Chapter 2: going to hunter accosiation

Dante didn’t immediately rush out of his apartment to seek bloody vengeance. Mostly because he was currently staring into the bathroom mirror and looking at a complete stranger.

His old face—the battle-scarred visage of a top-tier S-Rank Hunter that used to be plastered on giant billboards across the central district—was entirely gone. In its place was a completely different person.

He looked younger, around twenty, unruly black hair, and symmetrical features that had zero blemishes.

"The Watching God’s Mercy," Dante muttered, touching his jawline. His voice had lost its gravelly, war-torn edge. It was smooth now, entirely unrecognizable. "Full soul reconstruction. The deity didn’t just rebuild my body; it gave me a completely different build."

He checked his pockets. His old dimensional storage ring, which used to hold billions of credits worth of S-Rank legendary equipment, was gone. He had no identification cards, no guild tokens, and exactly forty-two credits sitting in a dusty ceramic jar by the sink.

Currently He had no guild backing, no connections, and zero wealth. He was a ghost. And honestly, it was the best thing that could have happened to him. If Marcus or the Radiant Dawn guild found out he was alive, they would deploy an entire army of A-Rank assassins to finish the job before he could even step inside the tower.

"Well," Dante said, pulling a faded black hoodie over his head. "If I’m starting from the bottom, I might as well get a new name."

He settled on a unpretentious alias: Zero. It was generic, forgettable, and perfectly described his current standing in society.

The Hunter Association building in Sector 4 was an imposing skyscraper made of reinforced mana-glass, buzzing with hundreds of hopeful rookies wearing pristine, expensive gear bought by their wealthy parents.

Dante walked through the automated glass doors, blending seamlessly into the crowd. Nobody looked at him twice. He didn’t have the oppressive aura of an S-Rank anymore. Because of the Vajra Mirror Body, his mana didn’t leak out of his skin like regular hunters. It was perfectly sealed inside him, coiled tight like a compressed spring. To any sensory hunter or mana-scanner, Dante looked as harmless as a high school student who had gotten lost on his way to the library.

He walked up to the automated registration kiosk.

[Welcome to the Hunter Association Registration Terminal.]

[Please place your hand on the scanner to register your Soul Signature.]

[Note: Forging a signature is punishable by lifetime imprisonment in the Abyssal Mines.]

Dante placed his palm against the glowing glass panel. A faint green light swept over his skin, reading the unique frequency of his soul.

Ding.!

[Scanning Complete.]

[Identity: Unregistered Independent Civilian.]

[Temporary Alias Issued: Zero.]

[Please proceed to Testing Chamber 04 for Rank Evaluation.]

Dante took the printed paper slip and walked down the corridor toward Chamber 04.

The evaluation room was a massive, reinforced hall lined with alloy plating designed to withstand high-tier magical explosions. In the center of the room stood a massive, three-meter-tall Mana Golem carved from dense, grey runic stone.

A middle-aged evaluator named Specialist Vance sat behind a bulletproof glass booth, looking thoroughly bored out of his mind as he chewed on a plastic pen. He didn’t even look up when Dante walked in.

"Name, Zero. Age, unknown. No previous guild affiliation," Vance read from his monitor, his voice droning through the intercom. "Alright, kid. The rules are simple. Walk up to the testing golem. Strike it with your maximum physical force or unleash your highest-tier magic spell. The golem’s core will measure your output and calculate your starting rank from F to S. Go whenever you’re ready."

Dante walked over to the massive stone golem. He looked at its heavy, runic arms and the dense glowing crystal embedded in its chest.

"Maximum force?" Dante asked, standing exactly two feet away from the machine.

"Yeah, whatever you’ve got," Vance sighed, clicking his pen. "Try not to break a knuckle. If you don’t have a weapon, just punch the reinforced chest plate. Don’t worry, it doesn’t hit back unless you—"

Dante didn’t wait for him to finish. He didn’t draw back his fist. He didn’t channel any mana. He simply leaned forward and casually slapped the golem’s stone chest with his open palm, using the exact amount of force a person would use to test if a watermelon was ripe.

The open-handed slap made a tiny, pathetic clicking sound against the dense alloy plate.

Inside the booth, Vance let out a dry, mocking chuckle. "That’s it? Kid, a wet noodle has more kinetic impact than that. Let’s see what the sensor says, but you’re looking at a solid, rock-bottom F-Rank—"

Before Vance could finish his sentence, the giant Mana Golem suddenly violently juddered.

The glowing blue runes carved into its stone skin instantly turned a toxic, flashing crimson. The internal magical core inside its chest began to whine, a high-pitched, metallic shriek that sounded like an engine redlining.

"Wait, what?" Vance froze, his fingers hovering over his keyboard. "The core’s energy levels are... spiking? No, that’s impossible, he didn’t put any mana into it!"

What the evaluation sensor didn’t understand was the nature of the [Vajra Mirror Body]. Even a microscopic amount of resistance from the golem’s defensive alloy plate had triggered a localized, micro-scale reflection loop. The system calculated the golem’s own internal structural density, multiplied it by 200%, and slammed it right back into the machine’s core.

The three-meter-tall, multi-ton stone golem didn’t just crack. It completely exploded.

Shards of dense runic stone and jagged alloy fragments blasted outward in a massive, violent shockwave, slamming against the reinforced walls of the testing chamber. The smoke cleared, revealing a pair of smoking, stone ankles stuck to the floor. The rest of the golem had been entirely reduced to a pile of fine, grey gravel.

Dante stood in the exact same spot, casually brushing a speck of stone dust off his black hoodie. His hair wasn’t even ruffled.

Inside the glass booth, Vance’s pen dropped out of his mouth, clattering against the desk. His eyes were wide, staring at the empty space where a million-credit testing golem had been standing a second ago. He looked down at his monitor, which was currently glitching out with rows of error messages.

[Evaluation Error: Kinetic output unregistered.]

[Mana Output detected: 0.00]

[System Conclusion: Physical force insufficient to cause destruction. Potential internal mechanical malfunction of Golem Unit 14.]

[Final Rating Assigned: F-Rank (Independent Specialist).]

The system’s basic algorithm couldn’t comprehend how a person with zero visible mana could destroy a golem, so it assumed the machine was simply old and broken.

Vance swallowed hard, his hands trembling as he grabbed the intercom microphone. "Z-Zero... the system says you have zero mana. The golem must have had a core leak from the previous tester. But since you technically survived the room explosion without crying... your F-Rank license is approved. Take your badge at the front desk and... please leave before the janitor gets here."

"Thanks," Dante said, a smile playing on his lips.

An F-Rank license was the absolute perfect camouflage. It allowed him to enter the lowest floors of the tower without attracting a single eye from the big guilds.

He walked out of the chamber, pocketing the F-Rank hunter badge. As he stepped back into the late-night streets of the city, the digital clock on his phone flashed.

11:59 PM.

Dante looked up at the massive, swirling vortex of the Tower stretching into the clouds. Midnight was coming, and with it, his second daily free spin.