Kai noticed her on the second block.

It was a woman with blond hair and blue eyes wearing black pants and a white blouse. She was keeping half a step more distance than a casual pedestrian would, and her phone was angled in a way that did not match where she was actually looking. He clocked it on his second pass of the area behind him and kept walking without changing his pace or giving any sign that he had noticed.

He adjusted his route toward the nearest gate instead.

[F-Rank Dungeon found.]

[F-Rank Dungeon: Little Cavern.]

[Recommended Level: 3.]

It was an F-rank.

Under normal circumstances, it would not have been worth his time. But now it was perfect and also a test to see if she would really follow him into it. He stepped through without looking back, though he heard the slight change in her footsteps behind him that told him she had made the decision to follow.

’Interesting, I might not have to do this on my own.’

The dungeon formed around him.

It had narrow corridors with broken stone walls and low ceilings that made the space feel smaller than its actual dimensions. A place that rewarded tight movement and punished hesitation.

[F-Rank Dungeon: Active.]

The first creature came around the corner before he had taken five steps. It had six legs and a flat, wide body covered in pale chitinous plating.

[Crawler.]

[Level 3.]

The blade moved before Kai had fully committed to the swing. The edge found the angle on its own, and the creature split cleanly down the middle without him stopping.

"What—" she said and stopped. He heard her adjust her grip on the phone.

Two more appeared around the next corner together, one the same type as the first. The other larger, roughly dog-sized, with exposed rib-like bones visible through thin grey skin and a jaw that opened too wide for the size of its head.

[Crawler.]

[Level 4.]

[Bone Hound.]

[Level 5.]

They came at him from slightly different angles, and he let them both close before he stepped to the side and brought the blade between the two of them. Both dropped at the same moment, and the corridor went quiet again except for the sound of footsteps behind him that were getting closer than they should have been.

"What, how did you..." the voice said, not finishing the sentence.

Kai turned the next corner without answering.

The system flickered at the edge of his vision.

He felt the blade responding to it in real time, the edge sharper and more certain in his grip than it had been at the start of the corridor.

Three more creatures appeared at the end of the next passage. All coming from different angles and clearly a coordinated spawn designed to catch a solo player in a crossfire of sorts. Kai stopped walking and let them close the distance instead of meeting them halfway. He stood still and felt the system respond to the held position, the distortion output spiking.

[External Attention: Increasing.]

[Distortion Output: Sharp Increase Detected.]

When they were almost on him, he stepped forward into the one coming from the center. The blade barely moved, but it had already arrived in front of the monsters. As if appearing where it needed to be, with the timing already worked out.

All three dropped within a second of each other.

"That is not possible," she said, her phone shaking in her hand. "He waited for all three before attacking... how is he so precise?"

The dungeon did not slow him down after that. He moved through the remaining corridors at a steady pace, the creatures dropping almost before they reached him. Each fight ended faster than the last as the blade’s adaptation kept refining. By the time he reached the boss’s corridor, the motion had become automatic.

The boss’s room was small, which suited what he was working with. The creature filling it was broad, covered in grey stone-like hide with a jaw that made up roughly a third of its total body mass, the teeth inside it the size of his fingers.

[F-Rank Boss: Stonejaw]

[Level 10.]

It roared when he entered and charged immediately. He did not dodge and did not try to use the room’s limited space to create distance. He stepped inside the swing instead, closing the gap entirely and too close to miss.

He drove the blade forward at the point where the stone hide thinned near the creature’s throat.

The Stonejaw stopped mid-motion, the momentum of the charge dying before it could complete, and then it came down heavily, and the room went quiet.

[Dungeon Clears: Solo.]

[Level Increased: 12 to 13.]

[+1 Stats]

Kai stood still for a moment and then turned around. To see that she had lowered the phone, forgetting she was filming.

"You knew I was following you," she said.

"From the second block," Kai said.

Her expression shifted. "And you chose this gate anyway."

"Yes."

A pause while she figured out what that meant. "You planned this."

Kai looked at her and saw her class that said: [Sound Sorcerer - Uncommon] and then her rank, which was F. "What’s your name?"

"Sora," she said, as the question had surprised her.

"Keep recording, Sora," he said, and walked past her toward the exit.

Outside, the gate collapsed behind him, and the crowd was already there.

Not the scattered onlookers from his previous runs, but an actual crowd. The gate district had more people in it than before.

Not all of them were players but ordinary pedestrians who had rerouted their morning to pass through here. Even though the news crew was setting up on the far corner, a food cart that hadn’t existed yesterday was already running a line.

The city was learning how to watch.

Phones were up before he had cleared the gate exit, and he could hear the notification sounds as people started posting in real time. The recognition moved through the group as a wave, not loud at first, just a ripple of people pointing and nudging the person next to them.

"That is him."

"The Null class from the clip."

"He just came out alone again."

Kai walked at the same pace he always walked, not slowing for the crowd. But not speeding up, moving through the opening they made for him without acknowledging that they were making it.

Behind him, he heard Sora’s voice. "He just cleared the gate solo. F-rank, full clear, boss included, alone—" She was narrating to her stream now, her voice picking up energy. "Dungeon footage goes up in ten minutes—"

Someone in the crowd shouted. "Null Class!"

Not hostile or mocking.

But it was filled with excitement and joy. It was the first time his name had ever been shouted out like that. It felt strange in a way he wasn’t prepared for, and he had to keep walking. Yet the crowd wasn’t done as someone near the front started clapping, and it spread through the crowd. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

Then more.

[External Attention: Surge Detected]

Not everyone joined in, but enough did. The ones who had watched the first clip and came down to see it for themselves, who had already made up their minds before they got here.

Kai kept walking and did not stop for it and did not react to it visibly, but he heard it.

[External Attention: Rising Rapidly.]

[Scaling Effect: Accelerating.]

Kai was still reading his system notifications when something made the crowd shift.

He looked up.

The building screen across the street had updated, a single new line added to the ranking list, the way a stone drops into water, quietly, before anyone realizes what it has disturbed.

[Rank 86]

[Kai Rosefield]

[Class: Null.]

[Level 13.]

[Dungeon Cleared: 7.]

The crowd saw it before he fully processed it. The pause that moved through them was not like the noise before it.

The first noise had been excitement.

This was realization.

This was two hundred people all registering the same information at the same moment and holding it for one second before they knew what to do with it.

Then someone said, "He’s on the list."

And someone else: "NULL class is ranked."

"...He’s climbing already?"

And then a third voice, someone who had clearly been arguing about this online all morning: "I told you! I told everyone! Damn it feels good to be right!"

The noise that followed was different from before. Before, people had been reacting to a rumor. Now they were reacting to a fact.

...

Three people near the back of the crowd weren’t cheering.

They were watching the ranking screen in shock and disbelief. One of them was a young F-rank with dirty armor that had cracks on it. He was staring at the NULL next to Kai’s name, had been staring at it since it appeared.

"He doesn’t have a class," he said softly.

The woman beside him in F-rank gear looked at the screen too. "He really doesn’t... Which means he has no skills or strong advantage...," she said.

"And he’s on the list."

She didn’t answer that one.

The young man pulled up his own status screen.

A common class — Blade Dancer. Yet it wasn’t a very strong class and forced him to find a team to clear the various F-rank dungeons. And made him despair at the thought of an E-rank dungeon, the kind he’d had to run from.

He had thought reality was telling him people like him couldn’t rise up. But he looked at the ranking screen.

[Rank 86.]

[Kai Rosefield.]

[Class: Null.]

He put his phone away.

He didn’t say anything else, but something inside of him surged, and a voice echoed inside. One that told him, one more time.

Let’s try once more.

...

Kai looked at the screen.

Rank 86.

Two days of runs in a city full of named classes and organized guilds, starting from nothing, and the number said 86. He closed the system and kept walking.

"Kai."

He stopped. Daniel was standing a few steps back, and something in his face had changed. The last time they had spoken, he had looked at Kai the way people look at something they have already decided is not worth their time. He did not look that way now.

"I saw the video," Daniel said.

Kai waited.

Daniel sighed before looking at the ranking display and then back at Kai. "That was not luck," he said. "What you did there... It seemed we were wrong about you."

"Join the club." Kai bluntly replied.

Daniel paused before laughing and saying. "Last time you were 97 and now already 86, you don’t seem to be keen on stopping." Daniel slightly frowned. "All without help and just solo." He paused. "Guilds are going to start asking about you, and some of them probably already are."

"Which ones?" Kai asked. "And what are their approaches?"

Daniel shook his head slightly. "It doesn’t matter which one yet, but as their approach... Hopefully it’s the peaceful one." He looked at Kai with the specific attention of someone updating a belief they had held confidently until recently. "You are going to keep doing this."

"Yes," Kai said. "Now isn’t the time to stop."

"You’re right..." Daniel let out a slow breath. "Then be careful," he said.

He started to leave and then stopped. "There’s a guild called Ironpact," he said, without turning around. "They’ve been recruiting hard since day one, and they don’t ask twice." He paused. "Just so you know what’s coming."

He left while Kai said nothing and turned back to the street.

He was almost clear of the crowd when he saw them.

Three people stood across the street watching him. The crowd around them was still moving and talking and holding up phones, but these three were not doing any of that.

They were just standing there, looking at him. The tallest one caught his eye and held it deliberately. Kai looked back at him for a moment, then turned and kept walking.

Behind him, the crowd was still buzzing. Sora’s voice was still carrying over the noise, narrating to a stream that was probably pulling in viewers fast. The ranking screen still showed rank 86.

The crowd reacted.

The three across the street decided.

Kai’s phone lit up as he turned the corner.

Unknown number, but it was the same one that sent the message.

So you don’t plan on falling off, good. We really should talk... After all, I know what you’re doing, not the footage, the actual mechanic.

He stopped walking.

This time, they did not wait for him to ignore it. A message came through immediately, like they had been watching for him to see the notification.

I can help you.

Kai stood on the corner and didn’t move.

The crowd noise from the gate was still audible half a block away. The three people across the street were probably already moving. The ranking system had his name on it now, public and permanent, and eight days was not very long.

He typed one word back.

When.

He put his phone in his pocket and kept walking.