With giddy anticipation, Dorian rushed through his work for the day and the subtle lessening of the gravity on some of the heavier equipment made work much easier for all. Dorian considered it training.

A public alert was issued at lunch over possible monster activity and was summarily ignored. The denizens of Kowloon City didn't need to worry about monsters.

The instant Dorian screwed in his last bolt for the day he immediately checked the time, he couldn't wait to leave and tell his friends about his recent discovery, the filled cores seemed to burn brighter every time he thought about them.

At the buzz signifying the end of the day, Dorian was among the first to head towards the changing room—a wry voice stopped him dead.

“The crew elected you to clean the place for the night shift crew, good luck,” a smiling Robert said to the snickering of Dorian's co-workers. It seemed he'd been too apparent in his eagerness for work to be done. Dorian was handed a broom and dustpan and left alone in the core room.

Once, he would have been over the moon for the chance to fill the depleted cores, probably why he'd never gotten the duty before. And now that he was looking mentally put together and was itching to get home—the evil bastards had sprung the duty on him.

With a dejected sigh, Dorian moved around the core room sweeping up discarded bolts and the like and putting away tools. He set a five-minute timer on his terminal and sat in meditation and began his breathing exercise to refill his core. The void was almost full when he heard the night shift crew descending the elevator.

In record time, Dorian was dressed and riding up the elevator to his bike. He got on with his helmet strapped on and drove out of Kowloon City. The instant he left the city proper and got on the road leading to the Lodge he increased the throttle on his bike and blasted off into in the falling night.

Dorian watched in growing surprise as the harder he pushed, the more the bike had to give and the higher the speedometer climbed. Smiling wildly and cheering in his head, Dorian remembered why he'd bought the bike all those years ago, the speed and the freedom it brought him reminded him of his favourite skill from the system, slipstream.

The skill had allowed him to move at superhuman speeds and dance around opponents, the bike had been his attempt at gaining the feeling again. But now powered by the core and with whatever Wilson had done to the motorcycle he could relive the feeling the skill had elicited again.

With a push of a button, Dorian turned on his high beam and nearly fell off the bike when the light illuminated the yellowed-eyed monsters somehow keeping pace with his insane speed. Now privy to their existence, the hunter looked on either side of the road and found more yellow eyes appearing in the gloom.

'Ratkin. Shit.' he swore.

Ratkin got their name from their pointy snout, a long bare tail, beady eyes and their general rat-like appearance. The name became confusing when looking at their long skinny arms and legs that hid surprising strength and the thin bone spikes growing out of their back. Their long bodies at almost 5 feet and their ability to stand on their skinny hind and legs coupled with very human-like hands made them a living nightmare.

Dorian had killed his fair share of the monsters but always with other hunters at his back. To hunt a ratkin alone was to court death. Damn things travelled in packs, to prove his point, more yellow eyes popped out of the darkness and joined the increasingly worrying number of monsters.

With nothing for it and knowing other Ratkin hid in the darkness, Dorian sped up some more and momentarily left the monsters behind. He had to duck and swerve when a ratkin leapt out of the darkness and swiped at the air above Dorian's head. Finally, the streetlights dotting the road came on and Dorian wished they hadn't. He was sandwiched in a pool of slathering rodents.

Dorian was contemplating doing something drastic when a flare fired from up ahead lit up the night sky red. In the distance and approaching quickly were the headlights of a van he was familiar with.

The hunters, his friends had come.

Dorian pushed his bike harder and it rose to the challenge, pushing him faster towards the approaching van and leaving the ratkins momentarily behind. Dorian laughed out loud when he could barely make out Leo sitting atop the van and stringing his bow. The van slowed to a stop and Dorian drove past them in a blur, the ratkins following him parted around the van like water around a rock and were picked off by Leo's arrows.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Leaning into his motorcycle, Dorian screeched into a turn, his rear wheel lifting and smacking a leaping ratkin out of the air. He completed his turn and rushed back towards the stopped van and the oncoming ratkin. Dorian found out one of his bike's special functions when he again pushed the button for his floodlights and a blinding light beamed out eliciting pained screeches from the monsters.

With a pained heart, Dorian jumped off his bike, sending it into a slide that bowled over the ratkins circling the van. He landed on his feet with reduced gravity and rushed towards his friends who had come armed. Dorian snatched a thrown spear out of the air and fed it down a leaping snarling ratkins throat, ending its life.

Armed now, he further lessened gravity on himself and waded among the still reeling ratkins and with his fellow hunters at his back visited a wholesale slaughter on the monsters.

Jax calmly planted himself behind the van and drove his spear into any ratkin that came close. Leo from his vantage atop the van picked off any monsters who were circling and looking for an opening.

A viciously smiling hulking Dan carried dual spears he used to skewer multiple bodies in a macabre kebab. With a thought Dorian lessened gravity on both Jax and Dan, smiling grimly at the increased speed of Jax's spear thrusts and Dan effortlessly flinging the corpses off his macabre kebab into the paths of other charging ratkin.

The hunters lost themselves in what it embodied to carry the name, why they never called themselves ex-hunters, because how could they when monsters such as these and more still existed? Dorian stabbed his spear into a ratkins eye and pierced its brain, making its questing limbs go dead. He further lessened gravity on himself and leapt up high ripping his spear out and along with half of the monster's skull.

At the apex of his jump, he fell back with increased gravity and landed spear first onto another ratkins skull. He lessened the gravity on the ratkin and flung the nearly weightless corpse into the feet of more charging ratkin. He dashed forward with reduced gravity and made it before the creatures could disentangle themselves and dispatched them with quick thrusts from his spear.

An arrow flew close to his ear and took a leaping ratkin out of the air, the creature landed and worked to get the arrow out. Dorian reversed the grip on his spear and slapped the protruding arrow deeper into the beast, killing it.

Under reduced gravity, Dan cocked his arm back and launched his spear forward taking three ratkin in the face. With well-placed stabs and positioning, Jax had created a barrier of ratkin bodies around the van, funnelling them onto the tip of his ever-thrusting spear.

At an unknown signal, the ratkin all silently aborted their attacks and disappeared back into the gloom beyond the streetlights. With a wordless look the hunters all raised their bloody spears above their heads and screamed their victory and exhilaration into the night sky.

They'd won.

They'd fucking won.

While his friends moved to clean their spears and pile up their kills and possible monster cores, ratkin were numerous and not known for having cores. Dorian approached his blood-spattered motorcycle to inspect the damages. What he found surprised him. Save for some easily buffed scratches the bike appeared undamaged. He really needed to read the schematic of the thing.

He righted his bike and wheeled it back towards his friends. Even though Leo stayed on his lookout spot atop the van, the hunters knew there wasn't a chance the ratkin would return. Individually the creatures were weak and relied on overwhelming numbers to pose a threat.

Plus even though they were the most common monsters to find out of the wildlands, not counting the flying ones—ratkin didn't usually attack as they'd just done. Either something must have spooked them out of their nest or more likely something or someone had destroyed their nest and the hunters had just fought the roving starving survivors.

Dorian didn't like either option but was willing to bet the Stewards looking for an injured dragon had something to do with it. Like they'd been conjured by Dorian thinking of them, the sky lit up with a blinding light, and a massive aircraft he'd never seen before descended. The aircraft which looked like a mix between an aircraft carrier and a ship flew on loud giant rotary blades that churned the air below. A ramp opened on the aircraft and four Stewards in their armour stepped out and rocketed down.

They landed and one of the Stewards smirked, “The vermin taking care of the vermin. Fitting. ” The stewards set the ratkin corpses alight with blue flames from nozzles on their armoured wrists. Dan made to move and a hand on the shoulder from Jax stopped him, Dorian could see the way his fellow hunter gripped his spear with barely suppressed anger. And he knew the armoured devils wanted the hunters to take a swing or react in some way.

It was the same with all of the Stewards, ordinary people itching to flaunt their ill-gotten strength.

The hunters did nothing but watch silently as the stewards picked up the handful of cores, the fruits of their labour and flew back into the craft, and just before they entered one of the armoured fools dropped two cores before the ramp shut and the aircraft moved off towards where the ratkin had disappeared.

With anger burning in him and setting his thoughts aflame, Dorian was tempted to pull the craft out of the sky and crush all within. He knew he could do it too and was preparing to do just that when a hand on his shoulder brought him back from the brink, he turned to find Dan shaking his head.

“It's not worth it. They're not worth it.”

Dorian nodded and seemed to deflate, the rollercoaster of emotions giving him emotional whiplash. A silent Leo jumped off the roof and run to retrieve the dropped monster cores. And in a small voice different from the bow-wielding warrior he'd been, said, “At least we got two.”

It started as chuckling but soon the hunters were having a full-on belly-aching laugh beneath a flickering street lamp with the ashes of their defeated foe at their feet. It felt like old times.