Smoke curled out of the testing equipment as sparks ran wild, the screen short circuiting itself. But before it died completely, it displayed one final result.
[E]
"Looks like the machine finally kicked the bucket. Well, it's been here longer than I have, so it was to be expected." The tester sighed, already thinking about the paperwork she was going to have to fill out, but still finished her job and printed out his official hunter card.
Rowan accepted his card and walked out.
"Holy shit dude, are you some kind of hidden rank hunter or something?"
Dan was equal parts amazed and confused. The equipment the government supplied anything hunter related was top of the line; budget shared with the Department of War, essentially limitless.
There had been a few cases where mage class hunters deliberately controlled their energy flow during testing and threw off their results, coming higher or lower than their actual rank, so errors at some levels were expected and accounted for.
But equipment failure had never happened before.
"Haha, I wish." Rowan laughed it off.
"Since it's your last day, want to grab a beer? My treat." Dan offered. "Think of it as your personal send off party."
After a year together, he felt they should at least celebrate before parting ways.
"Sorry, but I have to decline."
Rowan thought about it as the words left his mouth.
He couldn't afford to waste a day slacking off anymore.
His opponent was Orelia.
A regressor who had walked this path thousands of times and succeeded.
He still didn't know whether she was aware that he had regressed back too this time around, which put him at a disadvantage either way.
How optimized her leveling route was, how efficient her methods, he had no way of knowing.
"Oh... okay..." Dan's face dropped. He sighed and laughed it off.
"I guess this is goodbye then. Good luck out there. Don't get yourself hurt."
Still, watching Dan's disappointment stung. Their friendship had ended abruptly in the last life, no goodbye, no closure. It would be a shame if it went the same way this time around.
"I'll call you when I'm free, is that okay?"
If the opportunity came, he wanted to fix it.
Dan's face lit up. He clapped Rowan on the shoulder. "That's fine by me! See you around~!"
He jogged off back to work, leaving Rowan alone in the lobby.
'Good to see you, friend.'
After leaving the association building, Rowan was met with a sight he had long forgotten.
A towering city, cars on the road and people walking around on the street.
"Ack!" A sudden headache attacked him, but this time it was more bearable than before.
The memory flashed to him, showing him the forsaken world that had turned into a hellscape.
A world where no normal humans survived.
If the rank E to D ratio was 10:1, the ratio from normal human to hunter was 1000:1.
And they all died, and he couldn't save a single one with all the power he had.
The advantage of knowing the future is that you can plan and know how it's going to play out.
But he refused. He was NOT going to follow the future; he was going to stop it.
Starting today!
But first...
"How do I use a phone again?"
After practically living in hiding for five years, a phone was something so distant it felt like a relic. Communication in those years had been magic and improvised signals.
Still, after fumbling with it for a while, it started coming back. Years of doom scrolling didn't just disappear, the muscle memory was still in there somewhere.
Being a hunter, the first thing you needed was a suitable weapon.
He pulled up a map and walked toward the nearest hunter district.
Some areas were designated and subsidized by the government to foster hunter businesses, pulling all the equipment and services hunters needed into one concentrated block for easy access.
Since he worked at the association, there was one not too far.
"Looking for a raid! Rank E fire mage, level 3!"
"Recruiting members, minimum D rank, range damage dealer preferred, melee welcome!"
People gathered in clusters across the square, forming parties or calling out for members.
It was a considerably large plaza and busy enough that weapons were everywhere, carried openly on backs and hips, ranging from straightforward swords to staffs with orbiting gemstones.
Rowan walked in and the first thing he hit was the equipment zone.
Hunter supply was one of the most profitable retail businesses in the post-gate economy, which meant competition was fierce across every price point.
Big chains had claimed the prime real estate up front, recognizable names that had expanded hard when the market shifted.
The kind of stores you'd find in any shopping complex, Costmart, Wall-Co, cheap and standardized and exactly what a first timer needed.
Nothing special, but reliable enough to start with.
Think of it like the NPC shop in an online game.
Not something you wanted to use forever, just something that kept you geared enough to find better pieces.
Deeper were the artisans.
Not [Skill] holders, actual craftspeople, blacksmiths and metalworkers who had been obsessively building things before the gates opened and suddenly found the entire world needed what they knew.
No [Create] skill existed in the system.
Every piece of equipment available was either looted from a dungeon or built by human hands.
But that wasn't what Rowan was looking for either, so he kept walking.
To narrow down what he was looking for, he knew something that wasn't exactly a secret, but more like a myth that most people were misunderstood about.
Only a weapon from gates can kill monsters.
It was a rumor that spread around like wildfire, and it wasn't helping that all top ranked hunters were using customized weapons to fight monsters, making one particular type of weapon get overshadowed and discounted for how effective it was.
Guns.
"Hello sir, what may I help you with today?" A gun shop was hidden within the corner with a man in a well dressed suit standing by.
Owning a gun was considered a niche in the hunter world.
Unknown to most, normal bullets worked just as well as swords.
"I want a shotgun," Rowan asked politely.
Why was a gun shop in the hunter district?
Because it was cheaper to be here and guns were considered suitable weapons for hunters.
Finally for the first time in American history, they got to enjoy cheap weapons like their army did!
"Do you have a license, sir?" Another hurdle was the permit.
"Here," Rowan pulled out his hunter permit card and placed it on the table.
On the back of the card he had read that it could be used as a federal firearms license.
"Well, we do have auto shotguns, but it depends on your budget." The seller asked.
"Around 2k." Rowan opened his bank app and saw 3 dollars inside, but luckily he had a credit card.
"May I suggest the Benelli M4?" The merchant smiled and pulled out a long black shotgun from under the desk.
Rowan picked it up, tested the grip, and nodded. "I'll take it."
One swipe later he had his first weapon, along with boxs of shells, putting him roughly 2.8k in debt.
Next, he picked up a short sword, a small arm guard, and a light chest plate, maxing out his credit card at a whopping 4k with a 12% interest rate.
'Next, find a raid.'
By entering his hunter ID into the hunter association app, one of the better inventions to come out of big tech since the gates opened, he could browse all active gates, their difficulty ratings, and open recruitment listings.
There were plenty of gates in the area ranging from E- to C+.
A gate ranked with a minus was considered valuable because it was slightly easier with slightly less reward, a trade most sensible hunters were happy to make.
A plus ranked gate flipped that, harder and more dangerous but better loot for those willing to push it.
The most consistently stupid thing a hunter could do was go beyond their rank.
Every gate had a recommended hunter rank and minimum member count listed, and insurance companies had made sure that mattered.
Miss the requirements, get injured or killed, and the claim got denied. Simple as that.
Most hunters followed the guidelines religiously.
There was a joke that went around.
It's easier to clear an S rank gate than to pay an American medical bill.