Rience's day as a Hunter was fairly ordinary, though 'ordinary' for him meant living like a normal civilian does while he was away from his hunter duties.
While sipping his coffee for breakfast, he remembered the bug that his system notification panel had.
[…Take over will happen after syncing with Villain's data.]
"The bug is still there. Am I the only one who has it? Or are there any hunters out there who have the same bug as me?"
As he couldn't answer his own question, Rience went to Hunteddit and posted a new thread in the 'Hunter Problems' community.
[System Notification Problem – Possibly a Bug
Hello, everyone. Yesterday, I just returned from a dungeon raid near Heritage Hills, The Gilded Labyrinth. This is a C-Class dungeon and posed no problems when I raided it with Team G. However, after the raid, there seems to be a bug in my System Notification. There's a message I can't seem to delete.
Any suggestions on what I should do with it? Should I just wait for this bug to be fixed?]
Once he hit 'Post,' Rience turned off his phone. He wasn't expecting any replies right away anyway.
While waiting for replies, Rience decided to train for a bit. As a hunter who relied on his body for a living, he needed to train every day—especially since he listed himself as an archer in his Hunter License. Being a B-Rank hunter, he had to be proficient in his declared specialty, right?
In reality, Rience wasn't exactly an archer. In his system panel, there were only 3 question marks beside his name, the usual spot where the name of the Trait will appear.
"Hmm, let me see what my current stats are now."
[Rience Valthorne (???) Age: 23
Strength: 63
Dexterity: 85
Agility: 77
Endurance: 72
Intelligence: 90
Perception: 83
Luck: 88
Mana: 78
Stats Points: 11
Skill: Mana Manipulation (B-Rank +) ]
"Oh that's right, I still have the stats points I got from the raid. Because of the bug, I didn't check how much I got."
This time, Rience put all his remaining Stats Points in Strength. The stats that he somehow neglected.
With his Mana Manipulation skill, he was able to manipulate the direction, speed and force that each of his arrows will have. That's why he listed himself as an Archer during the hunter training.
The real reason, though, was much simpler: Rience valued his life too much to risk it on the frontlines, where death came far more easily than from a safe distance. There were still many books out there that he hadn't read yet.
For today's training session, Rience decided to practice with darts. There was something specific he wanted to experiment with.
Recently, during raids, he'd found himself depleting his arrow supply faster than usual.
Since arrows crafted by Hunter Blacksmiths are notoriously expensive, he was considering switching to throwing daggers instead.
Small daggers were significantly cheaper than arrows, and with his Mana Manipulation skill, he could retrieve them at will.
This was a luxury he didn't have with arrows; their wooden shafts almost always shattered upon impact, rendering them unrecoverable. He couldn't help it, though. Whenever he applied his Mana Manipulation skill to the arrows, they would receive substantial damage upon impact. He would consider himself if there were 4/10 arrows that wouldn't shatter.
Higher-grade, indestructible arrows did exist, but a single recoverable arrow cost more than an entire bundle of standard ones.
Due to his thrifty nature, he decided to just buy whichever was cheaper and then reinforce them with his Mana Manipulation skill.
By coating the low-grade steel in a layer of his own energy, he could grant them the durability of masterwork blades without the exorbitant price tag.
Since Rience was usually just an extra to fill numbers during raids so there was no significant importance on whether he could do significant damage to monsters or not.
His priorities were simple: survive the dungeon, collect his fee, and get out in one piece. That was more than enough for him.
Rience picked up his headphones from the table and started an audiobook. He usually listened to books he hadn't 'read' yet during his training sessions.
While this wasn't exactly reading in the traditional sense, he couldn't very well hold a book when his eyes needed to be locked on the bullseye.
After preparing what needed to be prepared, the system suddenly appeared in front of him.
[Villain data synchronization complete. Takeover commencing in 23:59:59.]
"Huh? What's this? A countdown? Will this be fixed in 24 hours?"
Thinking that maybe the bug will be fixed after the countdown, Rience returned his attention towards the bullseye. He suddenly recalled his high school days, at that time he would always calm his mind by throwing darts. Even though the board was tattered due to being overused, it didn't stop him taking his eyes from the bullseye and throwing the darts.
Finished with his trip down memory lane, with a fluid snap of the wrist, he threw the dart, and within a few seconds his hand ending pointed toward the board. There was no hesitation—just a sharp, singular focus on the inner ring of the triple twenty.
Because of his strength as a hunter, he used his Mana Manipulation skill to cover the dart before the impact. If he hadn't, it would have punched a hole straight through his condo wall despite being built with reinforced concrete using limestone mined from dungeons.
Though the techniques for darts and archery differ completely, throwing darts trains his perception more than by training archery. Rience discovered this back when he was in the Hunter Training Camp. However, he had broken many boards before he could control his strength for each thrown dart.
Rience trained his perception with darts for the next 30 minutes, when he had enough he decided that it was time to see if the hunters had anything to say about the bug he had in his system panel.
Opening Hunteddit on his phone, he clicked on his notification and read each comment.
-A bug? Does the system have a bug?
-Are you trolling because you are a newbie?
-It has been proven for the past 150 years that the system is near-perfection and will never have a bug. This isn't a software where someone programmed, this is a creation of a higher being.
-Not all systems are perfect, it may happen.
-LOOOL, this guy is definitely a noob that hasn't gone to the Hunter Training Camp yet. Maybe wait until you get there and learn how to be a hunter for the next year.
This was unexpected, he was being treated as a newbie hunter because of his post. Fortunately there are some that believed him. Even so, this didn't answer his question.
"Back in the Hunter Training Camp we did learn that the System was flawless… maybe I shouldn't be too concerned about this?"
Letting go of his worries about this 'bug', Rience resumed his training.