Chapter 3: Chapter 3: Unsanctioned Hunt

This portal was more like what he’d expected from SF-98. When he passed through, only a slight tingle traced itself over Hal’s body.

He found himself standing on a dingy platform in what looked like an abandoned subway station. There weren’t any doors from the platform other than the tiny Gate that they’d squeezed their way through, so it looked like the only way through was further down the tracks.

“C’mon, newbie,” Gavin said, indicating the tracks. “Mana’s stronger in this direction. Means the loot’s all there.”

“Coming,” Hal said. He made his way to them.

“Well, on you go,” Yancy said, gesturing. “Tick tock.”

Hal understood what they wanted. He wasn’t stupid. As a Bronze F-rank, he was almost completely useless. Anybody that wanted to work with him would know that, and even the most desperate unsanctioned Gate miners wouldn’t take him for his power.

He was bait.

Hal hopped down anyway.

They were using him as a meatshield, but he was fine with that. Being in front meant that he might be able to take an actual fight. Hal had no illusions about his current ability, but he wanted to test out [Swordfighting]. Maybe he’d actually be able to prove himself in combat.

Prove yourself to who? He shook his head and walked.

The tracks were every bit as faded as the platform that they’d come from. They almost felt more like traditional railroad tracks than subway ones, wooden slats nailed down over rusted steel bars. They might’ve been. Hal knew that nobody really understood the logic that Gates used to construct their little pocket worlds, just that they were located on a plane of existence that wasn’t his.

He kept his eyes and ears pricked, one hand holding his nine-inch dagger and one on his phone. Alia’s phone, actually, since it never seemed to leave his pockets even when he placed it somewhere else. It still had all the functions of a normal smartphone, so he used it for its flashlight, illuminating the long tunnel ahead of them.

It was dark further down, and it got narrower as they walked.

“Mana’s getting denser,” Gavin said from a solid twenty feet behind him. “Might be we’ll—“

His flashlight revealed a spider the size of a small dog clinging to the tracks, and Hal recoiled.

The spider leaped, and Hal reacted. He slashed upwards with the dagger, repositioning himself into a defensive position, and the spider hissed, leaking green blood from its body where he’d nicked it.

Hal threw the phone at it, the flashlight shining on the walls wildly as it spun, and the spider jumped towards it.

He wasn’t one to waste opportunities, so he struck, stabbing down straight into its abdomen. It was tougher than he’d expected, but he wasn’t weak—well, physically, anyway—so he pierced through it all the same.

The spider died before Gavin and Yancy caught up to him.

“Fair play,” Gavin said, still affecting that awful British accent.

“Your kill, your shard,” Yancy said, peering down at it. “Cave spider. Great. F-class monsters for an F-class Gate. I heard there was a Gate clear yesterday that ran into beasts way above the expected level for a low-class Gate. Wondered if we’d run into anything like that. Hoped, kinda.”

Hal only managed to keep himself from shuddering by marveling at his stupidity. From his spiritual pressure, Yancy couldn’t be more than Silver. A low Silver at that. He was high F-rank. Against something like the titan? He would damage it no more than a fly’s wings could hurt Hal.

The spider’s core was revealing itself, its flesh melting away, so Hal took his pick from his belt and went at it. He was practiced by now, so it only took the better part of a minute to get the fingernal-sized glimmering green gem from within. Since he had no space in his inventory—he’d left his timecard at home, but he’d thought it would be good to put a backup plan in there—he put the shard in his pocket.

Gavin was tapping his foot in impatience by the time they were done, but he didn’t say anything.

Hal kept going. They walked for what felt like hours but was probably more like fifteen minutes, running into a total of three more spiders. He was prepared, so he made quick work of them. Gavin was frustrated enough with the lack of progress that he ran forward to kill the third one, blowing it apart with a magic-infused punch. Hal didn’t know his Path, so he couldn’t tell what the skill was.

Eventually, the path widened, revealing their target.

F-class Gates tended to significantly fewer rooms than those above them, and this one was no exception. The tunnel opened up into a single domed room maybe thirty feet wide and thrice as tall, with the track spiraling out into eight separate paths that ended in nothing. On one of the tracks, directly opposite them, there was a single rail car, deformed by time and presumably magic.

“There’s monsters here,” Gavin said with certainty.

Hal would bet his entire meager wallet that they were hiding inside that rail car. It looked more like an old San Francisco trolley than anything else, but the windows were dusted over.

“Go on then,” Yancy said. “Try poking with it a stick or something.”

Hal didn’t dignify him with a response. There was an unnatural source of light here already, a gloomy half-twilight settling over the entire room, so he put Alia’s phone away in favor of his second dagger, this one unblooded.

Not for the first time, he wished that he had a magical weapon. He wouldn’t be able to handle it, of course—his mana simply wasn’t powerful enough for anything above the shittiest Bronze-tier items, and at that point he may as well use a mundane knife—but it would’ve been nice to believe he had some backup.

Oh well. He’d make do.

As he stepped closer, he felt the spiritual pressure of the monster—monsters, maybe—that lay within the rusted rail car. It was far, far weaker than the last boss he’d stared down, which came as a relief. It shouldn’t have—if anything, the pressure this beast gave off was higher than expected for an F-class Gate of this size.

Still, it wasn’t a god-like giant that could strike men down with a simple stare. That counted for something.

Once he stepped within twenty feet of the rail car, the top of it exploded open, metal shards flying every which way. Long, spindly legs glistening with chitinous armor grasped the shattered edges of what had once been a roof, and they slowly dragged a bulbous abdomen out from within.

The remains of the trolley creaked under the armored spider’s weight as it unveiled itself, its main body pulsing with every movement, large enough to fit an entire person within.

It was odd, Hal mused, that he felt almost no fear despite certainly being outmatched here. He’d certainly been more scared than this when he’d been fighting weaker bosses with more people backing him, but the titan in SF-98 had recontextualized his fear.

Hal was weak, but so was this monster. In the grand scheme of things, being scared of this spider was like being scared of a bucket of water when the ocean sat nearby.

The spider threw itself at him, and he met it with twin daggers. At the same time, he activated [Speed] and [Strength], granting him the edge he needed to dodge and parry.

Two legs speared down at him as the spider landed, and his enhanced speed was just enough to turn both of them aside, one dagger for each bladed limb. A spark flew where his blades made contact, but both of them stayed intact.

The legs sank into the ground beside him, piercing through rotting wood like it was wet paper. Having missed its prey, the spider hissed. Where the ground-spiders had hissed like particularly angry cats, this one produced a sound that seemed primed to trigger primal fears. Hal heard both Gavin and Yancy take a step back, but he shoved his fear aside.

It wasn’t useful right now.

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[Speed] flowing through his veins helped him predict the spider’s moves. It prepared itself to attack, tensing all eight of its legs, and he rolled back as it jumped, trying to flatten him. Having seen its legs tense, he’d easily gotten out of the way.

And then the spider shot a green web out of its pulsing abdomen, a long string that attached itself to a wall behind Hal, and it flew towards him.

He readied himself with [Strength], unable to get out of the way—

A blast of wind tickled his ear, and the trolley-sized spider flew back, its web broken.

Hal got to his feet and turned around.

Gavin stood not ten feet behind him, both fists still wreathed in white magic. When Hal looked closer, he saw traces of red in there.

“I’ll show you how a Silver gets shit done,” he said, stepping forward.

Hal let him take the lead, noting that Yancy still hadn’t done anything. Coward.

Gavin was more powerful than Hal by a long shot, so it only made sense to let him lead. Still, why wasn’t Yancy participating? He had to at least be high Silver to be D-rank, which Hal knew he was, but he was just… standing back.

The spider hissed again, and then Hal had more immediate things to worry about.

The other man was powerful and actually had a Path, but Hal wasn’t useless either.

He activated [Swordfighting].

Time to figure out what this does.

When he stepped forward a second time, daggers in hand, he felt smoother, every movement more fluid… aligned. That was the word he was looking for.

It wasn’t replacing his instincts, which he was grateful for. Sarah had trained those into him. No, it was simply helping him act on those instincts more effectively.

Gavin punched the spider again, this time launching it directly upwards. The enemy shot another one of its webs at the ground, probably intent on stomping back down on the ground, but Hal was there. With [Strength] and [Swordfighting] combined, he was able to cut through the web before it hardened, leaving the spider flailing in midair.

When it fell, both Gavin and Hal were there to meet it. Gavin smashed through it using some application of his Path, surrounding his fist with a spearlike construct of mana and stabbing straight into its body. Hal just used his daggers.

He tore them out just as quickly, twisting them to inflict further damage, and he readied himself for the fight to continue.

Gavin shoved his fist inside the wound and activated a skill. The spider’s entire body convulsed, and Hal had to dodge one of its armored legs as it nearly took his head off.

“It’s dead,” Gavin said. “Congratulations on surviving.”

And so it had. It was, in the end, an F-class boss monster with F-class durability.

Hal felt it as some of its vital energy flowed into him. It wasn’t anything near the amount that an elixir made with its shard would grant a man, but it was something. Every kill granted a fraction of the dead monster’s mana.

No level-up. Disappointing. He’d thought that a much greater contribution than average to the fight might grant him something, but it hadn’t. Not having a Path stunted his growth so much that even this wasn’t going to level him up, even at Bronze.

“I’m taking the core,” Gavin said, already digging around inside the monster’s innards.

Hal shrugged. He obviously would’ve preferred to take it, but his entire goal had been to get inside a Gate so he could try signing in from within. That was the real prize he’d earned.

“So what was Yancy for?” Hal asked. “No offense to Yancy, of course, but… he didn’t really do anything.”

“Hell if I know,” Gavin said, fishing out the fist-sized core with a grunt. He cheered silently. “He just asked to come. I don’t ask, he doesn’t tell.”

That gnawing feeling had returned, and it got worse as Gavin covered himself with more of his Path’s magic.

“What do you—“

Gavin disappeared with a pop, reappearing further down the tunnel.

“Well,” Yancy said, speaking for the first time since they’d entered the Gate. “I did say we’d protect you.”

“You didn’t do shit,” Hal said, failing to hide his irritation. “I didn’t need your help, but still. It’s the principle of the thing.”

He didn’t drop his daggers. If Yancy was’t here to help clear the Gate, then…

The lights dimmed, and Hal realized that it wasn’t the Gate failing but another man’s skill activating.

A wall of black force spiraled into existence, and Hal didn’t need to look to realize that his only exit had come off.

“Did you know,” Yancy said, surrounded by midnight-black aura, “that humans are one of the best sources of elixir materials?”

Shit.

Hal had been right to not drop his daggers.

Yancy was a D-rank with a spirit much more powerful than Hal’s. He had to use everything he could get his hands on.

Reluctantly, he reached for his remaining skill points.

[Swordfighting +3! 1 -> 4]

He readied himself, and Yancy advanced.

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