Chapter 18

The next day Jack slept in until midmorning, the previous night when he finally arrived back at his small flat it was still early evening but he was exhausted and so collapsed straight into bed.

When he finally awoke to the sound of birds chirping and traffic outside he decided to get up. He tried to stretch but suddenly a horrific aching sensation manifested all over his body.

“Gah! Fuck me!” He had to lie still for a few moments before the painful aches subsided, he’d clearly overdone it the past couple of days. First hunting and cultivating from the goblins to the limit and then from the Bloodletter wolves the very next day. This was clearly his body telling him to slow the fuck down. Still though, Jack thought as he grimaced, it's good to find out one's limits, he was still learning about lightning cultivation after all. Over the course of the past two weeks he’d found that lightning energy seemed to affect his muscles the most judging by the soreness and violent involuntary twitches he suffered from at times. Then there were the headaches he went through, though he wasn’t certain if that was down to cultivation or the use of his accidental time perception ability.

Eventually Jack managed to drag himself out of bed, albeit with a lot of groaning, and he may have also flopped onto the floor before finally clambering to his feet and shuffling over to the fridge to root around.

As he sat down in front of the tv with a bowl of cereal and milk he decided he would give hunting or any job a miss today, he’d already fulfilled his quota for the month and needed to give his body time to heal. He switched on the tv and changed the channel to the news.

The screen flickered a little and nothing but static could be seen for several seconds, Jack frowned, he leaned forward and flicked the screen, a little burst of electricity accidently left his finger tip and the static disappeared to show the news. He let out a little sigh of relief before sitting back.

Predictably the news was covering the events of the previous day, it showed a map of North Yorkshire with multiple points highlighted as places that saw fighting. There were around eight places that had been attacked according to the map with overall casualties at over two hundred, not including hunters and soldiers. The screen shifted to multiple images and videos of dead monsters in various states of decay from different locations. It even showed videos of hunters fighting, in one village a guy armoured in grey and red kills a few skittering multi legged nightmares with a shotgun before they get too close, he then released a bright burst of fire which killed them as several leap towards him. In another village a group of hunters surround an extremely large humanoid creature wielding a massive bloodstained tree branch. They all pelt it with streams of fire and large rocks until it crashes to its knees, a hunter then walks up to it before burying an axe in its face.

Jack watches all this in fascination, he may not wield the same element as these guys but he can at least take notes on their tactics. Jack eagerly continues watching these hunters do what they do best, he wasn’t expecting however, to see the familiar village of Boroughbridge appear on screen with a group of hunters walking by. He frowned, there hadn’t been any media when they arrived had there? Then he shook his head, everyone has a camera these days! It's probably one of the most widespread pieces of technology in the world.

He continues looking at their group and there he is, right at the back of the group, looking nervous and a little out of place, but at least the reporter doesn’t comment. The scene shifted to when they found themselves surrounded by Bloodletter wolves and continued to when everyone split up with Zack yelling at everyone to stay put but being ignored. Jack grimaced, yeesh, not their finest hour, the media really knows how to take a terrible moment out of context and display it for all the world to see.

However it didn’t end there, the scene shifted once again to when Zack, Jack and Rachael were facing down two wolves having just split with the rest of red team. The camera focuses in and shows Jack taking out his pager and taking a selfie with a bemused Rachael, a horrified Zack and two furious looking Bloodletter wolves behind them. In the background the person holding the camera or camera phone lets out an exclamation of surprise.

“Bloody hell! Did that guy just take a selfie!?”

Afterwards it shows Jack shooting forward incredibly fast, the camera actually lost sight of him for a moment. The camera refocuses on him and the tv shows him quickly and easily slaughtering the two wolves with a spear. Jack turns around to face Rachael and Zack as they approach, the view shifts down a little at his chest to focus on the red rampant bull icon in chains on his chest armour.

Afterwards the screen shows the newsroom with the anchors. They speak about the overall response of the hunters and military, they invite guest speakers through video calls who add in their own opinions. Overall the conclusion is the same as it always is, it's the government's fault. The issue of villages and other rural areas not receiving enough protection is brought up again with people going over the same points as they always did.

It was then that a political commentator announced that Parliament was considering plans to reintroduce settlement walls back into the UK built by earth cultivators. This was assumed to mean that villages, towns and cities would have walls built around them again, this news was treated with mild surprise by the anchors and their guest speakers but overall it was considered a positive change. One individual from the opposition party in Parliament however stated that this would cost the UK taxpayer prohibitive amounts of money and would spread the work unfairly towards elite earth cultivators rather than proper British construction companies. Most of the speakers were not supportive of his arguments.

All the time they’d been speaking and debating in the newsroom, the pictures of several hunters from the previous day's priority hunts had been plastered on the screen in the background, very visible and clear. Jack's image was one of them. It was a little embarrassing but it could be worse, two Bloodletter wolf corpses were at his feet and he was standing there looking fairly relaxed and not shitting himself in fear at all, holding a bloody spear. Yep, he was definitely straddling the line between anonymity and notoriety right now, or perhaps he was losing his balance ever so slightly. Oh well, not his fault he was apparently so photogenic.

While he slowly munched his cereal and watched the news his phone, not his pager, buzzed. He leaned over to grab it from the coffee table in front of him and read the text.

You BEAUTY!! Watching the news now! Also got a hunt for ya. Today/tomorrow fine. See ya!! Gary

Huh, he’d sort of wanted to laze around for a couple of days but he had made a commitment. What did he mean by beauty? Was this a new way of greeting someone that he’d been unaware of. Jack frowned before noticing that his image that was still plastered on the tv, quite clearly and proudly showed off the rampant chained crimson bull. Well if that's not good advertisement I don’t know what is really, Jack thought to himself.

Jack texted back.

K, will accept hunt today and deliver tomorrow? Jack

A couple of minutes later.

Excellent! See ya tomorrow wolf slaya!! Gary

Jack snorted in amusement before texting an affirmative. He’d meander down to the guild and see what the job was before doing it tomorrow, the extra day would help him heal and prepare if needed.

Before he got ready he logged into his online hunters account and checked his finances, to say they looked good was a bit of an understatement considering he’d only been hunting a little over a week. He quickly moved some of the money over to his bank account and logged out. Just as he was shutting down his laptop the screen flickered and Jack frowned in worry but shrugged before putting it away.

Afterwards he got dressed and put on his shoes. As he was doing so he noticed the bite marks on his leg from the giant rat hunt were almost completely healed, with just a few light scabs remaining. Likewise for the cuts across his chest, they’d been deep cuts but there had barely been any bleeding and had just needed stitches then and there. He considered picking the stitches out but left them alone for now. As well as the rapid healing there was no sign of infection, a sign that his cultivation was already having effects on his body.

With one last look at his battle wounds he left his apartment and made his way over to the hunter HQ. As he was slowly walking down the pavement he noticed the streets were far more crowded than usual, that might have been because it was nearly lunch time, but many people seemed to be carrying suitcases or large backpacks and were in family groups. The various car parks located within the city were full of cars, as were the sides of the road with a parked car occupying whatever available spaces there were.

Jack’s relaxing stroll towards HQ turned into a frustrating effort to make it past an obstacle course of warm bodies, he slid his way past crowds of people and resorted to walking on the road at times. He looked at all the people and wondered if there was an event occurring at some point today, York was a touristy city so crowds of tourists weren’t uncommon but this was a bit much.

Eventually he made it to his destination, however it was even worse than before with a large crowd of people surrounding the HQ building stopping just outside the iron gates. Police were present trying to keep the crowd in order and journalists were around the periphery of the crowd reporting to camera teams what was happening. Huh, maybe something is going on today, Jack thought. Hunter appreciation day perhaps? Then he looked at individual faces within the crowd and overall no one seemed particularly happy. Angry, distraught, tearful, these were some of the expressions he could pick out of the crowd, more angry than distraught perhaps, judging by the aggressive looking men at the front of the crowd closest to the building and police barrier. At what point does a crowd become a mob? Jack wondered nervously.

There was no way he was making his way through this, he didn’t really like attention or getting ripped apart by a violent mob. He backed off and entered an alleyway that only had a few people occupying it. He took out his pager and went through his contact list looking for Cheryl, as he was doing so he received another one of those emergency alerts on his pager.

‘ALERT. POTENTIALLY HOSTILE CROWD OUTSIDE HEADQUARTERS. DO NOT APPROACH. REPEAT. DO NOT APPROACH. USE REAR DOORWAY FOR ENTRY AND EXIT.’

Guess that answers that, the rear doorway. He went back to the alley entrance and peeked around the corner, trying to look as casual and non-huntery as possible. The crowd was still there and growing it seemed. Jack walked along the pavement back the way he came and crossed the road to the HQ’s side before walking around the building. There were still people there but not as many and they were all walking in the opposite direction towards the front of the building.

He made it to the rear of the building, it was a rather large building and it actually took him a few minutes. Eventually he spotted a strong iron gate similar to the front one and a large man standing behind it along with several police. He walked up to them and they spotted him approaching, tensing up noticeably. Jack removed his hunters licence from his wallet and showed it to them, the big guy who resembled a club bouncer passed some sort of barcode scanner over it and after a moment it beeped and flashed green. The bouncer nodded and spoke in a deep voice.

“You’re good.” He opened the gate and Jack stepped through before the bouncer quickly shut and locked the gate again. Jack sent a quizzical look at him and was about to speak but the bouncer grimly shook his head and spoke again.

“You’ll find out inside.” Then motioned with his head for Jack to enter the building. Jack shrugged and turned to enter the building through a single green door, it looked somewhat clandestine compared to the front entrance, which he supposed was the whole point. Just as he was about to open the door it swung open and two hunters stepped out gossiping as they walked past Jack.

“Can you believe it?” One young man wearing a modern looking chainmail shirt asked his companion, he sounded shocked.

“Actually yeah, a little bit.” A woman wearing some sort of black carapace armour answered. “He’s always been pushing the limits and he’s always been a complete twat. This was bound to happen eventually. I mean, there's cameras everywhere nowadays.”

“Still though, a civilian, he looked like…..” The young man stopped speaking and swallowed heavily, not able to continue and took a deep breath.

“Don’t think about it, if we’re lucky he’ll finally get what's coming to him. C’mon.” They passed Jack, the woman gave Jack a brief nod and he nodded back.

Well now I’m curious, thought Jack. He stepped through the door and walked down a well lit, white walled, bare corridor. He passed what appeared to be the kitchens on his right before walking through another set of doors, emerging into the guild hall. It was fairly quiet, very people were there at such an early time of day, with just a few members of staff cleaning. He continued through until he arrived into the jobs and requests room. There were more people present in this room but it was still quiet, he looked around and saw various hunters and what appeared to be admin staff gathered together in loose groups scattered around the room, all having whispered serious looking conversations. Perhaps quiet wasn’t the word to use, tense perhaps.

Jack looked around in confusion before spotting Cheryl of all people at the help desk. She didn’t seem entirely happy either, she was leaning back in her chair, she drummed her fingers on the desk with one hand and twirled her purple hair through her fingers with the other. On anyone else this might’ve made her look absentminded and daydreaming but she actually managed to look rather intense, a deep scowl marred her face and Jack almost didn’t want to approach. However she managed to spot him and he couldn’t pretend to not see her.

He cautiously made his way over and tried to greet her cheerfully but still retain his caution.

“Uh, hey Cheryl, how goes it?” Smooth.

“I take you haven’t heard?” She said.

“Can’t say I have, or maybe I have, what's your thing?”

She sighed and gave him an unimpressed look. “One of our hunters was caught on camera yesterday performing a…..” She trailed off, struggling to find the right words.

“What? What? Is it some weird sex thing, with a monster? Oh no, it is isn’t it? I’m not sure I want to know actually.” Jack frowned, perhaps this is what had so many people horrified outside.

“What? No! A hunter was filmed yesterday killing, or at least causing the death of a civilian.” She shook her head at him.

“Oh fuck.” Now he felt like a dick. “Who was it? And how? Causing the death of?”

“We can’t disclose who, the video didn’t make it fully clear anyway. All we saw was a hunter pushing a man into a nest of Needle Tongues and running off.” She explained matter of factly.

“Jesus! Seriously?!” She nodded grimly. “Thats fucked up! But er….what are needle tongues?” He asked.

“They’re like a cross between a monkey and a mosquito.” She explained, as if that explained anything. After Jack gave her a look of exasperated confusion she continued with a smirk. “Think of an extremely strong, fast chimpanzee with a chitin exoskeleton and claws. Its head is sort of angular, almost triangular. And its tongue is like a mosquito’s, like a large hypodermic needle.” She brought up an image on her pager and showed it to Jack, to him it looked like a striped yellowish demonic insect monkey with an elongated pyramid for a head, he couldn’t tell where the eyes were. Yep, definitely don’t wanna wind up in a nest of them. “They live in groups of ten or so and like to kill by swarming their prey then stabbing their tongues into your body, then they all drink your blood, complete exsanguination.”

Jack shivered a little. “What rank are they?” He asked quietly, he wondered if Cheryl might have prior experience at telling ghost stories.

“By themselves, one on its own is a D, but they’re never alone so a hunt for Needle Tongues is usually high C or low B, depends how old the nest is, older the nest the larger the group. That's pretty normal for most monster groups. Best way to deal with them is get them all in a tight group then blast ‘em with a fireball or something, that's why elemental abilities are key in this line of business.” She explained with a little bloodthirsty smile at the end. He nodded along, edging away from her slightly along the desk.

“So Jack, are you here for your exclusive hunt then? Like to stay busy huh?” She leaned back and smiled at him.

“Yep, I’m - wait, how do you know about my exclusive hunt?” He asked in surprise.

She shrugged. “I know everything.” She said simply. “Gary’s Monstrous Alloys? He's your supplier for gear right? The one you made a ‘deal’ with.” She held up her fingers in quotation marks when she said deal.

“Well now you're just making it sound silly.” He replied. “But yes, that's the gist of it, I’m just gonna take a look and accept the hunt today, then do it tomorrow.”

“Well good luck then.”

He nodded at her then turned around to find a free terminal, he found one along the wall next to the large notice board. He logged in and looked through the options, amongst various icons and lists, an icon labelled exclusive request was highlighted. He tapped it and it came up with a G ranked hunt for slimes from ‘Gary’s Monstrous Alloys’. It stated they wanted a gallon of harvested slime and then showed several hotspots slimes were known to spawn at. He tapped the accept hunt option and his pager buzzed in confirmation.

This was the very definition of an easy hunt, all he needed to do was send a relatively strong spark of lightning into a slime and it was dead, he considered heading out today but decided against it. He could probably complete the hunt today but he still wanted to spend some time recovering, besides, there was no rush.

He headed back over to Cheryl. “All good, just a hunt for slimes and harvesting their leftovers, easy peasy.”

She looked at him with a triumphant smile for an instant before it disappeared, she nodded and rested her chin on her hand. “That's good, you gonna do it tomorrow?”

“Yep, still feeling a little sore from cul - fighting yesterday.” He nearly slipped up and used the C word.

“Uh huh.” She didn’t seem to notice. “Make sure you buy a ceramic lined container in the plaza, otherwise that stuff will just eat right through anything else.”

“Oh right! Thanks, although I don’t know why a weapons and armour store wants harvested slime.” He wondered.

“I don’t know the specifics, but it's something to do with it being like raw liquid non-elemental magic, it's useful in all sorts of industries. There are some companies that use it to research a new form of clean energy.” She explained in a relaxed fashion, lazely waving her hand to illustrate her point.

“Huh, if this stuff is so useful I would've thought people would be trying to like, I dunno, set up a farm of these things.” Jack said.

“People are looking into that too, but monster spawning is still a bit of a mystery. How? Why? Where? What? It's not really known how the process can be controlled yet, and slimes are even more mysterious, some people don’t even think they’re true monsters; just small manifestations of magical anomalies.” She explained.

“Oh! Yeah I’ve heard that theory before.” He chimed in.

“Really? Where?” She tilted her head.

“Here, another guy at the help desk er, helped me.” He said with a grin. “You guys are so helpful!” He continued grinning at her.

She snorted. “Yes we are, don’t forget it.”

“I won’t, anyway I’m gonna go to the plaza then back home. See ya.” He stepped back and headed over to the med vendor and hunters plaza. Cheryl gave a lazy wave then pulled out a magazine and leaned back in her chair to read it.