The driver’s side door creaked open, the metal hinges complaining under the weight of a heavy arm.
A man stepped out into the damp night air. He was in his mid-thirties, thick-set across the chest and shoulders with the square, dense frame of someone who carried heavy iron for a living. He wore a dark canvas jacket over a reinforced leather chest piece, the leather scuffed deep along the ribs where a blade or a claw had tried to cut through. A thick scar cut across his left jawline, dragging the corner of his lip down into a perpetual, sour sneer.
He didn’t look like an administrative officer from a top-tier guild. He looked like someone who lived in muddy ditches and cut meat out of monsters for a paycheck.
The man walked around the front of the van, his heavy leather boots crunching against the loose gravel. He stopped three feet away from the rusted iron gate, his hands resting loose on his belt. His eyes, small and cold under heavy brows, swept over Rain from his worn sneakers to his damp hair, taking in the frayed cuffs of his gray hoodie and the thinness of his neck.
"Are you Rain?" the man asked. His voice was a low, dry rasp, like two stones grinding together at the bottom of a dry well.
Rain held his ground under the streetlight, his hands pulled tight inside his hoodie pockets. "Yeah. I applied for the White Tiger carrier slot."
The man didn’t introduce himself. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a heavy set of iron keys he was most likely handed by school security and unlocked the thick padlock holding the service gate shut. He pulled the chain free, letting it rattle loudly against the metal mesh, and kicked the gate open six inches.
"Get in," the man said, gesturing with his chin toward the slide door on the passenger side of the blue van.
Rain’s mouth twitched.
’Get into an unmarked blue van parked at an abandoned gate by a guy who looks like he buries people for money,’ Rain thought, a dry, bitter ripple of humor moving through his head before his stomach had time to drop. ’Right. That’s not a red flag at all. That’s just standard student orientation.’
Underneath the dry joke, a cold, heavy pulse of real unease settled into his chest.
Although standing three feet away from this man was vastly different from standing forty feet away from Instructor Vance. Vance was a mountain of raw power, a force of nature that made the entire street go dead. This man was different. The weight rolling off his heavy shoulders was sharp, gritty, and dangerous.
Rain didn’t argue. He pushed through the narrow gap in the chain-link gate and walked over to the van. He pulled the sliding side door open. The interior smelled faintly of old engine oil, stale tobacco, and damp leather.
He climbed inside, stepping over a pile of loose tie-down straps, and pulled the heavy door shut until the latch caught with a loud clack.
The man walked back to the driver’s side, hauled himself up into the bucket seat, and slammed his door shut. He shifted the transmission into gear with a heavy metallic crunch, spun the steering wheel with one thick, calloused palm, and swung the van around on the narrow dirt track.
The weak yellow headlights swept across the dark line of trees lining the outer perimeter fence as the vehicle began to bounce along the rutted road, heading west toward the outer highway.
The driver glanced once into the cracked rearview mirror, his eyes locking onto Rain sitting on the wooden bench seat behind him.
"Where’s your gear?" the man asked flatly.
Rain blinked, leaning forward slightly against the back of the driver’s seat. "My... gear?"
"Your chest guard. Your boots. Your utility kit," the driver said, his voice completely flat, not even raising his tone as the tires hit a deep pothole that bounced Rain three inches off the wood. "Your weapon."
Rain’s throat went dry. He pulled his hands out of his hoodie pockets, staring at his plain, cloth-covered wrists. "The listing said carrier slot. It said no equipment required for F-rank baseline applicants."
The driver let out a short, wet grunt from the back of his throat. He didn’t say another word. He turned his eyes back to the dark asphalt road ahead, his thick hands resting loose on the top of the steering wheel.
Silence settled over the interior of the cab, heavy and suffocating, broken only by the rhythmic thumping of the worn tires against the cracked pavement.
Rain sat back against the wooden wall of the van, his jaw clenched tight until his molars ached. A surge of embarrassment burned hot behind his ears.
He had been so desperate to see three hundred credits hit his card, so eager to find a single open door on that public job board, that he hadn’t even stopped to ask the most basic question about what he was walking into. It was a rift. Even a low-tier gate was a localized rupture in space, filled with hostile fauna, unstable mana currents, and sharp rock. Entering one in a cotton hoodie and canvas sneakers wasn’t just foolish; it was suicidal.
He kept his mouth shut. Trying to explain himself now would only make him sound like a clueless baseline kid who belonged in a lecture hall, not on a transport. He pulled his hood up over his head, leaning his shoulder against the vibration of the side panel, staring out the darkened passenger window.
The van rolled past the last lighted security checkpoint on the edge of the academy perimeter.
The bright, white arc lights of the campus gave way to the deep, unbroken darkness of the Western Arch. This was the outer civilian buffer zone, a wide stretch of low-density forest, abandoned agricultural plots, and sprawling industrial warehouses built decades ago during the initial post-Fracture construction boom.
It was miles away from the shielded core of the upper city, far from the towering spires of the Central Abyss, sitting in a quiet, forgotten stretch of land where the civic grid sputtered out into unpaved roads and broken power lines.
Rain recognized pieces of the scenery as they passed under the rare, flickering sodium streetlights. He had studied the district maps in his secondary schooling. He knew that the Western Arch was dotted with old, low-yield rift sites, stable ruptures that had been downgraded by the regional authority years ago and left open for private contractors to harvest for low-grade mana crystal shards and raw hide. It was ordinary, rough terrain, the kind of place where poor families worked the salvage yards and independent hunters tried to scrape together enough core material to pay their registration fees.
Fifteen minutes later, the van slowed down, turning off the asphalt onto a narrow dirt logging trail that cut deep into a stand of tall, black pine trees.
The headlights bounced over exposed roots and thick mud before the van finally ground to a halt in a small, cleared clearing at the base of a sharp ridge.
The driver cut the engine. The headlights flickered out, plunging the clearing into near-total darkness, illuminated only by the pale, cold light of the moon filtering through the high pine canopy.
"Out," the driver said, unbuckling his seatbelt.
Rain slid the heavy side door open and stepped out onto the damp earth. The cold air hit his face immediately, carrying the sharp, bitter scent of crushed pine needles, wet clay, and something else, a faint, metallic ozone taste that made the back of his tongue tingle.
It was the smell of a rift gate.
Four people were standing near the rear of a dark pickup truck parked fifty feet away under the trees. They turned as the van door slammed shut, their faces lit by the low blue glow of a portable utility lantern sitting on the hood of the truck.
Rain adjusted his hoodie and walked over behind the driver, his eyes instantly locking onto the four waiting figures, taking them in with quiet, methodical precision.
The first was a tall, lean guy in his early twenties, wearing a set of fitted leather armor over a high-collared shirt. A long, thin arming sword hung from a leather scabbard at his hip, its hilt wrapped tightly in red grip tape. He stood with his arms crossed, his posture stiff, his eyes darting toward Rain with a sharp, immediate flicker of disapproval.
Next to him sat a stocky woman on the tailgate of the truck, wiping down a heavy iron mace with an oiled rag. She wore thick, overlapping steel plates over her shoulders and chest, the metal pitted and stained from old rust. Her short, black hair was pulled back into tight braids against her scalp, and a pair of thick leather gauntlets rested beside her on the truck bed.
The third was a younger guy, maybe nineteen, leaning against a tree trunk. He looked nervous, his fingers constantly adjusting the straps of a reinforced canvas chest harness. A short hunting bow was strapped to his back, along with a quiver of black-feathered arrows. He looked like an archer from the lower district guilds, someone who had bought his gear piecemeal from secondhand pawn shops.
The last member of the group stood slightly apart from the rest, leaning against the side of the truck with her arms tucked into the sleeves of a long, dark utility coat. She was thin, with pale skin and sharp features, her eyes dark and completely unreadable as she watched the van arrive. A pair of long iron daggers hung low on her thighs, strapped directly to her legs with heavy buckle harnesses.
Rain could tell it was a scratch team. A collection of independent, low-tier mercenaries brought together from completely different backgrounds, wearing mixed gear that had clearly seen better days.
The driver walked right up to the center of the clearing, stopping by the lantern.
"I’m Warrick," he said, his rasping voice cutting through the quiet rustle of the pine trees. "C-Rank Rift Raider. I’m running this contract."
He pointed a thick, scarred finger toward the dark ridge rising behind the trees. "The gate opened three days ago in a ravine two kilometers up that slope. We walk in from here. It’s a standard C-Rank rift."
A sharp beat of absolute silence fell over the clearing.
"Wait a minute," the tall guy with the arming sword said, his arms dropping to his sides as he took a step forward. "Hold on. The posting on the civilian board said D-rank entry level. It said a low-density baseline clearance."
The woman sitting on the tailgate stopped her rag mid-wipe, her small eyes narrowing as she looked up at Warrick. "My listing said it was a routine E-rank clearing run. A salvage detail. I didn’t gear up for a C-rank environment."
"Mine said E-rank too," the young archer said, his voice jumping an octave as his eyes darted between the others. "It said support and rear guard!"
Rain stood silently near the back of the group, his eyebrows pulling down slightly as he listened to the back-and-forth.
The pieces connected in his head with sickening clarity. Warrick hadn’t posted a single, honest job notice. He had tailored five different listings across five different board channels, tweaking the phrasing, adjusting the rank requirements, and promising low-tier payouts to attract desperate, low-ranked people who wouldn’t ask too many questions until they were already standing in the mud two miles outside the city limit.
Warrick didn’t even flinch. He didn’t offer a polite apology, and he didn’t try to deny it. He just took a slow step forward, his heavy leather boots sinking into the wet clay as he looked at the four angry faces in front of him.
"You think a real C-rank guild roster is going to hire any of you?" Warrick said, his rasping voice dropping an octave, turning cold and heavy. He pointed directly at the tall guy with the sword. "You. Dane, right? D-rank physical augmentee. You’ve been sitting on the local contract board for six months trying to get a spot on a guild roster, and nobody’s called you back because your core density is too low."
He shifted his bloodshot eyes to the woman with the mace. "Maren. D-rank defensive core. You’re thirty-two years old, working twelve-hour shifts at the iron foundry because you can’t afford the five thousand credit Guild registration fee."
He looked at the archer. "Toby. D-rank ranged support. Still waiting on your third tryout invite that’s never going to come."
He turned his gaze to the pale girl with the daggers. "Nyra. D-rank agility specialist. Two years freelancing and not one guild’s bothered to look twice."
He looked at Rain last, pointing a thick thumb at him. "And you. F-rank baseline. A student who can’t even afford a pair of leather boots."
Rain’s jaw tightened, his fingers curling into tight fists inside his hoodie pockets, but he didn’t break eye contact.
"Every single one of you falls short of what an official, high-tier guild contract demands," Warrick said, stepping right into the middle of the circle, his broad chest rising and falling as he looked them down. "A real C-rank raid team costs thousands of credits in advance pay, insurance bonds, and gear clearance. I don’t have that kind of capital, and you don’t have those kinds of credentials. But I have the location permit for a fresh C-rank gate, and I’m offering you a cut of a C-rank monster harvest."
He paused, letting the words sit in the damp, quiet air of the forest.
"You stay stuck in your little boxes, doing minimum-wage security sweeps and warehouse shifts for the rest of your lives," Warrick continued, his voice dropping into a low, persuasive rumble. "Or you walk up that hill with me, pull real core material out of a genuine gate, and put a real raid victory on your official record."
He reached into his thick leather coat, pulled out a small, heavy silver badge stamped with an official guild seal, and held it up in the lantern light.
"I’m an official squad leader for the White Tiger auxiliary wing," Warrick said, his small eyes gleaming in the dark. "We clear this gate tonight, and anyone who carries their weight gets a direct, fast-tracked recommendation to my guild’s secondary roster. No registration fee. No six-month waiting list."
Dane swallowed hard. His fingers twitched on the pommel of his sword. "A direct recommendation?"
"A real contract," Warrick confirmed. "With a base monthly stipend."