Chapter 78: Welcome To The Hunter’s Association.
King opened his character interface.
The rune balance sat at 562,000 currently. He navigated to the level-up panel and began converting.
The runes poured in, level thresholds consuming the balance in large chunks as each tier demanded more than the last. King watched the number fall, three hundred thousand, two hundred, one hundred, fifty, and kept confirming until the system returned an insufficient funds notification and the process stopped.
540,000 runes spent. 22,000 remaining.
His rank settled at #44.
King checked the accumulated stat points. 170 stat points, built up across every level gained in the conversion, waiting for distribution. He opened the allocation panel and worked through it without hesitation, the build already decided before he started.
44 points to Strength. His new Tank class had increasing need for it. He addressed it.
40 to Speed.
43 to Mind.
43 to Constitution. Eli’s condition was a reminder. HP was not a vanity stat.
King confirmed the distribution and felt the change settle through him immediately, a physical shift, not dramatic but unmistakable, his stats had crossed certain thresholds and the body adjusted to reflect them.
His frame had filled out even more across the shoulders and through the chest, the added Strength manifesting in visible mass, and yet the Speed allocation had done exactly what it was supposed to do, the added weight carrying lighter than it should have.
He felt balanced in a way that the previous build had been approaching but hadn’t fully reached.
Then he checked his full details one more time, reading through the updated numbers, confirming the distribution had landed correctly.
With a swipe, King closed the interface.
He turned to face the room again. Vi had finished the immediate treatment on Maya and sat beside the child now, monitoring her breathing. Eli remained rested against the wall.
"Take care of her," King said. "Both of you."
He turned toward the exit.
Vi stood.
She crossed the room before he reached the door and stopped him with both arms around his torso, pressing into him without warning, her face against his chest. King returned it, one arm around her back, and held the contact for a moment without rushing it.
She pulled back enough to look at him.
"Be safe," she said.
Then she pulled him down by the collar and kissed him with the full weight of everything she wasn’t going to say out loud compressed into it.
King held it for a second longer than necessary, then their lips parted with a smack.
He looked at Eli.
Eli gave him the same single nod he’d given earlier. King returned it, then walked out.
---
The map opened as he cleared the estate’s entrance, the Hunter’s Association marker sitting at the far western edge of the display, well outside his current region. A straight line between his position and the marker crossed multiple zone boundaries and a significant stretch of territory he hadn’t moved through yet.
He started walking west.
The distance meant time, and time spent crossing open ground between regions was time exposed. King kept his pace steady and his awareness high, reading the terrain around him.
There was nothing unordinary, just the occasional scurries and growls at distances he never bothered to engage.
He found the fast travel point after a stretch of open road, a glowing node embedded at a crossroads where the ground around it had been worn smooth. King stepped onto it and selected the western destination.
The world compressed.
It expanded again in a few seconds, and the difference between where he’d been and where he now stood was total.
The terrain that greeted him was mountain range, hard, vertical geography, grey stone ridgelines stacked against each other in a formation that blocked the horizon in every direction. The air carried a cooler quality up here, thinner, the light falling differently against the rock faces.
King checked the map. The marker sat ahead, nested in the mountains, and as he oriented himself and began moving toward it the details of the approach became clear. A great wall ran through the mountain range, following the natural contours of the ridgelines and using the geography itself as reinforcement.
It was customized, and clearly expensive, the stonework was solid, the parapet walkable, guard positions integrated at intervals that covered every viable approach angle.
King kept moving through the valley passage that led toward it.
He knew what a death trap looked like in theory. This could be one. Hunt had every strategic incentive to resolve the King problem definitively rather than engage in the kind of direct negotiation the message had implied.
The attack on Eli and Maya could have been setup rather than demonstration.
But the same logic that had answered Vi applied here. Not coming didn’t make the threat smaller. It made him reactive, waiting for Hunt to dictate the next move rather than putting himself in the room where the conversation could actually happen.
He was going to walk to the gate.
The gate resolved itself ahead as the valley narrowed. It was towering, iron-reinforced, set into the mountain wall. King took in the scope of what he was approaching and felt a cold, focused clarity settle over him.
Hunt Starbuster was not just a player with a large guild.
He was constructing something. A civilization with walls, gates and organized defense, thousands of players operating within a system that Hunt had designed and was actively maintaining.
The Popular Ranking points, the fan value, the spread of the Hunter’s Association across multiple zones, it all connected here, to this mountain fortress that had no business existing at this stage of the game unless someone had been working toward it from the very first day with a complete and unwavering plan.
King had underestimated the scope of it.
A figure stood at the gate. One man, positioned at the entrance without armor that suggested active combat readiness, a representative rather than a guard.
He watched King approach and, when King reached speaking distance, produced a measured smile that held neither hostility nor warmth.
"Welcome," the man said simply. "Master Hunt has been expecting you."
The gate parted behind him, both halves moving inward with the smooth operation of well-maintained hinges. The figure turned and stepped through, looking back once with a short gesture.
"Follow me."
King followed.
A sudden shock of the interior stopped him for a half second.
Three smaller mountainsides rose within the wall’s perimeter, each one carved and modified into functional structures, fortified faces, cut entrances, scaffolding still active on sections under continued construction.
Players moved through the spaces between them in numbers King couldn’t quickly estimate, but the density was high enough that thousands was not an exaggeration.
Supply lines moved between structures. Organized groups drilled in open areas. The whole space had the operational character of something that had been running for weeks and had found its rhythm.
He strengthened his focus and kept pace with the figure ahead.
They moved toward the central mountain, the largest of the three, its face cut clean at ground level where an entrance had been opened directly into the rock. The opening responded to their approach, the interior beyond it lit and active.
King stepped inside.
The headquarters rose from the mountain’s hollowed interior in tiers, stone steps cut into the rock connecting each level to the one above, mechanized elevates moving between the higher floors where the steps became impractical. Bridges crossed the open vertical space between tiers, and the whole interior buzzed with the kind of directed activity that didn’t happen without organizational structure holding it together.
People moved with purpose on every level King could see.
The figure stopped and turned, letting King take it in for exactly one moment.
"Welcome to the Hunter’s Association."
Then he moved again, leading King directly to an elevate at the far wall. They stepped on, and it carried them upward past tier after tier of the interior’s activity, rising through the mountain’s height until the mechanism stopped at the uppermost level.
A single corridor. A single door at its end, built from reinforced material, its construction heavier than anything else King had seen in the building.
The figure approached it and knocked twice.
Then he stepped aside and leaned slightly toward King.
"The master awaits," he said quietly.
