The city changed the moment the number hit fifty after a week

Not gradually but immediately, like a wire pulled tight, finally snapping into a different shape. The system board was updated, and three blue lights vanished from the Mythal skyline within the same hour.

The crowd watching the boards made a sound that was not quite excitement and not quite fear, but something that lived between them.

[Remaining Active C-Rank Dungeons in Mythal City: 50.]

Close to half of it was gone.

That was the number that hit people and made them look at the skyline differently.

Not fifty remaining but fifty gone. Half the C-rank gates in the city had already collapsed, and the other half were being contested by every guild and independent team that could field a viable group. The race had stopped feeling like an opportunity and started feeling like a countdown.

People in Mythal were trying not to be left behind by the future.

Guild buildings ran twenty-four hours now, lights on through the night, recruitment lines wrapping around the street outside. Dungeon schedules changed so frequently that the coordination offices had stopped posting fixed times.

Teams fought over routes openly, arguments that had previously stayed in private channels spilling out onto the street because nobody had the energy to keep things contained anymore.

Even the arguments sounded exhausted now.

Kai stood near a crowded intersection that morning and watched three blue lights disappear from different parts of the skyline almost simultaneously. After clearing over ten of the C-rank dungeons with Sera, he had reached level 36.

The crowd around him reacted immediately, phones coming out, forums refreshing, streams updating with the results before the gate debris had finished settling.

[Official Rankings Update.]

The arguments started within minutes.

"Elden Cross cleared two today! He is definitely going to clear the most!"

"Mira Solt is ranked four, and she hasn’t slowed down once." 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

"Doesn’t matter if he burns out first."

That last one sat in the air differently than the others.

Burnout had become a real word in Mythal, not a metaphor. Hunters had started saying it with the same tone people used for injuries.

Kai saw evidence of it in every direction he walked. Hunters are sleeping against the walls outside dungeon zones. Guild teams carrying injured members through streets that were not designed for medical transport.

Healers sitting on curbs with their heads in their hands from mana exhaustion. Even the top-ranked players looked visibly worse than they had two weeks ago, with dark circles and slower movement, and the short tempers of people who had been running on less than they needed for too long.

He passed a small café and slowed when he heard two voices through the open window. Two lower-ranked hunters, both in basic gear, are watching a replay on a small screen at a corner table.

"They cleared three this week," one of them said.

"Yeah."

"Think we can catch up?"

A long pause.

"Honestly?" The second hunter laughed, short and quiet. "No."

Kai kept walking.

Kai kept walking, but he had been hearing versions of that answer more and more often lately. By the time he reached the outer district, he could already hear the shouting. Two guild teams had squared off outside one of the remaining gate entrances, both sides with weapons drawn, security guards wedging themselves into the gap between them.

One team was pointing at the gate. The other team was pointing at their watches. A route window had been missed, or claimed, or stolen, and now twelve people were screaming about it on a public street while a small crowd gathered to watch.

Someone near Kai muttered, "Silver Bloom leaked another team’s route schedule yesterday."

He looked at the man. "Leaked it to who?"

The man lowered his voice. "Whoever paid for it."

He kept walking without making eye contact again. It was the third thing like it that week. A team had shown up at a gate they’d booked and found another team already inside. A fistfight had broken out outside a coordination office over a disputed window.

Nobody had drawn weapons yet, but the way people looked at each other in dungeon zones had changed. You could feel it in the way conversations stopped when the wrong person walked into a room.

The public was still watching all of it like a sport, the same as it had for weeks. The only thing that had changed was the scale. Street streamers camped outside gate locations to catch the exits live, and their audiences had grown big enough that the hunters themselves had started recognizing the faces waiting for them.

Kai’s name came up more every day. And every time people watched him climb, someone else pushed themselves harder trying to keep up. The reactions got louder each time.

Sora had been live for six hours straight when the latest ranking update dropped.

She stared at the board for a moment before speaking. "Okay, this is getting genuinely intense." Her chat was already moving faster than usual. She leaned forward. "But I want to say something."

The chat slowed slightly, recognizing her tone. "People need to stop treating these clears like they’re just content. Hunters are dying almost every day now."

Sora sounded tired in a way she hadn’t a month ago.

"Another team went down this morning," Sora said. "Experienced players who weren’t strong enough for what the gates have turned into." She looked straight at the camera. "The city keeps pushing anyway because nobody wants to fall behind. I understand that. I just want everyone watching to actually see what that means."

The chat slowed down.

For almost ten seconds, it was nearly still, which rarely happened.

That same afternoon, Kai and Sera came out of a collapsing C-rank gate into the usual wall of noise. They were both breathing hard, clothes grey with dust, blood dried on their arms from the boss’s room.

The crowd surged forward against the barrier the way it always did now, phones up, names being shouted, the sound of people who had been standing outside for an hour waiting to see who walked out.

Kai moved through it without slowing down. He wasn’t sure when crowds had stopped feeling unusual. He had gotten used to the noise the way you get used to traffic, something you hear without really listening to anymore.

Then a boy near the front of the barrier caught his eye.

He looked about eight. He had pushed right up to the edge of the barrier and was staring at Kai with the focused expression of someone who had been waiting specifically for him.

When Kai looked at him, the boy pulled in a breath and shouted over everything else in the crowd.

"DON’T LOSE!"

The people nearby laughed, but the boy did not. He stayed pressed against the barrier with his hands gripping the rail, watching Kai with the kind of focus that made it clear he had not said it for the crowd.

He had said it because he meant it. Like Kai, losing was something the boy genuinely believed the city could not afford anymore.

Kai slowed for just a second. The kid sounded super afraid.

Sera fell into step beside him. "You okay?"

He did not answer right away. He looked up at the rankings board, then at the skyline, and the blue lights were fewer than they had been that morning. Around them, the crowd was already moving on, phones back out, attention pulled toward the next update.

"The city’s getting worse," he said.

Sera looked at the same skyline. "Yeah."

They walked. Behind them, the gate finished collapsing, one more light gone. By the time they reached the end of the block, Sora’s stream had already clipped the boy at the barrier, and the clip was spreading, and by morning, it would be everywhere.

The air around Kai shifted.

[External Attention: Surging.]

[True Fans Gained: 37.]

[Total True Fans: 87.]

[Scaling Effect: Intensifying.]

The distortion no longer reacted to attention like something surprised by it. It reacted like something expecting more.

He read it and kept walking.

Whatever the city was accelerating toward, Kai intended to reach it before everyone else.