Chapter 10 - 9 — The Green Gate
POV: Jace
"Jace Nolan."
Nine heads turned before I was out of my chair.
A few of them tried to make it look like something else, glancing over and then finding somewhere better to put their eyes, while two of them simply stared without bothering to hide it.
"That’s the one from the stadium."
"His sphere went gold. Gold, out of seventy thousand."
"His father is Christopher Nolan. Of course it went gold."
Three days ago all of them had been students, and most of them still had no idea how a person is supposed to act around another Player, so the whispering came out awkward rather than cruel.
The stadium had been easier than this.
There, I had been one shape on a platform in front of seventy thousand people who could only see me from a distance. Here there were ten of us in a room with hard chairs and bad lighting, and every look landed.
The clerk checked my face against her screen.
"Identity confirmed, and your ceremony result is on file. I need the broad class your known Ability falls under."
Every camera in the region had watched me put white-gold fire over my palm outside that exit, so there was only one answer available.
"Mage."
She typed it, and the card printed a moment later.
[PLAYER LICENCE]
Name: Jace Nolan Player Rank: SSS Class: Mage
Three lines, and nothing else.
No Ability name on it, no mana figure, no attributes, and nothing at all about the two entries sitting further down my private window.
One of the others put his hand halfway up while I was still holding the card.
"Sir, does an SSS rank mean he’s already as strong as a veteran Player?"
"No," the orientation officer said. "Player Rank records the grade of the Ability that awakened. It says nothing about experience, combat skill, physical strength, or whether the holder has any idea how to use what he has."
Nobody looked at me while he said it, which was somehow worse.
He was also right, and I knew it better than anyone in that room, because owning Aten and knowing how to fight with Aten were not remotely the same thing.
The rest of the licences went out one at a time.
The broad-shouldered girl registered as a Tank, and when her card came off the printer she did not move away from the desk.
"If I’m defensive class, does that mean I’m expected to stand in front of the monsters straight away? On the first one?"
"You’ll be told what’s expected before you enter."
"That isn’t a yes."
Bria Caldwell, her card said. She took the answer without arguing and went back to her seat still thinking about it.
The one after her walked up like he had spent his whole life in a gym, and he took his Swordsman registration grinning at it.
Idris Bennett kept that grin right up until the officer mentioned live monsters, and then his hand closed hard around the edge of his card.
Nia Okafor came next and barely said a word. She registered as a Healer and then read her own licence three separate times while she sat down, as though the printing might come off if she stopped checking it.
Then there was the Archer, who could not let a silence sit.
"So if I get eaten out there, does the Bureau keep the licence or do I get buried with it?"
"You’d be surprised how often we’re asked that," the officer said.
"Right, right. Asking for a friend. The friend is me."
Tomas Meyer sat down laughing at his own joke, and his knee did not stop bouncing once.
The last five were called through after us, and I made myself pay attention to their classes when the clerk read them out.
In a few hours they would be walking into a dungeon of their own, and I would rather know their faces before something went wrong in there.
Once every card had printed, they moved all ten of us into a briefing room.
A PSB field officer stood beside a display showing the recognized Gate colors stacked from the bottom up.
"Gates are classified on mana density, instability, expected monster strength, environmental hazard, and recorded data from dungeons that resembled them."
He worked up the list as he spoke.
Green sat at the bottom as the lowest recognized threat, with Blue above it for stronger monsters and worse dungeon conditions. Yellow was flagged high risk and unsuitable for inexperienced Players, while Orange required veterans and organized preparation.
Red sat at the top, the highest danger the Bureau recognized, and the officer said the ones that were not cleared in time stopped being dungeon problems and became regional ones.
Then he came back down to the bottom of the display.
"You are going into a Green Gate today, and I want to be careful about what that means. Green is the lowest threat we recognize, and it is not a safe Gate, because there is no such thing."
He let that sit for a second.
"Everything behind every one of these colors can kill you. We have buried rookies who walked into Green dungeons believing lowest threat and no threat were the same sentence."
Tomas raised a finger.
"Do Players always need a team? Like, always?"
"No. Experienced Players clear suitable Gates alone every week of the year, while other dungeons need a party because of their size, their conditions, the monsters inside, or the legal entry restrictions attached to them."
He looked across the ten of us.
"You are being grouped because not one of you has ever been inside a dungeon, and not because Gates come with a rule about five people."
My eyes had drifted back up to the red band on the display while he talked.
Three days ago my father walked out of his four hundredth Red Gate with all six of his people still breathing, and he did it while looking mildly inconvenienced by the rain.
I was standing in a briefing room learning what the colors meant.
"One more thing," the officer said. "Your licences are already issued, so today is not another examination."
"This is an introductory raid, and it exists so you can stand on dungeon ground, see monsters, move as a party, and find out what real pressure does to you."
They took us down to the armoury after that.
The staff opened several secured racks along the wall and told us to pick one beginner weapon each that we could physically handle, and nobody was assigned anything according to class, though they reserved the right to refuse something stupid.
Bria went through four shields before she settled. She lifted each one, turned with it, and put back anything that stopped her feet moving the way she wanted, and the one she kept was not the largest on the rack.
Idris pulled down the biggest sword in the row.
He got into a stance with it, felt his own balance go, and stood there for a moment with his ears going red before he put it back and took a lighter blade without saying anything.
I did not comment, and neither did anybody else, which I think he appreciated.
Nia picked a short weapon she could carry without it getting in the way of her hands, then held it against her side to check it twice.
Tomas took a bow, drew it far too fast, and nearly lost the string across his fingers before the armoury officer caught his wrist and moved it into the right place.
"That would have taken your fingertips off."
"Noted. Enthusiastically noted."
I walked past the staffs and the wands and stopped at a pair of reinforced gauntlets, mana-conductive, built heavy through the knuckles.
The armoury officer looked at them, then at the Mage line on my licence.
"You’re certain about those?"
"They’re built for close range, they protect the hands on impact, and they can take mana passing through them without failing," I said. "That’s useful no matter what shape my Ability ends up taking."
"A staff gives you distance. Gauntlets mean you have to be inside a monster’s reach to do anything at all, and most Mages spend their careers making sure they never are."
"I know."
I kept them anyway, because I was not going to build my first fighting style around enemies agreeing to stay far away from me.
I fastened them on and opened and closed my hands a few times.
They sat heavier than bare skin without being clumsy, so I could still punch, block, grab, and push mana through the plating.
The problem was not the gauntlets. My memories held years of drilling, and this body had not earned a single hour of it yet, so I knew exactly how a movement should feel and my arms were still eighteen years old.
The transport out to the PSB Gate compound took an hour, and the nerves came out of everybody on the way.
Tomas stopped talking somewhere around the halfway point, which was louder than anything he had said all morning.
Nia watched the emergency vehicles lining the approach road and did not look away from them.
Idris checked the strap on his sword, then checked it again, then checked it a third time.
Bria asked the only questions worth asking, about formation and about what the retreat signal was going to be.
The compound held two Green Gates in separate containment zones, and I saw them both as we came through the vehicle gate.
Their surfaces moved like dense green light pushed through water, slow and constant, with armed PSB personnel and medical teams standing outside both barriers.
The field officers split the ten of us into two groups of five, and it was not a contest between them. There were two dungeons available, so both were being used.
I ended up with Bria, Idris, Nia, and Tomas, which gave us a Tank, a Swordsman, a Healer, an Archer, and a Mage.
The other five were walked toward the second containment zone.
"Decide your marching order before you go in," the officer said.
"Front," Bria said immediately. "That’s the whole point of me."
"Beside you," Idris said. "Not behind."
Tomas took the rear without being asked, since a bow needs room, and Nia moved into the space between the two lines.
"You’re behind Bria," Idris said to me. "Your card says Mage."
I did not want an argument about who was in charge before we had crossed anything, so I took the place directly behind the front pair instead, close enough to move up or drop back once I found out what Aten could actually do.
Nobody objected, which told me they had not thought about it as hard as I had.
The officer gave us one last thing before the barrier came down.
"The color is an estimate taken from the energy outside the Gate. Once you are through, the terrain, the numbers, and the way the monsters behave will matter far more than what is printed on a report."
The Gate opened for entry.
Tomas stopped joking. Nia put both hands on her weapon. Idris swallowed hard and set his jaw, and Bria took the first step before stopping to check that the rest of us were following her.
And standing there, I worked out something that had never once occurred to me across six years of resenting my own uselessness.
I had been raised inside one of the greatest clans in the world, and I had never entered a dungeon in my life. In the timeline I remembered, Gates were rooms other people walked into while I waited outside with the vehicles.
I had three Abilities now, and only one of them was any use to me while I was still alive.
Bria went through the green surface and vanished.
Idris followed, then Nia, then Tomas, and for one moment I was alone in front of it.
I tightened both gauntlets, stepped forward, and felt the Gate pull the world out from under my feet.