[Reset complete]
[Detected: Same skill in existence. Effect calculated.]
[New ruling required. Adjusting skill parameters.]
[Ruling added: Not affected.]
"Pa..."
"Papa, why did you make mama cry?"
"What?!"
Rowan jolted awake with a shout, his chest heaving as his breath came in ragged bursts.
The memories rushed through him all at once, so painful it felt like his skull was being cracked open from the inside.
The war, the deaths, the end of the world, all of it flashed through his mind not in sequence but simultaneously, every moment existing at once since time was no longer in sync with him.
"Ah, AH!!!"
He screamed, nearly retching, blood dripping from his nose as he crumpled to the floor. His vision swam, everything too bright and too blurred to make out, his balance gone completely.
And then it all stopped.
"Huff... Huff..."
He slowly regained his senses as the ringing in his ears faded and the voices around him filtered back in.
"Ro... Rowan!"
A man's voice cut through the noise as his consciousness snapped back. Someone was in front of him. A middle aged man in a black suit, two badges on his lapel, a USA insignia on one side and a sniper scope crossed with a knife on the other.
Rowan recognized those badges.
'Hunter Association? But it got destroyed years ago!'
He shook his head and looked at the man properly.
He knew this face. A coworker. What was his name again?
The details of his past life had gone foggy, worn thin by years of new faces and new deaths layered on top of them.
"Mister Rowan! Mister Dan! What are you two making a scene for?! Get back to work!"
"Yes ma'am!" Dan bowed his head in apology and shot Rowan a sideways glance, signaling him to do the same.
Rowan didn't move. The last time he had bowed to anyone wasn't something he could even place anymore.
"Hmph! You dare look up at me like that? Just because you awakened doesn't mean you're better than the rest of us. In here, I'm your BOSS!!"
The floor manager walked up and jabbed her pen into his chest.
The sight of them jolted something awoke.
He knew this woman. The manager of his old workplace.
Ohio State Hunter Association Headquarters.
And the man standing beside him, still wincing from secondhand embarrassment, was Dan.
His old best coworker.
"That idiot's starting trouble again."
"Remember the last new year party? He acted so proud winning the game, and he's an awakened one."
"I heard the only reason he works here is because of his mama. Should be out serving his country instead. Coward."
Whispers rippled across the floor as people leaned toward each other with barely concealed grins, glad to have something to break up the day.
Being the only awakened person on the floor made him a convenient target, especially for people who spent all day drowning in paperwork about people like him.
"Are you out of your mind? Just apologize or she'll bury you in overnight work." Dan hissed at his side, trying to nudge him into reason.
Rowan ignored him and walked straight toward the floor manager, eyes forward.
"I quit. Here's my card. Call me when the documents are ready."
He pressed his Federal Employee ID card onto the desk and walked past her.
"Wait, you think you can just walk away like that?! I'll report you for abandonment of post!"
The floor manager grabbed his shoulder, furious.
"Go ahead. I dare you."
Rowan didn't flinch. Because even though most of his memories from this life had gone foggy, one thing he remembered clearly was that hunters were treated as first class citizens.
They were the ones keeping the peace, keeping the gates contained, keeping people like her alive to yell at office workers.
In a courtroom filled with jurors who lived near dungeon gates and had survived disasters firsthand, who did she think they would side with?
"You, you!!"
"Calm down. You don't want that blood pressure medication going to waste, do you?"
He brushed her hand off his shoulder and stopped at the office door, remembering one last thing.
"Dan. Does the hunter exam have any open slots right now?"
Since they both worked in what amounted to the HR office for registered hunters, Dan had access to the scheduling system.
"Wait, let me check." Dan pulled up the board. "There's a fast track slot opening in ten minutes."
"Thanks."
Rowan waved without looking back and walked out to the elevator.
But before the doors closed, a hand shot through the gap followed by a sharp sound.
"Ouch!"
The elevator bit Dan's hand before releasing. He shook it off and squeezed inside, slightly out of breath.
Rowan looked at him.
"What is going on with you?" Dan said, catching his breath. "First you suddenly scream like a dying pig, and now you just quit your job."
Dan had worked alongside Rowan for an entire year.
The last two survivors of their intake, everyone else from that batch had either transferred out or quit, leaving just the two of them.
"Now you're going to become a hunter and you couldn't even give me a heads up? I have to find a new work partner now, hell, maybe even a new job the way things are looking." He looked genuinely put out.
Going back into that office alone, without the one person who made the wolf den bearable, wasn't something he had prepared for this morning.
Rowan considered it. "Sorry. Something urgent came up."
Not entirely a lie.
"Is it money?." Dan sighed and leaned against the elevator wall as the floor numbers ticked down, staring up at the light above the doors. "Cancer, right? My mom has it too. That's why I'm here, pushing paper in a federal building instead of doing something else."
"Oh." Rowan never knew. "You never told me that before."
Whether he had forgotten or Dan had simply never said it, he couldn't be sure.
Because he remembered that around a year from now the intensity of the gates would spike hard enough that every awakened person got conscripted, and they never got to even say goodbye.
"Well, it's not exactly good small talk, is it?" Dan let out a short laugh. "And honestly I don't know much about your family either. Except about your father."
A year as partners and they had never talked about anything beyond work and sports scores.
"Yeah." Rowan sighed.
The elevator doors opened into a busy floor, people dressed in the casual warrior style that had become normal since the gates opened, street clothes layered with armor plating that looked pulled straight out of a fantasy novel.
'It's been so long since I saw this many people.'
Rowan couldn't contain a small smile.
Then he remembered that he didn't remember.
"Hey Dan, which way is the testing room?"
"Really?" Dan stared at him for a moment, then shook his head and led the way anyway.
With his trust placed on Dan direction, Rowan used the time to open his status window to check his current situation.
--
[Status]
Level: 1
Class: Assassin (E) / Soul Reaper (Tier 2, SSS)
[Stats]
Strength: 1
Agility: 1
Vitality: 1
Dexterity: 1
Magic: 1
Status Points: 5
--
'Damn. I forgot how weak I was!'
His stats were nothing short of abysmal.
But it was to be expected. At level 1 everyone started with 1 across the board.
Stats worked as a multiplier rather than a fixed value. A physically strong man with 2 in Strength could hit harder than a scrawny one with 5.
The floor manager might have looked like a joke, but the government wasn't.
Ten years of research had produced a standardized training program adopted widely across the military, and that foundation was a large part of why humanity hadn't collapsed after all the gates rapidly opened.
Still, locking himself into military structure was too rigid for what he needed now.
He needed room to move, room to grow on his own terms and his own schedule.
And the ticket to that freedom was a hunter permit!