"The talent," said a voice from the middle of the table.
Everyone looked. The speaker was a second analyst from the threat classification division, a younger man nad Rui Danping who had the specific quality of soone who had been sitting on a piece of information and had reached the point where holding it was less useful than releasing it.
"There’s a second component to the historical accounts that Dr. Fei hasn’t ntioned yet," Rui Danping said. He glanced at the older analyst. "I’ve read the sa archive."
Dr. Fei looked at him. Sothing in the older man’s expression acknowledged the addition without resistance. "Go ahead," he said.
Rui Danping looked around the table. "In the original accounts, the Sub-Class is described as one outco. But the accounts also describe a second potential outco that was considered even more significant. Sothing the original hunters called a Talent." He paused. "Not a skill and not a class. Sothing that existed above both. A fundantal enhancent of a hunter’s core capabilities that didn’t operate through skill activation or class chanics but was simply present. Always active. Permanent."
"A passive enhancent," Chen Liangyu said.
"More than that," Rui Danping said. "The accounts describe it as an edge that couldn’t be trained for or worked toward. A blessing, so of the records call it. A divine advantage. Sothing that made the hunter who possessed it categorically different from peers at the sa level, the sa class, with the sa skills and the sa training." He looked at his own datapad. "The original accounts describe specific hunters who returned from the event period with combat capabilities that exceeded everything their class and level should have permitted. The attributed explanation was Talent." He paused. "None of those accounts are confird by the Bureau’s standards. But they are consistent with each other across multiple sources and multiple geographic regions from one hundred and fifty years ago."
"So the event offers two potential outcos," Director Lan said. "A Sub-Class, which is a second class structure awakened alongside the primary. And a Talent, which is a fundantal permanent enhancent."
"Yes," Rui Danping said. "If the historical accounts are accurate."
"And in the original event, no confird successes in either category," the Director said.
"No confird successes," Dr. Fei said. "In an era before the classification system existed, before structured hunter training existed, before the Bureau existed. Sixty million registered hunters worldwide in the current system, all with the classification infrastructure and the training background to understand what they’re being offered." He looked at the Director. "The baseline conditions are different."
Director Lan looked at the central projection, which was displaying the worldwide activation signature. A pattern in the data that the Bureau’s automated systems had flagged as requiring manual interpretation because nothing in the existing paraters covered it. He looked at it for a long mont.
"How long does the event last?" he said.
"Unknown," Dr. Fei said. "The original event had no docunted end trigger. The accounts simply stop describing the unusual phenona after a period that the records suggest was several months. Whether the event ended or whether the docuntation stopped for other reasons is not determinable from the surviving archive."
"So we have no duration," the Director said. "No confird chanism for awakening the Sub-Class or the Talent. No historical successes to reference. And sixty million hunters worldwide who received a notification this morning." He looked around the table. "What is the Bureau’s official response?"
Chen Liangyu spoke without hesitation. "We docunt everything," she said. "Every hunter who reports an unusual dungeon experience during the event period, every reading anomaly at monitored rift stations, every claid awakening that cos through any national bureau office. We build the database we wish had existed one hundred and fifty years ago."
"National bureaus need guidance on what to tell hunters," another departnt head said. "Sixty million people received that notification. Every hunter organization, guild, and independent contractor in the world is going to want a statent within the next few hours."
"We tell them what we know," the Director said. "Which is what Dr. Fei has described. This is a once in a lifeti opportunity of a kind that has not existed in any of our lifetis."
"The guilds are already mobilizing," Rui Danping said. He was looking at his datapad. "The major guild networks have been on ergency communication channels since the notification appeared. They’re calling it the biggest event in registered hunter history."
"They’re not wrong," Dr. Fei said. "If even a fraction of what the historical accounts describe is accurate, a hunter who successfully awakens a Sub-Class and a Talent during this event doesn’t just beco stronger." He looked around the table. "They beco a different category of thing entirely."
The room absorbed this.
On the screens, the rift monitoring stations continued to display their elevated readings. Uniform. Global. Patient. Whatever had activated with the worldwide notice was already inside every dinsional rift environnt on the planet, waiting.
Director Lan looked at the screens for a long mont. Then he looked at Dr. Fei.
"Eleven years you’ve been maintaining that file," he said.
"Yes," Dr. Fei said.
"Why?" the Director asked.
The older analyst was quiet for a mont. He looked at the docunt on the table in front of him, the printed pages that were fifty years older than the Bureau itself.
"Because the accounts describe sothing that the hunters who lived through the original event couldn’t understand with the tools they had," he said. "They didn’t know what they were experiencing. They didn’t have the classification system, the training frawork, the accumulated knowledge base that every hunter alive today has access to." He paused. "I wanted to make sure that if it happened again, soone was ready to explain it."
Director Lan looked at the central projection one more ti. "Brief the national bureaus," he said to the room. "Full disclosure of the historical record. Tell every guild and every registered organization what they’re dealing with." He stood up. "And Dr. Fei."
"Yes," the older analyst said.
"Send a full copy of that file," the Director said. "Tonight."
Dr. Fei nodded. He picked up the docunt from the table and held it for a mont, eleven years of patient maintenance represented in printed pages that nobody had wanted to read.
"Of course," he said.
The eting continued. Outside the Bureau’s walls, in every city and every region where hunters operated, the mobilization had already begun. The worldwide notice sat on sixty million hunters, read and reread and forwarded and discussed.
Sub-Class Awakening.
Once in one hundred and fifty years.
And it had just started again.
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