The Guild assigned new swordsmen their first sanctioned hunt within forty-eight hours of registration. Standard practice. Routine clearance of low-level Demetrons that had pressed too close to the eastern vents.
Raiden and Jester were assigned together — a mercy, since no senior swordsman wanted to partner with the boy who had cracked a registration crystal and potentially drawn every Demetron within three kilometres of the dome to attention.
The Hunt Captain, a grizzled woman named Aldris with a sword-arm enchanted to level 9, pulled them aside before the gate.
"You," she said, pointing at Raiden, "do not use your system conspicuously. You," she pointed at Jester, "do not let him die, because the paperwork for a Super System casualty would ruin my month. Clear?"
"Crystal," said Jester cheerfully.
"Understood," said Raiden.
The gate opened. The air outside the dome hit them like a fist — thick, stale, carrying a metallic undertone that Raiden would later learn was the smell of corrupted earth left behind by Demetron transit paths.
The squad cleared twelve low-level Devils and nine Dirlets in the first hour. Routine. The Dirlets were fast but brittle; Jester's Fire sword magic carved through their outer hide easily. Raiden matched him strike for strike, learning the rhythm, feeling how his God Style attribute sharpened every swing into something cleaner, faster, more inevitable than it should have been at level one.
Then the Enraged-breed appeared.
It was not on the mission manifest. It was not supposed to be this close to the dome.
It was enormous — a quadrupedal thing of black and purple hide, easily thirty metres at the shoulder, with eyes that had gone red with the biological rage state its breed was named for. Three veteran swordsmen broke formation immediately. Aldris was barking orders. Jester had gone pale but was already pulling flame into his blade.
Raiden's system spoke to him. Not in words — in instinct, in the sudden crystalline clarity of the God Style activating fully for the first time, overlaying his vision with motion arcs, weak points, the exact trajectory of the creature's left foreleg strike a full two seconds before it happened.
He moved.
What happened next was later described in the After-Hunt report as "anomalous engagement by probationary swordsman Kael, resulting in unexpected incapacitation of high-tier target." What actually happened was that Raiden ran up the creature's foreleg while it was mid-swing, reached the juncture of neck and skull, activated a Dark-element pulse through his blade that the God Style had apparently decided was the correct tool for this exact moment, and drove the sword home with every joule of his level-one strength multiplied by a system that had no ceiling.
The Enraged-breed hit the ground. The earth shook.
In the silence that followed, a single object rolled free from the cooling mass of its body. Dense. Faceted. Pulsing with a dim inner light.
A Core.
"That's..." Aldris crouched down, not touching it. "That's an Enraged Core. Demonic element sub-type."
"Can I keep it?" Raiden asked.
Everyone stared at him.
"Absolutely not," said Aldris. "It gets registered, catalogued, and stored in the Guild vault."
"Right," said Raiden, and memorized exactly where the Guild vault was located.
Jester appeared at his elbow.
"You know," Jester said quietly, watching the senior swordsmen carefully bag the Core with warded gloves, "most people spend their first hunt running away from Enraged-breeds."
"Is that what you were about to do?"
"I was about to do a strategic repositioning. Very different thing." A pause. "...Yes. Yes I was going to run."
Raiden almost smiled.
Above them, beyond the dome, the count of Demetrons in the valley had reached seventeen.
· · · ,,, · · ·
Chapter III · Preview
The Corrupted Taming
The Abyss-breed Core was not in the Guild vault when Raiden returned for it three nights later.
Someone had gotten there first.
The trail led out of the dome entirely — through a cracked vent seal, into the grey waste beyond the glass, toward a region the maps marked only as: Emperor Territory. No sanctioned entry. All Valid Cards suspended.
Jester, upon hearing this, set down his third cup of morning tea, stared at the wall for a long moment, and then stood up and began strapping on his sword.
"I didn't say you had to come," said Raiden.
"You also didn't say I didn't have to come," said Jester. "Which, with you, I've learned means the same thing as please come because I'm going to do something catastrophic."
They left on the fourth bell, Valid Cards in pocket — not that they'd be useful where they were going.
Somewhere ahead, in the depths of Emperor Territory, the stolen Core pulsed.
And with it — something answered.
System Alert · Raiden Kael
Corrupted Demetron detected in range.
Classification: Abyss-breed · Corrupted (Core-summoned)
Current HP: 100% → Taming threshold: 5%
Stats: Base –10% (corrupted reduction applied)
Recommendation: Reduce target to taming threshold without fatal strike.
God Style active. Precision mode enabled.
— To be continued in Volume I, Chapter III —