Chapter 6: Hunters

"Good evening, welcome to the Hunters Union, how may I help you?" I greeted with a polite smile.<You have gotten quite good at this>

<Perhaps you can make this your career instead of becoming a Hunter>

Yeah, no, I have no intention of doing this long-term, it’s just a temporary gig to help support myself for now, that’s all.

Two years have passed since my reincarnation, today’s the 2nd of October, 2167, and I’d just turned seventeen a little under a month ago.

You have to be at least seventeen to enroll at the Hunters Academy, since Hunters have to be above eighteen to take on Quests and raid Dungeons.

Which makes sense, I guess, probably not the best idea to have what would effectively be child soldiers, ethically and morally speaking.

Most aspiring Hunters enroll at the Academy right after they turn seventeen, so that by the time the one-year course is over, they’ll be eighteen and able to start working as a Hunter right away.

That said, some Awakened individuals choose to wait till they’re a bit older.

I enrolled the day after my seventeenth birthday, but the course isn’t due to start until next January, so I’ve still got around three months left.

Also, I’ve been working part-time as a receptionist at the Hunters Union, I applied shortly after I was assessed, and they hired me after a brief interview.

Hm, I wonder if the ten percent passive luck boost I get from my Greed Class had any sway in that?

I’ve also got plenty of experience applying for part-time jobs in my previous life, since I had to earn as much money as possible to appease that syndicate’s debt collectors, so I’m pretty used to interviews.

Anyway, I work four hours a day, from midday to 4 PM, and the pay isn’t half-bad, 25,000 Credits a week. It is technically a government job, so yeah, it pays fairly well.

I often worked upwards of twelve hours in my previous life, I always had at least three part-time jobs at any given time after my father saddled me with his debt.

So, to only need to work four hours a day, feels amazing. I actually have time to relax and spend on my hobbies, not to mention laze about and sleep.

The main reason I took this job was because, well, money. The monthly allowance I got from the orphanage was basically spare change, and I wanted some semblance of financial independence.

Not that I’m complaining, that orphanage is a good place.

The staff took great care of the kids, they provided more than adequate shelter, food and education, all for free, and it was really comfortable there too.

So, I’m not going to bitch about how low the allowance was, they had no obligation to do that.

Also, I’m using past tense because I just moved out of that facility, about a week after my last birthday.

You have to be seventeen to be able to rent or buy property, and honestly, I kinda felt bad staying there, like I was taking advantage of their kindness, especially considering that I’m an adult on the inside.

While I do want a life of luxury in this world, I refuse to achieve that goal by being a rotten piece of shit like the people who made previous life a living hell were.

Instead, I’ll achieve my goal my way. I’ll show no mercy to those who get in my way, but at the same time, I’m not about to step over the lives of innocent people who’ve done me no wrong.

That’s why, as soon as I was old enough to move out, I did. I got myself a small but nice one-bedroom apartment, it costs 20,000 Credits a month to rent, but I managed to save up quite a bit while living in the orphanage, so while I’m not exactly loaded, I’m somewhat comfortable, financially speaking.

Besides the money, there was another reason why I applied to work at the Hunters Union. To put it simply, I wanted to learn more about Hunters.

And thanks to one of my Greed Skills, I’ve been able to learn a fair bit. My first Greed Skill is the one I named Treasury, the storage power with a hundred slots and the ability to preserve and make copies of items.

And since Ai had already stored and preserved all my favorite foods in the storage space of the Skill, I was able to save quite a bit of money on food.

Admittedly, it’s been tough to resist trying the cuisine of the current era, a lot of the food is pretty similar to what was around in my old era, but there’s a bunch of new stuff too, and there’s also a number of foods from my old era that I never got to try.

Anyway, to get back to the point, about my second Greed Skill...I named it Appraisal, and it works just as the name suggests.

When it use it on Hunters, I get a display of their abilities converted into stats, so that they’re comparable to my own abilities, and I also see their Classes, Attributes, Spells, Skills, Power Levels and Potential, along with personal information like their names, ages, and gender.

However, it’s mostly lower-ranked Hunters that show up at the Hunters Union, a lot of J-Ranks, a few Q-Ranks, and the very occasional K-Rank. I haven’t seen an Ace in person, and as for X-Aces, there are none in Sanctuary Theta.

Higher-ranked Hunters are recruited by private organizations known as Guilds, and thus have no reason to come to the Hunters Union for Quests.

Hunters who weren’t scouted by Guilds and have to take Quests from the Union instead are often referred to as Freelance Hunters, most of them form parties and take on lower-ranked Dungeon raids.

Dungeons are ranked by Threat Level, which is determined by the number of floors they have. Dungeons with less than twenty-five floors are known as Low Level Dungeons, twenty-five to fifty floors are Mid Level, fifty to seventy-five floors are High Level, and seventy-five to a hundred floors are Critical Level.

Oh, and in extremely rare cases, you get Dungeons that have between a hundred to a hundred and fifty floors, those are called Calamity Level Dungeons.


But a Calamity Level Dungeon hasn’t appeared in over twenty years, and only four in total have appeared at all.

The Hunters Union rarely issues Quests above Mid Level, the more dangerous Dungeons are usually tackled by the Guild Hunters instead.

I’ve been feeling pretty restless lately, I’m more than a little eager to get started at the Hunters Academy already. Well, at least I was able to enroll for free.

Usually, you have to pay a tuition fee of 500,000 Credits to enroll, but the Academy has a special program that allows Awakened orphans to enroll free of charge.

So, I made sure to enroll before I left the orphanage, I would’ve had to pay the tuition if I’d enrolled after moving into my new apartment.

Yeah, I know, kind of a dick move on my part, but in my defense, I would’ve seriously struggled to afford it with my current savings.

Especially now that I’ve got to pay rent and utilities, and I’ve also been training at a gym for a couple of hours after work, to get myself into shape and get used to my new body and powers.

I want to be as prepared as possible by the time I begin at the Hunters Academy.

Speaking of training, my shift for the day is almost over, I’ll stop by the gym before heading home.

My training has been progressing pretty steadily, and I’ve been enjoying the workout, I’m easily in the best shape I’ve been across both my lives.

My experience as a gymnast in my previous life-...before my sorry excuse of a father abandoned me and left me at the mercy of that syndicate...-has definitely helped assess my training needs.

Thanks to the progress I’ve made, I’m feeling pretty confident. So, let’s see how far I can push myself today...