Chapter 90: Last Hunter Left
The news moved through the city in pieces.
Not one announcement but a sequence of smaller ones, each arriving before anyone had finished processing the last.
Raze would not recover in time.
The coffee shop on Halen Street went quiet when that one came through. Nobody picked their cup back up. The idea that Raze was in a hospital bed and could not leave left many people stunned. Mira would not recover in time either.
A shelter in the western district had a television in its common room, and the people watching it had been following the gate operations since the Mythical phase began. Some of them had been displaced by the Abyssal Clock influence.
They watched the news about Mira and couldn’t help but praise her effort for carrying the other hunters out. But hearing she was seriously injured, someone in the back of the room started crying quietly, and nobody told them to stop.
One by one, across broadcasts and forum posts and group messages and livestream comments, the city received the same information in different forms. The Abyssal Clock team was down. All of them. The Crimson Eden team had one person still unconscious, and only one person was relatively fine.
In a hospital waiting room, someone pulled out their phone and said to the person beside them, "So who’s left?"
The person beside them was quiet for a moment.
"Kai Rosefield," they said.
The same conversation was happening in every group chat, every comment section, every corner of every forum still running.
Someone in a livestream chat said Kai cleared Crimson Eden. Someone else said with Sera, and Sera is currently unconscious, while Kai is walking around fine, which is suspicious.
The streamer running the channel read the comments without saying anything for a long moment.
"You’re not wrong that it took four top-rank hunters to clear Abyssal Clock," the streamer said finally. "And it nearly killed all of them... You’re also not wrong that Divine Maze is the one nobody can categorize. The reports don’t agree on what’s inside it. Nobody knows what exactly the inside of the dungeon is." Another pause. "What I know is that everyone else is in the hospital. And he’s not."
The comment section kept going. It was not resolved. Both sides were partly right, but neither side liked that answer.
Then someone posted a clip.
No context.
Just footage from a camera near the Divine Maze district. A figure walking alone down the middle of the street, no escort, no guild formation, no support team. Moving at a pace that was neither hurried nor slow.
The caption said: "He’s already going.
The argument in the comment section stopped.
Not because anyone had won it.
Because it had stopped mattering.
...
Sora went live without planning to.
She wasn’t dressed for streaming. Wasn’t sitting at her desk. She was standing in her living room with her phone in one hand and her streaming tablet propped against a stack of books on the kitchen counter.
Her chat was already full when the feed connected. Two million viewers in the first thirty seconds.
She didn’t do her usual introduction. Didn’t smile. Didn’t set up the segment.
"You’ve all seen the clip," she said.
Her chat is flooded.
HE’S GOING ALONE
SORA PLEASE
IS HE GOING TO BE OK
Sora looked at the camera. Her eyes were red.
"I’ve been covering Kai since his second dungeon run," she said. "I watched him solo a D-rank when everyone said it was impossible. I watched him clear C-ranks with Sera. I watched him fight in Storm Castle and Crimson Eden, and I broke down every frame of footage trying to understand how he does what he does."
She paused and took a breath.
"I still don’t fully understand it. But I know this. Every time someone said he couldn’t do something, he proved them wrong."
The chat slowed.
But this is different!
Mythical rank SOLO! Don’t doubt our man!
Four of the best hunters almost died in the last one!
Sora read the comments and nodded slowly.
"Yeah," she said. "This is different. I know that. He knows that."
She looked at the clip playing on her phone. Kai walked alone through the rearranged streets.
"But he’s going anyway. Because there’s nobody else. Because the city needs someone to walk through that gate, and every other person who could do it is in a hospital bed right now."
Her voice cracked slightly.
"So yeah. I’m scared. I think he’s scared, too. But he’s still walking."
She wiped her eyes quickly. "I’m going to stay live until he goes in. If you want to stay, stay. If you can’t watch, I understand."
Nobody left.
The viewer count climbed past five million.
...
The Divine Maze district was wrong on sight.
Kai saw that even though the buildings were all intact, everything was in the wrong order. The block he was walking through was not the block that should have been here. He had walked through this same street for years, even before the system had shown itself.
The apartment building on his left had been four streets over from his memories.
The pharmacy on his right had its sign, but it was facing the wrong direction, its entrance pointing toward a wall rather than the street.
A road ahead ended where a park should have continued.
The park was still there, but now had two buildings between it that had no business being there.
Everything was intact, but somewhere else.
A woman was standing outside a building on the corner. She had grocery bags in both hands, and she was staring at the front door of her apartment building, as it had personally offended her.
The woman stared at the wall where her front door used to be.
Kai slowed. "Are you okay?"
She turned around. Grocery bags in both hands. The expression of someone who had been reasonable about this for three days and was running out of reasonable.
"This is my building," she said. "Eleven years I’ve lived here. Eleven years that door faced the street." She looked at the wall. "Now it faces the neighbor’s fence."
"How do you get in?" Kai asked.
"Side entrance. They put one in yesterday for our building. For our whole street." She laughed but it wasn’t happy. "Maintenance came and cut a new door in the wall because there was no other option. My daughter thinks it’s an adventure. She calls it the secret door."
"How old is she?"
"Seven." The woman shifted the grocery bags. "Last night she asked me if the house was going to keep moving. If one morning she’d wake up and her bedroom would be somewhere else."
Kai looked at the white gate glowing in the distance.
"What did you tell her?"
"I told her the house was just confused," the woman said. "And that confused things always settle down eventually."
She looked at him. Then she blinked.
"You’re him, aren’t you," she said. Not a question.
"Yeah."
She was quiet for a moment. Long enough that Kai thought the conversation was done.
Then she said, "My husband wanted to be a hunter. Before the system, I mean. He was strong. Athletic. He trained for two years. Then the system went live and he awakened and his class was Supporter. Low tier. He quit three months later." She looked at the gate. "He’s been watching every stream about you since your third dungeon run."
Kai didn’t say anything.
"He says you’re what it looks like when someone refuses to accept the answer they were given." She looked at Kai with something tired and warm at the same time. "He cried when you cleared Crimson Eden. He didn’t think I saw but I did."
She reached out and put her hand on his arm.
"Fix this," she said. "Not for the city. For the people in it who needed to see that the answer you’re given isn’t the only answer."
Kai looked at her hand on his arm. At the grocery bags she was still holding. At the building with the door that faced the wrong way.
"I’ll fix it," he said.
She let go.
He kept walking.
He heard a man on a phone saying, "No, I know where it is, I’m standing in front of it, that’s not what I’m saying, I’m saying it’s not where it was yesterday." A pause. "The road is different. The whole road is different." Another pause. "I don’t know what that means."
Further in, a street ended in the middle of what should have been a clear path through to the gate district, which was now occupied with rows of houses.
The Divine Maze wasn’t destroying the city.
It was rearranging it.
Two blocks later, he passed a father sitting on the steps of a house that had moved overnight. A child came through the door behind him.
"Dad, why does the house face the wrong way?"
The father looked at the street that should have been behind his house. "I don’t know, sweetheart."
"It was fine yesterday." The girl tilted her head. "Can’t we move it back?"
"I don’t think so."
The child noticed Kai before her eyes lit up, and she tugged her father’s sleeve. "Is that the man from TV?"
The father looked up, and his eyes widened. "Yeah," he said. "I think it is."
The child waved.
Kai waved back.
"Are you here to fix the houses?" she asked.
"I’m going to try," Kai said.
"My dad says probably not," she said. Very seriously. "He says it’s too complicated."
The father closed his eyes briefly. "Sofia."
"He said that."
"I said I wasn’t sure," the father corrected. He looked at Kai with an apology in his face. "She doesn’t have a filter."
"It’s fine," Kai said. He looked at the girl. "Your dad’s right that it’s complicated."
"But you’re going anyway?"
"Yeah."
She considered this with the full focus of a child processing new information. "Even though it’s complicated and you might not fix it?"
"Even though."
She nodded slowly. Like that was the important data. Like adults who tried anyway were a specific category she was building understanding about.
"Okay," she said. "I’ll watch from the window."
The father stood up. He looked at Kai with an expression that said he had about fifteen things he wanted to say and had narrowed it down to one.
"My daughter’s going to remember this day," he said quietly. "Whatever happens. She’s going to remember that someone showed up."
Kai looked at the girl, who had already turned to tell her father something important about what angle was best for watching from the window.
"Tell her the house will be fine," Kai said.
"You sure?"
"I’ll make sure."
The father looked at him for a moment longer.
"Alright," he said. And believed it.
Kai kept going.
He was two blocks from the gate when he realized people were following him. Not a crowd but a handful, and even more joined at every street.
People started following him.
More joined at every street.
A child pointed. "That’s him."
The parent beside the child looked. "You’re right. It’s Kai."
The child’s eyes went wide. "He’s here to clear it."
More people joined from the side streets. The crowd was not loud or celebrating, but just deciding that watching from the windows was not enough.
Someone behind him said, "You really think he can do it alone? It took four of the best hunters in the city to clear Abyssal Clock, and they all ended up in the hospital."
Someone else said, "Then stop watching and go home."
"I’m not going home, I’m saying—"
"He’s ranked eighth and third in event contribution. He cleared Crimson Eden with Sera and the whole team, and Hollow Sky gave him the highest contribution in the Storm Castle fight over Raze. Over Raze." A pause. "What else do you need?"
"I need to know he can do it alone. That’s different from doing it with help."
Nobody answered that one because nobody had the answer.
Mayor Ko was at the outer perimeter alone.
No press team. No official formation. Just the mayor in his jacket with two assistants far enough back that it was clear he’d told them to stay there.
He watched Kai approach. Watched the crowd behind him. Watched the gate.
"Kai," he said.
"Mayor."
They stood facing each other. The gate hummed behind them.
"You don’t have to do this," Mayor Ko said. His voice was quieter than his public voice. "I mean that. Nobody in this city has the authority to make you walk through that gate."
"Someone has to," Kai said.
"Yes. But it doesn’t have to be you specifically. We’re still working on alternatives."
"How’s that going?"
Mayor Ko was quiet.
"That’s what I thought," Kai said.
Mayor Ko looked at the crowd gathered behind Kai. At hundreds of people who had walked through a rearranged district to stand here. At a city that had been afraid for the past couple of days and then he nods once and stepping aside.
Kai’s phone buzzed three times in quick succession.
Lily first. Don’t die... And I trust that you can do it. I doubt you would tackle this dungeon if you weren’t confident.
Mira next. Come back in one piece.
Not ’good luck’ or ’be careful.’ From a hospital bed, Mira was still worried about the person walking out the door.
Raze only sent three words. Hit it harder.
Kai almost smiled.
Then a fourth message appeared, from Elden. No matter what, if it becomes too much. Then leave, you can repeat back and forth with everyone helping you.
Kai read it twice and smiled.
A fifth message came from Kei and the others. All of us are watching, so don’t you dare lose!
Then he looked at the notification below all of them. Sera’s name, and he saw no message. Just her name and then he turned around.
The crowd behind him was enormous.
Hundreds of faces in the front and thousands further back. People on rooftops. People hanging out of windows. People who had walked through a district where their houses had turned themselves backward just to stand here and watch.
The woman with the grocery bags was somewhere in that crowd.
The father and the girl named Sofia.
The man from Titan Grave district.
The woman carrying her sleeping child.
Somewhere further, in a hospital room, monitors beeping steadily. Raze watching on his phone with his legs that wouldn’t let him stand. Mira counting people and arriving at a number that was one short. Lily reading data she couldn’t control from a bed she couldn’t leave. Elden with his tablet and his seventeen scenarios.
Kei. Rin. Lina. Dorn.
Leo on Mina’s bed with her arm around his shoulders.
Twelve million people watching through a screen in a kitchen. Kai smiled before he typed a message to Sera, knowing she wouldn’t see it until she woke up.
"Together," he wrote.
He sent it before putting the phone away and heading towards the Divine Maze gate.
It was white.
Not the deep blue of the standard gates, or the black of the Mythical gates, or the red of Crimson Eden. But a doorway of absolute white that should have looked simple. It didn’t. The closer he stood to it, the harder it became to remember what it had looked like a moment ago.
He looked away and looked back.
It already felt different.
The gate opened wider as if the white was inviting him inside. The interior showed nothing, and Kai stepped forward anyway.
