Kai checked the rankings before he left the apartment.

The screen cycled through its morning update with names shifting and positions adjusting, and then it settled.

[Rank 54.]

[Kai Rosefield.]

[Class: Null.]

[Level 19.]

[Dungeons Cleared: 13]

He looked at the entry for a moment before closing the screen. The message came through immediately after the ranking update, as if it had been waiting.

You’re still climbing.

One line with no name. It didn’t need one.

Kai stared at the number on the screen. Victor. He had always worked through other people before, always kept a layer between himself and whatever he wanted done. Calling directly meant something had changed. Kai put the phone down and did not answer it.

Which meant 54 was not a number Victor was comfortable watching pass without acknowledgment. For the first time, Victor looked worried and Kai found that amusing.

He changed into his gear and left.

The first gate was visible from half a block away, and so was the problem with it. Something was off about the crowd outside. The distribution was too consistent for people who had arrived naturally, groups cycling through the entrance in an order that had been arranged rather than emerged.

Wait times for anyone outside the rotation stretched in a way that looked like natural congestion if you were not reading the pattern.

Ironpact again.

They weren’t blocking entry, but delaying other people from entering through a long line of their members.

Kai stood just short of the line and read it in a glance, he’d seen the pattern enough times now. A rotation wearing the shape of a crowd. He counted one cycle to confirm, then turned and walked.

"Not worth it," he said quietly.

He turned north and kept the frustration where it was useful. In the part of his mind that was adding to a plan on how to deal with them in the future. He reached a gate where the Ironpact influence had not yet reached and stepped through it.

[D-Rank Dungeon found.]

[D-Rank Dungeon: Landslide Depths.]

[Recommended Level: 17.]

[D-Rank Dungeon: Active.]

The corridor stretched wide with stone flooring, giving him room to work. Before the first creature appeared, he activated his experiment.

[Class Emulation: Wind Striker - Partial.]

This felt different from flame emulation. Instead of concentrated heat, tension spread across his whole arm. The air around his blade developed directional awareness, like it had opinions about where to go.

The Fractured Blade responded immediately. The edges began to spiral with thin currents of compressed air wrapping around the blade in tight coils until the blade looked less like steel and more like something that had been built from directed wind.

The first creature rounded the corner. Humanoid, fast, built for speed over mass.

[Hollow Runner.]

[Level 16.]

He swung at the first Hollow Runner.

The pressure wave arrived before the steel did, staggering the creature before the blade cut through it.

[Distortion Applied.]

[Drop Quality: Optimized.]

[Amplification Complete.]

His attack wasn’t faster than Lina’s, but the added wind made it arrive quicker and set up for the true attack before the Fractured Blade followed through.

He moved deeper and tried the second emulation when more enemies appeared.

[Class Emulation: Pulse Fist - Partial.]

This sat differently in his forearm. The distortion’s interpretation diverged completely.

When his blade made contact, the pulse didn’t erupt from impact like Kei’s technique. Instead, ripples spread through the air before contact. The ripple reached creatures first, not damaging but disrupting whatever they were attempting. The blade followed through into targets that had already lost footing.

Two creatures fell cleanly, both disrupted before they could commit to attack patterns.

[Distortion Applied.]

[Drop Quality: Optimized.]

[Amplification Complete.]

He continued deeper and activated the third emulation.

[Class Emulation: Thread Caster - Partial.]

No threads materialized. Instead, tension compressed into his blade’s edge as an inherent property rather than an external projection. When he struck, the contact didn’t just cut. It left something behind at impact points, a residual weight that made movement heavier around wounds. Not from damage but from something the distortion was doing to the space at contact sites.

He stood looking at the result longer than he’d stood looking at the others. This one he hadn’t predicted. Which meant there were still things he hadn’t accounted for yet. That was useful and slightly uncomfortable at the same time.

He wondered if all Emulation would diverge from the original, or was it because it was only partialBoth possibilities interested him more than they should have, given that he was still inside a dungeon.

Regardless, he reached the boss chamber.

[D-Rank Boss]

[Iron Sentinel.]

[Level 19.]

The massive creature stood in the center room with armored plating covering every surface; standard approaches would target first. He’d defeated similar bosses by finding armor gaps.

But today wasn’t about normal methods.

He had one emulation still running, the Thread Caster frame, its duration not yet expired. He wanted to know what would happen if he did not let it spread across the strikes the way he had been doing in the corridor.

If instead he held it, he kept feeding the remaining duration into a single point. He stopped moving toward the boss and stood still.

He focused the magic of the Thread inward, refusing to let the tension distribute itself across his movement the way the emulation wanted to. The threads along the Fractured Blade’s edge pulled tighter in response into a concentrated point at the blade’s tip. He could feel the resistance in it, the frame pushing to express itself the way it was designed to, and he pushed back.

The Iron Sentinel crossed the room toward him.

He did not move but kept compressing and feeding the emulation’s remaining output into the same point. The threads along the blade’s edge were so concentrated that the Fractured Blade looked almost like a normal weapon again.

The boss was close.

Fifteen feet.

Ten feet.

He could feel the emulation’s duration burning out faster, but that was the cost. Everything spent in one moment.

Five feet.

The Iron Sentinel reached him. He ducked under the first strike and drove the blade through and released. The threads along the edge didn’t cut outward. They discharged inward, through the point of contact, and the armor didn’t crack.

It separated as though whatever logic held the plating together had been quietly removed. The rest had followed the logic of a system that no longer had a center.

The boss went down without a second strike.

Kai stood in the silence and looked at what he’d done.

[Drop Quality: Optimized.]

[Dungeon Clears: Solo.]

[Emulation Duration: Ended.]

[Level Increased: 19 to 20.]

Kai looked at the Class Emulation notification.

The entire remaining duration had burned out in the release, with the frame consumed completely in a single discharge. One use per emulation cycle, the entire output front-loaded into one moment.

That was the constraint. But the power had surpassed anything he’d ever unleashed, maybe even in his Near-Death threshold.

It was a one-shot.

If the setup was right, then he could take down a boss without much difficulty. He left without stopping and found two more gates outside Ironpact territory. He headed towards a free E-rank dungeon, which he quickly began clearing.

...

A slowed clip of Kai’s earlier dungeon clear was already circulating online. It was something he sent to Sora, who did a quick stream and had it uploaded.

He literally deleted the boss!

So what? The top 10 can all do that.

Yeah, didn’t you guys see how Victor Hale utterly destroyed one of the D-rank bosses?

Oh shut up!

Guys! The armor separated BEFORE the slash landed!

What kind of weapon does he even have???

Who cares! We should be asking how he is even doing this with just normal slashes!?

This guy is actually terrifying!

...

The second dungeon opened into wide terrain with too many approach angles. He moved faster than the first run as the chain carried over, and the distortion started from a higher baseline.

[Chain Count: 2.]

[Distortion Output: Increasing.]

Enemies dropped earlier each engagement.

The boss didn’t survive.

[Drop Quality: Optimized.]

[Dungeon Clears: Solo.]

He moved to the third gate without pause.

[Chain Count: 3.]

[Consecutive Chain: Active.]

[Distortion Output: Amplified.]

The third dungeon ended faster than either of the others, the chain at its third link climbing toward the peak state.

[Drop Quality: Optimized.]

[Dungeon Clears: Solo.]

[Level Increased: 20 to 21.]

He stepped out into the open and saw the city had moved hours deeper into its day.

He ran the comparison.

Two E-rank clears instead of the one D-rank he had planned. Slower on paper, but the chain bonuses had closed the gap, and he hadn’t needed to wait on a single Ironpact gate to do it.

He stayed on the street a while after, watching the players move between gates. He was looking for the pattern in it: which gates the rotation touched, how long it held, where it thinned out. After a few minutes, he took out his phone and started writing it down.

Gate locations and Ironpact presence. Which ones had been open this morning and which ones hadn’t. Below that, he started a second list. Gates outside their current range, lower-rank options he could chain when the better ones were locked up, rough estimates of what each would cost him in time.

He read back over what he had. It wasn’t much yet, but it would help him in knowing how to outmaneuver them, and if it came to it. Where to hit them if they continued being a problem for him. He added a header to the second section, closed the note, and looked up.

The combined emulation sat in his memory like something unfinished not because it had failed, but because it had worked completely, and he didn’t yet know what that fully meant. He didn’t know its ceiling yet.

He intended to find out.