The sharp crack of the stone bullet breaking the sound barrier echoed aloud as a splash of color appeared on my target. I hadn’t hit the bullseye, but the shot was grouped together with another few holes in the sheet, so at least my magic revolver wasn’t firing wildly anymore.

Magic guns, I snorted. I seriously needed to come up with something better to call my new weapons. While it got the idea across plenty well, it also managed to sound horrendously lame. Setting aside the revolver, I grabbed up my magic rifle, firing a few more shots.

The shots this time were much closer to the bullseye, with a few making it in, and I walked over and grabbed the target, placing a new one a good deal further back on the hill. I’d grown up with guns, and when magic became real, I’d wanted to see if I could make one that used magic rather than gunpowder. I succeeded, but there was just something missing when I fired it. It could have been the lack of smell of burning gunpowder, or the absence of recoil, but it just felt off to me.

A sigh leaked out of me, at least the lack of recoil let me more easily use 55 caliber bullets. Oversized things they were, about the size of a rifle cartridge, but all of it mass to be sent downrange. As large as the were however, they were necessary for what I would be hunting. I brushed my thoughts away from my mind as I focused down the sights of my rifle, looked down at the target, and squeezed down on the trigger at the end of my released breath. The bullet landed, and a splash of color appeared around the hole I’d made in the target. It had landed squarely within the bullseye this time, but was further from the center than I would like. I was more comfortable with rifles than pistols, and I prided myself on my aim with them.

I pulled back the bolt and pushed it back forwards, loading a new bullet into the chamber, and repeated my shot. This time the bullet landed squarely where I’d intended it to. I repeated the actions until my magazine was empty, and set down the rifle, relaxing from the intense focus I tried to hold while shooting. I walked down the space I was using as a range, and grabbed my target, admiring the well grouped shots, before packing up all of my arsenal and starting to head back home.

The drive back was peaceful, and I thought about my next move. I’d recently finished college, but in all honesty, I didn’t want to get a desk job, the thought of just working from a desk from nine to five for the next however many years until I got old and retired, just sounded like death to me, but until recently, it was the only thing I had considered doing.

When the world changed however, a job had become viable that I had become interested in, hunting, and I was at least going to try it out. Having a boring desk job would be my backup if it didn’t work out. I was soon home, and packed the gear I would need the next day to try out hunting. After I was done I got myself ready for bed, and was soon sleeping the night away.

The blaring of my alarm clock woke me, and I contemplated the murder of the inanimate object for a moment. I slammed the snooze button a few times, but eventually got out of bed around when I had intended to, having set my alarm early due to my addiction to the lovely snooze button.

I grabbed my bags I was bringing, and loaded up my car, it was time to try my hand at hunting. I was soon driving to a slightly less populated area, heading for the nearest gate. As far as we could tell, gates were simply portals to another world, and magic had come along with them when they mysteriously appeared. The world had been thrown into a temporary chaos with the advent of the gates and magic, but things had soon calmed down and life had gone on as normal.

I soon arrived at the area where the gate was, and parked in the dirt parking area which had been cleared for people wanting to cross over. I shouldered all of my gear, and walked to the gate. The gates themselves were interesting, seemingly a perfect half circle around 6 feet in radius that led to another world. If you bothered to dig out the ground beneath it, you would find it was actually a perfect circle, but it was less convenient like that, and so it was left with half of it underground. It looked just like a mirror that was reflecting another world as you walked around it as I did, finding it interesting that you could walk through it from either direction. I eventually took a deep breath and stepped through, releasing it as soon as I crossed, having noticed nothing about the transition.

Supposedly the oxygen content in the otherworld was higher, but it wasn’t something I could notice at least.I looked around a bit, I was in an open area, surrounded by tents, and a few structures made of concrete or cinder blocks that had to serve some purpose. Around the entire little camp, there was a chain link fence topped with barbed wire, the bases of the poles sunk into the ground with concrete poured around them. Outside of the camp, it was surrounded by forest, making me wonder if they had cleared out the camp area of trees for the sake of the hunters and the buildings I had no clue about.

The reason I’d come to this particular gate, even though there were a few within driving distance of my apartment, was pretty simple: my application to be a hunter had been accepted and I’d been assigned here because it was understaffed after a few of the hunters had died. It had scared me a bit, but the death rates among hunters were very small in actuality, or at least they had been so far. I was a bit iffy on this particular gate, as this wasn’t the first time people had died, but I chalked it up to coincidence rather than anything scary.

I finished looking around, and started to set up my own tent, putting all of my camping gear inside of it, and then started to care for the weapons I’d be using for hunting here. The consisted of a magic powered bolt action rifle, along with a revolver style magic gun. I’d tried to make semi-automatic weapons, but my abilities hadn’t been up to the task. They were both made of granite, magically hardened to be tougher and harder than steel. The bullets were made of the same material, seeming more like miniature stakes rather than the standard bullet. I would’ve really preferred to work with metal, but my mana capacity was simply too low to sculpt metal for more than a couple of minutes at a time, and the stone, when I hardened it with mana, was simply a better material than non magically sculpted metal. Mana itself was simply a common name used to describe the amount of magic you could handle. It had come around due to being a common thing in games, being used to measure how much magic you could do. Just as in games, the amount of mana you could use was limited, after you’d channeled enough, your personal mana would be depleted, and you couldn’t influence the world anymore; you couldn’t do any more magic.

The guns themselves were powered by magic cores I had bought with some of my savings, using the acceleration runes inscribed on both the bullets and the barrel. The barrel’s runes were more extensive, and the rifle would accelerate the bullets to more than double supersonic by the time the bullets left the barrel. After that, acceleration runes on the bullets would take over, speeding up even more as they flew to their target. On the other hand, the bullets from my pistol would barely break the sound barrier, but when the mass of the bullets was quite a few times larger than your standard bullet, they could do some serious damage. I’d completely ruined the steel target I’d bought, even though it would bounce even steel core shots from my non-magical rifle.

Once I’d made sure that my weapons were ready, I put my pistol into my holster by my hip and left my magic rifle in the tent. I then decided to go find out what the buildings were for. The first building was simply cinderblocks, with a large metal door on one side, and had a few ATV’s parked behind it. After seeing some people go in and out, I walked into the first one, pushing aside the strips of plastic at the entrance. I was greeted by a man behind a cinder block and wood counter, and another large steel door with a latch behind him, like the ones you see for walk in freezers. Lounging about the room were a few people playing on their phones. Across from the man behind the counter was a small man talking with him, so I listened to their conversation for a bit while waiting for the man behind the counter to be free for me to question.

“I’m telling you, nobody gets discounts, we pick up the body, chop it up into the valuable parts, and we get 30% of the sale. If you want to chop it up yourself and find people to purchase it without us, then feel free.” The man behind the counter explained.

The small man cursed , but eventually let out a short “Fine”. As he headed out, having one of the people sitting around join him, I walked over to the counter.

“So I guess here is where we sell what we hunt?” I questioned the man behind the counter.

“Yup. You hunt them, then bring us to where the body is. We’ll bring it back here with one of the ATVs and we’ll handle the butchering of the body and selling of the parts. Just tell us if you want to keep any of the parts, especially the core,” the man replied with a slight southern drawl.

I thanked him for the information, then went over to the next building, but it had a locked door, and nobody seemed to be going in or out of it, so I simply shrugged and decided to ignore it. The third building was made of wood, unlike the other two, and when I entered, I soon saw that it was a restaurant of some kind, with people lounging around tables with food and drink. I decided that I would have to come back here, as it would be preferable to be able to get food while I was in this world rather than having to go back to earth and drive twenty minutes to the nearest fast food place.

Walking back out of the restaurant, I nearly bumped into a group entering, but was soon outside. Deciding it would be a good time to try hunting, I went back to my tent, grabbed my rifle, as I already had my oversized pistol in a holster on my leg, and started heading to the gates of the chain link fence. I soon arrived, and was greeted by two people lounging around, likely to work as guards for if a monster decided to show up. They greeted me before one of them decided that he wanted to have input on my hunting before I’d started.

“You probably won’t find much out there today, the monsters nearby have been driven off. You probably want to wait a few more days until more of them show up, or else you’re going to have to go a few miles out, and that’s a good way to get killed.“

Regardless of the fact that his input hadn’t been asked for, I thanked him for the advice, and decided that I would at least follow the advice about not going too far afield. I shrugged my rifle by its strap higher onto my shoulder, and ventured into the wilderness.

I walked through the trees, which weren’t much different from the ones on earth. The only real differences were in the leaf shapes, and I’m sure if I looked I could find specimens from earth that looked similar. The forest was an old growth one, with practically no underbrush, and only the leaves and twigs cracked under my feet. Eventually, I got a couple miles out or so away from camp, and decided to climb a tree to get a better view, and hopefully spot a monster to hunt.

The rest of the day was spent in the tree, after I’d found one that had a comfortable spot to sit in right where the trunk split off into two different branches. The day passed in peace however, with me just eating the sandwiches I’d packed into my backpack for the day. Eventually, it started to get dark, and so I decided to head back to camp. I didn’t know the area well enough to navigate it in the dark, and I wasn’t going to risk being the one caught by a monster in the darkness, rather than being the one doing the catching.

I made my way back to the camp, and greeted the same guy lounging around the gate like a guard who had decided to give me input, which I suppose had been pretty accurate. I was soon at my tent, and snuggled up in my sleeping bag, leaving my rifle laying next to me.

I woke up far too early in the morning to a loud whistling noise. I threw on some clothing as fast as I could, grabbed my weapons, and rushed outside, to see chaos. Near the gate, there were large, eight foot tall green monsters. I would have labeled them as ogres, but they were far too skinny, looking more like an oversized version of the pop culture description of a goblin.

Everywhere I looked, there were people fighting them off, mostly at the gate, but also a couple places where the chain link fence had been knocked over, the concrete foundations ripped out of the dirt surrounding it. From some people, I saw bolts of lightning flying, or fireballs which would splash onto the monsters, melting through their flesh like hot water going through ice. Up closer to the monsters, I saw people who must be the ones who were talented at body enhancement magic using swords, spears, or occasionally more unusual weapons.

I pulled out my rifle, and got closer to the monsters so I wouldn’t risk hitting any of the melee fighters, then started putting bullets through the bodies and heads of the monsters. I soon ran out of ammo in my rifle, seeing as how I hadn’t thought to bring extra with me, and switched to my pistol, firing off four of the shots it carried, before just watching nervously, saving my last two shots for an emergency. After a bit, there was the sound of a horn, and the monsters still left alive began to flee.

Once all of the hunters started to relax, I turned my head as I heard a mage standing close to me curse.

“Fucking goblins. They’re basically worthless aside from their cores. The only thing nice about them is that there’s usually enough of them to make some money from the cores alone.”

“So those things were goblins then?” I asked.

“Yeah, or at least that’s what we’ve been calling them here. Apparently some of the other hunter groups are calling them ogres.”

“So how do we split the cores? Just mark the ones we killed in some way?”

“Yeah, it’s usually pretty obvious which ones you killed, but for the ones where there’s confusion the money is usually split between the hunters having a dispute. It’s basically the honor system, but if you’re shown to be claiming things you didn’t take down, you’ll get your license revoked and not be able to get a new one.”

“So do these things attack often?”

“We only get goblin attacks every now and then, maybe once a month. Them attacking is probably why the monsters have been cleared out nearby though, normally you can’t swing a cat around without finding at least one monster.”

“I’m Lucas” I belatedly introduced myself as we walked to the corpses to begin sorting out our kills.

“I’m Will”

After our short introductions, we’d arrived at the corpses, and I began finding the ones I had shot. They were easily recognizable by the relatively small holes in the goblins, far cleaner than the sliced up, burnt up, or otherwise destroyed goblins. I quickly used the little talent I had in body enhancement magic, dragging the corpses together, so I had a neat little row of the 7 goblins I had killed.

“So what do I do with them now?” I asked Will

“Just wait here, the people from the butchery will be coming around to gather the cores out of them, then the corpses will get dragged around a half mile from camp, where the monsters will take care of them for us. If you want to keep the cores for enhancing or whatever, just tell them”

I nodded, and we was soon waiting impatiently. After a bit of silence, I decided to make some small talk with Will while we waited.

“So why are you here Will?”

“I’m actually here with my sister, she really wanted to be a hunter, and I wasn’t going to let her go alone,” he said, pointing out a small girl with brown hair a decent distance away, who surprisingly, was one of the melee fighters. I shook my head, I needed to get out of thinking stuff like that was unexpected, strength came largely from magic now, with even people lacking in muscles able to lift 1500 pounds easily with just the assistance of magic. Being petite no longer meant you were physically weak.

Not too long after, the people from the ‘butchery’ as Will had called it came around, and asked me if I wanted to keep any of the cores. I said yes for keeping one of them, as I would need to replace the fractions of a core powering my rifle and pistol after a few hundred more rounds. They then quickly and efficiently cut open the ribcage of the goblins, removing a purple crystalline object, the core, handing me one of them still dripping with blood, and having me sign a sheet with my name after they marked down that I had given them six cores. I instantly wiped the core off on the ground as best I could, trying to remove some of the blood.

Cores were useful for basically everything. They were the new premiere source of power. When it had been discovered that a single core could generate enough power to power the average household for a year, they had become the new oil. With monsters never seeming to run out, the rush for cores began.

“Just come around to the butchery after a few days, we’ll have sold the cores and we’ll give you your money then,” the man who had me sign kindly explained.

Not too long after, the ATVs came by, and started to carry out the goblin bodies for the monsters to eat.

“Hey, want to join my sister and me in having a meal at Johnsons? It’s the one restaurant we have here, and somehow reasonably priced.” Will invited me soon after the bodies were taken.

“That sounds nice,” I replied, and followed him as he started heading towards the wooden building. Not long after, his sister ran up to join us, and the first thing I noticed were her deep green eyes, which matched with her brother now that I took a better look at him. The second thing I noticed however, were her pointed ears.

Not long after her brother introduced her as Sophie, I just had to ask.

“So what’s with the pointed ears?” I asked.

“Well I actually enhance with the goblin cores, it’s what I ended up with” She replied. I’d known that enhancing your mana with the mana stored in a core would slowly give you minor physical alterations from the monsters you were enhancing with, I’d seen photos of people with animal ears, or the slit pupils that cats have, and even greenish skin, but it was my first time seeing what amounted to an elf.

I wondered if I could get some internet fame posting photos of her, and decided to ask her about posting a photo of her online later.

We made small talk as we went to Johnsons, and I learned a bit more about how enhancing with cores worked

“So basically, you become able to handle more mana, and get some physical characteristic from the monster, and that’s it?”

“Well it’s not really just one characteristic, I get enhanced strength from just being enhanced with the goblin cores, I can bench press like five hundred pounds without the use of magic,” she explained. “But yes, I can handle enough mana to bench press closer to four thousand with the use of magic now.”

I stared at her in shock. I’d known that enhancing your mana with cores let you handle a lot more, but four thousand was close to the world record lift record using magic. I figured some hunters may be stronger than the world record without showing off, but it was still ridiculous.

“So you just enhance yourself using any core?” I asked.

“Nope, once you enhance yourself with a certain type of core, you can only use that type of core to keep enhancing yourself. It’s why I like these goblin raids, it gives me a chance to get even stronger, even if I don’t get any money out of it. I can’t use a core from a syth or something, it’ll just sort of slide around my mana, not flow into it.”

I nodded, it meant that what core I would use to enhance myself would matter quite a bit. It would probably be a good idea to enhance my mana with something that wasn’t too rare, but was quite strong. I grinned, if I could handle more mana, I could actually start to mana sculpt metal. I could make my guns even more ridiculous.

We soon arrived at the Johnsons, and went inside to see it utterly packed, with plenty of alcohol all around. We were lucky enough to get a small table in the corner however, and Sophie claimed it while Will and I went to order food at the counter.

The meal was simple, but delicious. I had a monster rib, literally just one gigantic rib smothered in barbeque sauce, Sophie had a steak and a baked potato, and Will, surprisingly, had just a salad.

“I’m a vegetarian,” he said by way of explanation.

“You’re a vegetarian that hunts monsters”

“It’s for health reasons,” he explained.

I shook my head, people who hunted tended to be the opposite type of people that were vegetarians, but I supposed that there was an exception for everything.

We soon finished our meal, and the three of us decided to meet up in front of Johnsons in around an hour to go hunting again. Hopefully this time we would actually see a monster.