The mission board's holographic interface cycled through available quests as Kaelen, Lira, and Jay stood in front of it, each searching different sections.
"Material hunting could work," Jay suggested after a few minutes of silence.
Lira nodded. "I'm not against it."
Kaelen kept his eyes on the board, scrolling through options. He didn't have a preference yet.
They continued searching, their focus narrowing now that they'd agreed on a general direction. After another minute, Lira stopped scrolling.
"Let's pick this one," she said, gesturing to a specific listing.
Kaelen and Jay both leaned in to read what she was pointing at.
[RAM PROBLEM]
[Type: Containment]
[Target: Lantern Horn Rams]
[Location: Divian Farmland, Fourth Tier, Cane District]
[Information: Lantern Horn Rams broke free from their harness and are tearing through crop fields]
[Objectives: Drive the Rams away from crops. Subdue without killing them.]
[Requirements: F-rank adventurer]
[Reward: 100,000 Credits]
[Threat Assessment: F-rank]
Kaelen read through the details twice before responding. "This could be okay."
"If you don't consider the pay," Jay added, her tone carrying mild disappointment.
"Come on, you two." Lira turned to face them properly. "This could be our first mission as a team. It's a good start."
"Hunting should be a better start up actually," Jay said.
"Why do you think so?" Lira asked.
"Coordination," Kaelen spoke before Jay could answer.
Jay tilted her head at him, a little surprised he'd taken the word out of her mouth
"If anything is going to help us with coordination, it's this," Lira continued. "Getting familiar with how we each fight in a controlled situation is better than going out to the Scourged Zone and dying pointlessly."
"While you're right, Lira," Jay said, "I didn't mean coordination." She paused. "I meant your ranks. You're a pending E-rank, but Kaelen is still F-rank. It would be better to even everyone's rank, or at least raise the party rating as much as we can. And what better way to do that than hunting missions?"
"And how does my rank affect the team?" Kaelen asked, genuinely puzzled.
"If we're both still F-ranks, it affects our progress," Lira answered. "We can't take higher-rank missions, since we're still considered an F-rank team overall."
Of course, Kaelen thought. The majority rank in a party determines the whole team's classification.
"But we can go with this," Jay said after a moment. "It'll be best for coordination like Lira said."
Jay pulled up her wristband and began inputting the mission information, registering it to their party card.
"Let's get this to the reception," Jay said.
....
May was busy sorting through data chips when the group approached her desk. Her fingers moved quickly, organizing the small devices into labeled containers.
"Have you guys decided on a mission to take?" May asked without looking up.
"Yeah," Kaelen answered.
"That's nice," May said, glancing up briefly before returning to her task.
"You forgot something, Miss May," Jay said.
May paused, giving them her full attention now. "You want more information on the mission?"
"Yes and no," Jay replied. "You didn't give us a group card to accept missions."
"Oh, I'm so sorry." May straightened, bowing slightly. "It must have slipped my mind."
She turned to her terminal and began typing, pulling up several screens. After a moment, she moved to a device that looked similar to a printer. A card slipped out. May proceeded to stamp a chip into the card using a stapler-like object, then handed it to the group.
Kaelen let his curiosity get the better of him, taking the chip before the others could.
It was small, barely ten centimeters long and five wide, cut diagonally between blue on the left and white on the right. He turned it over, checking both sides.
May chuckled at Kaelen's obvious interest.
"You might be the dead weight of this team, Kaelen." May teased.
His face went warm immediately.
"Don't take it the wrong way, it's cute," she added. "You look at everything like you're seeing it for the first time."
"Technically, he is," Lira said.
"Please, Miss Lira, I was joking." May looked back at Kaelen. "I wasn't trying to embarrass you."
"I'm not offended," Kaelen said.
"No but he genuinely is new to all of this," Lira continued, her tone even. "He only awakened about five or six months ago."
The shift in the room was immediate.
May stared. "Pardon?"
"Say whaaat," Jay said, her voice climbing.
Kaelen exhaled slowly. "I had a late awakening. That's all."
"I'm so sorry, Kaelen," May said, her earlier playfulness replaced by concern.
"It's okay."
"No, I'm really sorry."
"It's okay."
"I am very sorry. I didn't mean to insult you. Yeah, you may be new to all of this, but it gives me no right to make jokes. I only assumed you're just naturally clueless since you're a Unique class.
"Kaelen is a Unique class?" Jay's shocked expression somehow grew larger.
"It's really okay, Miss May. I don't mind," Kaelen said. "You didn't mean it in an offensive way. But I have a question. Why are you more surprised now than when i registered as a Unique rank?"
"It's because awakening at a late age is already rare, and awakening to the Unique rank is even more bizarre," Lira answered.
"You've probably learned that awakening is mostly expected at age twelve to thirteen," May added. "Beyond that, your aether core becomes too clogged to form an ability."
Jay was still speechless, only listening, not knowing what to say as she processed the information.
"But you weren't this shocked when I told you," Kaelen shot Lira a questioning look.
"Maybe the shock was just so high, I couldn't react," Lira said, waving her hand dismissively.
Kaelen could only sigh but decided not to push further. "Let's get the mission info, Miss May."
"Jay," Lira called out to the dazed Jay.
"Yeah, yeah." Jay blinked herself back into the room. "Sorry." She typed on her wristband, transferring the information to May's terminal.
May turned back to her terminal, accepting the wristband transfer from Jay. She searched for a moment, reading the information on the holographic screen, then started typing away in search of additional details.
"It's a containment mission from the Divian family," May said after a moment.
"The Divian," Lira muttered, the name finally clicking. She had been wondering why it sounded familiar, but now it made sense.
The Divian weren't a family who engaged in politics, but they were pretty influential and strong. Influential enough to be on the fourth tier where the academy was located, and strong enough to have birthed multiple AA-ranks and at least one SS-rank. This left Lira wondering why a family like that would want someone coordinating F-rank beasts on their farm.
"You'll be containing at least a hundred of them," May said.
"A hundred?" Kaelen asked.
"It's a possibility. The farm is pretty extensive. It's the Divian family, after all," May continued.
"Nothing we can't do," Jay grinned, her energy fully returned.
Jay transferred the quest to the card, pre-registering it as a party-accepted quest. They waved May goodbye and set out for the fourth tier.
...
Getting to the transit station was easy enough. Getting there quickly was another matter, because Jay immediately started pestering Kaelen the moment they were outside.
"Okay but seriously, how did you manage to awaken after all that time?"
"Jay, I genuinely don't know. I didn't do anything special."
"But there had to be something. A trigger. An event. Something."
"I really can't explain it."
"Come on."
"Jay." Kaelen called, his voice strained. He wasn't irritated, but he was a little stressed, and his body from yesterday still ached. He was surprised both girls were moving freely after fighting fifty-seven Scourge Wolves.
"Just one detail."
Lira walked slightly ahead of them both, not saying a word, quietly enjoying every second of it.
They boarded the hover-car heading up to the fourth tier. The car was moderately full but not cramped. Jay kept the questions going until Kaelen started giving one-word answers out of sheer exhaustion, at which point she finally relented.
The car climbed through the fifth tier and slowed at the fourth.
...
Kaelen stepped off and immediately understood why people talked about the upper tiers the way they did.
It wasn't just the architecture, though that was jarring enough. The buildings here were defined in a way the lower tiers weren't. Defined lines. Materials that caught light cleanly instead of absorbing it. The streets themselves felt different, laid with tiles that hummed faintly with aether.
Even beasts moved through the streets here like they belonged, domesticated-looking but clearly not harmless.
The air was richer. That was the only word Kaelen had for it. Aether-dense in a way that pressed gently against his skin when he breathed. No wonder cultivators living up here moved faster through their levels.
He hadn't registered any of this on his way to the academy months ago. He'd been too wound up in his own head to look.
They boarded a transport to the Cane District and navigated the rest on foot, stopping to ask for directions a few times. The responses ranged from helpful to dismissive to outright insulting.
Jay's jaw tightened on the third one.
"I hate self-glorifying bastards," she muttered, barely low enough to avoid a confrontation.
"Don't bother," Lira said with a faint smile.
"How are you two not bothered by this?"
"It's not worth it," Lira voiced with an unbothered expression.
Kaelen thought about it for a moment before speaking. "My mother always said you don't need to prove your strength to people who aren't part of your destination. Every unnecessary fight is a quiet betrayal of your purpose."
Jay opened her mouth, closed it. Then something in her expression softened just slightly. "That's actually deep. I wish I had a mother."
The words landed heavily.
"Jay, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"
"You have nothing to apologize for," Jay said simply. "She's the one who left. That's on her, not you."
Nobody said anything after that. The rest of the walk to the farm was quiet.
...
The Divian farmland appeared when they crested a hill, and it was bigger than any of them had expected.
A force barrier dome covered the entire estate, faint and shimmering like heat off metal. Beyond it, the fields were dense with color, greens and golds and a few shades that didn't have obvious names, rows of crops and plants stretching further than Kaelen could track from where they stood.
They walked down toward it.
No entrance was visible on their side.
"We'll have to go around," Lira said.
"Left or right?" Jay asked.
"Who are you?"
The voice was small and quiet, and it came from very close.
Kaelen turned first.
He moved fast, putting himself between the voice and the others before he'd fully processed what he was seeing, body dropping into a defensive stance without conscious thought. Lira and Jay both reacted to his movement with confusion rather than matching it.
"Kaelen, what are you doing?" Jay asked.
"Stay back."
The woman standing four meters away looked ordinary at first glance. A maid dress that ended just above the knee. Beige hair pulled into a ponytail. She was tall, six feet exactly, slim-waisted, and she stood with a stillness that had no particular tension in it.
She was blindfolded.
They hadn't heard her approach. Not a sound. Not a footstep.
The System had already reacted before Kaelen's reasoning caught up with it.
[Warning: Hostile Presence Detected]
[New Quest Assigned: Survivor]
[Classification: Side Quest]
[Type: Mandatory]
[Difficulty: ???]
[Objective: Survive]
[Reward: ???]
[Time Limit: None]
He stared at the interface for half a second. The System had never told him to explicitly survive before. Even when against the Obsidian Mauler, against the serpents, against Jax, it had always given him objectives. Numbers. Actions. This was one word.
'Survive.'
"Jay. Lira." His voice came out flat. "Run when I say."
"We're adventurers," Jay said, stepping forward before he could stop her. "We accepted a quest from the Divian family, miss."
The woman tilted her head slightly to the left, like she was listening to something just past them.
"If you accepted the quest," she said, calm as anything, "then I'm allowed to kill you."
"Run. Now."
Kaelen activated Temporal Lock the same instant he shouted it. Lira grabbed Jay without asking why and pulled her back.
[–33 A.E.]
[Temporal Lock Failed]
He didn't even feel the impact a little after it happened.
CRACK
The sound came first, bone and stone, one loud crack merging into the next, and then he was already embedded in the face of the nearest boulder, the rock spiderwebbed out from the point of contact with his body. His ribs had given. Something in his shoulder had too.
He couldn't tell how she'd moved. There'd been no transition between her standing there and the moment he hit the rock.
Jay's earth rose in waves, spikes splitting the ground in sequence.
The woman walked through them. Not around. The formations dissolved before they reached her, like she'd simply disagreed with their existence and they'd accepted it.
"What the—" Jay's expression went blank with shock.
Lira was already moving. Her arms and boots shimmered silver, aether coating clean and tight. She drove a kick toward the woman's face.
The maid caught her foot. One hand. There was no shift in her weight. She lifted Lira and threw her sideways like she was correcting something mildly inconvenient.
Lira twisted in the air and landed on her feet, which said everything about how far she'd come, but her expression said she knew it hadn't made a difference.
"Jay, snap out of it."
Jay came back. She pressed both palms to the ground and pushed her will into it, trying to liquefy the soil beneath the woman's feet.
The earth obeyed, but not for Jay. She was the one sinking. Down to her waist in the ground that had been solid a second before, unable to pull free.
The maid stepped toward Lira without urgency.
"You move like a ranger," she said, calmly.
"Why are you attacking us?" Lira asked, dodging back.
"Your friend attacked first."
"You told us you intended to kill us."
"You walked here to be killed." She caught Lira's next punch by the wrist, no effort visible in it. "That's a distinction."
Lira pulled against her grip and got nothing. The woman was holding her without even bracing her feet.
"Let her go."
Both of them turned.
Kaelen stood maybe fifteen meters back. He'd pulled himself out of the rock. His hair was moving, lifting at the edges, aether bleeding out of him and pulling the air with it. His ribs were knitting, the sound of it faint but there if you listened for it, bone finding bone again in real time. His shoulder had already reset.
He looked at the maid with eyes that had gone very cold.
"Quite the vitality—"
BAM
She never finished the sentence.
The impact hit her mid-word. She left the ground, crossed the distance to the boulder field in a fraction of a second, and hit it hard enough to carve a trench through three consecutive rocks before she stopped.
Dust came up around her in a cloud.
Nobody moved for a moment.
Then Jay, still half-submerged in the ground, said very quietly, "What just happened."