Dungeon Raider System

For most of the inhabitants of the slums, waking up in the evening was almost unthinkable. Not just because it wasn't safe to go out at night, but also because light went off at odd times during the night and it left people with nothing to do to. Corporate drones, workers, students, even criminals got up early in the morning.

But that wasn't Kristina's case.

Contrary to most people, she slept during most of the day and went outside a couple hours before sunset. The reason for that was simple, her job could only be performed during the night. The most common guess, and also what her neighbors belived, would be that now that she wasn't forced to cohabit with an abusive husband, she became an escort.

It made perfect sense, she got up late and came back early in the morning, she also started earning a lot of money but didn't move out of the slums and her looks had improved drastically over a short span of time to the point she looked ten times younger than she actually was. But even though it was a reasonable explanation, that wasn't the case.

It all happened the night that Uriel showed up in her apartment. Somehow, after Uriel killed the changeling, an immense power awakened within her and she became a hunter and a heavenly rank at that.

Unlike most hunters, instead of heading outside the city, she took it upon herself to make the slums a safer place by killing as many cryptids as possible.

Needless to say, after her husband's death no one believed her it was a cryptid's doing and they assumed her husband abandoned her because she was crazy. Because of that, no charges were filed against her but even if they were, it would have gone nowhere. No one cared about the life or death of a slum rat like her husband.

On this particular night, Kristina found herself following the tracks of a monster rank cryptid that nested on the sewers. It was a particular kind of rat, one that was responsible for many mysterious deaths in her neighborhood.

People would suddenly become ill and pass away in a matter of days. The doctors blamed it on the Hanta virus which had no cure or vaccine, but she knew better. Her trait wasn't particularly strong in combat, but it allowed her to pick up even the faintest flux energy signature allowing her to track hunters and cryptids alike.

In any city, the sewers were a disgusting place, but it was hundreds of times worse in a megacity due to its size. Entering the sewers was absolutely impossible for anyone without a trait, even ascended would only be capable of spending a couple minutes inside due to the accumulation of toxic gases.

Kristina, though, was a heavenly rank huntress and even if she was a rookie hunter, her body was able to endure the poisonous miasma that flooded the sewers. Finding the crytpid was easy enough for her, but she knew that killing it was an entirely differnent matter.

The rat king emerged from the blackwaters, glaring at her with ghastly red eyes as though taunting her and the huntress replied by jumping into the foul waters without hesitation.

Something like that had its merit, especially when taking into consideration that she was a pretty woman dressed in nice clothes, but that didn't matter to the adventurous woman whose life took a 180° turn after losing everything and gaining a new life in the same night.

Unfortunately for her, fighting against monsters wasn't as easy as it seemed on TV. Just as the cryptid's name suggested, the rat king was followed by its loyal subjects, horrible rats the size of a trash can.

They were only of the beast rank, but even though their sharp teeth broke whenever they gnawed at her leaving nothing but a scratch on her diamantine skin, they grew back again and the many grazes on her skin began accumulating.

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She shook off all the rats she could with a sudden twist of her body and dived deep into the blackwaters. Slow, heavy bubbles gave way to a repulsive foam that was caused by the commotion bellow its surface until they came to a stop.

A few seconds later, Kristina emerged victorious from the waters covered in human waste, bearing in her hand a valuable object, a monster rank flux orb.

Covered in goo and surrounded by the filthy smell of human waste, Kristina exited the sewers expecting the streets to be completely empty as it was too dangerous to go outside in the slums during curfew, but she was shocked to see a woman leaning on the lightpost.

"Are you Hunter Kristina?"

"I can explain!" Kristina yelped once she noticed the woman in question was a ranger.

"I have no intentions of taking you to the hoosegow if that's what worries you. In fact, I'm here to recruit you..."

"Recruit me? I... I don't think I'm a good fit for the rangers ma'am."

"No, not for the rangers," Charlie shook her head as she adjusted her cowboy hat to let Kristina see her face. "word on the streets says you're the best tracker in town and I need to find a certain person."

Kristina was beyond flabbergasted as she had no clue how did she find out about her trait. She wasn't even registered at the Cryptid hunting agency and she sold all the flux orbs she obtained on the black market which caused Kristina to become suspicious of the woman in front of her.

"Are you really a ranger?" She asked, fearing Charlie might be an outlaw huntress.

"Of course I am, but this is a personal matter."

"Alright, but I need something that belongs to the person you want to find or I won't have anything to go by."

"Would this work?" Charlie said as she handed a fedora hat to Kristina.

"Could this be...?"

"Yes, I need you to find the whereabouts of Raider."