On Monday night of my second week, my phone rang at 1 a.m.

  “An E gate needs cullers by 2 a.m. Are you available?”

  “Yes,” I managed.

  “Thank you for your service. I am texting you the address now.”

  I opened the message and groaned aloud when I saw that the gate was in Clairton. That was a thirty-minute drive, and from looking at the location on a map, I was pretty certain the gate was in an old steel mill on the Monongahela River.

  Coal mining and steel production used to be big business in this corner of the state, but now it was all ghost towns. The boom of American production during the war moved overseas when Africa as a continent came into its own. Ethiopia and Buganda could produce more steel for cheaper, so one by one the mills and plants that made Pittsburgh possible closed down.

  Eventually, nearly all of American manufacturing followed the steel industry and moved to Africa. Blue-collar Americans cost too much money, and safety regulations were too restrictive. After a couple of decades, the height of American industrialism was a distant memory.

  A few folks tried to hang on in the smaller steel and coal towns, but stray monsters were still a reality even if you didn’t live in the wilds. Plenty got loose and bred in the early years, but towns that couldn’t afford police and fire departments couldn’t afford to have experienced crawlers on standby. After a few tragedies, most everyone moved closer to the city.

  Clairton was one of those ghost towns.

  I grabbed my CDM training gear, thankful that one of the few perks of the internship included passable equipment, and walked two blocks to my car.

  Traveling these old steel town roads creeped me out. Nothing was torn down. It was just abandoned. There were still swingsets in yards and rocking chairs on porches, like the people living there had only recently stepped away and intended to return soon.

  Streetlights weren’t necessary if there were no people, so nothing existed until my headlights shone on it, glinting off broken glass and casting long shadows. More than a few horror films were set in towns like this, and I could see why. Being in the ruins of civilization was a special kind of isolation, even if those ruins were relatively close to home.

  When I pulled up, I was happy to see a gray-haired CDM culler leaning against his CDM SUV and scrolling on his phone. I was worried I would have to fumble my way through an abandoned coke plant with only my headlamp to find the gate. Coke was an important material in steel production, if you didn’t know.

  “Name?” he gruffed as I got out of my car. Based on the battle-axe, I presumed he was a martial class.

  “Dorion Carmino.”

  “Says here this is your first cull.”

  “That’s correct, sir.”

  “Oh, you have the archer class. That makes you a lot easier to babysit.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  “We’re waiting on three more. Go ahead and get geared up. Don’t leave anything valuable in your car, by the way. Break-ins out here are pretty common.”

  My gear was simple enough to put on over my clothes: a leather tunic, a quiver, a bow, a shortsword, shin pads, and a helmet. Though it was made of metal, the helmet looked more motocross than medieval.

  The system had rules for what could damage monsters and what could withstand damage from monsters. Kevlar could stop a bullet, but a goblin arrow would sail right through it. Similarly, an arrow fired from a recurve bow would do more damage than a bullet fired from a rifle if the target was a monster.

  Craftsmen who could work with the mana crystals from dungeons pushed to incorporate more modern ideas into crawling gear, but there was always the risk the system wouldn’t recognize an item as compatible, so it would remain mundane even if the materials were expensive.

  Two cars pulled up in close succession. One was another veteran CDM culler. She had a spear and a kite shield. She wasn’t as old as the one who greeted me, but I guessed her to be in her 40s. This definitely was not her first cull.

  Megan popped out of the second car with a cup of coffee in her hand. Her CDM kit was identical to mine except she had a longsword and a shield instead of a bow and quiver. She smiled at me.

  Which was weird, because it looked like her eyes were still closed. The time of night sucked for a cull, but she seemed to take it exceptionally hard.

  The last person to arrive was an intern with the investigation department. His gear matched Megan’s, but I learned later he wasn’t a fighter or a brawler. He was a rogue.

  “We don’t have time to learn names, and you don’t need to be trying to remember if it’s Daniel or David when you have calls to make. These cull teams are always thrown together, so get used to doing it this way. I’m the captain. I’m steering the ship.”

  He pointed to the woman with the spear.

  “She’s a ‘guard.’ Short for lifeguard. Being nervous for this is fine, but mind where you’re swinging and shooting. Guard and I have been stabbed a few times by interns and would prefer to not experience it again.

  “The two biggest rules are stay in formation and do whatever the fuck we say. E-ranked gates can still kill you, but if you listen when we speak, this one won’t. Any questions before we head in?”

  The rogue raised his hand. “How does the loot split work?”

  The captain clucked his tongue. “Someone didn’t pay attention in orientation. Sorry, bud, I’m not a Powerpoint presentation. Any real questions?”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  No one spoke or raised a hand.

  “Alright. I’ve run a few gates in this place before. Mind your step, or you’ll get your money’s worth out of your tetanus shots.”

  The captain led the way, and the guard brought up the rear.

  “The CDM gets the mana crystals,” Megan whispered to the rogue. “We get XP.”

  The rogue released a disappointed huff but didn’t say anything otherwise.

  The Clairton steel mill was a small town in and of itself, and a few decades of decay and graffiti-loving interlopers made it a maze of multicolored rubble. I tried to imagine what this place would have looked like in its heyday. Cranes loading steel beams onto trains. Furnaces roaring. A coal barge passing by on the river on its way to the city.

  All I saw now was dirt, rust, and spray paint.

  We stopped outside of what the captain said used to be a blast furnace. The dungeon gate was next to it. Wider but shorter than a standard doorframe, this particular gate was a natural stone arch whose opening was covered by several pieces of mismatched lumber nailed together. That was this gate’s version of a door.

  When you learn about the dungeon gates in history class and how much trouble they caused when they first appeared, you can’t help but think, “How could a dungeon gate ever go unnoticed?”

  If it weren’t for the CDM tech that could detect dungeon gate signatures by satellite, no one would have ever known this gate was here. We were well away from the road, so the few people who might pass by would never have an eyeline to the gate. If they did, they weren’t likely to notice a gray stone arch amongst the ruins already here. Graffiti artists clearly trafficked this place, but they were even less likely to report a gate. The CDM weren’t police, but more than a few people saw them as one and the same.

  So this door would have sat here long enough for a dungeon surge. Easily.

  Some dungeon gates were more noticeable, particularly the upper-ranked ones. An S-ranked gate might be something like a drawbridge or a giant cave mouth. Most gates, however, weren’t larger than a set of double doors, and they all presented in the same way: a freestanding entrance structure and only the entrance. A simple dungeon gate looked like something you might see in a home improvement showroom.

  Except it was a portal to a dungeon full of monsters instead of the aisle with all the toilets.

  The captain tossed the wooden cover aside, crouched, and shuffled through. It looked like he disappeared into a pool of black paint.

  A cavern lit by torches was on the other side, and though the ceiling was low in this section, I could stand fully upright.

  This was my first time in a dungeon, and it felt surprisingly ordinary. Aside from the conveniently placed torches hanging from the walls, this seemed like a normal Earth cave, not a different dimension.

  The captain asked Megan and the guard to take the frontline. The rogue and I were directly behind them, and then the captain brought up the rear. I took that as laziness at first, but he did a surprising amount of coaching for how bored he looked. Levels were great, but the system didn’t teach or instill party tactics. That was up to us to learn, so I was happy to have an experienced culler telling me what to do.

  The goblins we fought were clustered in groups as if waiting for us to arrive, and the guard never let us noobs get overwhelmed. These were level 1 enemies, and she brushed them off like picnic ants.

  My first goblin headshot was a bit of a thrill, but by the tenth kill, the effort felt more like a gym exercise. Draw, aim, loose. Draw, aim, loose. Over and over and over.

  Nothing remarkable happened. There were no exciting or interesting moments.

  I thought the boss might be, but the guard told us to wait outside. The CDM didn’t want a party with levels as low as ours to go up against a goblin berserker. So she killed it, and then we hiked out, cutting out the mana crystals of our kills along the way for the CDM to keep.

  No, the rest of us didn’t get XP for the boss. The system split XP equally between party members, but it omitted anyone who didn’t actually contribute. If a healer stood ready to help their party but never actually did anything, they would still get an equal share of XP. The security they provided was a contribution by the system’s standards.

  If someone came along with the express purpose of not participating in battles, they didn’t get XP. That meant no “carrying” someone through easy gains simply by having them present. Crawlers had spent years trying to game and trick the system, but as far as I know, no one has ever found a workaround to get easier XP.

  The sun had begun to rise by the time we returned to our cars. The captain and the guard were the first in their vehicles and the first to leave.

  Megan went to her trunk and pulled out several towels.

  “Going to the beach?” I asked.

  “No, I don’t want goblin guts in my upholstery.”

  Shit. I hadn’t thought about that.

  “See you in a couple hours,” she said as she sat.

  I waved when she pulled away. The rogue followed her, and I stripped down to my skivvies to try and spare my car seats. It already had the permanent funk of a gym bag. I preferred not to add rotting goblin flesh to that scent bouquet if I could help it.

  I checked my progress while I waited for my GPS to load:

  Dorion Carmino

  Class: Archer

  Level: 1

  XP Progress: 37/100

  Str: 4

  Dex: 5

  Con: 4

  Int: 3

  Cha: 3

  Abilities: (none)

  Traits: Ranged Accuracy

  Spells: (none)

  That XP count had read 1/100 for much of my life. Seeing that change didn’t seem real at first.

  With the XP split, every goblin was worth 1 XP. I was grateful for the training wheels the CDM provided, but that seemed abyssmally low for the effort I put in. Once I gained a few levels, I’d be able to farm more challenging E-ranked gates as well as D-ranked gates to earn better XP.

  But this was a start.

  ***

  I had enough time to shower before my workday but not enough time to sleep. This was part of the deal, and I knew to expect days like this. Still. It sucked.

  A few minutes after I sat at my desk, Leminson set a tall cup of tea in front of me and another on Megan’s desk. She wasn’t in yet.

  “Thank you for this,” I said.

  “Don’t expect a delivery after every run, okay?”

  I laughed. “I won’t.”

  And that’s where morning small talk ended and the work began.

  Saito saluted me when he arrived, and so did John Bruce and Tristan Lofold, my other cubemates. They were nice enough but weren’t ones for socialization. Leminson and Saito invited them every time they invited Megan and me somewhere, but they always declined. I liked that they continued to extend the offer just to show the others they were welcome.

  Megan was twenty minutes late or so, but the CDM was lenient in these circumstances. They understood what a cull entailed, after all.

  She microwaved her tea–which horrified Saito as a tea snob–and started banging away at her keyboard like everyone else.

  A couple of hours later, a man with a gray ponytail and carrying a clipboard arrived at our cubicle. He wore a sport coat, a t-shirt, fashionable straight-leg jeans, and spotless sneakers.

  “I need three grunts,” Enforcer Grensmith said. “Hope none of you have had lunch yet.”