The dungeon was on its third wave when the armor started bleeding.

Not from damage.

The creatures in this dungeon hadn’t landed anything worth calling a hit. The blood came from the stacks. Pressure was building past the point Raze’s body could contain it, and began coating his figure as he tore another monster in half.

[Blood Tyrant: Stack 4.]

The fourth Rock Beast burst from the shadows to his left. Raze turned toward it without adjusting his pace, broadsword sweeping in a horizontal arc that started at his hip and ended at nothing because the creature had already come apart at the middle before the swing completed. Both pieces hit the floor.

He kept moving through the fragments without looking down.

The high-ceilinged passages were designed for creatures that used darkness and tight angles to set ambushes. That had been a problem once.

Two more Rock Beasts came from ahead, movements synchronized. They rushed him from opposite sides and generated stone pillars between them, trying to split his attention and funnel him into a tight angle.

Raze walked forward into the pillars.

His broadsword discharged a wave of crimson that turned the stone to powder before impact, and he crossed through the dust into the gap between the two creatures. His blade found the first one’s throat before it had finished processing that the barrier was gone.

The second one’s hand had converted to a stone spear already in motion toward his back. He drove his elbow backward into its skull, and a cracking sound echoed out.

[Blood Tyrant: Stack 6.]

The sixth stack arrived differently from the first five.

Stacks one through five were additive. Each layering onto the previous until the pressure in his chest and arms was specific and present in a way that most sensations weren’t. Stack six was something else. The additives stopped being separate and merged into a single condition that sat behind his eyes and changed how the dungeon read to him.

He could see the exact position of every creature in the corridor. Fifteen feet was the same problem as three feet.

The Rock Beasts that were still moving did so at a pace that belonged to a different category of urgency than what Raze was currently operating in. He watched them register him as a threat, but he knew none of them was going to be able to do anything to stop him.

A massive form dropped from the ceiling ahead. Larger than the corridor creatures, built for the wider chambers deeper in the dungeon. Brown skin with rock fragments fused along its spine and arms, amber eyes that processed threats with more intelligence than the Rock Beasts managed.

[Stone Rumble]

[Level 24.]

Raze closed the distance. His broadsword went in at the torso and came out the other side, and the Stone Rumble was already dissolving by the time his left fist followed through.

Another Rock Beast tried the blind-side approach. He sidestepped without adjusting his grip, let momentum carry it past him, and brought the sword down across its back as it went.

[Blood Tyrant: Stack 8.]

The eighth stack was when the blood stopped dripping and started flowing, moving down his fingers in thin, steady lines that caught the corridor light. Raze flexed his hand and watched it track the contours of the armor.

There was something clarifying about it. The stacks showed on the outside now, proof that what was happening inside was real. He kept walking toward the boss chamber door, and he saw the Stonehulk fill half the room.

Stone armor plating covered its entire body, with moss covering it. It moved on four limbs interchangeably while its amber eyes registered Raze the moment he crossed the threshold, and its eyes began to glow.

[C-Rank Boss: Stonehulk.]

[Level 27.]

It charged, each step registering as a small impact through the chamber floor.

Raze sidestepped at the last moment and drove his broadsword through the Stonehulk’s shoulder joint. Crimson energy discharged along the blade’s edge on contact.

The Stonehulk roared and spun faster than its size suggested it should manage, sweeping a rear limb in a wide arc. Stone fragments were scattered across the floor where Raze had been standing.

He was already climbing.

The embedded sword gave him leverage, and he used it to get to the creature’s back, felt the angle shift as the Stonehulk tried to locate where the threat had gone, and yanked the blade free before the repositioning could trap him.

He dropped back to the floor.

[Blood Tyrant: Stack 10.]

The tenth stack was the point of the whole exercise.

The Stonehulk’s next movement was visible before it began, not prediction but the stacks slowing the monster’s weight shift and attack path into something he could read three seconds early. He grabbed the creature at the joints, felt the stacks running through his arms and shoulders, and lifted it into the ceiling.

The impact rang through the room.

The Stonehulk came down, and Raze was already swinging, the broadsword moving along the trajectory the tenth stack had shown him.

It connected at the neck, finding the crack in the plating that his shoulder strike had started. Crimson energy spread from the impact point and ran outward along the fault lines in the stone armor. Once the fractures had a direction, they traveled on their own.

The Stonehulk shattered.

[Dungeon Cleared: Solo.]

[Blood Tyrant: Stacks Released.]

[Level Increased: 19 to 20.]

The stacks faded from ten downward, each one lifting in sequence, the unified pressure of the tenth dissolving first. And then the earlier layers peeling back one at a time until Raze’s armor had no blood markings on it.

He checked the drops.

Five items. Armor, core materials, and a rare weapon. He assessed the weapon’s damage type and put everything in his inventory without further consideration. He rolled his shoulders once and walked toward the exit.

The ranking notification came through before he reached the gate.

[City Ranking: Updated.]

[All Active Players Now Visible.]

[Recalculated from System Day One.]

He read it and kept walking. He had been at rank three since the first update, and he expected that was where he would find himself, at least in the top ten of the official list.

He was correct.

Outside the gate, a crowd had gathered at the distance people maintained when watching someone emerge from a solo C-rank clear. They stepped back when he appeared, and Raze noted it and didn’t acknowledge it.

As he walked over, he saw a storefront across the street with a banner that wasn’t there before he entered the dungeon.

GUILD AFFILIATES: 10% DISCOUNT.

The shop that had sold sporting goods had a new display: armor ratings, starter weapons, and dungeon-grade rations in stacked rows. The owner stood inside watching the crowd around the gate with a smile on her face.

He then reached the woman with short hair, and she held out a phone. "You should see this," she said. "It’s been going around since yesterday."

He took it.

The paused frame showed a group of four standing outside the collapsed gate entrance in various states of aftermath. Burns on two of them, one sitting against the wall, a fourth standing with the specific posture of someone who had just had a run go badly and hadn’t finished processing it.

Raze let the video play and saw a person walking out of the gate with the gate collapsing. But what caught his attention was the people around whispering about the man having no class.

He raised a brow before watching it twice. Normal speed first, tracking the general shape of what had happened. Then, half speed, watching the movement and the timing specifically. The spacing between steps.

He saw Kai wasn’t moving like he had gotten lucky in the dungeon. No, he walked like everything was planned, and it all worked out. Raze’s eyes narrowed; it was just like when he cleared those E-rank and F-rank rank dungeons without any issue. But this shouldn’t be possible for a person with no class unless he somehow found a way around it.

But is that possible?

That was the interesting part.

"Null class," someone in the group said. "They’re saying he really has no class."

"Is that even possible? All I’ve been hearing is people talking about their classes..." someone else said.

"He lives in Mythal. Same city." A third voice. "He was already ranked higher than most people from my friend’s ceremony. Only Victor Hale and a couple of others are above him."

Raze handed the phone back.

"You think it’s a high-level item?" the woman asked. "Maybe a rare weapon?"

"Either that or the Null Class isn’t what we thought."

He started walking.

He thought about what the footage actually showed and what it meant that he couldn’t explain it with any framework he currently had.

In two weeks of running D-rank dungeons solo, he had encountered maybe four players whose abilities surprised him. All four had classes that explained the surprise once he knew what to look for.

This one he had watched twice, and the explanation still wasn’t there. That was the interesting part but they were in the same city.

They’d meet eventually.

The ranking would keep updating. The footage would keep circulating. And whatever that player was doing, they had not stopped doing it.

Sooner or later, the gap between rank three and wherever that Null class ended up was going to be close enough to test.

He was already looking forward to it.