He ran four dungeons in four days.
Not E-class or D-class or even C-class. He hit a Class B formation in Sector 8 on Saturday, a Class B on Monday morning, a Class A, his first, on Wednesday, and a second Class A on Thursday. Each run was faster than the last. Each run added dozens of shadows to the Register. By Friday evening, when he sat in the warehouse surrounded by the faint violet glow of his deployed army in formation drill, the system displayed:
[SHADOW REGISTER: 187 units][LEVEL: 24][STRENGTH: 52 | AGILITY: 61 | ENDURANCE: 48 | PERCEPTION: 74 | VOID AFFINITY: 1,519]
Herald spoke to him during the drill, a voice from the floor-shadow at his feet, the ivory-masked face half-visible in the dark.
'Your formation tactics are improving,' Herald said. 'The Chimera shadow is underutilized. Its fire capacity is being wasted in a support role.'
'I know,' Liu Yun said. 'I'm building a vanguard structure. Fenris and the two Minotaurs as primary heavies, Chimera as mobile artillery, Crawlers and Hellhounds as flanking elements.'
'You're thinking like a human military officer.'
'I am a human military officer. Approximately.'
'Think like a Void Sovereign. Your shadows are not infantry. They are extensions of you, projections of your will through the void-substance. Formation thinking limits you to human tactical frameworks that were not designed for entities that cannot be permanently killed and that operate through a unified directive intelligence.' Herald paused. 'You don't need formations. You need intention. The army will execute the intention.'
Liu Yun considered this.
'Demonstrate,' he said.
'Dismiss all units. Summon only the intention.'
He dismissed the army. One hundred and eighty-seven shadows dissolved back into the Register and the warehouse was empty and dark.
Then he thought, simply and completely: protect the perimeter.
The shadows rose without being summoned, rose, arranged, took positions, moved with fluid cooperation along every wall and corner and doorway of the warehouse, settling into a configuration that was genuinely smarter than any formation he had consciously designed. They had organized by the logic of coverage and mutual support without a single individual command from him.
Herald said: 'There it is.'
The knock on the warehouse door came five minutes later.
He dissolved the shadows before opening it. Standing outside in the industrial district's amber streetlight was Sera Ashveil, the Frost Sovereign, dressed plainly in civilian clothes, her silver hair loose and her hands visible at her sides in the universal gesture of non-aggression.
She looked at him.
'Nice warehouse,' she said. 'You've been running it as a solo training space for three weeks. You cleared the B-8 Gate in forty minutes on Saturday. The previous record was six hours, party of five.' She paused. 'I was the one who set the previous record.'
'Come in,' he said. He stepped back from the door.
She walked in and looked around the empty warehouse, dust motes, industrial debris, his training course, the single folding chair he used for rest breaks. She turned to face him and her eyes moved with the assessment speed of a veteran Hunter cataloguing threats.
'I sent you the message,' she said.
He nodded. He had suspected.
'I have a perception ability that detects Void-type energy,' she said. 'I've had it since my original Awakening but there's been nothing to detect in twelve years because Void-type Hunters essentially don't exist. Then three weeks ago, sitting in my apartment three blocks from this warehouse, I felt something like a sun coming on.'
'That was my first summon,' he said.
'I know what it was. I researched it.' She crossed her arms. 'I also know what's coming. I've been detecting anomalous readings in the northern wilderness for a month. And I know what the Association's equipment keeps missing because they don't know to look for it: the Gate fracture rate in the last two weeks has doubled. Not in the data they're publishing. In the actual fracture locations that their peripheral sensors are logging and that aren't making it into the public-facing reports.'
'Voss is suppressing it,' Liu Yun said.
'Yes. Because a doubled fracture rate means public panic means political pressure means scrutiny of the Association's budget allocation and Voss's personal contract.' She said it flat and factual, the way she would report a dungeon obstacle. 'The city has no idea how bad it's getting. And in three months, if my projections are right'
'You know about the Avatar,' Liu Yun said.
She stopped.
'There's a source,' he said. 'She's reliable. The Demon King's Avatar will arrive within three months. Possibly two now that Bael knows I exist.'
Sera Ashveil looked at him for a long moment.
'The weakest Hunter in Veramore,' she said slowly, 'has information from a divine Oracle and an army I can feel in the walls of this building.'
'One hundred and eighty-seven,' he said. 'And growing.'
Her expression shifted, not softening exactly, but recalibrating. The assessment speed of her gaze had not stopped, but what it was assessing had changed.
'I want to help,' she said. 'I want in on whatever you're building. Not as a subordinate, I'm not following orders from someone who was E-rank four weeks ago, but as a partner. Equal footing.'
'Equal footing includes sharing information,' he said.
'Agreed.'
'And following tactical decisions during active combat, not committee discussions when a monster is in front of us.'
She considered. 'Agreed.'
'Then we have a deal,' Liu Yun said.
Sera Ashveil, the Frost Sovereign, looked around the dusty warehouse and at the E-rank jacket he still wore and at the folding chair that was his only furniture, and something in her expression cracked open for just a moment, not pity, closer to recognition. The particular recognition of someone who has also spent years being underestimated.
'You need better headquarters,' she said.
'I know,' he said.