Today was the day after Christmas and mom and dad asked the three of us to give them some time alone at home for something. It being the day before my birthday, I wasn’t sure if we would be doing anything.

 

Since my birthday is the anniversary of the first outbreak, I would need to wait a day before registering as a hunter. The anniversary is a day that most government buildings are closed, which includes the association.

 

Aria Anthem and I were going around town looking at some of the decorations our town put up for christmas. When I look over at my siblings I see some of the stuff that they got for Christmas yesterday. This was mainly the necklace I had bought for Aria.

 

I myself was wearing the clothes that I was given yesterday. It was pretty cold so I had worn warmer clothes over them.

 

It was pretty fun doing this with them.

 

Eventually we made our way to a part of town that had set up a bunch of stalls for christmas. People set up stalls selling candy or cakes or ornaments and stuff like that.

 

The town even set up a Christmas tree, like a really big one. This wasn’t the big city we live near, where the hunters association was, but our local town.

 

Most of the stalls had closed down and were being taken down, but a few were still open.

 

We grabbed hot chocolate to deal more with the cold and made our way around the stalls.

 

✾

 

The two main groups hunters can belong to are the association and a guild. These two entities work in tandem to monitor and assist hunters.

 

But there exists a third type of group. They are known as dark guilds. They are essentially guilds made up of criminals or people who have had their licenses revoked for whatever reason.

 

For the most part, all they do is criminal activity, but a few have different goals than just money. Some even think that the dungeons need to be let undergo an outbreak so the world can end and a new one can form in its place.

 

Dealing with the dark guilds is the association's problem, but they often pay guilds to deal with them as well. Any known dark guild has a bounty placed on them. There are even some guilds or hunters who mainly go after dark guilds. The reason the association outsources to guilds is because guilds usually have more resources to support hunters, so most powerful hunters end up joining guilds. This leads to them having way more man power.

 

The most powerful dark guild is known as the kings end guild. They formed shortly after the first outbreak. The leader, compared to the leaders of other dark guilds, is quite well known. His name is Elijah. He often posted videos of himself for recruiting or to prove his strength. This leads to a lot of people knowing of him.

 

And the current actions of the king's end guild are happening in Zenith's home town, involving his family.

 

✾

 

The members of the newly formed highschool party were making their way to the closing christmas festival. They were enjoying their break together. All of them were quite excited about everything that has been going on, except Mia. She hadn’t been feeling great and she finally realized the reason yesterday.

 

Over the last 10 years, she would have referred to one person as her best friend, but over the last two weeks, they hadn’t spoken once.

 

It wasn’t until she didn’t receive a merry christmas text from him that she realized the truth. She didn’t know what to do, but decided to wait until they went back to school to talk to them, leaving her feeling weird until then.

 

While they were walking into the festival, Hunter kept telling Noah he should have tried harder to conceive his sister to come with them.

 

“Dude, I've told you this before, but you aren’t my sister's type” Noah told Hunter.

 

“And her type is?” Hunter asked.

 

“Losers” he replied nonchalantly.

 

“Well, I can’t be one of those” Hunter said with confidence. The whole group laughed at the exchange.

 

They were all super happy. When they got to the festival, the group split up. The couples in the group wanted to spend some time together. So that left Hunter and Abby together.

 

As the two of them went around the festival together, they didn’t talk that much. In the group, they were the only single people left in the group, but they both also had crushes on people.

 

While they walked around together, they eventually saw something unexpected. Both of them knew about the group bullying Zenith. Hunter even joined in most of the time.

 

So when they saw Zenith with the two S ranks who gave them the orientation, they were confused. To later prove it to the others, they took a picture of the three of them. Zenith turned around as they took it, so the two of them ended up needing to hide from him.

 

Then they quickly made their way to the meeting place for the group and texted everyone except Mia and Noah. Noah had made it clear that no matter what, they could never let Mia know about them bullying Zenith.

 

While the rest of the group met up again, Mia and Noah started to go around the festival. Mia started to have a good time. She started to realize that she didn’t like Noah as a boyfriend. Or more like didn’t like being his girlfriend in the group.

 

When it was just the two of them, it felt more like being friends to her.

 

But while they were going through a stall that was selling scarves and hats, and while Mia was trying to get Noah’s opinion on one, he suddenly kissed her.

 

They had kissed several times since they started to date, but she never really enjoyed doing it. When they first started, she told him about it, and he reassured her that it would eventually feel good. So they had been practicing so it would be better. But one thing she had asked was that he would never do unprompted.

 

Eventually, Mia was able to push Noah off of her.

 

“WHAT THE HELL!?” she yelled at him, but he seemed to be not paying attention. He was watching something else in the stall. “NOAH” she yelled again.

 

“Oh, sorry Mia. you just looked so good I couldn’t hold myself back” he explained.

 

“WHAT THE HELL! You couldn’t hold back? Try harder!” she yelled even more, then stormed off from him, trying to get some space.

 

Seeing Mia walk away from him, Noah got annoyed and sulked back to where the group was now waiting.

 

When he meets up with them, they show him the picture of Zenith and his siblings, still unaware of their relationship.

 

Coming up with a plan, Noah started talking to Abby.

 

“Abby, you have a crush on Anthem right?” Noah asked.

 

“How did you…?” Abby asked.

 

“How I knew isn’t important. But I’m going to give you some advice. Make sure hey don’t spend time together. Do whatever you can to stop Zenith from spending time with Anthem. Its for the best" he told her.

 

From there the group tried to figure out a plan to make sure that Zenith leaves Anthem alone.

 

✾

 

I was having a good time going around the festival with ANthem and Aria. At some point I thought someone was watching us, but when I tried to see who it was, I didn’t see anyone.

 

Eventually, Aria dragged me to a stall selling scarves and wanted me to try one of them on. During the winter, I often wore scarves, mainly due to me not liking big puffy coats, so I compensated with other winter gear.

 

The scarf she wanted me to look at was black, the main color of things Aria picked out for me. This was something I noticed. Where Aria often picked darker colors for me, Anthem would more likely go with a bright color.

 

I tried on the scarf but didn’t like the length that much, so I ended up passing on buying it. After that, the two of us moved on.

 

But very shortly after, someone called out to me.

 

“Zenith?” someone said, in a questioning tone.

 

When I turned to see who was talking to me, I accidentally was left behind by Aria and Anthem. But I saw Mia was the one who called out to me.

 

“Mia, what are you doing here?” I asked her.

 

“I came with some friends. I see that you are here with your family?”

 

“Just Aria and Anthem. My parents have something right now”

 

“Oh, that's cool” she said, then we stood in silence for a second.

 

“How was finals for you” she ended up asking.

 

“I think they went fine. Hey, we probably shouldn’t be doing this?”

 

This caught her off guard. “Doing what?” she asked.

 

“Talking. You have a boyfriend now. He probably doesn't want you hanging out with someone like me”

 

“Noah is your friend. He would be fine if we talked”

 

“I wouldn’t be so sure. Just, you shouldn’t talk to me anymore” I tell her, then walk away to find my family. I don’t know why, but my head started to throb very hard and I was getting light headed.

 

But before I found them again, someone grabbed me by the arm.

 

When I turned, I found an older blond woman and a girl around my age standing behind her. When I look at the girl, I feel a strange sense of familiarity from her. I don’t know why, but she looks like a strange version of Mana.

 

But the women tried to talk to me. 

 

“Zenith, is that really you?” she said, tears forming in her eyes.