Fighting Them There Ch 01

Fighting Them There

is a story that takes place in a gamified world with dungeons that need to be attacked by heroes lest they spill monsters into our world and slaughter civilians. The basic setup should be familiar to anyone who's been exposed to modern Korean fantasy such as

Solo Leveling

,

A Returner's Magic Should Be Special

,

My Daughter is the Final Boss

, etc. etc. Some people get super powers based on fantasy RPG character classes, and society demands that they teleport into instance dungeons to fight monsters and bring back treasures. There's a lot of specifics of world building to get through, so while there will be "bedroom action" every chapter (that's the kind of story this is), we won't get to the "dungeon action" for a few chapters.

Max's class has a lot of moving parts, and figuring them out is the major theme of the first few chapters. Once those have been posted, his class writeup will appear in the Series Introduction for

Fighting Them There

. That way, if you need a refresher on what his abilities do, you can check there and I won't bore you with repeating the same info dumps over and over again. Anyway, on to the story:

###

"Happy birthday, son!" Max's parents were elated that he had passed the arbitrary milestone by which humans marked adulthood. His own smile was rather forced, as it was still seventeen days before the hunter's rune matured on his shoulder into a manifested

class

. That time was an equally arbitrary milestone dictated by a long departed people that even the elves called "The Ancients." Twenty rotations of another planet around a distant star, and it would be a time marked two and a half weeks after his eighteenth birthday. That would be his

real

birthday, when he would discover the powers granted by his class. The powers that would allow him to travel to that distant planet and fight the monsters over there.

"Happy birthday, bro!" His sister Michelle, "Meesh" when they were getting along, was born almost eleven months after him. Surprisingly, she had sprouted a hunter's rune as well. Two hunter's runes in the same family, a fact so surprising that the government had politely requested blood samples from every one of their relatives. A hunter's rune appeared on the shoulder of just one in nearly sixty thousand teenagers when they were twelve days after the midpoint between their thirteenth and fourteenth birthday. It meant the chances of two siblings getting hunter's marks wasn't one in a million, but less than a third of that. Not impossible for it to have been random chance, but unlikely enough that they'd received extra attention since his freshman year.

"Happy birthday, Max!" Sophie was the woman he was pleased to call his girlfriend. She was tall and strong. Her long blond hair framed her gorgeous face. Her athletic swimmer's musculature didn't prevent her from having well defined breasts that just barely spilled over the confines of a grasping hand. Everyone could see that Sophie was a catch. And that was all before her class manifested. Her hunter's rune had become Valkyrie, a B-tier vanguard class. Just eight in five hundred and twenty-one hunter's runes became B- or A-tier classes. The majority of hunter's runes became D-tiered, with the rest split evenly between E- and C-tier. She hadn't even

been

to a dungeon, and she could already lift a motorcycle and jump onto the roof of his house from the ground.

He was happy for Sophie, of course. She was destined for great things, and he loved her. But it meant that their dream of clearing dungeons together was in serious jeopardy. If his class was anything less than C-tier, she was going to leave him behind almost immediately. They had spent many hours kissing and planning their future: a team of trustworthy hunters doing simple dungeon clearance missions. Fighting them there so that they wouldn't have to fight them here. Max, Sophie, Michelle eventually, plus three others to be named later. Once Sophie's class had manifested, that plan was called into question. She was going to be sent to the most dangerous dungeons, a champion of Earth who would appear on talk shows and cereal boxes, and in just seventeen days he would find out if he had any real chance of being a part of her team.

"Soon you'll go to San Diego to fight the monsters. I'm so

proud

of you, son!" His mother did look proud. And he was going to have to ship out pretty soon. The gates were expensive to operate, and the newly manifested were sent off world just twice a year. Sophie would go with him to the base no matter what class he got, to meet the newly manifested recruits from the other worlds. To get training and equipment for his class, to be sent to the dungeons and try to fight the monsters over there. And the muster date was only eight days after his class would manifest. They'd go off world together, but if he got a vanguard class like she did, they'd never be able to venture into a dungeon together at all. And if his class wasn't a high enough tier, he'd have no chance of getting into the special dungeon raiding forces. Sophie of course, would be given the kind of invite to the SDRF that couldn't be turned down. He hoped eight days was enough time to practice his new abilities so that he didn't completely embarrass himself when he got to Camp Acheron.

"We gotta fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here." His dad sagely intoned the global defense motto. He meant it to be supportive. Max was going to go, and would have even if the penalties for resisting the draft weren't prohibitive. Fighting them over there. Human history was filled with empires clashing with the claim that sending soldiers to kill and die far away was somehow going to prevent some kind of catastrophe at home. And while a careful reading of history from Carthage to Vietnam was not wholly supportive of those claims, it was hard to argue against the literal truth of the statement with regard to the dungeons. If dungeons weren't cleared, they could create dungeon breaks.

During dungeon breaks, monsters would pour out into populated areas. In some ways it was easier to fight them then. Humans could use guns and bombs instead of dungeon equipment when the monsters came Earthside. The weaponry of Earth was far deadlier than the swords and spears that were allowed into the dungeons. But dungeon breaks also put civilians at risk. Too many civilians at risk. The people of Marrakesh, Guangzho, Lima, and Hyderabad had been caught in nuclear crossfires when dungeon breaks had proven otherwise unmanageable. No one wanted that to happen here. The people looked to hunters to keep the dungeon breaks from happening. They

needed

lots of D- and E- tier hunters to keep imps and razor boars from appearing in malls and playgrounds, but of course the people

really

looked to the SDRF to close the flashier and more dangerous dungeons. They wanted people like Sofie to tell them that they would never see another dragon attack on Lima. That they'd never see another demon lord smashing buildings in Guangzho.

Max felt his future slipping away from him. He wanted to pull Sophie into an embrace and never let her go. But he also realized that with the strength she'd just acquired and how little control she had over it, he might get severely injured if he grabbed her suddenly. He wanted to stay with her forever, but he knew that the chances were very high that he was going to be dead weight that she needed to cast off to achieve her destiny. He wanted answers, and he knew that he was probably not going to like them when he got them. And he knew there was

nothing

he could do to get the answers any faster, and

nothing

he could do to make those answers any better. It was still seventeen days before his class manifested, and until then he had nothing but a hunter's rune full of possibility. He did the only thing he could do: he forced a smile, and ate some cake. It was pretty good cake.

"I love you, Sophie." He said it with a felt sincerity, and he hoped that his all-consuming fears didn't come through in his voice.

"I love you too, Max." Sophie placed her hand on his chest with exaggerated caution. It came to rest on his body like a helicopter touching down, their bodies not making contact until Achilles captured the tortoise. Max appreciated the physical contact, and he understood her trepidation. But while it reminded him that her love for him was sincere, it also reminded him of the difference in power between them. And of how likely it was that he would never be able to bridge that gap.

For the moment, all he could do was hope. And kiss his girlfriend. And eat cake.

###

The manifestation of a class was based on the rotations of a faraway planet around a faraway star. Twenty of that planet's years, marked from the moment of birth. Or five of that planet's years, marked from the moment the hunter's rune first appeared. Armed with his birth certificate and a calendar app, Max knew the hour and minute that his class would manifest. The moment he'd been waiting for since his hunter's mark first appeared back in junior high. It was going to happen at three twenty-two in the morning, and he was going to stay awake for it. And Sophie and Michelle were waiting for it as well.

The three of them just hanging out in his room, drinking highly caffeinated beverages, playing video games, and sharing their hopes for the future. It was just like his first year of high-school, when Sophie had consented to be his girlfriend and his kid sister had sprouted a hunter's rune of her own. Back then, they were going to be demon slayers of the SDRF. Sophie had been certain that she was going to get a storm class, performing crowd control work by raining magical fire on the baddies. Michelle had wanted to be a magician of some kind as well, although she waffled between whether she was going to be artillery or control. She was absolutely certain that she'd be protected by a handsome defender, though whether that lucky imaginary man was an orc or elf changed in the telling.

Throughout all of this, it had been generally assumed that Max would get a vanguard class. Something awesome like Paladin or Shadow Knight. Something that would let Max come sword to claw with the monsters of the dungeon, buying time for the mighty magics of his girlfriend and sister to get the job done. He would fight them there, so that the girls in his life wouldn't have to fight them here. Once Sophie's class had manifested, those childish fantasies had to be put away. She was a vanguard, and one of the best vanguard classes it was possible to have. Now he needed to get something else.

Anything

else, or he'd never see the inside of dungeon with his beloved in his entire life.

There were eight class types, and the dungeon gates took in up to six hunters who all had different ones. There were choices available in party composition, there were more types than there were seats for the gate. But while a party didn't strictly

need

to have a vanguard, it absolutely could not have two. If six hunters stood on the platform and two of them were controllers, one of them wouldn't go and the whole dungeon raid would only have a five member party. Most successful parties had three of the front line classes: defender, flanker, slayer, and vanguard; and three of the second line classes: artillery, control, storm, and support. Uneven team makeups were possible, but literally could not be more uneven than four-and-two. Apparently it was elvish learning that four second line classes was ideal, and orcish wisdom that four front line classes was ideal, but human statistics nerds had determined that an even split was best of all.

"What do you think you'll get?" It was probably the eightieth time that Michelle had asked the question that day. She was worried, though nowhere near as worried as Max was. When he didn't say anything immediately, she wishcasted something comforting. "I'm sure you'll get Sentry, or maybe Ranger. You've always been good at spotting things." C-tier defender and flanker classes respectively. He would of course be totally relieved to get either. They probably wouldn't be enough to get him special assignments, but he'd at least be able to raid

some

dungeons alongside Sophie without dragging her down.

He chuckled. "But if I got Sentry, we couldn't fit with your handsome orcish Myrmidon." His light tease was successful in getting Michelle to blush.

Sophie leaned in close to his ear, and whispered. "When your class manifests, you'll be strong enough to withstand the involuntary squeezing of my thighs." He turned to her, and her warm smile showed him that she was looking forward to that aspect as much as he was. They hadn't really been hiding it, both sets of parents had accepted the inevitable of Sophie spending the entire night during the manifestation, and Max had secured an agreement from Michelle to give them alone time for the rest of the night as soon as they'd seen what the result was.

It wasn't that they hadn't been able to do

anything

while Sophie's class had manifested and he was still an unenhanced human. He'd been training in swordplay fairly obsessively since before they'd met, and he

could

hug her strongly enough for her to notice. But only barely. And they couldn't do anything they

really

wanted to without risking a broken pelvis for Max. Even if he got unlucky in his class manifestation, he'd still be getting lucky tonight. Sophie was sleeping over, and they were going to sleep in. The front line classes got a lot more strength and resilience than the second line classes, but even if he was an E-tier artillery he'd gain enough durability to allow Sophie to break in his bed without breaking him.

He kissed her. They had been limited to kissing and heavy petting, but he did very much enjoy both when it was with Sophie. "I'll never be strong enough to withstand that look in your eyes." It was very cheesy, but it was also after three in the morning and he was in love. Surely some amount of cheesiness was allowed. By Sophie's expression, it seemed that it was. But by Michelle's expression, it seemed that it was not, so the jury was still out on that. Sophie kissed him back and almost pushed him over.

The fated moment arrived, though about twenty seconds later than they'd thought it would. He'd been able to calculate it down to the minute, but minutes were stubbornly sixty seconds long, giving a frightening amount of gray area when obsessively watching a clock and a hunter's rune. It was a good thing they'd realized that before they'd gone with their earlier plan of doing a countdown like on New Year's. It was on his shoulder, and so he had removed his shirt in order to make the hunter's rune visible. A mirror was on hand so that he could see it, but Sophie and Michelle could see it forward instead of backward.

"It's... a support class." That in itself was a relief, it meant that it wasn't literally impossible for Sophie and Max to enter dungeons together. They could tell it was a support class because each type of class had a common motif: shields for defenders, spears for flankers, axes for slayers, swords for vanguards, and so on. The common theme in the mark of the support class was a hand, and in each specific class it was depicted as holding a different thing. The mark on Max's shoulder was just... a hand. Open. Empty. And wholly unfamiliar. "I don't recognize this one. That's... good, right?" The fact they didn't recognize it

was

probably a good sign. D- and E- tier classes were pretty well studied, and it was thought that every one of them was catalogued. As one went up the tiers, there became more classes despite D-tier being the most common for hunters to actually get. So it was entirely reasonable to suspect that a rune that they'd never seen before was at least a C-tier.

Michelle and Sophie looked at him expectantly. "What does it say?" They both asked. Reading one's own class information was possible, though people rarely bothered. Firstly because much more in-depth descriptions of a class' parameters could usually be found online, but crucially because the descriptions given by the runes were written in Ancient. Every teenager who revealed a hunter's rune got tutored in Ancient, but it was still a difficult and unexpressive language. Actually accessing the internal class tutorial was not as easy as Max had hoped, and he sat there making some truly goofy facial expressions before it came up. But come up it did, and the Ancient script revealed itself to Max and Max alone.

"Oh no." He stared at his class description in horror. He saw his stats, and they were horrible. That wasn't a surprise, because his class was support, and those almost all had pretty bad stats. He'd still have super-human strength and durability, but not as much as he had expected considering that he'd expected to be a front liner. The stats were explainable, but he was having a really hard time explaining any of the rest.

"What is it? What's the class?" His sister was practically jumping up and down in anticipation.

His brow furrowed. "It's called 'Master.'" He tried his best to read the text, and kicked himself for not being very good at reading the language of the long-departed civilization that had created all the magic that they relied on to take the fight to the monsters.

Sophie put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Nothing broke, so his durability had obviously increased. "Master

What?

" Several known classes had the word "Master" in their title. Master Swordsman was a D-tier strict upgrade on the E-tier vanguard class of Swordsman. There was a D-tier Master Spearman, Master Shieldbearer, Master Axe Wielder, Master Fire Starter, Master Trapper, Master Healer, and Master Blasphemer that were all structurally similar. Of more interest, the Master of Puppets was a C-tier controller. And then there were classes like Beast Master, Wind Master, and Arms Master, that also used the term. The Ancient rune for Master showed up in the name of a lot of classes, modifying a class to indicate that it was in some way improved. Although in cases like Master Shieldbearer, it was specifically being compared to the E-tier Shieldbearer class.

Max shook his head. "It's not Master

Something

, or

Something

Master. Or Master

of

Something. It's just... Master. The whole class name is just the modifier rune." He drew it on a piece of paper and both Michelle and Sophie looked at it in confusion. "The class description is long. Longer than anything I've ever heard of. And it has a lot of moving parts. I'm the Master, and I can designate slaves. The slaves get seals, and this other thing that's a resource the master gives them. I think it's blood." He drew some more runes. A class having more text was generally a good sign. Even the most wordy of the E-tier classes could fit on an index card

Fortunately, Sophie was much better at reading Ancient than Max or Michelle. "That

could

mean blood, but it's also any other contained liquid. Water in bottle, juice in a fruit. I think

Essence

is a better translation. It probably means you can invest power into your slaves, like Beast Master or Summoner. But what about the seals? What do they do and how long do they last?" Seals were at least something they were familiar with, since many support classes used them. They were buff effects that had an extended duration and could only be combined with different seals. So a hunter could benefit from a seal of haste and a seal of fury, but could not benefit from two seals of haste.

"Sorry, there's a lot of text to scroll through." That in itself was a weird thing for Max to say, Sophie had a B-tier class and it would eventually let her fly, and the text didn't

scroll

. "It looks like there are three seals, and they have establishment conditions and no end condition that I can see." He wrote down the names, which the three of them decided translated as: seal of claiming, seal of binding, and seal of envy. "Each of them can be progressed, and there are master actions and slave actions that advance them."