Nathan woke to the sll of toast that wasn’t burning.
He lay still for a mont, inhaling. No smoke. No frantic waving at the detector. Just warm, golden bread heated to the correct temperature and removed from the pan at the right ti. A miracle, by this apartnt’s standards.
"Good morning!" Lucy called from the kitchen corner, brandishing a spatula like a trophy. "I made breakfast. By myself. Nothing caught fire this ti ."
"I can tell." Nathan sat up, rubbing his eyes. "The smoke detector isn’t screaming."
Mirko and Kuro were both in bunny form on the bed. Mirko had assud her "lecture posture", ears forward, chest puffed, one paw raised for emphasis. Kuro lay flat with half-closed eyes, the picture of patient suffering.
’—and that is why the senior summon is responsible for the junior summon’s acclimation to the party dynamic,’ Mirko was saying through the link. ’I trust you’ve been taking notes.’
’Sure thing boss’ Kuro replied reluctantly. ’I’ll rember everything.’
’Then you rember the seventeen tis I’ve corrected your flanking angle.’
’I rember you ntioning it. I don’t rember agreeing you were correct.’
’Insolence. Master, Kuro is being insolent.’
Nathan ignored them and checked his interface. ssages had grown overnight. Word and images from the broadcast had spread across the TCA network, and now every guild with a recruitnt budget seed to have his contact address. Silver Drake. Celestial Peak. Red Dragon. Golden Hawk. Goldcrest. Each promised the sa things in different fonts: resources, training, party support, exclusive Tower access, signing bonuses that made his stipend look like pocket change.
He scrolled without opening any. He wasn’t ready to choose right now. Guild sponsorship ant guild obligations, politics, enemies. He’d just escaped one feud with the Stone family. He wasn’t eager to inherit a dozen more without thinking it through with his party mbers.
"Toast," Lucy announced, sliding a plate in front of him. "Eat it before it gets cold."
---
The TCA forge wing slled of the familiar tal and heat, sa as always. Vex hunched over her workbench with her summon: Ember the Molten Sprite dancing around her shoulders in spirals of orange and gold. The rhythmic clang of her hamr didn’t pause as Nathan entered.
"Back again?" She didn’t look up. "What, did you break sothing in that duel? Looked pretty rough on the broadcast. That Berserker nearly took your Knight’s arm off."
"You watched."
"Everyone watched. Two humanoid summons. A Level 51 Berserker yielding in the final chamber." She set down her hamr and lifted her goggles. "I knew you were hiding sothing, but humanoids? Sheesh, boy. That Assassin one is sothing else. Can’t believe you hid that from ."
"Didn’t see the point in sharing."
"Smart." She wiped her hands on her rag. "So what brings you back? Ring still working fine, I assu. I don’t do refunds."
Nathan placed his D-Grade bow on the workbench. The weapon had been with him since graduation, a standard Academy issue, functional but unremarkable. It had fired the arrows that killed his first monster. It had launched the [Focus Shot] that shattered the Dread Knight. It had been with him through every climb, every duel, every desperate mont. But the Veiled Colosseum had pushed it past its limits. The wood was warped near the grip. The string was fraying. If he was going to climb higher he needed sothing better.
"I need an upgrade."
Vex examined the bow with the clinical detachnt of a surgeon. "D-Grade trash. Basic. Functional but boring. You’ve been climbing with this since graduation?"
"Since the Tutorial Realm."
"And you cleared a High Class Tower with it? Against a Level 51 Berserker?" She shook her head. "Either you’re the best archer I’ve ever seen or the luckiest idiot alive."
"Little of both."
She snorted. "Got materials from the Colosseum? Can’t forge sothing from nothing."
Nathan reached into his inventory and produced the items he’d set aside. Fragnts from the Veil Tyrant, chunks of condensed silver light that still pulsed faintly. The core shard from its chest, a crystalline piece of what had once been the Tyrant’s heart. Silver-infused threads from the veil itself, harvested during the final floors. And the rarest piece: the Tyrant’s Eye, a palm-sized orb of swirling mist and shadow that had dropped as unique loot when the boss collapsed. Not a crafting material in the traditional sense, a trophy, a mark of mastery. But Nathan had a hunch.
Vex’s eyes went wide. She picked up the Tyrant’s Eye with the reverence of a collector handling a museum piece. "This is... you got this from the final boss?"
"Unique drop. I figured you’d know what to do with it."
"Damn right I do." She turned it over in her scarred fingers. The swirling mist inside seed to respond to her touch, shifting from silver to pale gold. "I can work with this. The Eye can be integrated into the bow’s riser... give it piercing properties. The core shard reinforces the limbs. The silver threads for the string. These Tyrant fragnts..." She was muttering to herself now, lost in possibilities. "C-Rank at minimum. Maybe B-Rank if the Eye integrates properly. Could even push A-Rank if I’m willing to lose so sleep."
"Do what you can, please"
"I always do." She set the materials aside with care. "Give a few days. Maybe a week. Good forging takes ti, and you’ve given materials I’ll probably never see again."
Nathan nodded. "I’ll be back."
As he turned to leave, Vex’s voice stopped him. "Cross."
He paused at the door.
"Rember, Try not to be the first one."
The warning lingered, the sa words she’d spoken before his first climb, now weighted with everything since. Nathan t her red eyes.
"I’ll keep that in mind."
---
The apartnt was quiet. Lucy was at school. Only the distant hum of city traffic and the soft rustle of bunny fur against bedsheets.
Nathan sat at the table and opened the Bunny Girl System interface. The familiar blue panel flickered to life. He’d been putting this off since the duel ended, but the question had been burning since Kuro evolved.
"System. How do I summon a third Bunny Girl?"
The pause was longer this ti. Then the interface shifted, and the conditions appeared.
[Third Summon Requirents:]
[1. Host reaches Level 60.]
[2. Achieve an S-Rank clear in a High Class Tower or above with a party of fewer than 4 Climbers.]
[3. A catalyst item: Dragon’s Heart Core.]
Nathan read them twice. Then a third ti, slower.
Level 60. He was at 31 now, and leveling had already begun to slow. He needed a year of consistent grinding, maybe more. It was achievable, but a long road.
Condition 2 was trickier. An S-Rank clear in a High Class Tower was one thing, they’d just done that but that was basically with the help of Derek’s party. But with fewer than four Climbers? The Veiled Colosseum had required a full party of eight in total, and it was on the weaker end of high class towers. A smaller party ant less firepower, less flexibility, less room for error. It ant Nathan would have to carry more weight. It ant the party would need to be stronger.
Condition 3 was the real wall. Dragon’s Heart Core. Items that could only be obtained from specific Elite Class Tower bosses. Dragons, actual dragons, the kind that appeared not as summons but as Tower-born apex predators. Only two recorded instances of dragon summoners in history. One was dead. The other was sowhere in the Top 10.
Mirko shifted to humanoid form and read over his shoulder. Her ears flattened. "Dragon’s Heart Core. The na suggests we will most definitely fight dragons."
"We may need to find the right Tower. Dragon heart cores don’t seem like a high-occurrence drop."
Kuro remained in bunny form but her ntal voice was sharp. ’We will et these conditions. Only a matter of ti and preparation.’
Then the system chid again, a secondary notification.
[Note: The next summon’s abilities and class will be influenced by which summon requirents the Host chooses to prioritize during fulfillnt.]
Nathan stared at the notification, His gar brain, honed by years of analyzing chanics, lit up. Anything requiring dragon parts as a catalyst was going to produce sothing with dragon-tier power. The harder the quest, the better the reward.
"We’re prioritizing Condition 3," he said aloud.
Mirko nodded slowly. "A dragon-aligned summon. That would be... significant."
’Maximum offensive capability,’ Kuro repeated. ’I am an Assassin. Another offense-oriented summon would create synergy. Or competition.’
"Synergy," Nathan said firmly. "We’re a team. Everyone has a role. Whatever the third summon turns out to be, she’ll find her place."
’She?’
"I’m assuming. The system hasn’t given a male option yet."
Mirko’s ears twitched with amusent. "The Bunny Girl Summoning System. The na is indicative."
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