"Look, ignore what you heard in movies, comics, and books. The reason hunters don't use guns and grenades isn't because they 'don't work' inside a rift. They work just fine, and E-ranked hunters'll use small arms all the time, you might even see some D-rankers using them. Problem is, though, once you get to C-rank, firearms just don't cut it anymore, and I mean that literally. They just don't have the magical power to punch through the bodies of the monsters in those rifts. If you can find an enchanted rifle, you go right ahead and mag-dump into some beasties face, but once you get into the higher grade D-rank, hunters start switching over to enchanted swords, hammers, and so on, because they have power, enough to kill some horror that's crawled out of your worst nightmares. Or at least give you a fair shot at it." - Benedict Walter, high grade B-rank hunter, during an interview.
She sighed and leaned back in her office chair, pinching the bridge of her nose as she spun away from the screen that displayed her teammates' guild profiles.
The guilds internal profile documents left a lot to be desired. Even her own was extremely sparse; it didn't even have a physical description of her on it, much less more pertinent information, like how many hunts she'd been on, or even her rank within the guild.
I guess that's what happens when your guild is so small everyone knows each other.
The hunter groaned and spun back around to her monitor once again, reading her profile for the twentieth time that day.
Emma Helsing - Rank D, mid-grade.
Pseudonym: Dhampir.
IHA ID: #3-1273-4973-5419
Awakened abilities:
Saint's Presence (Passive, creates a circle of hallowed ground in a variable meter radius.)
Blood Healing (Active, may heal minor injuries by absorbing energy through physical contact with blood or a fresh corpse)
Archetype: Vanguard
System Access: N
Gender: F
Age: 25
It was, if nothing else, exactly accurate. The names and descriptions of her abilities had come from one of the guild officers with a system, of course; she wouldn't be caught dead indirectly calling herself a saint, and she hadn't even known about her 'Blood Healing' until the entry interview with Miss Song.
She certainly deserves her rank in the guild as the Moon card, though.
Emma groped around for her travel mug with her off hand, eyes tracing over the profiles the guild had sent her of her assigned team. Distracted, she nearly knocked her mug over, sending almost boiling tea spilling across her keyboard, but she whipped her hand around the other side of the thing and caught it before it could tilt much, a reaction that would have been impossible for her just a few short years ago, before she awakened.
Max Greenwood - Rank E, high-grade.
Pseudonym: None
IHA ID: Unregistered
Awakened abilities:
Iron Skin (Active, temporarily increases durability in exchange for mana)
Archetype: Vanguard
System Access: Y
Gender: F
Age: 22
Max... she thought, taking a sip of her scalding drink. Couldn't they have at least mentioned how shy she is?
Understandably – at least according to her – she had reservations about the other designated front-liner of the team being shy, of all things. Neither of Emmas abilities could prevent her from being injured, so she was supposed to focus on killing riftbeasts while Max held their attention, relatively safe with her Iron Skin trait, but with how the girl avoided meeting her gaze as if Emmas eyes could kill her...
Then, there was Will. If she didn't know better, Emma would've thought he was the guild examiner, but watching him stumble over his own feet – as an Assassin archetype, no less – during team training the previous few days dispelled every last one of her doubts about him.
Still, there was something off about him, and his profile was of little help in figuring out exactly what that something was.
William Moore - Rank E, high-grade
Pseudonym: None
IHA ID: #3-3187-4568-6843
Awakened abilities:
Heartseek (Active, guides the users strikes towards designated weak points in exchange for mana)
Archetype: Assassin
System Access: N
Gender: M
Age: 24
Of course, he had an ID number with the International Hunters Association, but so did she, and his was likely for the same reason – to smooth over paperwork later on since awakened travel was often restricted due to the superhuman threat they posed. Having a case handler and ID with the IHA in advance would save any hunter a great deal of headache and stress.
No, wait. Maybe it's his ability. Makes him seem like he's always sizing everyone up, maybe.
That felt right. There's no way the Major Arcana, and especially Miss Song, as the Moon, revealer of that which is hidden, would've let a violent criminal past the interview stage. Anything Emma could discern about the man would be far, far less than what any of them would have.
Even so, the would-be Page of Swords decided to keep an eye on him, just in case. After all, not even S-ranked hunters were infallible, and none of the Major Arcana, not even Death or the Tower cards were anywhere close to being S-rank.
Although... Justice let slip at lunch the other day that Death and Judgement haven't been re-evaluated in years...
Emma shook her head and internally chastised herself for getting distracted while working again.
Next was... Lawrence. A religious man, strangely enough, in the era of magic and monsters.
Actually, that kind of makes sense, now that I think about it...
Lawrence Jones - Rank E, mid-grade
Pseudonym: None
IHA ID: None
Awakened abilities:
Lay on Hands (Active, allows the user to use mana to heal a touched organism with very poor efficiency)
Archetype: Cleric
System Access: N
Gender: M
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
Age: 32
Her finger found the scroll wheel of her mouse and dragged his profile up to the center of the screen. Really, she hadn't expected such a large man to be so quiet, but she supposed it fit, knowing he was a proper priest by vocation and not just archetype.
Dunno what god or gods he's a priest of, though. Surprisingly tight-lipped about that, honestly.
When she was a child, it would've been a safe bet to assume a priest followed one of the Abrahamic gods, but now? Backed by magic and ritual, religions most people thought had been extinct made furious comebacks.
She just hoped it wasn't one of the nastier gods people prayed to these days.
If it was, Moon would've caught him. Right?
Right, yes. She would. She would've paid special attention to something like that.
Honestly, he also looks way too young to be in his thirties. I would've guessed twenty five at most.
Finally, Hannah. The Mage of the team, and only other D-rank the guild had seen fit to give her.
Hannah Whittaker - Rank D, low-grade
Pseudonym: None
IHA ID: None
Awakened abilities:
Blade Spirit (Active, allows the user to control bonded edged weaponry telekinetically via mana)
Spirit Summoner (Active, allows the user to create and control artificial spirits which may have a very large range of abilities)
Archetype: Mage
System Access: N
Gender: F
Age: 23
Though with abilities like those, they probably didn't need another, and that conviction had only grown once Emma saw the woman use Blade Spirit during training. Even at 'only' D-rank, she could control four large knives at once, with impressive range and precision. Not only that, but even mundane steel could carve open a mana barrier if Hannah focused all her power on just one blade.
Once she gets some experience and ranks up a letter and a grade or two, people will be fighting each other to get her on their team for hunts.
For now, though, Hannah would need to focus on passing the entry exam, same as the other three. For Emma, this was a chance at a promotion, but for those four? Whether or not they stayed in the guild hinged on how well they did in the rift the next day.
Well, except for whichever one is the examiner... I still have no damn idea who it is.
She was absolutely sure that she'd make an even better impression by identifying the examiner the guild was sending with them in disguise, but she was making no progress with that, despite spending nearly a week in close proximity to the four of them during work hours.
Emma needed to figure out who it was. She'd already gotten extremely lucky that Fools Tarot, a guild famous for its generous benefits and PTO, despite its relatively small size, not only accepted her, but promoted her to Ten of Swords so quickly, but if she wanted to reach B-rank and retire from hunting by the time she was thirty five like she planned, she needed every drop of support and opportunity she could wring out of the Major Arcana.
It's alright if I'm late by a couple of years, but D to B is a long way, and I really don't want to restart at a different guild later on. Tarot gives us right of refusal on not one, not two, but three rift assignments a year! Where else am I gonna find that kind of treatment?
She could work as a special investigator for the IHA, she supposed, but she really didn't want to – they'd likely keep her paired with her current handler, a man who thought he was being real damn funny when he assigned a hunter named Helsing the pseudonym 'Dhampir', like she hadn't heard that joke or similar ones a hundred times a year already.
She grumbled at the thought of working alongside him for a decade or more. He wasn't a bad guy or anything, but just the idea of having to listen to those kinds of jokes constantly set her teeth on edge and sent a serrated ripple through her normally-placid aura, attracting the attention of some of the other hunters in the office.
One, a 'rival' Ten of Pentacles, even rolled over in her office chair to waggle her eyebrows and try and tease her about the the disturbance.
Emma gratefully accepted the distraction – she was getting nowhere, after all, and it wouldn't hurt to shoot the shit with a colleague every now and then, even if they were on the clock.
"Was it a boy, dearest Emma, that got you all bothered enough for the rest of us to notice?" she asked sweetly, a mischievous twinkle in her steel-grey eyes. "Oooh," she half-pretended to gasp as a thought struck her. "Or do you prefer girls?"
"Shut up, and yes – but not like that!" 'Dhampir' said, cutting her colleagues ambitions of romantic gossip down before they could truly begin. "I was thinking about that asshole that gave me my pseudonym."
The Ten of Pentacles made a show of being heartbroken at her colleagues initial denial, before smoothly shifting to commiseration. She, too, had a pseudonym she disliked, after all – though just like Emmas, it was still quite fitting, annoyingly so.
While she complained theatrically, 'Dhampir' studied 'Shakespeare'. The other woman had an asymmetric bob of smooth black hair to frame her sharp eyes, shaved on one side, and a light dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks, with cupids bow shaped lips. All in all, it gave her the appearance of a professional young woman, much at odds with the fact she was an absolute goblin of a hunter.
Looking closer, however, would reveal her colleague had a whole mess of piercings, though she hardly wore them during hunts or at the office. Much more like the irreverent gossip she actually was, Emma thought.
If she recalled correctly... 'Shakespeare' had awakened with a hybrid archetype, despite starting as the lowest of the low, low-grade E-rank. Mage/Cleric. Not a rare hybrid, as hybrid archetypes went, but rare for someone to start as that. The magic she started with, too, was uncommonly flexible. Emma didn't know the name of the ability, but she knew her guildmate could manipulate water in all its forms in quite a variety of ways, including using it to soothe the hurts of herself and others.
She is pretty cute... Eh, maybe if she's still single when I'm getting ready to retire. And neither of us have fuckin' died in a rift.
"Alright, alright, I've satisfied your gremlin curiosity, now go back to your desk, Lizzie," she commanded, interrupting a dramatic flourish from the other woman with a shooing motion.
"Oh very well, your majesty. Back to the cold, dark mines with this lowly peasant," 'Lizzie' complained, before spinning in her office chair and kicking off back down the walkway. "But you still owe me a spar, Helsing!"
Emma grunted in assent and waved her off again, before turning back to her monitor and the rift briefing it contained to calls of 'I'm serious! Fight meeeee!' from her friend.
Yeah. I'd miss the guild culture too much to work anywhere else. Even if I ignored the bonus. Though those bonuses are probably the reason the atmosphere in here is so friendly.
Anyway, let's review... Official report designates this as an E-rank rift, with a low possibility of significant damage, even in the event of a riftbreak, as the monsters inside are literal goblins.
"Unlike Liz," she muttered to herself with a wry smile.
Like everything else the guild did internally, however, the report on the rift was sparse at best and barebones at worst. Thankfully, she did have a few friends in the Rift Management Bureau, and she'd 'bribed' said friends with a night at a karaoke bar downtown and pestered them with questions about the rift she was to go into.
She needn't have bothered; the rift really was just as unremarkable as the guilds report had implied. A cavern-like appearance occupied by a small 'tribe' of goblins. No more, no less. Like all goblin 'tribes', there were a few warriors, a shaman, and a chieftan, but nothing a gaggle of E-ranks couldn't overcome, and they'd always have the guild examiner in case of emergency or unexpected shifts in the rift.
And examiners are guaranteed by the guild to be at least mid-grade C-rank, fully capable of clearing an E-ranked rift solo. Maybe even a low-grade D-rank rift.
Still, even if she didn't get any truly actionable intelligence from her friends, the Ten of Swords did confirm that there was little to worry about in the rift itself. Her main challenge, fittingly, for the exam she was undertaking, would be wrangling her unblooded party into fighting shape.
E-ranked rifts could be cleared by professional dreamer soldiers, after all. Even civilian-grade firearms or swords could cut down goblins well enough for that.
All they needed to do was pay attention, and not get in each others way. A taller order than it would seem at first glance, sure, but nothing like what a D-rank rift would be like and Emma hadn't gotten this far this quickly by charging ahead recklessly.
