Chương 38: Registration

"Just reading this makes me not want to do it." I held the Swift Gale Sword Style manual open in my hands. The words inside had changed to English, and I could understand them now, but just by reading it I could tell learning it would be a chore. I hadn't even earned a basic swordsmanship skillcard and here I was, thinking about picking up an entire sword style. Maybe I should just trade it for an MMA skillcard, or some other hand-to-hand combat style instead.

I closed the book with a snap and checked the time on my phone. 9: 10. Walker Tower was about forty minutes away by bus, so I left to not be late. I regretted that the instant I saw the traffic. A new rift had opened, and the nearby blocks had been closed off until evaluation could be completed. My forty-minute trip turned into an hour and a half.

By the time I walked from the bus stop to Walker Tower, Cerise was outside, tapping the ground with the toe of her shoe, over and over, like she was trying to drill a hole through the concrete. No one dared approach her—not with that frown on her face. Honestly, I didn't want to either. She'd called me seven times already. The first one was at 10: 01. I tried explaining, but it didn't look like it was enough. I walked up anyway and gave her the most awkward greeting of my life.

"Hey." She glared at me, and for a second I genuinely feared for my life.

"Don't you check the news?"

"I do, every day. Just didn't today." I'd been too busy reading the sword manual to notice anything else. The stomping finally stopped. She took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. I wondered if she had some kind of anger issue that her doctor had told her to manage this way. Whatever it was, it worked. Her expression went back to normal.

"Fine. Let's go get this over with. The appointment's in twenty minutes." I followed her inside. The security check was the same as before. We got in the lift, and instead of going up, we went down. The floors above ground belonged to the guilds, the general marketplace. Only the safe, boring stuff got sold up there. The real business happened underground, where the RiftWalker Association ran evaluations and research. The elevator doors slid open onto a lobby bigger than the one on the ground floor.

We found the CARD REGISTRATION desk and made our way to the reception counter.

"I had an appointment booked," Cerise said.

"Can I get your name?" the clerk asked, not even looking up.

"Clark Benz." The clerk looked up, spotted me standing next to Cerise, and something clicked behind her eyes. Keyboard keys clicked as she typed.

"Clark Benz, copper-ranked. Wants to register as silver-ranked. Can you tell me where you got the card?"

"I gifted it to him," Cerise answered before I could open my mouth.

"And where did you get it from?" the clerk asked, turning to her.

"My dad gave it to me."

"And who's your dad?" The clerk sighed.

"Eric Truman."

"You should've led with that." It wasn't much of a shock to her. Guild kids were basically the only people who ever came in to register new cards. She did glance at me. I wasn't registered with any guild—at least not currently—but she didn't push it. What did it matter to her whether I was Eric's bastard son, Cherry's boyfriend, or some random stranger off the street? She had the data. She logged it. That was the job.

"Damond Tatlow has been assigned to you," the clerk said, still staring at her screen.

"He'll be here shortly. Please wait." She pointed toward a row of chairs along the near wall. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. Cerise walked over without a word and sat down, already scrolling through her phone. I sat beside her and observed the lobby. There were several reception counters, each one for something different — ARTIFACT REGISTRATION, MONSTER REGISTRATION, RIFT CLEARANCE.

Walkers moved between them, all silver rank or higher, from various guilds. The elevator gate opened. Four men in black suits stepped out, flanking a boy. They walked toward the same registration counter we'd used. The clerk wasn't bothered in the slightest, she handled it same way she had done it a hundred times before. I was too far to hear much, but a few words carried over: gold registration. Phoenix Guild.

Phoenix Guild was the number one guild in Neupolis, owned by the already-massive Phoenix Industries—the first company to break into the dungeon-delving business. The boy looked about my age, a little taller, with black hair slicked back and a sharp jaw. Black shirt, black pants. Objectively handsome, annoyingly so. He noticed me staring and turned his head toward me. I looked away instantly. For a second longer he kept looking, first at me, then at Cerise, who was still glued to her phone.

I peeked—I know, I shouldn't have—and saw she was watching cute cat videos. I never would've guessed she was into that. By the time I looked back up, the boy had already lost interest. The clerk herself led his group inside personally. What kind of bullshit was that? We had to sit and wait our turn, and he just gets walked straight in? A man in a black suit approached from the direction the Phoenix Guild group had gone, an ID badge hanging from his neck. I guessed he was my registrar. He stopped in front of me.

"Clark Benz?" I nodded and stood up.

"Damond Tatlow. Follow me." At least he didn't try for a handshake.

"I'm heading in," I told Cerise. She waved without looking up from her phone. I followed Damond through the same hallway the Phoenix Guild group had disappeared into. We took a left, past a row of doors on either side, and stepped into one of them. The door clicked shut behind us.

"This room's completely soundproof," Damond said.

"No cameras, no recording devices, nothing. Check yourself if you want." Card registration had always been a mess. The government had made it mandatory—register your card or don't enter the rifts. They'd promised the data would stay anonymous. So people registered. Then the RiftWalker Association got hit by a cyberattack, and every scrap of that "anonymous" data got stolen. Then the kidnappings started. Silver-ranks, gold-ranks went missing in daylight and tortured until they gave up their cards.

The stolen cards flooded the black market overnight. After that, no one talked about their cards anymore, not even to family, terrified that a careless word over dinner could get them taken. That's why I'd been caught off guard when Cerise showed me hers without a second thought. Of course there were people like her father. Who ha card's strong enough to protect themselves. Walkers stopped registering altogether. Without registration, the Association had no way to know who was copper, silver, or gold.

No way to know which rifts were safe to let someone into. It became a real problem. The Association tried offering a compromise: one registrar would know your card, and its details will never touch the database. Walkers still didn't buy it. At that time of dismay, a new rift opened. Forgotten Hours. It was a miracle. Inside were monsters who dropped cards which now belonged to every registrar.

"No need. I trust the Association," I answered.

"Great. But protocol says I still have to let you read the card." A silver card appeared in Damond's hand. I took it and read. Forgotten Minutes Craft a story where a boy didn't want to remember all the times his parents fought. So he crafted a spell — one that made him forget everything from the moment it activated to the moment it deactivated. Recorded in the Akashic system, year 45983. Forgotten Minutes lets the wielder forget everything that happened during the card's activation.

Their pupils turn white as an indicator. The timing of that rift's opening was almost too perfect, like the Akashic system had cracked it open on purpose, just to save the Association from itself. I handed the card back.

"I'll activate it," A second later, his black pupils bled white.

"Can I see your card?" I summoned Shadowstride and handed it over. I wasn't going to register Rotary Rend, because Cerise herself didn't know I had it, and even if she did, gifting someone two silver cards would raise a lot of eyebrows. Damond read the card, then pulled a notepad and pencil from his pocket and wrote something down. He showed it to me. It read: Silver card confirmed. Surveillance and passive-buff type. That was all the Association would ever register. No name, no specifics.

"Yeah, this works," I told him.

"Okay. Deactivating now." The white drained back out of his pupils, color returned. He blinked and looked around the room like he was seeing it for the first time, then glanced down at his own notepad and nodded to himself.

"Your registration as silver rank will be complete within twenty-four hours. Pleasure working with you."

"Likewise." We stepped back out.

"Done?" Cerise asked when I walked up.

"Yeah. Rank updates in twenty-four hours."

"Nice. Let's go, then. Toby's waiting outside."

"Who's Toby?"

"The third guy for our party."