Old Corny might have been an extreme extrovert, but I’m not the kind that’s good with strangers. A bunch of ‘overly friendly’ out-of-towners came sprinting in my direction.

They looked positively happy to see me, their emaciated faces, pulled taut into a rictus smile.  Their tattered clothes because they were moving so fast.  

The chubby bloke in the middle lost his shirt revealing a torn torso, with some of the insides spilling out, looking a little bit like dried sausage links. Their hands were all outstretched, like they all want  to either give me the biggest hug or the best high five.

Unfortunately touching and physical contact isn’t much my thing, so I side-stepped them.

These guys were quite the persistent lot though. All the denizens of the Outside  or Outer-world were. The skinny woman in the torn leather armor lurched after me. Her fat friend with his innards leaking, tried to tackle me. The third one with no arms was a bit slow on the pick-up but that was fine.

I’d found that in this new life avoidance wasn’t always the best policy, sometimes you just have to deal with things head on. Thus I swung my cricket bat and knocked off the heads of the friendly miss and the armless one.

As for the fat one, him I just pushed with my free hand. His rotund form suddenly accelerating at my touch. Hurtling through brick and plaster till it finally found itself airborne. Flying from a newly made hole that had been blown through the side of the building by his girth.

My new friends were gone, but the noise I’d made, running around with those out-of-towners and getting rid of that last guy, brought others, who were just as eager to meet me.

*****

So, I’m a hunter now. It was surprisingly easy. Almost scarily so. All it took was me going up to one of the city’s Hunter Adminstration Offices, saying I wanted to be a hunter, and then filling out some paperwork.

I mean, there wasn’t even a test. I know, I know, I might have made a big deal about how much harder it was for people to be killed or die. I think I might have over-exaggerated there.

People could definitely die permanently, they died every day in fact, just like in the world I came from. It was just that it took slightly more, and that there was a fair chance that they, or something that at least looked like them, would come back.

And even then there was a limit, to how much they could rely on that before they could be  expected to simply fall to the earth and become dust and nothingness, their spirits becoming part of the mists that covered everything in the Outside.

Honestly the most apt description would be to imagine this as the kind of world where everyone had lovely green bars that tracked how much damage they could take before they died. And a little icon with their faces on it, that tracked how many times they could die, before it was game over.

It wasn’t really like that. At least ‘I’ hadn’t noticed anything that convenient hanging around the corners of ‘my’ eyes, but that was more or less how the world worked.

*****

After having met and parted with, a crowd of ten to twenty, severed ‘friends’. I made my way to the hole that the fat one had fallen through. I stepped out into the empty air and let gravity pull me down to the street.

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The sidewalk shook a little, and the concrete beneath my feet crumbled in a way that might have gotten me in trouble if I was inside one of the  Inner-territories but all in all, it was a pretty good landing. At least an eight out of ten. Not outstanding by any means but still very solid.

I started walking as soon as my legs stopped tingling from the long fall. Heading deeper into the misty wastes of the Outside.

*****

Did I already mention that I only just recently joined the hunters? I think I did. It turns out that being a newbie in the hunters was like being a newbie in any other organization.

Basically you kind of had to start from the bottom and make your way up the ranks. Going from G to A with the top rank being S(for star).  

*****

I found myself in a clearing where there were either no buildings nearby or they’d all been knocked down like a child’s abandoned toys. A man stepped out from one of those overturned buildings.

He was large, about ten feet or so in height and built like an SUV. Bulky, and meant to take punishment.

He was dressed in a mixture of the typical out-of-towner rags and bits off metal scrap and he was armed with a bent stop sign, that he must have wrenched out from the ground somewhere. With a fair amount of concrete still attached to the end of it.

I think I might be more good looking then I previously thought, because he saw me and his eyes began to glow and drool began flow from his mouth, as sticky spittle.

I was appreciative of the attentions and very flatter, but as I already had a wife at home, I was forced to rebuff his advances.

Lightly pushing him away with my palm, though he might have taken it a bit badly and went flying back in his dwelling. Dramatically crashing through the outer walls of what seemed to have been some kind of military fort or bank.

Dust and rubble issuing from the hole that he’d made in his home with his high speed entrance.

*****

As always, these awkward little tete-a-tete were made all the more awkward because hunters were required to take three things from their quarry.

The first was a photo, taken with one’s cellphone. The second was the magic core. The essence stone. All the creatures of the outside had them. Actually all creatures on the inside had them too.

The only thing was that  essence cores of human revenants didn’t calcify and magic stones until they became severed undead.

As for the third thing, that was quite simple, the third that one needed to take was anything else. Anything else that might be of use, or worth selling that was one the creature or in its dwelling.

Be it  skins, bones or fur, or the loot and goods of any unfortunates that happened to be present. Any that was worth money was to be collected. It wasn’t so much a rule but it was expected.

Especially since at least half of your average hunter’s income was based on the worth of whatever they’d managed to find while travelling the Outer-wastes.

There were also the dog tags of other,’less fortunate’ hunters, which was expected to pick up as courtesy to the families of the deceased. The Guild paid for them of course but it was just a little change, given as incentive for those might not do it otherwise.

Not that I’m complaining, after all I only took this job because I have a family to support.