If you wanted to hunt, then what you needed was a hunter permit.
A system the governnt created to keep track and observe the behavior of awakened individuals.
Many years ago there was an "awakening coup" attempt where a group of awakened ones decided to try and overthrow the governnt and seize control, but the attempt failed.
Since then the laws and rules of who and how you could clear gates had beco stricter.
"Man, I only got rank E..."
"Sa here. I guess it’s back to work..."
A man and woman walked out of the testing room with disappointnt written across their faces. Rank E ant your power was too low that hunting beca genuinely dangerous.
Even if leveling up was possible for everyone, the risk required to get there wasn’t sothing average people could bear.
When the official system was first implented and the data ca in, rank E hunters had a casualty rate of over 20%, the highest of any profession in recorded history.
And if that didn’t deter you, the cost of Arican healthcare would finish the job.
"I got rank D!!"
A teenager ca bouncing out after them.
"I’m from Silver Claw guild, would you like an interview!"
"Wait, I’m from Red Pellet, we have a sign-on bonus for healer or warrior class!"
A group of scouts who camped outside the testing room every day sward the boy before he even finished reading his results.
D rank was considered the baseline for becoming a real hunter, so a teenager walking out with one was exactly the kind of prospect the guilds circled.
If Rowan rembered correctly, every 10 people at one rank equated to 1person at the rank above. 10 E for 1 D, 10 D for 1 C, and so on up the ladder.
The gap between ranks was exponential.
And the higher your base rank, the better your ceiling for improvent later.
Two people starting at level 1 with the sa stats on paper were not equal if one held an S rank skill.
The higher ranked skill scaled faster, hit harder at every threshold, and compounded over ti.
By comparison, his Assassin skill at E rank could only make him marginally faster, while his Soul Reaper skills were capable of far more interesting things.
Most people who ca to check their rank were teenagers in high school or early college.
People normally awakened around 18, a built in clockwork that appeared mostly in the young.
But if soone awakened later in life their rank tended to co in higher to compensate.
That was part of how humanity had fended off the first world raid.
A select few awakened at A and S rank and tore through the monster hordes, seizing back control.
Many of them were still on active duty. So had retired due to injury.
Rowan knew so of them personally. A few had even been his ntors.
’This sure does bring back mories.’
Back when the draft happened he had been lined up with another 10,000 Aricans who had refused to register as hunters, tested for the first ti, learning their rank alongside strangers.
Rank wasn’t sothing the system assigned as a judgnt of the individual, it was made by the governnt.
It was a asurent, a calculation run by AI based purely on stats, the sa AI that monitored the city and detected gate appearances.
It asured the density of your mana, not the amount. So even if you leveled up to 100, you would still be stuck at rank E.
The real system, the one that gave people their status windows, given ranks to their skills and stats, where it ca from and why, remained a mystery to the very end.
"Next is... Rowan?"
The girl knew who he was. Only a handful of awakened worked in the entire building, so his na circulated.
"Hi." Rowan waved.
Dan followed close behind, accompanying his best friend through his midlife crisis.
"You decided to join the hunter force, huh? Good for you." She looked mildly interested.
Rowan worked in the sa building, so seeing his own status window should have already told him roughly what rank to expect.
Most people knew before they walked in, but so still hoped it would be different.
Not Rowan.
He had taken the test before in his last life. He already knew what the outco would be.
People got two free rank checks.
Beyond that, it was 100 dollars each ti, and that was the rate for fast checking.
"You know the drill. Place your hand on the orb and relax."
The room was built like a dical center, wires and cables running from the walls and hooking into a black orb sitting in the middle of the space.
A [Depleted Mana-stone].
Rowan placed his hand on it and settled.
[E]
No matter how much he wished otherwise, that was just how the system worked.
"Okay, here we go." The girl had a gambling addiction. Watching people spin their rank each ti was like pulling a slot machine lever, and the lever never got old.
The energy flux moved from the orb into Rowan, a mild buzzing sensation that rushed through him before flowing back.
The black orb began glowing with a dim light. An early signal for E rank.
’As expected.’ Rowan sighed and began to pull his hand away.
But the orb never stopped glowing, it kept shining brighter and brighter.
"Hm?"
The tester had worked this room for years, run countless people through the orb, seen B ranks co through that made the whole office buzz. But the light pouring out of that stone right now was sothing she had never seen before.
The reading on the screen in front of her began to glitch, numbers spinning wildly.
[E] [S] [D] [A] [D] [C] [S] [SS] [SSS]
The screen flickered as the energy being pulled into the orb grew stronger and stronger, until.
BANG!
A circuit breaker tripped and every light in the building went out.
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