The silence lasted about four seconds.

Then someone in the middle of the crowd said. "That’s Black Vein Depth."

And everything came apart at once.

Not one voice, but over twenty, and the information quickly spread through the crowd.

"That dungeon is marked..."

"Three teams went in this morning..."

"The second team had a full support setup..."

"He went in alone..."

"He’s NULL CLASS..."

The woman near the front, the one who had said Kai would die, finally found her voice. "That’s not possible." She was still staring at him in disbelief. "How could a person with no class clear that dungeon!"

Around her, phones were already moving.

Screens tilted toward other screens. Someone had been recording from the roof of the building on the northeast corner and had caught the whole thing on a wide-angle lens while the crowd watched.

Someone else had gotten close enough by zooming in to catch Kai’s face for a few seconds before he left the frame.

Both clips were spreading before he had crossed half a block.

...

Across the city.

Sora was mid-stream when her phone started going off. One notification, then five, then too many to count. Her comments stopped being comments.

She looked at the screen. "Wait."

Her chat had already seen it, and the links were coming in faster than she could open them.

BlackVeinDepth solo clear.

NULL class cleared Black Vein.

"No way—" She opened the first link before she finished the sentence. The video played for the first four seconds, and it showed Kai walking toward the gate. The crowd recording and the gate pulling him in.

She opened the second clip before the first one finished. Kai walked out with the gate collapsing behind him, and he had an indifferent look like he didn’t just do the impossible.

"No. No no no—" She stood up from her chair and then sat back down before standing again in shock. "Is this... okay, wait. WAIT." She rewound the exit clip to the moment the gate collapsed and watched it again. "He just... that’s Black Vein! That is ACTUALLY Black Vein. He came out of Black Vein."

She sat down very carefully.

"Okay," she said. "Okay, I need to— everyone stop talking for one second, I need to think."

Her chat did not stop talking as she stared at it.

"He did it..." She stopped and then started again. "Okay. Okay, that is..." She stopped again in shock and tried to calm herself down. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

But her chat was not helping.

Sora!

Sora! That player you talked about last time, did it!

Black Vein had already claimed a dozen teams!

Even a team with a rare class was killed!

A no-class person actually soloed it!

Sora say something!

"I’m trying to..." She rewound it again and watched his face as he came through the gate. "He looks— why does he look like that!? Why does he look like he just went to buy groceries? He went into a dungeon that ended three teams! And he came out looking like that."

She rewind it a third time.

"Okay, here’s what I need everyone to understand." She pointed at the screen. "That face right there is just unbelievable. Did he really treat Black Vein like a grocery run?! He really solo-cleared it. I genuinely cannot—"

She stopped trying to finish the sentence and just stared.

Yes!

He actually did it!

Can you find him!?

What did he do in there!?

She clicked her mouse and leaned close to the screen. "All right, let’s think about what he faced there. Black Vein Depth has twice the usual monsters, and I even heard the environment itself works against you. Such as the ceiling falling down and the wall shifting." She tapped the video player. "Earlier today, even a full team with a rare class couldn’t clear it."

It wasn’t that bad, right?

I’m sure they made a mistake!

Sora laughed before saying. "Let me show you more context."

She pulled up something else and played it.

It showed thirty seconds of the Black Vein dungeon. It was a team of six with good classes and equipment, two support classes visible in the frame. They made it fourteen seconds past the threshold before the feed cut to outside footage — three of them being helped out, one being carried, two not appearing at all.

The timestamp was from that morning.

"That team was ranked," Sora said. "Two of them are in the top fifty." She let it sit. "They had full support with scouts relaying information from entering earlier and then doing a coordinated entry." She paused. "But Black Vein still sent them home."

Her chat was already connecting the dots before she said anything.

"And yet, Kai was able to do it... By himself."

The chat messages came rushing in, making Sora nod her head with a smirk. In the chat window, fans spammed her name while some tried to ask how long it took Kai to clear it.

She laughed before asking the most interesting question. "What do you guys think he did to clear the dungeon?"

Viewers fired off guesses, which she nodded at.

What do you think he did?

"Well... Watch this." She queued up footage from two days ago and placed it side by side with the Black Vein exit. "Look at how he moves? See, he strikes, and the fight ends." She pointed at the split screen. "I think that’s exactly what he did, he simply went in and swept through them."

Just like that!? But an entire team couldn’t, how could he!

It just means those teams suck, hahahah!

How is he real!?

Sora chuckled and said. "It is most likely he just took them down with one or two strikes." She looked at the exit clip again. "Even there, we can see he did take a beating but still cleared it."

She zoomed the clip. "But again, the most ridiculous part is him clearing it by himself! I’m not okay. I want everyone to know I am not okay right now."

Her chat was not helping.

He’s literally built differently!

Someone check on Sora, she’s about to short-circuit!

Hahahaha, I haven’t seen Sora this worked up in a long time!

SORA FIND HIM!

"I don’t know where he is!"

The comments came onto her screen even faster.

If he can do it without a class...

Watching this guy makes me feel like I should go back out...

Was this not difficult for him!? Will he go even further than this!?

"That’s what I can’t get past," Sora said, leaning toward her camera. "He just solo-cleared a dungeon where multiple teams failed. That has two top-10 rankers preparing to run it, and guilds fighting over it. Yet he acts like it was nothing..."

The chat exploded once more, but Sora didn’t read it as a massive grin appeared on her face.

"Aren’t you guys curious?"

Curious about what?

Do you mean what he will do next!?

Or if he will reveal what happened in the dungeon!?

Her viewer count climbed past forty thousand.

Sora laughed and said. "All good questions, but I’m talking about... Just how far would he go now? Imagine it, what if he reached the top ten in the city? Or... What if he becomes stronger than even those Epic Class Players?"

And she saw the comments explode with many yes, some questioning her words, and others dying to see that just for how funny it would be.

She stared at Kai’s silhouette disappearing into the gate. "He has no class, but I think he is the most dangerous player in this city." She let that sit. "I said what I said."

Her chat erupted.

Most dangerous player in the city!?

Null Class Supremacy!

She saw the viewer count climb and didn’t say anything for a moment.

"Find the next clip the moment it exists," she said in her chat. "Because I really want to see just how far our city’s dark horse will go."

...

’Black Vein Depth solo clear’.

The post had eight hundred replies when it reached Raze’s feed. He was between gates, sitting on the wall outside a C-rank entrance, running his own output calculations for the day.

He read the title. Then opened the clip.

He saw the gate collapsing as Kai walked out, and then he saw the crowd’s reaction. Their look of disbelief, with some of them rubbing their eyes and others falling to the ground in shock. He handed the phone back to the woman who had shown it to him.

"I planned to tackle that one later... But I didn’t expect him to really clear it," he said, and then fell silent for a moment.

Then he stood up and walked toward the gate.

...

Victor was standing in front of the public ranking screen when the update came through.

Not the footage. That was already circulating, had been for the last forty minutes, but he had not looked for it. What he was looking at was the gate status for Black Vein Depth, which had just flipped from contested-uncleared to solo clear, and the name and level sitting next to it.

Level seventeen.

He stood there for a moment. Two ranked teams had failed to clear that dungeon today. In this city, a level seventeen player was still supposed to be grinding D-rank content. That was just how it worked here.

He put his hands in his pockets and walked away from the screen. The footage could wait. He needed to think first.

...

Kai was three blocks from the gate when he understood the crowd was following him.

He stepped through the city gate and sensed ten figures drifting behind him. They did not hurry or shout but simply fell in step with him.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw them trying not to flinch. He turned left at the crossroads, slipped through a narrow market alley, and reemerged on a parallel street. The footsteps shifted behind him.

He turned left again, then right and then three turns in four blocks.

One by one, they fell away. Eight remained.

Their steps locked into a steady rhythm, drawing tighter around him. He picked up his pace and slipped onto the main road, market noise swallowing the sound of his feet. Four shadows now.

A block later, they were gone.

He saw a stall that had sold produce now offering engraved weapon grips and system-interface tutorials on printed cards. A teenager stood watching dungeon footage on her phone while her mother tried to pull her toward a school entrance.

Once he passed the school, he knew everything was fine for now. But he sighed and knew the Ironpact had moved from casual recruitment to careful surveillance. They were building a record of his movements.

That was far more dangerous.

He continued walking home, thinking. How would the conditions read with a team? He didn’t need one to clear dungeons but a well-chosen group might surface something new, or at least speed up the process.

He’d have to find one first, which was a problem on its own.

The attention scaling notification was still climbing at the edge of his vision.

[External Attention: Surge Detected.]

[Scaling Effect: Active.]

[Distortion Output: Sharply Increasing.]

The system was running hotter than it had ever run. He needed to give it something worth responding to before Ironpact figured out his routes.

And then he got a message from Sora asking him about the dungeon.

He sent her a quick explanation before putting the phone away and began planning for the team dungeon tomorrow.