Kai stood outside the D-rank gate for a full minute.

[D-Rank Dungeon found.]

[D-Rank Dungeon: Sandy Cavern.]

[Recommended Level: 18.]

Instead of testing out the E-Rank gate, he wanted to push himself with a higher-level one. From what he learned online, E-Rank gates ranged from 10 to 15, while D levels ranged from 15 to 20. It was a weird setup, but some people found out it wasn’t just a jump in level, but in the monsters’ abilities.

And worst of all, the number of monsters inside the dungeon.

It was recommended to reach level 17 before trying D ranks. Which meant he couldn’t make any mistakes, considering he was below 10.

Fortunately, his distortion rarely did.

He then glanced down at his phone to see that the original clip had been sitting at four hundred and ninety thousand yesterday when he went to sleep. This morning, it had crossed nine hundred thousand and was still moving.

Not at the overnight pace.

Faster, the counter jumped in intervals that suggested something had shifted in how the footage was circulating. A larger platform had picked it up, or a specific account with a significant following had been reposted, or both.

The comments were coming in faster than the view counter was updating, and new reposts kept appearing every few minutes, each one finding a slightly different audience and restarting the spread.

He watched one more refresh. The number moved by three thousand in the time it took to register the previous count.

The system notification he had closed before sleeping was still sitting in his memory from this morning’s check.

[External Attention: Surge Detected.]

[Scaling Effect: Active.]

[Distortion Output: Increasing.]

The scaling had been climbing without him doing anything, running on footage of something he had already done, and the distortion had been responding to that in real time through the night.

He closed the phone and scanned the crowd outside the gate before walking through.

As Kai pocketed his phone, a gate two blocks south pulsed and spat out three players.

The first one was walking. Barely. Her left arm hung at a wrong angle, and someone had wrapped her torso in bandaging that had already soaked through. She sat down on the curb without being told to and put her head between her knees.

The second player was being carried by the third, who was breathing the way people breathe when they have been breathing too hard for too long and haven’t recovered yet. He set his teammate down against the fence and stood with his hands on his knees.

A small crowd gathered around them.

"D-rank?" someone asked.

"Recommended level eighteen." The one still standing didn’t look up. "We were seventeen."

Nobody said anything to that.

Kai recalled the recommended level on his own gate. It was eighteen, and he did it at level nine, closing the gap with his power and clearing it.

Then he paused and saw a notice had been fixed to the fence beside the gate overnight.

Bold text: GATE DISTRICT SAFETY BRIEFING — ALL RESIDENTS ADVISED TO REGISTER WITH LOCAL COORDINATION OFFICE.

Below it, smaller: Schools in districts 4 and 7 have adjusted pickup schedules due to gate proximity. Parents, please confirm arrangements.

Beside that, taped by someone else entirely, a handwritten note on torn paper: My kid just cleared her first dungeon yesterday! She’s 19!

Both pieces of paper were damp from the morning air. Neither had been there two days ago.

He then noticed three people near the entrance, spread across the approach in positions too well-distributed for strangers waiting their turn. Similar posture, similar glance timing, each of them watching the gate without quite watching it.

When one of them shifted position, the other two adjusted without looking at each other. Coordinated movement without a signal.

That took practice.

He memorized the pattern and walked through.

[D-Rank Dungeon: Active.]

The layout opened into a wide, broken landscape. Jagged uneven ground with a pale open sky above, wind cutting across in irregular gusts that pushed at his clothes and made the air feel active and unpredictable. A dungeon designed for movement rather than corridor tactics, which meant the creature types were going to be built differently than what F-rank had been producing.

He stopped for a second as the ground shook beneath.

The first monster appeared from below the surface, sliding upward through the ground and stepping out. It was a roughly human-shaped monster made out of sand.

[Sand Wraith]

[Level 17.]

The average creature here was vastly above the last F-rank boss he’d cleared. He watched the Wraith circle instead of charge, reading its pattern.

He gave it twenty seconds, and it didn’t commit. Then he moved first, stepping forward and swinging at what passed for the creature’s center. The blade connected, and the Wraith scattered. Sand particles spread across the broken ground around him in a wide radius, no longer holding any recognizable form.

He stepped back and stayed still.

The sand began pulling back together. Grains drifted toward each other, and the Wraith reformed, rising from the ground up, thinner than before but whole.

Kai watched it settle.

One hit hadn’t been enough.

That mattered. A creature that got back up after the first swing was a problem for the chain and he needed to know if two swings on the same target still counted as one clean kill, or if the system saw the gap between them.

He watched the Wraith move to the left before he rushed towards it again. This time aiming for the dense knot he could see in its upper chest, where everything seemed to hold together. The Fractured Blade shifted slightly as he swung, finding the angle on its own.

The Wraith dropped.

The sand scattered and went still.

[Level Increased: 9 to 11.]

[+2 Stats]

[Rank Increased: F-rank to E-Rank!]

Kai blinked before opening up his stats that far surpassed the average level 11 player.

[Player: Kai Rosefield.]

[Rank: E.]

[Class: Null.]

[Level: 11.]

[Exp Requirement: 750/1500]

[Attributes]

[Strength: 25 (+30).] 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

[Vitality: 28 (+25).]

[Agility: 24 (+10).]

[Magic: 25(+10).]

"Oh, it represents my overall strength or level range." He muttered in surprise before closing the screen. He looked calm on the surface, but he couldn’t stop the faint warmth of rising to the next rank with his own effort and being closer to his goals.

Then more notifications appeared.

[Adaptive Response: Active.]

[Output Adjustment: Confirmed.]

[Drop Quality: Optimized.]

[Consecutive Chain: Active.]

He looked at the consecutive chain notification. The two-hit kill had counted as one, and the chain rewarded that momentum.

[External Attention: Increasing.]

Still climbing, even inside the dungeon with no audience here, no footage, and it didn’t matter. Out there, people were still watching what he’d already done.

He closed the screen and kept moving.

The Ironback Strider came from the far end of the broken terrain, covering ground faster than its bulk suggested it should, head dropped into the charge position with all that weight concentrated forward.

[Ironback Strider.]

[Level 17.]

Kai stepped to the side as it passed and swung at the curved plating across its back. The blade skipped off without biting in. The shell was rounded just enough to throw the force sideways.

The Strider turned and came at him again.

It was faster than expected, even as he evaded, the blow smashed into his arm. Sending waves of pain from his elbow down to his wrist. He took a breath as he continued to back away before checking his arm.

There was nothing broken, and he could still hold his sword. But his next swing was going to be slower, so he shifted his weight, found his footing, and kept his eyes on the Strider.

D-rank was not F-rank.

The Strider had barely been trying.

The third charge came, and this time he aimed for the gap between two of the larger plates instead of the surface. The Fractured Blade found the angle before he did, shifting mid-swing to meet it.

The edge went through clean. He hit the same spot twice more, and the Strider went still.

[Drop Quality: Optimized.]

[Distortion Output: Sharp Increase Detected.]

[Level Increased: 11 to 12.]

[+1 Stats]

He closed the notification and rolled his shoulder before flinching from the pain that would last for a bit.

He looked at the dungeon ahead.

More of the same, probably, except harder with a lot of monsters he needed to clear. The boss at the end would be worse than anything he had just fought. But he already tested out what he wanted and didn’t need to venture any deeper for now.

Going deeper would produce credits and experience, but the rate of new information per engagement dropped significantly from here. He had already found the result that justified the run.

If he was wrong about any of his distortion mechanics, the people who paid for it were asleep in an apartment waiting for him to come home. He had eight days, and he could not afford to do anything wrong.

He headed towards the exit and headed back home.

...

Mina was in the kitchen when he got back. "There’s another video of you," she said.

"In the dungeon or leaving?"

"Clearing multiple dungeons." Mina crossed her arms. "Someone filmed you walking into two of them and then got pictures of you coming out of another one."

Kai set his bag down. "I didn’t notice."

"Or maybe they were skilled," Mina said with a raised brow.

"There’s a chance," he said.

She was quiet for a moment, and then she spoke. "Kai, do you think it’s safe for you to..."

"Nobody’s going to do anything..."

"Yet." She looked at him steadily. "I’ve been working. I’ve seen how aggressive some people get when they decide something belongs to them."

He crossed the kitchen and touched her hair lightly, making her freeze. "Trust me like you always do," he said. "Nothing will happen, I will make sure of it."

Mina held the look for a moment and then exhaled. "When did I not... Fine, but if I see you limping, then we will have words."

From the other room, Leo’s voice came through the wall loudly. "I am telling you it is real. Just because he is Null doesn’t mean he can’t clear a dungeon. He can..."

Mina glanced toward the wall and back at Kai.

"He’s been defending you to his friends all day," she said. "Since this morning." She said it quietly.

"He really didn’t have to–"

"Don’t be silly, of course he will. That’s how we’ve always been." Mina said before walking away.

Through the wall, Leo’s voice had shifted slightly, still certain, but onto something more specific now.

"...but look at the comments. Not the ones saying he’s fake. The ones asking where the gates are. Someone’s been mapping which ones he used."

Leo had paused, listening to his friend’s response. "I don’t know. But it’s the same person on three different posts. They’re not asking because they’re fans."

Kai stood very still for a moment. Through the wall, Leo was still talking, building his case with the patient certainty of someone who had been having this argument all day and had not once considered the possibility that he was going to lose it.

He sat down.

[External Attention: Sharply Increasing.]

[Distortion Output: Increasing.]

[Adaptive Response: Accelerating.]

He closed the system and pushed back from the desk.

The distortion numbers had climbed while he was in the dungeon. Not the same steady pace from the morning, but steeper, the curve angling upward in a way that matched the view counter refresh he’d watched outside the gate.

He looked at the notifications and then at his arm, which still had opinions about the Ironback Strider.

D-rank had cost him the use of his arm for the rest of the run, and the boss at the end would have been worse. He had made the right call turning back. The right call was also the slow call, and the slow call was one that his calculations could not currently afford.

He needed something to change the equation.

He thought about D-rank and what it had taken from his arm today. He thought about the eight days on the notice and what those eight days required. He thought about the gap between where he was and what the debt needed him to be.

Every calculation led to the same answer.

He needed a partner.