Once a hunter reaches Level 5.
Sometimes Level 6.
The system bestows upon them a skill.
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How it works exactly no one fully understands.
What the system analyzes.
What code or logic or something beyond both drives its decisions.
Unknown.
But what happens after is documented.
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When the skill arrives it comes with something else.
A window.
The kind the system always uses.
Showing the hunter something called a Path Symbol.
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There are nine of them.
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*Breaker — Destruction.*
*Forger — Creation.*
*Dreadwalker — Presence.*
*Tracker — Hunt.*
*Weaver — Connection.*
*Warden — Order.*
*Purifier — Purification.*
*Seeker — Abyss.*
*Vanguard — Ascension.*
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Each ability a hunter receives correlates with one of these.
Not always obviously.
Not always immediately.
But always.
As usual not much else is known beyond that.
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What is known is the ranking system.
Every ability carries a rank.
Starting from the bottom.
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*Red.*
*Iron.*
*Bronze.*
*Silver.*
*Gold.*
*Diamond.*
*Platinum.*
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To give a sense of scale.
Eighty percent of hunters receive a Bronze skill.
It grows faster than the higher tiers.
Easier to build with.
Easier to understand.
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Once a skill reaches a certain point something else becomes possible.
Fusion skills.
Two hunters combining abilities that coordinate with one another.
The combined output exceeding what either could produce alone.
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And beyond that.
Branch skills.
When a main skill reaches its maximum point it can generate a branch.
A second ability grown from the first.
It can never surpass the main skill it came from.
Its traits and attributes will always mirror the parent.
Always carry its nature.
Always point back to where it came from.
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The first skill you receive defines everything that follows.
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Chi-Long looked at them.
Ha Joon and Eun Byol.
Both worn down.
Both tired in the specific way that went past the body into something harder to name.
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She looked at them a long moment.
Then spoke.
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"Your training here is reaching its conclusion."
A pause.
"You will remain in this forest."
Another.
"I will come and attack you."
Her eyes moving between them.
"You will not know when.", "", "You will not know how.", "", "You will have no food.", "", "No water.", "",
A breath.
"Your only mission is simple."
She let that word sit.
Simple.
Like the most terrifying things always are.
"Get a scratch on me."
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She smiled.
Small.
Cold.
The kind of smile that understood exactly what it was asking.
"That's all."
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Then she turned.
Walked into the trees.
The jungle folding around her.
Gone.
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Somewhere distant.
Military vehicles moved through the air.
Strong.
Silent from this far away.
Flying formation above a range of mountains.
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Below them a rift.
Sitting in the mountainside like something the mountain had tried to swallow and couldn't.
And below the rift.
A village.
Rice fields stretching as far as the eye wanted to go.
Green and still and completely ordinary against everything around it.
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Inside the rift.
Tunnels.
Dark.
Going under at angles that suggested no end.
An almost endless spiral descending into something that predated the map.
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Creatures moving through it.
Not randomly.
With purpose.
Traveling from the center outward.
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At that center.
A mana crystal.
Enormous.
The kind of size that made the ones in other dungeons look like fragments.
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And around it.
Something assembling.
Xenomorph-like.
Insectoid at the edges.
Mutated past the point where the original shape was still visible.
Screeching sounds moving through the tunnels.
Carrying upward.
Finding the village above.
Finding the rice fields.
Finding the ordinary world that had no idea what was directly beneath it.
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They moved.
From the center outward.
Organized.
Patient.
Like something that had been waiting a very long time and had finally decided.
Now.