"It's painful to say this Kai Jogo, You're fired" the Hunter Association director didn't even look Kai in the face when he fired him."You're a D-Rank," the man said, reading from a document. "Your mission completion rate is forty-three percent." then looks up at Kai "That's the lowest on our roster.....We need hunters who actually succeed."Kai stood in front of his desk, tightening his fists and wanted to argue. He wanted to tell the director that the missions were impossible for him, and he was only doing his best because he really needed this job.But he didn't say any of that.Instead, he said, "When do I get my final payment?""It was already deducted," the director said. "From the equipment damage from your last mission. You're done here Kai, leave your badge on the way out."Kai's hands where shaking as he took the badge off his belt and set it on the desk.He was twenty-three years old, and his career as a hunter was over.As he went Outside the Association building, it was b

Forty eight hours had passed since Kai joined Zenith. He stood in the middle of a B rank dungeon, chest heaving, monster blood dripping off his knuckles. The rest of the crew was a few feet back, catching their breath. Ripley leaned on her cracked shield. Baylor wiped singed fabric off his staff. Marcus pressed a cloth to a shallow cut on his forearm while Mina healed the gash.Kai did not move to help. He only stared at the pile of mana cores at his feet, counting their value in his head. The payout would cover Kim's upcoming school fees, the new math workbook she had mentioned, and a new uniform to replace the one she had outgrown. He felt a faint flicker of something when he thought of her smile, but it faded before he could hold onto it.A blue glow lit up the edge of his vision.[LEVEL UP: LEVEL 5][NEW SYSTEM UNLOCKED: COPY SYSTEM][ABILITY: COPY APPEARANCE OR SKILL OF TARGET FOR LIMITED DURATION. DURATION SCALES WITH LEVEL. CURRENT MAX: 10 MINUTES][EMOTION LEVEL: 85%][DECAY R

The old west docks smelled like salt and rust and rot. Kai led the way across cracked concrete, his boots crunching over broken glass and discarded fish bones. Nix stayed a step ahead, his tracker glowing faint green in his palm, his steps so light he left no prints in the grime. The crew followed behind, moving slow. Ripley favored her left shoulder, her broken shield discarded in a dumpster three blocks back. Mina kept one hand pressed to her chest, the black veins from the Void attack still peeking out from under her sleeve. Marcus limped, his leg wrapped in a bloodstained bandage. Niko brought up the rear, his eyes never staying in one place for more than a second.Kai did not look back. He held Nix's tracker in one hand, the crumpled cult report in the other. Every few steps he checked the screen, his face blank. Togo was half a mile ahead, holed up in the oldest warehouse on the pier, the one with the collapsed roof and the rotting pilings that stuck out of the bay like broken t

Dawn painted the badlands a sickly pale gray when the beat-up van rumbled down the cracked dirt road. No one spoke. The air inside smelled like old sweat and monster blood and the quiet, sharp anger Mina had been carrying since the Rotting Burrow. She sat in the far back corner, her arms crossed, staring out the window like she would rather be anywhere else. Ripley sat next to her, picking at the loose thread on her bandaged shoulder. Baylor polished his staff in the middle seat, his eyes down. Nix drove, one hand on the wheel, the other flipping through a tattered notebook of dungeon notes. Niko sat behind Kai, his daggers loose in his lap, watching the back of Kai's head in the rearview mirror.Kai rode up front, his elbow resting on the open window. He ran the Hollow Spire's known stats through his head over and over, the system feeding him numbers until they blurred together. He tried to remember the sound of his dad's laugh, the one that used to shake the whole couch when he watc

The third floor hit Kai like a physical blow the second he stepped through the archway. The air was thick enough to chew, heavy with the smell of old blood and burnt incense and something else, something sharp and metallic that tasted like pennies at the back of his throat. His vision swam. The system glitched so bad the blue text in his eyes warped into meaningless lines for three full seconds before it stabilized.[VOID DENSITY: 94%][WARNING: EXPOSURE BEYOND RECOMMENDED LIMITS][LORD RESONANCE: 31%]The room was huge, circular, the walls lined with hundreds of stone alcoves cut into the rock. Each one held a body. Men, women, kids, all wearing the tattered remains of hunter uniforms from every era of the last thousand years. Their skin was gray, their eyes closed, their chests not moving. But every single one of them was breathing. Slow, shallow, in perfect sync with each other, like the whole room was one giant sleeping lung.In the center of the floor stood a stone altar, ten fee