Chapter 89: One Last Gate
Kai looked at the phone.
Mayor Ko’s name on the screen. He already knew why. He let it ring once, then twice, then answered.
"Mr. Rosefield." Mayor Ko sounded like a man who had not slept in two days. "Would you be able to come to the fourth-floor conference room?"
"I already know what you’re going to say," Kai said.
A brief pause.
"What are your thoughts?"
Kai didn’t say anything for three seconds. "For now, focus on dealing with rebuilding the other districts and keeping the city calm."
"Wait, what about–"
He hung up and looked at Sera. Still asleep, her breathing steady, the monitors running their quiet updates. The flowers that someone had left on the windowsill were the only color in the room that was not medical white or equipment gray.
Someone knocked.
He said come in without turning around, expecting a nurse. Kei walked through the door with Lina behind him, Dorn behind her, and Rin last, closing the door quietly, the way you closed doors in hospital rooms.
Kei looked at Kai for a moment. "You look terrible," he said.
"You too," Kai said.
"I wasn’t stabbed."
"Skill issue."
Kei’s mouth pulled up at one side, and he looked at Sera on the bed, and the expression changed into something quieter. The four of them came into the room properly, filling the available space without crowding it.
Dorn set flowers on the windowsill beside the ones already there and then adjusted them as it mattered. He did not explain why he had brought them or where he had gotten them. He just set them down and stepped back.
Lina looked at Sera for a long moment. "Is she still sleeping?"
Kai nodded.
"Classic," Lina said, but the word came out soft rather than dismissive.
Rin sat beside the window and kept looking at Sera.
"She always does this," Kei said.
"Sleep for three days?" Kai said.
Kei laughed, short and genuine. "Take responsibility for things that aren’t hers." He glanced at Sera. "Then refuse help and then complain nobody helps."
"She doesn’t complain," Rin said.
"You can’t see it, Rin? Tsk, you are losing your touch."
Rin rolled her eyes while Lina giggled and said. "Stop exaggerating. She just rarely shows how she feels."
Dorn nodded once from beside the window, which apparently settled it. Kai looked at Sera and thought about the river in Crimson Eden.
"This is the first time I’ve felt good in months."
"We cleared it because of her," he said.
The room went quiet.
Rin didn’t look surprised when she looked at him like she was deciding whether something she had already suspected was true.
"She’ll be unbearable when she wakes up," Kei said with a grin.
"Yeah," Kai said.
"You planning to tell her you said that?"
"No."
Kei grinned while Lina covered her mouth. Even Dorn looked amused for a second.
They stayed for another twenty minutes. Kei told a story about a dungeon from before Kai knew any of them, where Sera had stayed behind to help a stranger whose team had cleared out and left them. She had missed her own reward chest. Never mentioned it afterward. Lina told about the time Sera spent her first major payout replacing a broken gear for a teammate who could not afford it and had not asked her to. Rin said, quietly, that Sera had spent six hours helping Kei train before a ranked run.
Kei said, "And then beat me in the assessment anyway."
"Which was rude," Lina said.
"Incredibly rude," Kei agreed.
Dorn stood up when they left. He was the last one out the door, and he stopped in the doorway and looked at Kai.
"Bring her back," he said.
Then he left.
Kai sat beside Sera’s bed for another few minutes and straightened the blanket where it had folded.
...
He was home before dinner.
The apartment smelled like food, and Mina was in the kitchen, and Leo was on the floor with his phone, refreshing whatever feed he had open. The television was on with the sound low, dungeon district coverage cycling through the four sealed gate locations and the one that was not sealed.
Leo looked up when Kai came through the door. "How’s Sera?"
"Sleeping," Kai said.
"Good," Mina said from the kitchen.
Kai sat down on the couch. "Good?"
"Means she’s alive," Mina said, and Kai couldn’t argue with that.
She then set a plate on the table in front of him without asking if he was hungry. He ate while Leo updated him on the city, which was Leo’s way of talking through things he was worried about.
With the four gates cleared, people were all now eyeing the final gate. While also wondering which member will enter the divine gate.
"Mayor Ko gave a statement," Leo said. "He said the city is grateful, the teams are recovering, and operations are ongoing."
"Ongoing," Mina said.
"That’s what he said."
Mina looked at Kai. He looked at his plate.
"You’re going, aren’t you?" Leo said. Not a question. The tone of someone who had been watching someone for long enough that certain conclusions arrived before the conversation did.
"Yeah," Kai said.
Leo nodded slowly and he looked at the television, at the Divine Maze gate visible in one of the distant district shots.
"Okay," Leo said.
Mina set her plate down and sat across from Kai. She did not say anything for a moment. "How bad is it?" she said. "The last one."
"I don’t know yet," Kai said. "Nobody does... It’s one of the reasons we had put it off for last."
Mina looked at her food. "That’s the scary one."
"Yes," Kai said.
"Okay." She picked up her fork. "Then eat first."
He took a bite of his food and began enjoying this familiar pace of being with Mina and Leo. For the first time in days, he realized how tired he was.
Leo talked about school, which had been running on reduced hours since the gates appeared, and which Leo’s classmates were treating as an extended occasion to argue about rankings and gate clears and which hunters were doing what.
Hana had opinions about the Abyssal Clock team that Leo had described as technically correct but missing the point.
"How is it missing the point?" Mina asked.
"She said they should have sent more people," Leo said.
"That’s fair," Mina said.
"More people weren’t available," Leo said. "That’s the point she’s missing." He looked at Kai. "Right?"
"Right," Kai said..
After dinner, Kai went to his room. He sat at his desk and opened his status screen. He read through it properly this time.
[Player: Kai Rosefield.]
[Rank: C.]
[Class: Null.]
[Level: 49.]
[Exp Requirement: 23,000 / 85,000.]
[Attributes.]
[Strength: 88. (+140)]
[Vitality: 90. (+170)]
[Agility: 86. (+120)]
[Magic: 87. (+130)]
One level away from reaching 50. He then closed it and opened his inventory instead.
The Fractured Blade. The edges were still doing the adaptive shifting that had started in the first F-rank gate and had been developing ever since. The Null Fang. Someone else’s weapon is now his, taken from the person Victor had sent through his chest. He turned it over once and set it down. The Tempest Fang. The storm sword from Hollow Sky, pale silver with the current lines still visible in the material.
The Bloodthorn was a dark red, almost black, the sword that required stabbing yourself and stored life force from everything it pierced. And finally the Ashen Seal at his neck, its warmth present even through the fabric.
He set everything out on the desk and looked at it. Then he thought about who was not available.
Raze was down.
Lily was down.
Mira was down.
Sera was still asleep.
He was the only option.
The Fractured Blade, which was the sword that had been with him since the beginning. Null Fang, the assassin’s blade that can ignore armor.
Tempest Fang.
Bloodthorn.
One by one, he laid them across the desk. Whatever waited inside the Divine Maze, he’d rather face it with choices. He came out of his room, and Mina and Leo were both on the couch.
Not watching television. Just there, in the way that people are just there when they have decided being present is the thing they can offer.
Leo looked at him before smiling. "Go clear it."
"That’s the plan," Kai said.
Mina looked at him with the look she had been giving him since the debt was paid, and the gates appeared, and the city changed around them. It was no longer worry, but instead faith.
"Don’t die," she said.
Kai almost smiled. "Working on it."
Leo said, "We’ll be here."
Mina said, "Like always."
Kai looked at both of them for a moment with a smile.
Then he looked at the window. The Divine Maze gate was visible in the far district. The light around the buildings near it was bent wrong, and everything in that direction looked slightly out of focus.
One gate left.
Kai opened the door and stepped outside.
