"It's been reported that a new dungeon has opened in South Korea early yesterday morning that so far appears to be above A-rank in danger and warranted anxiety from all in Seoul-"
"Can you turn that off?" I asked, leaning forward from the back seat to clutch on the side of the driver's seat. "That's been on the news for too long and I'm tired of listening to it."
"This news just came out this morning." Reed was incredulous while glancing up and back in the rearview mirror towards me. "Just let me listen to it for a bit. Put your headphones in or something."
I'd been about to counter his point, but decided to keep my mouth shut. Yeah, for civilians, that news only broke about thirty minutes ago or so. But for me, it'd been hours - because no one clearly had anything better to do from midnight till morning - of getting message after message on the message board of the company, people pinging each other back and forth about what South Korea would do if it really was above A-rank. They only had A-ranks in their country, so it was likely that they were going to call on hunters from other countries to help them.
That was the overall consensus that some people came to, at least.
It makes sense, I thought, digging around in the backpack at my feet and grabbing for my headphones case, fumbling around. Grabbing what felt like it, pulling it out, then shoving it right back in while glancing through my hair to see if Drake had seen. But my cousin, for once, wasn't playing games or watching videos on his phone, instead passed the heck out against the window with his mouth open. But they're better off either reevaluating all of their current hunters to see if any of them became S-rank or if they have more A-ranks since the new year, or playing a numbers game with what A-ranks they do have and seeing how they'd fare without assistance first.
Reed pulled up to a stoplight as I finally did grab my wireless head phone case while making sure my buzzer stayed deep in my bag. No, no one would've recognized it, seeing how I was just a low-rank nobody in the company that only did patrols during the night when curfew took up quite a bit of the time, but still. Paranoia had kept me alive through every adversity that'd threatened my life, and kept it together when it was threatened.
"-a statement from the chairman whose guild members were responsible for the discovery of this dungeon, the Frozen Land guild-"
My headphones connected and began to play. I wasn't too worried about what was going to be said next or missing it. It was just the watered-down version of what I'd already heard anyway.
So I closed my eyes and leaned against the window, turning off my passive listening skill and trying to fade out a little myself. My head hurt pretty badly after staying up too late doing econ. But well, at least my A would stand strong in that class.
And today, after school, I'll go to club. And afterwards, straight to the company, so I can get this weekly check-in crap over with and then hit the hay.
It'd not been the roughest week I'd ever seen, but sleep was precious to me. Four hours was not optimal. Friday night would not exist for me, and Saturday morning would not see me until it was the afternoon.
But even I knew what that feeling was when Reed finally pulled to a stop that wasn't a stoplight, and killed the engine. I had to push up my glasses to rub my eyes and get the sleep out of them that had tried to pull some welcome, last-minute wool down, before popping the headphones out and putting them away. Sadly, I was not about to win myself points with Mr. Landon if I tried to go through the gate breaking school policy, and I very much aimed to be on everyone's good side by the time I graduated. No one was allowed to have anything bad to say about me even when the teachers gossiped in their lounge or in classrooms at lunch when they thought closed doors and a floor between us could stop me from hearing.
So I worked a little hard to massage feeling back into my face, pulling my grayish bag on my back, smoothing out the skirt I'd chosen that day so it was just above my knees, and combing my hair where it'd been smashed against the window. I'd taken the braids out so the short waves could drift just above my shoulders and keep me from looking too much like a preschooler with my dark brown bangs just above my glasses. Drake startled awake when his sister knocked rapidly on his window, having slid out of the passenger seat up front and mercilessly rapped her knuckles on it. Reed locked the car behind us while slipping through the parking lot, cars moving a bit too fast and desperate to make sure their kid made it on time.
"Morning, Mr. Landon," I said, bothering to give him a bit of a smile while walking inside.
"Good morning, Miss Bell," he returned with a loud and gruff voice, hands folded over each other like a body guard while standing between the two open gates. He towered over the awkward thirteen and fourteen-year-olds that looked down at their phones or cackled together while walking through, and I looked past to my first class of the day while wondering if we had enough time for breakfast.
"Brooke, do you think you could come out even five minutes earlier next time so we could hope to get breakfast one of these days?" I asked, looking up from my watch and sacrificing any thoughts to go to the mess hall. Obviously, if I didn't care who was looking, I could walk out with a few muffins. But there were too many people, too many cameras, and it was daytime. Heck no I wasn't abusing my skills just to fill my stomach, however tempting it would be when starving through APUSH and chemistry in the morning.
"Sorry," my other cousin sighed, fixing her blonde and walking past me without much acknowledgement. "Drake didn't want to get up this morning. Blame him, not me."
So I could sigh as Drake trudged on after having broken off with us to go be with some of his friends, heading to first period together. Reed didn't even look at me while staring down at his phone and walking past, so I smacked his arm.
"Ow!" He turned on me, glancing up and down to see who dared to distract him from running into a pole. "What the heck, Cade?"
"Stop walking and looking down at your phone." Then I pointed to the pole, which he glanced at and sidestepped, shaking his head at me but putting it away. "You're welcome!"
"Goody two shoes!"
I didn't say anything back while slipping into first period. They had three minutes till class started, so I didn't know what they were dragging their feet for. "Good morning, Mr. Benson."
"Good morning, Miss," the old teacher glanced up over his glasses to see me strolling in, then back towards his computer as he kept taking attendance. "Happy Friday, everyone."
"Happy Friday!" Mike yelled out in the first row, clapping hands with people around. "Get me out of here."
"Don't be that way, Mike. The school year's barely three weeks in," I shrugged while slipping stuff out of my bag and putting it down on the desk, then slipping my bag along the back of the chair to sit down next to him. I wasn't in the best of moods because of my four hours of sleep, but it wasn't the worst. "If you keep talking like we're close to the end, I might just cry."
Three weeks in and I already felt like I'd been grinding for five months. The idea that econ was only just getting started and I was struggling so badly already...
Yeah, I might just cry.
Mike looked back at me, saw me settle in, then turned back to his friends and kept talking with them. It appeared the statement I made wasn't relatable enough to include me in the fun.
I opened my notebook and reviewed the notes I'd managed to take in the library before club started, looking down the pink vocab words and the pencil definitions beside.
"Hey, do you think I could take a picture of that? I was really busy this week, and I'm really suffering in this class...I just want to study it really quick before the quiz."
Someone leaned forward behind me to ask such a nauseating question to my back. I ignored it for a few seconds, pretending to be the deeply invested goody two shoes that I was, finger trailing down the page. Glancing down at my watch discreetly to see how much time was left.
Good, I felt my mouth twitch a little, but with a bowl cut, it was harder for people to look past the curtain and see my expressions sometimes.
"Hey, Cade-"
The person behind me nudged my shoulder again. Annoyed but trying my best not to show it, I turned around long enough to say, "Could you leave me be? I'm trying to study. Thanks."
But before I could turn around, she caught me. "I know, and I was wondering if I could just take a picture of your notes so I could study a little too."
"There's no point-" There's no way in hell you're copying my notes no matter how busy you are. Do it yourself. "-since the quiz is literally in thirty seconds."
"But he administers it at the end of class-"
I flipped my notebook closed after one last glance, sliding it off and dropping it at my feet. "That's for chapter quizzes. This is a unit quiz. It's at the beginning of class. He told us about how the class works at the beginning of the semester. Don't you remember?"
"No," my classmate swallowed, sitting back in her chair after having been leaned forward. "I didn't. But there was no need for you to be so rude about it."
"I wasn't rude, I was trying to study myself. They're my notes," I shrugged like it really was just her fault - because it was - and turned around in my chair. "And it's not like you're going to memorize everything for a fifty point quiz in three minutes."
"Okay, my gosh, sorry," she sat back as Mr. Field closed the door and the bell finally rang. It irked me that she took such a tone like I was such a horrible person. My stomach let me know how displeased it was with my quick dinner the night prior and I knew it wasn't about to be a good first period at all. "I was just asking."
And the answer will always be no.
First period started off on an awkward foot like that. It was quickly quiet though when Mr. Field slapped down the quizzes in the back row and they were quickly passed to the front. "Put your name and date down, first thing. I'm not going to shift through a hundred and fifty quizzes just to see whose is whose, and you don't want to get a zero on your first unit quiz, I guarantee you."
The quiz came sliding from Mike and I stopped it before it almost went over the edge of the desk. I slid a little frown over at him, but he was already scribbling away and taking advantage of the time to show how little he'd studied, staring at a blank page. He put his left elbow down on the desk and casually stared at his right hand with the pencil in it, towards my quiz not that far away.
Are you kidding me?
I sighed while looking up at the presidents over the white board in front of me. It was too early in the morning for nonsense.
[Activating Title [[Child of Darkness]]]
"Huh?" Mike sat up a little, confused as to why it was suddenly so hard for him to notice me there while putting my left arm along the page and starting to scribble down answers. He rubbed his eyes and blinked over at me before blinking down at his page, thinking he was just seeing things. You'd better.
"Alright, time's up. Start passing them down the rows and back. Stop writing, Sylvia."
Sylvia was still scratching away at the quiz behind me as I canceled my passive spell and passed my quiz back through her hands. She glanced at all of the answers on the front page and groan before sending it and hers back to the guy behind her.
I sighed, crossing my arms and dropping my pencil to stare back up at the presidents. Andrew Jackson was looking particularly scornful that day, and I hoped it was down at Sylvia instead of me for once. He looked the way I felt, at least.
And I felt that way till first break, popping out of the other side of AP chemistry at ten in the morning and wondering why such a class existed, sliding into the sunlight and then booking it for the cafeteria. Only after having secured a muffin - blueberry, which wasn't bad, but I could've done better - and walked over to my friends standing around our usual wooden bench did I start to exist a little happier than before.
"-send Alexander Cross, obviously. He's S-rank."
My eyes went up to the sky while just trying to enjoy my muffin. "Savannah. It's too early in the morning for this."
Savannah turned on me while wiping her mouth. "No it's not, it's ten already. And why do you hate talking about stuff with dungeons so much again? I know you keep up with the news, because you always have a lot more to say about it than me."
My side glance to her looked a little too dead for a little too long. Her brows went up, challenging me. So I looked away and pulled out my phone instead, turning to the side of the bench so she'd pay attention to Nita instead and they could go at it. It'd be my first time checking my notifications too, and I was on the lookout for acknowledgement that my report was received.
What?
I frowned at the email's headline, watching it trail off in a way I didn't want it to. Suspiciously not the way it usually did. I swallowed my muffin a bit dryly, looking through the other notifications and making sure none of them were fairly significant before sliding them away.
"But obviously neither of them can go. Cross is dealing with an A-rank dungeon in England right now, and Deion Evans has to stay in the states. He's also just barely an S-rank as of the last eval in July, and I don't think his guild would send him over just to die. America's out of the helping game when it comes to S-ranks, and Korea's got plenty of A-ranks. What's the point in us sending ours?"
"But there's probably a lot of economic stuff at play too, besides politics. We're really good partners with Korea on stuff, right? Wouldn't we help them out to maintain good relations? It's not like the US has a lot of allies these days."
"And what do you know about the economy, to say we'd hop in and kill a new national treasure for a small country with nothing but problems?"
"Nothing. I'm seventeen years old."
"Exactly."
I finally had to roll my eyes and turn back to look at the both of them, only to find them both staring at me. "What?"
"What do you mean, what? We're looking at you."
"Yeah, I know, and for what? I'm not interested in this topic."
They exchanged a look. I knew it was better than an eyeroll, but still. I clicked my phone off and decided to check the email at lunch when I had more time and less expectations for my attention. Nita and Savannah would end up dragging me into it one way or another, and all I had to do was last seven minutes until the bell rang.
"America will send someone."
"Who?"
"How do you know that?"
I looked up to the sky again, then down at my muffin. Savannah snatched it out of my hand before I could look down, and I turned on her with wide eyes. "Answer first, then you can eat."
"So...rude."
Nita stood up and got in front of me, folding her arms and enforcing the ban. "Please, class valedictorian, just answer. We want the scoop on things no one else would say, because you're typically right."
"For one, I'm not valedictorian-"
"But you will be."
"-and for another, I'm not typically right."
"Yes," Nita glanced up at the sky as well as if to ask God why I was delaying, the golden rosary around her neck pulling up a little out of her shirt. "You are. You were right about the robberies at Spear Mint and downtown, you were right about HIRO losing all of those heroes to HUNTR. You were right, Cade, and now we need you to be right again. Now, tell us. What's going to happen to deal with the possible S-rank in Korea, the likes of which we've only ever seen once before?"
When the world first fell down.
"..."
A flash of blue and violet overtook my gaze for a moment, covering Nita's face. But I blinked the memory away before it could stir up things within me, rubbing my forehead for a few moments and trying to give it just enough thought to maybe be true, but not enough to annoy me. I hated any talk of hunters, or hunters compared to heroes. Being a hero was so much easier and, though not as necessary, still a respectable thing in society.
There was no need to be anything like a hunter when my skills worked just fine elsewhere.
"The first time an S-rank dungeon opened, there was no such thing as an S-rank. There was barely even an A-rank, and at the time no one knew how skills and equipment worked. Sure, yeah, we had fantasy and imagination and stuff like that to supplement our knowledge. But it took a while of suffering and loss for all countries from a single dungeon before we finally got a hang of how to fight like a hunter and manage to close the dungeon. That took a party of five S-ranks, thirty-three A-ranks, and a hundred and fifty-six B-ranks, and most of them died. That was over twenty years ago now. There have only been dungeons of A-rank and below that have appeared since then, and now we have - all combined, internationally - twelve S-ranks, hundreds of A-ranks, and hundreds of thousands of B-ranks. Almost half of the S-ranks are either newly-minted like Deion Evans and won't be sent out until they've at least reached the six-month mark for a new rank, or are about to retire, like Kevin Chang."
I took a breath, counting on my fingers for a moment just how many exactly were available then for sending.
"Considering the rules - because countries are definitely going to take advantage of not sending their S-ranks if they can - the political conditions, and the seriousness of the situation, only eight S-ranks have the potential of going. And yes, it's going to get more serious. If it's really an S-rank, it's not just Korea's problem, it's everyone's problem. A single pandemic was enough to total the global economy for two years and have effects that last till today, and then an S-rank dungeon opening up not long after was enough to total the global economy even worse for far longer and we're still afraid of the idea of an 'S-rank dungeon.' Those that didn't learn from WWI," I shrugged, reaching out a hand for my muffin. "Did not do well during WWII."
"And?"
"And? Give me my muffin. I'm hungry."
"What's with the world war comparison? We won in the end."
"Point is, after WWI we got complacent and barely built up to fighting fit during WWII. Over the past twenty years, we've always known that another S-rank dungeon would open again someday, and we've been preparing for it as best we can and as best as fate would allow. Now, all we can do is hope that the world isn't stupid and renege on sending S-rank hunters when we could nip this in the bud early. The longer they hold out and disperse forces for some stupid reason or another, the higher the toll and the longer the fight."
"So basically," Nita held my muffin higher in the air from me after Savannah gave it to her. I had half a mind to snatch it out of her hand and take her down with me. "America will end up sending Deion Evans even though he's technically not eligible until January?"
"No, they won't send Evans. He's not ready."
"What? Then Alexander Cross?"
"It'd most likely be him, yeah."
"But he's caught up with a dungeon in England...and he just went in. It'll at least be another two weeks until they close it."
"The dungeon in Korea just barely appeared yesterday," I sighed, getting tired of their game. They were nice, but sometimes, they really did tick me off. "S-rank dungeons don't open so easily. It'll be at least another month until anything starts to poke out of there. You guys are all caught up on this stuff, but you don't know that?"
"Well not everyone gets into the weeds like you do, Cade. Why do you think we asked you? It's 'cause we don't know."
"Okay, sure. But you do know that an A-rank dungeon will appear, and it takes two weeks to open, right? That's why Cross is in England right now but he only just went in two days ago. That's how they gauge the strength of dungeons: as long as it takes to open is as long as it should take to close for someone of an equivalent rank."
"But wait," Savannah held her hand up to Nita who was starting to check her watch and feel bad as the time to eat my muffin ticked away. "Why do we need so many S-ranks for an S-rank dungeon then? Shouldn't it just be fine for one to go by that logic?"
It took me a few moments of keeping down my anger for me to look at Nita and warn her, if she didn't give my muffin then I'd actually be angry, and she did hand it over. Just holding it in my hand made me a bit less cross with them. "No. S-rank dungeons are different, just like S-rank hunters are different. And...it's more appropriate to say that the first dungeon that opened was SS-rank, since it took three months to open."
"So they're just unique? So strong there's no point in differentiating?"
"No, I wouldn't say that either-" I cut a glare at Savannah as she went to snatch my muffin, and I took an angry bite and chewed a bit. "If it's just an S-rank, a real S-rank dungeon and not the SS-rank that we just call an S-rank that occurred twenty years ago, that really would just take one or two S-ranks and a month to close it. The problem is if it does actually take three months to open: that would prove that this is one of the same strength as the one from twenty years ago, and then countries won't hesitate to offer up their S-ranks and get the job done. In fact, they may just start throwing anything at Korea to close it and 'stop WWII' before it starts, Kristallnacht, invasion of Poland and all."
"Is there such an enormous gap between S-rank and SS-rank?"
"Yep," I chewed again, looking down at my watch and wondering why they didn't just pull that stuff from online. I took a few more bites as they waited and bothered to look angry. "The difference between a D and a B, or 69.99 and 80 percent, is ten percent. The difference between a C and an A, or 79.99 and 90 percent, is ten percent. But the difference between F, E, D, etc., are all about ten percent, plus a few percent more. E is 110% of F. D is 115% of E. The jump from A to S is, for most people, astronomical. That's why most hunters save for a few every ten years will never become S-rank. It takes years of training, years of hunting, years of closing dungeons. It takes purposefully trying to go to the Olympics in order to get into the Olympics. Very, very few people are actually prodigal enough to just achieve it with ease. A-rank, yes, but S-rank is something different."
"Then the percent difference between A-rank and S-rank," Savannah pressed, looking down at her watch. "What is it?"
The bell rang. We stood up as I began to munch on the rest of my muffin quickly, but neatly, wiping my face while swiping up my bag. The gray thing flew on my shoulder as I thought for a few moments, licking my lips. I'd never really thought about it before until I had to explain it to them.
"Probably...200%."
Nita actually looked a bit dumbstruck at such a conclusion. "But is that taking into account that 110% of E is not the same as 110% of D? Because D is already stronger than E when taking 110% of both, but then raising it five percent is even more. So saying 115%, it's actually growing a lot faster than...isn't that an extremely exponential growth rate, when an F-rank as the lowest rank is already superhuman compared to humans?"
"It is. That's why countries treat their A-ranks like royalty. You said it yourself earlier, Savannah."
Balling up the wrapper of my muffin, I tossed it a good distance away straight into a trash can and kept walking with them.
"If you're strong enough, you become a treasure. And people will never, ever let you go or leave you alone once they find out what you can do for them. That's actually...probably, another reason why we have so few S-ranks in the world."
"Because they're afraid of being controlled?"
"Well, yes, that."
"And?"
"And..."
"Why go be a hero? Your talents are wasted there."
"Because it's my life. It's my choice, and I'm in middle school, and-and I don't want my parents to worry about me."
"Your strength is not your own. It's a gift, and you need to-"
"Don't tell me what to do!"
"Because?"
I'd stopped in front of the library, looking inside for a moment. It was empty in there. How nice it would've been to just be alone and not having them bugging me about nonsense all of our fifteen minute break. Maybe I'd go there next week and let them chatter about it by themselves without dragging me into it. I was known for just studying all the time anyway.
"Imagine being like a god," I said, looking longingly towards that empty library. How it called to me. "But instead of being the one making the rules, you're the one shackled by them. You're told what to exist for, how to exist, who you can and can't meet. You don't have a life. You don't have friends or family. You have work, guilt, and a commitment to people you'll never meet no matter how much you fight for them. You live in a cage and no one will ever take you out, because they're afraid of you."
"But they live like kings. If they didn't want to be S-ranks and get all the perks, they didn't have to say anything."
"Sure, some of them are definitely living lives that they wanted and fought for. They aren't restricted and can do whatever they want so long as they do what tasks are put in front of them. Some of them, like Cross, can even decide whether or not they'll take a job. A lot of them are in control, but others aren't so lucky. You never know where you'll end up on the spectrum of autonomy, because a lot of hunters don't have any. Now go on, and don't you dare bug me about this again at lunch. I don't like talking about this stuff just because I know about it, and if you dare take my food again, I'm leaving."
"Okay," Savannah raised her hands up, backing away from me to go to her classroom. Nita was with me for third period. "Sorry. See you in three hours. Please calm down before then."
"Stop antagonizing me and I won't have to."
"Okay, okay. Bye."
Savannah slipped away into the crowds of backpacks streaming everywhere, and I took in a breath before looking at the hell that waited inside.
Econ.
"You really hate this class that badly, huh."
"I don't hate it, Nita, I just don't like it."
"Then you hate it. Is this the one that might take valedictorian away from you?"
I cut a glare over to her while marching in.
"I'm just saying," Nita followed after me before I branched off to go to my seat. "You didn't reach out to me for help with the worksheet last night, and I was worried that you were doing it by yourself."
"I had the power of the internet in my hands, that's why. I was also busy with other things."
"The same things that keep you busy every day despite only being in one club?"
"I have a job, remember?"
"Oh, that's right," she snapped her fingers while sliding into her seat just across from me. The classroom was too small for all the people it needed to fit inside and set up in the weirdest way. "Where do you work again? We still have never gotten free food from you."
"I don't work with food." Unless it's a sandwich shop being robbed, which had actually happened once before. Filling out the report for that was a bizarre time. "And you know I don't do things for free."
"Ugh, cheapskate. Fine. We'll bug someone else for free food."
"I hope you don't and that you don't get anyone in trouble."
"Where does Reed work again?"
I lifted heavy brows to Nita. "He doesn't have a job."
"Yes he does. I was just talking with some of his friends last week, they said he got a job over the summer. You didn't know?"
"...no." Huh. He's doing well for himself, it seems. "Where at?"
"The local Target. Savannah and I were planning on dropping by one of these evenings and seeing if we could find him."
"Huh...maybe I will too."
"Alright, good morning everyone-"
It took all I had in me to keep a calm face on as Nita laughed at me, seeing the cracks in my mask as the instructor rushed in through the door. Oh, how I hated that lady.
"-sorry I'm late, the coffee machine was broken...now, if you'll pull out the worksheet from last night, I just wanted to go over a few things with you. Did everyone see the message I posted on the online classroom to not do the last three pages? I haven't taught you that material yet..."