Chapter 14

Eventually Sergeant Peters arrived with several police cars and other vans. Armed officers went into the house and emerged a few minutes later looking very grim. After that several people wearing the white full body suits of crime scene investigators entered and the police began cordoning off the area. Sergeant Peters approached Stacey and Jack looking just as grim as everyone else.

“Well, I think that wraps it all up, thank you both for your work here today. I’ll confirm your payment now.” He nodded and then left abruptly.

Jack shared an uncertain look with Stacey who just shrugged and began walking away. He hurried to catch up and they left the scene. Stacey gave him a lift back to HQ.

“Not bad Jack, not bad at all. I honestly thought I’d have to save your life a few times during that hunt but you definitely held your own.” She turned to him with a smile.

“Oh, thanks,” Jack replied, surprised.

“The lighting cultivation was a surprise too, but don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. I think I get why you’re keeping it a secret. But anyway, do you understand why we brought all those flares?” she asked.

“Uh, because goblins are sensitive to light?” He frowned, it seemed kind of obvious.

“Partly, but most importantly, always be prepared and never ever fight fair. See ya!” With that she waved a cheerful goodbye, got in her car and drove off.

He snorted in amusement and decided to head home for something to eat. Earlier on he’d managed to cultivate from all the goblins Stacey had dragged out of the house which was around thirteen. Despite managing to draw and condense it all into his core just before the police arrived his limbs still felt a little sore and very occasionally a muscle twitched involuntarily. But despite that, the killer headache he’d been anticipating hadn’t arrived yet, he didn’t know if that was a good sign or the calm before the storm but still wanted to head home to rest.

The next day Jack got up a little earlier than normal, he moved slowly at first, expecting the aching of his muscles to return with a vengeance, but instead he felt only a little sore despite yesterday's activities. Perhaps this was an indication of him getting a little stronger. He got up as normal and began his morning routine with plans to head out and complete a harvesting job later on, if he finished early he might be able to check out the gym and the sparring areas, they apparently had instructors present.

His phone buzzed with a text, it was Gary the smith, he was giving Jack a heads up that he would have a job for him in a couple of days, Friday probably. He text back in acknowledgement then turned the tv on before sitting down for breakfast. He flicked through the channels until he got to the news. They covered a variety of stories both local and international. An American pharmaceutical company was in the final stages of testing a new so-called miracle drug derived from new materials found since magic became a commonplace reality. This new drug could apparently heal any wound within seconds whether it was just a scratch or something fatal. Needless to say it had both its supporters and detractors, hunters and many military organisations couldn’t wait to get their hands on it, but many others stated that there hadn’t nearly been enough time to test such a drug before releasing it for commercial purposes and were trying to organise a boycott on all sales.

In other news giant Sand Wyrms were apparently still causing a great deal of carnage in the Middle East with entire villages swallowed up and countless refugees converging on Jerusalem which so far had managed to fend the Wyrms off. A massive bounty was being offered by a wealthy prince in the Arabian peninsula for the first confirmed kill of a Sand Wyrm. More than a few hunters and journalists had tried to go into the deserts of the Middle East but very few had returned, so far no one had managed to kill a Wyrm.

More locally, Oxford had been officially declared a magical anomaly similar to the Dire Woods and the Red Gorge. When the Centaur Titan had struck, non-combatants didn’t have any time to evacuate so the casualty total was extremely high in the tens of thousands, the magical storm which had manifested the Titan had somehow affected the town and it’s dead. Now Oxford was quarantined by the army and host to a full on zombie outbreak, it wasn’t contagious from zombie bites or the like but if you died within the miasma that covered Oxford then you became a zombie. These weren’t the mindless brain dead slow creatures that shuffle around aimlessly in movies, these things were incredibly fast and strong, didn’t feel pain or tiredness and needed to suffer incredible amounts of damage before they went down. And yes, they were rather aggressive to anything that wasn’t undead and had been classed as C rank minimum individually. The military actually had to hire hundreds of earth cultivators to get an emergency barricade in place all around Oxford, by this point it was over a hundred metres tall and thick and they were still growing it. Parliament were currently arguing over whether or not to use explosive ordnance to deal with Oxford once and for all, needless to say more than a few people protested at this and were in fact, quite literally protesting as close as they could get to the Oxford walls. The news had footage of thousands of people outside the wall, some bearing signs and banners that said things like ‘Zombies are People too’ or ‘Don’t Bomb my Grandad’.

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If anything the news seemed to be getting bleaker and bleaker these days. The state of affairs was especially bad out in the countryside with many villages and small towns getting attacked without any help showing up until it was all over. The only upside seemed to detail the array of triumphs of various hunters, in particular a group of A+ ranked hunters seemed to be undefeatable and were currently the darlings of the United Kingdom. They were the ones who had defeated the Oxford Titan Centaur and were considered to be amongst the most powerful hunters and cultivators in the Northern hemisphere. There were now plenty of hunters in the UK who'd made names for themselves and had become top tier celebrities with all the trappings, there were over the top perfume advertisements, endorsements, appearances on talk shows, groupies, paparazzi, juicy scandals, there was even talk of reality TV shows.

The news wasn’t all terrible, but these days even in a cynical, sceptical place like the UK, more people than you would have thought were beginning to pay attention to the doomsday preachers that had been appearing of late.

Jack finished his breakfast and got ready to go out to the hunter’s guild. As he was pulling on his new armoured vest he noticed a marking over the left side of the chest. It was a crimson colour and seemed to depict a rampant bull wrapped loosely in chains, Jack frowned, he hadn’t noticed that detail before. When he thought back to it, the weapons store Gary ran did have that image on a sign hanging above. Jack shrugged, nothing wrong with a bit of advertisement he supposed.

Once he was all geared up he left for HQ. Forty minutes later he was in front of a terminal looking for an easy G rank for harvesting something. Eventually he found one, one of the nearby farms had a slight problem with Spitter Shrooms, the requester needed someone to get rid of them because they caused all nearby plant life to die. This was a reasonably well paid job because another party was willing to pay for any intact Spitter Shrooms harvested due to the fact that the substance they exuded was a potent herbicide and pesticide. Various agricultural companies paid well for it. Jack hit the hunt acceptance button and set off.

As he left he noticed a fair few people in suits rushing around looking rather harried on the upper floors, going in and out of offices, he also noticed a couple of what appeared to be uniformed soldiers amongst them. He was only vaguely aware of what went on in the upper floors of HQ, when he asked Cheryl, she just said it was all admin and research. So he assumed the suits were responsible for receiving and disseminating jobs and the like. Organisational stuff maybe.

Jack left the building and checked the SatNav on his pager, he saw the route and decided he’d take advantage of his licence giving him free passage on all public transport and take the bus. After five minutes of waiting he got on the bus, as he was walking to sit down he received several odd stares from passengers but he smiled at them as he unhooked his spear and axe from his back and rested them against his legs, they glanced nervously away. Twenty minutes later he was at his stop.

It took a bit of walking but he got to his destination and met with the requester for the job. The farmer pointed out the various patches that hosted the Spitter Shrooms, normally the farmer would be more than capable of this himself but permanent removal of these things required a little something extra. The information the hunters guild had gathered on Spitter Shrooms stated that a hunter or any other cultivator would have to attune the area of soil the Shrooms were growing just as when they harvested parts from a slain monster. This burst of elemental energy burned away any remaining spores or material thereby stopping the stuff from regrowing.

With all the locations in mind Jack set off for the nearest one and got to work. It was long boring work, however it was made easier by the premium harvesting kit he had shelled out for. It was expensive but worth it. He had ditched his old rucksack and replaced it with a small compact zipped bag that was attached to his weapons harness. It had everything he needed to safely harvest plants and fungi like these as well as various parts from monsters he’d slain. He’d also gotten a similar bag that held a premium first aid kit as well as the free bi-weekly one.

Once he was done, he returned to the farmer who had been busy with something else. Jack showed him a large sack full of Spitter Shrooms, now that they were all gathered in one place, the smell they gave off was not at all appetising. Oddly enough they smelled of wet dog, quite strongly. The farmer took a peek in the bag and grimaced before backing away. He thanked Jack and told him he’d confirmed the payment. With that Jack set off back to York hunters HQ to sell the smelly things. He tried to close the bag tight but the smell seemed to permeate through the material. Back on the bus everyone gave him a wide berth.

When he made it back to HQ, he made his way straight to the same drop off point as when he’d done the Violet Rock Clingers job. The person manning the drop off point seemed more than happy to accept all the Shrooms after a brief examination and in the end paid Jack a decent four hundred pounds for the harvest which was on top of the two hundred and fifty pounds he’d already received for the job in the first place.

Smiling happily to himself Jack was about to go to the guild hall for something tasty to eat when suddenly alarms started blaring throughout the building. His pager vibrated in his pocket, he took it out and read the large red letters on the screen.

‘EMERGENCY. PRIORITY HUNT ISSUED. VOLUNTEERS ONLY. ASSEMBLE AT HUNTER HQ IMMEDIATELY.’