33 The hunter union (1/2)

Bai Yun was walking through the streets of Yellow city. He was going to go and get a licence from the hunter union.

The hunter union was established a long time ago. It was probably the oldest institution in the entire world. It was said that the hunter union was established by the three great heroes of old many millions of years ago. Then the three heroes finally ascended to the Immortal World. It was only due to the non aggressive nature of the union that it managed to last until now.

No one knew what the three heroes did to be called as heroes. Some people said that they defeated an evil tyrant, while some others said that they defeated some other extra world monster who drifted in from the endless void. The only thing that people knew was that the fight happened in the Bay of Heroes. The truth was lost in time, probably only known to the highest levels of the hunter union.

The hunter union played an important role. They where the contact point for people who needed services and mercenaries who could provide the said services.

Anyone who needed any item or needed a job done could simply contact the hunter union and place a job offer there. And anyone who has registered as a hunter could take it up and get the job done for a reward. Of course the hunter union would take a small cut depending on the authority of the person who undertook the order.

The biggest contractor for the hunter union was the Little Merchant Association. Since a huge amount of their raw materials came from dangerous places, they needed powerful hunters to collect them. In fact even the items that people who simply walked in and sold at the hunter union was actually sold to the merchant association. They had opened a counter at the hunter union. This was because when they tried to open their own counter at the merchant assassination, not many people wanted to go all the way over there, even if the price was same. Thus the new situation came up. In exchange the merchant union would only place their orders at the hunters union. Besides, selling items at the hunter union would also allow one to get union points. This encouraged people to sell items here.

Union points was a special property of the hunter union. In the hunter union, the resources you could buy, special events and regions you had access to as well as the the discounts were all based on an authority system. The authority was given to the cards one would get when someone registered as a hunter. But since each card was tied to a person, it was next to impossible to take some one else's card. Thus a card, for all intents and purposes represented a person.

There were nine levels to the system, counted in one to nine stars. The union elder council and chairman and all only had a seven star authority. Eight stars was for the the hidden background of the union, the people who would usually stay in the secret realm of the hunter union. The ninth star, or the highest tier, is said to have only three accounts: one for each of the founders. But those cards are said to be lost in time also.

Not only that the first six stars were also divided into three tiers further, bronze, silver and gold. Six silver stars was the highest any person not affiliated to the hunter union could rise their card to, as the six gold stars was only to upper echelons of the hunter union management.

The authorities was not decided by the cultivation levels, but by various other factors, like contribution to the hunter union, and fighting strength or potential. Thus technically even a qi step cultivator could have a sixth star authority.

Bai Yun was going to the hunter union to register as an official hunter. He wanted to get a hunter union license. This would allow him to have an identification in addition to help him take up various jobs, which could give him give him a source of income. Also the dangerous jobs could help him improve him techniques or cultivation. Moreover the union cards were also a source of pride. For example his father had a rare six silver star card, which was the source of envy for pretty much everyone.

Being the place where the headquarters of the Hunter Union was, the Yellow city hunter union was very busy. But qi condensation cultivators would not go there except on special occasions. There were a few other locations in yellow city for lower level cultivators. Bai Yun was going one of such locations. There was even one in the Bai Clan, but he did not want to go there due to various reasons.

Once Bai Yun reached there. He walked into the entrance and looked around. He wanted to get a id and sell as much of the items he had collected in the beast valley.

He asked around, and quickly found the office for new registrations. There were a few people waiting to register. Since most people registered early, there were a lot of people registering in the hunter union here everyday. Bai Yun had to wait for a while in the queue before it was his turn. Since most of the people were in the qi step, he did not stand out at all.

Bai Yun walked up to the counter and gave his name. When they found out that he was from the Bai clan, and especially that he was the son of the famous Bai Mu, they were surprised to say the least. They were justifiably confused as to why he did not register at the hunter union office in the Bai clan. Bai Yun escaped the inquiry by saying that his mother would worry if he registered as a hunter right after he was healed. They seemed to accept the reason. It seemed as if they have never heard of the demon queen of the Shadow Stream Academy.

Once they took down his important information, like his age, his cultivation, other details etc, they issued him a card in his name. The card of the hunter union could be used world wide. It could not only function as a identity but also as a bank card. The merchant union operated a bank which had branches across the world, and a hunter union registration automatically opened an account with the Little Merchant Bank.

”This is an important identity card. Each person can only own one, as the card is tied to your personal aura and soul signature. This also means that a person can have only one card each. That is why the card is considered as a good identification tool. It cannot be faked. Well that's not true. Maybe there are ten people in the world who could fake a union card.” The person who was in charge of registration said, laughing as he did so.

There were many counters where he could sell items in the hunter union. Bai Yun joined a queue in one of the counters. This queue was much longer than the one for the new registrations. Also unlike that line, this was made up of mostly veteran hunters.

As a result sometimes some arguments would break out between hunters over their place in the queue. Some would even try to cut the queue if they could.