The straps dig into my shoulders like they want to cut me in half. Two bags of loot, three sets of gear that ain’t even mine, and a leg that’s shaking so bad I keep thinking it’s gonna just give out right here in the tunnel.
Nobody looks back at me. Not once.
"Move it, porter," somebody says. I don’t even know which one said it anymore. My eyes are stuck on the ground, on my own boots dragging through the dirt like they weigh a ton each.
F-rank. That’s what I woke up as. Everybody else in this party got something — fire, blades, some kinda beast summon. Me? I got nothing you’d call a gift. Just enough mana sensitivity to carry gear and not die doing it. That’s my "class." Porter.
The gate mouth opens up ahead, that shimmer of light that means we’re finally out, finally back in the real world, and my legs almost buckle right there at the threshold. I catch myself on the frame. Nobody stops to check if I’m alright.
I don’t care though. Not really. Not anymore.
Because back home, my sister’s hospital bill’s sitting on the table with a red stamp on it, and the loan sharks don’t care what rank I woke up as. They just want their money. So I keep walking. One step, then another, until the gate spits us out into the gray evening light and the cold hits my sweat-soaked shirt like a slap.
Someone shoves a hand at me — not to help, just impatient. "Gear check. Hurry up."
I set the bags down. My arms are numb. I don’t say anything. I never do.
They spread the loot out on the table — crystal cores, a couple of low-tier accessories, some raw ore. I stand by the wall, arms still sore, and I watch them count it all up between themselves. Numbers getting thrown around. Splits getting decided. My name never comes up once.
I wait. Tell myself maybe they just forgot, maybe it comes after.
But the counting finishes. Bags get tied shut. People start stretching, already talking about where to eat tonight.
So I open my mouth before I can stop myself.
"...Where’s my pay?"
The room goes dead quiet.
Then somebody laughs first — a short bark of a laugh — and it spreads through the rest of them like a fire catching dry grass. One of them’s holding his stomach. Another one’s shaking his head like I just said the funniest thing he’s heard all week.
"Your pay?" the party leader says, wiping his eye like he’s actually got tears in it. "You’re a porter, man. You carry the bags. That’s the job. What, you thought you get a cut too?"
More laughing. Somebody mutters "F-rank thinks he’s a hunter" and that gets another round of it going.
My face is hot. My hands are shaking, but not from the exhaustion anymore.
"I did the same gate as you," I say, quiet. "Same monsters. Same risk."
"No," the leader says, and now his voice’s got an edge under the smile. "You walked behind us the whole time and picked things up. That’s not risk. That’s a service. And services don’t get loot splits."
He tosses something at my feet — a few crumpled bills, way less than bus fare should cost for how far we walked. "There. For your trouble. Don’t spend it all in one place."
More laughing.
My eyes drop to the bills at my feet. I don’t pick them up.
Then the leader’s gaze catches on something on the table — small, dark, glistening under the gate’s dying shimmer. A slimy black egg, no bigger than my fist, tucked between the crystal cores.
"The hell is this," he says, picking it up between two fingers like it’s trash. "Who grabbed this? This ain’t even sellable." His eyes land on me. "You. You picked this up, didn’t you? Wasting bag space on garbage."
He flicks it at me. I catch it on reflex, cold slime coating my palm before I even register what I’m holding.
"Here, eat that if you’re so hungry," he says, and the laughing starts up again, uglier this time. "F-rank probably think it’s dinner."
I don’t laugh. I don’t move.
"Get out," he says, the smile gone now, voice flat and hard. "I’m not gonna say it twice. Leave now, or I put you on the ground myself."
My hand tightens around the egg. Slime squeezes between my fingers, cold and strange, almost like it’s pulsing.
I should leave. Every part of me that’s still thinking straight says walk away, Jake, it’s not worth it.
But my mouth moves before my legs do.
"I want my full pay," I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel. "Not this." I don’t even look at the bills on the ground. "The real split. What I’m owed for the gate."
The hit lands before I even see it coming — knuckles across my jaw, and my head snaps sideways, and I taste copper. I stumble but I don’t go down. I don’t say sorry either.
He grabs the front of my shirt, pulls me up close so I get the full weight of his glare.
"You forgot something," he says, low, right in my face. "You owe my guild. Gear rental, gate registration fee, porter bond — all of it’s on your tab, remember? And I can call that in tonight. Right now. Have management drag you and that sick sister of yours down to the mana mines to work it off. Doesn’t matter she’s got a fever. Doesn’t matter she can barely stand. Contract’s a contract."
My blood is roaring in my ears. Every muscle in my body wants to swing at him, wants to put him on the ground and make him take it back — but I know what happens if I try. He’s B-rank. I’m nothing. He’d break my arm before my fist even reached his face, and then he’d still send my sister to the mines just for spite.
So I stand there. Fists shaking at my sides, doing nothing. Jaw throbbing, blood in my mouth, and I say nothing, because there’s nothing I can say that changes the math here. He’s got all the power. I’ve got a slimy egg in my hand and forty crumpled bills on the ground.
He shoves me back, satisfied, like he just proved a point he already knew was true.
"Pick up your trash and get out of my sight," he says, already turning away, already done with me. "Before I change my mind about being nice."
I bend down and pick up the crumpled bills, egg still slick in my other palm, and that’s when it hits — not pain, not exhaustion, something else. A pulse behind my eyes like a switch flipping on.
[DUAL AWAKENING DETECTED]
[System One: Wealth Multiplier — Active]Any currency in your possession can be doubled. Cooldown and limits apply based on tier.
[System Two: Monster Maiden Evolution Engine — Active]Capture, hatch, or tame any monster regardless of rank. All bound monsters manifest in humanoid maiden form.
I freeze. Bills still in my fist, egg pressed cold against my other hand, and the world just... stops for a second. Nobody around me sees it. The leader’s already walking off, laughing about something with his buddies, gate lights flickering behind them like nothing happened.
But something happened. Something huge.
I look down at the money in my hand — forty crumpled bills, the "pay" he threw at me like garbage — and I think the word double on instinct, more reflex than intention.
The bills feel heavier in my palm all of a sudden, and when I peek — there’s more there than I started with. Actually more.
[Currency Doubled: $40 → $80]
My heart’s slamming now, but not from the hit to my jaw anymore.
Then I look at the egg. Slimy, black, pulsing slow like something inside it is breathing.
[Unidentified Monster Egg Detected][Rank: Unknown — Sealed][Bind and Hatch? Y/N]
I stand there in the dirt outside the gate, blood drying on my lip, eighty dollars folded in my fist, and an egg that’s about to become something no one in this party would ever laugh at again.
They tossed me trash.
They have no idea what they just gave me.
I close my hand tighter around the egg and think one word.
Yes.