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.
