"No way." Jinx turned her head away and refused Caleb's request without hesitation.
"Oh?"
Even Caleb was surprised. Had this girl lost it?
"You're definitely going to arrest him."
Jinx viciously shoved a handful of snacks into her mouth, stuff she had swiped from The Last Drop.
"He's my friend," she continued through her chewing, "I'm not going to betray him."
"The last Chem-Baron is yours to deal with."
"Okay then, I'll set up a meeting with him right away."
Watching Jinx's departing figure, Caleb shook his head helplessly.
He still needed a little more sleep.
...
"You're sure this is the place?"
Caitlyn gripped her rifle tightly, not daring to relax her hold for even a second.
Because this whole area, the place known as the Dredge, had fallen into dead silence.
For any place where people lived, silence like that was wrong.
Even if the entire district had fallen asleep, there still would not be absolutely no sound at all.
If there truly was none, that meant something was wrong.
Very wrong.
"I remember it right. The Dredge is here."
Vi answered in a low voice.
When she was a kid, Vander had forbidden her from ever coming here, but she had still sneaked over once to take a look.
Then Powder had gone home crying, and Vi herself had thrown up all over the place.
It sounded like cheers were drifting in from far away, as if there were finally signs of human life.
But that did not make either of them lower their guard in the slightest.
In an environment where everything felt wrong, if something normal suddenly showed up, that was probably wrong too.
Anybody with half a brain could figure that out.
There seemed to be figures moving in the distance, so the two of them decided to get closer and take a look.
...
[Ding!]
[Congratulations, you have slain the hero Dr. Mundo, the Madman of Zaun.]
[Champion power-tier rankings are now unlocked and can be inspected at any time.]
The system notification jolted Caleb awake from his sleep.
"Took that long?" Caleb rubbed at his watery eyes.
He had not slept well at all, but compared to his time in prison, this was already pretty decent.
"So you're saying Mundo was only just now confirmed fully dead?"
Still groggy from sleep, Caleb tried to piece things together anyway.
[No. It is because you never asked about this feature.]
"You could've told me."
Caleb stared at the panel in front of him and complained weakly.
[The power tiers are as follows:]
The system ignored him and kept going.
[T0: Aurelion Sol, Lord of the Heavens, the Star Forger.]
[T1: God-tier. Possesses overwhelming power and does not require mortal worship to improve further. Both the ceiling and floor are extremely high.]
[T1 examples: Aatrox, Zoe, Bard, and others.]
[T2: Demi-god tier. Their upper limit does not reach the same height, or their power is determined by mortal worship, with a lower floor.]
[T2 examples: Ornn, Janna, Nasus, and others.]
[T3: Peak of the mortal world. Able to dominate an entire region and nearly invincible within mortal limits.]
[T3 examples: Camille, Garen, Darius, and others.]
[T4: Strong among mortals. With enough preparation, they can easily handle ordinary people, but they are not unbeatable. With the right plan, they can still be defeated and killed.]
[T4 examples: Caitlyn, Jayce, and others.]
Looking over the system's classifications, Caleb finally understood.
On the continent of Runeterra, Hextech and chemtech coexisted, and there were also plenty of people who wielded magic.
People could empower demi-gods through worship.
So the system's way of evaluating strength was actually pretty simple, how well could you fight?
"So what about Mundo?"
Caleb could not help asking.
[Approximately T3.5, very close to T3.]
The system gave its answer immediately.
"That sounds about right."
Caleb stared at Mundo's huge face on the panel and sank into thought.
If Singed had not been around, and if the Chainsword had not been sturdy enough, there really would not have been much they could have done to Mundo for a while.
They would have had to leave him there to keep wrestling with Zac.
"Camille is really at the peak of the mortal world?"
Caleb did not even try to hide his surprise.
To him, Camille's biggest advantage was just those blade legs of hers.
Even if she could generate shields like she did in the game, that did not automatically make her one of the strongest mortals alive.
[Her Hextech heart allows her to retain her youth indefinitely. Combined with her meticulous thinking, she is very difficult to defeat in a contest.]
The system gave him a detailed explanation.
[And that Hextech heart is a masterpiece beyond compare.]
[Not even its original craftsman could create a second heart that would never need replacing.]
"At least now I won't have to keep stumbling around and getting lucky by accident."
Caleb felt a little relieved. After all, he did not know the later plot that clearly, and there were plenty of champions he did not recognize all that well.
Now that the system had given him a power ranking, he would not have to leave everything to fate anymore when deciding what he could fight and when he should run.
And right at that moment, one of the hanging Chem-Barons outside the window got his head blown off with a single shot!
Who did that?!
Caleb grabbed his Hextech shield and vaulted out beside the hanging Chem-Baron.
"Who's got the nerve to open fire under my watch?"
Caleb frowned as he looked at the shattered skull.
Wait.
That was a special round used only by Caitlyn's Hextech rifle!
Caleb was one of the people who had designed that rifle, so he immediately recognized the unique shape of the bullet.
Why would she suddenly blow that Chem-Baron's head off?
And from that far away?
Something huge must have happened.
Something serious enough that she had no way to return and explain it in person.
An emergency, so she had used this method to alert him.
Without hesitating, Caleb broke into a sprint toward the Dredge.
...
Vi punched down one prisoner after another as they climbed up. These people were unbelievably weak.
But they were clearly moving with discipline, as if carrying out some larger task.
Vi and Caitlyn, neither of whom understood machinery well enough, could only watch it happen.
"What exactly are these people trying to do?!"
As she kept dropping them one after another, Caitlyn shouted toward Vi in the distance.
Not long after the two of them had drawn near, they had been attacked.
But once they fought back, they discovered that these people were not actually targeting them at all.
"None of them have mechanical parts! That's completely abnormal for the Dredge!"
Exactly.
The weapons in these people's hands were crude, and in the Dredge, the number of people without mechanical prosthetics did not even make up ten percent.
So what had happened to turn this place into something like this?
At last, Caitlyn spotted the leader in the crowd. His face was filled with anticipation as he ran toward a switch.
Aim. Fire. The man dropped.
The motion was smooth and precise, but Caitlyn had not expected that he still managed to hit the switch.
As the elevator in front of them slowly started to rise, a cloud of green smoke spilled out, and within it a human shape could just barely be seen.
Urgot stepped out of the haze and tossed the broken body in his hand back down into the abyss behind him.
It was the Noxian agent who had shown him the way out.
"I guess I know why none of them had mechanical parts anymore," Vi muttered under her breath.
The chemtech lower body with its six legs was devastating enough on its own, and then there was the machine gun replacing his right arm.
Those parts had not come from nowhere.
And some people in the Dredge could not survive without their chemtech devices.
Which meant the monster standing in front of them had built his road up out of the abyss with countless human lives.