The payment came through the next day.
Sailor stood at the financial department desk of the Association and looked at the figure in the notification. Twenty thousand rubles. For one lower-level reconnaissance of a rank C tower, less than an hour of work, one knife strike that Max had later called a shovel grip.
Twenty thousand.
He put the phone in his pocket and went outside. He stopped on the steps, turned his face to the sun, and stood like that for a few seconds. Not because the amount was enormous. Twenty thousand was twenty thousand, reasonable for a first time, nothing more. But it was the first money he had earned this way. Not at a warehouse, not in an office, not for paperwork. For a tower.
A start, he thought.
He took out his phone again and opened the assignment list in the Association's app.
♢ ♢ ♢ ♢
Over the next two weeks he took four more assignments.
All rank C towers. All within the city or in the nearest industrial zones. Max was assigned as his partner for each one, apparently that was the terms of his contract with the Association for this period, accompanying new hunters. He never said so, Sailor never asked.
The second outing was similar to the first: Max worked, Sailor watched and occasionally helped with small things. The third outing was better: Sailor already understood how to move through corridors, had stopped bumping into walls on turns, held the knife more correctly. Max said nothing, but he also stopped correcting him, and that in itself was a sign.
On the fourth outing, Sailor killed a monster on his own. Not finished it off, not assisted, but actually on his own, while Max was occupied with two others. A rank D dark infantry soldier, one strike in the right place, which he had found through trial and error over the previous three outings. The monster sank down and dissolved.
Max glanced over.
«Cleaner,» he said. Briefly, without inflection.
Sailor nodded and kept going.
That was better than any praise.
♢ ♢ ♢ ♢
After the fifth outing they sat near the perimeter exit while the patrol officer processed the paperwork. Max stood by a concrete block and looked at the tower. Sailor stood beside him.
They were quiet for about two minutes.
«How many floors does this tower have?» asked Sailor, simply to check whether he already knew the answer.
«Eighty,» said Max.
Sailor looked up at the spire overhead.
«We were on the first.»
«Yes,» said Max.
«And what's on the eightieth?»
Max was quiet for a moment. Not because he did not know. From the look of it, because he was deciding whether it was worth saying.
«No one knows,» he said at last. «No one has made it to the eightieth. Or to the seventieth either. The deepest clear-out in this city went to the forty-third floor, three years ago. A group of eight, ranks from B to A. Two didn't come back.»
Sailor looked at the tower.
«And how many towers like this are there in the city?»
«Eleven,» said Max. «Three lowest tier, fully cleared. Five mid-tier, partially cleared. Three high-tier, the Association doesn't let new hunters anywhere near those.»
«And in the country?»
«A lot,» said Max. «There's no precise data in the public record. But a lot.»
He pushed off from the concrete block, took his papers from the patrol officer, and nodded to Sailor.
«Let's go.»
Sailor followed and thought about eighty floors. About the fact that they had been on the first. About how somewhere above, in the darkness no one had ever seen, something lived and waited.
Not yet, he told himself. First learn to hold the knife properly.
♢ ♢ ♢ ♢
By the end of the second week there was sixty-eight thousand rubles in his account.
He sat at home that evening looking at the number in his banking app. Sixty-eight thousand in two weeks. More than he had made at his internship in a month.
The system glowed quietly before his eyes.
[ Name: Sailor ]
[ Race: Human ]
[ Type: Anomaly ]
[ Class: None ]
[ Level: 2 ][ 34% ]
[ Strength: 14 ]
[ Agility: 12 ]
[ Constitution: 13 ]
[ Mana: 15 ]
[ Stat Points: 5 ]
[ Skills: — ]
[ Talent: Nameless Contract ]
[ Trait: Dragon's Will ]
His level had risen to two after the third outing. The five stat points he had not touched yet, not knowing where to put them correctly. There were still no skills. That worried him a little; most hunters got their first skill at level one upon awakening. He had nothing yet.
Anomaly, he reminded himself. No textbook.
He closed the system screen and opened the banking app again.
Sixty-eight thousand.
The gear from the Association's storage was functional, he had grown accustomed to it. The jacket had stopped restricting his shoulders by the third day. The knife sat comfortably in his hand. But he understood that this was a starting level, with a low ceiling. Against rank C monsters it worked. Higher up, problems would begin.
He opened a browser and started looking at gear shops.
Good armor started at two hundred thousand. Decent rune-reinforced weapons from a hundred and fifty. He did the math, closed the browser, and lay down on the couch.
Keep saving, he decided.
♢ ♢ ♢ ♢
The phone vibrated at half past nine. He looked at the screen and smiled.
Mom (China).
«Sailor!» The same voice, the same exclamation point. «Dad and I were just talking about you. How are you?»
«Fine,» he said. «Working.»
«How's work?»
«Going well,» he said. «The pay is decent.»
«Really?» His mother was clearly pleased. «I'm glad. You've always been serious, I knew you'd find your path. Dad, can you hear? He says the pay is decent!»
His father said something in the background, too indistinct to make out.
«Dad's asking what exactly you're doing,» his mother said.
Sailor paused for a moment.
«Working with facilities,» he said. «Technical profile. Hard to explain briefly.»
That was, once again, technically true.
His mother did not press for details; she rarely went deep into work matters, that was more his father's territory. She switched to other things: told him it had rained heavily in Shanghai, that his father had a new project at work, that she had found a Russian-language café serving decent borscht, though it was expensive.
Sailor listened and stared at the ceiling.
He thought about how he would tell them the truth someday. Not now, not over the phone. In person, when they visited or when he went to see them. So he could see their faces. So they could talk properly.
Soon, he told himself. But not today.
«Take care of yourself,» his mother said before saying goodbye. «And eat properly. I bet you keep forgetting lunch.»
«I don't forget,» he said.
«You're lying,» she said without any edge, simply stating a fact.
He laughed. So did she.
They said their goodbyes. The screen went dark.
He lay in the quiet a little longer. Then got up, went to the kitchen, and made a proper dinner. Not because he had remembered, just because it seemed right.
♢ ♢ ♢ ♢
He took the next assignment two days later.
Same rank C tower, different district. Max was waiting at the entrance, as usual a little earlier than agreed, phone in hand and bored expression in place.
«You came,» he said instead of a greeting.
«I came,» Sailor agreed.
They passed through the perimeter and stopped at the entrance. The same darkness inside, the same cold air you could feel even from outside.
«Third floor today,» said Max. «Information came in about activity up there. Clear-out assignment, not reconnaissance. You understand the difference?»
«Reconnaissance you look, clear-out you kill everything that moves,» said Sailor.
«Rough but accurate,» said Max. «Monsters on the third will be rank C. Not D. That's a different level, remember that.»
«How different?»
Max thought for a moment.
«Remember those infantry soldiers on the first outing? The ones I killed in twenty seconds?»
«Yes.»
«A rank C monster will kill me in twenty seconds if I'm not careful,» said Max evenly. «That's not to scare you. It's just the difference in level. Stay closer than usual and don't try to be a hero.»
«Understood,» said Sailor.
Max nodded and stepped inside.
Sailor stepped in after him and felt the familiar things: the cold, the smell of stone, the dim bluish glow of the walls. Over three weeks this had become almost familiar. Almost, but not quite. The tower stayed foreign every time. That, he had already understood, was never going to change.
The third floor greeted them with silence.
It lasted exactly until the first turn.
A rank C monster looked different from the infantry soldiers on the lower levels. Larger, darker, different movement: not jerky but slow and very precise, like a predator that does not hurry because it knows you are not going anywhere. It moved on all four limbs, head low, eyes glowing a dull red.
Max stopped.
«Dark hunter,» he said quietly. «Rank C. Hold.»
Sailor held.
What happened next was not as fast as before. Max worked well, that much was obvious, but the monster dodged, struck back, nearly connected once. The fight lasted about two minutes. At the end Max stood upright, with no visible damage, but his breathing was slightly heavier.
«There,» he said briefly. «The difference.»
Sailor looked at the spot where the monster's body had been; now only dark ash was settling on the floor.
«I wouldn't have taken it,» he said honestly.
«No,» Max agreed. «Not yet. But that's yet.»
He said it without particular emphasis, just a fact. But Sailor noticed the word yet in that sentence. Filed it away.
They moved on down the corridor.
The third floor turned out to be long.
♢ ♢ ♢ ♢
He got home in the evening. Took off his jacket, hung it on the hook, put the kettle on. Sat down at the table and opened the banking app.
Eighty-six thousand.
A third-floor clear-out paid more than a first-floor reconnaissance. Logical. He looked at the number and thought about the rank C monster that had nearly reached Max. About the tower's eighty floors. About the fact that they had been on the third.
Seventy-seven floors above them.
He closed the app and opened the system screen.
[ Level: 2 ][ 67% ]
Growing, he thought. Slowly, but growing.
The kettle boiled. He got up, made tea, and sat back down. Outside it was getting dark. The tower on the horizon glowed faintly with its inner light, the kind only visible at night.
He looked at it and drank his tea.
Eighty floors.
Someday.