"How to become a Hunter? Just be at the wrong place, at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing. Fate will take care of the rest."

- Veteran Hunter, during a TV interview. (2038)

My eyes fluttered open, like it was just another morning after a long nightmare. The difference? You don't have to deal with the consequences of your nightmares.

The sight that welcomed me when I woke up was of fresh corpses covering the floor of the undercity. Both scorn and human alike. I was not even sure how I was still alive, my arm should've been far beyond healing, and I could clearly tell that I was about to die. Hell, I even tried to go out on my own terms, but fate wouldn't even let me have at least that?

'I am afraid not, Raven. You still have a duty to fulfil.' A voice resounded deep inside my head, it felt weird but...comforting? At the  same time.

"And now I hear voices in my head, I guess the mental trauma fucked me up so bad I became schizophrenic or something." I spoke to myself, clearly thinking I was still trapped inside a really long, convoluted and far-too-realistic nightmare.

'That is an inaccurate diagnosis, I am afraid. I administered you with sufficient medical attention to keep you alive while your psyche recovered. You will start feeling...normal...within the next few hours.'

"....The voice is responding to me now...I'm really going crazy..." Looking to my arm, it wasn't there anymore. The shock alone was so big that I was about to scream, but instead I felt something...calming me down from the inside, something warm, something nice.

'I am sorry about the loss of your limb, Raven, but amputation was the easiest way to get you out of death's door at the moment. For now, I would recommend for you to gather your wits and start analysing your situation.' The thing inside my head seemed far too calm for me to call it a creation of my own mind, but she spoke with my own voice and it was starting to freak me out.

"Should I analyse how everyone I knew is now dead on the ground and I am basically trapped in here? Also who, or what, are you? I-I don't even know what I'm supposed to do, what am I supposed to do now?" But I was interjected by a response from the thing before I could even start shedding tears.

'Precisely. The zone is still under the threat of a Major Outbreak, and by all accounts, you are the only Hunter available in the entirety of this city, if my records are to be believed. You should head to the surface, gather supplies and prepare a plan of evacuation from the city or eradication of the dungeon, judging by your mental state however, I'd also suggest some time to process information and come to terms with the loss of loved ones, if you can find their corpses that is.'

"Wait, wait, wait, wait....What kind of...Hunter?...Me? But...But how did I?" And yet another interjection.

'Not by your own design of course. After you fell unconscious, the outbreak continued to consume the city and eventually, through a multi-hour process, Athenea has been consumed by the gates. Within this alternate space, the most promising candidate for a Hunter is selected, and now you, Raven, have the chance to fight for your survival. Or die alongside these people. By all means, the choice is yours.'

"....What the actual fuck is that bullshit explanation?" I could barely wrap my brain around the entire city being swallowed in a single night, but being trapped in here and being forced to become a Hunter? That was another matter entirely.

But before I could continue asking the voice inside my head any more questions, my grumbling stomach interrupted my train of thought. My lips were also dry, and my eyes were irritated. i was alive alright, because the pain I was starting to feel was a reality too. The thing seemed to catch onto this, and for a second I could almost feel as if it was looking through my own eyes. It was a weird feeling, one I wasn't used to, like clipping through an avatar in virtual reality. It was all kinds of uncomfortable.

'There is little sustenance to be had down here, but it will do. You should notice the old refrigerator still working around three-hundred meters from your local position. It should contain food you can take.'

"So now I have a GPS inside my head?" I was feeling many emotions at the same time, but the tone in which the thing spoke made me feel incredibly irritated for some reason. Maybe it was because it was using my own voice, but that was another existential topic I'd rather not delve into as of this moment.

'Not quite. I am your Stigma. Every Hunter has one that roughly explains to them how to function within the borders of these dungeons. I am a replica of a perfect you, for the lack of a better explanation.'

"...That sounds incredible, for all the wrong reasons." Knowing that I had drugs injected into my brain to keep myself from straight up collapsing due to shock and trauma made my thoughts a little more calm than they should've been in response to this, but I was hungry, so I needed to eat.

Following the directions that the stigma gave me, I reached the refrigerator and opened it. Inside I found some snacks and actual food being preserved, the owner probably thought that food supplies would be running low if they were going to be holed up down in the undercity until the outbreak was handled. It seems he calculated wrong though.

I stuffed myself with a few juice boxes and nutri-bars. Cheap replacements for food that did their job, not very pleasantly, but they probably had more nutritional value than most of the food Bill cooked up during his free time. Remembering all the weird dishes he would serve and the disgusting mixtures he would create made me smile a little, and then I remembered what was happening right now and that smile dropped as fast as a fly.

'You should take a backpack and start gathering food and water. You will need them later. Here.'

The voice spoke and my Oculus implants booted up again. The familiar minimalistic HUD now included little red dots that symbolized marked locations, or rather corpses, that the stigma had taken notice of. At the very least it was useful as a GPS so I shouldn't be too fearful of it. As long as it doesn't try to steal my identity or read my every thought.

'Oh, I will never try that. I cannot go against my persona's wishes after all.' The voice replied, clearly reading my last train of thought.

"I will refrain from responding to that." I said.

'But you already did.' The voice had a point. So I shut the fuck up and started collecting. With my remaining arm I would first take a backpack off a nerdy boy's corpse, trying to clean the blood from it only to find out it had already dried out so there was no point to it. And inside the medium-sized backpack I would stuff every remaining food supply and first aid materials I could find in this mountain of rotting flesh.

In the end, I gathered the following.

• 4 Nutri-Bars
• 3 Juice Boxes (Orange Flavoured)
• 3 Bottles of Watter
• Bandages (Probably Clean)
• Disinfectant (Little medicine bottle of flammable liquid)
• A knife

Truly an overwhelming quantity of supplies, enough to keep me alive for many months. Or that was the dream. The people in the undercity were so badly prepared not one of them had more guns or bullets on them at the time. At least not any I could find or carry. I kept the pocket knife in my jacket's pocket and the handgun that still remained on the ground next to the blanket was also picked up.

There were no bullets left for it, but it should still be somewhat useful right? I threw it into the backpack and looked over at the nearest entrance before asking my stigma another question.

"Are you sure you didn't see Roach or Bill down here?" I asked, maybe there was some hope.

'I did not. But do not get your hopes up too soon. Normal people are unlikely to survive inside Dungeon Grounds without a Stigma or a system to make use of. Speaking of which, you should be seeing one....Now.'

And there, in front of me, appeared some sort of weird RPG window. Dungeons...Guides...Systems...This was sounding more and more like some sort of sick game I had been dragged into without my consent. And the most terrifying fact about that theory is that it may as well had been true, since the stigma didn't bother to clarify it as wrong.

'Should I explain how all of this works?' The stigma asked me, upon noticing how confused I looked.

"Yes please."