Ironpeak hit like a wall.

  One moment the road was quiet enough to hear wagon wheels complain and lizards breathe. The next, the valley opened—and the town sat there like a clenched fist of stone and timber, ringed by palisades and squat watchtowers that made it clear this wasn’t a place built for comfort.

  It was built to keep living.

  The caravan rolled through the gate and onto proper stone. The guards didn’t gawk, didn’t gape at Eins or Zwei, didn’t even pretend to be impressed. They checked cargo, waved them through, and went back to scanning the next line of arrivals like the road itself was endless.

  Bastian exhaled so hard it sounded like relief made physical.

  “Finally,” he muttered, voice cracking. “A place where someone else is paid to worry.”

  Null kept his hood low as the wagons joined the flow of traffic. Inside the walls, Ironpeak was a different kind of danger: not claws and ambushes, but bodies. Too many. Too loud. Too unpredictable.

  The street was packed with merchants hawking trade goods and militia moving people along with bored discipline. Hammering rang from open workshops.

  Null’s gaze drifted over the crowd…and froze.

  A faint rune on the back of a man’s hand. Not ink. Not a tattoo. Something that sat under the skin like a brand made of light.

  Null’s own hand moved before he decided to check. He turned it, palm down.

  Same mark.

  Drifter.

  The realization didn’t feel triumphant. It felt like stepping into a room and realizing it wasn’t a room at all—it was an auditorium. He wasn’t first. He wasn’t alone. He was simply one more face in a wave of people the world hadn’t finished digesting.

  They pushed deeper into the town’s main thoroughfare. Drifters clustered around bulletin boards like moths around a flame. Some were loud. Some looked exhausted. Most looked…stuck.

  A leather-clad guy leaned against a post, waving a parchment like it had personally insulted him.

  “Thirty copper,” he said, voice sharp with disbelief. “Thirty. For delivering crates. I’m telling you, this game’s trolling us.”

  His friend—a mage in a robe that still had shop creases in it—snorted. “Bro, you got crates. I got ‘help the shrine caretaker sweep.’ I’ve been sweeping for two in-game weeks. Two. My kill count is zero.”

  “Maybe it’s a slow start?” someone offered half-heartedly.

  “Slow start my ass,” the leather guy shot back. “I didn’t buy a dive capsule to roleplay fantasy janitor.”

  The mage jabbed a thumb toward the board. “Go outside then. Wolves in the valley are like Level 12. I’m Level 8. You’re Level 7. We’re loot pinatas.”

  “Party up and EXP turns into crumbs,” the leather guy groaned. “Five people and it’s like the system taxes you for having friends.”

  A third voice slid in, quieter, conspiratorial. “You guys been out at dusk?”

  Both of them turned.

  “Don’t,” the mage said immediately, like he already knew where this was going.

  “I’m serious,” the newcomer insisted. “When the wandering sun dips, mobs get…weird. Not ‘harder.’ Weird. Aggro range goes stupid. My party got wiped out because a rabbit spotted us from way too far away. A rabbit. It wasn’t even a special rabbit.”

  “Skill issue,” someone said automatically, because players were predictable across worlds.

  “Shut up,” three people answered in the same breath.

  Null kept walking, but his chest tightened. He didn’t doubt them. He’d seen enough already to believe the world didn’t care what was fair.

  He also couldn’t ignore the cold contrast.

  He glanced at his status, quick and private.

  Level 19.

  A number that didn’t belong in the same sentence as “two weeks sweeping.”

  He thought of the canyon. The shaman. The dungeon. The Matriarch’s blur-fast charge and the sickening slam into stone. He thought of the forge heat, the stink of sulfur and oil, the way his hands moved when he stopped trying to force them.

  He’d earned his level, yes.

  But he’d earned it in a world that kept tilting the board under his feet.

  They reached the Adventurer’s Guild and the crowd thickened again—Drifters spilling out of the doors, militia going in, messengers weaving through like fish in a river. The building was larger than the outposts they’d seen on the road, built to handle volume: wide counters, posted notices, clerks with the dead-eyed patience of people who had been asked the same question a thousand times today.

  It wasn’t a fortress.

  It just felt like one when the street outside was chaos.

  Bastian moved like a man with an anchor finally under him. He spoke with the clerk, produced contracts, got them stamped. Payment was counted. Signatures were checked. Nobody fussed. Nobody bowed. The guild didn’t care who Eins was as long as the ink was correct.

  And that, strangely, made Null respect it more.

  Outside, once the formalities were done, Bastian turned to the group and bowed—deeper this time, sincere.

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  “Master Eins. Master Zwei. Valeriana. Kael.” His gaze landed on Null last, and it held for a beat. “Null.”

  He didn’t say “kid.” He didn’t soften it. He used Null’s name like it mattered.

  “You kept me alive,” Bastian said, voice rougher than usual. “On this road, that’s worth more than gold. I’ll remember it.”

  Valeriana gave a single nod—professional and clean. Kael’s ears flicked, his version of agreement. Then both of them melted back into Ironpeak, headed toward the mercenary quarter like people who knew exactly where they belonged.

  Bastian lingered only long enough to shake hands.

  When he clasped Null’s forearm, his grip tightened slightly, and his voice dropped to something almost private.

  “Keep your head attached,” he murmured, like advice, not a joke. Then he released Null and disappeared into the crowd with the practiced vanishing act of a merchant who always had another meeting.

  Zwei stretched, rolling his shoulders like he’d just arrived at a festival. “Iron Hearth?”

  Eins grunted. It meant yes.

  The Iron Hearth was loud downstairs—Drifters drinking, miners laughing, someone arguing about a “hidden class” like they’d seen it personally. But upstairs, away from the common room, they found a small parlor with a door that muffled the worst of the town.

  Even here, Ironpeak leaked in through the walls: distant shouting, boots on stairs. Eins sat, planted his forearms on the table, and looked at Null like he was lining up a strike.

  “You’ve grown fast,” he said.

  Null didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. Eins wasn’t praising him. He was stating a problem.

  “In skill,” Eins continued. “In level.” His eyes flicked—briefly—to Null’s belt, where Phoenix Kiss rested. “And in confidence.”

  Zwei’s smile was still there, but his eyes tracked the same thing. “He’s not wrong.”

  Null felt a tightness in his throat. “I didn’t—”

  “Lad,” Eins cut in, tone low, blunt. “Listen.”

  Null shut his mouth.

  Eins tilted his head toward the window, where the roar of Drifters surged like surf. “You grew under cover. You had two veterans and two professionals on your back. That won’t last.”

  Null’s stomach sank, because he knew precisely what Eins meant.

  Eins tapped the table once. “You learned to work with us. You haven’t learned to work with them.”

  Null pictured the crowd outside. The complaints. The impatience. The way people lied to themselves when they were scared. He would have preferred another Matriarch to that.

  “I want you to take a board quest,” Eins said. “One that requires Drifters and militia. Learn their rhythm. Learn their bad habits. Learn how they break.”

  Null’s hands tightened unconsciously. “Eins—”

  “No.” Eins didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. “This is training.”

  Zwei leaned back in his chair, trying for casual and failing by a hair. “Also… put Phoenix Kiss away.”

  Null blinked. “Why?”

  “Because it’s comfortable,” Zwei said, cheerful tone forced into gentleness. “And comfort makes you sloppy in ways you don’t notice until your throat is open.”

  Null’s fingers went to the dagger without thinking, the chitin-bound hilt familiar under his touch.

  Zwei pointed at him, grin flashing. “See? That.”

  Null’s cheeks warmed. He hated that Zwei was right.

  “A blade like that forgives bad timing,” Zwei continued. “It lets you stay narrow. You start thinking every problem is solved at knife range.”

  Eins gave a low sound that was almost an approval. “Use a bow.”

  Null turned to him, startled.

  Eins didn’t elaborate much—Eins never did. “Distance teaches patience. Patience keeps you alive.”

  Zwei nodded, more animated now. “And it forces you to read the field. You stop watching one target and start watching patterns. You’ll hate it. It’ll be good for you.”

  Null exhaled slowly. He could feel the old instinct in his chest—the Ethan instinct—to refuse. To avoid. To stay small. To stay hidden.

  But the gaps were gone.

  No missing hours. No waking up with time stolen. No unexplained bruises and scars like his body had gone somewhere his mind couldn’t follow.

  Whole.

  Not safe. Not gentle. But whole.

  Eins reached into storage and set something heavy on the table with a metallic thunk.

  A compact collapsible hand-forge—iron plates, interlocking hinges, runes carved into the frame like a promise. The same kind he’d used on the road when the wagon axle snapped.

  Alongside it, he placed a few refined iron bars and a pouch of fuel that smelled like coal and old smoke.

  “Take it,” Eins said. “A smith travels with fire.”

  Null stared.

  Eins didn’t soften. “Fix your gear. Fix theirs if it buys you goodwill. Tools earn trust faster than words.”

  Zwei’s grin returned, lighter this time. “Also, if your new friends are idiots—and they will be—you’ll at least be the idiot who can straighten their bent swords.”

  Null let out something that almost qualified as a laugh.

  Then he nodded, once, decisive.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  Eins’s gaze held him for a moment longer, then dipped in what passed for approval. “Good.”

  Preparation ate the rest of the afternoon.

  Null took the hand-forge to his room, unfolded it in the corner, and lit it with practiced motions. It didn’t roar like a full forge. It hissed—contained heat, controlled flame—perfect for field repairs and careful work. The warmth filled the small space and loosened his shoulders without him realizing.

  He ran Mana Repair across the chitin plates of his armor, sealing weak joints and smoothing stress points until the patchwork felt less like desperation and more like design. He didn’t chase perfection. He chased reliability.

  When he finished, he packed the forge away again, the metal warm under his hands. He strapped it like a weight he was choosing.

  Then he went to the market.

  Ironpeak’s stalls were a mess of shouting and haggling, and Null had to remind himself that none of these people were monsters. They were just loud. Just hungry. Just desperate in a way that looked ugly when a story didn’t polish it.

  He found a fletcher wedged between a potion seller and someone hawking “rare dungeon maps” that looked hand-copied and suspiciously stained.

  The fletcher took one look at Null’s stance and offered him a bow without asking too many questions.

  Standard recurve. Simple string. Nothing fancy. A quiver of iron-tipped arrows.

  Null paid and took it, turning the grip in his palm.

  It felt too light.

  Too flimsy compared to the certainty of Phoenix Kiss.

  But when his fingers closed around the bow, something inside him stirred—faint and ghostlike.

  Not mastery.

  Recognition.

  Like his hands had held one before, long ago, in a life he didn’t fully remember.

  He left the market and drifted back toward the guild boards, bow slung over his shoulder, hood still low. The crowd was thicker now. Drifters pressed close, shouting over each other, reading notices aloud like volume could change the reward.

  He found the quest Eins meant: a kobold subjugation in the foothills. Militia-supported. Drifter-assisted. Cooperation required.

  A simple notice, but Null could already see the shape of what it would become: people arguing about loot, about party roles, about who deserved what. People who panicked when it went bad. People who blamed everyone but themselves.

  A voice behind him barked, “Need one more! Anyone with ranged?”

  Null’s body turned halfway before his mind caught up.

  A group of Drifters stood nearby—three of them, mismatched gear, eager eyes. They were scanning the crowd like they were shopping for survival.

  Null’s hand drifted to his belt out of habit.

  Phoenix Kiss wasn’t there.

  Good.

  He forced his hand away.

  He took a breath and stepped forward.

  “I can shoot,” he said, which was only half a lie. “I’m joining the kobold run.”

  The group’s eyes flicked to the rune on his hand, then to the bow.

  One of them grinned. “Nice. What level?”

  Null hesitated.

  Then decided—coldly—that this was the first lesson.

  He didn’t need to announce himself. Not yet.

  “High enough,” he said, voice even.

  The grin faltered, replaced by a quick, calculating look. Then the Drifter shrugged like it was fine, like nobody ever lied in a game.

  “Alright. We’re meeting militia at dawn. Don’t be late.”

  Null nodded once.

  As the group moved off into the crowd, Null stood still for a moment, letting Ironpeak’s noise wash over him. Voices. Laughs. Complaints. A thousand small stories colliding.

  It wasn’t quiet professionalism anymore.

  It was the mess of the real player world.

  And tomorrow, he’d step into it without Eins in front of him, without Zwei watching his blind spots, without Valeriana holding the line or Kael reading the shadows.

  He tightened his grip on the bow strap.

  For the first time since entering Twilight World, the challenge in front of him wasn’t a monster.

  It was people.

  And he was done hiding behind giants.