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shamera · 5 months

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NaNo day 16

so previously i said fdb video game isekai since i was having a block with the time loop story but still need words

i lied. fbd modern hunter awakening au instead. in honour of solo levelling coming out next month. i have. an idea. dunno how far it will go, but i got pretty excited to write this today, so that's a win for me.

Man'er cameo, i'm so sorry to her. tw for blood and injuries, i guess. nothing fatal yet.

Fang Duobing still had his head in his hands when the loud thwack of files dropped right next to him, vibrating the office table.

“No,” he whined, already knowing exactly who it was that would do such a thing to him when he very obviously didn’t want to be bothered. If the ‘do not disturb’ sign he’d written and taped to the door hadn’t been the largest indication, him being the president’s son with the corner office that he didn’t even want would have been a deterrent for people to talk to him in the first place.

“I heard you tried joining Baichuan Court again,” his aunt’s annoying voice cut in. She sounded smug, and also right next to him, which was where she leaned when she was mocking him. “Don’t you already know you’re not going to make it in?”

“You shut up,” Fang Duobing mumbled out, slouching so that his arms started sliding down on the table as well, until his elbows were pushing the files away and he was nearly face down to scream incoherently into the wood grain. His words were the epitome of rudeness, but his aunt was only a few years older than him anyway, which meant she was the one who literally taught him every rude thing he knew. “They’ll have to accept me one day. I have all the qualifications; this is discrimination.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Tianji Hall, kiddo. What’s not to love here? You’ve got a good job, it pays well, it’s safe—”

It was nepotism, and the entire building knew it. Worse, Fang Duobing didn’t even want to be there in the first place, had tried running away several times the moment he hit legal age to do so, yet had always been dragged back home on the basis that he couldn’t make it out in the real world. Because everyone else took one look at his name, his face, his ID, and immediately backtracked.

Anyone else might look at the office provided to him and his bespoke suits and claim otherwise, but his family was ruining his life. He wasn’t made to work in an office! Fang Duobing trained half his life to fight, to defend, to help people and clear dungeons!

He just wanted to be a proper Hunter, and didn’t that make sense? Both his mom and aunt were Awakened as well, yet they worked in logistics and defence and wanted to keep him behind-the-scenes as well out of the dungeons where Hunters died on the daily.

It had been ten years since the laws that drastically changed how Hunters were allowed into dungeons, and Fang Duobing was still seething about them. Ten years ago, the two largest Hunter sects, Sigu Sect and Jinyuan Alliance, were decimated in a dungeon on the eastern sea, the two having turned against each other after the death of the dungeon boss and then caught in the collapse of the dungeon in one of the biggest disasters of the past decade. An entire neighbourhood had to be evacuated, and the fires burned for over a week before it could be put out.

It was, his mother would insist, one of the reasons why Tianji Hall was needed, because Hunters could not run rampant as they had anymore since the dungeons first began appearing in the world.

Since then, the government had also placed laws preventing individual or teams of Hunters from entering dungeons alone ‘for their own safety’, and enforced rules on how only sects could sanction dungeon raids. Which meant unless Fang Duobing registered with one of the remaining Hunter sects, no matter how hard he trained, he would be banned from dungeons.

His aunt reached in to yank at his ear, causing Fang Duobing to sit up again, yelling as she continued to pull even as his hands reached up to shove her away.

“Fang Xiaobao,” she said sternly, voice pitched with youth and her tendency to forgive him just about anything despite the amount of times she had been called into drag him home, “I understand you’re upset, but you’ll have to live with it! Why are you looking down on our Tianji Hall? Our work is just as important as the other sects!”

“We don’t raid!” Fang Duobing complained, still trying to pry her fingers from his ear. “We don’t even go into dungeons! Why even guard the gates? Even civilian children know better than to get near one, so at best we’re a logistics sect that deals with what people bring out from the dungeons— ow, ow! Okay, just let go already! Stop twisting!”

Thankfully, she did let go, although she sniffed disdainfully as he glared, cradling his red ear.

“It’s insulting for the heir of Tianji Hall to think we’re not doing anything.” She told him, leaning forward in a threat gesture until Fang Duobing leaned back from his aunt, appropriately scared. “Do you think Hunters can work without us? Without our gear and weapons, without our regulations and support teams? Their casualty rate would be much higher!”

“Then you can be heir,” he murmured, and winced when she moved to grab at him again, “Sorry, sorry! But I mean it!”

“Stop trying to go after the sects,” she advised him, standing straight from where she had been leaning against his desk, brushing off her skirt and straightening her blazer before pulling the wispy strands of her bangs around her face artistically. “I’m going to be busy this afternoon— where’s your lunch?”

“Stop stealing my lunch,” he complained, and then stared suspiciously. “You’re dressed up today. Are you wearing lipstick?”

“Physician Li is stopping by to help us deliver the latest reports to— oh, stop making the face. Just because he reported you twice—”

“Tattled,” Fang Duobing insisted, pushing himself from his chair in indignation. Twice, Fang Duobing tried to run away from his family, and twice he met Li Lianhua who eventually told his aunt where he was. Twice. Even a dog would learn better, and he was definitely better than a dog. “You’re not taking my lunch to give to him!”

“And why not? I’m not a fool, Xiaobao! He would have gotten it anyway—”

Fang Duobing flushed, and began shoving his aunt out of his office. “He’s not— I wouldn’t— go wash your face, your makeup makes you look old!”

Amidst her shrieking over how she was barely any older than him, he finally managed to close the door in her face and breathe a sigh of relief for the soundproofing installed in his office.

What a terrible morning. To think he personally made another trip down to the Baichuan Court tryouts with a (somewhat questionable) fake identity and a mask, and was almost accepted until they realised who he really was— it went to show that he had all the qualifications! He had the skills! They were banning him just because they were scared of his mother!

His only reprieve today might be Li Lianhua’s timely arrival, so that Fang Duobing could bully the man into eating a healthy lunch because everyone knew that Physician Li was chronically ill but also a terrible cook. Completely trash at cooking, with a tendency to not only skip meals but supplement them with candy like a child.

(Well, Fang Duobing knew that, having trailed Li Lianhua for weeks at a time the two times he attempted to hide from his family, and having to choke down the ‘creative’ recipes the man would come up with.)

Yes, it was just revenge, after all!

He was going to write another letter of complaint to Baichuan Court and then heat up his lunch, and Fang Duobing was going to make sure that the rest of his day would go better than his morning.

—

The shaking started subtly, like a truck driving too close to the building if it weren’t for the fact they were more than ten floors above ground level. Fang Duobing hadn’t even felt it at first, too busy on his phone until his assistant Li’er knocked on his door and stuck her head in, frowning when he scrambled to put his phone away and look like he was definitely busying himself doing something else.

“Sir?” She asked tentatively, arms clutched around several case folders. “Should we sound an earthquake warning, sir?”

It was only then he noticed that the glass of water on his desk had the slightest of ripples within. Earthquake? It was unusual for this region to get earthquakes, and the rumbling was likely from construction nearby, but there hadn’t been any construction scheduled nearby.

Fang Duobing thought for a moment and then figured, why not? It would be a good excuse to take the rest of the day off and also give the rest of the people some extra time to rest— “Yes, that’s a good idea, better safe than sorry—”

As if on queue, the slight rumbling increased dramatically that moment, starting to shake books from his shelves, and Fang Duobing gripped at his desk in shock before staring up at Li’er who screamed and dropped all her files. The scent of ions in the air like a sudden thunderstorm hit him, and despite never having been in close proximity to a dungeon, he knew the rulebook.

“Incoming gate!” He yelled out, hearing people screaming outside his office as the rumbling grew to be violent shaking, and then it felt as if the hold of gravity lessened on them, and items went tumbling every which direction in a surge of purple light, the feeling like static shock on the skin.

For several seconds, the world faded away and there was nothing at all, his vision brightening and then darkening, the air cold and then still and then like it didn’t exist at all, frozen in time. There was a terrifying moment where he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t feel, but that passed quickly until he registered the ringing in his ears to be the sounds of people screaming and crying around him.

And then— cold.

Fang Duobing shivered as his palms hit the stone floor, grit and bits of sharp sand pressed against his skin as he blinked himself to awareness again. The ground was uneven, and he could still hear people around him, although the screaming stopped. Most were groaning in pain, some whimpering from fear, and the thunderstorm smell in the air was slowly fading into something like rainwater and algae. He fumbled a moment in the pitch black, and then reached into his pocket for the pocket he just shoved in, pressing a button to light up the screen.

The bright picture of a happy yellow furred dog sitting on a kitchen chair with both front paws held up by someone out of frame stared up at him, and Fang Duobing fumbled to thumb toward the flashlight app so he could better see his surroundings.

The light revealed a large cavern, too big to actually see with his phone light, and several other figures slumped across the cave floor a ways from him, some shapes obscured by various furniture that had been transported along with them.

Two others were also now fumbling for their phone light, and he could identify Wangfu and Li’er in the chaos.

“Is everyone okay?” He called out, and got some groans of confirmation in return. Fang Duobing pushed himself up, getting his feet beneath him and relieved that he hadn’t been injured in the transfer.

“Sir, I think… Man’er fell badly…”

Amongst the small handful of people who ended up where they were, there was a college age girl grimacing on the ground, a hand clenched tightly around her bleeding calf. Fang Duobing hurried over with his phone to see clearer, and saw her leg twisted in an angle that meant bad news.

There was a young man holding her shoulders to keep her up, although her complexion was pale even in the darkness.

Within the confines of the dungeon, blood was very bad news. Not to mention most of the office workers in Tianji Hall were not Hunters, and therefore would be unable to fight back against whatever came at them.

The young woman’s pale face only seemed to drain further at his severe expression, so Fang Duobing attempted to smile reassuringly. “We’ll have to bind that up somehow. Does anyone have…?”

Li’er came to his side, ripping off the white frills off the end of her dress with some difficulty, her eyes wide with both fear but also trust as she handed him the fabric.

The others were also all looking at him expectantly, and Fang Duobing felt a rush of fear, a different kind than finding himself in the dungeon, as he took the fabric. He wasn’t— this wasn’t… but he had lived with Li Lianhua for weeks at a time, and read through the medicinal books when he got bored, having turned off his phone so he couldn’t be tracked. While the books were more on herbal knowledge and energy pathways for traditional chinese medicine, there were also basics for handling and treating sounds.

As he came closer, Man’er whimpered and clutched harder at her leg, “Please don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” he told her, hoping the panic wouldn’t show in his voice. Then to the man standing behind her, he said, “Make sure she has something to bite on. We don’t know what’s here, and she might attract something by screaming.”

With the blood spilled, and what noise they already made, they would have to move, and move fast. There was a reason Hunters were only allowed into dungeons in experienced teams, and that was something the handful of them definitely were not.

The man nodded, his movements frenetic, and pulled a pen from his shirt pocket even as the young woman whimpered and bit back a sob, shoulders shaking at the pain.

There was a chance that Fang Duobing could make everything worse, but it was a chance he would have to take as there was no way Man’er could be moved otherwise. With her leg that twisted, every movement would be agony and they wouldn’t be able to bind her wound up. A wrong move, however, meant that he might nick an artery attempting to set her broken bone, and that would lead to even worse bleeding.

“Don’t worry,” he tried to soothe her as she bit down on the pen, tears flowing silently down her face even as she shook. He reached for her leg and she jerked away, immediately regretting the slight movement as her breath hitched. When he touched her leg above the wound, her skin was burning under his fingers. He grimaced and looked up at Li’er’s expectant eyes and said, “I need splints. Chair legs, wood— anything that can hold her leg straight.”

She and Wangfu immediately acknowledged his words and went around to search through the furniture that came along with them, taking their lights with them. Fang Duobing looked back at Man’er and attempted the reassuring smile again. “Don’t worry, don’t worry. This will feel like it sucks for a little while, but you’ll be okay once we get out of here.”

She just closed her eyes, leaning back into the man holding her up.

“Here!” Wangfu came back with a contemporary table lamp, the base and bulb taken off so that it was mostly just two long pieces of metal folded in the middle to allow for adjustments.

Fang Duobing accepted the pieces, thinking that it really was exactly the kind of thing he needed, and then thought, am I really going to do this?

There was so much blood, and he knew that it was best to not disturb the wound and leave it to professionals, but they were in a dungeon and no one expected a new gate to appear right in their office building, and no one was prepared and that meant that any rescue teams would need time to organise and get to them. Even minutes could mean life or death in a dungeon if they were unlucky.

“It’s okay,” he said again, feeling like he was reassuring himself. “It’s going to be okay.”

His hands were trembling as he took apart the metal pieces of the lamp to make two sections, and then set it down on the stone next to the girl’s broken leg, staring incomprehensibly.

Luckily, before he could gather up the courage to act, there was a voice behind him, “Move aside.”

He turned his head into the darkness, relief running through his veins as he recognised his aunt and Li Lianhua jogging up to them, both of them looking scraped up but otherwise uninjured. His aunt had blood running down her arm where she lost a sleeve, and a scrape against her cheek, but looked alright overall, features concerned rather than pained.

Li Lianhua had his hair tied back in a low bun, his usual baggy clothes dirtied but undamaged, although there was a cut running down his brow that hit the outer corner of his cheek, streaking blood down his face. Despite this, he looked unphased, frowning as he crouched down next to Fang Duobing to examine the girl’s leg.

“Physician Li,” the man behind Man’er breathed a sigh of relief. “She… is she…?”

“She’ll live.” Li Lianhua said curtly, his touch clinical without inciting any reaction from the girl like Fang Duobing’s had. “You got lucky here. The break’s not as bad as it looks, it’s still a closed fracture, you just happen to also have a deep cut above it. It really hurts, doesn’t it? The bone is dragging right against some nerves, so let’s—”

His hands were braced against her leg, and he moved, and the young woman didn’t so much scream as she wheezed out a breath around the pen between her teeth, ending the noise with a whimper before she slumped down further.

“Good, good,” Li Lianhua told her, tone soothing. He braced the metal pieces against the young woman’s leg and reached to pull the ruffle that Fang Duobing had been clutching onto tightly in his nervousness. The woman made sounds of pain and discomfort through the first two wraps, but eventually settled as her bones were wrapped tightly, with the fabric soaking up the blood from her cut. He reached into the shoulder bag he always carried with him and pulled out a powder packet. “Take this. It’s just a mild painkiller, but it will help. It won’t hurt as much from here on, but you’ll have to be carried, and you’re not going to like it.”

“You couldn’t have given it to her before that?” Fang Duobing asked, dismayed.

“It doesn’t work immediately.” Li Lianhua answered him, as Man’er shakily took the powder with a whispered thanks. “And it tastes bad. If she vomited from the pain, not only would she feel worse afterward, it would be a waste.”

“You—!”

“Xiaobao,” His aunt admonished, a hand coming to grip Fang Duobing’s shoulder tightly. “Let Physician Li work.”

Li Lianhua looked up, counting the heads there and frowning. “...This is a big group.”

They weren’t a large group, merely seven people in total, but Fang Duobing understood his meaning immediately.

Short of defeating the dungeon boss, the surest way of exiting a dungeon was defeating the creatures within. One kill per one person if they wanted to leave, as each monster within the dungeon had a core which could be used to transport them out of the dungeon. With it being illegal to kill dungeon bosses, that meant it was their only way out other than waiting for a rescue team.

Of the group, only Fang Duobing and his aunt were Hunters, which meant only they would be able to fight.

Neither of them had ever fought in a dungeon before.

(And, Fang Duobing would never say aloud, his skill was not… fighting oriented.)

“It’s best if we do this fast, then,” Li Lianhua said, “and get the injured out.”

“You know what’s in this dungeon?” Fang Duobing asked, surprised.

“They look like centipedes,” his aunt confirmed. “We passed a corridor while looking for you with several dozen of them together, so they would all attack at the same time. If we could take those down, we can get everyone out safely. But the numbers are…” she trailed off, her eyes flickering over to the injured young woman.

Li Lianhua pushed himself back to his feet, the phone light casting heavy shadows under his eyes.

“Someone will have to carry her.” He said. “Because we have to move or we’ll be swarmed very soon.”

—

In the end, the young man holding Man’er before ended up carrying her on his back, although Fang Duobing offered to do so as well and reassured him that they could switch when he got tired. Li’er revealed her injured wrist for Li Lianhua to wrap, and only Wangfu and Fang Duobing ended up without injuries entirely.

“I’m fine,” He Xiaofeng waved her nephew off from her bleeding arm, turning a flirtatious look over her shoulder. “Physician Li looked at it for me earlier. It’s unfortunate, but won’t hinder me. I can still fight.” Her Awakening as a Hunter gave her a skill that ensured almost all of her hits would connect with its target. It was a physical enhancement, meant to control minute fluctuations of her muscles for terrifying accuracy, but it wasn’t anything close to magic. If it wasn’t possible to make a shot, then she wouldn’t be able to do so.

With the deep cut in her arm, Fang Duobing worried that it wouldn’t be her accuracy affected, but the strength of her hits. With his aunt’s sniper-like reflexes, her greatest weakness would be not taking out her target on first hit.

And without weapons, they were practically sitting ducks.

“It’ll be fine,” Li Lianhua said to him, likely after seeing his woebegone expression. Thanks to their lack of injuries, it was Fang Duobing and Wangfu taking point, scouting out the area ahead little at a time to give others time to run if they attracted unfavourable attention. Li Lianhua was wiping away the blood from his cut with his sleeves and grimacing at the stain to his cream coloured clothes. Fang Duobing worried that the wound was still bleeding sluggishly, but Li Lianhua, like He Xiaofeng, waved his concerns off.

“The gate appeared in a high traffic area,” Fang Duobing observed as they moved along the cave, three of them with their phone lights out to illuminate the way in front and behind them. He stopped a moment to scan the light around, making sure there was nothing lurking along the walls or ceilings where they were. If they were in a dungeon with insects, it was better to be safe than sorry. “It shouldn’t take the closest sect longer than ten minutes to mobilise, and then… five minutes to get here?”

“Ten if you’re lucky,” Li Lianhua corrected in a tired murmur, wiping at his brow with a frown. “If a gate appeared, then traffic would be awful around the area. There might be accidents on the streets, and abandoned vehicles. That means more pedestrians, which means it might be hard to even get runners to the location for the first while. I’d add another twenty minutes, likely. Maybe half an hour.”

“And then they have to find us in the dungeon.” His aunt volunteered. She didn’t sound very enthusiastic. “As we haven’t seen anyone else so far, we don’t know how large this place actually is.”

“We’ll have to keep moving,” Fang Duobing deduced, brow furrowing as they continued to walk. The scent of blood would attract predators, and if they weren’t getting help very soon, their best option really would be to find monsters they could defeat, and acquire the cores to get out themselves.

This was an opportunity, Fang Duobing determined. So long as he could keep everyone safe and get them out, then that was absolute, irrefutable proof that he should be allowed to join Baichuan Court. He just had to… keep everyone safe.

He thought of another instance, a reassuring voice and a warmth surrounding him, and steeled himself.

“I’ll take point,” he said. “Wangfu’s with me. My aunt and Li’er at the rear, and we can keep Man’er safe that way.”

“Li’er’s wrist is injured,” his aunt protested. “It’d be best to have Physician Li with me at the rear.”

Fang Duobing gave her a dubious look, not at all convinced by that argument. Ideally, his aunt would take the lead as she could make use of anything to attack, but with the way things were, he was making do with what they had! Besides, he was also taking into account Li Lianhua’s unpredictable health, with his heart condition and all. “He’s the only one who knows what to do in case something happens to Man’er.”

His aunt made a noise in protest, but then pouted as Li Lianhua didn’t glance her way. Her lipstick was still the same dark shade of red from earlier.

“Keep against the wall,” Li Lianhua suggested. “It will be one less side for ambush.”

They did just that, slowly but carefully making their way through the cave and staying out of reach of smaller pockets illuminated by the light. Once they found another site of destruction, with various office equipment that had been transported into the dungeon, and Fang Duobing picked up a waiting room chair with steel legs, figuring it was much better than having no weapon at all. Wangfu found a water bottle, and they stopped for a minute to give Man’er a break and some water.

“She’s not doing so well,” the young man carrying her said, hitching her higher up his back as gently as he could, but she still gave a sharp inhale of pain.

“Broken bones don’t like being jostled,” Li Lianhua agreed, but couldn’t give any way of comforting the young woman.

“Don’t worry,” Wangfu told her quietly, “We’ll be out soon! And then the doctors can take a look at you… no offence, Physician Li.”

Li Lianhua merely shrugged with a slight smile. “I don’t often get patients with broken bones coming to me. If there’s still water left, you should use it to clean up some of the blood. We might be able to divert attention if we clean with a cloth and leave the cloth in other locations.”

“That’s a smart idea!” He Xiaofeng exclaimed.

“Of course, that could backfire depending on the monster in the dungeon,” Li Lianhua warned. “If there are other types of monsters than what we’ve seen. We’ve been lucky so far.”

“Yeah,” Fang Duobing interjected. “And we should get going again.”

The brief respite took less than three minutes, but all of them were too jittery to stay for long, understanding the type of environment they were in. That they hadn’t seen others… There should be dozens of people on the floor of that building, and there were only seven of them here now.

Li Lianhua lingered toward the back of the group this time as they left behind the ruined office furniture, his eyes lingering on the shadows behind them, moving and writhing just shy of the light.

#NaNoWriMo #mlc nano 2023 #look i will reveal what series this is actually inspired by after i get to the point #where revealing the title wouldn't be spoilers #but ya'll know the tropes #we got isekais in japan transmigration in china and hunters in korea #if not well next part is the explanation part so exposition time #I hope people are enjoying my daily writing pain haha #ha...haaaaa #December may be face down on the ground month for me

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