Chapter 95: Winning Changes Everything
Kai heard them before he reached the door.
Kei echoed out loud first, saying the room needed fixing and had volunteered himself for the job. Then Lina laughed, and Rin said something quiet underneath both of them. Then Dorn, which sounded almost like a laugh.
Kai stopped outside the door for just a second. He had been through a Mythical gate alone. Had walked into white light without knowing what was waiting. Had come back with a mantle on his shoulders and a city filled with joy.
Sera was awake and that was the important part.
He pushed the door open.
Kei saw him first and stopped mid-sentence. His face went through three different expressions in one second. Then he landed on the grin.
"There he is," Kei said. "The man! The legend! The guy who made us all sit in a hospital for hours."
"I didn’t make you sit anywhere," Kai said.
"You walked into a Mythical gate solo. We were not going to leave." Kei gestured at the room. "This is your fault."
Lina stood up with her arms crossed and looked at him. Her face was composed, but her eyes weren’t. Then she walked over and hugged him, yet he could feel her hands gripping him tightly.
Kai didn’t know what to do with his arms for a moment. Then he put them around her shoulders and held on.
"Don’t do that again," she said into his shoulder.
"Noted," he said.
She pulled back, cleared her throat, and went back to her chair like nothing had happened. Her eyes were slightly wet, and she was pretending they weren’t.
Rin was next as she walked up and studied his face. Her eyes moved across his face before glancing down his body.
"You look tired," she said. "Did you not sleep before going inside?"
"I didn’t have the chance to."
"That’s reckless... But you’re okay."
"Yeah."
"Okay," she said, and went back to her spot by the window. But she was smiling. The small, careful one she kept for things she was genuinely glad about.
He put his hand on Kai’s shoulder once, firm and brief. Then he went back to his wall.
"He’s very emotional," Kei told Kai. "You should’ve seen him while you were inside. He stood by the window the whole time and wouldn’t move."
"I was watching the gate," Dorn said.
"You were worried."
"I was watching the gate."
"You were worried and watching the gate."
Dorn looked at the wall.
"We were all worried," Lina said simply. "That’s allowed."
Kai looked at the bed.
Sera was sitting up against the headboard and looking at him.
She was awake.
He had sat beside that bed for two hours watching her breathe. Had answered the mayor’s call with one eye on her face. Had walked into a Mythical gate with her last text still unread on her phone.
He walked over before sitting down, and neither of them said anything for a moment.
"You finally awake, sleepy head?" he said.
Sera’s mouth pulled slightly at one corner. "I was unconscious," she said. "You took too long."
Kei spun around in his chair with both hands pointed at Kai. "See? Sera agrees with me. You were slacking."
"Both of you are terrible," Rin said, without looking up from the window.
"My partner clearly needed motivation," Sera said.
Kai’s lips moved slightly. "That’s true," he said. "This is obviously your fault."
Kei threw both hands up. "He admits it!"
"He admitted nothing," Rin said.
"He said it was her fault. That implies he needed her. Which implies he wasn’t performing to standard. Which—"
"Kei," Lina said.
"I’m establishing the logic."
"You’re exhausting everyone."
"Those aren’t the same thing."
Kai chuckled before looking back at Sera. "You got my message?"
"I read it when I first woke up," she said quietly in a tone just for him.
"And?"
"And I’m here," she said. "We’re both here."
Kai nodded once.
"Together," she said.
"Together," he said.
Kei, from across the room, said, "I feel like something important just happened and nobody explained it to us."
"It’s none of your business," Sera said, without looking away from Kai.
"Deeply unfair," Kei said. "We sat here for all those hours."
"And we appreciate it."
"Do you? Do you really?"
Lina was already laughing while Dorn covered his mouth, but his shoulders were shaking. Rin shook her head with an amused smile on her face.
Lina looked at Kai from her chair. "Are you going to tell us what happened inside?"
"Eventually."
"Eventually like today, or eventually like never?"
"Eventually, like when I’ve figured out how to explain it."
Kei leaned forward. "Was it terrifying?"
Kai thought about it for a second, seeing a copy of Mythal, seeing alternative paths he could take, and fighting a boss that could ban a person’s powers.
"Yes," he said.
"On a scale of one to Crimson Eden?" Sera asked.
"Different kind of terrifying."
"Helpful," Sera said drily.
"I’ll write a report," Kai said.
"I’d really like that," Rin said.
"I was joking."
"I wasn’t."
Kei interrupted. "Okay, but the important question. The mantle." He pointed at the White Thread Mantle on the back of Kai’s chair. It was glowing faintly. Shifting slightly at the edges like it was still deciding on a shape. "What does it do?"
"I’m still figuring that out."
"Can you make it do something right now?"
"I could."
"Will you?"
"No."
Kei slumped back in his chair. "You’ve been gone two days, and you’re already back to being difficult."
"I was never easy," Kai said.
"Fair point." Kei paused. "For the record? I told everyone you’d come back. The whole time. Didn’t waver once."
"That’s true," Rin said. "He was being annoying about it, though."
"I was confident."
"Loudly and repeatedly confident."
"Because I was right." Kei looked at Kai with something that was trying to be casual and wasn’t quite making it. "I told Sora’s chat too. Over five million people. I said you’d walk back out, and I was right."
Kai looked at him. "You were on Sora’s stream?"
"She called me for a comment. I was very eloquent."
"What did you say?"
Kei grinned. "I said you’d better come back because I still owed you a rematch."
Kai raised a brow, not recalling ever fighting Kei, while Dorn made a sound.
"That was his version of eloquent," Lina said.
"Him making stuff up?"
"I prefer exaggerating and seeing the future."
"Rin is right, you are annoying."
Rin’s lips twitched before saying quietly, "The group is glad you’re back."
Kai looked at her. "I wasn’t gone long."
"You were gone the right amount of time," she said. "That’s different."
Kai blinked before smiling and nodding.
Then every screen in the room turned blue.
The monitor beside Sera’s bed.
The television on the wall.
Every phone simultaneously, the blue light replaced whatever had been on the screen. Everyone recognized that blue light immediately and they went still.
Kei stopped mid-sentence.
Rin stood up.
Outside the window, the city had gone quiet.
[City Objective: Complete.]
[Mythal City: Ranked First Among Completed City.]
[Reward Distribution: Commencing.]
Nobody moved.
The pattern had been consistent. Every announcement since the beginning had introduced something harder. The room was holding its collective breath waiting for the other half of this one.
Then the Titan Grave district changed.
They could see it through the window.
The fractured roads that had been cracked since the first Mythical gate’s appearance began sealing, the damage running backward in real time, stone edges drawing together and smoothing over.
A collapsed section of building on the district’s eastern edge rose, rubble assembling itself into the walls and roof it had been before the gate’s pressure cracked the foundation months ago.
Sera moved toward the window. Kai helped her without making anything of it, and she accepted without commenting.
...
The restoration moved through the city in a wave.
People stopped walking and talking. All of them were staring at the light in awe. District by district, the visible damage was undone with quiet precision. In Hollow Sky’s district, a family walked back into a house that had been structurally condemned.
It was fixed.
The father opened the door. His two kids pushed past him into the hallway and went straight to their rooms, as they’d only been gone overnight. He stood in the doorway and looked at his house.
It was fixed, completely. Tears began leaking down his face before he put his forehead against the doorframe and stayed there.
The Abyssal Clock district came next. A man sat down to eat lunch and was still sitting there when he finished.
No missing time.
He looked at his watch before looking at his food. Then he laughed so hard he had to put down his fork. He checked his watch again and laughed even harder.
...
In the hospital room, Lina was completely still with her hands over her mouth. Rin’s notebook was closed in her lap, and her gaze continued staring out the window. Kei was silent. The longest Kai had ever seen him go without talking.
Dorn hadn’t blinked in several seconds. Sera watched the restoration wave move through the streets below and then looked at Kai.
"We did that," Sera said quietly.
"Yeah," he said.
From the street below, the sound of someone crying. Not quietly, but a hard, open crying. Then, more voices echoed out before, in the next minute, the city was crying.
Kei finally broke his silence. He turned to Kai with red eyes and the realest expression Kai had ever seen on his face.
"You did that," Kei said. "The last gate. That was you."
"Everyone helped out."
"The last one was you."
Kai didn’t answer because Kei wasn’t wrong. Instead, he felt mostly relief, like he was putting down something very heavy and finally being able to breathe.
...
[City Restoration: Complete.]
The cheering that followed was different from anything the city had produced during the gate phase. Not the desperate relief of a cleared dungeon or the stunned reaction to a ranking update. But one of relief. The belief that things could finally return to normal.
Then the system spoke again.
[Leadership Candidates Identified.]
The cheering stopped.
Then faces appeared in the sky, and they were full portraits. Each one was rendered in the same blue light as the announcement. They appeared above the skyline one by one, large enough to be seen from any district.
Kai Rosefield.
Sera Vale.
Raze.
Lily Blue.
Mira Solt.
Elden Cross.
Victor Hale.
...
The room looked at the sky.
Then at each other.
Then back at the sky.
Sera looked at her own face above the skyline. "That’s unsettling," she said.
"You look good, though," Kei said before sighing. "Still... What the hell is the system trying to do now?"
Nobody had an answer.
On the broadcast visible through the window, Mayor Ko was looking at the portraits. He had handled every impossible thing the Mythical phase had put on his desk. Mayor Ko looked confused.
The portraits stayed for thirty seconds.
Then they were gone.
No explanation followed or additional messages appeared. The city stared at the empty sky where the portraits had been.
"The system just decided some people are leaders," Kei said. "And then didn’t explain what that means."
"It never does," Rin said.
...
The celebration resumed.
The restoration had happened, and the Mythical Gates were gone. To the people of the city, there was nothing left to wait for. The city below the hospital window began finding its noise again, and this time it was even louder.
Then the system spoke a third time.
[Promotion Confirmed.]
People who had been mid-celebration paused and looked at screens.
[Removing Obsolete Content.]
The pause extended.
Nobody immediately understood what the phrase meant in this context. Then the broadcast screens across the city began showing F-rank dungeon gate locations, the small blue gates that had been the starting point for every hunter since the system went live.
The screen showed hunters inside them, still mid-run, still fighting the creature types. Every gate shook at the same moment, and then the hunters inside were ejected.
A portal appeared behind them before something invisible froze the hunter and all the monsters around. Then the hunter was hurled into the portals and back into the streets. The footage showed hunters rolling out onto the pavement, swearing, looking back at the gates they had been inside thirty seconds ago.
The gates began glowing.
Not the standard dungeon activity glow.
Something that built rapidly, spreading from gate to gate across the city like a signal traveling a network. One gate taking it up and the next and the next until every F-rank dungeon in Mythal was producing the same intense light at the same time.
Then they were gone.
It did not collapse the way dungeons collapsed when cleared. Not sealed the way the Mythical gates had sealed.
But erased!
The gate locations became ordinary streets instantly, no rubble, no magic residue, no indication that anything had stood there. Every F-rank dungeon in every district of the city, gone in four seconds.
The broadcast feeds cut to the empty gate locations.
The city stared.
Nobody was cheering.
...
Lina said, very quietly, "They took away the starting dungeons."
The room was quiet for a moment.
Kai looked at the empty gate location on the broadcast. The street that had been an F-rank gate entrance was just a street now. Ordinary pavement, like the gate, had never been there. He had walked into an F-rank gate on day one with an iron sword he bought the same morning. Had come out the other side feeling confident with his distortion. All because he swept through his first F-Rank dungeon called Feral Cave.
That was where all of this had started.
A small blue gate in an unremarkable street, but it was gone now. The starting point was just gone.
Then the system explained.
[New Baseline Difficulty: Established.]
[E-Rank: Level 10 to 20.]
[D-Rank: Level 21 to 30.]
[C-Rank: Level 31 to 50.]
A pause that felt longer than it was.
[All Monsters Will Now Carry Their Highest Available Equipment Drop.]
"The loot improves," Kei said.
"Everything improves," Rin said. "And everything becomes harder."
Sera was looking at the window. "A lot of hunters just lost their safest income and every new person who awakens from this point... Enters a world where the beginning dungeons are level ten, not level one."
Kai trembled as Mina and Leo’s faces flashed in his mind. He clenched the bedsheet in horror as he began to understand the implication. "The starting point moved..."
Then the final message arrived.
[F-Rank Stage: Complete.]
Kei said, after a moment, "F-rank was a stage."
"Not a dungeon type," Lina said in shock. "A phase."
"And the phase ended," Rin said.
"Forever," Sera said.
The room went quiet.
Then a couple lines of text appeared quickly before vanishing.
[Contribution Analysis: In Progress.]
[ERROR.]
[RECALCULATING.]
Then the screen disappears.
Nobody reacts.
Nobody notices.
Except Kai narrowing his eyes for half a second at a familiar set of words but saying nothing. Outside the hospital window, the city continued celebrating.
Inside the room, nobody was celebrating anymore. The seven hunters stared at the sky and realized the beginner phase of the System was over.
Forever.
