Chapter 173: Different Answers
Kai had been running errands for an hour when he decided to cut through the park on his way back.
The morning had the comfortable pace of a city that was not currently in a crisis. Children on the playground equipment. A few people jogging the path that circled the central pond. Three hunters doing footwork drills near the east fence, running the same pattern repeatedly.
A few people recognized him as he walked past. One teenager whispered something to his friend before both looked away when Kai glanced over. An older hunter gave him a respectful nod.
Kai returned it and kept walking.
The city still hadn’t stopped talking about the fights.
Kai sighed before then pausing when he saw them.
Kei. Dorn. Rin. Lina. All four of them in the middle of what appeared to have been a group run, paused near a bench while they argued about something.
Kei noticed him first.
"Kai!" He immediately abandoned the argument and changed direction, walking toward him at a pace that communicated urgency without being technically running.
The others followed.
Kei reached him and did not say hello.
"What was wrong with Elden?" he said.
Kai blinked. "What do you mean."
"What do I mean." Kei threw both hands up. "He turned an entire dungeon into a death trap. He had lasers. Gravity fields. Explosions. Magic constructs. Chains." He started counting on his fingers, realized he had run out of fingers, and continued anyway. "What kind of person wakes up and thinks, today I will spend twelve hours making someone else’s morning completely miserable?"
Kai laughed. "That’s one way to describe it."
Lina smiled. Rin looked at Kei with the expression she reserved for his more energetic moments.
"It was effective," Kai said.
"That’s the most terrifying part," Kei said.
They started walking together, following the path around the pond. Dorn fell into step at the back. Rin kept pace with Kai on his left. The morning was pleasant and the park was full of people enjoying it, which made the conversation about gravity traps and arcane lasers feel slightly surreal.
"So," Kai said. He was genuinely curious. "If it was any of you. How would you deal with Elden."
Everyone went quiet for a moment. Actually thinking about it.
Kei answered first, without hesitation. "I wouldn’t deal with it."
Kai looked at him. "What."
"I’d ignore everything," Kei said. He waved his hand at the imaginary dungeon. "Sprint past the traps, straight to the boss, kill it, dungeon cleared, Elden loses all his preparations. And then we will have to find a new dungeon without his prepartion."
A pause.
"That might actually work," Kai said.
Kei pointed at him. "See."
Kai turned to Dorn. "What about you."
Dorn was quiet for a moment. He kept walking, looking at the path ahead.
"I’d lose," he said.
Nobody rushed to contradict him.
"I fight by wearing people down," Dorn said. "I block. I defend. I outlast. I wait for the other person to make a mistake." He shook his head. "That battlefield was designed to drain you. Every trap costs you something, energy, time, position. I’d be giving everything to Elden’s strategy without being able to use my own." He paused. "I’d probably collapse before I got close enough to be useful."
Kai nodded. It was an honest assessment and Dorn said it without embarrassment.
"Rin," Kai said.
Rin had her phone out and had apparently pulled up a clip from the fight. She tilted the screen toward Kai without saying anything, pointing at a specific moment in the footage.
"The construct changed position here," she said. "Elden had to redirect his attention for about two seconds."
"I saw that," Kai said.
"I’d pull him," she said.
Kai blinked. "Pull."
"I would use my thread," she said. "If I can drag him out of position and toward me, I don’t have to walk through the battlefield at all. He comes to me instead."
Kai thought about this. "You’d need to find an opening through all that barrage."
"Then I would wait at the entrance since most of his traps are far from it." Rin said.
"That’s more patient than I was," Kai said.
"You had a lot more power to work with," Rin said, which was the most generous version of that particular observation.
Kai smiled and looked at Lina.
"I would use the wind," Lina said.
Kei blinked. "What."
She shrugged. "The lasers travel in straight lines. The spears follow trajectories. The explosions spread outward in predictable patterns." She looked at Kai. "I’d redirect them."
Kai stopped walking and he stood there for a second. "I didn’t think of that," he said.
Everyone looked at him.
He scratched the back of his neck. "If I tried to use a wind sword, that would have saved me a significant amount of trouble in the first ten minutes."
Lina covered her mouth with one hand. The sound that came out was not quite a laugh but was close to it.
"I thought so," she said.
Kai laughed. "I spent fifteen minutes solving something you answered in five seconds."
Lina smiled. "Sometimes the simple answer is enough."
Kei pointed immediately. "Hey." He looked at Kai. "You agreed with her."
"Yes," Kai said.
"What about my idea?"
"You admitted it depended on luck."
Kei opened his mouth and then closed it. "That’s fair," he said. "I hate logic." He said it with a resigned look.
Everyone laughed.
They kept walking. The path curved around the far side of the pond where a family was feeding the water birds, the kids crouched at the edge dropping pieces of bread and watching the birds compete for them.
Kei said, "Elden probably spends twelve hours preparing breakfast."
Lina said, "He probably has a backup breakfast in case the first one goes wrong."
Rin nodded, very slightly, as though this was not an unreasonable thing to believe.
Dorn said, "He probably does."
The group laughed. A jogger passing in the opposite direction glanced at them with the mildly confused expression of someone catching one sentence of a conversation with no context.
After a moment Kei said, "So. Who’s next."
"Lily," Kai said.
A short silence.
Kei whistled. Low and slow. "Good luck," he said, with the sincerity of someone who meant it.
They split off at the park entrance. Kai waved and headed toward the market to pick up what he needed for dinner.
The market was running at its normal morning pace. He moved through the stalls picking things up for whatever Mina was planning. A few people recognized him and one of them offered a congratulations that Kai accepted with a nod.
He was thinking about what Lina had said.
Redirect the attacks instead of fighting through it. In truth that did make sense, instead of having to adapt and cut through the arrays of attack. Lina’s answer was simpler with less effort but then he wonders if that would have been more convincing to Elden.
By him smashing through everything, it proved to Elden he was the best.
Yet this also made him smile at how there was no one correct answer. Kei would have gambled on the boss. Dorn would have recognized the mismatch and known it early. Rin would have waited for a single opening. Lina would have redirected everything.
All different. All honest. All reasonable given who each of them was.
Kai picked up a bag of rice and put it in with the rest.
Leo opened the apartment door before Kai had finished getting his key out.
He stared at Kai for one second.
"Elden," he said.
"Yes," Kai said.
Leo immediately started. "How did you survive when the sky started shooting? Were you panicking? Did you think you were going to die? Was the gravity actually as bad as it looked? Was it fun?"
Kai moved past him into the apartment and started setting the groceries on the counter.
"Yes," he said. "Very. Sometimes. Yes. Very."
Leo nodded. "Awesome."
Mina came in from the other room, looked at Leo, and then looked at Kai. "Only you would hear that story and think awesome."
Leo nodded again. "Correct."
Dinner happened the way dinner happened in the apartment, which was with Leo asking questions and Mina occasionally correcting his framing of the questions and Kai answering where answers were available and not answering where they were not.
At the end of it Leo leaned back in his chair.
"So," he said. "Lily tomorrow?"
"Probably," Kai said.
Leo grinned. "I can’t wait. So... If you fought Elden again would you win easier?"
Kai thought. "...Yes."
Leo blinked. "Really?"
"I know what to expect now."
Mina smiled. "That’s usually how Kai works."
Leo grins before he continues talking while Kai and Mina listen.
Tomorrow was going to be difficult.
Tonight was not.
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