"Wait, I can explain—"
Before Kade could utter the remaining words, he was grasped by his shirt, lifted off the ground and then struck to the wall with a hard thud. His sleek dagger fell with a soft metallic clatter, as the other onlookers of hunters broke into Snickers.
Then voices jeered from all directions.
"It's him again. I wonder which episode of harassment is this? Oh! Let me guess—"
"It's the one hundred and twenty-third episode!"
"What a poor little guy going as a hunter, huh? Well, I bet he learned his lesson, today."
"I'm even surprised that he's still alive ever since he'd joined the hunters guild. It's a big deal."
It had been about a couple of months since the opening ceremony of the new hunters that came with the power ranking analysis which occurred once a year. Kade was one of those newcomers to test his worth and applied for a hunter guild: The Striker Guild.
During which he was an E-class, and to make things worse, he was talentless as a nothing. But luck came to his side as he was accepted, unlike the others, due to the connection by his lost mother's prestige once as a prominent slayer in the hunter community, and by the help of Aria… you'll still get to know her, soon.
Luck? Would he even call it that? When things went out of his taste as he was like a shadow with no little value, but a burden to the hunters when it comes to protection during extremely dangerous raids. And like a turn of events during the raids, the hunters found out how to make a good use of him by making him play the role of a bait, which nearly… or, always cost his life. And also as a hunter norm, to be targeted as the weak in the hands of bullies and weak hunter abusers.
His current, or most persistent bully jerking him to the wall, was no other than Mia, a C-class hunter girl, who wore a gothic-styled fashion, but quite in her taste. Instead of black, it was in blues and purples. Her elegant magenta hair was stretched and tied to a ponytail, she wore a blue shirt under a purple vest and blue skirt with fashionable thigh highs.
The eye shadow and mascara added to the intensity of her threatening crimson eyes, as they pierced at his weak azure ones, like some hypnotic spell as he shifted them away from hers.
"I wonder how you bullies schedule your daily routine for bullying and beating the weak, shouldn't this be old?"
Kade muttered under his seized breath as her grip pressed harder over his fragile neck, but she didn't care to know what he was cursing, as it was always the same familiar response that he gave.
She grimaced with a dark expression.
"Why are you still here, anyways? You promised me that you'd leave and get a part-time job for yourself, huh? A zero that you are!"
"We don't need trash here, okay?!"
She snapped, with a clear sense of superiority.
He held onto her arm, silently begging to gasp air as her grip and the pressure against the wall grew stronger the more, over the passing seconds. And just as he was at the corner of his limit, then…
"MIA! What do you think that you're doing, again?!"
Kade couldn't help but to feel relieved as her grip loosened around his neck, when he heard the familiar saving voice far behind them.
A young girl with long, shiny brown hair flowing to the cool morning breeze, and hazel eyes piercing at her. Aria had a stern look on her face which made her even much scarier than Mia was.
Aria and Kade were long childhood friends since middle school and high school, until she had discovered her early innate affinity to a psychic-typed power as a B-class, before she left him and joined the hunters community.
Back then, they had looked over each of their backs, and as if they were naturally connected to each other, they loved lawn tennis as a sport and were both good at it. Occasionally during the long summer vacations, they went out to the court nearby to play, did their homeworks together, and also gifted each other during special holidays and went to the 'Sooth 'n Chills' cafe, sometimes.
But all this was over, when she left for a better life in the hunters domain. The bullies in the school that seemed never to be there, appeared like they had been waiting for this to happen all along.
His life was just like a game of bullies and low self esteem, even after applying as a hunter, and going through the awakening ceremony which deemed him useless, as well as plunging him to a new phase of chapter for misery in the hunters community.
Like everyone had always dreamed, Kade had looked forward to becoming a brilliant, impactful and powerful hunter more than his mother… but no, fate had displayed to him what he truly was, and that was how he ended up in this situation now as a result.
Mia lowered her arm, then dropped him to the ground and scratched the back of her head, smiling awkwardly, and said with a hint of mockery:
"Oh!... I was just probably measuring my strength on him, if you didn't mind?"
Aria stared at her for a while, before rolling her eyes, and then said with a tired sigh, knowing no one would fall for a ludicrous excuse.
"Hunters aren't meant to treat their fellows like this, but instead, battle against the monsters that we are all here for."
Kade heaved a deep gasp, after being strangled for almost a minute, then picked his intricately adorned dagger as he looked up at Aria… and a tall figure that accompanied her.
Then a familiar juvenile resentment boiled within him as he saw the charming young man behind her, smiling friendly at him.
The young man matted with blonde shoulder-length hair, had stark features with his purple eyes that glinted with sharpness. He wore a leather battle suit of white and blue, reinforced with sturdy straps. A large blue scarf draped around his neck, and one of the most that caught Kade's eye was the longsword with a sharp, broad blade forged from resistant steel which was encased in its sheath that hung behind him. He was no other than Ren Hover.
The guy was a perfect model of lean figure and athletic body build with a defiant and determined demeanor that fitted his nature.
Kade had long had something beneath just friendship to Aria, but something intimate which he had yet to unfold to her, but was always destroyed by his sight. He looked at himself all over, and grimaced at his skinny appearance, he's probably not her speck as a weak, miserable hunter with no value.
He would just be like a third party to their presence.
Aria marched toward Kade, then stopped beside him for a moment, before she helped to lift him to his feet and said slowly, in a matter-of-fact tone.
"You know, I don't have always to watch your back all the time. Try to keep up yourself, okay?"
Then she walked past me to a clear spot, before she squatted to the ground and brought out a parchment, then unrolled it, which looked wide as like a map, with all the marks dotted at different points in what seemed like a narrow labyrinth of passages, with a central wider path.
By then, the other onlookers of hunters had scrambled off for their intended business, which left the little hunter party with Aria, the charming young man, Mia, Kade, and two more members… a robust guy in an armoured suit and a lanky guy, who remained in the desolated remote mana zone, with a warning sign of dungeons for regular civilians.
The rest squatted along with Aria as she explained, tracing her fingers over and across the crudely sketched map.
"This is according to the guild master, as we are here to survey an abandoned dungeon that had already been cleared off with its boss, but somehow still remained after some few days. Meanwhile, the other division of our guild are on some other gate mission, which lives us to this one."
She moved her fingers from the mouth of the entrance, then linearly across the other side where a mark lay.
"We are going to navigate through the dungeon to see what's the cause of this, and then gather reports back to the guild, got it?"
The rest of the hunters nodded in understanding, as she rolled the map up, and then they all rose up to their feet.
Kade couldn't help but to be relieved once more about their mission; it wasn't a raid but a survey in the dungeon. If not, then Mia and the others would have voted for him to be the bait… and porter, in most cases.
In exception to Aria… and the charming guy.
But the pain of this treatment still lingered deep down his fragile heart, all day long.
The cohort of six hunters marched boldly toward a large vertical swirling portal that shimmered with flowing ethereal blue energy.
The moment they were close enough, the warm sensation of heat caressed their skin softly as they halted in front of it.
Aria glanced around at the others and they responded with a simple nod, but caught Kade at the far end on the left side, looking at his feet with a fallen expression.
She sighed.
"Kade…? Is anything alright, there?"
To support her, in order to lighten up the atmosphere, Ren beside him, squeezed his shoulders and leaned towards him with a bright expression.
"You know, I was once like you, but never gave up till now, I believe in you bro. No matter which class that you fall into does determine who you really are, so you don't have to feel down 'cause we're with you, right?"
"Chillax, everything will be okay. It's not like we're going on a raid, so far I'm here, and for Aria to be happy."
He reassured Kade as Aria badged in closer, and added in a low voice:
"I'll be always with you, too, understand? You don't have to feel left out."
Kade lingered for some moment as he caught Mia rolling her eyes; Gregory, the muscular tank held back his laughter; Arsen, the lanky hunter, huffed in annoyance.
Then with a newfound determination, Kade gripped tight to his dagger, which he knew was of no use. Then he looked straight up at the blue shimmering portal.
"Yeah, thanks a lot."
A moment later, the hunters strode off into the portal that engulfed them with bright blue radiance, then they dissolved in and disappeared.