The SSS-Rank Deveror Who Abandoned Glory to Raise Four Daughters

The dragon disappeared the way it had appeared — completely, between one moment and the next, the air where it had been carrying the specific afterimage of something significant that had just stopped being present.

What remained was the clearing outside the dungeon entrance, the afternoon light, and approximately thirty people who had been going about their afternoon and had looked up at the wrong moment and were now standing completely still with the expressions of people whose understanding of what their day contained had been significantly revised.

Nobody said anything for three full seconds.

Then everyone said everything simultaneously.

"—was that a—"

"—Crimson Dragon, that was a CRIMSON—"

"—on top of it, there were people ON TOP—"

"—WAIT IS THAT—"

"—that’s Kira. That’s KIRA. From the—"

"—no that’s impossible she’s in the eastern—"

"—I’m telling you that’s her sword, I’d recognize that sword anywhere—"

"—and behind her, is that SOLA? And MAREN?—"

"—all three of them, all THREE—"

"—where did the dragon GO—"

The crowd had become something with its own momentum, pulling people in from the edges as information spread outward and curiosity spread inward. Someone had already started running — toward town, Cidd assumed, because that was what people did when they needed to tell someone something immediately and there was nobody immediate available.

Kira was already dealing with the first wave.

Not reluctantly — Kira had never been reluctant about attention, had always moved through it the way she moved through everything, directly and at speed. She was talking to three people simultaneously with the specific energy of someone who was used to this and had decided it was happening on her terms.

Sola was more measured. Two people, both of whom she apparently knew, handling them with the warm precision of someone who had developed over years the skill of being publicly recognized without losing herself in it.

Maren was standing slightly apart from all of it with the expression of a man who had chosen, at some point, to exist at one remove from public momentum and had made peace with that choice.

Cidd stood next to him.

Nobody was looking at them.

"Happens every time," Maren said, watching the crowd.

"Does it bother you," Cidd said.

"No." He watched Kira redirect someone’s question with the efficiency of long practice. "It would bother you."

"Significantly," Cidd agreed.

"That’s why you’re F rank Cael from a small village in the west."

"That’s part of it."

Maren looked at him sideways. "What’s the other part."

"I wanted to see what it felt like to be nobody again." He watched the crowd. "Before I remembered what it felt like to be somebody."

Maren was quiet for a moment.

"And?" he said.

"It felt good," Cidd said. "Both parts felt good."

Maren nodded. Filed it. Said nothing else, which was the correct response and which Cidd had always valued about him.

Kira extricated herself from the crowd with the specific efficiency of someone who had a destination and was going to it. Sola followed. They crossed to where Cidd and Maren were standing with the expressions of people who had just run a social gauntlet and were ready to move.

"We’re going," Kira said.

"Yes," Cidd agreed.

"If we stay here another five minutes someone’s going to try to commission something and I’ve told my guild liaison I’m on personal leave and I don’t want to—"

"We’re going," he said.

They went.

The road back to Venmoor had the quality of a conversation that was still happening even in the silences.

Kira walked beside him — slightly ahead, because she always walked slightly ahead of whatever she was walking with, an instinct so deep she’d stopped noticing it — and talked about the crowd, about the dragon, about the specific face the woman nearest the front had made when the dragon disappeared, and then transitioned into talking about what came next with the seamless momentum of someone who processed events by talking through them.

"Materials first," she said. "You mentioned gathering. Where and what?"

"Region east of here. Two days. Specific mineral deposits and some monster sourcing."

"We’re coming."

"I didn’t ask."

"You didn’t have to. We’re coming." She looked at him sideways. "Unless you object."

He didn’t object.

"After the materials," she continued, "you said you’re going home. To the village."

"Ashfeld," he said.

"We’re coming to that too."

"That I might object to."

"Too bad." She said it pleasantly. "You disappeared for ten years. We are coming to see where you disappeared to. That’s non-negotiable."

"Kira—"

"Non-negotiable," she said again, with the specific quality she used for things that were actually non-negotiable and not just the opening position of a negotiation. "You can tell us to sleep in a barn. You can tell us we’re leaving after one night. You can make it as inconvenient as you like. We’re still coming."

He looked at the road ahead.

"There are people there," he said.

"You mentioned."

"It’s—" he paused. "It’s a specific kind of place. I don’t want it—"

"We’re not going to disrupt it," Sola said, from his other side, quietly. "We just want to see it. Where you’ve been. What you built." She looked at him. "We’ve been looking for you for a long time. Seeing it matters."

He looked at her.

Looked at the road.

"One night," he said.

"Two," Kira said.

"One."

"One and a half."

"That’s not a unit of time."

"It is now."

Maren said nothing. He’d already won by being the one who wasn’t arguing.

The guild hall was exactly as he’d left it — the same noise, the same quality of light, the same arrangement of tables and quest board and the particular culture of a space that housed people who spent their lives doing difficult things and had developed a community around that shared difficulty.

He pushed through the door.

The desk was visible from the entrance.

Sera was at it.

She looked up at the sound of the door — professional reflex, the automatic orientation of someone who’d been doing this long enough that the door meant something was starting — and her expression did the specific thing it did when it was registering something expected.

"You’re back," she said. "I wasn’t sure you’d—" she came around the desk, moving toward him with the forward energy of someone who had been thinking about a conversation and was ready to have it— "it’s been three days, I was starting to think—"

She stopped.

Because Kira had come through the door behind him.

And Sola.

And Maren.

The quality of Sera’s expression changed.

Not dramatically — she was too professional for dramatic. But the specific warmth that had been building toward his return recalibrated itself in the space of approximately one second into something considerably more measured.

"I see," she said. "Your friends."

"Old companions," Cidd said. "We ran into each other in the dungeon."

"In the dungeon," Sera said, in the tone of someone noting that this was an unusual place to run into people.

"Mm," he said.

Kira stepped up beside him.

She looked at Sera.

Sera looked at her.

Two people reading a situation simultaneously and arriving at the same understanding from different directions.

Kira smiled.

It was the specific smile she used when she had identified something she found interesting and was going to engage with it.

"You must be the guild staff he mentioned," she said.

"I processed his registration," Sera said, with professional precision.

"Very helpful of you," Kira said.

"It’s my job."

"Of course." Kira looked around the guild hall with the ease of someone who had been in a thousand guild halls and was comfortable in all of them. "Nice hall. Good layout. The quest board positioning is slightly suboptimal for traffic flow but the lighting is better than most."

Sera looked at her.

"Thank you," she said, in a tone that was processing several things simultaneously.

"Kira," Cidd said.

"I’m just making conversation," she said, pleasantly.

"You’re doing the thing."

"I don’t know what thing you mean."

"You know exactly what thing I mean."

Kira smiled at him. Then at Sera. Then stepped back with the air of someone who had accomplished something and was content to let it sit.

Sera looked at Cidd.

He looked at her.

"The completion report," he said.

"Yes," she said, snapping back into full professional mode with the efficiency of someone who was very good at their job when they weren’t being observed by competitive S rank women. "Come to the desk. I’ll need the full documentation."

She pulled the completion form from her drawer. Opened her ledger. Set her pen to the page with the readiness of someone who had done this a thousand times and could do it perfectly regardless of circumstance.

"Floor by floor," she said. "Starting from one."

Floors one through three she wrote without difficulty.

Fast, yes — suspiciously fast, she noted with a small pause at the timing — but the floors were documented, the monsters were known quantities, the completion was clean. She wrote it with the practiced speed of competence and moved on.

Floor four.

She wrote the monsters he listed.

Stopped.

Looked at the list.

"These are A rank," she said.

"Yes," he said.

"Floor four."

"Yes."

"The guild documentation for floor four—"

"Is six months old and was produced by an A rank party of five," he said. "I know. The documentation is also incomplete — there are two side passages that weren’t mapped and a variant monster type that isn’t in the standard assessment for this region."

She looked at him.

At the form.

At him.

"You mapped the side passages," she said.

"It seemed useful," he said.

She wrote it down.

Floor five. Floor six. Floor seven.

By the seventh floor she had stopped asking clarifying questions and had started writing with the specific focused silence of someone who had decided that questions were making the situation worse and information was making it worse faster and she was going to get through the form and process her feelings about it afterward.

Floor eight.

Floor nine.

"Floor ten," she said.

He told her.

She wrote it.

Her pen slowed at the boss entry.

Stopped completely.

She looked at what she’d written.

"Arch Lich," she said.

"Yes," he said.

"Solo."

"Yes."

"F rank," she said. Just the words. Without inflection. The specific tone of someone reading something that their brain was flagging as an error and their eyes were refusing to correct.

"That’s what I’m registered as," he said.

She put her pen down.

Looked at the form.

Looked at him.

"Tell me who you are," she said.

"Cael," he said. "From a small village in the western—"

"That," she said, "is not what I mean."

He looked at her with the polite patience of someone who understood exactly what she meant and had decided not to engage with it.

She picked up her pen.

"Items for assessment," she said, in the tone of someone who had made a professional decision and was implementing it regardless of her feelings about the decision.

"Yes," he said.

He reached into his pack.

The first item came out and went on the desk.

A dungeon crystal formation from the sixth floor. Decades of mana exposure rendered into physical form, the specific clarity of it catching the guild hall’s light in a way that made the light look like it was trying harder than usual. Sera had seen one before — once, in her first year, when a senior assessor had brought one in for a demonstration and fourteen people had gathered around to look at it.

She picked up her pen.

Set it down.

Picked it up.

Wrote a value in the assessment column.

Looked at what she’d written.

It was a large number.

She was already composing the internal message to the senior assessor.

Then the second item came out.

She looked at it.

Her pen stopped.

The vial sat on the desk and the liquid inside it moved in the way that liquid didn’t move on its own and the mana coming off it had a quality that her three years of assessment training described as deep floor concentrated essence, theoretical because nobody had submitted one for actual assessment before.

"What," she said.

"Item two," he said.

"What is that."

"The assessment chart has a classification under—"

"I know what the classification is," she said. "I’m asking what it’s doing on my desk submitted by an F rank registrant who has been in this town for three days."

He looked at her with the patient expression of someone who had decided this question was also not being answered right now.

She put the vial carefully to one side.

"Next item," she said.

He put the next item on the desk.

She processed it. Wrote a number. The number was larger than the first number.

Next item.

Larger number.

Next item.

She stopped writing.

Looked at the collection on her desk.

Looked at him.

"I need," she said carefully, "to call some colleagues."

"Of course," he said.

She stood up.

Walked to the back room door.

Opened it.

"Ovin," she said, to the room behind the door. "Ferris. Come to the desk."

A pause.

"Both of you," she said.

Ovin came first.

He was the oldest staff member on shift — thirty-one years of guild work, the specific weathered competence of someone who had processed a very large number of adventurers and their very large number of quest completions and had developed across those years an instinct for when something was outside the normal distribution.

He looked at the desk.

At the items.

At the man sitting across from it.

He pulled up a chair.

Ferris came second — younger, the guild’s primary material assessor, the person Sera called when something needed valuing that she wasn’t certain about. He looked at the desk and his professional expression went through several rapid transitions before settling on focused.

"Let’s go through these," Ovin said, to Cidd. "One at a time."

They went through them one at a time.

The dungeon crystal: Ferris wrote a number, showed it to Ovin, Ovin looked at Cidd, said nothing.

The concentrated essence vial: Ferris wrote a number, showed it to Ovin, Ovin said "that’s preliminary," Ferris said "I know," they both looked at Cidd.

The monster materials from the upper floors — standard enough individually, but the quantity and quality of them, the grade of the dungeon-adapted variants, the documentation accompanying each one with the specific precision of someone who had catalogued everything in real time — added to a number that Ferris was writing in the margin because the assessment columns weren’t wide enough.

Then the core.

Ferris picked it up.

Held it.

Set it down.

Picked it up again.

"Where did this come from," he said.

"Tenth floor," Cidd said. "Boss room. It was a drop."

Ferris looked at Ovin.

Ovin looked at the core.

"I’ll need to send this to the regional assessment office," Ferris said. "I can give you a preliminary value but the final—"

"That’s fine," Cidd said.

Ferris wrote a preliminary value.

Ovin looked at it.

Looked at the preliminary value from the essence vial.

Added the two numbers together with the dungeon crystal and the monster materials and the documentation rights and the floor mapping bonus and the boss confirmation bonus and several other bonuses that the assessment chart specified for circumstances so unusual that the chart had not expected to actually apply them to a real submission.

He showed the total to Sera.

Sera looked at it for a long time.

"That’s the advance," she said. "The full assessment—"

"Will take several days," Ovin said. "The regional office needs to confirm the core and the essence vial. The documentation rights go through the mapping authority separately." He looked at Cidd. "We’ll need you to stay in Venmoor while we process this."

"Three days," Cidd said. "I was already planning to wait for the rank assessment."

"The rank assessment," Sera said, in the tone of someone who had temporarily set aside one impossible thing and was now being asked to pick it back up.

"F rank registrant completing a ten floor solo dungeon run including an SS rank boss," Ovin said, in the tone of someone stating facts that he had processed and which he was now presenting to the universe for the universe’s consideration. "Standard protocol requires formal rank assessment review. Regional board. Three to five days."

"I know," Cidd said.

"The jump is—" Ovin paused. "There’s no precedent for this specific jump. The protocol for unprecedented rank reassessment is—" another pause— "we’re going to have to make some decisions about protocol."

"That’s your department," Cidd said pleasantly.

Ovin looked at him.

"Who are you," he said. Not accusatorially. Just — asking. The specific question of a man who had thirty-one years of pattern recognition telling him something and wanted to know if the something had a name.

"Cael," Cidd said. "Small village. Western region."

Ovin looked at him for a long moment.

Looked at the desk.

Looked at the three people at the table behind Cidd — the two women and the man who had been watching the entire proceedings with varying degrees of visible amusement.

"Right," Ovin said.

He went back to his records.

Sera processed the advance payment.

Her hands were steady. Her expression was professional. She was doing the thing she’d trained herself to do — handling what was in front of her competently regardless of what she thought about it.

She slid the payment documentation across the desk.

He signed it.

She looked at the signature.

Looked at him.

"Cael," she said.

"Yes," he said.

"Just Cael."

"Yes."

"From a small village."

"Yes."

She looked at the signature again.

"Come back in three days," she said. "For the rank assessment."

"I’ll be here," he said.

"And in the future," she said, with the specific careful tone of someone saying something that was professionally appropriate and also meant several other things, "if you’re planning to submit items of this — caliber — a prior notification would help us prepare."

"I’ll keep that in mind," he said.

She nodded. Professionally.

He stood.

She looked at the desk. At the items still waiting for full assessment. At the number in the margin that Ferris had written because the columns weren’t wide enough.

"Cael," she said.

He looked at her.

"Are you going to tell me the truth at any point," she said, "about who you actually are."

He looked at her with the polite patience she was beginning to recognize as his specific version of a non-answer.

"Have a good afternoon," he said.

He walked to the table where his three companions were sitting.

Sera watched him go.

Then looked at Ovin across the hall, who was looking at his records with the specific focused attention of someone who was not looking at anything in his records.

She looked back at the desk.

At the numbers.

At the signed document that said Cael, no family name, small village, western region.

She picked up her pen.

Put it down.

"Ferris," she said.

"Yes," he said, from two feet away, where he was still sitting and had not left because he also had questions.

"Who is he," she said.

Ferris looked at the items on the desk.

"I have no idea," he said. "But whatever he is — we’re getting a new legend and we don’t know it yet."

At the table Kira leaned toward Cidd the moment he sat down.

"The receptionist," she said.

"Sera," he said.

"She asked who you were."

"Yes."

"You didn’t answer."

"No."

Kira looked at him. Then at Sera behind the desk who was looking at paperwork with the focused attention of someone using paperwork as a reason to look somewhere specific.

"She’s going to figure it out," Kira said.

"Probably," he said.

"Sooner rather than later."

"Also probably," he agreed.

Kira looked at her for another moment.

"She’s competent," she said, in the tone of someone acknowledging something they’d assessed and reached a conclusion about. "For guild staff."

"She’s very good at her job," Cidd said.

"Mm," Kira said.

Sola, across the table, was looking at the surface of the table.

Kira’s eyes went to her.

Sola continued looking at the table.

"What," Kira said.

"Nothing," Sola said.

"That’s the third time you’ve said nothing and meant something."

"I’m just sitting here."

"You’re sitting here with a face."

"I always have a face. I have a face right now. This is my face."

"It’s a specific—"

"Should we talk about the rank assessment timeline," Maren said.

Everyone looked at him.

"Three days," he said. "We have three days. Materials are east of here. Two days travel. We go tomorrow, gather what’s needed, come back for the assessment, then go home." He looked at Cidd. "Is that the plan."

"That’s the plan," Cidd said.

"Good," Maren said. "Then we should eat and sleep and stop having conversations about faces."

Kira pointed at him.

Put her hand down.

"Fine," she said. "But I want it noted that everyone at this table has a face and some of them are more interesting than others and I’m not going to pretend I don’t notice."

"Noted," Maren said.

They ate.

That night at the inn Cidd lay in the dark and listened to the specific silence of a building full of sleeping people and thought about three days and what came after three days.

The materials east of the city.

The rank assessment.

Ashfeld.

He thought about Rhea saying come back.

He thought about the egg in his pack, warm against everything else, whatever was inside it continuing to be whatever it was becoming.

He thought about Kira at the desk reading the room and the specific expression on Sera’s face when the third item came out and the number Ferris had written in the margin because the columns weren’t wide enough.

He thought about Ovin’s question.

Who are you.

He thought about the answer, which was the same answer it had always been and which he’d never needed to say out loud to know it completely.

He thought about the road east tomorrow.

About the demon army and what Kira had said about the expansion and what it meant that they were finding demon activity this far into civilian territory.

He thought about all of it and let it settle into the order it settled into and closed his eyes.

The egg was warm against his side.

Whatever was inside it was still becoming.

He went to sleep.