Lider faced the Guild tower, staring at the “Adventure Awaits” sign woven atop the white lattice walls of exposed bone. The sign, composed of Lilium mood-flowers, opened and closed with every breath, smoothly changing colors. He smiled. The Liliums fed on his nervous happiness, radiating blues and pinks back at him. He craned his neck upwards, trying to catch sight of his final destination.

The tower itself was an imposing, absurdly tall structure of living architecture. Join the Guild, become a Hunter, a protector of the Citadel - and I will be your home, it implied, not in words but in its visual arrangement of shifting fields of flowers, mossy balconies, and organic patterns of bone and ligaments that held it all together. The tower faded into wispy, white clouds high overhead.

As Lider entered, an eyeris of rainbowy elytron parted with a flutter. The Greeting Area was full of mood trees, an entire grove blossoming on the first floor. The path through the grove led him to a fairy ring, dotted by glowing, small mushrooms.

“Um. Hi?” He spoke, stepping into the ring.

A Greeter Phryganistria bent down towards him with a smile, his long, thin neck stretching from a platform held aloft by the intertwined roots of the mood trees.

“How may I be of assistance?” The Phryganistria spoke with a woody, crinkly voice, his seventeen eyes observing Lider.

“Um… I’d like to join the Guild,” he spoke, suddenly feeling shy, the mood tree leaves taking on light azure shades nearby. He showed the pyramid with an eye in the center of his palm to the Greeter.

He felt a pulse in his palm as the eye blinked, indicating his sentience was sufficient for self-determination.

“Human extermination is a dangerous business and we generally discourage someone so young from it, but in your case… yes. I understand. Don’t be nervous, young spawn.” The Greeter nodded, extending a long arm out. “Right this way.”

A wall of mood trees shifted, revealing a centipede mover.

Lider flashed his pyramid eye at the centipede, summoning the nearest carrier cabin.

The centipede mover shifted endlessly upwards until a clear segment stopped in front of him. The segment of clear elytron opened, and he boarded.

The centipede shifted rapidly upwards, and Lider’s stomach lurched. It emerged onto the outside of the building and moved in a great spiral around the exterior, higher and higher. From this new vantage point, he could now see nearly the entire superstructure of the Citadel - a leviathan, circular diatom with a variety of towers rising out of the hexagonal districts beneath. The centipede passed through the low hanging white clouds and carried him above the Great Barrier wall of the Citadel.

He gasped. He had never gone above this layer.

Beyond the wall, the scorched lands extended outwards for many kilometers. The landscape was blackened by constant fire-bombing, ashes swirling above burning remnants. A few fire whirls spun in the distance above lakes of magma. From the great height of the Guild tower, Lider witnessed the overwhelming, breathtaking power of the constantly moving supercell storm-shield that held the Citadel in its eye. He had seen visuals, sure, but nothing beat seeing it live, nothing beat the feeling of being here, several kilometers above the world.

Beyond the no man’s land fogged by the fluttering ashes were the areas infested by the human pestilence. The deadly, unforgiving place where he was aiming to go, like a determined fool. A determinate fool, of acceptable sentience - he reminded himself. Now that his All Seeing Eye was awake, he was allowed to choose his path, allowed to rise above the Great Barrier wall and even go outside of it on human extermination quests.

The centipede stopped at the top floor, unlocking the cabin. The cabin whooshed out of sight as soon as Lider stepped out.

The Guild Hall was an impressive sight, a large open concept space filled with giant panels listing varieties of quests available, letters etched on chitin panels constantly shifting as quests were taken up by Hunter teams. After a bit of gawking, Lider walked to the Evaluation desk.

The Evaluation Secretary was a Medusozoa. She was busy juggling a variety of tasks with hundreds of jellyfish tentacles. One of the floating eyes within her large, clear, umbrella-shaped head swam towards him, and focused.

“Yes?” The Secretary asked.

“Hi. I’m here to apply to be a human hunter,” Lider said, showing his pyramid eye.

“Ah. I understand,” The Secretary nodded.

Lider squinted at her. Everyone was saying that they understood, but they didn’t. Not really. It wasn’t his fault that he looked so… human. Not everyone had the advantages of hundreds of appendages, some monsters were born with only four limbs and two eyes. It was incredibly rare, approximately one out of two million were born so human-looking and the population of the Citadel was less than that.

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He was that one out of two million. The Family Mender said he had high humanism, and there was nothing that could be done about it. For decades he had dreamt of escaping the negative attention the other spawns had blessed him with, the weary looks of deep concern from the elder ones and the “understandings” constantly dispensed by those in positions of authority.

Lider saw his own pale reflection in the face of the secretary and hated it.

Nobody ever picked a monster like him on their sports or study teams at the Academy. He expected that likewise nobody would want him to hunt in their team. He would go out alone and get all of the experience points from the System, prove himself worthy of being a great Human Hunter. He aimed to claim the accolade status of “Bane of Humanity” in record time. He looked too human - this was his advantage in this game. Nobody would ever suspect him! He would integrate himself into a human hive, learn their secrets and weaknesses, and murder them all as soon as their guard was down.

It was a beautiful, perfect plan.

The Secretary pressed a button and a large bony sphere descended from the arrangement of job panels, held aloft by a long spine. The sphere stopped right next to him. A thousand ghostly eyes looked at him from the hollows of the sphere.

“I see you,” The sphere said, its eyes looking right through him, making him shudder.

“I see all of you. Provide me a limb for my larva to reside in and you shall be blessed with my omniscient radiance and obtain great potential for power.”

Lider offered his left wrist to the System sphere. A needle drew itself from the depths of the sphere, injecting one of its ghostly children into his hand. He winced, as a part of his wrist became unbearably cold. Something alien inserted itself into his mind and he tried not to resist it, tried not to freak out. He was currently observed by the Secretary and other Hunters that were attracted by the descent of the System Sphere. Ghostly text flashed in front of his eyes, letters forming out of flashing static.

[System activated. Welcome, new hunter - Lider Lox.

Initiating evaluation...

Aberrancy: 0%

Hunter level: 0

Human kill count: 0

Nest decimation: 0 ]

The text burned in his eyes as if someone was repeatedly stabbing them with icy needles.

Lider wheezed, bending over. An unbearably frosty headache gnawed at him from inside his mind. He rubbed at his eyes, attempting to lessen the pain. He knew, expected the System to bond with him, but didn’t know how intrusive, how foreign and cold it would feel.

“Hey Liz, check out this perfect specimen!” A female voice cut through the pain of the system integration.

“What? How’s he perfect?” Another voice resonated back. “Wait… are you serious? I know that look. We are not taking another level zero! It took hours to wash the last one out of my dress, damn it!”

“Argh?” Lider blinked, focusing on the small crowd gathered around him, rubbing tears out of his stinging eyes.

“Sup? I’m Catastrophe Lestr. You can call me Cass.” A hand formed in his view. “This fabulous idiot here is Elizabeth Dumadomm. Aka Lizben the Dummy. Aka Liz D.”

“What? Why am I the idiot?” Lizben inquired.

“Because you don’t know a good thing when you see it, Liz. Look at this perrrrfect nooblet. You’d have to be an idiot not to want him on our hunting team.”

Lider stared at the two females, through the system letters. He had no idea how to make them go away. The girl who called herself Cass was made of constantly rippling, black metal that shifted from one outfit to another. A Ferromagnetic. The one named Liz was wearing a long, pink, candy-style gothic lolita dress. She had four arms, dark skin, jet black hair and eight pink-red eyes with a pink stripe going across her face. A Latrodectus.

Back in the Academy, he was forced to memorize all sorts of monster subtypes, until he could recall them at will. In his opinion, it was an exercise in pointless memorization.

He stepped back from the hand, bumping into the Evaluation desk. He didn’t like where things were going. Maybe if he just politely declined -

The girl made of liquid metal rapidly flowed around him, like a river of darkness, reforming right behind him. She grabbed at his cheeks, smooshing them.

“Look at these adorable meaty bits!”

“Do you mind?” Lider tried to push her hands away, and failed as his own slipped over or right through hers. The Ferromagnetic’s body even felt like liquid metal, his fingers sinking into her wrists and emerging out the other side like she was made of thick soup.

“Just agree, it will be easier for you,” Liz sighed, ruffling her dress with one of her pincers. “Once she’s attracted to someone, they’re not getting away until they’re dead.”

“Get it? It’s cuz I’m an adorable magnet.” The Ferromagnetic wiggled her eyebrows at him. Her hands grabbed at his mouth.

“Hi! My name is…” Cass stated in a deep voice, wiggling his jaw as if he was talking.

“What?” Lider outputted, annoyed.

“Introductions, how do they work?” Cass winked at him.

“Get off me!” He said angrily.

“You have ten seconds to give me a name.” The Ferromagnetic’s lips thinned. “Nine.”

“No, because I… am going hunting alone!” Lider growled.

“Six seconds till I make up a name for you.”

“Ooooh, this one is brave.” Liz said. “A level zero, planning to head out alone? That’s tantamount to suicide. I’m starting to be impressed. He’s gotta be very special or very dumb and suicidal for that to work. Probably the latter.”

“See! I told you this one is Special! All of you can frig off! This human Bean is mine!” Cass rapidly grew another pair of metal hands and waved at the other Hunter teams that were observing the situation. She was making a series of shooing noises while she did it too. Lider sighed.

“I’m Lider...”

“Bean.”

“Huh?”

“You were too slow. You’re now Bean.”

“What? No!”

“Yeeeees. Your current name has been approved by the committee of team representatives and entered into the job roster.”

“What committee? What? Job roster?” Lider glared at Cass. One of her liquid metal hands was stretched out, typing something into the registration desk behind him.

“We’re going human hunting in fifteen, Bean.”

Cass waived her 5th hand, pointing to the quest board. Lider raised his eyes to where she was pointing, peering through the welcoming System message - which he still had no idea how to get rid of.

According to the board, “Team Catastrophe” was assigned to human nest decimation in North-East Sector 74. The team listed Cass, Liz, and… Bean in its table.

Lider groaned in frustration. His brilliant plan to go at it alone was thwarted by a very clingy Ferromagnetic.