Chapter 94: Lion Heart for the Rescue

The invasion was over, but the damage to the city was still there. People were returning to their homes, worn down. Destroyed buildings, roads, stores. It was hard to look at Seattle and see the same place it used to be.

It would definitely take some time to rebuild. Maybe 6 months. But even if the city looked the way it did before, I knew the way people thought had changed.

Everyone believed they were safe, protected by the hunters, that there was no chance of so many monsters coming out of the rifts to attack the city. Apparently, they were wrong.

Security in Seattle had increased drastically. As soon as I stepped off the plane, I was stopped by officers. They weren’t regular cops, but hunters.

I took out my ID, the real one this time, and handed it over.

The hunter, dressed in a police uniform, looked at my ticket, then fixed his gaze on me.

“What were you doing in Canada?”

“I was hired to carry out a mission. I can’t tell you the details. But the person who hired me is a rank S hunter. If you want, I can call him.”

The two hunters exchanged looks and started smiling.

“Go ahead, call him.”

I’m sure they believed I wouldn’t be able to call a rank S hunter.

I didn’t call Zoen, but Lion Heart. I figured that of the two, Lion Heart had a better chance of picking up, and of helping me in that situation. Zoen was still…less trustworthy in my eyes.

Lion Heart answered the phone.

“Talk to me, little bro.”

“I’m at the airport, and two officers, hunters, want to know why I went to Canada considering the whole situation. Can you explain it to them? You know, the mission you hired me for?”

Before I even heard Lion Heart’s answer, I handed the phone to one of the hunters.

Judging by the expression on his face, it seemed to have worked. He gave the phone back and said, “Lion Heart said he’s coming to the airport to pick you up. Wait here with us.”

“But why?” I asked.

Hadn’t Lion Heart’s word over the phone been enough?

“Unfortunately, we can’t confirm it’s really him. There are a lot of scams these days, so we can’t take any risks. And since he already said he wanted to come get you anyway, we figured it was better to let him come.”

“Ah, I see.”

I waited in a room full of cameras, with several guards keeping an eye on my every move. Most of the guards were regular humans, but some were hunters.

Because of the current situation, the airport had more hunters than usual. Not just the airport, the whole city did. Security had increased because of public pressure.

Anyway, I sat there waiting for about 30 minutes until Lion Heart finally arrived.

He was in his normal form, pretty skinny, not very tall, wearing a cap and sunglasses to keep himself hidden.

As soon as he showed up to get me, all the hostility the guards had been giving me changed instantly. One of them even brought me a little cup of coffee.

“Sorry for the misunderstanding.”

“No problem,” I said.

I was pissed, for sure, but I didn’t want to run into any more trouble.

Lion Heart and I left the airport and got into his car, which was waiting for us out front.

We didn’t say anything during the ride, but as soon as we got in the car, Lion Heart questioned me.

“What the hell were you doing in Canada with a fake ID? They told me you didn’t even have an outbound ticket, and you never went through a border crossing. Which means you went illegally. I had to use my contacts to get you out of this mess.”

“I did a mission for Zoen,” I answered. “I took his son, Zeph, there, and then he offered me this mission.”

“Zoen? I wouldn’t trust that guy. What the hell kind of mission did he put you on?”

I decided to tell him some of the details, of course, leaving out the fact that Gary had helped me and that the others were inside my pocket dimension.

I knew there was a good chance Lion Heart already had an idea that I could do those things, but I decided not to say anything.

On top of that, I told him I wanted to take the test to officially become a rank A hunter, even without having formally completed the academy’s graduation like most other people.

That wasn’t an easy thing to do.

“Rank A? You’ve gotten that much better already?”

Lion Heart was surprised.

“Look, it’s possible, but the test is a lot stricter than the normal one because you don’t have the training of a full academy. But considering all the shit that went down, and the need for stronger hunters, I think they’ll go for it.”

The invasion, in the end, was working in my favor. The United States wanted to increase people’s safety and increase the number of hunters capable of facing monsters, clearing rifts, and so on.

Because of that, my chance of getting my official license, even without having studied at the academy, was higher than normal.

“Take me to the Hunter Society then,” I said. “I want to do this before we go to that new continent you want me to go to with you.”

Lion Heart opened the partition that separated us from his driver.

“Take us to the Hunter Society building.”

“Understood, boss.”

He came back and sat next to me, sighing.

“So they were being manipulated by a demon, maybe the same one you freed by mistake, and there’s a high chance these demons are heading to that new continent? What a situation we’re in…”

I got thoughtful, and decided to tell Lion Heart something. Of all the powerful hunters, he was the only one who was actually helping me and seemed at least somewhat trustworthy. He gave off an aura of kindness, of generosity, of someone who genuinely fights to protect the weak.

That’s what I had always seen in him on TV. Always defending the weak, almost like a model hero. I decided to tell him there was a high chance the academy’s principal was involved with the vampires, or even, in the worst case, the demons.

I thought he would be surprised, but he wasn’t. Lion Heart kept a serious face.

“To be honest, I already suspected that guy. And on top of that, even some other members of the Hunter Society’s upper ranks are acting strange, especially the other rank S hunters. I don’t know, the world’s getting weird, kid.”

For the first time, I saw Lion Heart shaken by something. It shocked me greatly.

We didn’t talk much more until we arrived at the Hunter Society building. The car stopped out front, we got out, and I followed Lion Heart inside.

There were a lot of people protesting in front of the building, demanding more security, raising signs and shouting.

“We demand that the hunters who are outside the country return to protect our country! Why are the most powerful ones abroad? That’s why we get invaded so easily! Where are the other rank S hunters? On vacation?”

During the invasion, no rank S hunter showed up to help, not even Lion Heart. That was eating at my mind.

“I didn’t go help because I was forbidden to. If I had, the other rank S hunters would have come after me. I can beat some of them, but all of them? No way.”

I was caught off guard by his statement. If that was true, then basically someone was corrupting the system, and Lion Heart was unable to fight these people alone.

The receptionist behind the main desk at the building’s entrance greeted us as soon as we arrived.

“How can I help?”

Lion Heart placed down his hunter badge, which was different from all the others, made from a very durable obsidian material found inside the rifts. And on the badge, it showed his rank: S.

The receptionist didn’t recognize every hunter by face, especially with Lion Heart wearing a cap and sunglasses to hide his identity.

“I want to request a test for my friend here to become an official rank A hunter.”

With trembling hands, the receptionist picked up Lion Heart’s hunter badge and started making some phone calls, talking to the people who ran the Hunter Society. Or rather, who ran that branch of the Hunter Society.

“They want a meeting with you and your friend on the 37th floor. Just follow the elevator up.”

We went to the elevator. Lion Heart pressed 37.

“What are they going to want in this meeting?” I asked.

“At most it’ll be a meeting with some suits who want to make everything official, nothing major. I believe that with the current situation you’ll easily be able to take this test, and pass.”

That’s what I was hoping for. We reached the 37th floor and went to the meeting room the receptionist had directed us to.

Lion Heart was already frowning before we even got inside.

“Something’s wrong here,” he told me.

When we opened the door to the meeting room, we saw about 15 people around a table.

Five of them were the suits Lion Heart had mentioned, but the rest…

The rest were rank S hunters!