Chapter 6

Jack and Charlie entered through the double doors into a large hall, there were groupings of small low circular tables surrounded by curved benches dotted all over the room, terminals that looked like ATM cash machines lined the sides along the walls and a large screen took up space along the right side of the room. The screen appeared to have several people clustered around and various groups of people were sitting around tables here and there. In the centre of the room was what looked to be a large help desk with a young woman with purple hair behind it. Charlie led Jack towards the help desk.

“Cheryl! Hey Cheryl! Got a newbie here for you!” Charlie called out cheerfully with a wave as he led Jack forward. Several people turned to regard Jack and Charlie as they passed but turned back to what they were doing in disinterest. Jack and Charlie reached the desk. Cheryl looked up from a computer screen and turned to the two with a neutral expression.

“Hey Charlie, a newbie is it? Can I have the paperwork and licence please?” She held out her hand.

“Oh yeah sure!” He gave her several documents and took Jack’s licence from his hands before passing it to Cheryl. She took them and scanned the documents before swiping the card through a groove on her keyboard, a few seconds later of furious typing and she handed the card to Jack.

“There, you're fully in our system and you're authorised to take G rank and F rank jobs and hunts, congratulations I suppose,” she said.

“Er thanks?” Jack distinctly remembered Charlie saying Cheryl was supposed to be nice.

“Excellent! Well I'll leave you in Cheryl’s capable hands and she’ll give you the grand tour and all that. See ya round Jack!” Charlie walked off quickly with a wave and a smile.

Jack turned his head and looked at Cheryl warily, she looked back at him with a bored expression. “Well I should probably tell you how all this works, you're probably eager to get back out there, dying to I bet,” she said sardonically as she rested her head on her hand.

“Erm yeah, not dying exactly, but knowing how it all works does sound useful,” Jack replied with a weak smile, oh god cheer up woman!

“Right well here we go, as a G ranker you’ve got to complete five G rank requests in one month as a minimum. But since you're new you get an extra month first time. When you move up you get one month to do five jobs of your rank or ten from the rank below. You can access any available jobs from the terminals along the walls, just slot your licence in and it’ll boot up automatically. Select whichever job you want and go out and do it, just to warn you though some jobs have a time limit so better get a move on and don’t dawdle, the requester gets alerted through an app or text when someone accepts their request and we have received complaints in the past when a hunter takes too long. Also for some reason hunters seem to like having a notice board where all the current hunts and jobs appear. That's the big screen over there that people are looking at, it’s not an actual notice board so please don’t try nailing or sticking anything to it, it's just a massive plasma screen. And most importantly, NO using elemental abilities in the HQ, there are signs everywhere. Also there's this.” She got out what looked to be a smart phone. She grabbed Jack’s licence again and slotted it into a slot in the phone, she seemed to type in a code and the phone gave a short series of beeps. She took out the card and gave both the phone and licence back to Jack.

“A smart phone? I already have one.” Jack looked down at it quizzically.

“It's not-It….haaaa,” Cheryl sighed in exasperation, like she’d been over this before. “That’s not a smart phone, please don’t try to use it like one, it’s for hunter and neighbourhood watch business only, it’s keyed to you and you can use it for lots of different types of functions. It uses GPS to track your location, it’s got a camera you can use to take pictures to use as proof of a jobs completion, it automatically updates any active jobs you’ve accepted and it has a direct line to HQ if you need assistance and you can save the contact details of any other hunter if you want to call them, plus a bunch of other stuff, you can take a look later.”

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“That er…sounds a bit like a smartphone.”

She looked irritated.

“Does…..does it have internet access?”

Her face started going red, her eyes went dark.

“Nevermind!……It actually does sound different than a smartphone, better even, I can see how it would be useful on the job.” Jack nervously tried to assure her, he held it up and looked at it so she could see him. “Is it er…heavy?”

“Well obviously, it’s made out of some tough materials because you’ll be taking it into the middle of deadly fights more often than not. What if you got injured and needed emergency treatment but couldn’t get it because all you had was a flimsy smartphone that broke earlier? Huh? Well?”

“Ok fair enough.” He held up his hands in defeat.

“Anyway, if you actually do manage to break it, you get one free replacement every two weeks, anymore than that and you have to pay for one and we don’t let hunters take jobs without them.”

“Uh huh ok, one last question, if this isn’t a smartphone…..then what's it called?” Jack asked cautiously.

“A pager.” She looked at him like he was an idiot.

“Oh, ok, no more questions”.

She rolled her eyes. “If you want to take a job just go over to one of those terminals and slot your card in like with a cash machine, it’ll log you in automatically and give you a list of jobs that you’re authorised to take. Just pick one you want, go for something easy please, then take out your card and come back to me, we’ll go over what you need to do on your phone…….pager, shit." She hung her head in shame then looked up at Jack accusingly.

Jack took a few steps back then hurriedly made his way to the nearest terminal. He slotted in his card and the screen went from showing the coat of arms for York city to various different lists of jobs, most of it was greyed out except the jobs under G and F rank. He picked the list labelled G rank and it enlarged showing a long list of requests, most of it seemed to be fetching and carrying, primarily following higher ranked hunter groups on trips and carrying whatever harvested loot they obtained. Being a gopher didn’t really appeal to him, nor did scrambling around in the countryside looking for weird plants or fungi, there were only a few actual hunting quests and he selected one for more information. Exterminating giant rats on a farm, that had some promise, he could get some combat experience and some cultivation material at the same time, the pay wasn’t bad either at three hundred pounds. Jack hit accept for the hunting of rats job and a second later his new pager vibrated in his pocket, he took it out and looked at it, “request accepted” appeared on the screen. He took his card from the terminal and made his way back over to Cheryl.

Jack handed his pager to Cheryl and she looked down at it.

“Giant rats is it? Yeah those are pretty common, although I did say go for an easy one, a swarm of vicious furballs with sharp claws and teeth carrying various diseases as opposed to picking flowers or carrying loot is not what I would call easy but whatever.” Cheryl shrugged and shook her head. She tilted the pager so that both of them could look at it then tapped the screen a few times showing a map with a highlighted route. “All requests come with a starting location and give you directions through satellite navigation on how to get there, also any monster or mutated animal has a highlighted name and you can tap it which takes you to the bestiary.” She tapped the name giant rat and the pager screen changed to a picture of a giant rat with a description underneath. “This tells you everything we know about the creature, weaknesses, strengths, diet, habitats, harvestables, etcetera. You can see here giant rats aren't classified as monsters but instead are considered mutated animals so if you kill them they won’t disappear, they’re fast and aggressive but are easily frightened and not terribly smart, they can be killed relatively easily and can grow to about the size of a large dog. This farm the jobs at is three miles outside York city, it says here you have to meet with a guy called Joseph at an old shed before you get started, whenever you meet a client you need to send word your coming, so you just need to send a text with the pager and then get moving." She handed the pager back to Jack.

“Right! Thanks Cheryl, you’ve been a big help, I’m gonna head off!” Jack smiled, feeling a surge of confidence and anticipation. His first real hunt!

“Uh huh, when you get back i’ll tell you about selling loot, not that you’ll get anything from this, they're just rats so nothing to harvest, also go to the med vendor through that door before you leave, they’ll give you a free first aid kit every two weeks, you can also buy and sell stuff at other vendors here too." She pointed him to a door along the wall near the large notice board.

Jack nodded and grinned before heading off.