Chapter 229: The Horizon Holds No One
Oliver keeps looking at me for too long after the panel disappears.
It isn’t that he failed to understand. It’s worse. He understood enough to have to decide whether saying anything about it would drive him insane, or just confirm that I’m an aberration walking around in human boots and a decent coat.
I don’t blame him.
The first time I saw my class’s Order, I figured the system had broken in some irreparable way too. SSS classes existed, of course, but "existing" and "appearing in front of you on your own profile" were completely different distances.
Ten years from now, only five people will be publicly recognized as holders of an Order SSS Class in all of Thirstfall’s recorded history. Others might have existed, hidden, dead too young, or swallowed by some trench before they could rise, but Order is private information. Without a voluntary reveal, a contract, espionage, or a very creative autopsy using skills, no one knows the real statistic.
Even among the known names, there’s a pattern. Knights, archers, mages, supports, rare professions. Absurd, yes, but still classifiable. But the unique-type Order SSS Class hasn’t appeared in any reliable record in over thirty Earth years, since Thirstfall first started stealing people from Earth.
Valerius is the most monstrous example that comes to mind. But he is still a gravitational mage, Order SSS, and ten years into the future, Rank SSS as well. If I had to bet on his current Rank, I’d say SS, maybe on the same tier as Rahul Sharma.
The difference is that climbing from SS to SSS can eat an entire decade, not only for the difficulty of evolution, but because too much power attracts too much politics. At a certain point, hunting stops being your routine and turns into just another chore squeezed between alliances, cold wars, public threats, and meetings that probably kill the soul faster than any monster.
I glance sideways and find Oliver staring into the vastness of Thirstfall. The sea, the sky-ocean, the impossible line where everything blends together. Watching that man go quiet in front of the view puts a strange weight in my chest.
I still don’t know how to tell them everything that’s coming, or when. Maybe prophets of old religions felt something similar before announcing disasters to their own followers: the certainty of carrying a truth too large to be useful whole.
"Oliver," I say, breaking the silence carefully. "You know there are three main continents in Thirstfall right now, don’t you?"
It takes him a second to come back from the horizon.
"Yes, boss. I did my homework. Frost, Ventalia, and Firesta. Why?"
"Just wanted to see how well you know the map."
"I mostly stick to Frost because of Azure Prime, but I visited Firesta once."
"Like it?"
Oliver makes a face so honest it nearly answers before his mouth does.
"Too hot. The watery sky up there looks like it’s boiling. It’s like being inside a pot somebody forgot on the stove."
The image is too good to argue with.
Firesta is exactly that on certain days: a hot continent, full of fire and magma monsters, as if someone shoved a volcano underwater and called it an ecosystem.
Frost has its horrors, but at least it lies better. Azure Prime is blue, cold, organized enough to fool newcomers. Firesta doesn’t even pretend to be hospitable.
I keep my own experiences to myself. For someone who’s officially still a newcomer, talking about Firesta with too much intimacy would sound like one more crooked piece in the puzzle Oliver is already trying to assemble.
"Why do you ask?" he goes on, narrowing his eyes. "Already thinking about changing continents? Is this about Sharma?"
When the tide collapse comes, you might miss Frost the way it is today.
That’s what I want to say.
But those words wouldn’t help Oliver. They’d only turn a careful soldier into a paranoia machine, trying to wring every piece of the future out of me as if enough information could keep the ocean from falling. Some truths don’t prepare anyone. They just make a person bleed before the blade arrives.
So I pick something smaller.
"No. I was just imagining what you were thinking, looking at that horizon."
Oliver turns his eyes back to the sea. His expression softens in a rare way.
"I was thinking this is beautiful and cruel at the same time. I wish my wife and my son could see this view at least once."
"Tourism in Thirstfall," I murmur. "That sounds like the kind of idea that starts with families smiling and ends with dinosaurs eating lawyers in a theme park."
Oliver lets out a full, healthy laugh, the kind that shoves the tension a few feet away for a while. The sound matches the world around it poorly, and maybe that’s exactly why it does some good.
When the laughter dies, he keeps looking at the sky.
"If you really are a unique-type Order SSS Class..." He points up, at that impossible blue. "Then this sky won’t be enough to hold you. Hang in there and do your best, boss. I’ll be at your side."
I turn my face toward him.
"Is that what you spent all this time trying to say?"
"Was it that bad?"
"Embarrassing."
Oliver scratches his head, breaking into a crooked smile.
"I’m not good with words."
"I noticed."
"But I’m good with actions."
He pulls the giant hammer from his inventory as if the weight of the weapon were a mere formality and rests it on his shoulder. The metal catches the late-afternoon light, enormous, simple, honest. Exactly like him.
"Come on, boss. We’ve got work to do, and it’ll start getting dark soon."
"So now I’ve got a 264 lbs babysitter made of pure muscle?"
"Something like that. Hurry up."
Oliver starts walking back toward the center of the city, the hammer resting on his shoulder, his posture lighter than before. I stay another moment at the railing, watching the endless horizon of Azure Prime while his back moves away.
Then a memory cuts through my mind.
It doesn’t arrive like an ordinary recollection. It comes sharp, sudden, with the same silent violence as the moment I woke after my first death and realized the impossible had happened.
A surname surfaces along with the image.
A smile is born on my lips before I can stop it. The corner of my mouth climbs bitterly, faster than smiling at a bad joke and realizing too late.
I knew it.
If I remembered correctly, if the pieces still fell in the same place even after everything I’ve already altered, then the road ahead is clearer than before. We need to save Lola, find my father, and go to the trenches.
Because maybe that’s how I’d change his future too...
...Dear Kaminski.
