After saying goodbye to Maryann, he headed deeper into the Player Resources section and found an empty terminal near the back.
At first, Max only wanted to know how much money an F-rank Player could realistically make from clearing Gates.
However, that simple question quickly led him somewhere else.
There were several Gates within travelling distance of the Academy, but simply possessing a Player licence didn’t mean he was free to enter whichever one caught his attention.
Some Gates had appeared on land later acquired by Guilds or private companies, and those groups handled access however they pleased.
Others were controlled by the government or the Academy and were made available to independent Players through permits.
Naturally, the Gate itself didn’t care about any of this.
A Gate was just a Gate.
If one suddenly appeared in the middle of an abandoned forest before anyone secured the area, there was nothing physically stopping someone from walking inside.
The permits, barriers and restrictions surrounding regulated Gates were all things humanity had built around them afterwards.
Max opened the public Gate directory and began going through the nearby listings.
Rank, location, monster population, average core value, current status and access requirements were all displayed there.
There was one term that appeared repeatedly among the F-rank Gates.
[Solo Gate]
Max opened the information page.
Solo Gates weren’t simply Gates where the authorities had decided only one Player was allowed inside. Rather, they were F-rank Gates that naturally accepted only one entrant at a time.
Since their difficulty was low and their behaviour had already been studied for years, licensed F-rank Players were allowed to purchase permits and enter them alone.
That privilege stopped at F-rank.
Anything above that required a party permit, and those permits wouldn’t become usable until the minimum number of qualified Players had been gathered.
Max lightly tapped his fingers against the desk.
’So once I rank up, I’ll have to deal with that.’
For now, however, the restriction worked perfectly in his favour.
He didn’t exactly want a group of strangers standing around while he experimented with [Devour].
With that settled, Max returned to the Gate listings and began searching more seriously.
The first nearby Gate contained Stonebacks.
Max knew the species well enough. They were bulky creatures with thick skeletal plating covering most of their upper bodies, which made them irritating opponents for inexperienced Players.
Their cores sold for a decent amount, but there were normally fewer than twelve Stonebacks inside after each reset.
Max moved on.
The next Gate contained Needle Rats.
He almost dismissed it immediately.
Their cores were worth very little, and there wasn’t much else on their bodies that Players bothered harvesting. Still, just before closing the page, his gaze landed on the estimated population.
Thirty-two to forty.
’Wow... That’s almost enough.’
The gauntlet required fifty kills before whatever was locked inside it became available.
A Needle Rat Gate wouldn’t solve his rent problem, but it might solve another one almost immediately.
’I’ll come back to this.’
Max saved the listing before continuing.
A few minutes later, another name caught his attention.
[Razorhound Den]
Unlike Needle Rats, Razorhounds were actually worth hunting.
They were four-legged predators that relied heavily on speed, using unusually powerful hind muscles and flexible spines to accelerate over short distances.
Their reactions were also considerably faster than those of most F-rank monsters.
Max had studied preserved Razorhound specimens before, although he’d never had the opportunity to observe a living one up close.
That alone made them interesting.
There was also something else. The Goreboar had given him [Feral Instinct].
If [Devour] could extract something as strange as combat instinct from one monster, then there was no telling what a creature whose entire body was specialized around speed might give him.
’Agility, maybe? Or something related to movement?’
He couldn’t know until he tried.
Fortunately, Razorhound cores also sold for considerably more than Needle Rat cores, so even if Devour gave him nothing useful, the trip wouldn’t necessarily be wasted.
Max opened the permit details.
[F-Rank Solo Gate]
[Status: Green]
[Permit Cost: 20 Credits]
[Duration: 4 Hours]
The four hours didn’t begin immediately after purchase.
Instead, the permit would be attached to his Player licence and activate the first time he used it to enter the Gate. Once activated, he could leave and re-enter for the next four hours, provided the Gate itself was available.
If the time expired while he was still inside, nothing would happen to him.
He simply wouldn’t be permitted to enter again after coming out.
"Twenty Credits..."
Max glanced at the corner of the screen where his current balance was still displayed on his phone.
Nearly half of everything he had.
He checked the current market price of Razorhound cores next.
Even the lower-quality ones sold for around twelve Credits, while better cores could go noticeably higher.
In other words, recovering only a few would already cover the cost of the permit.
Of course, that assumed he actually managed to kill them.
Max continued searching.
He compared permit prices, monster populations and core values, but as the minutes passed, he found himself paying more attention to the monsters themselves.
A normal beginner probably cared mostly about whether a Gate was safe enough and whether the loot was worth the trouble.
Max cared about those things too, but he had another question ordinary Players didn’t need to consider.
’What can I get from eating them?’
That changed everything.
Some Gates contained more monsters but very little that interested him biologically. Others had better cores, but the creatures inside fought in ways that didn’t suit someone whose only weapon was currently a clawed gauntlet.
By the time Max finished, several listings had been crossed out and only a few remained.
He returned to the Razorhound Gate.
It wasn’t the safest option he’d found, nor was it the most profitable.
But it had enough monsters, decent cores and a species he genuinely wanted to test [Devour] on.
That was good enough.
Max pressed the purchase button.
[Purchase Permit?]
[Cost: 20 Credits]
He paused for a while. His rent was three hundred Credits. His account held forty-five.
Spending twenty of them on permission to enter a place filled with monsters sounded questionable when he thought about it that way.
Then again, keeping all forty-five wasn’t going to magically turn it into three hundred...
[Permit Purchased.]
[Available Balance: 25 Credits]
He stared at the new number for a moment and grinned slowly.
"...This better work."
***
By the time Max reached the Gate, another four Credits had disappeared into transportation.
He chose not to check his balance again.
The Razorhound Gate had appeared several years ago inside an old industrial yard near the edge of the district.
Most of the surrounding warehouses had long since been abandoned, and a tall metal fence now separated the Gate area from the rest of the property.
Max entered through the outer fence and immediately spotted it.
The Gate stood several meters high near the center of the yard.
Its surface looked almost like pale-blue water suspended vertically in the air, constantly shifting without ever spilling onto the concrete below.
The space around it bent slightly as well, making the old warehouse behind it appear distorted whenever Max looked through the edges.
He had seen Gates plenty of times before. Everyone had.
What felt different now was knowing that he was actually going inside one.
Several metal pylons had been installed around the Gate, forming a wide artificial barrier around the entrance.
That barrier was the part controlled by humans.
Near the only opening stood a small dark construct with a scanner built into its surface.
The Access Node.
For regulated Gates, the Earth AI used the Node to confirm a Player’s licence and whether they possessed the correct permit before opening the surrounding barrier.
Max walked toward it, only for the display to change before he even reached for his licence.
[F-RANK SOLO GATE]
[STATUS: GREEN]
[OCCUPANCY: 1/1]
[ENTRY UNAVAILABLE]
Max stopped.
’Someone’s inside already.’
Buying a permit gave him permission to enter, but it didn’t reserve the Gate for him.
Since this particular Gate only accepted one Player at a time, anyone else with a valid permit simply had to wait until the current entrant came back out.
Fortunately, Max’s four hours hadn’t started yet.
He found a seat near the fence and sat down.
There wasn’t much else to do, so he pulled out his phone and went through the Razorhound information again while he waited.
Almost forty minutes later, the Gate suddenly rippled.
Max raised his head.
A man emerged from the pale-blue surface.
He looked to be somewhere in his late twenties and wore reinforced clothing that had been torn badly around one shoulder. There was dried blood along his trousers and across the front of his shirt, while a heavy backpack hung from one side.
The man stopped after crossing over and caught his breath.
Max’s eyes moved toward the backpack.
It was almost full.
Judging by the shapes pressing against the material, he had probably brought out several core containers along with whatever monster parts were worth selling.
Seeing that made Max feel slightly better about the twenty Credits he’d just spent.
The man rested for a short while before leaving the yard.
Soon afterwards, the Access Node changed.
[OCCUPANCY: 0/1]
[ENTRY AVAILABLE]
Max stood up.
He opened his backpack and pulled out the black gauntlet he’d brought from home.
The moment he slipped his right hand inside, the plates adjusted around his fingers and forearm until they fitted perfectly.
Max flexed his hand once and the claws moved along with him.
He then approached the Access Node and placed his licence against the scanner.
A blue light passed across the card.
[PLAYER VERIFIED]
[RANK: F]
[VALID SOLO PERMIT DETECTED]
[PERMIT ACTIVATED]
[REMAINING TIME: 04:00:00]
Max slipped his licence back into his pocket and walked forward. The pale-blue surface rippled as his hand touched it, and before he could feel anything beyond a sudden chill, his entire body passed through.
And somewhere between one world and the next, a voice whispered the words every Player heard upon entering a Gate.
[The challenge is yours, Player]