Depthless Hunger

Long before dawn, Kai was alone in the training yard going through his exercises. He might not have any advanced techniques, and Juray needed more time to complete his enhancement potion, but that didn't mean he couldn't work. A Physique Level of G-6 might seem like just symbols in his spiritual sight, but in the real world it made him superhuman.

Exercises that had once risked injury were now easy, so he pushed himself much harder than before. All of the new hunters in the Granfian clan were experiencing increased strength now that their Classes had awakened, but Kai had always spent more time training and could test his body's limits even further. He had no idea how much work it would take to reach G-7, but he'd fight his way there no matter how long it took.

As he worked, Kai kept his mind off the futility of it all by focusing on future plans. It had been yet another day without an answer to his letters, so he needed to discount help from the clans. He had Juray as an ally and hoped to discuss further ideas with her. Even though he could imagine various schemes that would produce a positive feedback loop, the problem was that he had so little kindling to start any fires. Just the money he had from the monster cores and a few resources provided to all Granfian hunters.

Eventually Kai reached his physical limits and recognized that he wasn't getting anything further from his training. He had cleaned himself off and sat down to recover for future training when others arrived in the yard.

"Kai, there you are. Good thing you're here early."

The familiar voice surprised him at first and Kai popped to his feet to see an old friend. Yangil Granfian was a hunter about five years older than him, a lean but muscular man wearing full steel armor. A five year gap had been insurmountable when they were younger, then Yangil had been a bit of a mentor, and recently the difference hadn't seemed so large at all. They were both technically full hunters now, and the idea made Kai examine his friend with his spiritual sight.

Name: Yangil Granfian

Total Power: 48

Knight Class: 9

Soul Level: 3

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Though Yangil wasn't as powerful as some of the veterans, he was still impressive. His Physique was right at the peak of the G rank and he had a Soul Level just as high as many warriors. But Kai realized that staring at all the symbols would make him seem awkward, so he pushed through them to smile.

"Yangil, I haven't seen you in a long time! You're back from the hunt?"

"Frontier gets worse every year." Yangil gestured for the other trainees to spread out before walking closer and lowering his voice. "Listen, Kai... it might be best if you moved your training hours earlier. We're going to have a lot of new Granfian trainees who will need the space."

Kai frowned at the implication but tried to shrug it off. "I didn't arrive now, I've just finished training."

"Oh? You always were out here early. Well, that might be easiest on everyone. We'll talk later, alright?"

"Are you seriously kicking me out?"

Yangil had been smiling since he entered, but that expression slipped away as he stepped even closer. "I can't order you, but give these kids the same chance you had. Maybe one of them won't be dealt such a bad hand by fate."

"It's that bad?" Kai struggled to keep his face neutral, which required swallowing both anger and shame. His friend... no, Yangil had never really been his friend. Maybe all he'd ever had were allies who wanted his potential future power.

"Worse than I'd heard. Not even a Novice Class... or can you not see that part? I'd tell you to work on your spiritual sight, but I guess it doesn't matter now."

Right at the end, the politeness slipped away from Yangil's eyes. Behind it, Kai could see not just pity but scorn. He'd seen that more than once: the idea that he must have done something to deserve this. Kai opened his mouth to say something, realized it would sound petulant, and walked away.

As he left the training yard, most of the new recruits didn't pay any attention to him. Just as well, considering that Yangil might try to humiliate him if he pressed the issue. Kai had always thought of the older man as jovial and fun-loving, but in retrospect his sense of humor seemed cruel. It had just never fallen on Kai because he was always at the head of the pack.

Before he could descend into petty anger, Kai forced himself to refocus. Even though it was intended as an insult, Yangil had pointed out a real shortcoming: his spiritual sense wasn't fully developed. It might not grant strength directly, but spiritual sight was a critical skill for any hunter. Developing it might be the best use of his time even if he had access to the training yard, since his physical development was plateauing.

The Granfian clan had their personal library near the center of their village within the city, and at least no one there scorned him. They might be stingy with power, but the clan had been founded on increasing access to knowledge. Now that he had passed the Hunter Trials, the warriors running the library took him directly to the books on spiritual sight without question.

Now that Kai had actually experienced it for himself, the language wasn't so confusing. None of the symbols were so concrete that they could be drawn in the books, but there were underlying truths. Kai rapidly clarified a few points that had been unclear to him.

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Chief among them, the reason that some Classes used the word "Novice" and some didn't. It seemed that most Classes began in a nascent form that fluctuated wildly before reaching their mature state. This meant they were briefly weaker, but when they reached their "Level 1", it would be more powerful than the first step of another Class.

So that was what Yangil had meant: his "Laborer" Class didn't have a nascent form and so it had no chance of evolving.

Rather than dwelling on that, Kai soaked up all the knowledge he could about developing spiritual sight. The books suggested that it would take the average hunter a month or more to fully develop their sight after first awakening it. But the books also seemed to imply that those hunters hadn't done many of the basic mental exercises that he had pushed through while still in training, so he hoped it wouldn't take that long.

For the next several days, Kai developed a new routine. He stayed out of the training yards during the day, not wanting to be shamed by Yangil again. If he went even earlier in the morning and then returned late at night, he could get just as much physical training as any of the others. That left him with the middle of the day to deepen his spiritual sight.

Just in case he'd missed something, Kai went back over all the old exercises: envisioning symbols perfectly in his mind, memorizing phrases forward and backward, gathering his will into a line to cast outward. Far from missing something, every exercise was much easier now that he had personal experience with what they discussed.

The new exercises took him a little longer to grasp, but he threw himself into them. Some, like trying to fix the floating symbols in place, didn't seem useful but must be training his general capacities. What interested him most was the idea of looking deeper into the symbols.

According to the theory, spiritual sight both identified objective facts about someone's development and tried to quantify their value. For the Classes of Goralia, these were simple numbers, but the systems of other nations could be more complex. Though even Goralia wasn't perfectly simple, given what he'd learned about Novice Classes.

Even though it wasn't immediately useful, Kai made himself memorize all the exercises for evaluating monsters. They lacked some essence - possibly the soul - that made them fundamentally different, but their strength could still be ranked from alpha to delta. The books said that it could take hunters several months to grasp any symbols at all from monsters and potentially years for their judgments to be accurate.

Sometimes he noticed other young hunters putting in work on the same exercises. He tried exchanging tips and suggestions with them, but most seemed more interested in developing their Classes. Since he was on his own, Kai resolved to put in twice as much work as everyone else and hope he could keep up.

Since he had been braced for a long struggle, Kai was shocked one day when he looked at his own soul and saw a new host of symbols:

Name: Kai Granfian

Total Power: 27

Laborer Class: 4 (4)

Physique Level: G-6 (14)

Soul Level: 3 (9)

???: ???

>

Along with each category, he now had a distinct impression of its overall "weight." His Physique Level of G-6 was no longer just useful for comparing to others, he could see that it was the core of his strength. His Soul Level of 3 was also weightier than the number suggested, even if he didn't understand it. Perhaps most importantly, these new symbols all added up perfectly to his overall strength.

Only one thing stood out to him: there were some fuzzy ambiguous symbols when he looked at himself that he never saw around others. He realized that he'd been seeing them ever since the Hunter Trials, he just hadn't focused on them. They weren't mentioned in any of the books he read and none of the exercises made them go away, so Kai tried to set them aside.

Could the mysterious symbols mean more than that? Kai felt as though they represented an important part of him, maybe even a powerful part, yet he couldn't grasp their nature. He tried not to build up any false hope and focused on what he could control. After all, if he was going to figure out the strange symbols, building up his sight was the best option anyway.

Everything else was exactly like the books had suggested. Even the fact that his Class barely offered him any strength couldn't dampen his enthusiasm at this new revelation. Kai spent an hour just staring at people, getting used to his new senses and marveling at how it all connected perfectly. No more ambiguity. Now he could really see the weight of everyone's souls in a coherent system.

Only after he got bored with that did it occur to him that he'd mastered his spiritual vision in four days.

Realizing that left him with strangely mixed feelings. It reminded him of the old days when he had been working harder and pushing further than anyone else, but those memories had a melancholy tinge now. Being able to see how far behind he was might just be depressing... and yet he found himself more motivated than anything.

He walked back to the training yard even though it was still the middle of the day, evaluating as he went. The untrained members of the Granfian clan usually had a total strength of one to three, while hunter candidates were all under ten. Veterans he respected were all much closer to a hundred, though he didn't actually see anyone in three digits.

When he reached the yard, Kai stayed at the entrance and evaluated some of the others who had completed the Hunter Trials. A few were more remarkable, but most looked like a young woman who was clearly going through early sword exercises:

Name: Unknown Granfian

Total Power: 14

Warrior Novice Class: 5 (5)

Physique Level: G-3 (8)

Soul Level: 1 (1)

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Despite her new Class, she was evaluated as much weaker than him. The insights from his spiritual sight roughly matched his normal intuitions: she wasn't untalented, but her fitness and skill were both beneath his. Until her Class began granting her overwhelming power, she'd be at a disadvantage if they fought.

Yangil looked up at him with a frown and Kai didn't back down, staring directly into his eyes with his new sight.

Name: Yangil Granfian

Total Power: 48

Knight Class: 9 (19)

Physique Level: G-9 (20)

Soul Level: 3 (9)

>

Despite all his experience, Yangil's Physique was still stuck at the G rank and his Soul was no stronger than Kai's. Yes, his developed Class granted him great power, but he wasn't impossibly far ahead. If they fought that day, Kai knew he would almost certainly lose.

But in a year? The idea made Kai's heart race. If Yangil had only made so little progress in five years as a full hunter, then even Kai's unsupported progress didn't seem so meager.

Still, there was no point in starting a fight that moment. Kai gave the older man an honest smile and turned away from the training yard. Now that he didn't need to train his spiritual sight anymore, he needed to find a new way to productively fill his hours. Perhaps Juray was done making his potion or he could find another idea in the city.

"Excuse me? Hunter Kai?" One of the officials stopped him near the entrance.

"What is it?" Normally Kai would have been searching for any sign of pity, but his mood was too good to bother with it. Besides, it looked like the official just had a message for him.

"This came for you." The man handed him a small slip of paper and then hurried on his way.

The message was scrawled in such a sloppy hand that it took Kai a moment to read it, but then the letters came together: it was Inafay Corinin. She implied that her clan hadn't shown his letter to her, but she had found it and then responded. Not only that, she suggested a time and place for them to meet. It seemed like she remembered their duel during the Hunter Trials and clearly was looking forward to fighting again.

Kai's grin broadened. He forgot all about hunters just getting by: if he wanted to advance his ambitions, he needed to compare himself to someone like Inafay.