It was a year of 2's. 2022, 2 years after 2020, and I had just finished my 2-week break. I was supposed to be back from Hawaii by 2:00pm local time. Instead, It was 2:02pm. The 2 fucking monsters which delayed my arrival from the airport were 2 dead 2 matter anymore, but it was annoying that no one else had taken care of them beforehand.

Still, I was back. Kai Seti was back in New York City. Though, "back" wasn't what it used to be. I really liked my condo in the city, before the shitty monsters came and overran it. You better bet I killed every single one of those investment-razing shits. My only regrets were that I didn't do it alone, and that they didn't suffer more on the way to hell like my stocks had. I was too young to have invested in the defense industry! Yet, essentially every other stock had plummeted.

"Sigh. At least the water still tastes amazing."

New York City, a city of good-tasting tap water. At least that's what they say. I don't mind other places' tap water as much as some people I know. It was one of the things the city decided it wouldn't give up, a sort of species-level heritage. Hah.

My blackout curtains were closed, despite being on one of the highest floors in the city. Although, that wasn't saying much. After the city had been attacked, any remaining high-rise skyscrapers were quickly demolished, as the idea that they could collapse from monster was too much to bear.

Much of the city fled far away from the center, but it was still decently dense, especially brimming with capable hunters.

I opened one of the doors of fridge and took out a 4-pack of double IPA. One of the issues with this post-apocalyptic life was how much alcohol it took to feel anything anymore... good bye sweet lager. At the same time, my abilities made it nearly impossible to go overboard with the drinks. Although, I do wonder what would happen if I had an IV of pure ethanol. Well, it would probably be painful.

It was the strangest thing, this "Mana Apocalypse". Or as the physicists labelled it, "Mana Lifting". As in, the lifting of mana into scientific perception, though some people liked to mean "the lifting of humans into hunters".

For one, it seemed that our scientific theories stayed roughly the same. Similarly, "magic"... really, they didn't want to call it "magic", but it is what it is. Anyway, magic had its own scientific hypotheses. "The Fifth Force" – although, it was too bad it wasn't the sixth one, since "hex" meant "six" but also magical curses. How vexing.

Magic wasn't just magic. Yes, that's confusing – that's why we tried to consider another name, truly. But "pentic" was horrendous, and if another "magic" ever became a thing, we could then finally use "hex" somewhere fun.

Anyway, magic wasn't simply magic. There were principles. The only issue was that the specific models of magic were still just hypotheses. Normally, this would be less of an issue, but with monsters pouring onto our planet, it was a slightly more urgent matter to understand how best to take out the trash, because there was a lot of trash.

Still, I decided to let the lifetime scientists deal with the exciting developments. No, I'm not being sarcastic, this was one of the most exciting times in science history and I was slightly very annoyed I couldn't just be a graduate student or postdoc.

Instead, I had monsters to kill, and that did rake in the dough. This wasn't the first time I made that tradeoff, and once again I didn't regret it. Besides, my life – and everyone's lives for that matter – was literally on the line.

I downed the beers as typed on my keyboard with a single hand. Although being a hunter was great in general, this was one of the things I appreciated the most: being so physically proficient, I could easily drink and type at once without using more than just my two hands.

There were a trove of messages which I responded to. Apparently there was a newish gate in the city. Welcome, welcome… I'll deal with it in a bit.

There were some comics and stories about monster-ridden gates before 2020, usually from the Eastern sphere. Of course, as a nerd, I had read them ad nauseam. But the popularity of those stories skyrocketed after the day of the mana lifting.

In fact, I had essentially awakened the same night, only a few hours after the panic-stricken headlines regarding strange phenomenon and portals. Needless to say, the nerd in me was fired up immediately.

Now, this the part where we go "Okay, so there's class S through class F, and I'm F, sucks to suck." As if. Imagine being bad at life.

Firstly, everyone is F. F for Fucked. Just kidding. F is around 93% of new awakeners, with the rest being E. No one has ever been confirmed to have been awakened D or above, not that we had the scoring system until a couple months in. From what I could tell, I was likely E class at first, maybe around the lower side, compared to the highest E awakeners who awakened in the middle of the class. Everyone else, which was about 99% of the (remaining) population, was considered unranked.

F was something like a highly-trained steroid-boosted super-jacked athlete, with the top of the class showing truly superhuman ability. It wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination, even with monsters around.

For one, it wasn't that normal weapons didn't work on monsters. Even pistols worked on the lower-class mobs. The military was in good standing and still extremely useful. Of course, using a ballistic missile on a city was decidedly a bad idea, unless the city was doomed anyway. And nukes... would be bad for more than just a city.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

So, humanity needed precision scalpels to remove the infection -- hunters. And moreover, only mana-awakened hunters could enter the gates to prevent monsters from pouring out in the first place. Objects not laced with mana faced exceptional inertia in gates, making normal bullets rather useless, though magical guns were certainly great, if they had enough power. A pistol's bullet was rather slow for me now.

Speaking of speed, the most insane thing about mana was its speed -- faster than light! Except it was highly limited, almost as if "limit breaking" had a certain limit itself. Either way, it was still finite, and not orders of magnitude faster. After the world had stabilized, I could foresee computers running faster. We were already able to communicate faster -- telepathy through magic means, seemingly travelling through Earth itself, lowered maximum latencies to tens of milliseconds. Imagine the benefit for VR and MMOs when the internet could make use of it!

But rather than reminiscing while browsing forums, I should probably go and kill some trash mobs for now. I had enough normie fun back in Hawaii. It was time to not get fired as one of the city's best solo hunters. Sure, I wasn't technically A-rank, but even the A-rankes would have a hard time with my feats. Not that there were enough to go around.

At the thought of how rare A-classes were, I breathed a sigh of relief that I awakened at all. It was much easier to live with the power to protect yourself. Before the Lifting, I had pulled myself out of poverty to become... well, not "elite", but pretty damn comfortable. After the Lifting, it would have been considerably more difficult. No – it would have been nearly impossible to influence my fate with skill. Experiments for forcibly awakening people haven't gone great. We currently know that awakening is somewhat correlated with IQ, but other factors are still elusive. Surprisingly, physical health was purported to only be minorly related. The nerds have risen up indeed. A sort of poetry, since RPGs correlated mana and magic with INT(elligence) and WIS(dom).

I toss the remaining IPA in the fridge, taking one to go. Thankfully, the new gate was near a decent public bathroom.

***

I show the guards my ID and scan my finger.

"Thank you, Mr. Blacklight. Welcome to Gate 22-UE0187-C1." The 187th gate on the East coast this year. A C-rank gate was surprisingly high.

But, 'Blacklight' was my moniker, not my last name. It was slightly annoying hearing it, especially with a 'Mr.' in front. It wasn't like I was a superhero, at least not the ones in comics.

"Please, just Mr. Seti would be fine."

"Oh, yes, sorry Mr. Seti. I'm a fan of your work."

"Haha, no problem", I reply casually as I clear security.

It was like a outdoor fair. Many trucks and mobile tents were set up, with hunters and Hunter Association-related officials walking to and fro. I go find the sign for my guild, 'Nightless'. It was a simple logo, using the mathematical symbol for 'null' with two detached right angles to "square" out the sign. Yes, I was lazy, and yes, I rejected the logos which weren't easily vectorizable so we could zoom in the logo easily. Its typical incarnation was white-on-black, which was simple enough. The idea was to the "nullify the night", that humanity may be "nightless". A fitting name for someone who lived in the city which never sleeps. Except for the fucking Starbucks which closes at 11pm for some unfathomable reason. How early!

To be clear, I hated dealing with guilds in video games. The ones I was a deeper part of, I hated the goodbyes. The ones I wasn't, well, it was shitty to feel left out.

But this was life-and-death in reality. Looking at the shadow of death in the face would motivate even a king of sloth like myself.

We had a good location set up already, as I had come to expect. To my delight, it wasn't next to the gate, preventing useless noise and traffic.

"Kai! You're here, it's good to see you again", the typical polite greeting rang out. My manager from the Association, Tom Eisen. A middle-aged man, he was in fact an F-rank awakener as well, almost E-rank. Instead of pursuing his abilities, he deals with most of the higher-level hunter-related issues in the city. He was quite effective at his position, as the life-and-death nature of the Lifting did away with general ineffectiveness.

"Mr. Tom. Tommy boy. Eisentower. Etc., etc., etc.", I greeted back. "When are you going to become a hot chick?"

"Hah. Should I refer you to one? Or would you prefer to not be reported for sexual harassment?", he countered.

"Indeed, my reputation would be annihilated in a matter of seconds. Anyhow, how's the gate looking? Another C rank, and middle of the pack at that."

A C-rank gate didn't mean it took a C-rank hunter to clear. That would be preposterously easy. It meant that C-ranks and above could get in. Upper D-ranks could also enter, but with specific permission and a waiver. It was definitely dangerous. Thus, C-rank gates were considered difficult to deal with. Although I went from E to B in a matter of two years, most E-ranks from back then would only be starting to reach low C now. This was the difference in effectiveness, and to a certain extent, luck. Still, C-ranks weren't exactly in horrendously short supply.

"Yeah, the rank is... I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not but the average gate rank has been steadily increasing. On the other hand, hunter growth is outpacing the threat, not to mention our increasing weaponry", Tom replied.

"I just hope they don't start leaking faster either, but it doesn't look like gate stability has changed. Just the overall mana density on Earth. Ah, though if I could hope for one more thing, it would be that Mars doesn't get this shit either. We should have some way out at least, haha. Though...", I trailed off. The idea was annoying to think about.

"Though what? They'll colonize Mars after we leave Earth?", Tom chuckled.

This fucking idiot. Does he think that idea too unreal?

"Dude. My idiot boy called Tom. Two years ago, some fucking false vacuum decay lifted our asses into a hellscape of ugly mana guzzlers. You really think that we have room for opinions like 'that would be craaazyyy~'? Tsk. Anyway, that's not important. The real issue is why these monsters aren't fucking hot!", I yell with conviction. Monster girls! That's what we needed! But these two years have seen nothing! I should just make my own holes in these shitty things! Actually, I'll do it right now! Aren't gates just interdimensional pussies anyway?! AAAAHH–

"Uh. Hey, are you okay? Did you not get any in Hawaii? And why did you just start staring at me? I have a wife I'll let you know", Tom interrupted my internal tirade.

I sigh with my head looking at the sky. Or rather, the tent's ceiling. And then I down my beer.

"No, Tom, nevermind. Just give me the low-down on the gate, the fliers, whatever. It's been 2 days right? Scouting party should have gotten back. Gimme."

Tom gave me a tablet with a sigh. It should have everything I needed to know on it.

"By the way, should I get your guildies? They're probably talking with some other hunters."

I did see a few people come and go as I was talking to this middle-aged guy, taking our guild fliers with them, even though everything was digital nowadays.

"No, why the hell should I stand in reception like an idiot? I'll go in and get some drinks."