Sunday evening in the apartnt had developed its own specific quality over the last several weeks. It was not quiet exactly, not with Leo present, but it was the particular variety of loud that felt like ho rather than intrusion.
The current situation was Leo’s fault, which was also consistent with most Sunday evenings.
"Sit down," Leo said.
"No," Kai said.
"Sit down."
"No."
Leo pointed at the television with the gravity of soone presenting important evidence. "You literally need to see this."
Kai looked at him. Leo looked back. The standoff lasted approximately five seconds before Mina pointed at the couch without saying anything.
Kai sat down.
"Traitor," he said.
"I choose survival," Mina said.
Leo nodded approvingly. "A wise decision."
Sera, who had arrived an hour earlier with the specific lack of ceremony of soone who had been showing up on Sundays long enough that arrival no longer required announcent, was already settled at one end of the couch. She was holding the cup of tea Mina had produced at so point. Kai had not seen it appear. It had simply been there.
Leo claid the remote with the energy of soone seizing a aningful resource, and the television switched to a compilation video.
MYTHICAL DUNGEON CLEAR: REGIONAL EDITION.
Leo grinned. "You know what’s funny?"
"No," Kai said.
"Everybody has been watching our city."
"Our city?"
Leo pointed at the screen. "The Mythal Dungeon is still trending. Especially the Divine Maze."
Sera did not look surprised by this. Neither did Mina. The Divine Maze clearly had circulated broadly enough that Kai had stopped tracking the references to it weeks ago, but knowing it was still moving through the regional networks and seeing evidence of other cities’ clears alongside it were different things.
The first video was Virelia.
Rain, grey buildings, a district that had been in rough shape before a molten titan the size of a building had made it considerably worse. The footage quality was not excellent. The fight was.
A figure in a dark red jacket entered the fra. Silver hair. Twin short blades. The system notification is visible in the corner of the footage.
Aric Vash. Level 55.
The titan’s arm ca across in a swing that should have been unavoidable at that range.
Aric was not where the arm expected him to be. He was not visible anywhere. Then decay spread from a point at the titan’s midsection outward, stone cracking and tal rusting in an expanding radius, the creature’s movents slowing as the effect accumulated. The molten flow from its joints reduced to a trickle. The explosions when it tried to force motion through the deteriorating body looked wrong, delayed, like ti around the creature had developed a different relationship with itself.
Then Aric moved through it. Twin blades. The titan ca apart from the structural failures the decay had created.
The tistamp showed forty-four minutes.
Leo leaned forward. "Okay."
Nobody said anything for a mont.
"That was cool," Leo said.
"That was cool," Kai said.
Sera looked at him. "You’re admitting it."
"It was objectively cool."
Leo looked victorious, which he apparently needed to express physically by leaning back and making a satisfied sound.
The second clip was Astran Port, a city built around the ocean, with harbor walls taking spray from a storm that was clearly not entirely natural. A woman stood at the harbor edge in a grey coat over light armor. Crimson hair. Silver glasses. The approach she had to her fight was imdiately different from Aric’s.
Elena Mirel. Level 54.
She did not rush. Every movent was the minimum required. The sea serpent she was fighting was large enough to treat buildings as obstacles rather than cover, and it was fast in the way of things that lived in water, the whole body participating in every motion.
She had already repositioned before it arrived. Every ti. The battle looked less like combat and more like soone working through a problem that had a correct solution they had already identified and were executing in sequence. Ten minutes in, the serpent froze. It shattered from the inside.
Leo said, "She’s terrifying."
Sera nodded. "Yes."
Leo looked at her. "Wait. You’re also terrifying."
"Thank you."
"That wasn’t a complint."
"I’ll take it anyway."
The third clip opened with explosions, a cara drone, and soone speaking directly into it at a volu and energy level that suggested they were performing for an audience they were extrely confident in.
"—and if this dungeon doesn’t explode in the next thirty seconds, I’m demanding a refund."
Hollow Reach. The Crimson Twins.
The one speaking was Kael Crimson. The one beside him was Luna Crimson. Kael had the bearing of soone who had been performing since before he was given anything to perform in. Luna had the bearing of soone who had accepted that her brother existed and had developed a functional relationship with that fact.
The fight was impressive for a completely different reason than the previous two. Neither of them was doing anything individually that Aric or Elena had not done. What they were doing was happening in constant reference to each other, every movent creating a condition that the other one exploited before the opponent could respond to the first action. The Mythical boss in their footage never established a rhythm because the rhythm they created was not the boss’s.
The final attack landed. Victory. The stream comnt feed that ran alongside the footage was moving too quickly to read anything specific.
Leo laughed. "I like them."
"Because they’re good?" Mina asked.
"No. Because they’re funny."
The compilation kept running.
More cities, more challenges, different power types, different strategies, and different conditions. A clear in a city that had been mostly flooded, the hunter used a class that worked with water rather than against it.
A clear in a city where the Mythical gate had been in the middle of the main comrcial district, and the fight footage showed storefronts in the background that were still technically operational.
A clear conducted entirely at night because that was when the boss was accessible.
None of them looked like Mythal’s clear. Every city had solved its Mythical Dungeon differently. Kai wasn’t looking at the levels. He was looking at how they fought.
Sera had gone quiet. "The system won’t keep city rankings separate forever," she said.
The room went quieter. Leo lowered his snack. Mina looked at the television and then at Sera.
"What do you an?" Kai said.
Sera leaned back slightly. "Think about it. We already have city rankings. Contribution rankings. Dungeon rankings." She pointed at the screen where the compilation was still running through regional footage. "The next step seems obvious."
Nobody said anything.
"Regional rankings," she said.
Kai actually considered it, because she was not constructing an argunt; she was describing a pattern that the system had been establishing since it launched. Every update made the world feel a little bigger.
Regional rankings made sense.
And after regional ca national.
Mina said, "And after regional?"
Sera said, "Probably national."
Leo put his snack down completely. "That sounds exhausting."
"It sounds like it’s coming whether it’s exhausting or not," Mina said.
The compilation had moved to its final section. Regional rankings. Current top perforrs across the docunted clears. Nas appeared with their associated levels.
[Aric Vash.]
[Level 58.]
[Elena Mirel.]
[Level 59.]
[The Crimson Twins.]
[Level 55.]
The levels were not dramatically higher than Kai’s but the gap was real. But he wasn’t surprised as from what he heard, the amount of top rankings in those cities was low. So those three had more of a monopoly on C-Rank dungeons, allowing them to level up more.
If anything, it made him curious.
They had faced different problems and found different answers. Kai wanted to see them for himself.
Leo noticed. "You want to fight them," he said.
Kai looked away from the screen. "Maybe," he said.
"That’s absolutely a yes."
Sera laughed. Mina shook her head in the way she shook her head when she had already accepted sothing she was not going to argue against.
Kai did not bother with the denial because Leo was correct, and the denial would simply extend the conversation without changing the conclusion.
The thought of running against Aric’s approach, whatever the decay chanic was doing to ti and structural integrity, was genuinely interesting.
Elena’s economy of movent, the puzzle-solving quality of how she had handled the sea serpent, and the question of how that translated into actual engagent. The Crimson Twins’ synchronization and what it would look like against soone who did not have a partner it had been calibrated to.
All of it was interesting.
The television kept running. More footage from more cities, the regional picture building itself out across the screen, and the apartnt around it was warm.
The conversation had gone comfortable again, Leo explaining at so length why the Crimson Twins were the correct answer to so question nobody had asked.
Mina responded with the patient engagent she brought to all of Leo’s explanations.
Sera was sitting at the end of the couch with her tea and looking at the regional rankings. Kai was looking at the sa list.
The city rankings had been the first scope. Regional was coming. National was further out, but the direction was clear.
The system was not finished expanding the fra of comparison.
For the first ti since the Mythal phase ended, Kai could see past the next imdiate step. Not just the next dungeon or the next threshold.
The actual shape of what was coming, the competition structure the system was building toward, the hunters in other cities who had been working through their own versions of the sa problems he had been working through.
He looked at Aric Vash’s level.
He looked at his own.
The gap was real.
That made it worth closing.
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