Don patted Lily on the shoulder. "Stop watching. Let’s go."

Lily shook herself back to attention and raised the crossbow. A wind arrow left the string and hit the ratman in the side, and the effect was immediate, its movements slowing as the elemental debuff took hold, attack speed and movement speed both dropping thirty percent for the duration.

Don had explained the difference between human archers and dark elf crossbowmen to people before, but watching Lily demonstrate it made the explanation feel redundant. Human archers hit hard and purely, physical damage with generous bonuses, clean and direct. Crossbowmen wove elements into their shots: wind, lightning, traces of water, each one carrying secondary effects that changed the shape of a fight rather than just contributing to the damage total. Less raw output, more control. Different tool, different purpose.

Don circled behind the ratman while it was occupied with Kira, who was keeping herself at exactly the right distance, just close enough for the claws to almost reach, just far enough that they didn’t, and triggered the backstab.

Killing intent activated. The strike landed.

4,312.

Not a critical.

Kira’s head turned sharply. "You put everything into Strength, didn’t you."

"Most of it," Don said, lining up the next hit. "Variant build. High Strength, low Agility. Makes me slow but hits like a problem."

Kira echoed his own words back at him in the same flat register. "We can make up for it with equipment later."

From the other side of the ratman, Lily started laughing. "Brother Don has a fan club now."

"I’ve always had followers," Don said. "I just don’t advertise." He glanced at Lily. "You’re making a face."

"I’m not making a face."

"You’re absolutely making a face."

---

The rhythm of it settled quickly.

Kira held aggro with a stability that made everything else easier, the ratman’s attention stayed fixed on her, the claws swinging against the shield in a reliable pattern that Don and Lily could work around without coordinating every move. Don handled backstab timing and burst damage. Lily controlled the pace of each fight with wind arrows and precise shots to the neck, a weak point she’d identified on the third kill and had been exploiting consistently since, the damage numbers there jumping well past four thousand on clean hits.

Each ratman went down in under two minutes. The experience was generous, elite monsters above their level bracket always were, and after five kills Don’s bar had moved a full percent. The drop rate was a different story entirely. Thirty minutes of fighting yielded seven rat tails from however many corpses they’d left behind.

"The quest needs two hundred of these," Lily observed, looking at the seven tails in her inventory with an expression of philosophical resignation.

"Good thing there’s a party leader to worry about the collection," Don said. "We just kill things."

They pushed further east across the plain, following the respawn logic of the monster distribution. Elite monsters took time to come back, which meant working the outer edges, pushing into fresh territory rather than waiting. The plain was largely empty, the level requirements kept most players away, but not completely.

Sound reached them before the player did. Piercing and sharp, then a bloom of explosive force, then the crackle of fire cooling against grass. Mage sounds. Dark Elf pattern, the rhythm of the casts.

They drifted toward it as the natural geography of the hunting ground drew them in the same direction, the same spawn clusters, the same logic about where the monsters would be. Don saw the player clearly when the distance closed to about thirty meters.

Tall. Close to one-eighty. Lean in the way that suggested deliberate efficiency rather than lack of mass, with eyes that were bright and quick even at this range. He was finishing off a ratman with the brisk economy of someone who had been doing this long enough that it no longer required his full attention.

He looked up and saw Don at almost exactly the same moment.

The laugh that followed was genuine and immediate.

"What are the odds?" he said, spreading his hands. "We really do keep finding each other."

Lane’s laugh was the easy, unforced kind that comes from genuine surprise rather than politeness.

"Small world doesn’t cover it," he said, crossing the distance between them with the loose stride of someone who’d been on his feet for hours and had stopped caring about it. His eyes moved across the group and settled on Don with the particular warmth of a friend who has been unexpectedly useful to find.

Lily had already recognized him. "Brother Lane, what are you doing all the way out here?"

"Ran a few bosses with the team earlier. Boss Ye called it a night and logged off, but I still had energy, so I pulled up the monster distribution map and found this place." He shrugged. "High experience, manageable difficulty. Easy decision."

Don tilted his head toward the plain stretching out behind them. "We’re working through a quest. Could use another body if you’re not attached to solo grinding."

"Quest sharing available?"

"One slot open."

Lane smiled. "Say no more."

Kira added him to the party with the efficiency of someone who treated social niceties as a secondary concern, and the moment his profile populated in the team display, Lane’s expression shifted, not dramatically, but with the focused attention of someone who had just read something unexpected.

He looked at Kira’s name. Looked at her class designation. Looked back at the name.

"You’re the first hidden class player on the American server."

"Yes," Kira said.

Lane absorbed this with the gravity it deserved, then turned and clapped Don on the shoulder. "Today is genuinely something. The top-ranked crossbowman, the top-ranked thief, and the only hidden class player on the server, and they’re all grinding rat tails with me." He paused. "I’m choosing to feel honored rather than statistically insignificant."

"There will be more hidden classes eventually," Kira said, in the tone of someone closing a topic.

Lane shook his head. "Not like the old games. Realms Online built balance into the architecture from the ground up. The gaps between classes are tighter. Hidden classes exist, but the ecosystem won’t produce them the same way."