Retry Hunter

The dangerous situation he was in today made him think about those close to him, especially his family. 

Taking out his phone Jake called his sister; at this time, she was probably the only one still awake. His sister who was still attending Highschool was able to stay with their parents while he had to leave and find his own place to attend university.

Putting his phone next to his ears, he heard a familiar voice "Why are you calling in the middle of the night, if you need money go ask mom and dad, I don't have any"

"I'm not calling for money, I just want to know if you guys safe"

"We're doing good, if you're really worried about us you should come visit"

"I won't, the commutes too long and the breaks about to end anyways, since you spend so much time on social media, has there been an increase in postings about things like monster sightings"

"In normal social media apps, no, but there has been an increase of those type of videos on the dark web, AI's getting pretty good these days, why are you asking about this anyways?"

"Because I was almost gobbled up by goblins"

"Hey, you might have bad luck with women but there's no need to call them goblins, just call them ugly like a normal person"

Annoyed Jake responded "Whatever, just send me the videos you find"

"Sure, if that's all, thanks for ruining my night"

He was about to respond but the call was ended. His sister was annoying as usual.

Moving along the street Jake arrived at a hospital, although his country had flaws, it at least had free healthcare, so a checkup was no problem.

Entering the hospital Jake soon found a doctor to do a physical checkup on him.

After doing various tests, the doctor told him his condition.

"Your shoulders are a bit strained and your you know what a bit is bruised, other than that you're perfectly healthy"

The doctor continued "Although young love is nice, I recommend telling your partner to tone it down a bit"

Jake let out a scoff "Doctor it's not like that; I just fell off the stairs"

"And whoever was with you at that time should be more careful"

Realizing that the doctor wouldn't let this go, Jake just went along with it since it wouldn't really hurt anyone, except his self-respect "I'll make sure to tell my partner that then"

"Good, that's good" the doctor replied

After walking Jake out of the room, the doctor muttered to himself "I was just joking around, I can't believe that young man's actually gay"

(A/N: I added this part just to make that joke and it was worth it)

Since he couldn't really go anywhere, Jake decided to stay in the hospital waiting room.

Taking out his phone, Jake then clicked on his incoming messages, all of them from his sister. Scrolling through the videos, he saw various types of creatures on the screen.

There were sightings of goblins a monster he was extremely familiar with but unlike the ones he faced in the building there were different types of goblins, some held swords, bows, blowguns, there was even a boss looking one robed in dark leather that was striped with tribal markings holding a staff.

Other than goblins there were werewolves, slimes, golems, vampires, yetis, giant bugs, and many more otherworldly creatures.

Other than that, there were also videos of people showcasing unique abilities, some summoned air, fire, ice, and lighting, there were others lifting cars and trucks with their bare hands.

Seeing the various environments and ethnicity of the people in the video, Jake realized that whatever happened in the apartment building was occurring all over the world. Although some of them might be AI generated like his sister said.

Thinking about the future, Jake planned out his next moves. From the dates on the videos there seemed to be more sightings of these monsters and super humans as time progressed. This meant that more portals were being opened or there were more monsters going through them and the situation might be a bit of both. This also meant that there was an increasing amount of people awakening superpowers over them.

If things did get worse, he wanted his friends and family to be safe, but he couldn't think of a way to convince them that things like this were happening.

Before he experienced the last hour if someone had told him that monsters were coming out of portals and people started gaining superpowers, he wouldn't have believed it either.

The most he could do was warn them and recommend stocking up on food and buy a weapon of some type for self-defense. Which he did but most of it was replied with ??.

Now that some time had passed, he decided to search up news about the apartment building since an incident like that should have already been covered by now. However, his search didn't yield any results, only showing related articles with the same keywords but none of them was about building 456.

Tapping the phone icon and putting in the number for emergency services, Jake clicked call.

"This is emergency services, what's your emergency?"

"I'm calling about the situation in building 456"

Before he could say anything else, the responder abruptly interrupted. "We have not received any calls coming from building 456, any news you've heard is due to the distribution of false information. Is there any other emergency you would like to report?"

"Uhm, no" Jake responded since the person seemed intent on not sharing any information about the apartment.

Thinking about it, Jake decided to go back to check out the scene himself.

Approaching and walking around the apartment building he didn't see anything unusual; Jake tensely entered the building just in case a goblin jumped him. But once inside everything was the same it used to be.

Even the doors that should have been broken on the 6th floor was fixed. Checking the upper floors everything was the same.

Entering his apartment, the mouse was still on the ground and his computer still running. Cleaning up, Jake went to his bed laying down, today had been a really long one and now he needed to rest, everything else could be dealt with tomorrow.

********

(Adding this scene for some worldbuilding)

In a dark van moving along the streets, a man cloaked in darkness held a phone to his ears and opened his mouth

"How's the situation with the building we cleared"

"Hello team leader six, since you've done such a nice job, other than a few phone calls everything seems to be going smoothly"

"Good and next time don't send us to such a low-level gate"

"Well, you'll have to talk to the higher ups about that, due the surge in portal openings we're short on manpower, since you were the only group around and to maintain public safety, we sent you"

The man let out a slight laugh "Maintain public safety my ass, they're just doing this to monopolize ether as much as they can before they have to reveal it to the rest of society"

"This may be out of line but if you hate the higher ups so much, why do keep working for them?"

"The same reason as everyone else, so I can get my share"

*********

Waking up, Jake felt well rested, then remembering yesterday events he quickly got up, checking the time which was 3:31 pm he realized that he slept for 15 hours straight. Although he stayed up late and had a stressful time this was still pretty unnatural.

Just as he was about to go clean himself up, the blue screen popped up in front him

[Mission: Train the body to meet an acceptable standard

System Repair Rate: 15%]

Jake thought that this was a pretty nice task since he was planning to do this anyways. Then he went ahead and took a shower. After he tried to search the apartment again but couldn't find anything off about it. In the next few days, he started going to a gym and martial arts dojo. During this time, he noticed that most of the other renters were missing, probably dead, since he didn't see or encounter any of them, furthermore new people came to rent out the apartments. When he asked the few that survived, they said that they were out during the night in question.

The weird thing was that even though so many people were missing none of their family members or friends came to check in on them.

Other than that, he also realized that his body had considerably increased regeneration, no matter how tired or sore he was after working out after nights rest, he would be good to go, other than feeling extremely hungry in the morning.

Time moved on and now it was time to go back to school however with monsters appearing all over the world, Jake didn't think anything he learned would be of any use, so he skipped the first week of school until his parents called saying that they would cut off his allowance if he didn't go back to school. Although he had some saving, he would quickly blow through them if he didn't receive any more money, especially now that he was going to gym, attending a dojo, and eating a lot more food. His parents agreed to increase his allowance since they liked the fact that he was starting to take care of his body. 

Jake started attending college again, but he wouldn't focus on the professors lectures instead going on his phone or laptop to watch videos about self-defense, various martial arts, and survival. If devices weren't allowed in the room, he would read a book about the same topics. 

Although his grades dropped, he was able to maintain a grade his parents were satisfied with, so he was able to keep his allowance. Sitting in his chair Jake looked at the system panel as the professor continued his lecture. 

[Mission: Train the body to be at an acceptable standard

System Repair Rate: 48%]

It had been 3 months since the goblin attack, during this time Jake got a lot stronger physically and mentally. His build remained lean, but he was a lot more muscular, more importantly his power continued to increase even if his body didn't grow. Mentally he now knew much more about self-defense, martial arts, and how to survive in various situations. 

In the dojo he was attending, he was now the number one expert even topping the instructor, seeing that he had nothing else to learn he quit attending and move on to another one that specialized in a different art. 

Over time as his body changed to become more aesthetically beautiful, the attention he got from women also increased, there was even an older woman that tried to bribe him with money for a night in a love-hotel. 

However, he payed no attention to things like that as he was more focused on the increasing sightings of monster and superhumans. Some of the videos even made it into mainstream media but was dismissed as fake videos made with AI and photoshop. However, in social chatgroups the discussions continued people were debating each other on whether the videos were real or fake. 

Now he sometimes overheard a few students talking about. There were even conspiracy theories focusing on the sudden disappearance of people, they showed cases where a person cut off their contacts with friends and family through text.

This might actually happen in rare cases but the amount of people saying they had the same experience was far too great. As controversy over this topic increased it started affecting society, with the constant pestering of Jake his friends and family took his advice and started storing up food and buying various weapons for self-defense. 

As his strength increased so did the repair rate of the system, once it reached 20%, he could now summon it anytime he wanted to. Even though the repair was at 48% he didn't unlock any other function, however he could feel that his strength was increasing at a faster rate as the systems repair rate increased. 

Even though he was a lot stronger than before the system still didn't find his body to be at an acceptable standard but thinking of all the monster that he might face in the future, Jake felt that it was true that he was still too weak. 

Feeling extremely bored with the lecture, Jakes mind wandered but soon entered a focused state when the system panel changed.

[Mission: Train the body to be at an acceptable standard

Side Mission: Survive the Portal Outbreaks

System Repair Rate: 48%]

With the notification, the building shook, everyone thinking it was an earthquake, started to find cover, some crawling under their desk. Jake was also trying to find cover, but his attention was quickly captured when his gaze covered the window.

Outside in the middle of the campus, a blue crack in the air opened up, rapidly expanding as the around it swirled, a huge green hand suddenly popped out of it. Followed by an extremely muscular hand and huge torso, the creature fully exited the portal. 

With green skin and a build akin to that of a tank, Jake recognized the creature to be an orc. Its flesh was marked with ghastly scars, holding a large hatchet made of bones with its left hand the orc exuded an overpowering presence. 

Taking in its new environment the creature looked around, as it did so it made eye contact with Jake. Feeling the intense desire of battle from the orcs gaze Jake quickly looked away, but it was too late hearing a petrifying roar, Jake glanced back only to see the orc running straight at him.