-lmao the hype died faster than the rookie did.

  -No one’s pretending he exists anymore? Who am I supposed to roast in the comments while I doomscroll now?

  -So the S-rank rookie hype lasted… three days. Nice.

  It was the same old comments, echoing endlessly through the hunter community forums.

  Three days, my ass.

  Troy Winter lay stretched out on a massive, white leather sofa that cost more than most people’s cars, scrolling through his phone. The penthouse was dark, and the only light source was the phone’s screen and the glittering city skyline outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  The once pristine white leather was a disaster zone.

  Around him was a mess littered with potato chip crumbs, and a half-eaten chocolate bar had left a tragic brown smudge on the armrest. On the imported Italian marble floor, a gaming controller lay tangled in a graveyard of empty soda cans and sour candy wrappers.

  It was midnight, but the traffic on the hunter forums was at an all-time high.

  It was the first juicy bit of gossip they’d had in a while, so of course the talk wouldn’t die down. When Troy’d first awakened as an S-rank, people had dissected his life for months.

  Everything until now had just been the same tired jokes looping back around.

  But when the feed refreshed, someone had dropped something new.

  [Subject: I recorded the whole thing. Full upload coming]

  Had a front row seat to the breach from my place. Figured if I died, maybe someone would find the file. Since everyone keeps saying the hero that saved the day is fake, I’ll drop it.

  Blurring his face is taking a while. Expect it up by noon tomorrow.

  “Someone actually filmed the whole thing?”

  Troy sat up, swinging his legs off the sofa and knocking an empty can way over with a metallic clatter.

  Luckily, even in his excited state, he was controlling his strength well enough to avoid being taken to the adjustment training room again.

  He’d been genuinely disappointed that there was no official dungeon recording this time since it was a breach.

  He wanted to see the video now.

  And he wouldn’ve happily thrown money at the poster if it meant he could skip the wait.

  …Assuming it’s real, of course.

  As expected, he wasn’t the only one thinking that. The comments were already flooding in.

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  -Sure, and I’m the one who killed the boss.

  -OP just farming attention

  -If you actually had the video, it would’ve been up days ago.

  -Every day someone says they’ve got proof. And every fucking day it turns out to be nothing.

  But the original poster didn’t take the bait. That, more than anything, gave the post a sliver of credibility.

  So people started to stir in the comments. Most people still didn’t believe it, but the post had gathered enough upvotes to stay pinned at the top. The trolls were still loud, but the lurkers were starting to bookmark the page.

  Because of that one post, the next day, a number of high-ranked hunters—Troy included—found themselves staring at their phones, counting down the minutes.

  ***

  The video premiered as a livestream.

  A black screen with a stark white countdown timer filled the display, ticking down to noon. The chat on the right side of the screen scrolled by in a blur of emojis and insults.

  Then, for the final ten seconds, the chat synchronized and started counting down along with the timer.

  Finally, the screen went black, and the chat froze for a split second in anticipation.

  And that was how the video that would serve as Shane’s official debut as a hunter went live.

  It was clearly shot on a phone. A good one, given how the image stayed clean even when zoomed.

  Not that the hunters who’d participated in the raids cared about the resolution. They cared about the edit and how they came off on camera.

  And most of them watched with a knot in their stomachs, hoping the footage didn’t linger on the moment they had turned tail and run.

  Shane was also watching.

  He sat in his studio apartment, a brow furrowed as he watched the view count skyrocket.

  The video had barely even started, but headlines were already popping up on internet news sites like Hunter News Network and Daily Dungeon. Famous YouTubers had started their own streams to watch and react along with their fans.

  The video was meticulously edited. It opened with a wide shot of the hunters gathering in the square before the dungeon breach, the color grading slightly desaturated to make it look gritty.

  Text appearing on the screen, fading in and out like a movie title.

  [THE TRUTH BEHIND THAT DAY]

  [Who were the heroes that stopped the A-rank Breach?]

  The chat started speeding up again. Most of them still thought the video was clickbait.

  -cringe

  -Pretty sure it was the late S-ranks who closed the breach (crying and laughing emoji)

  -I’m here for the comments, not the video. Let’s goooo

  -This better pick up soon my lunch break ain’t that long.

  As if anticipating the audience’s short attention span, the video hard-cut to the moment Whitley Barlowe approached Shane’s group.

  The audio was garbled by the distance and the wind, but the editor had done the legwork. Crisp whitesubtitles appeared at the bottom of the screen, transcribing Josh Miller’s lip movements perfectly.

  [Josh Miller: Ah, Hunter Barlowe.]

  Of course, the viewers recognized him instantly. Whitley’s identity had been plastered all over the news as the man responsible for the breach.

  The chat exploded with rage.

  I was a latecomer, too, actually, thought Shane.

  But thanks to the editing, it looked like Shane had been with the Wynn Guild members from the very beginning. The person who filmed the video had clearly decided to focus entirely on Shane’s party.

  The hunters who had arrived before them were barely shown.

  Probably because they ran away pretty quickly.

  From the perspective of the hunters who had fled, it was probably a mercy not to be shown clearly.

  The video zoomed in as if to confirm who was in Shane’s party. Like a character introduction, each hunter’s name and guild was written below them: Josh Miller, Luke Hinton, Kit McKay, Henry Stone, and so on.

  The editing was incredibly clean. It made their ragtag team look like a group of fairly reliable hunters.

  Of course, the important thing was how he was going to be introduced.

  Throughout the video, his face was consistently blurred, or the camera would pan away just enough so he wasn’t in the center of the frame.

  Shane was just starting to think, with some relief, that maybe the uploader was respecting his anonymity and just treat him as a background extra.

  Until the camera zoomed in on the figure standing slightly apart from the group. The background darkened, highlighting him.

  Text appeared on the screen, but it wasn’t a name.

  [Editor’s note: Since we don’t know his name, and he refused to give it to the press, we’ll give him a nickname for the purpose of this video.]