Chapter 56: Reasons For Being A Hunter

For the next thirty minutes, the recruits watched the final countdown to entry.

There was none of the flashy posturing Kael had occasionally seen in televised high-rank raids. The six hunters—mostly D-ranks and seasoned E-ranks, judging by the practical, well-worn state of their gear—worked in near-total silence. The vanguard checked the locking clasp on his tower shield three separate times. A woman with a shortbow tested the draw weight of her string, her expression as calm and detached as a carpenter measuring a board, while their team leader signed the final manifest on the coordinator’s tablet.

Kael leaned in slightly toward Marcus. "Sir, this crew looks like they’ve run dozens of gates together. Do they really run a full manual gear check every single time?"

"The smart ones do," Marcus replied, his eyes never leaving the squad. "Complacency kills more veterans than high-rank bosses ever will. The day you think you’re too experienced to check your straps is the day a buckle snaps when a beast has its jaws around your forearm."

Down on the tarmac, the site coordinator raised a green flag.

The raid leader gave a sharp, two-finger signal. Forming a tight two-by-two column with the shield-bearer at the point, the squad marched past the inner gate and approached the shimmering violet fissure.

None of them slowed down. One by one, they stepped straight into the churning dark—and vanished as though they had walked through a curtain of black water.

A strange, cold tightness settled in the center of Kael’s chest as the rear guard disappeared, leaving the tarmac empty once more.

Just like that, six people had stepped entirely out of the normal world. No radio waves traveled cleanly across the dimensional boundary unless routed through a hardline tether near the entrance; no backup could reach them in less than several minutes if things went south.

Kael stared at the rippling surface of the gate and wondered what would go through his head the first time his own boot crossed that line.

Would his legs lock up? Would the fear dull his reactions?

He didn’t have an answer yet. All he knew was that Sera’s warning—and Marcus’s—had never felt more earned.

"Look closely at their faces when you remember that walk," Marcus told the group quietly. "Beginners always assume veterans aren’t scared. That’s garbage. Every hunter with a working brain feels their stomach drop at the threshold. The difference is that professionals let their training drive their feet instead of their nerves."

Beside Kael, Ethan shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his jaw tight. "Easier said than done."

"Of course it is," Marcus said. "If it were easy, we wouldn’t need an Association."

For the next twenty minutes, the yard settled into a tense, watchful routine. The recruits listened to the low murmur of the communications tent, where a technician monitored the short-range beacon planted just inside the gate’s mouth.

Then, a harsh burst of static tore from the main receiver.

Inside the comms tent, the lead technician stiffened, pressing one hand firmly against his headset before barking an order to the site coordinator.

Marcus’s posture changed instantly, his shoulders squaring as he took half a step toward the railing. "Report," he called down to a passing security officer.

The officer exchanged a clipped sentence with Marcus below the platform. When Marcus turned back to the recruits, every trace of instructional patience had vanished from his face, replaced by cold iron.

Down by the tents, two white-coated medics were already sprinting toward the inner barrier, rolling a heavy trauma gurney and tearing open sterile field kits as they moved.

Daniel’s voice cracked slightly. "What’s happening? It’s only been twenty minutes."

"Abort signal," Marcus said grimly. "The raid team tripped their entrance beacon. They’re coming out hot with a casualty."

A ripple of uneasy murmurs went through the recruits. Ethan’s hands gripped the steel railing in front of him. "How bad is it?"

"We won’t know until they clear the veil," Marcus said, his eyes fixed on the violet rift. "Look at the yard right now. Everything looked textbook twenty minutes ago, didn’t it? Weather clear, mana stable, veteran crew. Remember this the next time you think ’routine mission’ means safe."

Down on the tarmac, the surface of the gate bulged outward like a struck drumhead.

The shield-bearer burst through first, his heavy boots skidding across the asphalt as he spun to cover the rear, his shield scored with deep, jagged gouges that hadn’t been there twenty minutes ago. Immediately behind him came two hunters hauling a third between them by the straps of his chest plate.

It was one of the flankers. The man was awake, his teeth clenched so hard his jaw trembled, trying and failing to put weight on a right leg that hung at an unnatural angle. The reinforced leather armor over his thigh was shredded, and dark, slick blood soaked through his trousers, dripping onto the gray tarmac with every ragged step he took.

The recruits instinctively surged half a step forward to get a clearer look, but Marcus threw a heavy arm out like a toll gate.

"Hold your ground!" he snapped. "Stay on the platform and stay out of the medics’ lanes!"

Every recruit froze in place.

Kael watched in tense silence as the trauma team reached the squad in seconds. There was no panic, no dramatic shouting. Working with practiced, brutal efficiency, the medics hoisted the wounded hunter onto the gurney, slicing away the ruined fabric of his trousers with trauma shears while a support healer pressed steady, glowing palms above the torn muscle to stem the arterial bleeding. While the medics worked, the raid leader stood beside the coordinator, helmet tucked under her arm, delivering a rapid-fire incident report between heavy breaths.

From the platform, Kael caught a clear glimpse of the injured man’s face as they wheeled him toward the waiting ambulance transport. He looked to be in his early thirties—pale with shock, sweat plastered to his forehead, his eyes tight with pain and frustration.

Alive, Kael thought. He was alive, and he was going home, even if it was via a hospital bed.

Beside Kael, Ethan let out a breath he seemed to have been holding for a full minute. "That went sideways so fast."

"You have no idea how fast it went sideways inside," Marcus corrected him sharply. "Maybe the terrain gave way under his boot. Maybe a lurker beast bypassed the vanguard’s line of sight. Maybe somebody was half a second late on a callout. In a dungeon, half a second is the difference between walking out with a paycheck and being dragged out on a stretcher."

He waited until the ambulance doors slammed shut and the siren chirped once at the perimeter gate before looking back at the pale faces of his trainees.

"A low-rank monster doesn’t need to be an S-class calamity to sever your femoral artery," Marcus said quietly. "It just needs you to make one stupid mistake."

Kael looked back at the gate. The violet rift continued to shimmer in the morning sun, completely indifferent to the blood drying on the asphalt twenty feet in front of it.

A few minutes ago, Kael had wondered whether he would be afraid when his turn came to step inside. Now, looking at that red stain on the concrete, a very different image rose in his mind: that thirty-something hunter’s phone ringing in a locker while someone at home waited to hear how his shift went.

He thought of the small apartment in Crestview District. He thought of Sera’s tired smile over morning tea, and the weight of Noah’s tiny hand curling around his finger.

Unconsciously, Kael’s fingers tightened around the canvas strap of his bag until his knuckles turned white.

*I don’t get to be reckless,* he told himself, the thought settling into his bones like lead. *Not when two other lives are tied to mine.*

Marcus let the silence hang over the platform for another ten seconds before gesturing toward the idling transport bus.

"Today’s lesson isn’t meant to turn you into cowards," the instructor said. "Fear by itself just makes you freeze. Preparation, situational awareness, and absolute discipline are what bring you back through that rift breathing. Back on the bus. We’ll break down the extraction protocol on the ride in."

Not a single recruit complained, lingered, or cracked a joke as they filed down the metal stairs.

---

The forty-minute journey back toward the city center felt twice as long as the trip out.

Ethan, who had spent the entire morning ride enthusiastically speculating about weapon classes and guild contracts, sat slumped against the window, his chin resting on his knuckles as the industrial yards blurred past.

Halfway back, he turned his head slightly toward Kael, keeping his voice low under the rumble of the diesel engine.

"You still going through with it?" Ethan asked. "Getting your full license, I mean."

Kael glanced over at him. "Of course."

"Even after watching that guy get carried out?"

"Especially after watching that," Kael said quietly. Seeing Ethan’s puzzled frown, he elaborated. "I don’t mean I’m eager to go get my leg torn open. I just mean... if I have to do this work, I’d rather see the ugly parts of it now than find out the hard way when I’m already inside."

Ethan stared at the back of the seat in front of him, nodding slowly. "I signed up because my old man’s business went under last year. Left the family buried in private debt. When my awakening test came back positive, I figured—hey, I’m big, I can swing a mace, I’ll clear a few gates and pay the whole thing off in six months."

"Money’s as real a reason as any," Kael said, thinking of his own kitchen table covered in hospital receipts and lease notices. "Just doesn’t do your family much good if they have to spend your payout on a funeral."

Ethan let out a short, humorless huff that wasn’t quite a laugh. "Man, you don’t sugarcoat anything, do you?"

"I think Marcus is rubbing off on me."

"Marcus could read a grocery list and make it sound like a casualty report."

Kael’s mouth crooked into a faint smile. "Maybe that’s why they put him in charge of the rookies."

When the transport pulled back into the Association compound, Marcus kept the group in the briefing courtyard for another twenty minutes, grilling each of them on the staging zones, the beacon system, and the exact sequence the medics had used during the extraction.

Kael answered calmly whenever called upon, his memory of the morning’s layout sharp and methodical.

"Today was step zero," Marcus told them once the review concluded. "Tomorrow, we start drilling footwork, weapon retention, and spatial awareness under fatigue. Do not mistake watching a gate for surviving one. Dismissed until 0800 tomorrow."

As the recruits began breaking apart toward the locker rooms and the front lobby, Marcus’s voice cut across the courtyard one last time.

"Kael. Hold up."

Kael paused, letting Ethan and Daniel walk ahead with a quick nod of farewell, then stepped over to the instructor. "Yes, sir?"

Marcus tucked his clipboard under his arm, studying Kael with those flat, observant eyes. "You kept your mouth shut out there today, and you actually watched the perimeter instead of gawking at the rift. That puts you ahead of half this intake."

"Thank you, sir."

"Don’t thank me yet," Marcus said evenly. "I saw the readout from your assessment, and I felt how hard you hit when I stepped into that brawl yesterday. You’ve got something unusual under the hood—more raw output than an unranked trainee has any business throwing around. Don’t let that make you stupid."

Kael’s ribs gave a phantom twinge at the memory of how effortlessly Marcus had put him on the floor despite that strength. "It won’t, sir."

"Raw power without fundamentals just means you die deeper inside the dungeon than the weak ones," Marcus said. "I won’t sign off on your license until your basics are airtight, no matter how hard you can punch. Understand?"

"Understood. I want the basics, sir. I’m not looking for shortcuts."

Marcus held his gaze for a beat longer, then gave a single, gruff nod that was as close to approval as the man ever came. "Good. Go home to your family, Kael. Training’s a marathon. You don’t have to win the whole thing on day one."

"See you tomorrow, sir."

---

By the time Kael stepped off the transit line in Crestview District, the late afternoon sun had dipped low between the apartment blocks, painting the concrete walkways in long bands of amber and cool shadow.

He climbed the stairs to his floor, unlocked the front door, and stepped inside. The apartment was quiet, warm, and smelled faintly of simmering broth from the kitchen. Sera sat on the sofa beneath the soft glow of the standing lamp, Noah tucked securely in the crook of her arm while a folded stack of clean laundry rested beside her.

She looked up the instant the latch clicked, the subtle tension in her shoulders easing when she saw him whole and unmarked.

"You’re home," she said softly.

Kael set his bag down by the shoe rack, slipped off his boots, and crossed the room to her. "I’m home."

He sank onto the sofa beside her, leaning in to kiss her cheek before resting two fingers lightly against the back of Noah’s warm, sleeping hand.

Sera studied his face in the warm lamplight, picking up on his quiet demeanor immediately. "Rough first day?"

"Not rough," Kael said, letting his head rest back against the top of the sofa cushions. "Just... sobering. We didn’t go near the entrance, just like Marcus promised, but we saw the whole machine that runs around a gate."

In a low, steady voice that wouldn’t wake Noah, he walked her through the morning—the forty-minute drive out to the industrial cordon, the unsettling violet tear hanging in the middle of the shipping yard, the twenty support workers monitoring every breath the six-man strike team took, and the redundant gear checks before entry.

Then he told her about the radio static, and the hunter who had been dragged back through the veil twenty minutes later with his leg torn open.

Sera’s breath caught quietly, her arm tightening a fraction around Noah. "On a low-rank gate?"

"That’s what made it hit so hard," Kael admitted, staring across the living room. "Everything looked completely under control until the second it wasn’t. One minute they were checking straps and signing clipboards like guys clocking into a construction shift, and the next, two medics were cutting his armor off on a gurney to stop the bleeding."

Sera looked down at their son’s sleeping face, her expression solemn, before reaching across the cushion to slide her fingers through Kael’s hand.

"That must have been awful to watch," she whispered.

"It was." Kael turned his hand over, lacing his fingers firmly with hers. "I knew on paper that hunting was dangerous. Anyone who watches the news knows the casualty rates. But standing twenty yards away and smelling the blood while a guy tries not to scream... it strips away whatever illusions you have left."

She squeezed his hand gently, searching his eyes. "Are you having second thoughts?"

Kael took a slow breath, looking from her steady gaze down to Noah’s peaceful face, then back again.

"No," he said honestly. "If anything, I’m surer now that I need to be there. Every person on that tarmac who knew their job kept that man from dying today. I just realize how much I still don’t know—and how badly things can go if I ever let myself get arrogant."

A quiet, reassuring warmth returned to Sera’s eyes. "Knowing what you don’t know isn’t a weakness, Kael. That’s what’s going to keep you safe."

"I know," he murmured, leaning his forehead briefly against her shoulder. "I just don’t ever want to make a mistake out there because I thought I was tougher than the room."

Sera rested her cheek against his hair, her voice calm and grounding in the quiet apartment.

"Then keep learning," she said softly. "You don’t have to rush, and you don’t have to carry the whole world by tomorrow morning. Just take what Marcus teaches you one day at a time, and keep coming back through that door to us."

Kael closed his eyes for a moment, letting the tension of the industrial yard, the humming violet rift, and the smell of ozone finally fade into the warmth of the living room.

"Deal," he whispered. "Every single day."