The city was loud even at night.

Not normal city noise but a restless kind that meant nobody was fully relaxing, everyone half-watching the skyline for the next blue light to disappear.

Kai walked beside Mina and Leo through the crowded streets, and the giant system board above the main intersection updated while they passed beneath it.

[Remaining Active C-Rank Dungeons in Mythal City: 79.]

Leo watched the number for a second. "Still can’t believe there were only ninety to start with."

Mina sighed. "People at the office haven’t stopped talking about it."

Kai glanced at her. "How bad?"

She laughed. "How much time do you have?"

The streets around them had changed.

Hunters moved constantly through the crowds now. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

Some carried injuries.

Others hauled monster materials openly through the streets.

Between the larger buildings, small stalls had appeared almost overnight. It was a temporary setup with portable display cases and handwritten price boards. Some shops had started putting metal shutters over their windows before sunset.

Their owners called out into the crowd with the specific urgency of people who understood the market was moving fast.

Some shops had started putting metal shutters over their windows before sunset.

"D-rank weapons! Fresh stock!"

"C-rank monster materials, limited stock!"

"Wind beast leather, best price in the district!"

Kai slowed near one of the stalls. A small pile of cracked mana stones sat in a display case with a price tag that made him look twice. He remembered what the same grade had been selling for a month ago.

The old man behind the stall caught his expression and laughed bitterly. "Everything’s doubled," he said. Then quieter: "Most things tripled. Yesterday someone got stabbed over a payment two districts from here." He shook his head. "People are getting desperate."

The old man looked genuinely afraid while saying it.

Kai nodded once and kept walking.

Mina had been watching the stalls too. "It’s getting rough at the coordination office," she said. "We’ve had way more people coming in. Some wanting advice, some asking about dungeon routes, a lot of them asking about guilds."

"What are the guilds doing?" Kai asked.

"Depends on the guild." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "The bigger ones are trying to build elite squads, pulling their strongest people into C-rank runs and leaving everyone else to manage lower dungeons. Some of the mid-tier ones are going the other direction, recruiting as many people as they can and then having the newer members farm F-rank and D-rank gates for materials."

Leo frowned. "That sounds rough for the newer people."

"It is, for some of them." Mina shrugged slightly. "Others get real support. It depends on the leadership."

They passed a group of hunters sitting along the sidewalk near a closed storefront.

Three of them, worn-down gear, low-ranked from the look of it, ignoring both the gates and each other. One stared up at the system board with a look Kai did not have a clean word for.

Leo slowed. "They came here prepared," he said quietly. "That guy’s got D-rank gear. He’s been running a while." He kept walking as he said softly. "They’re just... not moving toward anything."

Nobody answered him, and he did not seem to expect one.

Kai looked back once.

They were not resting and not waiting for a queue.

They had stopped looking at the gates at all, which was its own answer, because everyone else in the city was looking at the gates. He had seen that stillness before, in people who had decided the next step was closed to them forever and had sat down inside that fact.

Kai understood that feeling more than he wanted to.

One of them still had dried blood on his gloves. Like he had come back from a dungeon and never quite left it.

Nobody around him seemed surprised by it anymore. Kai turned back to the street ahead and said nothing.

Hunters rushing toward gates, guild advertisements cycling across building screens, dungeon highlight clips playing in the windows of electronics stores. Everywhere Kai looked, people were chasing something. Strength or money or survival or just not being left behind when the numbers finished dropping.

Then Leo pointed ahead. "There."

The restaurant sat on the corner of a quieter side street, warm light coming through the windows, the noise of the main road dropping off as soon as they turned. The restaurant almost felt disconnected from the city outside.

[Misel Resto]

Inside, it was soft music and warm food and people talking at a normal volume, and the city pressure genuinely felt farther away the moment the door closed behind them.

Leo collapsed into his chair with theatrical exhaustion. "I’m starving."

"You say that every day," Mina said.

"Because I’m hungry every day."

"Fair."

Kai laughed and opened the menu.

They ordered quickly, and the food came, and conversation loosened once the food arrived. Leo started talking about school almost immediately.

How half his class had become obsessed with dungeon rankings since the announcement, arguments breaking out between friend groups over which guild was better, and which hunters were overrated.

"Hana told him Raze would win every fight in the city, and now he won’t let it go," Mina said, glancing at Kai with the particular expression she reserved for situations she found deeply enjoyable.

Leo pointed his fork at her. "That is not what happened."

"You talked about it for forty minutes," Mina said.

"Because she was wrong."

"And you needed to explain exactly how wrong," Kai said.

"Yes," Leo said, then caught both of them looking at him and groaned. "You’re doing it again."

Mina was already laughing. "We’re not doing anything."

"You have the face."

"What face?"

"The face you both make when you’re about to be annoying about Hana."

Kai leaned back in his chair. "We’re just listening."

"You’re smiling."

"I smile."

Leo looked between them with the expression of someone who understood he had walked into something and was now committed to it regardless. "I’m not talking about Hana."

"Nobody said you had to," Mina said pleasantly.

Leo went back to his food with the focused intensity of someone who had decided the conversation was over.

Mina caught Kai’s eye across the table.

Both of them immediately pretended otherwise.

The rest of the meal moved easily.

Mina told a story about a man who had come into the coordination office and tried to recruit people for the C-rank dungeons despite being level eight. Leo nearly choked. When she added that he had come back two hours later wearing sunglasses and tried again, Kai laughed out loud which was rare enough that both Mina and Leo looked at him.

"He did not," Leo said.

"He absolutely did," Mina said.

For a while, it felt like nothing outside the window existed.

Kai realized halfway through Leo talking he had been unconsciously tracking every movement inside the restaurant.

Every hand near a weapon.

Every shift in breathing.

Every possible threat.

He forced himself to stop.

Then Leo looked up from the last of his food and pulled out his phone. "Okay, there’s a rumor going around." He turned the screen toward them. Forum threads and speculation posts, all circling the same idea. "People think whoever clears the most C-rank dungeons before the count hits zero might get a system prize."

Mina leaned over to look. "What kind of prize?"

"Nobody knows. Some people think it is a unique item. Some think a class upgrade or special recognition from the system." Leo’s eyes were already bright. "But some people think it’s not a prize at all. They think it’s a requirement! Like the system is setting up the next phase, and whoever clears the most C-ranks will be part of triggering it."

Nobody at the table laughed.

Because all three of them had already noticed the same thing. The system had started escalating faster than humanity could adapt.

Mina sat back. "A prize would be better. At least reward people for the risk they’re taking."

Leo grinned. "I hope it’s an event. Like a full city-wide event with special dungeons and bosses that gives a title! That would be so cool."

None of them thought the system was finished escalating anymore.

Kai focused briefly on the system board. The number was sitting at seventy-nine, ticking down somewhere while they sat here eating.

"Who knows," he said. He looked back at the table, at Mina and Leo, and the warm light and the empty plates. "It might be both."

Leo looked at him. "Both would be insane."

"Yeah," Kai said. "But it would be warranted. These dungeons are terrifying."

"Haha, I bet they are!"

For a little while longer, this was fine.

He had been calculating the dungeons remaining against his current clear rate and the time it would take the guilds to exhaust their momentum. The numbers kept producing the same result. He was going to need to move faster, he had already started thinking of deadlines instead of days.

Another gate disappeared from the skyline while they laughed over dinner.

None of them noticed.

The city did.