After making sure Jax was settled and had everything he needed, Dorian stumbled home, his mind in a fugue state. Every single time he and the other hunters tried to rise up, to make something of themselves, they were always put back in their place. It didn't matter if what they were doing was legal or not. It was always the same.

And the worst thing any hunter could ever do was accept help from the GDF. They'd learnt that the hard way.

It was years after the events of the blood drenched fields and the older hunters, the ones who'd had the system the longest weren't coping well. Shrinks and doctors had come to look after them and they'd announced their preliminary findings. The System when it had been active had had a shielding effect on the minds of the hunters, it had protected their fragile psyches from the rigours that was the life of a hunter.

Now with it gone, and said shielding also gone with it— it was hitting people hard. All of that PTSD hitting at once and without warning. It was brutal. Each day people woke up to news of mass suicides and the situation was only worsening. Something had to be done.

The newly created Global Defense Force stepped in and put forward a program they'd been working on. They called it ART. Augmented Reality Therapy.

A program that would mimic the effects of the system, complete with stat sheets and quests, the works. What they couldn't replicate was the mental shielding, but the hope was that it would take like a placebo effect and somehow work.

And somehow it did.

Having that familiar structure back in their lives helped a lot of hunters and the daily quests helped them have a modicum of a normal life.

Dorian and many others like him was offered the program but he refused and that was the best decision he'd ever made in his life and sometimes he felt it was the worst.

It started as little accidents, former hunters under the program driving out of town for reasons unknown and most coming back and some didn't. Then it ramped up to attempted robberies, attempted assassinations and sometimes the worst of all. Wanton mindless slaughter.

The GDF or some arm within the new government was repurposing the daily tasks and making the hunters do whatever they wanted. Be it kill political rivals, other hunters or just kill innocent civilians. One of the hunters had been incapacitated and questioned by his fellow hunters on why he did what he did. He said simply with an empty smile on his face, “The System told me to.”

Before the other hunters could catch up and finally stop what was going on it was too late. The damage had been done to the hunters public image. Every time a hunter was gunned down committing some crime, the news always failed to mention that they were under a program that literally led them into said situation. The GDF denied the program had ever existed, and attributed all crimes to the publicised mental instability of the hunters.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

What was once known as the old guard, the old hunters that were with the system from the very beginning had their numbers gutted and it wasn't by some sinister monster, it was by the very people they bled and died to save.

Dorian pulled himself out of his despairing musings and focused on the now. He looked up and found himself standing before the small shack he called a house. The shack was located on the outskirts of The Lodge and had a beat up old world motorcycle parked out front. Dorian had been calling it home for years. With a sigh that deflated his body and made him weak and put his mind to unsavoury things, Dorian pushed open the door to his house and went in.

Inside he puttered around getting dinner ready, a bowl of ramen cooked over a gas burner. As Dorian sat in the dark shovelling ramen into his mouth, he suddenly flung the bowl away and screamed into his hand letting out his frustrations in the least harmful way he knew. It was just too much. Taking another deep breath to center himself, Dorian took off his jacket and prepared to call it a night when a weight in the pocket made him stop.

Dorian reached his hand inside and pulled out the depleted monster core. No the mostly depleted monster core. It took the hunters years after the system had left to find out, but hunters could pull the Echo out of the monster cores and do absolutely nothing with it. A useless ability the System had left them. The hunters couldn't empower their bodies with it and holding it too long within their bodies caused the Echo to simply dissipate.

Dorian pulled his necklace from around his neck and stared at it in the dark. He'd memorised every pattern and facet in the lumpy stone to no avail. He still had the pelt of the Dire Cat he'd harvested the dud from. Clutching the dud in his palm, Dorian squeezed till the stone cut into his palm. In each palm he held his past as hunter and the result of it. Dorian made to throw both crystals when he froze, he'd felt something.

With a conscious effort, Dorian pulled the final flickering Echo out of the monster core and directed it towards the bleeding hand that held the dud core. The dud core had rebuffed all attempts to have it absorb any energy, echo or otherwise so Dorian wasn't expecting anything. So it was with a wildly beating heart that Dorian watched the faint Echo make it there and using the blood as some sort of bridge it slipped into the dud core. Supremely intrigued, Dorian pulled the energy back out and it readily came and with it whatever the dud core was housing.

Dorian made to pull it into his body when the flickering Echo run out and the mysterious energy zipped back into the dud core. Looking at the dud core in astonishment, Dorian didn't know what it was he held. But whatever it was it wasn't a dud.

Suddenly energised and unable to sleep, Dorian shot out his shack with a death grip on the essence stone and run all the way back to the garage he'd left a raging Dan at. There had to be more of the mostly depleted monster cores. There had to be. Dorian made it to the garage covered in sweat and gasping for breath. He yanked open the door and stumbled in, making Dan who was hunched over his table jump.

“What the hell, Dorian you scared the shit out me.” Dan said angrily.

Dorian ignored him and made his way to the open black cases only to find the ones containing the depleted monster cores empty. Dorian turned his wild gaze on Dan and ground out, ,“Where are the monster cores?”

“The depleted ones? I sold them to some foundry that grinds them down and makes glass trinkets out of them. You'll get your cut tomorrow. ”

The news was like a gut punch that left Dorian reeling. He had been so close to discovering something new. With his mind running away with itself, Dorian stumbled home and went to sleep, his dreams filled with ways of getting a monster core.