Matthew had cast away his warriors before he exited the gate while holding the crying child.

The child nearly immediately scrambled from his grasp as he saw his mother and ran towards them.

A small hoard of flashes came from the crowd gathered around the gate. Despite the authorities trying to keep the crowd at ease, many had their phone camera's positioned on Matthew.

Matthew covered his eyes with a hand as he began back towards his car that still sat parked on the side of the road. He could hear several questions being tossed at him as a small group of people rummaged their way through the crowd heading towards the gate.

Most people moved aside for them. Matthew turned to see them as he walked. They were clearly hunters. There were six of them. Two wore heavy-looking plate armor and shields. Another two wore something reminiscent of mages robes. And the last two wore varying amounts of leather armor. One of which had a pair of daggers across the back of their hips.

One of them, the one with the daggers, stopped Matthew from walking away by grabbing his shoulder.

"What all was in there that you saw? Any hints on what the boss is?" He asked.

Matthew raised a brow before answering. "The kid was in the boss room. I've taken care of it. But it was lizardmen, if you're curious."

As if on cue, the sparking blue gate around the crowd began to sputter and pulse with energy before, in a flash, collapsing in on itself and disappearing.

A small moment of silence fell over both the crowd and the other hunters.

Matthew began to walk away again when the hunter grabbed his shoulder again. "Hey, what rank are you? You cleared that all by yourself?"

Matthew nodded as he pulled his hunter's license from his pocket and held up to the man's face. "E-rank, technically. And yes, I cleared it. But please, I need to get back to my car. I just got back from an unnecessarily exhausting vacation."

With that, the hunter let go of Matthew's shoulder and let him walk back to his car. Matthew felt the confused and slightly awed stare of the hunter as he got into his vehicle and began to drive off.

***

It only took about another half-hour to get home.

His home wasn't much, just one room of an apartment building in Dallas where his guild was. It wasn't necessarily in the nice part of town, but it was the only place he could even afford, even with the guild's benefits.

He fumbled for his keys in his pocket before finally unlocking his door and walking into his apartment room.

The room was small. It consisted of an unmade bed with a nightstand at its foot. There was a small television up against one of the walls. A door led off from the room, leading to the bathroom.

In the corner of the room next to the exit door was a kitchen consisting of little more then an oven, fridge, microwave, and a set of cabinets with any sort of supplies inside along with the small door to a measly pantry.

With a slight sigh as his meager room Matthew began to unpack his things.

Not too long after he felt his phone begin to vibrate in his pocket just as he had finished putting up his clothes.

He grabbed his phone from his pocket. Audri was calling him.

He accepted the call before holding the phone to his ear. Almost immediately he nearly dropped his phone as Audri's voice rang through the speaker.

"Oh thank God you're still here. I thought you were going to go into the gate." She rambled.

Matthew fell silent for a moment contemplating weather he should tell Audri about his adventure within the gate.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"It was just a kid who ran into it. Some hunters went in and got him out though. I just forgot to call once I was back in my car." Matthew explained.

It was best not to let Audri worry about him, she already did that more then Matthew would like.

"Good. That's good." Audri breathed a sigh of relief. "You'd nearly given me a heart attack."

"So what's been going on with the guild while I was gone? Squad 12 having any trouble?" Matthew asked as he continued unpacking his things.

Squad 12 was always the group that Audri and Matthew were assigned to. While on occasion they were placed elsewhere, squad 12 took care of the lesser gates that appeared in the vicinity of Matthew's apartment building.

It was comprised of Matthew, as an E-rank fighter who mostly 'picked off the scraps' of what the hunters in the front line had done; Audri, a D-rank mage who mainly used lightning to attack several magic beasts at once; Cereiana, a D-rank mage who could summon a spirit that normally took out the back lines of magic beasts they faced; Sanri, a C-rank fighter who duel wielded short swords; Tyler, a C-rank assassin who is mostly a scout for the squad; Berret, a C-rank tanker who wielded a hammer and shield; and Valine, a C-rank healer who could heal wounds as well as replenish stamina and mana, while the rejuvenation wasn't large, it did cover many aspects in a single skill.

Despite being an E-rank (now only by license), Matthew always found squad 12 to be welcoming of him, regardless of his rank.

"The guild is fine as ever. Squad 12 is good, no one's been severely injured since you've been gone. Oh, there was this B-rank gate that happened over near The Ball. Valine and Sanri were sent in with squad 1 and a few others to go clear it." Audri stated as if she was telling some fairy tale.

"Is that right?" Matthew said, not fully listening to what she was saying as he pulled out his spear from its case in his luggage bag before putting it back and setting the case atop his nightstand.

"Oh, and Berret told me the story of what they found in there. Guess what the boss was?" Audri asked, excitement rising in her voice.

"What?"

"Angels." She shouted. By her voice, Matthew could easily tell she was grinning ear to ear.

Matthew suddenly stopped what he was doing at the word 'angels'. "Wait what?"

"Yeah, they were these human-looking magic beasts, but they had pure light instead of skin. And most of them could fly." She let out a light laugh. "Sanri hated that."

"What else was in the gate?" Matthew asked, trying to keep the urgency of his question at bay.

"The boss was supposedly really hard."

"What was it?" Matthew asked almost immediately.

"It was another Angel, but this one had four wings of light and could heal the other magic beasts around them. It could also summon these spears of light to shoot out. Uh... I think it also had some kind of light slash or something. Anyways, you can ask Berret about it once you're back at the guild." Audri explained.

Matthew looked at his hand as Audri explained the boss's abilities. He set a finger on the nightstand next to him as a small bolt of light appeared on the surface.

[MP: 101/101 > 100/101]

He watched as a small spearhead of light jutted from the spot of light before disappearing.

"But anyways, the team's missed you. Be sure to check in tomorrow. I'll go looking for you if you don't."

"I'm sure you will." Matthew said sarcastically. Although in reality it probably wasn't an absolute lie.

"Well anyways, I'll let you finish up unpacking. I'll talk to you later, alright?" Audri stated.

"Alright." Matthew replied. Not soon after, the call ended.

It didn't take too much longer for Matthew to finish unpacking.

Not soon after he finally lay on the comfort of his bed.

With a light swipe of his hand, Matthew opened his status screen.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

[Name: Matthew Adams]

[Level: 26]

[Job: None]

[HP: 250/250]

[MP: 101/101]

[Available Status Points: 0]

[Strength: 43]

[Agility: 54 (+5)]

[Vigor: 50]

[Intelligence: 40]

[Sense: 44]

[Faith: 44]

[Skills]

[Active: Healing Hands, Golden Spears, Genesis]

[Passive: N/A]

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

Matthew pursed his lips as he looked over his stats. Despite having taken out a D-rank dungeon largely by himself- with the exception of his holy warriors- he had only leveled up a single time. While much harder dungeons did exist, anything beyond a C-rank gate was fairly rare. Even then, he felt it would be some time until he could reliably take on higher ranked dungeons, especially if his level rose so high that it would take several months for him to even gain a single level.

He took out his hunter's license from his pocket and looked up at it; at the golden 'E' indicating his rank when he had gotten reevaluated.

Then again, he should be happy he could grow in strength at all. If he hadn't accepted the trip to see Luke; If he hadn't walked into the dungeon with him and entered the double dungeon, he would still be an E-rank hunter, not only in license, but in strength as well.

Even if he did plateau soon, he was still much stronger then he'd ever thought he'd be.

But one thing was for sure: going to New York was the best thing he'd ever done.