F-Rank Awakening: My System Turns Trash Skills To SSS-RANK

Chapter 36: Straight to the meat grinder

Rain let out a breathy, quiet laugh, leaning his head back just an inch as he looked at Abby.

"The very same," Rain said, his tone light and dry. "Though honestly, the internet made the whole thing sound a lot more heroic than it actually was. Mostly it was just me running for my life and getting very lucky. But sure, I’ll take the heroics claims,"

Abby chuckled, stepping back a pace and smoothing her hands down the front of her shirt, "Well, lucky or not, you’re pretty much all anyone in my guild house has been talking about for three days straight."

Rain raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Oh, don’t get too arrogant," she added quickly, waving a hand in the air with a small, crooked grin. "Ninety percent of it isn’t even about you. It’s about White Tiger losing their clients and public trust over the whole mess with Warrick. Our senior officers spent all of yesterday’s briefing analyzing how their contract structure collapsed after the incident. But still... surviving a C-rank rift when you haven’t even finished your basic term? That’s real. People who actually go into gates know you can’t just luck your way through a C-rank shift. So, yeah. Respect."

"I appreciate that," Rain said smoothly, settling his hands back into his hoodie pockets. "Though after holding Tenski’s horse stance for two hours on loose gravel, I’m thinking a C-rank beast might actually be easier on the knees."

Abby laughed out loud this time, a bright, clear sound that drew a quick glance from two nearby students packing up their their things to leave the place.

"Right, because you were clearly struggling so hard," she teased, shaking her head as she glanced at his boots. "I saw Tenski kick you. You didn’t even move an inch! Meanwhile, half the front row was vibrating like leaf springs."

"I was hiding the trembling very carefully," Rain replied, his eyes crinkling at the corners. "It’s all about optical illusion, Abby. Inside, my legs were screaming for help."

"Liar," she said, though her eyes were light with easy humor. She slung her heavy leather gym duffel over one shoulder, shifting the strap into place. "Look, I actually have to sprint. I train off-campus four days a week down in the lower city district, so I barely have time to grab my bag from the locker block."

"Oh, city training. Look at you Professional schedule and everything." Rain drawled playfully, tilting his head. He couldn’t quite place why talking to her seemed so easy. He was an easy going person normally, but Abby brought an almost familiar energy into the equation.

"Hey! Guild obligations are no joke," she said, nudging his arm lightly with her elbow as they began walking together toward the perimeter gate. "I basically live on the transit shuttle when I’m not driving and hop between classes and the gym. Honestly, it’s exhausting trying to keep up with the theory modules while doing physical reps off-site every evening."

"No, I mean it," Rain said, his voice dropping into something genuine and warm, stripping away the teasing tone. "It’s seriously impressive. Balancing academy work with full guild routines isn’t easy. I saw how you handled Mumford on the first day. You’ve got actual form. If I had half of your technique back in that rift, I probably wouldn’t have spent seven days in the hospital recovering,"

Abby paused for half a second near the concrete gate post, looking up at him with a slight flush touching her cheeks. She let out a small, self-conscious huff, swatting at the air between them.

"Okay, stop flattering me," she laughed, though she looked genuinely pleased. "You’re making me sound like some kind of prodigy. Mumford just didn’t know how to keep his weight over his toes."

"Hey, credit where it’s due," Rain said, stopping by the gate while she stepped out onto the sidewalk.

"Listen," Abby said, turning back around to face him, holding the strap of her bag with both hands. "I really do owe you for finding the earring. Are you free tomorrow around noon? I can buy you lunch at that noodle place near the south dorms as a proper thanks."

Rain rubbed the back of his neck, a noncommittal but warm smile on his face. "Tomorrow? I might have a few things to take care of around campus, but I’ll try to make it work. Let me check my schedule in the morning."

"Deal," Abby said, stepping backward down the concrete steps with an easy wave. "Don’t go getting dragged into any more rifts between now and then!"

Rain laughed, raising a hand in farewell. "I’ll try my best!"

He watched her head toward the shuttle stop, her blonde ponytail bouncing against her shoulder, before he turned back toward the dorm blocks, the light mood lingering in his chest.

By seven o’clock that evening, the sun had fully dipped below the horizon, leaving the academy grounds bathed in the warm, orange glow of tall streetlamps.

Rain sat in a booth near the back corner of a small, noisy diner located just outside the eastern student gate. The air was thick with the rich, salty aroma of fried noodles, sizzling beef, and spilled soda. Abstract pop music hummed from cheap speakers mounted near the ceiling, barely cutting through the loud chatter of hungry first-years recovering from physical drills.

Across the wooden table, Peter was currently busy shoving a large dumpling into his mouth while trying to take a sip of dark plum juice at the exact same time.

"So," Peter mumbled around his food, wiping a smear of red chili oil from his chin with a paper napkin. "You said yesterday... you said you had an idea about Corwin’s crew?"

Rain picked up a fried spring roll with his wooden chopsticks, dipping it casually into a small dish of soy sauce.

"I talked to them today," Rain said evenly.

Peter froze mid-chew. His eyes went wide as saucers, his chopsticks hovering two inches above his plate. He swallowed hard, making a loud, wet sound in his throat.

"You... you what?" Peter squeaked, his voice pitching high enough to draw a brief glance from a couple sitting in the adjacent booth.

"Keep your voice down," Rain said gently, taking a bite of his spring roll. "It’s fine. We had a quick conversation by the library arch."

"Rain, are you insane?!" Peter hissed, leaning across the table, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the edge of the wood. "They’re crazy! Dax literally bent a steel locker door last week because someone looked at him wrong! What did you say to them?!"

"Well," Rain said, chewing calmly before setting his chopsticks down on the ceramic rest. "They think I owe them money for those two skill disks they lost the night they jumped me."

Peter blinked. "Wait... what?"

"The disks," Rain repeated.

Peter shook his head slowly, his brow furrowing in confusion. "What disks? I didn’t see you holding any disks that night."

Rain paused for a moment, remembering. Peter had gone down first, one solid hit from Dax dropping him before he’d even gotten a hand up. By the time the beating turned to Rain, Peter had already been unconscious on the ground a few feet away. He wouldn’t have seen anything.

"Right," Rain said. "You were already out by then."

He set his water glass down, turning it slowly on the wooden table.

"There was a kid at the Resonance Ceremony. Sen. He got issued a disk same as me, but he broke down right after, said he couldn’t do it, and forced his into my hands before he walked off. So I had two on me. Mine, and his."

Peter’s face went pale. "Two disks? Rain, that’s... that’s illegal. You can’t carry an unbound disk that isn’t registered to you, let alone two. That’s a straight-up federal violation."

"I know," Rain said evenly. "I was trying to get back to the dorm without walking past a security checkpoint. That’s the only reason I cut through that back entrance in the first place. Corwin and his crew found me there instead."

Peter’s hands had gone still on the table, his half-eaten dumpling forgotten. "Is Sen coming back for it? Did he say he wanted it back eventually, or—"

"I don’t know," Rain said. "Haven’t seen him since."

"Did you actually lose them, or did you just tell Corwin that?" Peter asked, leaning in, his voice dropping lower. "Because if you’re sitting on two unregistered disks somewhere in your dorm room, Rain, that’s not a debt problem. That’s the kind of thing that gets you expelled and thrown in a holding cell."

"I don’t have them," Rain said. "When I woke up, I was already in the infirmary. Whatever happened to them between the ground and that bed, I don’t know. Corwin thinks I hid them somewhere. I think security or the medical team picked them up off me without logging it right. Either way, they’re gone. I don’t have them, and I can’t produce them."

Rain had just told a lie about not having the disks anymore. Which was technically true but he omitted the part where a strange screen swallowed both disk. But he had his reasons for lying to Peter.

As much as he wanted to help someone in need, he’d just met Peter and couldn’t trust him with a secret as big as his synthesis system just right away. He knew that was a naive move and he was holding onto that card for now.

Peter sat back, dragging a hand down his face, some of the color slowly returning as the immediate legal terror settled into something more manageable.

"Okay," he said, mostly to himself. "Okay. That’s insane, but okay. So what did they actually want from you today?"

"Fifty thousand credits," Rain said. "Or the two disks back. Their choice."

Peter’s jaw dropped. "Fifty... fifty thousand? Rain, you don’t have fifty thousand credits! I don’t have fifty thousand credits! Nobody in Class C has fifty thousand credits!"

"I know," Rain said smoothly. "Which is why I offered to work it off."

Peter stared at him. He didn’t say a word for three full seconds. Then his hand jolted sideways, knocking over his tall paper cup of plum juice. The dark purple liquid spilled instantly across the wooden tabletop, pooling around his plate of dumplings.

"Damn it," Peter panicked, grabbing a handful of thin paper napkins and slapping them down onto the wet wood, splattering juice onto his own sleeve. "Work it... Rain, no! No, no, no! You don’t understand!"

"Peter, settle down," Rain said, leaning forward to help him dab at the edge of the table before the stain reached the floor.

"Settle down?!" Peter whispered loudly, his eyes darting frantically around the diner as he tried to sop up the juice with soaked paper. "Last night... last night when you told me you had a plan! I saw that look in your eyes! I thought... I don’t know, I thought you were some kind of strategic genius who was going to call the campus security board or trick them into a contract violation! I thought you had a smart way out!"

Rain tilted his head, watching the boy struggle with the napkins. "And?"

"And you just walked up to them and asked to get dragged into the exact same illegal rift team I’m trapped in!" Peter practically wailed, slamming a fistful of wet napkins into the small plastic trash basket at the end of the table. "That’s not a plan, Rain! That’s just... that’s just jumping straight into the meat grinder with me!"

"It’s not jumping into a meat grinder," Rain said calmly, picking up his glass of water and taking a slow sip. "It’s getting access."

"Access to what?!" Peter asked, his voice cracking slightly as he slumped back into his seat, looking utterly defeated and exhausted. "Access to getting killed by a D-rank beast because Dax wants to steal another guild’s core haul? Rain, listen to me. They send us into active perimeter zones! We don’t even get real armor! If an independent guild team catches us sneaking around their transport crates, they’ll break our legs and dump us in the ditch!"

"They won’t," Rain said.

"How can you possibly know that?!" Peter pressed, his hands shaking as he gripped his knees under the table. "You’re an F-rank student! I’m an F-rank student! What changes just because there are two of us walking into those rifts instead of one? We’re still just two broke first-years with no guild backing and zero practical combat stats!"

Rain looked at Peter for a long, quiet moment.

He saw the raw, genuine terror in the younger boy’s face, the panic of someone who had spent a month being hunted, squeezed, and beaten until he couldn’t see any outcome that didn’t end in disaster. Peter was looking at the situation through the lens of a victim who believed the world was fixed, that ranks were permanent, and that bullies always held all the cards.

Rain reached across the table, tapping his knuckles softly against the wood right in front of Peter’s plate.

A small, confident smile spread across Rain’s face, his gaze steady under the warm diner lights.

"Peter," Rain said softly, his voice full of an easy, unshakeable calm. "Relax. I might be going into that rift weak..."

He paused, letting the moment sit.

"...but I’m not coming out of it the same."