Chapter 487: Good Hunting
"Understood."
"Good hunting today, Ackerman."
"Thank you, Caelen."
The intermediary bowed slightly and walked away across the square with his familiar unhurried pace. Bruce watched him go until he was gone from sight around the north side of the fountain, and then Bruce turned and walked back across the square toward the elevated café.
The seal on his hand felt cool and clean and steady.
Kael and Theron were at the table.
Bruce sat down. He set his hand on the table, back up, so the seal was visible.
Both of them looked at it.
The seal was small, perhaps the width of a coin, and the design of it was elegantly simple. A single stylized character that Bruce did not immediately recognize as a seal from his book, surrounded by a fine circular border. It was drawn in the same silver-blue as Elenora’s glow.
"That’s it," Kael said quietly.
"That’s it."
"How does it feel?"
Bruce considered.
"Steady. Cool. Present but not pressing. It does not feel like a weight. It feels like a mark. A statement." He turned his hand slightly. "I can feel her signature in it, but I cannot feel her. It is a seal, not a connection. She cannot listen through it or speak through it. It is only proof."
"That’s good."
"That’s what she said last night. Now that I have it, I can confirm it."
Theron, quietly: "The other souls in the square will notice."
Bruce looked out.
The souls in the square had already noticed. He could see it in the small readjustments of position around them. A well-dressed soul who had been passing near the café had paused, then continued on with a new angle to their walk. Two of the intermediaries who had been positioned to be seen had glanced at Bruce, then at each other, then made small motions that Bruce read as messages sent. The political layer of the square was already updating.
By evening, everyone who mattered would know.
He was, from this moment, publicly Elenora Vessa’s sponsored hunter.
Kael, watching the same movement in the square: "We should go."
"We should go. The portal map will be at the rooming house within the hour. We can pick it up and choose today’s hunt from there."
They finished their warm cups, paid, and left the café.
They walked out of the square into the wider streets.
The watchers on the walk to the rooming house had already changed configuration. Bruce counted four now, but two of them were different watchers from the ones this morning. New watchers, replacing the ones who had reported back. The information about the seal had moved fast. The employers were now dispatching different observers with different instructions.
He did not slow. He walked at his normal pace.
Theron said, very quietly, on the walk: "Bruce. Yesterday, one of the watchers I noticed was on a corner near the market square. He was young, probably an F-rank himself. He looked scared. Not scared of us. Scared of the person he was reporting to. He kept glancing behind him at nothing, the way a person does when they are being watched themselves."
Bruce nodded. He had noticed the young watcher too. He had filed him.
"That was probably one of Sisel Marn’s."
"How do you know?"
"Guess. Sisel apparently sends multiple layers of observation, she watches through junior observers who are themselves being watched by more senior observers. That way if the junior is compromised, the senior can still report. The junior watchers of that kind of arrangement are always scared."
"That’s, that’s how organized criminal networks worked in my old life. In tax fraud rings."
"Yes. Political networks and criminal networks share a lot of structural DNA."
"You said that once already."
"I keep noticing it."
They reached the rooming house. Bruce checked at the front desk. Caelen’s map had indeed already arrived, delivered by a small quiet runner in the past thirty minutes. Bruce took the folded soul-paper and went upstairs.
They opened it on the small table.
The map was, as Caelen had said, a more detailed portal chart than the general market map Bruce had bought on his second day. It showed the same five main portals of the Xiltra island’s basic hunting range, but it also showed four additional portals marked in a distinctive silver-blue color: Elenora’s sponsored portals.
Each of the four was labeled clearly:
The Deepwood, a deep-forest E-rank portal in the north outer district. Described in the map’s small note as "richer forest terrain than the F-rank forest, with mixed fauna types and occasional plant-type hazards. Recommended for parties with balanced combat capacity."
The Tidewash, an aquatic E-rank portal in the west outer district. "Underwater terrain, aquatic-type beasts. Requires the ability to work in soul-water. Recommended for parties with talents adaptable to fluid environments."
The Proving Ground, a controlled training portal in the south outer district. "Simulated combat environments for practice against specific beast types. Does not yield cores or essence. Used for tactical development. Free to sponsored parties."
The Library of Small Voices, an archive portal in the central outer district. "A specialized dungeon housing rare texts. Sponsored parties may enter to read or purchase. Materials available include soul-script advanced manuals, talent theory papers, historical records, and specialized manuscripts."
Bruce read each entry carefully.
The Proving Ground was interesting, a free training portal was an unusual benefit. He could use it to test the seal system without spending essence on real fights. He filed that.
The Library of Small Voices was the most immediately valuable to him personally. Rare texts on soul-script and talent theory. Bruce could probably find, in there, the advanced manuscripts the small stall keeper had mentioned would be more useful than the basic manuals, and possibly at better prices.
The Deepwood was probably the best pure hunting choice for today.
He looked up at Kael and Theron.
"Deepwood today?"
"Deepwood today," Kael agreed.
"Then Library tomorrow?"
"Library tomorrow," Bruce said. "I want a proper look at what’s in there."
"And the Proving Ground when?"
"The Proving Ground when we have time to spend on training rather than earnings. Not this week. Next week."
"Fine."
Theron, who had been reading the map, said: "The Tidewash?"
"Not soon. I do not have any experience fighting underwater. Neither does Kael’s fire, in a useful way. Underwater fire is complicated. I want to save the aquatic portal until we have prepared for it specifically."
"Fair."
They folded the map and put it in Bruce’s ring. They packed their gear. Bruce, before they left, opened the soul-script manual and checked one more seal, the character for push, which he had memorized last night as a simple offensive seal. He wanted to have it ready for the Deepwood.
They left the rooming house.
The walk to the Deepwood portal took longer than the walks to the other portals.
The north outer district was further from the Guild district than any of the other portal districts they had been to. The streets thinned out as they moved north. The buildings became lower, less densely packed. There were fewer souls on the streets, and the ones they saw were a mixed collection, not the mid-tier working souls of the Guild district, but a rougher blend of hunters heading in or out of the outer portals, workers going about specialized trades, and a scattering of what Bruce suspected were faction-affiliated souls who lived in the outer districts because it was cheaper.
The Deepwood portal was at the very edge of the north outer district, in a small quiet square backed by an old soul-stone wall that Bruce guessed had once been part of an older city boundary. The portal itself was larger than any of the F-rank portals, a pool of dark surface almost four meters across, hanging in the air with the same suspended stillness as the smaller portals but with a deeper quality of green in its color, as if the terrain on the other side was seeping through faintly.
The guard at the post was, Bruce noted with mild surprise, a full A-rank soul.
She was a tall lean woman with the same weight of glow as Caelen, though a different shade, a warm amber that suggested a fire-adjacent alignment. She was reading something at her post when they approached. She looked up.
Her eyes went to Bruce’s hand.
She saw the seal.
Her expression did not change, but the small shift of her attention was recalculating. She had recognized the seal. She was updating her understanding of them from unknown E-rank party approaching my portal to Elenora Vessa’s sponsored party approaching my portal.
"Sponsored?" she asked.
"Sponsored."
She held out her hand for tokens. Bruce handed his over. She pressed it against her post’s reader, which chimed differently than the F-rank readers had, a longer softer tone that Bruce guessed corresponded to sponsored access. She made a note.
"Ackerman."
"Yes."
"You’re new to this portal."
"First time."
"Standard advisory for the Deepwood. E-rank terrain, mixed fauna types. The dungeon is layered, three levels, with each level significantly more dangerous than the previous. E-rank hunters are advised to work only level one until they have reached at least high E, verging on D. Level two is proper D-rank territory. Level three is C-rank and above. Your tokens will restrict you to level one, but there is one exception: if a level-one alpha calls its territorial boundary, you may find yourself in a chamber that opens into level two by accident. If this happens, retreat immediately."
"Understood."
"There are also plant-type hazards on level one. Living vine formations, spore-releasing flowers, root-networks that can trap unwary hunters. The Deepwood is not just its beasts. The dungeon itself is partly alive. Treat the terrain as a potential threat, not just as scenery."
"Understood."
"Good hunting."
She waved them through.