Support me on patreon if you're enjoying!!!! you get to read ahead and I get to not be broke!!!! T~T
---
In a fortunate turn of events, the guild managed to find a hunter with medical expertise. As a hunter who split his time between working as a doctor and a hunter, he had just finished up a morning of practice before heading to the guild. Before he could take an assignment and leave, Kael and Orin had cornered him and had asked for his help.
With the addition of another expert, the three hunters who had surgical skills worked together to begin dissecting the monsters laying out on the net outside of the Hunter's Association. They worked fast as the sun rays peeked through the clouds, heating and rotting the bodies below.
Of the three, Angelica, with focused eyes, utilized her abilities to the maximum. Her hands operated without a single wasted movement, twice the speed of the others as she zoned in, taking in no stimuli other than the task at hand.
"It's still quite a sight to see her work," Seraph cupped her cheek with one hand. "Even after all these years."
"Yeah? It's been a while since you two have seen each other, right?" Kael murmured from beside her. He too, stood mesmerized by Angelica's quick work. "Would you say that she's improved since the last time you've seen it?"
"Well... I meant it a little differently," Seraph's gaze deepened as she stared off into the space in front of her. "She just is able to bring a level of focus I've never seen elsewhere. She maximizes her human ability. It's hard to believe, but she's just... an ordinary human in all honesty. She represents the maximum an unpowered human could reach. As we had grown up, she could be considered as the pinnacle of perfection. That was her nickname too... Any work she does, we could all aspire to reach."
"I... see," Kael stroked his chin. "She certainly fights as if she has a blanket physical enhancement ability. So that's certainly a new perspective on things."
While those on the sidelines chatted and watched the surgeries unfold, Angelica began making headway into the mystery. She dissected each monster from head-to-toe, checking if any had multiple crystals lodged inside of their bodies.
She, along with the others though, always found the crystals in one place. In the back of the skull, planted right into and replacing part of the brainstem. As she ripped out each crystal and tossed it aside, assistants—students or guild workers depending on the instance—put the crystal into a collection bag beside her.
After they went through a handful of monsters, Angelica, Orin, and the doctor-hunter decided to call it quits, as they had found no deviation from the pattern.
"We should send these off, I guess?" Angelica pushed her hair back as a bead of sweat ran down her temple. "Let's keep quiet about them in case it's related to something larger. But let's send it to one of the official laboratories for them to take a closer look at."
"It's probably causing aggression," The helper they had found pulled off his pair of gloves. With gray hair and a stubble, he seemed much more worn than Angelica. "You all mentioned you recovered these from a massive outbreak, correct? These have traces of energy just wafting off of them. I remember a series of controversial papers that dealt with a similar concept of experimental enhancers several decades ago."
"Woah," Kallix couldn't help but exclaim, "That's some impressive knowledge. I'm glad we found you."
"No, no, it's nothing special," The man reassured. "Anyone who's in a biologically-related field my age would recognize this type of item. It had enough controversy back then that no one would forget it. This though... seems like a much more refined version of anything I had heard about back then."
"Huh, well, it's a lead if nothing else," Angelica massaged her wrists before turning towards Kael and Seraph. "Sorry to involve you all in this."
"No, it's good practice, we were going to patrol anyway, so I'm glad you helped us catch something as important as this," Kael reassured as everyone began walking towards the Association's building. As they left, the guild workers stayed behind to clean up and dispose of the bodies according to guild regulations.
"... So what do we do now?" Ryker mumbled as he followed Electra into the Hunter's Association building. The other five students followed along behind him as they stayed silent behind the professionals. "Obviously this is evolving to a scale that's beyond us."
"I mean, we can still help, it's not like we're lacking in terms of power," Electra patted Ryker on the shoulder. "Think about it, the graduate division students deal with work like this all the time, and we're less than a year out from getting there."
"True, true," Ryker raised his chin back up. "I'll leave the technical know-how to the professionals for now though. Paper reading is the bane of my existence."
Just as the words left Ryker's mouth though, Angelica backed off from the group up ahead. After exchanging some pleasantries and checking in with the students, she flashed a brilliant smile. "It seems like you all will have some homework tonight. I'll send over some review papers and news articles for you all to read. It's good to familiarize yourself with what you're up against. However, because they're all from so long ago, take all the information with a grain of salt because you never know what has been mitigated, lost, or improved."
"This can't be a coincidence..." Ryker fell to his knees as everyone else began laughing. Angelica's confused look and concern though, revealed the sad truth of the situation. "I've cursed myself... I must've become too hubristic and the heavens took to punishing me."
"Al... right, good luck with that," Angelica shook her head with a faint smile. "Just make sure to take care of yourself. We'll be doing a debrief soon in the adjacent room. Feel to come listen, but it's not critical. We'll be discussing how to get in contact with various labs, scheduling a send off, and sending out a message to the other patrol teams."
"Any recommendations on things we could do other than listen? Because though it seems a little boring, it's useful information nonetheless," Ryker asked, climbing back to his feet.
Angelica tapped her chin, and without much coming to mind, she shrugged. After seeing her reaction, everyone looked at each other before agreeing to the meeting. They followed her in, dragged chairs from the side, and began listening in while taking a couple notes here and there. Electra and Ryker in particular, took detailed notes for themselves, storing their notes away into important folders on their phone.
"Surprisingly useful," Ryker murmured to Electra.
"For sure," Electra looked to their side, resisting the urge to join Albion, Titus, Conrad, and Celeste in just listening. "Nyssa is still fast asleep though, impressive how she does it."
"Impressive indeed, a starfish-position as a cat? She must be tired," Ryker nodded without looking up from his notes. "Also what did they say again about contacting the laboratory again?"
"Ah, they mentioned the protocol of sending in a formal request. Then, if it's urgent, to reach out to the managing director with your situation..."