"The problem with saving people is that they remember your face. The problem with being remembered is that the wrong people start looking."
I didn't go home immediately.
I couldn't. The medical team at the Assessment Center insisted on a full evaluation, and refusing would have drawn more attention than cooperating. So I sat on a cold examination table in a sterile white room while a doctor who looked like she hadn't slept in thirty hours poked and prodded at me with clinical efficiency.
"These lacerations are superficial," she said, peeling back the torn fabric of my shirt to examine the claw marks across my ribs. "You're lucky. Goblin weapons are crude, but they carry a mild mana toxin. Any deeper and we'd be talking about systemic poisoning."
I wasn't lucky. I'd angled my body during each dodge to minimize wound depth. Combat geometry—redirecting the force vector of incoming attacks so that hits become grazes. It was a technique Mira had drilled into me over six months of brutal training sessions.
But the doctor didn't need to know that.
"Just adrenaline, I guess," I said.
She gave me a look that suggested she didn't believe me but was too tired to argue. "I'm going to clean and bandage these. You'll need to keep them dry for forty-eight hours. Any signs of infection—redness, swelling, unusual warmth—come back immediately."
"Yes, ma'am."
While she worked, I studied the system interface hovering at the edge of my vision. The corruption counter sat at 28%, a dull crimson number that pulsed faintly with each heartbeat. I could feel it now—not as pain, exactly, but as a presence. A heaviness behind my eyes. A slight distortion at the periphery of my vision, like looking through glass that wasn't quite clean.
The first threshold. The system had warned about physical and mental changes. So far, the physical changes were minimal—a faint darkening around my irises that the doctor hadn't noticed in the examination room's fluorescent light. But I could feel something shifting inside me. Something subtle and patient.
Like a seed that had been planted and was quietly, steadily, growing roots.
Level 4. In the original timeline, I hadn't hit Level 4 until my third Gate raid, roughly two weeks after awakening. The combat experience from the Assessment Center incident had accelerated my progression significantly.
Silver lining to an otherwise catastrophic situation.
The doctor finished bandaging my wounds and handed me a clean shirt—plain white, government-issue, the kind they kept in bulk for situations exactly like this. I put it on and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror on the wall.
I looked like hell. Dark circles under my eyes. Skin pale from blood loss and adrenaline crash. And there—barely visible unless you knew to look—a ring of deep grey around my irises that hadn't been there yesterday.
The corruption's fingerprint.
"You're free to go," the doctor said. "Take it easy for the next few days. No strenuous activity."
No strenuous activity. Right. Because that was definitely in the cards for someone trying to prevent the apocalypse on a ten-year deadline.
"Thank you," I said, and I meant it. She was just doing her job. She had no idea what was coming.
None of them did.
I stepped out of the medical wing and into chaos.
The Assessment Center's main corridor was a storm of activity. Association personnel were everywhere—uniformed officers, plainclothes agents, investigation teams with equipment I recognized from my previous life. Portable mana scanners. Spatial distortion analyzers. The heavy-duty stuff they brought out when something went seriously wrong.
And through the glass walls of the corridor, I could see the media.
Dozens of cameras. Reporters pressing against the security perimeter, shouting questions at anyone in an Association uniform. News vans with satellite dishes on their roofs, broadcasting live. I could see the ticker text scrolling across the screens of phones held by passing staff members:
BREAKING: GATE MANIFESTATION AT HUNTER AWAKENING CEREMONY — CASUALTIES REPORTED — MYSTERIOUS TEENAGER CREDITED WITH SAVING HUNDREDS
My stomach dropped.
I'd known this was coming. The moment I chose Option B, the moment I decided to fight instead of hide, I'd accepted that attention was inevitable. But knowing something intellectually and seeing your own blurred combat footage playing on a news broadcast were very different experiences.
The footage was grainy—security camera quality, taken from a high angle. But it clearly showed a figure in a white shirt moving through the goblin swarm with precision that didn't belong to a sixteen-year-old. The Void Step moments were the worst—visible as a blur-and-reappear effect that looked, on camera, like teleportation.
Because it was teleportation.
On the screen, I watched myself channel the Awakening Stone. The beam of light. The Gate collapsing. The blue flash of awakening.
It was, objectively, spectacular footage. The kind of footage that went viral. The kind that turned nobodies into somebodies overnight.
The kind that painted targets on your back.
I pulled the collar of my new shirt up and walked quickly toward the exit, head down, avoiding eye contact. The security perimeter kept the media outside, but I'd need to cross the plaza to reach the street, and the plaza had no such protection.
"Takahashi."
I froze. The voice came from behind me—calm, authoritative, familiar.
I turned to find a man leaning against the corridor wall with his arms crossed. Mid-forties, athletic build, sharp eyes behind wire-framed glasses. He wore a tailored black suit that screamed government money, and his posture had the relaxed tension of someone who could snap from casual to lethal in half a heartbeat.
I didn't recognize him from the original timeline. Which meant either he was someone I'd never encountered before, or he was someone who'd been operating in the background—invisible, the way people in his line of work preferred.
"Ryu Takahashi," he repeated, not a question. He pushed off the wall and approached with measured steps. "My name is Hayashi Shiro. Bureau of Hunter Intelligence."
Bureau of Hunter Intelligence. The Association's shadow department. The ones who investigated things that couldn't be explained through normal channels. In the original timeline, I hadn't known they existed until Year 3, when they'd approached me about Akira's suspicious activities.
They'd been right about Akira. I hadn't listened. I'd been too loyal. Too blind.
"Am I in trouble?" I asked, keeping my voice uncertain. Young. Scared.
Hayashi studied me for a moment. His eyes were the kind that took in everything and gave back nothing.
"Not at all," he said. "You saved a lot of lives today. The Association is grateful."
"Then what—"
"I just have a few questions. Routine. Nothing to worry about." He gestured toward a nearby door. "If you don't mind?"
I minded very much. But refusing would look suspicious, and I'd already used up my daily quota of suspicious behavior.
"Sure," I said.
The room was small. Two chairs, a table, no windows. Not technically an interrogation room—the lighting was too warm and there was a potted plant in the corner that someone had actually been watering. But the layout was designed for conversation extraction. I'd been in enough of them to recognize the psychology.
Hayashi sat across from me, placed a thin tablet on the table between us, and folded his hands.
"Let me start by saying that you're not in trouble," he repeated. "This is just a standard debrief for anyone involved in a Gate incident. Especially someone who played such a... significant role."
"Okay."
"Can you walk me through what happened? From your perspective?"
I'd prepared for this. On the examination table, while the doctor stitched and bandaged, I'd constructed a narrative. Close enough to the truth to be believable. Distant enough from the truth to be safe.
"I was in Chamber 12. Waiting for my number. The wall exploded. Monsters came through." I paused, swallowed, let my hands tremble slightly. "People were screaming. Running. I saw one of those things—a goblin—about to attack a girl. I just... moved. I didn't think about it. My body just moved."
"You moved very effectively," Hayashi said, his tone neutral. "The security footage shows combat techniques that our analysts describe as 'advanced Hunter-level.' Joint locks. Weapon disarms. Anatomical targeting."
"I've watched a lot of training videos online," I said. "I've been interested in Hunter combat since I was a kid. My father was a Hunter before he died."
This was true. My father—Takahashi Kenji—had been a D-Rank Hunter who died in a Gate Break when I was six. It was part of my public record. An easy, verifiable detail that added credibility to the lie.
Hayashi nodded slowly. "Your father was registered as a D-Rank, Enhancement type. Killed in the Yokohama Gate Break of 2015. I'm sorry for your loss."
"Thank you."
"But watching training videos and executing Hunter-level combat techniques under extreme pressure are very different things, Ryu."
"I know. I can't explain it. Adrenaline, maybe? Survival instinct? I've read about mothers lifting cars off their children. Maybe it was something like that."
Hayashi's expression didn't change. He didn't believe me. I could see it in the subtle tension around his jaw—the kind of micro-expression that most people missed but that I'd spent years learning to read.
But he couldn't prove I was lying, either. And my story, while improbable, wasn't impossible. Adrenaline-driven feats of extraordinary ability were documented, if rare.
"What about the Awakening Stone?" he asked. "You touched it and channeled its energy into the Gate. Our analysts have no record of anything like that ever being attempted, let alone succeeding. Can you explain how you did that?"
"No," I said honestly. "I was desperate. The Gate was open and more monsters were coming through. I saw the Stone and I just... grabbed it. I don't know what happened after that. It was like the energy moved on its own."
Another half-truth. The energy hadn't moved on its own—I'd forced it, using control techniques from my previous life. But the underlying concept was genuine. The Awakening Stone's energy was compatible with Gate energy. In theory, anyone who touched the Stone during an active Gate manifestation could have achieved a similar result.
In practice, they'd have been killed. The energy feedback alone should have stopped my heart. The only reason I'd survived was the Void System absorbing the excess—and even then, the corruption cost had been massive.
Hayashi tapped something on his tablet. "Your awakening registered as C-Rank. Shadow Walker class, Void-Aspect. Our analysts find the classification... interesting."
"Interesting how?"
"Void-Aspect doesn't exist in our databases. We have Shadow, Dark, Light, Elemental, Physical, Mental, Spatial—dozens of documented aspect types. But Void? That's new."
Damn. I'd hoped it would fly under the radar.
"Is that bad?" I asked, widening my eyes slightly. Innocent. Confused.
"Not bad. Just unprecedented. We'd like to run additional tests at some point. Nothing invasive—just standard classification procedures. It would help us understand your abilities better."
Translation: We want to put you in a lab and figure out what you are.
"Sure," I said. "Whenever you need me."
Translation: I will dodge those tests for as long as humanly possible.
Hayashi studied me for another long moment. The silence stretched. I let it—filling silences was an amateur mistake. In interrogation dynamics, the person who speaks first after a pause loses ground. It was a game of patience, and I'd been playing it for longer than this man had been in his career.
Finally, he smiled. It was a professional smile—warm on the surface, calculating underneath.
"One last question," he said. "During the fight, several witnesses reported that your eyes exhibited an unusual glow. Red or crimson, intermittent, lasting for most of the combat engagement. Can you explain that?"
My blood went cold.
The corruption. The visible manifestation. People had seen it.
"My eyes?" I touched my face instinctively, a gesture of genuine surprise layered over genuine panic. "I don't... no, I didn't notice anything like that. Could it have been reflections? The Gate was giving off a lot of colored light."
"Possibly," Hayashi said. "The witnesses were under extreme stress. Perception during crisis events is notoriously unreliable."
He was giving me an out. Deliberately. Which meant one of two things—either he genuinely believed the witnesses were mistaken, or he was filing the information away for later use and didn't want to tip me off.
Given that he was Bureau of Hunter Intelligence, I was betting on option two.
"Well," Hayashi stood, extending his hand. "Thank you for your time, Ryu. And thank you for what you did today. Regardless of how you did it, a lot of families will have their children home tonight because of you."
I shook his hand. His grip was firm. Measured. The grip of a man who was already planning our next conversation.
"If you need anything—questions, concerns, or if you notice anything unusual about your abilities—please don't hesitate to contact the Association." He placed a business card on the table. Plain white, black text, no logo. Just a name and a phone number.
HAYASHI SHIRO
Bureau of Hunter Intelligence
[Number redacted]
"I will," I said. "Thank you."
I picked up the card. Slipped it into my pocket. And walked out of that room with every nerve in my body screaming.
Getting past the media was easier than I'd expected.
The Association had set up a rear exit for participants who wanted to avoid the press. Most of the evacuated teenagers and their families were using it, streaming out in clusters of shell-shocked civilians being shepherded by uniformed staff. I blended into the flow—just another kid with bandages and a haunted expression—and slipped through the perimeter without anyone looking twice.
The anonymity wouldn't last. My name was in the system. The security footage existed. Sooner or later, a reporter would connect the dots, and then my face would be everywhere.
I had maybe twenty-four hours before my life became unrecognizable.
I needed to use them wisely.
The walk home took forty minutes. I could have taken the train, but I needed the time to think. The streets of Shinjuku were their normal chaotic selves—crowds of shoppers and salarymen and tourists, all oblivious to the fact that a Gate had ripped open inside a government building three kilometers away. A few people were watching the news on their phones, but the story was still in its early stages. Details were scarce. The Association was controlling the narrative.
For now.
I walked and I planned.
Priority one: Damage control. My cover was compromised but not blown. C-Rank was manageable. The combat performance was concerning but explainable—adrenaline, desperation, lucky instincts. Hayashi was suspicious but had no proof. If I kept my head down and avoided further spectacle, the interest might fade.
Might. With a Luck stat of 3, I wasn't betting on it.
Priority two: Corruption management. Twenty-eight percent was dangerously high for Day 2. The Selfless Protector trait reduced accumulation by 3% when protecting civilians, but that was a passive discount, not a cure. I needed to find ways to actively reduce corruption, or I'd cross the 50% threshold within weeks.
In my previous life, I'd never dealt with corruption. The Void System was unique to this timeline. But the system had mentioned emotional bonds reducing accumulation rate. Hana was my primary anchor. I needed more.
Which meant building relationships. Connections. Trust.
For someone who'd spent his last years as a paranoid, isolated combat machine, that was going to be a challenge.
Priority three: Training. Level 4 was nothing. My body was stronger than it had been yesterday—the awakening had enhanced my physical stats significantly—but it was still a fraction of what I needed. My three unspent skill points needed to be allocated strategically, building toward the abilities I'd need for what was coming.
And what was coming was Akira Kurogane.
I stopped walking.
The name had surfaced in my mind like a depth charge, and the explosion of rage that followed nearly made me stagger. I stood on the sidewalk, pedestrians flowing around me, and I breathed.
In for four. Hold for seven. Out for eight.
Akira Kurogane. Guild Master of Crimson Vanguard. Japan's Number One Hunter. The man whose smile could light up a room and whose hands were stained with the blood of everyone I'd ever loved.
He would see the footage. Of course he would. Akira tracked every notable awakening, every unusual incident, every potential threat or tool. It was how he'd found me the first time—a sixteen-year-old S-Rank with no connections and no protection.
He'd approached me with warmth and mentorship and promises. He'd made me feel like I belonged. Like I mattered. Like the power I carried was a gift to be celebrated, not a burden to bear.
And then he'd used me. Year after year. Mission after mission. Bleeding me dry of strength and loyalty while he built the infrastructure for humanity's destruction.
He'd see the footage, and he'd see a C-Rank teenager with unusual abilities and a mysterious class. Not an immediate threat. Not a priority target. But something to watch. Something to file away.
If he decided I was useful, he'd send recruiters.
If he decided I was dangerous, he'd send something else.
I resumed walking. Faster now.
I reached the apartment building at 4:47 PM. The stairwell smelled like miso soup and old carpet—Mrs. Nakamura was cooking dinner early. Normal sounds. Normal smells. Normal life.
It felt like walking into a photograph of a world that didn't exist anymore.
I stopped at the door. Reached for my key. And then I heard it—the television, playing inside our apartment. Loud enough to hear through the thin walls.
"—extraordinary footage from the Hunter Assessment Center in Shinjuku, where a rogue Gate manifestation during the Awakening Ceremony led to a violent confrontation with hostile entities. Fourteen casualties have been confirmed, with over forty wounded. However, officials say the death toll would have been significantly higher if not for the actions of a single teenage participant who engaged the creatures before professional Hunters could arrive—"
I closed my eyes.
She'd seen it. Of course she'd seen it. Hana watched the news like other kids watched anime—obsessively, analytically, with a running commentary on everything the anchors got wrong.
I opened the door.
Hana was standing in the middle of the living room, facing the television. She wasn't sitting. Wasn't casual. She was standing the way people stand when they've received news that doesn't fit inside their understanding of reality—rigid, arms at her sides, fingers curled into loose fists.
On the screen, the grainy security footage was playing. A figure in a white shirt, flickering between goblins, blade rising and falling with mechanical precision.
Me.
Hana turned around.
Her face did something I'd never seen before—not in either timeline. It cycled through emotions so fast I could barely track them. Relief. Fury. Confusion. Fear. More fury.
She settled on fury.
"YOU IDIOT!"
The volume of her scream could have registered on seismic equipment. I flinched—not because I was afraid of a thirteen-year-old girl, but because the raw emotion in her voice hit me like a physical blow.
"Hana—"
"YOU ABSOLUTE IDIOT! YOU COULD HAVE DIED! YOU—" Her voice cracked. The fury fractured, and beneath it was the thing she was really feeling. Terror. Pure, unprocessed terror. "They said fourteen people died. Fourteen. And you were IN THERE. Fighting MONSTERS. With your BARE HANDS."
"I had a sword, actually—"
"DON'T JOKE! DON'T YOU DARE JOKE RIGHT NOW, RYU!"
She never called me Ryu. It was always Onii-chan. The name hit like a slap.
I stood in the doorway and let her rage. She needed this. Needed to expel the fear through anger because that was how Hana processed emotion—she'd always been like that. Fury first, understanding later. It was one of the things I loved about her.
One of the many things I'd failed to appreciate the first time around.
"I'm okay," I said quietly, after her shouting had subsided into harsh breathing. "I'm here. I'm okay."
"You're not okay." She pointed at my bandages, visible where the government-issue shirt gaped at the collar. "You're hurt. You're bleeding. You fought monsters at a ceremony that was supposed to be safe, and the news is saying—" She grabbed the remote and rewound the footage. "Look. LOOK at this."
She paused on a frame. The quality was terrible, but it clearly showed a figure—me—Void Stepping across the chamber. One frame I was in one location. The next frame I was five meters away. No motion blur. No transition. Just... there, and then somewhere else.
"That's not normal," Hana said, her voice dropping to something barely above a whisper. "That's not adrenaline. That's not survival instinct. That's not anything they teach in online videos."
She turned to face me fully. Her brown eyes—our mother's eyes—were red-rimmed but dry. She'd cried already, probably while watching the broadcast before I got home. The tears were spent. What remained was the analytical mind that would get her into Tokyo University at sixteen.
"How did you do that, Onii-chan?"
The question I couldn't answer.
I walked into the apartment and closed the door behind me. Took off my shoes. Set them neatly on the rack. Ordinary movements. Routine gestures. Anything to buy seconds.
"I awakened," I said. "During the incident. C-Rank. They said it might explain the—"
"Don't."
I stopped.
"Don't lie to me." Her voice was steady now. Quiet and sharp and older than thirteen. "I know what C-Rank awakening looks like. I've researched it. C-Rank Hunters can enhance their physical abilities slightly, maybe manifest a weak elemental affinity. They can NOT teleport across rooms. They can NOT fight like trained soldiers. They can NOT—" She grabbed the remote again and found a different segment, "—channel energy from an Awakening Stone into a Gate to close it. That's not C-Rank. That's not even S-Rank. Nobody does that."
I had no answer. Every lie I could construct, she'd demolish. Every excuse, she'd dissect. This was Hana—the girl who could read people like open books. The girl who saw patterns where others saw chaos.
And she was looking at me the way she'd look at a problem she was determined to solve.
"Onii-chan." She stepped closer. "Your eyes."
"What about them?"
"They're different. The color around your irises—it's darker. It wasn't like that this morning."
The corruption. She could see the corruption's physical manifestation.
"And on the footage—" she was talking faster now, the words tumbling out as her mind connected dots, "—there are moments where your eyes look red. Not reflected light. Not the Gate's glow. Red. From inside."
I stood very still. The system interface pulsed in my peripheral vision, silent and watchful.
"Ryu." She used my name again. "What happened to you?"
The truth pressed against the inside of my teeth like a living thing. I wanted to tell her. God, I wanted to tell her everything—the regression, the Void System, the Cataclysm, the ten years of hell that I carried inside this teenage body. I wanted to show her the system interface and explain the corruption meter and tell her about Akira and Erebus and the seven traitors and the 3,655 days we had left.
But I couldn't.
Not because she wouldn't believe me—Hana would believe me if the evidence supported it, and the evidence was literally written on my body.
But because knowing would put her in danger. If Akira or the Bureau or anyone else suspected that a thirteen-year-old girl had information about regression and Void Systems and future apocalypses, they would come for her. And I couldn't protect her. Not yet. Not at Level 4 with a body held together by bandages and stubbornness.
Keeping her in the dark was a cruelty. I knew that. But it was a cruelty born from love, and I'd make the same choice a thousand times.
"Something happened during the ceremony," I said carefully. "Something I don't fully understand yet. My awakening was... unusual. The Association is looking into it."
"That's not an answer."
"I know."
"Ryu—"
"I know." I crossed the room and knelt in front of her, taking her hands. They were small and cold and trembling slightly. "Hana, listen to me. I can't explain everything right now. Not because I don't want to, but because I don't have all the answers yet. What I can tell you is this: whatever is happening to me, I'm going to figure it out. And I'm going to be careful. And I'm not going anywhere."
She searched my face. Looking for the lie. Looking for the tell.
"You promise?" she whispered.
"I promise."
It was a promise I might not be able to keep. But I'd die trying.
She pulled her hands free and punched me in the shoulder. Hard enough to sting, not hard enough to aggravate the wounds.
"If you ever scare me like that again, I will kill you myself." She turned and walked toward the kitchen. "I'm making dinner. You're eating it. All of it. Even the vegetables."
"Hana—"
"ALL. The vegetables."
Something warm and painful expanded in my chest. A feeling I'd almost forgotten existed.
Home. This was what home felt like.
Dinner was rice, grilled fish, and enough vegetables to feed a small army. Hana cooked with the aggressive competence of someone channeling emotional turmoil into culinary productivity. Every chop of the knife was a little too forceful. Every stir of the pot was a little too vigorous.
I sat at the kitchen table and watched her, and I ate everything she put in front of me without complaint, and for thirty minutes, the world shrank to the size of our tiny kitchen and nothing else existed.
No Cataclysm. No corruption. No Akira. No Void.
Just a brother and sister sharing a meal in a small apartment in Tokyo.
It couldn't last. It never did.
After dinner, while Hana washed dishes with the focused intensity of someone who was definitely not still processing fear and anger, I retreated to my room and sat on the bed with the door closed.
Time to allocate resources.
Three skill points. Each one could be used to unlock a new skill from the Void System's skill tree or upgrade an existing skill by one rank. The decision was critical—every point invested was a point that couldn't be spent elsewhere, and at my current level, each individual skill had an outsized impact on my combat capability.
In the original timeline, I'd been a Fire/Enhancement dual class. My fighting style had been straightforward—enhance physical stats, set everything on fire, overwhelm with raw power. It worked because I had the mana reserves and raw stats to back it up.
But the Void Sovereign class was different. My skills focused on spatial manipulation, darkness, and the undefined energy the system called "Void." These abilities were subtle. Precise. The kind of tools that rewarded intelligence and creativity over brute force.
Which meant I needed to build smart, not strong.
I opened the skill tree.
Three points. Seven options. I needed the combination that maximized survival and versatility while supporting my long-term strategy of hidden growth.
Shadow Blade was tempting—having a weapon I could manifest at will meant never being unarmed. But at Rank F, the damage would be modest, and I'd be better served by acquiring a physical weapon that didn't cost MP to maintain.
Void Anchor was tactical gold. Mark a location, teleport back to it within thirty seconds. The applications were endless—escape routes, ambush setups, repositioning during combat. Combined with Void Step, it would make me one of the most mobile fighters in my rank bracket.
Dark Shroud was pure stealth. Essential for someone trying to operate in the shadows. Combined with Presence Suppression, it would make me very difficult to detect or track.
Mana Thread was a utility skill with deceptive depth. Detection, tripwires, binding—the threads were tools, and tools were only limited by the creativity of the user. In my previous life, I'd seen a B-Rank Hunter with a similar ability use mana threads to control an entire battlefield.
Void Sense was arguably the most valuable. Passive awareness of threats, hidden enemies, spatial distortions—it was an always-on danger sense. If I'd had it at the ceremony, I would have detected the Gate forming much earlier.
Presence Suppression upgrade was practical. Increasing my mana concealment from 15% to 35% would make it significantly harder for people like Hayashi to detect my true power level.
After fifteen minutes of deliberation, I made my choices.
Skill Point 1: Void Sense. Passive protection. Never be caught off guard again.
Skill Point 2: Dark Shroud. Active stealth. Disappear when I need to.
Skill Point 3: Presence Suppression upgrade (F → E). Deeper concealment. The foundation of my entire strategy.
A stealth-oriented build. The opposite of my original timeline's approach. Instead of the blazing inferno that everyone saw coming, I was becoming the shadow that nobody noticed until it was too late.
It felt right. It felt like the kind of Hunter I should have been the first time—not a weapon of mass destruction, but a precision instrument.
A scalpel, not a bomb.
My phone buzzed.
Then buzzed again. And again. And again.
I picked it up and found seventeen missed calls from unknown numbers, forty-three text messages from classmates I barely remembered, and twelve emails from addresses I didn't recognize.
The missed calls were likely guild recruiters. C-Rank awakenings with rare classes were valuable commodities in the Hunter economy, and guilds had entire departments dedicated to identifying and recruiting promising newcomers. In the original timeline, my S-Rank awakening had attracted every major guild in Asia within twenty-four hours.
C-Rank was less dramatic, but the unusual circumstances—the Gate fight, the Stone channeling, the mysterious class—would amplify interest. I was a story, not just a statistic.
The text messages were variations of "OMG I saw the news, was that you?!" and "Dude, are you alive?!" from classmates whose names I'd forgotten in the original timeline. I ignored them.
The emails were more concerning. I scanned the subject lines:
"Crimson Vanguard Guild — Recruitment Interest"
"Silver Phoenix Welcomes New Hunters — C-Rank Signing Bonus"
"Iron Bastion Defense Force — Elite Training Program Invitation"
"URGENT: Interview Request — Tokyo News Network"
"Re: Assessment Center Incident — Association Follow-Up Required"
The first email. Crimson Vanguard. Akira's guild.
My hand tightened around the phone until the screen protested with a faint creak.
He was already reaching out. Already extending that golden hand. Already beginning the process of identifying, evaluating, and potentially acquiring the unusual teenager from the Assessment Center footage.
In the original timeline, this was how it started. A recruitment email. Then a phone call. Then a personal visit from a guild representative. Then a meeting with the great Akira Kurogane himself—charming, generous, overwhelming in his attention and warmth.
And then the trap closed.
I deleted the email without opening it. Then I blocked the sender address.
It wouldn't stop Akira. Nothing that simple would stop Akira. But it was a statement of intent, even if no one but me could hear it.
You will not have me again. Not in this life.
The other guild emails I flagged for later review. Some of these organizations were legitimate—good people doing honest work in a deadly profession. In the original timeline, I'd dismissed them all because Akira had gotten to me first. This time, I had the luxury of choice.
But not tonight. Tonight, I was exhausted and wounded and carrying a corruption level that pulsed behind my eyes like a second heartbeat.
I set the phone on my desk, face down, and lay back on my bed.
The ceiling had fourteen cracks. I'd counted them last night. Now, in the dim light filtering through my curtains, I counted them again.
Fourteen.
Same as yesterday.
Some things, at least, hadn't changed.
Sleep came in fragments. Jagged, uneven pieces of unconsciousness interrupted by flashes of memory that weren't quite dreams and weren't quite nightmares.
I saw Kaito burning.
I saw Mira's face as the tentacle punched through her chest.
I saw Hana's student ID, blood-smeared and cracked, lying in a pile of rubble that used to be a shelter.
I saw Akira's smile. Golden. Warm. The smile of a man who'd just driven a sword through my heart.
And then I saw something new.
A void. Not darkness—darkness implied the absence of light, and this was the absence of everything. No up, no down, no distance, no time. A nothing so complete that existence itself felt like an insult to it.
And in that nothing, a presence.
Erebus.
Not a voice. Not a shape. Just... awareness. The knowledge that I was being observed by something that existed outside the boundaries of reality as I understood it.
It spoke. Not in words. In impressions. In feelings that translated themselves into meaning the way dreams translate emotion into image.
Amusement. The timeline fractures around you like glass beneath a hammer. You are the hammer, little sovereign. Every step you take sends cracks racing in directions you cannot predict.
I tried to respond. Tried to push back. Tried to demand answers—what are you, why me, what do you want.
Patience. Patience is the foundation of sovereignty. You will learn what I am when you are ready to understand it. For now, focus on what you are becoming.
What I'm becoming?
The corruption grows. You feel it. The darkness behind your eyes. The cold efficiency that makes calculation easier and compassion harder. You chose to save those children today, and it cost you. The cost will increase. Every time you use what I have given you, the price rises.
How do I stop it?
You don't. You manage it. The bonds you hold—the sister, the friend, the allies you have yet to find—they are your anchors. They slow the tide. But they cannot stop it. Nothing can stop it.
Then what's the point? If I'm destined to lose myself—
Destiny is a word used by those who lack the will to choose. You are not destined for anything, Ryu Takahashi. You are positioned. What you do with that position is yours to decide.
But decide quickly. The clock does not pause for philosophical debate.
And the one who calls himself golden... he has already seen your face.
I woke up gasping. The clock on my desk read 3:17 AM. My shirt was soaked with sweat. The corruption counter pulsed at the edge of my vision: 28%. Unchanged.
But the feeling—that heaviness behind my eyes, that cold sharpness in my thoughts—was stronger than it had been before sleep.
He has already seen your face.
Akira. Erebus was confirming what I'd already suspected. Akira had watched the footage. Had studied it. Had filed the name "Ryu Takahashi" somewhere in that organized, ruthless mind.
The hunter was aware of his prey.
Which meant I needed to become something other than prey. Faster than I'd planned. More aggressively than I'd hoped.
I sat up in bed and pulled out the notebook from its hidden compartment. By the light of my phone, I began revising my timeline.
Original Plan: Maintain low profile for 6 months. Build power quietly. Avoid attention from major guilds and government agencies. Gradually reveal higher capabilities as cover story develops.
Revised Plan: Cover is compromised. Accelerate power development. Establish independent position within 3 months. Build network of allies who can provide protection and intelligence. Stay ahead of Akira's interest curve—be useful enough to ignore, not threatening enough to eliminate.
The balancing act was going to be excruciating. Too weak and I'd be dismissed as irrelevant—safe, but unable to influence events. Too strong and I'd be flagged as a threat by Akira, the Association, and every other power player in the game.
I needed to find the sweet spot. The exact level of prominence that made me visible enough to matter but not dangerous enough to warrant action against.
In martial arts, there was a concept called "riding the line"—maintaining your balance on the exact boundary between two extremes. Too far in either direction and you fell. But on the line itself, you were in perfect control.
I needed to ride the line for ten years.
While fighting monsters. While managing corruption. While keeping my sister alive. While preventing the literal end of the world.
No pressure.
I wrote until dawn, filling pages with plans and contingencies and backup contingencies for the contingencies. When the first light of morning crept through the curtains, I had a rough operational framework.
It wasn't enough. It was never enough. But it was a start.
I emerged from my room at 6:30 AM to find Hana already awake, dressed, and sitting at the kitchen table with her laptop open. The screen showed a news article with my face on it—a still frame from the security footage, blurry but recognizable.
She looked up at me. Her expression was carefully blank.
"They're calling you the 'Phantom of Chamber 12,'" she said. "It's trending."
Of course it was.
"Creative," I muttered, sitting down across from her.
"There are conspiracy theories already. Some people think you were a plant—a trained Hunter posing as a civilian to test the Assessment Center's security. Others think you're a government experiment. One thread on HunterWatch claims you're an alien."
"An alien. That's new."
"The most popular theory is that you're a latent S-Rank whose power partially manifested during the crisis, and your C-Rank reading was a measurement error."
That one was uncomfortably close to the truth.
"What do you think?" I asked.
Hana closed her laptop. Slowly. Deliberately. The way she did everything when she was about to say something she'd spent a long time thinking about.
"I think my brother went to the Awakening Ceremony as a normal sixteen-year-old boy and came back as something else. I think whatever happened in that chamber changed you—or revealed something that was already there. I think you're hiding something important, and I think you have reasons for hiding it that you believe are good enough to justify lying to the only family you have left."
Each sentence landed like a hammer blow. Precise. Measured. Devastating.
"And I think," she continued, her voice steady, "that I'm going to trust you. Not because I believe your explanations—I don't. But because you're my brother, and you came home alive, and right now that's enough."
She opened her laptop again.
"But Onii-chan?"
"Yeah?"
"If you get yourself killed keeping secrets from me, I will find a way to bring you back just so I can kill you again."
Despite everything—the corruption, the exhaustion, the weight of two lifetimes pressing down on me—I laughed. It was a broken, ragged sound, but it was genuine.
"Deal," I said.
She almost smiled.
The morning light fell across the kitchen table, catching the steam rising from the tea Hana had made, and for a single, crystalline moment, everything was perfect.
Then my phone rang.
I looked at the screen. Unknown number. But the area code was one I recognized—Association headquarters, Chiyoda district.
I answered.
"Ryu Takahashi?" A woman's voice. Professional. Clipped.
"Speaking."
"This is Coordinator Tanaka from the Hunter Association's Recruitment Division. We'd like to schedule a meeting with you at your earliest convenience to discuss your classification results and potential placement opportunities."
"When?"
"Today, if possible. We have a slot available at 2:00 PM."
I glanced at Hana. She was watching me with those sharp brown eyes, not even pretending she wasn't listening.
"I'll be there," I said.
"Excellent. Report to the Association's Tokyo Branch, Building A, Floor 12. Bring your identification and your awakening registration card."
"Understood."
The call ended.
Hana raised an eyebrow.
"Association meeting," I said. "Probably standard stuff. Classification paperwork."
"Probably," she agreed, in a tone that made clear she didn't believe it for a second. "Want me to come?"
"No. Stay home. Study for your exams."
"You're going to a government building alone, the day after you nearly died in a government building."
"I'll be fine."
"You always say that."
"And I'm always right."
"You literally have bandages on right now, Onii-chan."
I didn't have a comeback for that. She knew it. The corner of her mouth twitched—not quite a smile, but close enough.
"Be careful," she said.
"Always."
I finished my tea, grabbed my jacket, and walked to the door. Behind me, I could hear Hana opening her laptop again, probably to track every public data point about the Association meeting schedule and cross-reference it with my stated reason for going.
She was going to figure everything out eventually. She was too smart not to. The question was whether I could build enough power to protect her before that happened.
I stepped outside. The morning air was cool against my face. The city was waking up around me—trains rumbling, shops opening, people beginning their ordinary days in a world that was slowly, invisibly, cracking apart.
Three thousand, six hundred and fifty-five days until the end of everything.
And somewhere in this city, behind the glass walls of the most prestigious guild in Japan, Akira Kurogane was watching footage of a sixteen-year-old boy who moved like a ghost and fought like a demon and closed a Gate with his bare hands.
I could almost feel his interest. A pressure against my skin. The attention of a predator who'd spotted something unusual in the herd.
I pulled up my collar and walked toward the train station.
The game was accelerating.
And I was nowhere near ready.
But readiness was a luxury. Action was a necessity.
One step at a time. One day at a time. One life saved at a time.
Until the clock ran out, or until I stopped it.
[Day 3 of 3,657] [Corruption: 28%] [Lives Saved: 286] [Lives Lost: 14] [Public Profile: RISING] [Akira Kurogane Awareness: CONFIRMED] [Emotional Anchor (Hana): STABLE — Trust strained but intact] [The ripples spread, Void Sovereign.] [Every action has consequences.] [Every consequence has weight.] [How much can you carry before you break?]
[END OF CHAPTER 4]