Seven years before the double dungeon incident in the main timeline:
Gabriel Nolan ran out of his house, holding the hand of his pregnant girlfriend. The US Government had announced that the apocalyptic terror known as Kamish the Dragon was heading this way, so they had to leave as soon as possible. After she was in the seat and buckled in, he ran inside to grab their bags, threw them in the back seat, and hopped into the driver’s seat as quickly as possible. As neither of them were Awakened, much less Hunters, they had no reason to stay here.
He rapidly backed out of the driveway and put the car in drive, before heading as quickly as traffic would allow to the highway. Unfortunately, after ten minutes it became apparent that everyone else had the same idea and that traffic would barely allow them to exceed walking pace. Even at highway speeds it would take the two of them both driving all night to make it to the Atlanta Airport. It was one of the largest airports in the world, and if they managed to get there they could go anywhere they wanted. Gabriel was thinking about heading even further south, to Mexico or maybe Brazil, where they could live off of their savings for over a year, hopefully surviving there until the Hunters dealt with that damnable lizard.
An hour later, however, they were still moving at a snail’s pace on a gridlocked highway. From what the traffic app said, several idiots a few miles ahead had decided that they didn’t want to wait for the dragon to kill them and decided to do it themselves by cutting off an 18 wheeler. This had blocked four of the six lanes of traffic, and even though the police were clearing the accident as quickly as possible, it was difficult to do anything when the ambulances, fire trucks, and tow trucks couldn’t make it to the scene.
As he impatiently waited for the traffic to move enough to let him roll forward, his ears picked up a distant sound. He cut off the radio, and heard it again. He tried looking out the windows, but didn’t see anything. ‘Well, it’s not like traffic is moving anyway.’ he said, as he put the car in park and got out to see what it was. There in the air, approaching rapidly from a hundred miles away, was a giant bird. That must be what…
He stopped himself. If it was that big from this distance, it must be as large as a whale. That’s when he realized that it wasn’t a bird. It was a lizard. It was a Dragon. “KAMISH IS HERE!” he yelled and pointed, hoping that others would see, then ran to the other side of the car to help his girlfriend out.
“But our bags.” she said as he pulled her away from the car and started urging her to run back where they had come from.
“Fuck our bags. We can get more stuff later. You are irreplaceable.” He pulled on her hand and she ran as quickly as she could. He would have picked her up and carried her if he thought it would be faster, but as she was already eight months along he wasn’t even sure he could lift her.
As they ran as quickly as she could manage the Terror in the Sky got close enough to launch its attack. There was a loud roar which caused everyone to freeze in terror, and a beam of intense heat lanced out. The force of the blast caused an explosion which threw the two of them forward into the concrete, and Gabriel rolled several times before coming to a stop. As soon as he came to his senses he ignored the scrapes and bruises on himself and got up and ran over to her, only to find a massive gash on her forehead which poured blood.
She wasn’t moving, so he pulled off his t-shirt and tied it around her head to stop the bleeding, and held her unconscious form. If only one of those Healer type hunters was nearby. Maybe they would get here soon and be able to treat her. He hugged her and cried, hoping that if a god existed, they would see fit to send some help.
A few minutes later he heard the sounds of helicopters approaching and wondered if his prayers had been answered. Maybe he would have to start going to church after this.
They didn’t come his way, however. The few Hunters that got close didn’t even seem to notice that he was there, as they ran by him to launch attacks at the dragon, hoping to force it to land so that their melee fighters would have something to do. Even the Healer he saw ignored the dying pregnant woman in favor of healing the nearby mage that had gotten knocked over in a Dragon caused Earthquake and broken a bone.
A few minutes later, after he tried to talk to the Healer only to be yelled at for distracting them, the Hunters moved away, leaving him kneeling there cradling the woman whose breathing was growing more and more shallow.
Five minutes after they took the battle a few hundred yards away she opened her eyes, though she seemed extremely tired. “Gabe.” she said. “Are the Hunters here yet?” Gabriel nodded. “Are they going to save us?” He started crying again, knowing that they were unlikely to save her, but nodding anyway to give her hope. “That’s good.” she said, then closed her eyes again.
Gabriel was still crying a minute later when the Hunters started running by. Kamish was pushing them back and once again they ignored the civilians as they fled to try and save their own lives.
The Dragon roared again and a blindingly bright flame struck out towards some of those hunters. Gabriel noticed at the last minute that the flame wasn’t just headed towards them, but that it would hit him as well.
In that moment a cold anger filled with hatred flooded his body. He wasn’t sure who he was more angry at. Was it the Hunters, who had abandoned the people in favor of saving their own asses? Himself for being so weak that he was unable to protect the woman he loved and their unborn son? Or maybe God for allowing this nightmare to occur in the first place? Who it was directed at didn’t matter anymore, though, as he let out a roar of his own, infusing it with that cold.
The ground quickly developed a layer of frost and a dome of blue light went out from him, shielding him from the worst of the blast. Much of it, however, got through, and he gritted his teeth in pain as he felt the skin on his arms start to burn. Still, he let out all of the rage he had been bottling up since the Dragon had appeared, and that rage was the only thing keeping him alive.
After what felt like hours but was likely only seconds his Rage Frost subsided as he lost all of his energy, but by that time the dragon had moved to attack someone else, leaving him alone. That’s when he realized what had just happened. What he had just done. He had used magic.
For the first time in weeks a smile came to his face. “Well, honey, it looks like I’m Awakened after all.” he said and looked down at her. She was awake and smiled slightly before starting to reach for his face. Before she could reach it, however, she lost all energy and let out a massive exhale. “Honey?” he asked and checked her breathing. He found nothing. “Honey?” he asked again, checking for a pulse. Again he found nothing. That’s when he noticed her side. Or rather, noticed that much of it was missing. There was a large section which was just charcoal, an area which stopped suddenly, likely because he had shielded the rest with his ice. And in the middle of that area was a tiny arm of a charred skeleton. That of his son.
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Gabriel opened his eyes and looked at his LED watch. He had been down here for sixty seven minutes, and had held his breath the entire time. As he swam back to the surface he realized how strange it was that his daydreams had turned into a nightmare. Why had he remembered the worst, most painful day of his life when he was so close to starting the next chapter of his life?
He broke the surface of the water and swam towards the emergency ladder, pushing the chunks of ice that were in his way to the side as he swam. Once he arrived he started climbing and soon he was back on the deck of the cargo ship.
A large German man held out a robe for him to put on. “Why do you walk around like that, sir?” he asked. “You know that the others can see you.”
“You didn’t seem to mind the view.” he answered, slipping the outfit on so that he was wearing some form of clothing. “Though all of you are welcome to join me in the bath if you wish.” Not that anyone would take him up on the offer, as the ‘bath’ was in water that was at subzero temperatures, only staying liquid because of the salt content.
“I’m keeping a professional attitude, sir. I’ve told you that I’m only interested in men when I’ve got too many drinks in me, and I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol in over a year.” ‘A’ rank swordsman Joseph Hienlich had a major life change one year ago when his wife caught him in the arms of another man in their bed, resulting in her leaving him. They had no children to make the divorce more difficult, but he swore to stop drinking, at first to try and win her back. When she still rejected him after six months, he continued to not drink so that he didn’t lose control of himself again. He claimed that the alcohol had made him bisexual, and that he was completely heterosexual when sober, but Gabriel didn’t think that was how attraction worked, and that he was merely suppressing a part of himself.
Three months ago, when Gabriel had started building his guild and had started recruiting Hunters from around the world, Joseph had decided to set out for somewhere that wasn’t full of painful memories and joined Gabriel, even knowing about the planned expedition and the fact that the guild’s headquarters would be in the most remote area imaginable.
“So, any news?” Gabriel asked as he started walking towards his cabin. While most of the others onboard would barely be able to function in normal clothing out here, and Joseph was wearing a winter coat, thanks to his powers Gabriel could barely feel the sub-zero temperature of the air.
“Yes, sir.” the vice head of the guild said, following behind his boss. “We have located an almost ideal location for the new base.” They went into the estate room, a renovation that the old cargo hauler had needed before setting out from the dock in Texas, and Joseph opened up the map created by overhead drone footage of the icy continent on the large touchscreen that served as a table. “As you can see, about two hundred kilometers from here, one hundred from the coast, is a massive ant nest. Based on residual mana in the area, we think a high A ranked gate had a break in that location, though the only ants that we have seen are a few A and B ranked ones that have left the tunnels, so we aren’t sure of their numbers.”
“Ants aren’t exactly known for their ability to resist the cold. Any idea why they left the safety and warmth of their tunnels?” While it wouldn’t exactly be warm down there, it would, at least, stay above freezing.
“They are hunting, sir.” Joseph replied with a matter-of fact tone that revealed that he had expected such a question. “Both the B and C ranked Penguin monsters that live along the coast here.” He drew a line alone the coast with his finger. “And the E and D rank fish the Penguins hunt for food. Apparently, there are too many ants to feed without bringing in outside prey.”
Gabriel nodded. “In that case, we should try taking out as many as possible before entering the nest. That will thin their numbers and prevent a flanking maneuver if they are called back.” While in other locations dungeon breaks tended to destroy everything in the area, including the local wildlife, here in Antarctica there was little to no native wildlife. This meant that when the breaks had occurred years ago the monsters had been forced to form their own ecosystem in order to survive. That meant that they were susceptible to strategies that Hunters normally wouldn’t use like cutting off supply lines, as well as ecological imbalance. “Call a Hunter meeting in the main briefing room. Rank B and up. We’ll need to get together two groups of Hunters, one to go with me to kill all of the ones outside the nest, and one to watch our backs with you, so that they don’t send out reinforcements. I’d say ten A ranks and five B ranks per team should be enough. Oh, and I want you to personally ask Li Xiu if she is willing to accompany us on this trip.”
Li Xiu, like many of the hunters here, had nothing to go back to in their homeland. In her case, she had lived in a small village in China when a two star ranked gate opened up nearby. Unfortunately, they didn’t notice that it was there until six days after it had formed. Hunters from other towns wouldn’t be able to clear it before a break, and likely wouldn’t be able to get there in time to deal with that break. She, as the only awakened Healer in the village, had been forced to team up with the only other two awakened in the village, a one star mage and a two star tank. While she did her best to use her four star healing abilities to keep them alive, the other two were unable to wipe out the monsters before the village had been destroyed, the three of them being rescued in the end by a team of two and three star ranked hunters from Beijing that had come looking for the valuable cores within the creatures.
With her entire family being killed, after the funeral she thought about leaving what was left of the village behind. That’s when she saw Gabriel’s advertisement on the Hunter website, and that he was willing to recruit awakened people from any country, background, or level, and even train them himself, as long as they were willing to join his guild and move to Antarctica to help harvest the massive numbers of dungeon break creatures on the continent. She became the strongest healer the guild had, and its only A rank healer, one month later.
Joseph went to gather the hunters, and Gabriel got dressed as he thought about the situation. Over the last four months, the four months since he had been one of only six hunters to survive the battle with the Dragon Kamish, he had put all of his effort into coming to this continent to start not just a new business, but a new life. Joseph had tried to convince him that they could make more money in the United States, and, indeed, for the next few years they probably could. The government was paying handsomely for anyone that was willing to fight to keep the country safe. And for the first three months he had done just that, amassing billions in revenue by, at first, personally hunting down every monster he could, and later leading teams of hunters, including Joseph, to do the same.
They could probably continue to do the same for at least another year. But Gabriel wasn’t sure he wanted to. He had come to realize that the rage he had felt on that day, the day he got his powers, wasn’t something that he could deal with by enacting vengeance on all of the monsters he could find. They, after all, weren’t the ones that had taken Her from him. No, if anything, the US Government, who had sent everyone they could after the Dragon without any care for the civilian casualties was more responsible than the monsters were. If nothing else, they had failed to evacuate the areas that would be affected or even give the people adequate warning. And he wasn’t sure how long he could continue to work for the people whose negligence had cost him the two most important people in his life, Her and his son.
Sure, the hunters were also to blame, as they had chosen to ignore the civilians as well, but hundreds of them had died, and only five others remained, and it did no good to blame the dead.
So now he was heading far away across the ocean, justifying it to himself and others by being the only one to contain the dungeon breaks on a continent where they were utterly meaningless, where he could make great profits, but only be able to spend them on imports. He had left most of his guild in the various offices in the US, but once the city here had been established all of the willing personnel would be moved here, leaving behind only those that didn’t want to leave.
Thirty minutes later Gabriel made his way into the hold, to the large meeting room that could hold all 300 people on board if needed. For the moment it held about half of that, at 142 people. Other than the 100 or so B rank hunters, all but two of them were A rank. Those two would be him, at SA rank and a large shirtless Russian man who was standing at the back, an S rank. This was Mikhail. He was a formal criminal who openly admitted to murdering a Russian politician. Not that he could exactly cover it up, as the man was in the middle of a televised interview at the time. Apparently, Mikhail didn’t agree with the man’s anti-hunter opinion and wasn’t content with just seeing him lose the next election that was happening in a month. Upon being called a demon for the third time, Mikhail left his seat, walked over to the politician, lifted him by the neck, and effortlessly snapped his neck.
He plead guilty in court and was sentenced to life in prison, but had his sentence commuted after only a year after he solo cleared several remote B and C ranked dungeons as part of a work release program, preventing several breaks that would have ruined the local ecosystems and wiped out several villages. As soon as he got out of prison, he contacted Gabriel and asked to join the mission, and Gabriel managed to pull a few strings to get him permission to end his parole and leave the country.
Anyone that looked at the distribution of power on this ship would be justified in thinking that the guild had heavily recruited high-ranked hunters, as about half of the people onboard were B rank or above. In reality, Gabriel had merely made sure that they gave preferential treatment to the high ranking members in the initial group. For the initial push into the continent only Hunters rank C and above would be sent on missions so that they didn’t lose anyone. Those that were below C rank had only been brought along because they had skills that were useful, usually crafting skills. While it was less common for the higher rank people to have such skills, many of them were also crafters. In fact, Joseph was a pretty good blacksmith, and had made much of his and some of Gabriel’s equipment from A and B ranked cores and dungeon resources.
