A hunter's job may look like a dream from the outside, you get to fight monsters and claim glory like in the stories of old. What most people forget is that the danger is just as real as those old tales made it out to be.
It's just that death, in this age, is nothing but a number on a screen.
"Hey! Are you Rowan?!"
Using an app, Rowan had found a party not far from here. Looking at their profile, he had half-expected an old photo.
But these were just kids... Rowan's face dropped.
"Yes, I am. And you are?" He asked just to be sure.
"Jack. And this guy here is Tyrone." One of the muscular boys spoke up, pointing to the man beside him.
Both may look rough around the edges from their styling choices, but neither looked younger than 20.
And tucked under Tyrone's arm was a short Asian boy looking nervous. "H-hi! I'm Lee."
"Nope, that's a high school boy. We are not doing this!" Rowan stood his ground. This was no joke — students had no business being here. They needed to be in class, or at least find a mentor before taking on a dangerous job like this.
"See, I told you that you look like a kid! But don't worry, mister, he is just as capable as any of us here. Am I right?" Tyrone squeezed Lee and pressured him to answer.
"Y-Yes..." Lee answered, and to Rowan's surprise, it was nothing but an awkward reply, not a dishonest one. The boy genuinely wanted this, just as much as the others did.
"Then where is the last one?" Rowan counted the party at four including himself and looked around for the missing member.
"I'm here! And Tyrone, let Lee go right now or I'm calling your mom!" A girl pulled up on a motorcycle and stepped off. Her figure was slender, her long blonde hair and blue eyes carrying the air of proud heritage. Her motorcycle alone was worth more than Rowan's yearly salary.
A lingering floral scent followed her as she walked up to the group.
"My name is Cordelia. You must be Rowan." She looked him up and down, her gaze settling on his weapon of choice. "A shotgun? Aren't those useless in dungeons?"
"Haha, that's just a myth. Trust me, it works just as well as any other weapon." Rowan assured her with a grin.
She did not seem particularly concerned either way. She was a rank D hunter, and this was only a rank E gate.
She had only come to support her boyfriend and protect him from his bullies.
"Lee, you can still quit, you know?" She tried once more to persuade him, but Jack's voice cut in.
"Yeah, quit and go cry to your mama. Eat ramen and watch anime, boo~"
"You, shut up!" Cordelia pointed at Jack, but he only stepped back with a smirk.
"Ok, ok, that's enough. Let's get this over with." Rowan stepped in before this high school drama went any further. He just wanted to clear his first dungeon and start gathering souls.
A Soul Reaper without souls in reserve was practically classless.
"Aye, mister." Tyrone answered with a joking tone as he drew his longsword, Jack doing the same beside him.
As for Cordelia and Lee, both carried wands that looked as though they had come from the same branch.
They did, didn't they... Rowan could tell that the lifelines of those branches were connected.
Matching wands for a couple, which made him feel more at ease, because there was a real benefit when two mages wielded a linked pair.
After scanning the QR code to confirm the raid, they went inside.
"A cave, huh?" Jack whistled.
Caves were one of the most recurring dungeon types, and one of their challenges was the darkness.
Lee opened his palm in the dark, and a warm, bubbly light began floating out from his hand, surrounding the group like a cluster of stars.
"Still as cute as ever~!" Cordelia gushed over her boyfriend's spell, while the two brothers up front glanced back and smiled quietly to themselves.
"What was that?" Rowan's question made the two flinch, but they ignored him and pressed on inside.
Rowan cocked his shotgun as they went deeper into the cave. Before long they began to hear footsteps not far ahead, and a pair of dimly lit eyes appeared in the tunnel.
"Incom—"
"Fireball!"
Without waiting for a signal, Cordelia thrust her hand forward and a ball of flame tore through the air.
The fire erupted and lit up the entire pathway, filling it with smoke as burnt, unidentifiable corpses were scattered by the blast. The first wave of monsters was dead just like that. She turned to the others with full confidence.
"Feel free to praise me, I'm used to it!" Cordelia declared proudly as Lee clapped softly beside her.
"You almost got us killed, you bitch!" Jack snapped, the heat having scorched the back of his neck by just a few inches.
"EVERYONE FOCUS!!"
Rowan kept his eyes fixed forward. More footsteps could be heard echoing from the other tunnels.
Then they came into sight, the monsters of this rift.
Creatures with green skin and the stature of middle school boys, each with a signature long nose and clutching a primitive stone-age weapon.
"Goblins..." Rowan detested these bastards. They had bred like a plague when the world fell and he had seen them everywhere.
"Let's do this, Tyrone!" Jack shouted as he charged forward without hesitation.
"Oh yeah!" Tyrone's deep voice boomed back as he followed, and when both sides clashed, the fight broke out.
"What's your cooldown?" Rowan asked. For a rank D mage, that fireball was no small spell.
"Two minutes." She looked away, knowing full well she had been showing off.
A spell that powerful came at a cost — it drained mana heavily, meaning she would not be casting anything significant for a while.
"Just keep those two supported," Rowan told Lee.
"But what about you?" Lee asked.
"I got this." Rowan moved in to back up the two men at the front.
Their initial bravado was already beginning to crack as the goblins started to close in around them.
Make no mistake, goblins may look small, almost childlike, but their strength was that of a full grown adult compacted into a tiny frame. More chimpanzee than human in nature. Which meant these two idiots had just charged headfirst into a two versus ten without stopping to think.
Just as both were beginning to reconsider their life choices.
One of the goblins dropped dead. Rowan had fired.
The goblins turned their attention to Rowan. He fired another shot, then another.
With each round fired, one goblin died, and their soul was harvested.
[Soul Harvested] [SP: 4]
Sadly, these goblins carried no skills, their rank too low to have developed any.
But souls were enough. Still, he wished it would drop more.
Not every death equaled one soul when it came to monsters. A weak ranked monster required multiple kills to make up a single soul, while a stronger monster would yield more than one.
"Gah!!" The goblins came rushing at him, but Rowan kept firing, fear nowhere on his face, even as the horde closed in.
When he ran out of ammo, he drew his knife, slipped past an incoming strike and drove the blade home.
Goblin blood sprayed from its throat as it dropped. More came from all sides.
But Rowan was experienced. Too battle-hardened, too skilled to fall for pack tactics.
He kept moving, and every strike was a death sentence for these lowly creatures.
--
[Status]
Level: 1
Class: Assassin (E) / Soul Reaper (Tier 2, SSS)
[Stats]
Strength: 1+1
Agility: 1+1
Vitality: 1
Dexterity: 1+3
Magic: 1
Status Points: 0
--
Strength and agility gave his body the power and speed to move the way he wanted.
But dexterity was what let him actually use that power and speed to their fullest.
Body after body dropped as the goblins were cut down like flies, from twenty, to ten, then five.
Before long, only the last one remained.
It stared into Rowan's emotionless eyes as he charged in and took its head clean off.
He had been doing this for so long he didn't feel anything anymore.
But there was one feeling he hadn't known for a long time.
Anger.
Rowan glanced over at Jack and Tyrone.
"What are you two standing there for?" Rowan holstered his knife and drew his shotgun, cocking it with practiced fingers in a matter of seconds.
"Uh... we just—" Jack stumbled over his words, scrambling for an excuse.
"Perhaps you were waiting on purpose, hoping I'd get injured?" Rowan's eyes didn't leave them.
"No, of course not!" Tyrone quickly defended himself. "We just couldn't find a way to get in, your movements were too fast for us to intervene without getting in the way."
"Yeah, we didn't want to step on your toes," Jack agreed, nodding along quickly.
Rowan went silent. Then, after a moment, he chuckled.
Nervously, both began to follow suit, before Rowan burst out laughing.
"Oh, is that so? I was worried you two were planning something funny." Rowan pulled them both in with one arm around each.
"Let uncle give you a word of advice." His voice was sharp and cold.
Both of them may have looked bigger than him, but they felt so small in his arms.
"Whatever you wouldn't dare to do outside, don't do it in here."