[C-Rank Dungeon found.]

[C-Rank Dungeon: Undead Land.]

[Recommended Level: 35.]

Sera was already at the gate when Kai arrived. She had new armor since the D-rank dungeons, dark blue and silver, a cloak drifting behind her.

When he walked up, her attention shifted toward him and then turned back to the gate. "There are rumors," she said.

Kai stopped beside her. "About what?"

"Ironpact. About who took them apart." She watched the gate. "Some people say it was a masked hunter. Some say government cleanup." She then paused before continuing. "Some people say it was you."

Kai said nothing.

The gate hummed in front of them. Down the block, a recruitment speaker ran through the same loop it had been running since dawn. The air carried the cold of a morning neither of them had slept through.

After a moment Kai smiled at the gate, and Sera made a sound that was almost a laugh.

"How are you feeling about all of this?" she said. "The announcement. The board. All of it."

Kai thought about it honestly. "It’s the clearest split the system has produced so far," he said. "The people already ahead had never had a better chance to stay there forever. Everyone behind them has the worst chance they’ve ever had to catch up." He looked at the ninety gates distributed across the city skyline, the blue electricity still crackling faintly at each entrance. "Opportunity and abandonment at the same time."

Sera nodded slowly. "That’s exactly what it is." She looked at the gate in front of them. "Which is why we’re not waiting."

She activated her class.

Golden light armor materialized over her frame in overlapping plates, the full Valkyrie manifestation, and then she extended one hand toward Kai. And a second set of lighter plates formed over him, not as dense as hers but carrying the same warm luminous quality, The armor settled across Kai’s shoulders like it belonged there.

He looked at it.

"Don’t get used to it," Sera said and walked through the gate.

He followed.

[C-Rank Dungeon: Active.]

The dungeon unfolded around them. And they appeared in a graveyard.

It stretched in every direction under a sky the color of old ash. Rows of cracked headstones pushed up from dark earth at uneven angles, and the ground gave slightly underfoot in a way that stone and soil shouldn’t.

The temperature here felt wrong in a way the city never had.

Very cold!

Like they were walking through a frozen area instead of a graveyard. Iron fences divided the grave sections; some collapsed, some leaned. Fog drifted between the headstones, drifting in directions the wind did not support.

There was a sound underneath all of it. The kind of frequency you felt before you heard it, as a bell struck so long ago that only the ghost of the vibration remained.

Sera went still beside him. Not cautious-still. Measuring-still.

"Feel that?" she said.

"Yes."

She watched the fog drift the wrong way. "Hostile architecture. The dungeon itself is part of the fight."

Then the ground broke open.

Hands first, forcing up through the dark earth, and then the rest of each body pulling free with the slow, certain effort of something that had never learned to hurry.

They rose in full armor, ancient and corroded but completely intact. Each one was carrying a weapon that had no business being in a C-rank dungeon. They moved like they had been doing this for centuries and remembered every lesson from every fight.

[Grave Warden.]

[Level 25.]

Then something bigger emerged. Taller and broader than the Wardens. Carrying a greatsword with runes burned into the blade. The runes flared each time the weapon moved.

[Ashen Knight.]

[Level 28.]

Kai looked at the level readout and revised his expectations for the morning. Sera didn’t react which worried Kai more than the level itself.

"Twenty-eight," he said.

"C-rank ranges from twenty to thirty-five now." Sera was already moving toward the nearest Grave Warden. "At minimum. Some teams have reported higher. Get used to it fast."

She drove her blade into its chest. Light burst outward from the point of contact, the Valkyrie class eating through corroded bronze like it had a grudge against it.

Kai went wide to the opposite side.

The first Warden that turned toward him was slow and heavy, sword rising on the long slow arc of something with no reason to rush. He let it commit to the downswing, then stepped inside the arc and put the Fractured Blade through the gap between chest plate and shoulder.

The fracture spread instantly!

The Warden sword fell first and then the body followed.

A sword materialized beside the corpse, still burning with actual fire.

[Drop Quality: Optimized.]

Sera glanced at it for half a second. "That’s the third time."

"Lucky," Kai said.

"Extremely," Sera said, in a tone that was not quite agreement and not quite a challenge either.

Two more Wardens came in together. Kai pulled left and drew both of them after him, letting them wind up their swings before Sera came in from the right. Six golden swords dropped from above and scattered the Wardens across the ground. Kai moved through the openings they left, one cut each, finding the joints and the gaps where the armor stopped.

After that, they stopped needing words.

Sera called out targets, and Kai hit them. She locked groups down with light constructs, and he cut through while they were pinned. It was clean, and it worked, and neither of them had to talk much to keep it going.

Then a Warden came in faster than the others, sword already swinging before Kai had fully turned. He caught it on the Fractured Blade and felt the Warden push. Kai let the next swing go wide and drove his blade through the knee joint. The leg gave out. He finished it before it reached the ground.

"We’re at six now," Sera said with her eyes on the next group of enemies.

"I’m counting."

The first Ashen Knight had been holding back.

Kai had been watching the Knight since they entered. It hadn’t moved toward them once. It stood back from the Wardens with its greatsword hanging at its side, runes dark, and he had left it alone for exactly that reason.

Then one of Sera’s light columns came down on top of it.

The Knight swung its greatsword up to meet the light, and every rune on the blade ignited at once.

Kai registered this and stepped back.

The greatsword didn’t swing but went off. The force scattered everything within ten feet, and Kai found himself three steps back without having chosen to move.

The explosion flattened half the graveyard.

"That," Sera said, catching her breath, "is why I lead with the shield."

The Knight raised the greatsword again. The runes were bright enough to cast shadows. Sera put her shield construct up between them and took the blast on it. The construct cracked through the middle but didn’t break.

"Move!" she shouted.

They went wide around it, one on each side. The Knight was still coming out of its own attack when Kai drove the Fractured Blade up through the gap between its helmet and chest plate. The distortion worked through whatever it found there.

The Knight went down, and the greatsword landed beside it, glowing faintly.

Sera paused on the drop longer than necessary and didn’t say anything.

They pushed through twenty more.

The Wardens were slow and took two hits each. The Knights were worse as their greatswords detonated on contact, and each one took both of them to bring them down. A blade caught Sera’s arm and cracked her light armor plating.

She hissed through gritted teeth.

Kai stepped into the Knight’s follow-up swing and drove his Fractured Blade along the rune channel of the greatsword. The blade slashed into the structural weak points, and the Knight collapsed.

Instantly, another optimized drop shimmered beside the body. Sera didn’t say lucky this time, but she did give Kai a glance.

By the time they cleared the graveyard section, the drops had piled up. Nine of them, each one well above what a C-rank dungeon should be producing.

Too many for probability to explain cleanly.

"These are the best drops I’ve seen," she said. "The other teams aren’t getting anything close. The best of them have pulled maybe two rare weapons like these the whole time."

"And you’re wondering how we’re already at nine."

"Yeah." She held his gaze. "Same as the other dungeons."

Kai looked at the ninth drop. "The Fractured Blade affects drop rates.," he said. "Which tends to lead to the best results."

She studied him for a moment. Then nodded once and turned back to the passage ahead. She had decided that was enough for now.

They reached the end of the graveyard: past the last rows of headstones, through an iron gate that swung open on its own. The passage dipped slightly, then leveled out before a door significantly larger than anything the dungeon had produced so far.

A physical pressure radiated from behind it, a weight you felt before you recognized it as a threat.

Kai halted with Sera stopping beside him. "Boss room," she said, the label making it easier to step forward.

The low-frequency hum from earlier had come back stronger. It was low enough that he felt it in his chest more than heard it, and whatever was on the other side had clearly noticed them.

She looked back.

Her light armor was cracked in three places. His cloak had a tear along one side. They had cleared twenty-nine enemies and accumulated a good number of drops.

And whatever was behind that door was still waiting.

Sera flexed her injured arm once.

The movement was subtle but Kai noticed the delay.

The pain.

And the fact she was hiding it.

Kai caught her wrist before she realized it and the contact lasted half a second.

Then both of them noticed it.

"Are you okay?" Kai asked with a frown.

"I’m... But if this does go wrong, I assume you know what to do?" Sera asked softly.

Kai looked at her before saying. "You worry too much. We will clear this one, just like we do for the other."

Sera paused before faintly smiling and saying. "Then are you ready?"

Kai looked at the door one more time. The pressure of something larger and deadlier than anything they had faced so far.

Kai pushed the door open first.

Something enormous immediately started moving in the dark.

The dark inside didn’t spill so much as lean toward them. And then a massive sword stopped inches from his face.

Not because it missed but because it had chosen to stop.

Then something spoke in the dark. "...why do you carry the King’s weapon?"

Sera froze.

Kai’s grip tightened around the Fractured Blade

"No... It doesn’t matter. Just die."