts at level 1.]

He saved the other four points. That might’ve been too stingy, but now that he had proven that he could break through his first barrier—the inability to level up that had been plaguing him his entire life—then he could hold out hope that even one as weak as him could gain a Path. When—if—he got a Path, he wanted to save his skill points for truly powerful skills.

Hal thought on it some more, then invested a point into [Speed].

[Speed +1! 2 -> 3]

Can’t hurt to have an extra boost if I need to run, he thought.

The other three, he’d save.

In the meantime, he needed to figure out what he was going to do next. His miner group was gone, which meant that he was either going to have to join up with another one or attempt a Gate solo.

The former was obviously preferable, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to go back to the Hunter’s Association. Their official groups—miner group 1447, for instance—were solid, but if he joined one of them, he was sure to be pulled aside for further questioning.

There were, however, unsanctioned mining groups. Groups that went for the tiny Gates, the ones even smaller than SF-98. Ones that didn’t get designations. Their payouts were similarly bad, but Hal had run into their ilk many times already.

He would sleep on it, he decided. There was still much time before the sign-in reset occurred, and he needed rest.

Hal dreamed of Alia.

---

“This is the new guy!” Gavin said, grinning. The man was a San Francisco native, but he spoke with an affected British accent for whatever reason. “Just a Bronze, but it can’t hurt to have a newbie along!”

“Sure, we can protect him,” another man said, tall and gaunt. “Name’s Yancy. It’s just the three of us.”

“Ashley couldn’t show up?” Gavin frowned. There was something off in that frown, but he had never been the best at reading people.

“Nope,” Yancy said. “We’ll be fine. We’re both almost C-rank. We can protect this guy.”

“If you say so,” Hal said. He tried to ignore the nagging feeling at the back of his mind. He needed a way into a Gate, and he already knew Gavin from a previous run-in during his eighth clear at SF-72, another F-class Gate.

“The Gate’s just in here,” Gavin said, gesturing at a rickety old house constructed between two equally rickety, equally old houses.

That sense of unease kept growing, but Hal followed them in.

Sure enough, there was a Gate. It was tiny, smaller than a manhole and hovering in midair, and its purple was duller than any Gate Hal had seen before.

“Come on,” Gavin said, and he dove in.

Yancy followed, not bothering to check if Hal was with them.

He steeled himself, taking a deep breath.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” he muttered to nobody.

Hal entered the portal.

Ascended Sign-In System

Credits: 0

Time Until Next Credit: 0:17:12

[Sign in?]

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