He Used to Be a Hunter (1)
Ian had thought of himself as a hunter. Hunters were those who stalked man-eating monsters along the border between day and night — and their hunts, as a rule, were conducted beneath the darkest of shadows.
In the depths of the mountains dwelled the great tiger. The Mountain Lord devoured not only flesh but soul, and it bent the spirits of every life it consumed to its whim.
In the shaded corners of graveyards lurked ghouls — corpse-devouring demons that grew strong gnawing on the rotting dead and hungered for the hearts of the living, luring their victims with the voices of the departed. Beneath cathedral bell towers, Dullahans rang out the promise of death, and in the depths of wild forests, wolves that walked on two legs crouched in hiding, concealing what they truly were.
And above all, there were the vampires.
Not in ancient castles, but beneath the skyscrapers of modern society. Vampires had seeped into the very fabric of human civilization, wielding eternal youth and a presence that bewitched mankind as their weapons.
Hunters were the ones who fought the night's kindred.
Secretly, never once exposed to the world of day.
And so, in Ian's memory, the name "hunter" had been a kind of code. No one had ever dragged them out into the bright sun and named them, and having no other name to call themselves by, they had been forced to make their deeds their name.
Which meant…
"Yes! Hunter number 429, please come to Counter 7!"
For a public official to call out the word "hunter" in broad daylight, from inside a sleek government building, as though it were the most natural thing in the world — to Ian, that was something beyond imagination.
What on earth is going on here?
It was a situation Ian found very hard to accept. All around him, people were shouting about "Status" this and "Status Window" that — words he knew, words he had never once imagined he would hear spoken aloud — and every last passerby seemed to be yelling them.
Others were sharing information about hunting grounds at the top of their lungs: the Gate that had just opened was crawling with fire-attribute monsters, ice-attribute gear was only good for keeping warm, and so on and so forth.
It was an alien conversation — if only because people were having it out in the open.
Ian found himself remembering the times he had prepared for a hunt with his comrades. Back then, talk like that had been conducted in the strictest secrecy, because there was no telling when or where a familiar or informant sown by the night's kindred might be listening.
Then there was the word "Gate" itself — a term for places divorced from reality — and it, too, was foreign to him. To Ian, a hunter's hunting ground might be as unreachable as the farthest point of the open ocean, or hidden behind layers of magic, but it was still, in the end, an extension of the real world. A concept like a "Gate" was something that existed only in novels.
And not even novels of this world, at that.
"Hunter number 432, please come to Counter 9!"
His number rang out across the hall. Still a stranger to a present he could not begin to adapt to, Ian made his way to Counter 9.
The receptionist seated there was a demi-human. The pointed ears and the faint scent of grass that clung to her brought to mind the fairies Ian had occasionally crossed paths with in his days as a hunter.
…Not that there was anything wrong with the word "fairy" itself. But the fairies Ian knew had a habit of playing vicious pranks with human lives on the line, or of lunging at anyone who despoiled their forests, shrieking about how much they were hated. That was the average fairy, as far as he knew the breed.
Had he come across this receptionist back when he was still active, his weapon would have been leveled at her before he'd finished the thought.
"Your reason for visiting the Hunter Support Agency is… oh my. You were reported missing inside a Gate?"
Ian's story was far too complicated to be lumped together under the phrase "missing person inside a Gate," but explaining it properly would have taken every hour from now until sundown and then some. So Ian simply nodded and said that he was.
"Hunters who go missing during Gate explorations sometimes suffer from memory loss, you see. Do you happen to remember your own name?"
"Ian."
The fairy receptionist tapped away at her keyboard, then tilted her head.
"Hmm. There's no hunter by the name of Ian, matching your description, on the Agency's missing persons list. Do you remember the time period of your last entry into a Gate?"
He retraced his final memory before being cast out of the Earth. The end of a century. The moment when the stars crossed paths. The fated day when the vampires ran rampant, seeking to resurrect the king of their kind.
"1999."
The fairy receptionist tilted her head again.
"1999? Um… do you mean the Common Era?"
Ian nodded.
"Wow. You really are from way back!"
From way back. Ian was bewildered by the unfamiliar label. He had been young, even among hunters — though if you counted the memories of his previous life, the arithmetic changed somewhat…
"Back in the Common Era, the Hunter Support Agency didn't exist yet the way it does now, so a great deal of information from that time was simply lost."
In a soft, soothing voice, the receptionist walked him through this and that. It was an age before the Constellations had properly extended their influence to Earth, before magitech had been established — and above all, most hunter records from the Common Era had vanished in the Cataclysm.
Which meant…
There was nothing left in this world that could prove the existence of a man called "Hunter Ian."
"Then what is to become of me?"
Ian was wound tight with tension. In the era when he had been active, the government had never looked kindly on hunters.
Hunters, they called themselves — but from the government's point of view, they were closer to armed terrorists. A few of the hunters Ian had known really had committed terrorism, at that.
Lunatics who caught wind that the CEO of a multinational corporation was a werewolf and set out with silver bullets to assassinate him. Madmen who blew open a dam for the sake of giving a vampire a burial at sea.
The hunters had backing of their own, enough to blunt the government's pressure, but hunters and public authority were, at their core, fundamentally incompatible.
That was simply what armed force beyond the government's control was.
Ian swept his eyes around the hall out of pure habit — searching for an escape route, should he need one in a hurry.
But the fairy receptionist simply beamed at him and answered:
"Yes! We'll begin your new hunter registration right away! First, could you please place your hand on the Measurement Crystal Ball here?"
Ian thought.
…Wow. Something straight out of a Constellation novel had just popped up in the real world.
"Oh dear. You're F-Rank."
In a way, it was only to be expected. From what he'd gathered in passing, and from what he'd read in those Constellation novels, the Measurement Crystal Ball classified a subject's rank based on their mana.
In Ian's day, the ways to accumulate mana on Earth had been few and far between. Even a man lucky enough to acquire it would burn through every last drop just to survive an encounter with a high-tier member of the night's kindred.
The Earth of today is drowning in mana… Frankly, it made his skin prickle. The oppressive weight of mana he had only ever felt inside a vampire noble's castle was pressing in from every direction.
What on earth had happened while he was gone? Ian resolved that the moment this registration business was finished, he was going to a library.
"But don't lose heart! Generation-0 hunters get lots of attention from the Constellations. Once you contract with a Constellation and receive your Status Window, you'll be ranking up in no time!"
A curious term reached Ian's ears.
"Generation-0?"
"Ah, it's not an official term! Here at the Hunter Support Agency, we number our hunter support policies — first, second, and so on — every time they're revised."
The hunters of this era divided themselves into generations according to which support policy had been in effect when they were certified as hunters. Registered under the first hunter support policy? First generation. And so on.
Which meant that "Generation-0" was the term for hunters who had been active before the Hunter Support Agency was ever founded.
Ian gave a small nod. Truthfully, judging by her story, he had been active a little before even that "Generation-0."
"F-Rank hunter, Ian. Your registration is complete!"
The fairy receptionist issued Ian a card printed with his hunter serial number and rank.
A Hunter Registration Card. It doubled as both an ID and a payment card.
"What would happen if I lost this?"
"Ah, it's tied to the unique mana signature the Measurement Crystal Ball scanned from you just now. Even if someone else picked it up, they couldn't use it."
Ian recalled something a druid he'd once hunted alongside used to say: that the shape of the mana a person accumulated changed with the shape of their soul.
Well, so long as I understand that there's some manner of security built in, that's all I need to know.
The moment Ian took the registration card and moved to rise from his seat, the receptionist hurriedly stopped him.
"One moment, Hunter! Our Hunter Support Agency is currently running a public job placement program for those just starting out in hunter work!"
She explained that if he visited the Public Works Department at the Hunter Support Agency Annex, he could take on commissions that were safe, if not particularly lucrative. Ian nodded.
He had been at a loss as to what he ought to do first. Information like this was always welcome.
"And there's a housing welfare policy for Gate returnees, too! Here's an information booklet — please give it a read!"
Taking the booklet in hand, Ian let out a hollow laugh.
Public rental housing. For hunters.
And I'm supposed to call this the world having gotten better?
Ian offered the receptionist a final word of thanks and rose from his seat. She answered in a bright, cheerful voice:
"Then, Hunter Ian — may the blessing of the stars be with you!"
Beneath the warm sunlight, hunters of every description strolled the streets. A crossbowman sealed head to toe in a reinforced suit that belonged in a science fiction film. A young man draped in a robe, a staff crowned with platinum and silver in hand, proclaiming with every inch of his body, I am a mage.
And then there was the crowd he'd first seen from inside the Hunter Support Agency, shouting "Status Window!" at the top of their lungs.
The sky was without question clear, and the sun bright — and yet the cityscape was more dizzying than midnight, in the days when the night's kindred had walked abroad.