A gate break occurs when a gate has not been closed in time before the cooldown expires.
This causes the world inside the gate to manifest and overlap into the real world.
Perhaps a tunnel dug deep into a sewer system, resembling a cave. An entire tower plucked into the middle of a road. Or a volcano replacing what was once a shopping mall.
No one knows exactly what will happen once a gate collapses, but one thing is certain.
There will be casualties.
'FUCK! I need to buy a motorcycle right now!' Rowan called a cab and grew anxious as he tried to find any information about this dungeon break.
He did not remember it happening in the past, but his memory was not that reliable anyway.
But there should not be a D-rank dungeon break occurring. It was supposed to be the most targeted gate rank and was hardly ever available, so why had no one cleared it yet?
Rowan searched online for the dungeon break in Ohio and found a livestream.
'Let's see.'
The livestream was from a nearby high schooler, since this dungeon had taken place close to a school. A public school. The entire area had turned into a lush green forest, with vines and flowers taking root everywhere.
"It broke five minutes ago and it's already turning everything into a jungle!" the streamer girl said as she panned across the damage it had caused.
'Forest, roots, flowers...' From the environment alone, with enormous combat experience behind him, he had already deduced the type of enemy responsible for the gate break. And what came to mind filled him with dread.
{ROWAN: RUN} {ROWAN: NOW} {ROWAN: FAST!}
He spammed the chat in a panic, but with thousands of people chiming in, his messages were swallowed by the wave of comments.
"Brother, can you go faster!" Rowan gritted his teeth and asked the driver, his face full of panic.
The driver was a heavyset man with tan skin. He simply lifted one hand off the wheel and gestured.
Rowan pulled out 5 mana cores and handed them to the man.
"Put your seat belt on, young man." With a thick accent, the driver put his foot on the gas and the taxi shot out into the road.
While the taxi turned left and right as if it had come out of a blockbuster film, the streamer began to stumble and lose her footing.
"W-what's happening..." Her words came out garbled as her hands grew weak. The phone she was holding dropped to the floor, showing her kneeling with blank, unfocused eyes.
"Damnit!" Rowan immediately caught on. 'So this is why no one wanted to clear it. It was a poison dungeon!'
A poison dungeon is one of the worst types of dungeons to raid.
While the mana signature remains the same, meaning the AI that calculates difficulty will display it as normal, the addition of poison monsters or a poisonous environment acts as a difficulty multiplier that no one will know about until they are already faced with it.
The only thing worse than poison is a curse type, but either is devastating for hunters, especially inexperienced ones.
"Even among D-rank gates, poison types are rare." The stream cut off as the streamer girl's body was engulfed and pierced by the vines.
Since the gate was still quite far, he needed around another 10 minutes to get there.
Rowan quickly swapped his magazine type from buckshot to dragon's fire rounds.
Against the enemy he was about to face, physical damage would do little to no harm.
And worse, by the time he arrived, it would likely already be twice as strong as it normally would be.
As established, hunters and gates are a zero-sum game. Hunters can level up by continuously clearing raids, but the monsters inside stay the same.
The keyword being "inside." Once they got out, they too could level up.
One of the many factors that contributed to humanity's downfall was monsters of this type managing to level up by using humans as their experience source. A harmless goblin could turn into a magi hobgoblin capable of wiping out an entire city block.
'And it's a plant type. The only plant type with flowers and poison at this rank: a Dryad!'
Rowan quickly wrote a post about the Dryad on the hunter forum.
{Rowan: For any hunter heading to the dungeon break at XXth Street, Ohio, prepare a gas mask or at least a two-layer face mask. The enemy uses airborne poison attacks. BURN EVERY FLOWER you see to stop its advancement.}
While he warned others and quickly received likes and comments, some asking where the enemy was and what it looked like, he did not want to confirm anything until he got there. But he was already closing in. On the opposite side of the road, cars were packed bumper to bumper trying to flee.
Not long after, he hit a blockade in front of him.
With police and a traffic jam stopped up ahead, the once fastest taxi in the US came to a standstill.
"This is as far as I can go," the driver told him.
"Thank you, here's a tip!" Rowan handed the man another mana core plus thirty dollars, stepped out onto the street, and started running along the sidewalk.
His feet turned into a blur as he weaved past the line of cars. With his stats he was about half as fast as a car, so it did not take him long before he reached the roadblock.
"Please show your card. Only hunters are allowed past this point," the officer said.
Rowan searched his pockets and pulled out his hunter card, the E-rank one.
"Are you sure? Isn't it a D-rank dungeon?" the officer asked with concern.
"I'll be fine," Rowan pocketed his card.
"Then good luck out there." The officer tipped his hat and stepped aside to let Rowan pass.
Rowan nodded and ran toward the crisis zone.
The green had already flooded the street and he could see it creeping up the sides of buildings.
But there were still no monsters in sight.
As for the poison, he was unaffected due to his skills.
"Please, please," Rowan muttered as he ran in a panic through the field of flowers, hoping no one had been hurt.
Only to be met with a reality.
Once again, he had failed to prevent it.
The streamer girl, alongside other civilians, from elderly men to young students, walked with flower buds sprouting from their heads and vines coiled around their bodies.
Demi Sprouts, the minions of the Dryad. Plant-type zombies.
Rowan lowered his gun and pulled out a knife.
These monsters were not strong. There is no need to waste bullets yet.
They were just spore carriers. Other than that, they were still meat and blood, and alive.
Alive, but no longer human.
This was the reality of a dungeon break. Humans were just pawns to monsters, the same way monsters were nothing but experience to hunters.
"I'm going to make this quick," Rowan said, his voice heavy with grief.
[Dash]
"I promised." His feet turned into a blur, and a silver arc of his blade cut through every trapped soul within his line of strike.
[Soul Devourer]
The soul of the streamer girl closed her eyes.
When it snapped back, heads dropped and she and others were freed from the spore's grasp.
[SP: 100]