Free Web NovelChapter 19: Professional Hunters Arrive
Luke realized that if he forged all this armor, he could gain over ten grand in an afternoon. This meant his business had struck oil.
"Hey, Amigo, look at this list," he said. "I need you to absorb it right now so we don’t forget what these nice customers ordered."
The turtle poked his snout out of Luke’s jacket, its eyes glowing as it used the〖Divine Bookkeper〗 skill to scan the written words.
"Data successfully absorbed, master!" Amigo squeaked. "But seriously, we should consider going back to the dorm now. Fighting monsters in the dark sounds like a very bad hobby."
"No way," Luke replied.
Before leaving, he replaced the list with a fresh one so he wouldn’t miss any customer if there were night orders. Once that was finished, Luke hopped back into the cab and urged the driver to hit the gas.
During the quiet journey through the dark highways, Luke stared out the window, seeing what the world had managed to become.
Two centuries ago, a cataclysmic apocalypse fractured the planet. Before that day, the world was a normal place, but when the sky unraveled like a knot, everything changed. Now, it was a tradition for summoners to combat the monsters crawling out of the portals called gates, the human race pushing back against the spreading destruction while searching for the origin of the apocalypse.
After a couple of minutes on the gas, the neon lights of New Florence vanished from the rearview mirror. The air outside the windows began to turn green, and the asphalt gave way to potholes. Skelton Town.
Looking through the windshield, Luke spotted searchlights up ahead. The Bureau. Their job was to keep regular citizens from wandering into toxic areas. Luke didn’t want his driver to get into trouble, so he told him to pull over.
He paid for the ride, slipped out of the car, and disappeared into the roadside. Staying low, Luke traversed the lands and bypassed the checkpoint without raising any alert.
Once past the perimeter, Luke used his phone to recheck the coordinates of the Beta-grade dungeon gate and the location of the hunter party’s van. But his phone’s screen lagged because the network coverage in Skeleton Town was garbage.
"Arse," Luke whispered angrily as he waved the phone in the air, trying to catch a signal. After a while, he got one, but the bad connection had delayed the tracker data by five minutes. This meant the hunter party was very close to the gate, about to beat him there by a matter of seconds.
"Dang it! I have to hurry!" Luke sprinted through the fog as rusted cranes and infrastructure loomed over him.
A dilapidated museum was waiting in the distance, and at the roadside, the headlights of the hunter van were cutting through the gloom.
Clrick. Scrick.
They just had to show up right now, didn’t they? Bursting from the shadows were three disgusting creatures who stopped Luke in his tracks. Slime Termites. Hissing aggressively, they leaped straight for Luke’s chest all at once.
"How sweet. You can all go together," Luke said fearlessly as he summoned his gauntlet, pulled his fist back, and threw a punch straight into the face of the middle termite.
BOOM!
Just that punch cleared the path. A couple of system boxes popped up in front of Luke’s eyes, but he didn’t stop to read them, sprinting right through the mist toward the museum.
〖Flame + 5.3〗
〖You have slain a Slime Termite!〗
〖Flame + 5.3〗
〖You have slain a Slime Termite!〗
〖Flame + 5.3〗
〖You have slain a Slime Termite!〗
〖XP Gained: +15〗
〖You have leveled up to LV. 8〗
〖Congratulations! You’ve received skill: Auto-Forge!〗
Meanwhile, in front of the steps of the crumbled museum, the hunter van screeched to a halt, mud splashing. The van’s side doors slid open, and four professional hunters stepped out. The party consisted of two men and two women, and they looked dangerous, wearing matching armor with Bronze-rank badges pinned to their shoulders.
One of the younger men in the rear suddenly paused and gripped the handle of his sword, peering back into the dark.
"Hey, hold on a second," he whispered. "Did you guys hear that? It sounded like a mini explosion."
One of the women with blonde hair and enough makeup to graffiti a wall rolled her eyes. "Of course you heard a sound, Billy," she said. "This is Skelton Town. The whole place is always crawling with mutated monsters. Don’t be a chicken before we even step inside the portal."
The leader of the party was a tall man with an eye patch and a sewn lip. He raised his hand to stop his teammates from arguing.
"Stop bickering, both of you," he commanded in a rough voice. "We don’t have time to worry about random wasteland trash mobs. Billy, inform the Bureau and the local authorities that our team has officially gotten to these coordinates first."
He pointed his sword toward the museum’s broken lobby, where the Aeon of the Beta-grade gate pulsed out.
"Once our digital check-in clears the network, we can legally deploy our barrier device," the leader continued. "That way, no other hunters can steal our loot, and this entire dungeon belongs to us."
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A/N: Thanks for reading!
