Chapter 171: Everyone Has an Opinion on the Stray Dog

The first video went live at 8:47 PM, exactly six hours after the draft ceremony concluded.

HUNTER HOT TAKES - LIVE NOW

Mila Chen’s face filled the screen, her platinum blonde hair styled in twin buns that had cost more than most people’s monthly rent. The split-screen showed Chloe Park on the right, her cat-ear headband blinking with neon LEDs.

"Okay Hunters and Hunties!" Mila’s voice hit that specific pitch that made teenage girls grab their phones and middle-aged men complain about kids these day. "Before we even START, I need everyone to sit down because what I’m about to tell you is going to make you lose your MIND."

Chloe bounced in her chair, the camera shaking. "Mila, I’m already sitting and I can’t handle this. The NVA Draft just happened and the entire SYSTEM is in shambles. We’re talking full institutional meltdown!"

"Full meltdown is too SOFT a word!" Mila slammed her hand on the desk. A graphic exploded across the screen, red hair and sharp eyes frozen in that moment from the Gala. "The number one ranked prospect, the mystery man himself, Satori Nakano, just publicly REJECTED all four elite guilds to join—"

A record scratch sound effect. The Onyx Hounds crest appeared, that three-headed dog with broken collars looking somehow both pathetic and defiant.

"THE ONYX HOUNDS!" both girls shrieked in unison.

"The ONYX. HOUNDS." Chloe grabbed her face. "The guild that literally everyone makes fun of. The guild that hasn’t placed above fifth in TWELVE YEARS. The guild where problem cases go to die!"

"And he didn’t go alone!" Mila was reading from her tablet, scrolling frantically. "Number three Natalia Kuzmina followed him. Number five Juan Navarro, that gorgeous sloth man who looks like he’s never been awake a day in his life. Number nine Pan Soomin, who according to my sources completely lost control of her transformation during combat trials and went full feral fox mode—"

"Which is SO hot by the way—"

"SO hot, agreed. THEN we have the Miyamoto twins at thirty and thirty-one, Jacob Williams at thirty-eight, and like six other top-fifty prospects just STAMPEDING to join this dumpster fire of a guild." Mila paused for effect. "That’s half the top twenty prospects choosing the LAST PLACE guild."

The camera zoomed in on Chloe’s face. "The forums are calling it The Onyx Uprising. HeroNet crashed TWICE from traffic. SnapGram engagement metrics are showing a four-hundred-percent spike in NVA-related content. This is THE story."

"Okay but let’s talk about what EVERYONE is thinking." Mila pulled up another photo, this one from the Gala. Satori in that charcoal suit, sharp jaw, those eyes that seemed to see through the camera. "Is this man building a HAREM? Because if you look at the roster, he’s got the ice princess Natalia Kuzmina who is STUNNING—"

"Stunning is underselling it—"

"The feral fox girl who apparently goes into heat during combat—"

"Mila, that’s not how transformations work—"

"BOTH Miyamoto twins who are known for sharing everything, and I mean EVERYTHING—"

Chloe was cackling. "Stop, stop, we can’t say that on air—"

"I’m just asking questions!" Mila held up her hands in mock innocence. "Is the Stray Dog collecting the baddest hunters at NVA for his own personal super-team? Is this a romance? A rebellion? A genius power play? All I know is that boy has ENERGY and I would let him—"

"ANYWAY," Chloe cut in, tears of laughter in her eyes. "If you want to follow this story, use the hashtags OnyxUprising, StrayDogSaga, and NVADraft. We’ll be streaming live coverage all night as more details emerge. This is Hunter Hot Takes, reminding you to stay dangerous, stay gorgeous, and stay SUBSCRIBED!"

The video ended with both girls making heart shapes with their hands.

Within an hour, it had eight million views.

===

GATE BREAK - VBN LIVE BROADCAST

The studio lighting was cold and professional. Park Hyun-Jae sat between Sterling Weaver and Isaiah Foster, her posture perfect, her expression neutral. The opening credits rolled.

"Welcome back to Gate Break. I’m Park Hyun-Jae, and gentlemen, I’ve covered this industry for fifteen years and I’ve never seen the data streams this chaotic." She turned to Sterling. "Your initial reaction to the Onyx Hounds’ unprecedented recruitment."

Sterling Weaver looked like a man trying very hard not to explode. His face had gone red, the veins in his neck visible. When he spoke, his voice vibrated with barely controlled fury.

"It’s a disgrace." Each word came out clipped, violent. "An absolute disgrace. That boy stood on that stage and spit in the face of every tradition, every protocol, every PRINCIPLE that makes this system work. The Argent Sentinels offered him a future. The Scarlet Phantoms offered him POWER. And he chose to play king of the trash heap?"

He leaned forward, jabbing a finger at the camera. "I don’t care what his scores were. I don’t care about his pretty speech. This is either supreme arrogance or dangerous anarchism, and frankly I’m not sure which scares me more."

"Isaiah?" Park Hyun-Jae’s tone remained perfectly level.

Isaiah Foster hadn’t looked up from his tablet. His fingers moved across the screen, pulling up graphs and data streams. When he finally spoke, his voice had that particular quality of a man stating mathematical facts.

"I disagree completely." He glanced at Sterling. "This isn’t anarchy. It’s a market correction."

"A MARKET—" Sterling sputtered.

"Let me finish." Isaiah pulled up a holographic display. "Look at the data. Twelve prospects. Nine of them ranked in the top fifty. Three of them in the top ten. The Onyx Hounds just acquired, in a single afternoon, what amounts to the most dangerous concentration of unorthodox high-potential assets in academy history."

The hologram shifted, showing probability matrices. "The guild system has operated on a simple premise: elite guilds get elite prospects. Safe bet. Predictable returns. But predictable returns cap at a certain level. What Nakano did was consolidate all the statistical outliers, the unpredictable variables, the high-risk high-reward prospects that make traditional guilds nervous."

"That’s insane—"

Isaiah’s smile was thin. "From a pure investment standpoint, it’s the boldest play I’ve ever seen. The question isn’t whether it’s legitimate. The question is why."

Park Hyun-Jae leaned in slightly. "Are you suggesting this was planned?"

"I’m suggesting it’s statistically improbable to be spontaneous." Isaiah pulled up another screen. "Public records show that B-Rank Hunter Luka Kuzmina and Onyx Hounds instructor Braxton Miller attended NVA together. They were teammates for three years. Close friends. Kuzmina’s stepson happens to be Satori Nakano."

The studio went quiet.

"There’s a seventy-eight-percent probability this was orchestrated months in advance. A backroom deal to stack a single guild with hand-picked talent, using family connections to subvert the entire draft process."

Sterling’s fist hit the desk. "I KNEW IT! It’s a fix! An absolute fix! Kuzmina should be investigated, Miller should be investigated, and that Nakano kid should be disqualified for—"

"Sterling." Park Hyun-Jae cut him off smoothly. "We’re speculating. Do you have evidence?"

"I have PATTERN RECOGNITION—"

"Which isn’t evidence." She turned back to the camera. "We’ll continue this discussion after a brief break. Coming up: what does this mean for the other guilds? And later, we’ll discuss the VHC’s official response to what many are calling the most dramatic draft in NVA history."

The commercial break graphic appeared.

Off camera, Sterling was still muttering about investigations and disgrace.

===

VHC OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE - DOCUMENT ID: VHC-PR-NVA-001

SUBJECT:

NVA First-Year Guild Composition

ISSUED:

9:23 PM, Draft Day

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Valorian Hunter Commission extends congratulations to all successful prospects on their guild placement. This year’s draft has resulted in a series of dynamic and unprecedented guild compositions that we believe will foster innovation and healthy competition within the academy environment.

The VHC maintains full confidence in the NVA faculty, including Professor Braxton Miller of the Onyx Hounds, to cultivate this exceptional generation of talent. We look forward to observing the innovative synergies that will undoubtedly emerge from these new team structures.

The Commission reaffirms its commitment to fairness, transparency, and the continued excellence of Valoria’s Hunter education system.

All questions regarding guild placement should be directed to New Vein Academy Administration.

-END TRANSMISSION-

THE BLACK GATE FILES - ENCRYPTED BLOG POST

TITLE:

Forget the Backroom Deal. You’re Not Asking the Right Questions About Anomaly-01.

POSTED:

10:47 PM, Draft Day

AUTHOR:

[REDACTED]

Everyone’s talking about Luka Kuzmina and Braxton Miller. Old teammates. Family connections. A conspiracy to stack the Onyx Hounds.

It’s a good story. Clean. Simple. Satisfying.

It’s also completely missing the point.

Let me give you some data that the entertainment channels won’t touch.

Satori Nakano’s final combat trial was designated Scenario 999. For those who don’t obsessively track VHC protocols like I do, that’s a simulation that hasn’t been deployed in seven years. Know why? Because it has a one-hundred-percent failure rate. Not "most people fail." ALL people fail. It’s designed to be unwinnable.

Nakano received a perfect score.

His combat efficiency was rated at ninety-eight percent. His appeal score maxed the scale. VEGA, the AI that’s been evaluating prospects for a decade, flagged his performance with an "anomalous data signature" tag.

That’s never happened before.

But let’s go back further. The VHC Gala. Everyone focused on his speech, his rejection of Julian Valerius, his viral "Stray Dog" moment. No one’s asking why a C-Rank late manifestation was even INVITED to an event that typically only hosts prospects with confirmed elite guild interest.

No one’s asking why President Seraphina Vance herself spoke to him privately after the confrontation.

No one’s connecting the dots.

Satori Nakano. The same surname as Dr. Kenji Nakano, the disgraced Gate theorist who vanished eight years ago after his research into trans-dimensional consciousness was sealed under Level Seven classification by the VHC. The researcher who claimed Aspects weren’t random genetic mutations but were fragments of SOMETHING ELSE bleeding through the Gates.

The researcher who had a wife. A son.

Public records show Kimiko Nakano, formerly of Graystone Park, married B-Rank Hunter Luka Kuzmina two years ago. She has one biological child.

Coincidence?

In a world governed by cause and effect, I don’t believe in coincidences.

Everyone’s asking why twelve top prospects followed him. That’s the wrong question.

The question is:

what IS he?