“The lanky guy with the buzz cut is Daniel Rusznyak,” Luke said, pointing towards the ex-SEAL that Agent Brown had asked him to hire.

  The agent had tried to make it an order, but Luke had realized it wasn’t one and gotten some concessions for it. So far, Daniel seemed competent, but time would tell.

  “The woman to his left is Gina Harthane,” Luke continued.

  She was a short woman with long brown hair, one of Luke’s friends from DnD. Her stature made people underestimate her, but she had beaten guys twice her size during the interview/tryouts. She knew Vanessa from LARPing and was hoping to get a magic class just like her.

  “The twins are Dom and Ivan Kurmaic.”

  The brothers were fraternal twins from Croatia, one with long blond hair and the other with short brown hair. They were by far the most heavily muscled of the bunch. Luke hadn’t known them before the interviews, but their competence was undeniable. They were in their late thirties and had a distinguished career as bodyguards for celebrities as they traveled the world. Luke had high hopes that their training would help them spot monster ambushes before they happened.

  “Jeff Brink is the bald one,” Luke continued, pointing at the tall Swedish guy in the back.

  He was one of the recommendations Luke had gotten from his Guard contacts, someone who had just left the service and was looking for a new career.

  “Hey!” Jeff interjected, “I’m tall too. You don’t have to point out how follically challenged I am.”

  Luke laughed and continued, “Max Durand is the handsome devil leaning on your desk.”

  The Asian guy was obsessed with his hair, always making sure it looked perfect. Luke was also 80% sure Max was gay and interested in the guard. Luke was happy to play wingman if there was actually something there.

  “I’m handsome too!” Jeff said and put his hands on his hips.

  “Sure you are,” Gina said and patted his elbow condescendingly.

  Luke shook his head. “And finally, we have Angela James.”

  He had saved Angela for last because he didn’t feel comfortable saying she was the tall black woman. He didn’t want her to get the impression he was reducing her to the color of her skin. She was a grim warrior and he was a little scared of her. There was something about her expressionless stare that gave him the creeps. Of all the people here, she was the one he least wanted to encounter in a dark alley.

  The guard nodded with each name and picked up a stack of day passes. “Alright, sounds good. Everyone hand over your driver’s licence and we’ll be good to go. Also, Mr. Moore. We can’t do day passes all the time, if you are going to have your monster hunters in often, they’ll need regular passes.”

  Luke nodded, “We asked for more passes last week, hopefully they’ll approve them soon.”

  The guard nodded and processed everyone through security. The group of eleven monster hunters walked through the snaking corridors until they arrived at the portal. Luke had chosen a time when there wasn’t a lot of traffic in and out of the magic gateway, so his new employees would have time to adjust to the idea they were going to walk to another world.

  It turned out that he needn’t have bothered. Sandwich and Bumblebee walked through when the light above the portal was green, and everyone followed. Angela showed her pass to the portal guard and walked through without pausing. The twins and Max followed closely behind her. Jeff and Gina hesitated a bit, but they still walked through together before Luke had a chance to tell them to take their time.

  Luke turned to Vanessa and shrugged. “I guess we picked brave monster hunters.”

  “Maybe you know what you are doing after all,” she replied.

  Luke smiled and walked through the portal. The corridor between worlds was as beautiful as always. His high Perception let him see billions of stars around them. Then they were on Kalibutan, following the other humans across the stone plateau.

  As agreed, Sandwich and Bumblebee paused at the top of the stairs leading down. They all glanced around the seven new hires. This was where everyone had gotten the notice that the system was observing them.

  Luke said, “Remember the thing we talked about on Earth and totally shouldn’t discuss here? Raise your hand if it applies to you.”

  At first, no one moved. Then the twins, Dom and Ivan slowly raised their hands. When they saw their brother had been chosen too they laughed and relaxed. Angela raised her hand for a moment and put it down as soon as Luke saw her.

  “Alright, good to know. We’ll be splitting up groups accordingly. To the rest of you, that wasn’t your last chance. Sandwich here didn’t get to raise his hand until he had been fighting monsters for years. Be patient, statistically, your time will come.”

  Jeff gave him finger guns and said, “You got it, boss. I’ll be patient. So patient, you won’t even believe how patient I’m being. You might have to remind the rest of these rabble, but not me.”

  “Gina, smack him,” Luke said.

  Gina happily complied, giving him a strong smack upside his head. He protested, but she just laughed.

  Luke smiled slightly and headed down the stairs. He gave them an overview of the trade through the portal, what everyone was doing and what products the two worlds exchanged.

  “By far the most valuable product to go through the portal is healing potions. Your job is going to impact that trade. One of the key ingredients of a healing potion is a red slime. They are fairly weak and our job is to protect them from the other monsters. We do the same with other valuable monsters. You could say our job is to be a monster rancher and we kill pests trying to eat our livestock.”

  He pointed to the shrines they were passing. “These are the shrines to the gods of Kalibutan. They are real deities with real powers, but they ask for too much in exchange. It's the official company policy to never pray to one of their gods.”

  “I heard they could give you magic. Why don’t you want us to have magic?” Jeff asked.

  “I had the same question,” Angela intoned.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Luke had to stop himself from shivering. He was in a twelve foot tall mech and she was only six feet tall. Still, Angela spoke like she was the one in charge.

  Sandwich stepped forward to answer. “They don’t give you magic, they give you the chance to ask for magic. They only dispense magic when they feel like it. But every time you pray they take your life force and your emotions. You have those emotions for a reason. The one and only time I prayed, I lost three of my friends. Trust me, the policy has a reason.”

  The walk to Bona Urbo was a quiet one. Well, Luke was walking, the new hires didn’t have mechs yet, so they were jogging to keep up. He had sent his magic drone ahead and used it to keep watch of the surrounding forests to make sure they were extra safe.

  When they were halfway to the estate village, Luke stopped them and pointed. “Looks like today’s a good day for us. Stone Beetles in the trees ahead.” He knocked his pauldron. “They make for great armor. They are pretty dangerous though, so everyone get behind a mech while I take them out.”

  Luke waited for everyone to bunch up behind Vanessa and the others then he activated Frictionless Slide.

  The skill blasted him sixty feet across the forest floor in an instant. He held up both hands and fired as soon as he arrived. He knew the sawblade and fire bolt spells wouldn’t work against their hard exoskeleton so he only used ice and lightning.

  Two of the four monsters were caught before they even realized he was there. The other two spun around and aimed at him. Luke fired again, two more monsters were hit. The one that was hit by lightning twitched its jumping legs and flopped to the ground. The last monster was hit by an ice bolt, but the magic was a second too slow to stop it. The Stone Beetle rocketed across the clearing, aiming directly for Luke.

  Half by instinct, Luke activated Frictionless Slide again, zooming sideways ten feet. He was just in time to see the monster fly by his face. It continued on another twenty feet before it slammed into one of the giant trees of the forest. The tree swung its grasping limbs around in agitation.

  The Stone Beetle didn’t get back up, the ice magic having done its job. Luke fired two more ice bolts at the monsters that had been hit by lightning so they didn’t get back up when the shocks stopped.

  Luke spun in place, looking for other targets, but there were none. “All clear.”

  Vanessa and the others repeated, “All clear,” as well.

  Although the fight had been short and easy, Luke’s class core rumbled inside him. He had leveled up War Machine. He must have been close to a level up already and those four monsters were just enough to tip him over the edge. He smiled to himself and pulled up his stat screen.

  Specialist White had recommended he focus on Acuity for now, so Luke went ahead and put both points into there. Next level up he would do Dexterity and Perception.

  As soon as the choice was complete, Luke felt like the world slowed down for a moment. He had passed the Acuity threshold and the stat was way more effective now. It was only for two seconds of his subjective time, but he felt like he had bullet time for a moment there. Thinking faster was a rush, but left him with a slight headache after.

  Luke turned his attention to the others and waved them over. “Come watch this, you won’t get a better chance to see a mostly bloodless core extraction.”

  The ten of them walked over, most of them excited to see the frozen monsters. Despite Jeff’s bravado, he stuck to the back of the pack and kept glancing around.

  “So, we are currently in slime territory, and normally we won’t harvest monster cores here. We leave them so the slimes can eat them and bud more slimes. But I figured you would like to see what the extraction process is like.” He grabbed a beetle and pulled it over to them. “The wing casings are magically stronger than most anything you’ll see out there, but if you flip them over, you can easily dig into their guts.”

  He matched word to action and punched his hand into the monster’s frozen guts. It shattered and revealed the small tier one monster core he knew was there. “That’s what we are here for. Monster cores. We sell them back on Earth to people that want to make something magical.”

  “How did you know where the core was?” Gina said and leaned over the corpse.

  “My visor has some inscriptions that let me see concentrations of mana. The monster core is sometimes behind the brain stem, or sometimes below the stomach. You’ll see a stronger glow closer to the core. Although, when it isn’t frozen solid, you might have to root around a little bit.”

  He stood up and clapped his hands. “Let’s get going again. I want to get everyone some practice time with power armor. We don’t have enough sets for everyone, so we’ll be rotating through them.”

  The eleven humans continued their journey through the forest. When the estate village appeared in the distance, several of the new hires gasped in surprise at the beautiful copper roofs and the organic design with glass and steel.

  When they arrived at Kruro’s place, Jinx hopped off Vanessa’s shoulder and phased through the door. Which elicited more gasps of surprise. Luke chuckled and rolled the door to the side.

  “Good, you are here. Luke, I have three messages for you, you are a popular man,” Kruro said. She eyed the new hires and subtlety flexed her tail, the coils sliding across each other.

  “I guess so, who wanted to contact me?”

  “The Seer sent an updated forecast to everyone, the Titan he is watching will arrive early in the morning in three days. Cormac wants you to visit his office to discuss plans for diverting the Titan. The inner runewright replied to your letter saying she expects you at her office today at the first hour of the crow.”

  “Thanks for the messages. I hope you don’t mind being the main contact between me and Lord Edobar’s people.”

  “We all work for his glory,” Kruro said with a dismissive wave.

  “Thanks all the same. I’ll get these suits of armor out of your workshop. I’m training the new hires today. Everyone say hello to Kruro and give her a bow.”

  The seven of them did as they were told and Kruro laughed quietly. “I’m an outer runwright, not inner. You shouldn’t have them bowing to me.”

  “You deserve the respect, trust me.” Luke turned to the others. “Time to get these mechs outside. Dom, Ivan, Max, and Daniel. You four suit up. We’ll help you if you need it. Be careful! It takes time to get used to the magic augmenting your movements. For now everyone has to move very slowly.”

  They walked over to the suits and the experienced people helped them into the power armor. Max didn’t want to mess up his hair, but Luke made him wear the helmet anyway.

  Daniel, the ex-SEAL, was the first to get a hang of it and could walk unaided. The other three slowly joined him in basic competence. Luke led them back out of the city to the fields just outside the farms. They wouldn't be in danger from nearby monsters because the village was still in sight and they kept the nearby land cleared.

  “Sandwich, Vanessa. You two are in charge of training and drills. Keep them moving like we discussed, switching out every so often. I’m going to go learn a new rune. Bumblebee, you are in charge of keeping watch for monsters,” Luke said and headed back to the estate village.

  Today’s chapter title comes from Catch Me If You Can (2003)

  Two minor announcements. I made small edits to chapters 54 and 55. Luke doesn't trust authority, so he wouldn't have told Specialist White all the details of his class. The specialist's information gathering class found out most details anyway.

  Also, starting next week, I am moving to a three days a week posting schedule. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I was running out of backlog and three days a week is more sustainable. 9 to 5 Monster Hunter needs at least three books and I don't want to burn out.