A long time ago, or in the far future yet to come.
"Hey~" A woman with long white hair and gleaming blue eyes dropped down beside Rowan and leaned against him. "Is the soup delicious? Salamander meat tastes a lot like chicken, you know."
Orelia was proudly present, humming and kicking her legs with anticipation as she watched his face closely.
Rowan, nearly 30 at that point, caught his scarred reflection in the bowl before eating.
Then the taste hit, hard and close to home.
Rowan lowered his spoon and was struck by the taste. This was no ordinary chicken soup.
"H-how did you..."
"Hehe~ Delicious isn't it. If you want, I can make it for you forever~" Orelia smiled and laughed.
But maybe he should have caught it sooner.
That the soup she made tasted too familiar to be coincidence.
Because sometime in the past there was an S rank hunter known for his efficiency and teamwork.
But no matter how fast he was, when the apocalypse came and all the gates broke open at once, he was not there to save the last family member he had left.
Rowan picked up the phone and dialed the number back.
His heart stayed still as an old familiar ringtone played while he waited.
"Rowan, will you be coming home late today?" A gentle voice came through the phone.
A voice he had not heard in years. The one person he should have saved but could not.
His mother.
"M-mom..." Rowan tried to hold himself together as something lodged in his throat.
"Are you okay? Did you get sick? I will make my secret chicken soup then. What do you think?"
"Yes mom, chicken soup sounds nice." Rowan did his best to keep his voice steady, nearly choking on everything rising in his chest.
"Then see you soon~ Take care of yourself out there, don't let mom bother you while you work. Come home safe." Then his mother hung up.
Rowan sighed and sat down on a curb. Blood from the wolves still dripped off him but he no longer had the will to continue. He stared into the sunset and thought.
"Maybe I should just go home..."
But not before cashing out all the loot from his dungeons.
While there was a dedicated zone for trading hunter goods, plenty of shops had opened up outside the district as well.
Loot shops that accepted dungeon drops for immediate cash, with the better ones even offering spare bathrooms, because they knew exactly how messy hunters could get after a raid.
Everyone fought for customers, and the better service attracted better hunters. So, most of the chains cared about their service quality just as much as their buying rates.
Rowan found one not too far away. A hostel and loot shop combo with bathroom access, perfect for someone who was half naked and soaked in blood.
"Stop!" The front guard immediately moved to block him as he walked in.
"Only rank D or higher can enter. Show me your permit." The guard looked him over and scoffed.
While E rank hunters were looked down upon in dungeon raids, they were actually preferred for physical labor outside, twice as effective but paid about the same as normal workers. Some D rank hunters even took outside jobs too, because fighting with your life on the line was not everyone's cup of tea.
Rowan checked the sign on the door. It really did say minimum rank D entry required.
"Oh..."
"What the hell are you standing here for, are you resisting?!" Before he could apologize for not reading the sign, the bald headed guard started shouting and grabbed his sword hilt.
Rowan could feel that this big bald guy was an E rank hunter from the power he exuded.
Another voice came as a group of guys walked up behind him.
"MAN, if only our mage wasn't absent today. She should break up with that loser boyfriend of hers and join us instead." An annoyed voice came from the group leader, who wore full armor with a sword and shield.
A full kit like that cost a fortune. On their chest was the [Silver Claw] emblem, they belonged to a guild.
"She is not our guild member, so please respect the boundary," another woman in the group wearing light cloth sighed.
"Hey, what is this smelly homeless doing here?" The leader frowned as his way got blocked by Rowan.
"Oh, hello sir, sorry for the unpleasant sight." The bald guard saw the man and his group and quickly bowed.
"Just get him away." He ordered the guard before glancing over and catching Rowan's permit.
A smirk crossed his face. "E rank trash like you makes us hunters look bad. Just go be a construction worker or something."
The others in the party nervously glanced at each other.
"Get out now!" The bald guard shoved Rowan toward the exit.
"Hey, I get it. No need to be rude." Rowan tapped his foot and stepped back a meter before turning to leave.
'That man is no beginner...' The woman in light cloth could see that Rowan's movements were fluid. He had to have been hunting for at least a year, maybe more.
And whatever prejudice they carried, rank on a card did not equal level on a status window.
For all they knew, Rowan could be a level 100 E rank.
Rowan glanced at the group and thought, 'That is a nice party.' He could see their roles were filled perfectly with some room to spare, could trim a little off the top and it would still run just fine. Then he turned and left.
'I should find a nearby hotel. Hope they accept bloody customers...'
Rowan sighed and walked along the pathway. About ten minutes in he reached the first motel and got instantly turned away.
Then another. And another. Every single one brushed him off.
Even the bus driver would not let him on with that much blood soaked into his clothes.
"Guess I am jumping in the river..." Rowan sighed hopelessly. Not that he particularly cared, he had done worse, but after so long he had genuinely missed having a proper shower.
For system's sake, he saved the world!
A proper shower on his first day back. Was that too much to ask?
"Hey big boy." A nearby voice called out to him.
Rowan looked over and noticed what he had missed on the map.
"Hello~!"
And the one who had called out to him was a friendly old Asian man with a round belly, waving from behind the counter.
A house with a small section converted into a Hunter Deposit Shop.
These were modest operations. No items to sell, limited loot accepted. But most took Mana Cores, the most liquid asset in the age of hunters.
'Why isn't it on the map?'
Rowan decided to take a look.
The old man picked up and put on his glasses, then his expression shifted to concern.
"Oh, you do not look good. Bad raid?" Seeing Rowan covered in blood, his clothes damaged and full of bite and claw marks, the uncle expressed his concern.
"Not really." Rowan smiled and accepted the goodwill as he looked around.
"1% commission? Is that not a little too low?" Most shops took around a 3% cut on Mana Cores, they needed significant capital since the cores could get pricey, and the security risk was very real.
Even in the age of hunters, thieves still existed.
So, either this uncle was an Asian tycoon with secret bodyguards, or he was simply too naive about American culture. Judging by his innocent smile, it was clearly the latter.
"Oh no no, 1% is very fair. 3% is too much." The uncle quickly waved his hand.
"You hunters protect our lives. I am very grateful." His words came from a place of real respect, something rarely found among people who looked at hunters like soldiers.
There were even some monster rights activists trying to prohibit hunters from going on raids.
"It is nothing. I was just a little reckless." Rowan brushed it off as he swung his backpack onto the table and began pulling out Mana Cores. All of them.
Normally hunters did two or three raids per week, each time with four to eight people splitting the loot between them.
Rowan doing two raids in a single day and dropping everything at once was a little much for a small shop like this.
"Woah woah, too many too many!!" The uncle quickly pushed them back.
"I can only accept twenty per day. This is too much!" Rowan had nearly a hundred in his backpack. Luckily for the uncle, money was not actually Rowan's problem right now.
What he needed was a bag.
"I will sell twenty then. Could I also get a plastic bag for the rest?"
The uncle happily agreed before disappearing into the back and returning with a neatly folded plastic bag.
After scooping the Mana Cores into bags he found them much easier to handle, far better than the nearly broken backpack that had been designed to carry a laptop, not dungeon loot. Not long after, the uncle counted out his money.
'This seems a little too simple...' Rowan was quietly concerned by how the uncle operated.
What was stopping someone from just taking the cores and walking out?
What could he do? Was he a secret martial arts master with hidden power?
Rowan knew that China had many secretly powerful hunters living among the mountains.
Even the government did not dare touch them, as they were the ones keeping the outer provinces safe.
"You want to come get a shower?" Before Rowan could leave, the uncle offered, he had clearly noticed the blood, which by now had dried and crystalized along Rowan's skin.
"Oh, that would be nice." Rowan accepted as the uncle closed up his shop and led him inside.
A ceiling fan spun lazily overhead. A refrigerator hummed and creaked in the corner.
Family photos lined the wall, the uncle, someone he assumed was his wife, and two boys. One tall, one small.
'Is that Lee or am I just being racist,' Rowan tried to make out the younger brother in the picture but was too afraid to ask.
Since it must have been an old photo, the uncle in it was noticeably slimmer than the man standing beside him now.
"Hehe, that one my oldest. Engineer, Beijing. Another got accepted, medical, still picking school." He pointed proudly at the older brother whose degree was written in Chinese as he led Rowan toward the bathroom.
"Drop the clothes here, I will lend you my son's shirt. Come back when you are ready."
"Wait... Did you do this so I would have to come back and sell to you again?" Rowan narrowed his eyes at the uncle who was already shuffling up the stairs.
"Ah, oh no~" The uncle faked surprise very unconvincingly.
"Haha! Smart move uncle." Rowan laughed but figured no harm done.
The uncle could not buy all his loot anyway and supporting a local shop beat handing everything to a chain that squeezed 3% commission under the banner of operational costs.
After finishing up and borrowing a clean white shirt, he left three extra Mana Cores on the counter as a gesture of goodwill.
"No no, this is too much!" The uncle refused and stood his ground, so Rowan quietly slipped them back into the plastic bag and headed home.
The encounter with the uncle had been a welcome one.
But with every step he took, his feet grew heavier.
The sun hung low as night began to fall. He walked for a while before he finally arrived.
It had been almost a decade since this place was destroyed and he had never returned, but the memory of standing here, of walking through that door, had never once left him across all the years and all the lives since.
A place where even if a lifetime passed, he would always remember the way back.
He was home.