Days passed like a river of time.
The gate opened and three people walked out. Rowan led the team with Lee and Cordelia closely behind him, each with a gun in hand. Lee had settled on a classic Glock and Cordelia had her wand and a matching Glock with a keychain on it.
"Is this what you two have been doing?!" Cordelia had joined them for the first time today and it was already making her want to be sick from stress. Not only were they clearing gates with just three people, which left her feeling dangerously exposed, but she also had to fight with a gun.
This was nothing like the typical mage raiding style she was used to.
"You’ll get used to it." Lee reassured his girlfriend. By now he was already well past the shock of it after clearing so many raids with Rowan, and had reached level 5 in just two days, catching up to Cordelia in a fraction of the time.
Half of that was being carried by Rowan. The other half was fighting to survive Rowan’s training regime.
"I wondered why he wanted to buy a gun. I never thought you would drag him into all this. Are you two insane? It is not safe!" Cordelia still could not accept that they had been duo-clearing gates for the past few days while she had been struggling to find a party since her mother’s ban.
"And you did not do as I told you." Rowan frowned at Cordelia. "I said you should stick with Lee and practice your basics. Instead, you kept trying to get into D-rank raids."
Cordelia flinched but turned away and tried to argue the way she always did. "I was just doing my best. I just wanted to level up first!"
"Level means nothing without skill. Look at how Lee has grown." Rowan pointed toward her boyfriend.
Cordelia looked and saw Lee weaving light directly into his own body to heal a fresh cut without breaking stride.
As expected of a medical student. His control over the skill now rivaled hunters who had started with D-rank classes, not in raw power but in precision and application.
"That is because you leveled him up five times!" Cordelia was still pushing back, and not entirely without reason. Lee’s rapid growth was starting to feel like a threat to the dynamic she had grown comfortable with.
She had been an active hunter for a full year, piggybacking on her mother’s guild parties to reach level 6. Lee hit level 5 in two days. It was not fair.
"Calm down, Cordelia. We can practice together later if you want." Lee offered after finishing healing himself. The boy no longer flinched at cuts or bruises. He simply waved them away now. Fighting that many bosses had a way of doing that to a person.
Experience built character, as the old saying went.
"Fine. But you have to teach me too." Cordelia sighed and turned to Rowan.
"I have to decline." Rowan said.
That confused not just Cordelia but Lee as well.
"What happened?" Lee asked.
"I have an appointment tomorrow. I got invited to a trial run with a Silver Claw party." Rowan pulled out the envelope and held it up. Cordelia snatched it from his hand and read it in one glance.
"That is my mother’s handwriting. She visited you?!" Cordelia’s face went white at the thought. "You don’t trust me? I swear I did not say anything!"
"I know you wouldn’t. But she must have looked into your raid records and found my name, and with her position I have no doubt she can access my full raid history." Rowan’s status as a solo hunter should have been secured information, but apparently not secured enough.
When Cassandra had left, she had apologized for the sudden visit and promised to have his record removed from the central intelligence database. It was something guild masters around the world did to prevent rival recruiters from poaching their talent.
"And it is Matthew’s party? You should decline. I am calling Mom right now." Cordelia picked up her phone and started typing, but Rowan quickly reached over and stopped her hand.
"You do not need to do that." He tried to stay as polite as possible, but she was starting to get on his nerves.
"You do not know Matthew. He is arrogant, spoiled, and useless. He is C-rank by class but he hangs around D-rank raids so he can get praised and play leader, because he cannot do anything at the C-rank level. He is the complete opposite of you." Cordelia put her phone down but remained visibly worried about Rowan’s upcoming party appointment.
Matthew was someone with a high rank class but low skill, so he preferred to stay in lower tier gates where he could shine.
Rowan was the reverse entirely.
And with experience both inside and outside of gates, Cordelia knew exactly what Matthew was capable of. He had tried to hit on her multiple times despite knowing she had a boyfriend, and inside the dungeon his reckless commands had already gotten one of her friends killed during the Dryad gate.
A complete loser without question.
And someone like that would absolutely try something when given the chance to be around Rowan.
"I think you are overreacting." Rowan started to share her concern but pushed it aside.
This was not his first time having to tolerate someone to get a job done.
People he had worked with in the past were far more vile than just annoying.
"You’ll see. And don’t say I didn’t warn you."
That was the last thing Cordelia said on the matter that he could remember.
Because after that day came the appointment, and all he could say now was:
"I should have listened to her."
Rowan stood completely still in front of the boss.
The floor was molten, rivers of lava cutting through cracked black stone in every direction.
And before him crouched a massive lizard-like creature, its body seething with flame, every scale lit from within like cooling iron pulled fresh from a forge.
And around him, there was no one left.