Both Don and Kira turned to look at Lily with the same expression at the same moment.

Lily patted herself on the chest with complete confidence. "Leave it to me. No problem whatsoever. Top quality, guaranteed."

She took the unsealing stone, set it against the equipment without hesitation, and struck. The light that followed was immediate and total, all five seals breaking open at once in a single clean flash.

Silence.

The helmet, which by rights should have been the weakest of the three, came back with a passive health regeneration effect of three points per second. Don blinked at it.

Then they read the silver-grade items.

[Malan’s Sword] — Rank: Silver. Type: Longsword. Required Level: 30. Physical attack: 315–370. Strength +50, Agility +40, Constitution +50. (Unsealed): Physical attack cap +75, physical attack +35...

[Bone Ring] — Rank: Silver. Type: Metal Ring. Required Level: 30. Physical attack +60. Strength +15, Agility +15, Constitution +15. (Unsealed): Critical hit rate +1%, Critical hit rate +1%...

Don clicked his tongue. "Your hands are twenty-four karat gold. That’s settled."

Kira swallowed. "You’re unsealing all my equipment from now on. That’s not a request."

Lily scratched the back of her head, looking genuinely pleased with herself, then tilted toward Don with a thoughtful expression. "Brother Don, I’ve always wondered about something. Can you explain it?"

"Go ahead."

"What’s actually different between equipment crafted by dwarf players and equipment that drops from bosses? Sister Diana and Elias Finch both seem to prefer crafted weapons. Why?"

Don considered it for a moment. "It comes down to the unsealed attributes. Dwarf-crafted equipment never rolls duplicate unseals, every bonus is unique. Boss drops are different; duplicates are normal, which is what you just saw with the ring’s double crit." He paused. "The trade-off is that crafted gear sometimes comes back with useless attributes, extra durability, mana bonuses, because the crafting process is more controllable but less surprising. And the final grade fluctuates with luck during production."

Diana held up the blueprint scroll and turned it over in her fingers. "Take this leather shoulder blueprint, for example. Under normal conditions it produces bronze-grade. With good luck, silver. With exceptional luck, extremely rarely, gold."

Lily’s eyes went wide. "Sister Diana, could you make me gold boots?"

Don reached over and flicked her chin lightly. "Did you just hear what she said? Exceptional luck. Extremely rarely. To get one gold piece you’d need to make fifty, minimum."

Diana smiled. "Don’s estimate is conservative, actually. Elias Finch has a gold longsword. It took approximately a hundred and thirty attempts to produce it."

Lily looked genuinely stricken. "A hundred and thirty?"

"And blueprints are already difficult to obtain in the first place," Diana continued. "I’m grateful to everyone for what we brought back today." She looked between Don and Lily with a practical expression. "I’d like to make a pair of boots for each of you leather armor players. If you want to help, the blueprint lists the material sources, wolf hides, mostly. Whenever you have the opportunity."

Both of them nodded immediately. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

The group began to wind down toward log-off, the easy quiet of exhausted people who had come out the other side of something genuinely difficult. The night had given them losses and then returned most of them, and added something extra on top of it.

Then Don remembered the gauntlets still sitting in his inventory, the quest reward he hadn’t looked at once since the system had dropped them in.

He opened his bag with quiet curiosity and pulled them up.

With the group watching, Don pulled the Courageous Gauntlets from his pack and turned them over in his hands. Dark brown leather, heavier than they looked, with a surprising elasticity when he pressed the palm. He checked the stats.

[Courageous Gauntlets] — Rank: Silver. Type: Leather Armor. Required Level: None.

Physical Defense +120, Magic Defense +120. Strength +9, Agility +15, Constitution +9.

(Additional): Physical defense +60, attack speed +2%...

The two percent attack speed bonus was modest, on a fast weapon like a dagger, the practical difference was marginal. Stack it to twenty percent and the story changed entirely, but two percent on its own was a footnote. The rest of the stats, however, were clean. Don equipped the gauntlets alongside the Bone Ring and pulled up his character sheet with the quiet eagerness of someone who genuinely could not help himself.

Human. Apprentice Thief. Level 30. Health: 4,895. Physical Attack: 2,823–3,048. Physical Defense: 704. Magic Defense: 569. Critical Hit Rate: 3%. Reputation: 8,200. Luck: 0.

His defenses were still the weak point, and he knew it. Everything else, though, sat in territory that he found deeply satisfying to look at.

The group leaned in to read over his shoulder. There was a collective exhale. Lily looked at the numbers, looked at Don, and appeared to be restraining herself from grabbing his arm and demanding an immediate wolf-hunting expedition.

Diana saved her the trouble, pulling out the blueprint and reading off the coordinates, northwest of the American region, a location called Fierce Wolf Canyon.

"Cheerful name," Don remarked.

Nobody disagreed.

They logged off. The mine, the boss, the deaths, the recovery, a full day of it, had settled into their bones, and nobody argued about sleep.

Don pulled off his light-sensing glasses. On either side of him, Kira and Lily were already yawning, making no effort to hide it.

"Midnight snack?" he offered.

Kira shook her head with her eyes half-closed. "Sleep."

"We’re back online in seven hours, then."

Lily made a sound of protest. "Why so early?"

"First month after launch, everyone’s schedule flips. Seven in the morning is the lowest population window. Highest efficiency."

"...Fine. I’ll suffer."

The three of them walked back to Don’s apartment, showered, and went to bed. Don in his room, Kira in with Lily. The arrangement required no discussion.

Don was up just after six. He started frozen wontons, woke the other two, and had breakfast on the table by the time they’d finished washing up. They ate quickly and walked to Henshaw Tower in the early morning quiet.

Grade-A office buildings like Henshaw Tower had once kept strict opening hours. That convention had quietly dissolved in the week before Realms Online launched, replaced by twenty-four hour security rotations that nobody had bothered to reverse. The studio floor was nearly empty when they arrived, just the hum of equipment and the faint blue glow of idle screens.

Don checked the level ranking chart first. The survival line had climbed. Players below level twenty-three were now eliminated. He counted carefully. Nineteen remained.

He wiped imaginary sweat from his forehead.

When he logged in and checked the active roster, only Faye was online besides the three of them. He glanced at her level out of habit.

Thirty-three.

He stared at that for a moment longer than was strictly necessary.