If you wanted to hunt, then what you needed was a hunter permit.
A system the government created to keep track and observe the behavior of awakened individuals.
Many years ago there was an "awakening coup" attempt where a group of awakened ones decided to try and overthrow the government and seize control, but the attempt failed.
Since then the laws and rules of who and how you could clear gates had become stricter.
"Man, I only got rank E..."
"Same here. I guess it's back to work..."
A man and woman walked out of the testing room with disappointment written across their faces. Rank E meant your power was too low that hunting became genuinely dangerous.
Even if leveling up was possible for everyone, the risk required to get there wasn't something average people could bear.
When the official system was first implemented and the data came in, rank E hunters had a casualty rate of over 20%, the highest of any profession in recorded history.
And if that didn't deter you, the cost of American healthcare would finish the job.
"I got rank D!!"
A teenager came bouncing out after them.
"I'm from Silver Claw guild, would you like an interview!"
"Wait, I'm from Red Pellet, we have a sign-on bonus for healer or warrior class!"
A group of scouts who camped outside the testing room every day swarmed the boy before he even finished reading his results.
D rank was considered the baseline for becoming a real hunter, so a teenager walking out with one was exactly the kind of prospect the guilds circled.
If Rowan remembered correctly, every 10 people at one rank equated to 1person at the rank above. 10 E for 1 D, 10 D for 1 C, and so on up the ladder.
The gap between ranks was exponential.
And the higher your base rank, the better your ceiling for improvement later.
Two people starting at level 1 with the same stats on paper were not equal if one held an S rank skill.
The higher ranked skill scaled faster, hit harder at every threshold, and compounded over time.
By comparison, his Assassin skill at E rank could only make him marginally faster, while his Soul Reaper skills were capable of far more interesting things.
Most people who came to check their rank were teenagers in high school or early college.
People normally awakened around 18, a built in clockwork that appeared mostly in the young.
But if someone awakened later in life their rank tended to come in higher to compensate.
That was part of how humanity had fended off the first world raid.
A select few awakened at A and S rank and tore through the monster hordes, seizing back control.
Many of them were still on active duty. Some had retired due to injury.
Rowan knew some of them personally. A few had even been his mentors.
'This sure does bring back memories.'
Back when the draft happened he had been lined up with another 10,000 Americans who had refused to register as hunters, tested for the first time, learning their rank alongside strangers.
Rank wasn't something the system assigned as a judgment of the individual, it was made by the government.
It was a measurement, a calculation run by AI based purely on stats, the same AI that monitored the city and detected gate appearances.
It measured the density of your mana, not the amount. So even if you leveled up to 100, you would still be stuck at rank E.
The real system, the one that gave people their status windows, given ranks to their skills and stats, where it came from and why, remained a mystery to the very end.
"Next is... Rowan?"
The girl knew who he was. Only a handful of awakened worked in the entire building, so his name circulated.
"Hi." Rowan waved.
Dan followed close behind, accompanying his best friend through his midlife crisis.
"You decided to join the hunter force, huh? Good for you." She looked mildly interested.
Rowan worked in the same building, so seeing his own status window should have already told him roughly what rank to expect.
Most people knew before they walked in, but some still hoped it would be different.
Not Rowan.
He had taken the test before in his last life. He already knew what the outcome would be.
People got two free rank checks.
Beyond that, it was 100 dollars each time, and that was the rate for fast checking.
"You know the drill. Place your hand on the orb and relax."
The room was built like a medical center, wires and cables running from the walls and hooking into a black orb sitting in the middle of the space.
A [Depleted Mana-stone].
Rowan placed his hand on it and settled.
[E]
No matter how much he wished otherwise, that was just how the system worked.
"Okay, here we go." The girl had a gambling addiction. Watching people spin their rank each time was like pulling a slot machine lever, and the lever never got old.
The energy flux moved from the orb into Rowan, a mild buzzing sensation that rushed through him before flowing back.
The black orb began glowing with a dim light. An early signal for E rank.
'As expected.' Rowan sighed and began to pull his hand away.
But the orb never stopped glowing, it kept shining brighter and brighter.
"Hm?"
The tester had worked this room for years, run countless people through the orb, seen B ranks come through that made the whole office buzz. But the light pouring out of that stone right now was something she had never seen before.
The reading on the screen in front of her began to glitch, numbers spinning wildly.
[E] [S] [D] [A] [D] [C] [S] [SS] [SSS]
The screen flickered as the energy being pulled into the orb grew stronger and stronger, until.
BANG!
A circuit breaker tripped and every light in the building went out.