Chapter 14: The Senior Hunter

HEAVENLY DEMON OF THE DEAD GATE

Volume 1: Risen from Suicide

***

The man moved like someone who had spent a lot of time carrying heavy things for other people.

He didn’t rush. He didn’t loom. He crossed the lobby at an easy, even pace and stopped a polite arm’s length away, close enough to talk and far enough that a nervous person wouldn’t feel cornered. It was a small courtesy, but Yun Zhou noticed it.

Someone taught him that. Or he learned it the hard way.

“Excuse me,” the man said. His voice was low and a little rough, like gravel under a rug. “Do you have a minute?”

Yun Zhou turned from the vending machine with the stiff, startled motion of someone who hadn’t expected to be spoken to. His shoulders came up. His eyes dropped to the floor, then flicked to the stranger’s face, then dropped again.

“Um. Yes, sir. Is something wrong?”

“No, no.” The man held up a calloused palm. “Nothing like that. I just overheard part of your assessment through the door.” A pause. “I wasn’t eavesdropping. These walls are paper.”

Honest enough to admit it. Or smart enough to say it first.

Up close, he was bigger than he’d looked across the lobby. Six-two, maybe six-three, with the thick, square build of a man who had been hit a great many times and kept standing. The scar through his left eyebrow was old and white. The shield on his back was a tower shield, scarred along the rim, the leather straps replaced more than once.

A badge was pinned to his jacket. Yun Zhou read it in a glance.

CAPTAIN DHARMA WIRASENA. Gate Safety Division. Rank: A.

A-rank. And a captain. In the part of the Association that supervises Gate entries.

He’s exactly the kind of person I should be afraid of, and exactly the kind of person I should want to know.

***

“Dharma,” the man said, offering a hand. “Wirasena. You can skip the ‘captain.’ Nobody out here uses it.”

Yun Zhou stared at the hand for a half-second too long, as though unsure whether a stranger was really offering to shake it. Then he took it, gingerly, and let his fingers go slightly limp.

“Yun Zhou.”

The grip was warm and dry and firm without being crushing. Dharma held it for exactly one second and let go.

A man who doesn’t squeeze to prove something.

Yun Zhou let a thread of Oculus slip out, tiny, careful, a thread through a needle’s eye.

It met no wall. No smooth glass. Just a broad, steady current of thought, slow and heavy as a river in summer, with the surface clear enough to see the bottom.

...kid looks like he hasn’t eaten in a week...

...the neck. Rope burn. God, he’s so young...

...zero mana. Channel blockage. They’re sending him into Gates with that? Somebody should stop this...

...I can’t take on another one. Not after... no. Just a talk. Just give him a chance to think...

The reading was so clean it almost felt rude. Yun Zhou drew the thread back, and a faint pulse of pain flickered behind his eye. No artifact. No discipline. No guard at all.

He doesn’t hide a thing.

It’s disgusting.

And, for the same reason, extraordinarily useful.

“Would you mind,” Dharma said, “if I bought you a coffee?”

***

The Association cafeteria occupied the corner of the ground floor, a long room of plastic tables and humming vending machines, smelling of burnt espresso and microwaved rice. At this hour it was half empty. A few hunters nursed paper cups. A television in the corner muttered about a Class-C Gate in the eastern district, with a banner: CONTAINMENT EXPECTED WITHIN 48 HOURS.

Dharma returned with two cups and a paper plate. He set the coffee in front of Yun Zhou, along with a hard-boiled egg and a sad-looking sandwich.

“Eat,” he said. “You’re about to fall over.”

Sandwich. Egg. A coffee with three sugars, because I look like I need them.

He’s judged my metabolism from fifteen feet away.

How irritatingly accurate.

Yun Zhou wrapped both hands around the cup and let his fingers tremble faintly. “I couldn’t, sir. I mean, thank you, but...”

“It’s four bucks. And I’m a captain. I’ll expense it.” Dharma sat across from him and leaned back, the chair creaking under his weight. “Eat.”

Refusing a second time would look proud. Accepting would look grateful.

Grateful is cheaper.

Yun Zhou nodded, a small, embarrassed jerk of the head, and picked up the egg. He peeled it with careful fingers and took a small bite. He ate like someone who had been taught to be ashamed of eating in front of others, a little too fast, a little too quiet.

Dharma watched him for a while without speaking. When Yun Zhou had finished half the sandwich, he said:

“Can I ask what you’re planning to do?”

“Sir?”

“With the license. Now that you’ve reactivated it.” Dharma turned his coffee cup slowly on the table. “You’re an E-rank with zero mana capacity. I read the certificate. ‘Non-curable.’” He grimaced. “That’s the worst phrase in the whole bureaucracy.”

Yun Zhou stared into his cup.

“I need to work,” he said finally. “I have... I had debts. They’ve been cleared. But I don’t have any savings. I can’t do anything else.”

“You could get a desk job. There are a few at the Association for people in your situation. Filing. Inventory. It doesn’t pay much, but it keeps you alive.”

“I applied.” A small, bitter laugh. “They said I didn’t have the right background.”

Lie. But a lie wrapped in a fact. Desk jobs for defective hunters were rare, and the waiting list was long.

Dharma’s jaw tightened.

“Of course they did.”

***

For a moment, he said nothing. He looked at the television, at the ticker scrolling across the bottom, then back at the boy across the table.

“I’m going to say something,” he said at last, “and you’re not going to like it.”

Here it comes.

Yun Zhou raised his eyes, slow and wary.

“You shouldn’t go into Gates,” said Dharma.

“I know,” Yun Zhou said, so quietly that Dharma had to lean forward to hear. “But I don’t have a choice.”

“That’s not true. You have choices. You just don’t like them.”

“They’re all worse.”

“They’re not worse than dying.”

The words hung there, flat and plain. A woman at the next table glanced over, then looked away.

Dharma rubbed his face with one big hand. When he spoke again, his voice was lower and rougher.

“I’ve been a Gate supervisor for sixteen years. I’ve logged three thousand, two hundred entries. I’ve pulled out two hundred eighty bodies. Do you know what the common factor is?”

Yun Zhou shook his head.

“Desperation,” Dharma said. “Not stupidity. Not weakness. Not even bad luck. Desperation. A hunter who’s desperate takes risks he shouldn’t. He says yes to parties he shouldn’t. He walks into corridors he shouldn’t. And the Gate takes him, every time.”

He took a breath.

“With zero mana, you can’t use enchanted gear. You can’t use healing potions. You can’t even trigger most of the safety systems we install at entry points. Your body is a bag of meat and bone.” His eyes were steady. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be cruel. But somebody has to tell you the truth.”

Somebody has to tell you the truth.

Yun Zhou looked down at the coffee, at the dark surface trembling faintly from the shake of his hands.

Sentimental, righteous, honest to the point of recklessness. He’s trying to save a stranger he’s known for ten minutes.

In my old life, men like this got executed by their own officers.

In this one, they get promoted to captain, and then they wonder why they keep losing people.

He let his voice crack.

“My party left me,” he whispered. “At the last Gate. They pushed me into a monster, and they left me.”

Dharma went very still.

“They... what?”

“I don’t blame them. I was dead weight.” A single tear slid down Yun Zhou’s cheek. He didn’t wipe it away. “I just wanted to say it to someone. I haven’t told anyone.”

For a long moment, Dharma did not move.

Then he put down his cup, rose from the chair, walked around the table, and set one heavy hand on Yun Zhou’s shoulder. The grip was gentle. His palm was warm through the thin fabric.

“That is not your fault,” he said. “Do you hear me? None of it.”

Warm hand. Warm voice. Warm heart.

What a tragedy, thought Yun Zhou, behind the shimmer of his tears. He believes every word of this.

He would have been a good friend to someone, in a better world.

In this one, he’s about to become a very good tool.

***

The conversation lasted another fifteen minutes. Dharma asked questions in a low, careful voice, and Yun Zhou answered in fragments: the party’s names, a few details of their last Gate, a story that was ninety percent true and ten percent shaped. When Dharma asked for the names, he hesitated, as though afraid, and finally gave them in a whisper.

Bram. Cassia. Dorian. Fenrir.

Dharma wrote them on a napkin with a pen he pulled from his breast pocket. His expression, as he did, became very still.

“They’re Taring Merah,” he said, half to himself. “Mid-tier guild. C-rank average. Bram’s been trying to jump to B for two years.”

“You know them?”

“I know of them.” The pen tapped the napkin. “I’m not supposed to open an investigation without a formal complaint. And you’re not going to file one.”

“I... I can’t.”

“No. I understand.” Dharma folded the napkin and slipped it into his pocket. “But I’ll keep an eye on them.”

An eye. A single captain’s eye.

That’s all I need. A watchdog, pointed at the right door, without any idea who aimed it.

Yun Zhou lowered his head.

“Thank you,” he said. The words came out as a small, shaky exhale. “I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything.”

Dharma stood, reached into his jacket, and pulled out a business card. It was plain, white, a little bent at one corner. He set it on the table and slid it across with two fingers.

DHARMA WIRASENA. Captain, Gate Safety Division. Direct: 555-0147.

“If you’re ever in trouble,” he said. “Or if you decide to go into a Gate and you want a second opinion on the entry conditions. Or if you just want to talk.” He hesitated. “Call. I mean it.”

Yun Zhou picked the card up with both hands, as though it were made of glass. He held it against his chest.

“I will,” he said. “I promise.”

A flicker crossed Dharma’s face. Relief, and under it something warmer, a little proud.

“Good,” he said. “Take care of yourself, kid.”

He gave Yun Zhou’s shoulder one last squeeze, turned, and walked away across the cafeteria. The long shield on his back swayed with his stride. Halfway to the door, a hunter at one of the tables called out his name and he raised a hand in greeting, laughing at something that Yun Zhou was too far away to hear.

Yun Zhou watched him go.

His face, as he did, was a small, grateful, trembling thing.

Behind it, a calm and ancient voice was writing in the margins.

Dharma Wirasena. A-rank. Captain. Honest, kind, impulsive. Cannot resist a stray. Believes in the system, which means he’ll bend it to protect anyone he thinks it’s failing.

A friend in the Gate Safety Division can read entry logs, flag dangerous parties, and quietly look the other way when one of his strays crosses a line.

I could use that.

I could use him.

He turned the card over, studied the number, and tucked it carefully into the inside pocket of his jacket, next to the memory card from the locker.

But a man who gives freely will eventually ask for something in return. They always do, in the end. And when he does, he will be hurt by the answer.

I’ll try to make it quick.

***

He lingered in the cafeteria for a few minutes after Dharma left, finishing the coffee, which had gone lukewarm. When he rose to throw away the cup, a woman at the next table, the one who had glanced over earlier, caught his eye.

She was perhaps thirty, with a sharp face and a loose ponytail, wearing a green hunter’s vest with a tiny embroidered fang over the pocket. A Taring Merah patch.

She smiled, thin and curious.

“Friend of Captain Wirasena’s?” she asked.

Yun Zhou tensed, only slightly. It was a small movement, one a casual observer would have missed. But she didn’t miss it.

“No,” he said softly. “He was just being kind.”

“Mm.” Her smile did not change. She took a sip of her tea. “That’s him. Everybody’s friend. Sometimes, that’s a problem.”

She went back to her phone.

Yun Zhou walked out of the cafeteria with the same small, stooped, harmless gait. He passed the security guards. He passed the lobby banner. He passed through the glass doors and into the afternoon light.

It was only when he was a full block away, in the shadow of a parking garage, that he let his shoulders straighten and his face go still.

Taring Merah.

The same guild as Bram.

She was sitting two tables away. She heard every word.

She heard the names.

He kept walking, his pace even, his eyes forward, one hand in his pocket resting lightly on the edge of Dharma’s card.

It seems the web is already starting to move.

And I haven’t even pulled the first thread.

***

To be continued in Chapter 15: “The Golden Rules”