Chapter 68: Scout call up

Peter swallowed hard, looking down at his worn boots, his knuckles white around the brass lamp before he set it down on the desk. "I was going to leave for Sector Five before the morning roll call. My uncle said I could crash on the floor of his office at the scrap yard. It’s off the grid, Rain. Reeve’s people wouldn’t look for me there."

"They’d find you in three days," Rain said, stepping closer and looking Peter straight in the eye. "And even if they didn’t, you’d spend the rest of your life hiding in a junk building, waiting for a syndicate collector to kick the door down. That’s not a life, Peter."

"What else am I supposed to do?!" Peter burst out, his voice cracking with raw, desperate panic. Tears welled in his red-rimmed eyes as he gestured wildly toward the scattered papers on the desk. "Fifty thousand credits! Three weeks! Corwin said Reeve isn’t playing games anymore! We don’t have job placements, we don’t have intel, we don’t have anything! I’m an F-rank carrier, Rain! I make eighty credits a run when I’m lucky! The math doesn’t work!"

"Put the bag down, Peter," Rain said, his tone low, grounded, and absolute.

Peter froze, looking at Rain’s calm, steady blue eyes. The sheer stillness in Rain’s posture seemed to act like an anchor in the middle of Peter’s storm.

"Put the bag down," Rain repeated softly. "And listen to me."

Peter slowly dropped his hands, letting out a ragged, shaking sigh as he sat down heavily on the edge of his narrow bed, his head buried in his hands.

Rain pulled up the desk chair, turned it around, and sat down facing him.

"I spent the night handling logistics," Rain said smoothly. "At eight o’clock this morning, a friend of mine, Nyra, and myself are registering an official, fully licensed independent party at the Sector Four Licensing Office."

Peter looked up through his tangled hair, his brow furrowed in confusion. "A legal party? How? You need thousands of credits just for the municipal bond."

"The bond is paid," Rain interrupted cleanly. "We have nearly twenty-five thousand credits in liquid capital ready to deposit. We have our baseline gear, we have our clearance forms, and we have a D-rank vanguard joining our roster to drop the per-capita insurance tier."

Peter stared at him, his mouth slightly open, utterly stunned into silence. "Twenty-five thousand?"

"Close enough," Rain said. "And there’s a fourth slot open on our official registration list."

Peter blinked rapidly, processing the words, but his mind couldn’t quite connect the dots. "A fourth slot? For who? You guys need another frontline fighter or a high-level scout to pull C-rank contracts."

"The fourth slot is for you," Rain said.

The small room went dead silent. The faint hum of the building’s heater was the only sound in the space.

Peter stared at Rain as if Rain had just started speaking a foreign language. "Me? Rain, I’m a carrier. I don’t have combat skills. I don’t have high skills. I can barely hold a shield without my knees shaking."

"You don’t need to lead the frontline," Rain said, his blue eyes locking onto Peter with absolute seriousness. "Theo is taking point on heavy defense. Nyra handles flanking and stealth recon. I take care of mobility and primary damage output. What we need is a dedicated, reliable fourth member who knows how to handle field logistics, secure loot drops instantly, track monster movement on the perimeter, and manage supply lines during long runs."

Rain leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees.

"If you stay in Corwin’s pipeline, you’re a victim waiting to be broken," Rain said, leaving no room for misunderstanding. "If you join our party, you’re an equal partner. You get an official quarter share of every legal rift run we clear. That’s real money landing straight in your own account, not laundered through Reeve, not skimmed by Corwin’s crew."

Peter’s breath caught in his throat. He looked at Rain, his eyes trembling, a tear slipping down his cheek as the weight of what Rain was offering finally broke through his panic.

"A real share?" Peter whispered, his voice trembling so hard he could barely force the words out. "Rain, you’d do that for me?"

"I’m not doing it out of charity, Peter," Rain said firmly, giving him the dignity of a real choice. "I’m doing it because I know you’re reliable when it counts. You kept your mouth shut when Dax got in your face yesterday. You stuck to the story, you protected the party, and you didn’t break. That means more in a rift than a high strength skill"

Rain stood up from the chair, looking down at Peter.

"We have three weeks to come up with fifty thousand credits," Rain said. "That’s not a lot of time, and I won’t pretend it is. It means every run we take has to count, no wasted days, no small jobs we can avoid. If we push hard and clear what we can as a party, your share of what we bring in starts chipping into your half of the debt immediately. It might not cover all of it by the deadline. But it’s a real dent, earned clean, instead of nothing at all."

Peter sat on the edge of the bed, his shoulders shaking as silent, heavy sobs took over his body. The terror, the exhaustion, and the crushing hopelessness that had been eating him alive since yesterday afternoon shattered all at once, replaced by a sudden, overwhelming wave of relief.

Peter wasn’t being dramatic, and Rain knew it.

The guilds controlled every legal inch of the rift economy, from the Rift Chasers who surveyed a new tear to the auction floors where extraction rights changed hands before a single sword crossed the threshold. Everything legitimate ran through that system, licenses, bonds, oversight, a paper trail someone could follow if something went wrong.

Gangs existed in the cracks underneath all of it. They had no Rift Chaser certifications, no guild backing, no legal right to touch a rift at all, which meant they survived on everything the legal system left exposed. Loan-sharking against people too desperate to read the fine print. Debt collection through fists instead of courts. Fencing stolen cores through men like Reeve, who knew exactly which questions never to ask.

And when a debt got bad enough, when someone owed more than they could ever work off through ordinary means, the gangs had one more use for a body. Unlicensed rift labor. No safety gear, no insurance, no municipal oversight, no name on any registry that would ever ask where that person had gone. A debtor handed over to a crew like that didn’t get sent to collect a wage. They got sent into whatever rift nobody else wanted to touch, shoved through the breach with nothing, and the gang didn’t particularly care whether they walked back out. If they didn’t, the debt simply closed itself, and nobody came looking, because as far as the system was concerned, that person had never been inside a rift at all.

Peter wiped his face aggressively with the sleeves of his shirt, sniffling as he looked up at Rain with raw, profound gratitude in his eyes.

"Okay," Peter choked out, nodding his head repeatedly. "Okay. I’ll do it. I’ll bring my clearance forms. I’ll be there."

Rain smiled, a real, genuine expression that brightened his face.

"Pack your student ID and your medical sheet," Rain said, turning toward the door. "Eight o’clock sharp at the Sector Four Licensing Office. Don’t be late. Theo gets cranky in the cold."

"I won’t be late," Peter said, wiping his eyes and standing up from the bed, his posture completely different from ten minutes ago. "I swear I won’t be late."

Rain stepped out of the Annex building and into the crisp morning air. The sun was just rising over the eastern horizon, painting the sky in pale pinks and soft golds.

He felt lighter than he had in weeks. The debt was still there, but it was no longer a shadow hanging over their heads; it was just a target, a set of numbers they were going to smash through together on their own terms.

His phone vibrated in his pocket.

Rain pulled it out, looking at the screen. A new text message had just arrived from a saved contact: Eren Toma.

Rain tapped the notification to open the text:

-Hey Rain. Ever since coach caught wind of what you pulled off in that street fight a while back and hasn’t stopped asking about you since. He wants you in his office at the athletics facility tomorrow afternoon at two. Don’t book any appointments for that time block.

Rain stared at the screen for a second, his blue eyes widening slightly as the words registered.

Eren Toma was the varsity team captain for the Blue Wave Powerball squad, the highest-tier competitive combat sport at the academy, boasting a few exciting perks including a massive talent scout visibility, and elite conditioning facilities. Getting a direct meeting request from the head coach wasn’t just a minor administrative check; it meant he was officially being considered for a roster position or a sponsored training track.

Rain let out a short, quiet laugh, a bright, uncomplicated grin spreading across his face as he looked up at the golden morning sunlight spilling over the athletic fields.

"Sweet!" Rain said out loud, slipping the phone back into his pocket with a satisfied snap as he headed down the station stairs.