Chương 61: [B2] Chapter 19: Aftermath

The system notice hung in the air a while after Zero read it, unhurried, the way genuinely important things seemed to know they could afford to wait to be dealt with. System Notice: All members of Team Zero have reached Level 50 Classes unlocked Nobody moved toward it. Miho was on one knee at the shallows, breathing hard. Viria hadn't let go of the bank's exposed root she'd caught herself on. Yukito's shadow lay flat and spent at his feet, not yet willing to reshape itself into anything.

"We'll do that later," Zero said, and nobody argued with him.

They found the nest an hour after the body had gone still. It was tucked into a hollow along the bank that the Quetzalcoatl's coiled bulk had been shielding the entire fight without any of them realizing it. In the center lay one egg. It was the color of pale jade, veined faintly with the same storm-dark indigo as its parent's scales and feathers, and warm to the touch in a way that had nothing to do with the afternoon sun. Nobody spoke for a moment.

"It was still guarding this," Viria said, quietly.

"The whole time. Every strike it threw at us, it threw while defending its child." Zero ran Identify. Identify: Unhatched Egg Species: Quetzalcoatl Viability: Confirmed Estimated Incubation Remaining: Unknown Note: Bonded lineage traits typically imprint on the first sufficiently attuned presence encountered post-hatching"It's alive," Viria continued, reading over his shoulder.

"We just… killed its parent and it's still alive in there."

"We killed a territorial apex that had been executing every apex predator in four sectors and had nearly killed both of us the first time we encountered it," Zero said, careful with the words he spoke.

"However, that does not undo what it also was. Both things are true." Miho wrapped the egg in the driest cloth remaining in her pack, gentler than she'd handled anything throughout the entire leg, and set it into Viria's subspace herself.

"We are not naming it," Zero said, watching Yukito make an expression he had learned meant he was already halfway to doing exactly that. Truthfully, Zero felt the same way, though he would not admit it.

"Absolutely not," Viria agreed, entirely unconvincingly. Miho said nothing, but that alone spoke more than a dissent from her would have. The rest of the harvest went quickly by comparison. Six scales, plated and iridescent even in death, dozen feathers from the ridge along its spine, and both of its fangs, each one longer than Zero's forearm.

Items Acquired: 1x Quetzalcoatl Egg (Unhatched) 6x Quetzalcoatl Scale 12x Quetzalcoatl Feather 2x Quetzalcoatl Fang Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. The transition back to the plaza came without warning, the way it always did, and the moment it resolved a board hung suspended overhead, updating itself in slow, deliberate motion.

Sector 8: Apex Predator Eliminated Leg 2 Status: Complete Speed Ranking: 58th of 512 Viria looked at the number, then at the rest of them, then very deliberately looked away from it.

"58th place is fine," she said.

"58th is fine, and I will care about it properly after I have slept in an actual bed."

"We fought something the system wouldn't rank," Miho said, already walking toward the hallway of marked doors none of them had seen in weeks.

"58th is not a number I intend to lose sleep over. Which is convenient, since I do not intend to lose any more sleep over anything tonight."

"Besides, we already know that speed isn't ultimately what matters most," yawned Yukito.

"However, I also agree that sleep is essential before caring about something like this."

Zero found his own name on a door exactly where it had been before World 2 began, and did not examine too closely how much relief the sight of it produced in him. He was asleep before he'd finished deciding whether that reaction was worth cataloguing. He woke to a window waiting patiently above him, the way the good ones always seemed to.

STATUS MENU: Name: Zero Race: Chimerian (Modified being) Class: None — (Advancement Available) Level: 53 HP: 1, 780/1, 780 Strength: 57 Agility: 68 Endurance: 99 Intelligence: 52 Willpower: 60 Talent: 28 Unique Stat: Anima — 2, 800/2, 800 Free points: 0 Skills: Adaptive Shift Lv. 5; Biological Mimicry Lv. 4; Identify Lv. 6; System Intuition Lv. 3; Spiritual Shapeshifting Lv. 3; Silent Mantis Dual Strike Lv. 2; Rabbit's Step Lv. 1; Predation Analysis Lv.

3 Titles: Fast Learner (#501), The Specimen System Trait: Race Evolution Sponsor: The Archivist of First Errors Beneath the status menu, a second line resolved, smaller, tied specifically to the sponsor field rather than to the leg's completion at large.

Archivist's Ledger — Grant Available Item: Archivist's Ledger (Upgrade) Item: Dark Alchemist's Journal Claim via Status Menu Zero pressed his thumb to the prompt, and the Ledger's familiar weight changed in his hands, subtly, the way a tool changed once a craftsman had spent enough hours learning its edges. A journal materialized beside it, unbound in dark leather, its pages blank except for a single line already written in a hand that was not his own.

"You keep finding the correct answer by asking the wrong question first. I find this more useful than doing it the other way around." There was no signature, but there was no need to guess whom it was from. Zero closed the journal, mentally filed the note the way he did to everything the Archivist left him, and did not yet have anything to write in return.

The first thing Zero noticed upon entering his team's common area was that Miho had a third tail.

"That is new," he said.

"That is very new," Miho said, breathless, watching it move in the mirror-glass of the plaza's far wall like it belonged to someone else entirely. It curled once, testing the air the way the other two had learnt to do, before it settled into an uneasy stillness.

Viria's quiver had been replaced sometime overnight, with arrows now drawing directly from her subspace rather than a physical stock, and she tested the pull with an expression caught somewhere between delight and disbelief that her own hands were doing this competently. She loosed one experimentally into the far wall, where it vanished before impact and reappeared, apologetically, back in the quiver.

"That is going to take some getting used to," she said, staring at it. Yukito's grant manifested quieter than the others, a change he only found by trying it: his shadow, extended toward Miho on instinct, held steady around her wrist instead of dissolving the moment it left his own body.

"It shares," he said, quiet, testing the word.

"Not just mine anymore." Miho looked down at the dark coiled loosely around her wrist, warm somehow despite being made of nothing, and didn't ask him to take it back.

They gathered in the common area once everyone had claimed what was theirs, the four of them arranged loosely around a low table none of them had needed to discuss the shape of.

"So," Viria said, dropping into a chair.

"Classes."" Finally," said Yukito. As Zero opened his mouth to say something about not rushing the decision, a window interrupted him. System Notice: Team Solace is requesting entry to your private space. The four of them looked at each other for exactly as long as it took to reach the same conclusion.

"Let them in," Miho said.