Chapter 17

In the end he was told he did have to go back down to PR so that they could prepare him for what he was supposed to say, though he wouldn’t need to go until the day of the press release.

Before they left Cheryl told Jack to get a move on with his to do list.

“What to do list?” he asked.

“Take a look at the exclusive hunts option in your pager or on a terminal, there's a long list of jobs and hunts from Gary, Steven the taxidermist and a hunt from Dr Joolton for the Black Shuck, whatever that is,” Cheryl said. “You need to hurry up with it and don’t let the list get too long.”

“Right right gotcha, I’ll get to it today or tomorrow,” Jack assured her.

“Ah, speaking of exclusive hunts, I was wondering Jack if perhaps you might also be available to take a few for the guild?” Welts asked, steepling his fingers on the table, looking at Jack expectantly.

“Ok, what hunts?” Jack asked cautiously.

“Basically, you go out with some higher ranking teams, complete the hunts and come back with a full intact monster corpse.”

“Aaaah, I was wondering when someone was gonna ask about that.” Jack sat back with a smug smile.

“Would you consider it Jack? It's not just for harvesting valuable materials for profit you see, what we and many other organisations are more interested in is studying the creatures. Except for the er…Jaw Gnasher, you helpfully left behind for us in the city centre park, we’ve never had the opportunity to truly study these creatures that invade our world, not in a controlled environment anyway,” Welts explained.

“Really? Well if you couldn’t get an intact corpse then why couldn’t you just…..I dunno….wrangle a few live monsters? There's plenty of weaker monsters out there you could just trap and lock up,” Jack pointed out. “Really, just go up to a goblin and punch it in the face, they’ve all got glass jaws.”

“Ah yes….that has actually been attempted numerous times before…….and it….never goes well, even with the weakest monsters we could find,” Welts actually looked uncomfortable for a second.

“Oh really? What happens?” Jack asked curiously.

“Well, it seems whenever a monster is around in a certain area for too long then more of its kind eventually manifest in the area with it, sometimes it's just one or two goblins or something like that. Other times it's entire swarms suddenly appearing from nowhere which wind up overrunning the security measures and killing everyone in the facility, it's unpredictable and uncontrollable. It's one of the few things we’ve actually learnt about these creatures.”

“In fact,” Welts continued. “During a briefing some time ago for the guild branch directors, we were made to watch a video of a soldier standing guard inside a corridor within a secure facility where live monsters were being kept. At first nothing happened except the soldier flinched when something seemed to drip on him from above, and then suddenly the entire ceiling above him gave way and he was enveloped in slime and quickly digested.”

Jack winced. “Jesus.” He remembered offering to obtain a live Red Cap specimen for Dr Joolton a little while ago, he was now very glad Joolton had declined.

“Yes,” Welts continued before leaning forward. “And you didn’t hear this from me but there are at least two secret underground bunkers in the UK and one on the Isle of Man that were overrun and now on a permanent watch list, since they’re now considered monster nesting grounds. We had to evacuate three small villages in the surrounding areas because of it.”

“Oh shit.”

“Indeed, so now you see why full intact monster corpses would be so valuable for study, at this stage, knowing more about the phenomena that assail us is imperative.”

“Huh, I didn’t know all that, now I feel a little guilty for not offering to help with this sooner,” Jack rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.

But Welts waved him off. “Nonsense Jack, you were a new hunter in a vulnerable position, you were just looking after yourself and caution is a trait I value in my hunters. But now that you’ve got your feet wet so to speak and you're a relatively strong hunter for your rank, well, perhaps you could lend a hand?” Welts looked hopeful.

Jack thought for a moment before deciding to go for it. “Sure, why not?”

“Excellent! My thanks Jack, I have a list of certain monsters in mind and I’ll get the details over to you soon. And obviously you’ll be well compensated. Anyway, lovely to see you both, congratulations on the promotion Jack. Russel, always a pleasure, I’ll see you at your promotion ceremony to A rank next week.” With that Welts and Cheryl both stood up and left, leaving Jack staring at Russel in surprise.

Russel shrugged without a word before also leaving.

With that the assessment was over and Jack was left in the room by himself, he spun around on the chair a couple of times, wondering what he should do with the rest of the day. He didn’t feel like going out on a hunt that day, it was also the end of the month and his monthly quota for completed jobs was long done.

In the end he decided to go down to the training halls for some practice. He got up, grabbed his gym bag and left the room to go down to the gym. Once he arrived he walked through and down the stairs leading to the training hall reception room. He booked one of the available shooting ranges and went to the room.

He entered the room through the heavy steel reinforced door and dropped his gym bag to the floor, from there he immediately set to work.

At the moment he had three types of ranged ability available to him, the first was a standard lightning bolt, it was arguably his strongest attack. It could kill just about anything he’d ever encountered but it was slow to pull off and he couldn’t quite get the accuracy in.

His next attack was what Jack called the quick bolt attack, it was just a dialled down full lightning bolt, not nearly as powerful but it was certainly lethal to weak monsters and enough quick bolts could be severely damaging to even strong targets. Plus it was more accurate and like the name suggested, it was fast.

His next ranged attack was another one he still needed to work on to make useful in an actual combat situation, his rail gun attack, the one where he used a magnetic field to propel steel marbles at terrific speeds. At the moment it was still too inaccurate to use in combat but if push came to shove he could always just throw a fistful of marbles with an extra strong magnetic field and obliterate everything in front of him.

For the next several hours he practised his abilities, he stopped briefly for lunch in the guild hall before continuing. By the end of it he felt like he was a little more accurate with his attacks and able to pull them off more easily.

Once his allotted time in the shooting range was over he picked up his bag and left, his muscles were fairly sore from channelling so much lightning but didn’t feel like calling it quits just yet. He wandered through the narrow dimly lit corridors until he found one of the small arenas littered throughout the underground training halls, he entered through a small door at the end of a corridor. Immediately he emerged into a large brightly lit hall that looked more like an old school gymnasium with the lines painted on the floor for football or basketball. In the centre were three large mats where pairs of hunters in white and cream coloured practise armour were duelling each other with blunt training weapons. Off to one side along the wall were bleachers where various hunters and other people sat and lounged, spectating or waiting for their turn to spar.

Jack wandered over to the bleachers, it was relatively busy in the arena, around thirty or so people were scattered around, the clattering of the practice weapons against each other, the grunts, cries and exertions of the fighters and the relaxed chattering of the spectators on the bleachers all echoed around the hall.

He noticed a group of pretty young women dressed professionally all sat in a cluster, chatting and giggling, watching the fights whilst eating. Jack had to clamp down on a surge of self consciousness, he knew that people from the administration staff often came down here to watch the spars during their lunches or breaks.

Jack dumped his gym bag next to a rack with spare pieces of armour and began to get kitted up before grabbing a blunt practice spear.

Most of the time, the training hall arenas were free use, that meant that anyone could show up if they wanted to spar against just anyone. All a hunter needed to do was show up, pull on some practise armour, then slot their licence into a terminal in the arena. The terminal would enter their name into the rota for matches, it would then randomly select two names and match them up according to hunter rank, so it was all fair who got to fight and who got to rest.

After Jack had slotted his licence into the terminal he went to a free spot on the bleachers and sat down, awaiting his turn to spar, wondering who would be picked to fight him.

After fifteen minutes of waiting it was finally his turn, one of the screens on the wall on the other side of the arena showed his name next to a Noah Varnson. He got up and headed to one of the mats, he was followed by a stocky looking fellow with dark skin, wielding a broadsword and kite shield.

They faced one another and sized each other up.

“Standard rules? First to twelve hits?” Jack suggested.

Noah nodded silently, looking at Jack intently. He hunched down and got into a wide stance, with his shield covering most of his body and his sword drawn back, ready to strike.

Jack too got into a wide stance, side on, with his spear pointing toward his opponent. Neither one of them moved for a moment before Noah shifted his stance, with that they were off. Jack rapidly lunged in with a strike which Noah deflected upwards with his shield. Noah thought Jack's guard was down, or up in this case, so he moved forward and attempted to strike with his sword. But Jack grabbed his spear in both hands and brought it down like a hammer, the spear head bounced off Noah’s helmet and that was the first point to Jack.

Noah shook his head and readjusted his helmet before they reset for another round. Unfortunately Jack didn’t have it all his own way, he managed a few more points after the first but Noah managed to decisively win with a final score of twelve points to seven. Jack’s spear had very little defensive capabilities and so he had to relentlessly attack, but whenever Noah managed to step in past Jack’s guard he was able to get a solid hit in. Noah was a very technical fighter and the spear wasn’t a good matchup against a sword and shield combo.

After the last round was over and Jack had finished wincing from the strong blow to his ribs, both fighters shook hands and left the mat.

Jack climbed up a couple of benches and slouched down onto the bleachers to wait for his next fight and watch the others. He looked around and noticed a few people eyeing him cautiously or curiously, never really the most sociable person unless provoked, Jack ignored them.

A short while later his name was called up again, this time he was up against a young man similar in age to Jack called Harold. He was slightly taller than Jack with olive skin and wielded a long sword, that was a slightly better matchup.

After agreeing to the standard first to twelve they began, Harold immediately attacked with a series of rapid slashes and swipes. But Jack played to his weapons strengths and sent in quick jabs from a greater range and didn’t let his opponent in close, Harold wasn’t able to defend himself and Jack got the first point after tagging Harold in the shoulder.

From there the match played out similarly to the first round until Jack had his opponent beaten twelve points to four. They both shook hands and departed from the mats to the bleachers.

By now Jack was a little sweaty but enjoying himself. He watched the other hunters fight and train and noticed just how extremely fast many of the hunters were moving, beyond what a normal human body should be capable of. Judging by the terrific clatter that resounded whenever two weapons clashed against each other, many people were putting an extreme amount of power into their blows. In fact, next to each mat were piles of broken or deformed practice weapons that had seen a little too much use in the past hour or so. Which was impressive since many of the weapons were made from composites of iron wood and polycarbonate plastic, inexpensive in this day and age but supposedly extremely strong. Every now and then someone would wheel in a trolley loaded with fresh practice weapons.

He was a little surprised and pleased with himself that he was able to keep up with them at all, he’d come a long way in a short space of time.

He watched two hunters zip around the mat in an elegant fast paced dual, both wielding blunt practice katanas. Neither one was holding back, any of their strikes would probably break the bone of a normal person and they were moving so fast even Jack was having trouble keeping track.

While he had some time on his hands and he wasn’t in a life or death situation, Jack thought he might try a little experiment on something that had been annoying him for a while now. His involuntary time dilation ability, whenever he was particularly stressed in the middle of fight, it seemed like everything around him slowed down, allowing him to watch everything in slow motion, allowing him to more easily react to what was going on around him.

It was a useful ability but he couldn’t control it, it only ever happened when his fear and adrenaline maxed themselves out and sometimes not even then. Apart from the uncontrollable nature of the ability, the other downside was the colossal headache it gave him afterwards. Sometimes it paralyzed him with pain and left him in a shivering heap, curled up in a foetal position.

He’d asked Stacey and Nate if they or any other hunters were aware of the ability but it was unfamiliar to them. Many hunters learned to increase their strength and speed to greater heights by fueling their bodies directly from their elemental cores, and some more experienced hunters and cultivators could enhance their various senses like sight and hearing. No one however could seemingly alter their perception of time, out of all the research Jack had done on the subject, he’d come up with nothing. A theory he was going with at the moment was that the lightning elemental energy was somehow augmenting the electrical signals in his brain, forcing them to go faster.

Until now he’d been avoiding trying to develop or practise the ability, despite how useful it was, or could be. Whenever it activated he was left with a colossal headache afterwards that would have him wishing he’d never been born, and experimenting with that kind of ability in the middle of a fight for his life was an excellent way of getting killed and eaten, or eaten and then killed.

Jack watched the two hunters duelling with their katanas and focussed on pouring a trickle of raw energy from his core into his brain, it was an oddly uncomfortable sensation at first. It felt like his sinuses were full and like he needed to sneeze, he felt some pressure behind his left eye and he stopped for a moment until the discomfort receded.

He tried again several times until he began to get the effect he was looking for, the two duelling hunters' movements gradually seemed to slow down along with everything else in the arena. Sound became disjointed and lower pitched, he noticed little motes of dust sail lazily through the air in front of him. He cut it off after a few moments and everything juddered back to normal.

He had a minor headache but nothing major, he tried it a few more times and felt able to control it more reliably. His experimentation was interrupted when someone prodded his shoulder then motioned to one of the screens on the far wall, it was showing his name next to someone called Adam.

Jack climbed down the bleachers to one of the mats and faced off against his new opponent. It was an axe wielder, a very large axe wielder with a very large axe, the man standing facing Jack was wearing a heavier variant of the white coloured practice armour, covering almost his entire body and head in strong plastic and metal armour. The axe he was wielding was likewise one of the larger weapons available from the racks, double sided and weighing upwards of thirty kilograms, it was blunt so it wouldn’t cut him but it would sure as shit break a bone or two if Jack allowed it to hit him.

The large man, Adam, leered down menacingly at Jack, he could just make out a faint sneer through the man's visor.

“Hi there, first to twelve?” Jack suggested, trying to be polite.

“Hmph, if you want to be boring,” sneered Adam.

“Oh? Well, I’d hate to be boring, what did you have in mind?” Jack asked.

“First to surrender loses!” he growled out with a feral grin, giving the giant axe in his hands a deft twirl.

“Uh huh….” Jack eyed his opponent sceptically, it was a common rule, perfectly acceptable. Though he had to wonder what it would take for him to feel the need to surrender after going up against a guy that was swinging around a weapon that was approaching half of Jack’s body weight.

“What's up sparker? Can’t hack it?” Adam sneered.

That decided it, sparker, he hated that word, clearly meant as a slur to people like him. “First to surrender? That sounds just fine to me,” Jack spoke through gritted teeth, a small upwelling of anger boiled up inside him.

Adam grinned and got into position, and Jack got into his stance. These practice matches were supposed to be weapons only, no elemental abilities were permitted. But internal abilities like enhancing strength and speed were never specified or mentioned, so Jack decided to give his time perception ability a live test.

He focused on his core and poured a small amount of his energy into his brain, immediately everything slowed down around him. Adam began to move slowly, bringing his axe back for a swing, Jack didn’t allow him to get any further than that.

He sprang forward with his spear tip leading, although his perception had been altered to see things in slow motion, his body was still the same speed, so Jack also felt like he was moving slower than normal. However it still gave him plenty of time to react and plan in a situation where a split second normally made all the difference, like when a big guy with a big axe was intent on bearing down on him.

Before Adam had even finished preparing his backswing, Jack had landed a solid jab onto his helmet. Adam stumbled but before he regained his footing Jack swung the reverse end of the spear into Adam’s head again with a resounding crack, Adam was dizzily reeling, he dropped to one knee before wildly swinging his axe but Jack calmly stepped back before putting a few more jabs into his helmet.

Adam dropped to all fours and Jack placed his spear head at Adam’s throat.

“Well? Do you surrender?” he asked with a grin. Hah! He couldn’t believe how easy that had been, it was like his opponent had been moving through honey, he’d had time to think of multiple methods of attack in just a few moments. He was definitely going to develop this ability for later use.

Adam didn’t respond, even though he was down on all fours it looked like he was about to flop down onto his belly, maybe Jack had gone a little too hard with the head blows.

Adam simply let go of his axe and tapped the floor a couple of times, the accepted non-verbal sign of surrender.

Jack stepped back with satisfaction, but then wondered if he should help the guy up, all of Adam’s previous sneering confidence was gone and in its place was a swaying staggering mess. In the end, two of the man’s friends came forward and hauled him to his feet before helping him out of the arena. Jack watched them go sheepishly before making his way back to the bleachers.

He was a little surprised as he walked when a small smattering of applause followed him, and low murmuring of the crowd in appreciation. Jack bashfully waved to the onlookers as he took his seat.

“Wow! Did you see that?”

“He destroyed that guy!”

“Not so weak after all.”

Jack grinned surreptitiously as he took his seat, he could feel people’s eyes on him as he tried to focus on the matches, inwardly he was still delighted with his triumph.

However, he felt a faint tickle from something just beneath his nose, he brought finger up and brought it back to look at when he felt something wet. Blood, his nose was bleeding, huh, not unexpected he supposed, considering the faint headache he could feel coming on.

Jack hurriedly wiped his nose on the back of his hand before rummaging around in his gym bag for his water bottle and some painkillers. While he had his head in his bag Jack heard the usual ambient sounds of the training arena get replaced with a gradual hush, before excited murmuring swept over the arena.

He brought his head up from his bag like a meerkat, trying to see what all the fuss was about. Over by the doors he saw a small crowd of hunters and guild personnel surrounding something or someone, all the fighting and sparring had paused for whatever it was. He wandered over in curiosity while he downed a few pills and took a swig from his water bottle.

Eventually the crowd parted enough for him to see what had captured everyone’s attention.

Jack nearly spat out his drink, it was Eric Flamewrought himself, surrounded by his usual lackeys and followers.

“Oh…..shit,” Jack involuntarily choked out, some water escaped from his mouth and dribbled down his chin. The man that was the focus of everyone’s attention stopped chatting with another hunter and turned to regard Jack with a small predatory smile.

“Ah! Jack! Fancy running into you here!” Flamewrought greeted him as if they were old friends, not as if Jack had accidentally killed his son.