When the bus returned to the town, Lucielle had already received the notification on her cell phone that a payment had been processed. Checking the amount a smile spread across her lips as Lucielle saw that she had received a sweet $1,000. This amount of money is what Slayers that raided E rank Gates would receive normally compared to the usual $200 she would earn in an F rank Gate. Though considering the Gate had mutated it wasn't too surprising that she had earned this amount.
If she went on raids every day, she would surely earn some satisfactory money at the end of the month, but due to the amount of Slayers at rank F, there were not enough Gates for a person to be able to raid every day, and even if there were, the chance of a tragedy to occur in one of these Gates would be exponentially high. So at the end of the month, the Slayers did not go on so many raids, causing rank F Slayers to have a low salary.
Gliding into the city, Lucielle could not help but be enchanted once again by the beauty of the place. After Earth was invaded by monsters, the technology of mankind skyrocketed at an astronomical speed. A notable figure from ancient history, before the arrival of the Gates, named Plato said the famous quote, "Necessity is the mother of invention", and that's exactly what happened.
When Gates began to emerge, Humanity strived through technology to fight the monsters. Weapons could hurt some of the weaker F-rank monsters, but monsters with higher ranks? Nothing humanity had could so much as scratch them, but then the first generation of Slayers were born as the Gods returned to Humanity and granted their blessings. The resources the first generation of Slayers harvested from the Gates enabled the technology of humanity to skyrocket to the stars, figuratively and literally.
Humanity had eventually expanded to the various planets in their galaxy and terraformed them to sustain human life and escape the Gates on Earth. However tragedy followed humanity as they expanded through the galaxy. Regardless of which planet humanity situated themselves on, a short while later Gates would begin to appear on the planet and release monsters to attack the human settlements if they were left unattended for too long. The Slayers eventually got the Gates on the various planets under control.
Lucielle was looking out the bus window at the town she lived in, the town of Stelaria. Compared to other cities on her planet, this was a great town. It wasn't a massive metropolis, but it had the comfort and convenience that any good medium-sized town could provide.
With a somewhat futuristic design, the houses and the few buildings in the town had rounded shapes, a unique characteristic of Planet E architecture. As Humanity had overcome the problem of overcrowding cities with the terraforming of several planets, which allowed cities to be built freely, and only those with little money would have to live in apartments.
Slowly the bus approached the entrance of the town. Lucielle had seen this scene dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of times, but she never got tired of the brightness that the town had during the day. Though the brightness of the day was equal matched by the dark under belly of the city at night.
The trip back to the city had been relatively smooth since Lucielle had slept most of the way back after her Fate Sight trip into Brian's future. Stretching in her seat as they arrived at the GSC (Government Slayer Control) HQ, which was the organization who controlled the distribution of Gates to the Slayers. They were the reason that only licensed people could raid Gates.
After the bus stopped, Lucielle got up from her seat and started to get off the bus. When she was passing by Stark, Stark looked at her and said in a serious voice, "I'll remember what you put me through in that Gate whore. So watch yourself."
Lucielle knew that Stark was threatening her but she just faintly smiled as she stopped and looked at him directly. "You'll have to work on that ice of yours boy if you wanna douse my flame so maybe keep your threats to yourself." She turned away from him and passed by the seat where Chris and Brian were seated but she paid them no mind.
'I forgot to kill him because of how great the threat of the Ratman posed. This will get troublesome later down the line I'm sure.' Stark was staring with open hostility at her back as she sashayed off the bus. He didn't know where she got her confidence from but he figured he'd get his revenge sooner or later since he was a rank D Slayer and he'll outpace Lucielle eventually.
This incident drove home to Lucielle and Mithrial how cold this lifestyle and world truly were. The world after the Gates appeared had figuratively and sometimes literally regressed to the law of the jungle where the strong would eat the weak. If a C ranked Slayer kills a E ranked Slayer inside a Gate, even if it went public, nobody would do anything about it, since a ranked C Slayer could defeat a rank E Gate very easily, but the opposite wasn't true. If the opposite had to happen, a ranked E Slayer would definitely be killed inside a rank C Gate.
Lucielle had spent 16 years as a normal person and 3 years as a F rank Slayer, the lowest type of Slayer in society, even in a town like Stelaria where the Gates that emerged were not so powerful.
After all this time, Lucielle already knew how important it was to have power. If she had power she wouldn't be forced to submit to the terrible things that had been forced upon her. As she had finally received powers, Lucielle's first goal was to grow those powers: train her
As she did not live far from the GSC headquarters, Lucielle walked home while making her own plans. First of all, she didn't need to go to rank F Gates anymore. From now on she could start going to rank E Gates without worry.
Her second goal, raiding rank E Gates would yield far more money than raiding rank F Gates, which at the moment was crucial for Lucielle.
Most Slayers were terrified when they thought of breaking into the top ranking Gates, but that was not the case for Lucielle. She had already studied everything she could find from rank F Gates and even without a power she was always able able to get out of any situation she had come across alive. Now that she had powers at her disposal, Lucielle knew that the only thing she lacked was knowledge about rank E Gates so to be better than the average Slayers who invaded them.
Lost in her thoughts, Lucielle had turned the corner that led home, however, when she looked at the gate that surrounded her home, she saw the "reason" for which she needed the rank E Gate money so badly.