Chapter 49: First D- Ranked Gate

Chapter 49: Chapter 49: First D- Ranked Gate

The next morning.

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Jason called Judith before he left the house, phone tucked against his shoulder while he checked the straps on his cloak one last time.

As far as Judith knew, Jason was going on a regular E ranked dungeon run.

But he’d gotten his first call as a D ranked hunter the night before.

"Be careful. I’ll have her settled before you’re even out the door."

"I appreciate it."

He gave Novaria a quiet tap on the cheek before heading out, mask tucked into the inside of his cloak until he was well clear of anyone who might recognize him.

He then settled it over his face at the edge of the district where the Gate had been scheduled.

---

The squad was waiting near the Gate’s shimmering seam when he arrived, four figures who all turned to study him at once.

"You’re Ash?."

The man speaking had the easy, grounded stance of someone who’d led plenty of first meetings like this before.

"The name’s Frank, I’m at the Third Level, I’ll be taking point."

"Understood."

"I’m Marcus," said the archer beside him, nodding once.

"The name’s Gareth," the tank added, arms crossed, sizing Jason up with open skepticism.

"Aja," the fourth said, offering a small, more welcoming smile than the others had managed. " I’m the Healer in case you were wondering. "

Jason gave a short nod in return, keeping his voice low and flat. "Ash."

"Not much for conversation I see," Gareth muttered.

"No."

Frank ran through the briefing quickly, professional and economical.

"This one’s a Forest-type Gate. The scouts flagged it as hostile ecosystem rather than discrete monsters, meaning the whole environment’s a threat, not just whatever’s walking around in it. Stay close, stay aware of what’s beneath your feet and above your head both."

Jason filed that away carefully.

’Never run a proper D-Rank before. Don’t know what I don’t know yet.’

He kept that thought to himself and followed the others through the Gate’s shimmering boundary.

---

The forest on the other side was dense and wrong in a way that settled into his gut almost immediately, the canopy too thick, the undergrowth too still, like the whole place was holding its breath.

Then the ground moved.

A root tore free of the soil and lashed toward Gareth, who met it head-on with his shield, bracing hard.

Gareth roared and something shifted in the air around him, a pulling pressure that Jason felt subtly even from several steps away, dragging the forest’s attention toward him specifically.

More roots surged from the undergrowth, joined by thick, whipping vines dropping from the branches overhead, the whole forest animating at once into something closer to a living weapon than a collection of individual threats.

Jason drew Kane’s sword, cloth-wrapped hilt settling into his grip, and met the first vine that came for him with a wide, instinctive cut.

It worked. Mostly.

But the motion carried too much of the spear in it, his weight shifted too far forward, his reach assuming a length the blade simply didn’t have.

The vine recoiled and struck back faster than he expected, catching him across the ribs hard enough to steal his breath.

"Watch your range newbie!" Marcus called, already loosing an arrow into a branch reaching for Jason’s exposed side. "You’re not swinging a pike!"

He adjusted, pulling his stance in tighter, footwork smaller and more controlled, cuts shorter and more deliberate, and the next exchange went considerably better, the sword answering him cleanly as he carved through a root before it could fully wrap around his ankle.

---

He found his rhythm from there, and once he found it, the fight changed shape entirely.

Fire gathered along the blade’s edge, not wrapping the whole weapon the way it would have on the spear, but condensing tight and hot along the cutting line itself, a thin, searing seam that didn’t make the steel glow so much as make the edge itself feel like it was made of something hungrier than metal.

He cut through a wrist-thick vine and it didn’t just sever, it burned through clean, the wound cauterizing even as the blade passed, no scorch mark spreading wide and wasteful the way raw fire usually did.

’There it is. That’s the version that actually works.’

Gareth held the center, using his taunt skill to pull the worst of the forest’s attention onto his shield again and again, stone-steady under the barrage.

Marcus peppered the canopy with arrows, clearing branches before they could fully commit to an attack.

Aja moved between them, healing light shining alongside her own Fire essence, closing a gash along Frank’s forearm one moment and scorching a root to ash with a quick burst the next.

A vine dropped from above, fast, aimed squarely at Aja’s unguarded back while she was mid-cast on someone else.

Jason moved before he’d finished deciding to, cutting the thing out of the air half a foot from her shoulder, fire hissing along the severed end.

She glanced back, startled. "Thanks."

"Just watch your back next time."

"That’s generally the plan."

Frank caught the exchange, something assessing in his glance toward Jason that hadn’t been there at the start.

The fight ground on, wave after wave of animated growth, roots and vines and branches all moving with the same coordinated, almost deliberate hostility, and Jason found himself stepping in more and more often, not stealing kills so much as closing gaps the others couldn’t quite reach in time, a root about to wrap Marcus’s leg, a branch swinging for Gareth’s exposed flank when his shield was already committed elsewhere.

By the time the forest’s assault finally began to slow, every member of the squad had taken at least one hit they hadn’t fully recovered from, and Jason realized, somewhere in the middle of it, that he hadn’t held back nearly as much as he’d planned to.

---

"Alright," Frank said, breathing hard, lowering his blade as the last of the immediate threats withered. "That’s the worst of it. Should ease up from here."

Gareth eyed Jason, wary but noticeably less hostile than before. "You fight like a demon Jason."

"I’m not"

"Sure." Gareth didn’t sound convinced, but let it go.

Marcus studied him a moment longer, something careful and curious in his expression. "Whatever you actually are, I’m glad you’re on this side of the fight."

Jason said nothing, which seemed, by now, to be answer enough for all of them.

They spent the next stretch of time harvesting cores from the fallen growth themselves, small, dense knots of pale green energy buried in the thickest roots, the work slow and methodical without a cleanup crew to rely on.

"No separate team for this one?" Jason asked, more out of genuine curiosity than anything.

"That’s mostly nly for C-Rank and up," Frank said, cracking a root open with practiced hands.

"Gates this size, we’re not drained enough to need the help. Save that courtesy for when it actually matters."

Jason nodded, filing the detail away, and kept working, the quiet satisfaction of a clean fight settling into his chest.