Chapter 17: Registration

Chapter 17: Chapter 17: Registration

The following morning

Jason sat at the kitchen table long after the dishes from breakfast were cleared, phone in hand, staring at a number that refused to get bigger no matter how many times he refreshed the app.

’Twelve thousand. And that’s before this week’s groceries, before the next round of injections, before anything actually goes wrong.’

He did the math again anyway, the way you keep pressing a bruise to see if it still hurts.

’The spirit ginseng and the other stuff I bought ate seven thousand in one trip. Medication runs two thousand a dose, and I need those on hand, not on order. At this pace we run dry before next week.’

’Then I stop buying things that keep her alive. Which isn’t happening. So something else has to change.’

He thought about it from every angle he could stand to think about it from, refusing to let the first answer be the only answer.

’I could sell more cores. Except cores require killing things, and killing things as an unregistered nobody with no rank and no backup is how unregistered nobodies end up as somebody else’s core.’

’I could ask the clan for more. Ha. No.’

’I could register.’

He turned that one over longer than the others.

Every registered Hunter in Mordania, even the lowest of them, even a fresh F-Rank barely a week off the intake exam, made a living wage off contract work and core sales that dwarfed anything an unawakened man could scrape together doing deliveries and odd labor. F-Rank wasn’t glory. F-Rank was steady, unglamorous, and it paid.

’And I happen to know a First Level cultivator who’s suspiciously overqualified to be sorted into F-Rank.’

He brought the idea to Novaria over what was left of the tea, laying it out plainly, the numbers first, the plan second.

"You’d need to register with someone," she said finally. "Which association?"

"That’s the part I wanted your opinion on." Jason set his cup down. "Great Clan-affiliated associations, like your family’s or mine, come with oversight. People who ask questions."

"The government registry doesn’t care as much," Novaria said slowly, already ahead of him. "The Association proper cross-checks cultivation against performance eventually, but their intake process is a formality. Test, stamp, done. Nobody there has any particular reason to look closely at one more disgraced clan reject filling out paperwork."

Novaria considered it again, then gave a short nod. "Government registry, then. It’s the obvious choice, honestly. I’m mildly annoyed I didn’t say it before you did."

"I’ll allow you the loss gracefully."

"How generous."

He cleaned her up just as he did the previous morning and after taking his own shower, headed straight for the nearest hunter association branch

"Wish me luck," he said, shrugging into his jacket.

"You’ll be fine. The hunter association takes as many hands as they can get"

He pressed a hand briefly to her shoulder on the way past. "Wish me luck anyway. For morale."

"Good luck," she said, dry as ever, and he was smiling about it the whole walk to the taxi stand.

The Hunter Association’s district branch was a squat, unremarkable building sandwiched between a bank and a noodle shop, nothing about its exterior suggesting that the inside processed people capable of tearing golems apart with their bare hands.

Jason pushed through the front doors into a lobby that smelled faintly of ozone and burnt coffee, a queue of maybe a dozen people ahead of him, and took his place at the back.

’Here we go.’

When his turn came, the receptionist behind the counter looked up with the practiced, slightly weary friendliness of someone who processed the same three conversations forty times a day.

"Welcome to the district branch. Name and purpose of visit?"

"Jason Veryon. I’d like to register as a Hunter."

Her eyes flicked to her screen, scanning something, and something in her expression shifted, the flat professional courtesy sharpening into faint, careful recognition.

"Veryon," she repeated, and didn’t elaborate on what that name apparently still meant to her, for which he was quietly grateful.

"I’ve recently recovered from an old injury," Jason said, keeping his tone even, unremarkable, the story he and Novaria had rehearsed the night before slipping out exactly as planned. "Cleared to register now. F-Rank, I’d imagine, given how long I’ve been out of practice."

"We’ll let the testing room decide your rank," she said, professional again. "I’m Talia, I’ll be handling your intake today. This way."

She led him down a narrow hallway lined with informational posters about Gate safety protocols and core handling regulations, stopping outside a plain door marked only with a number.

"Standard procedure," Talia said, pulling it open. "The room reads essence output. Nothing invasive. Just stand in the marked circle and pour your essence into it for about thirty seconds."

Jason stepped inside, glanced at the faint circle etched into the floor, and felt, beneath the surface calm he’d been holding since he walked in, a small flicker of something close to nerves.

He let Veil drop.

He felt it go, the quiet, constant pressure at the edge of his awareness releasing all at once, like letting go of a held breath he’d forgotten he was holding. His essence signature bled outward, unguarded.

[Veil: deactivated.]

He poured his essence into the circle beneath his feet and lit up, faint lines of light tracing outward from where he stood, and a readout scrolled across the small screen mounted beside the door.

CULTIVATION LEVEL: FIRST

AFFINITY: DUAL DETECTED

Talia glanced at the screen, then back at him, brow rising slightly. "Dual affinity. That’s not nothing for a fresh registration. Fire and Lightning, looks like."

"Well. Congratulations, Mr Veryon. You’re officially F-Rank." She tapped something into her tablet. "First Level cultivation qualifies you for F-Rank clearance regardless of affinity grade, standard policy.

He let Veil settle back into place the moment the readout finished, the familiar pressure closing back around him like a held breath returning.

Talia walked him through the rest of the intake at the front desk, a stack of forms, a registration card with his name and rank stamped across it in tidy print, and a small printed slip with a login code.

"This gets you access to the Association’s Hunter portal," she explained. "Gate listings by region and threat rank, open raiding parties looking for members, contract postings, core exchange rates, all of it updates daily. Worth checking every morning if you’re planning to work regularly."

"I am," Jason said. "Regularly and enthusiastically."

"Good attitude." She glanced at him, something faintly amused crossing her face now that the formal part was done. "One more thing. Do you have a weapon already, or would you like to see what we’ve got for new registrants?"

Jason thought about the kitchen knife currently drying in a drawer at home.

"I would love to see what you’ve got."

"This way, then."

The weapons room sat at the back of the building, a long, low-ceilinged space lined with racks of standard-issue gear, nothing enchanted or exceptional, but serviceable, the kind of equipment meant to carry a new Hunter through their first several ranks before they could afford something better.

Talia gestured him through with a small wave. "Take your time. Everyone’s first weapon says something about them, in my experience."

Jason moved down the racks slowly, running his eyes over each option the way he approached most decisions, without rushing toward the obvious answer just because it was obvious.

A sword first. Balanced, familiar, the default choice for most new Hunters, the weapon every instructor in his childhood had drilled into him alongside a dozen others. He picked one up, tested the weight, and set it back down almost immediately.

’Too much finesse required for a body that wants to hit something hard and set it on fire afterward.’

A saber next, curved, quick, built for cutting rather than thrusting. He thought of Novaria’s saber, the way she’d apparently made it an extension of her own reach back before her accident, and set this one down too.

’Feels wrong to borrow the shape of someone else’s weapon just because it’s sitting closest to hand.’

Twin daggers caught his eye briefly, built for speed and precision, and he considered them longer than he expected to, given how well they’d have suited a Lightning-heavy build.

’Fast. Fits half of what I’ve got. But daggers ask you to dance around a fight rather than end it. I don’t particularly want to dance. I want to close the distance and finish things before they get a second attempt.’

Then he reached the spear rack, and something in him settled before he’d even picked one up.

He lifted it, testing the balance, the long clean line of the shaft, the weight distributed just right to make the whole thing feel less like a weapon and more like an extension of his own arm reaching further than it had any business reaching.

’This.’

He turned it over slowly in his hands, thinking it through the way he thought through everything, refusing to let instinct alone make the decision without checking its work.

’Fire and Lightning don’t want subtlety. They want force, delivered directly, without wasted motion. A sword asks you to be clever about where you cut. A spear asks you to be decisive about where you point, and then commit completely once you do.’

’Reach matters too. I spent sixteen years small and slow and unable to close distance on anything. A spear gives me distance back before I even have to fight for it.’

’And it’s difficult. Genuinely difficult, harder to master than half of what’s on these racks, which means there’s more room in it to actually grow into, rather than a weapon I max out in a year and then have nothing left to chase.’

He planted the butt of the spear against the floor, feeling the length of it settle comfortably along his shoulder, and found himself almost smiling.

’Overwhelming force.’

’Yeah. This one’s mine.’

"Spear," Talia said, watching him from a few feet away, something like approval in her voice. "Good choice. Unforgiving weapon to learn, but nobody who commits to one ever seems to regret it."

"I’ve got nowhere better to be than however long it takes to get good at this," Jason said, testing the weight one more time before shouldering it properly.

’Sixteen years of nowhere better to be, if I’m honest. Might as well spend the next stretch of them pointed in a useful direction.’

He signed the final form, tucked his registration card and login slip into his jacket alongside a marriage certificate that had finally stopped feeling quite so heavy to carry, and stepped back out into the afternoon with a spear over his shoulder and, for the first time in longer than he wanted to admit, something that felt almost like a plan.