My Class is Null, But I Always Get the Best Outcome

The meeting had ended and the city was waiting on the other side of the Mayor’s building’s entrance.

Mira was already moving when they reached the street, her pace the one she used when she had something to accomplish and knew exactly where to accomplish it. Lily was reading her own notes while she walked, which was simply how she moved through the world when there was information worth processing.

Raze was on his phone before the door had fully closed behind him, his voice already at the tone of someone making a request they expected answered quickly. Elden had his notebook out and was writing while he walked, which should have been more dangerous than it appeared to be but somehow was not.

Kai and Sera walked in the same direction.

Neither of them said anything for a while. The city was doing its midday things around them. A construction crew was working on the road two blocks over, the sounds of it carrying. A group of children came around a corner being led by what appeared to be a teacher who had accepted that managing this many children across a city street required full concentration.

Kai smiled.

Sera looked over at him. "What?"

"Yesterday we were discussing Authority," he said. "Today we’re planning recruitment."

Sera said, "Yesterday we were trying to beat each other."

"That too," he said.

She laughed. They kept walking.

...

Sera said, "Can I ask something?"

"Yes."

"What’s the actual principle behind the Abyss Watchers?"

Kai thought about it. He did not answer immediately. They passed a merchant opening the side doors of his shop, stacking crates in the doorway. A delivery cart moved through the intersection ahead of them.

"Restraint," Kai said.

Sera tilted her head.

"Hunters are getting stronger," he said. "Guilds are getting stronger. Eventually they’ll have disagreements. That’s normal. We’re not building the Abyss Watchers to stop people from disagreeing."

She nodded.

"We’re there so disagreements don’t become disasters," he said. He looked at the street. A family was crossing at the corner, two parents and a small child between them. "If hunters start fighting, we separate them. If civilians are nearby, we move the civilians first. If they can solve it without us, we leave."

"We’re not rulers," Sera said.

"No," he said. "We interfere only as much as necessary. Never more."

She walked for a moment. "That also means the Abyss Watchers should never become more powerful than the city itself."

He looked at her.

"If people start being afraid of the Abyss Watchers instead of the criminals," she said, "we’ve already failed."

Kai was quiet. Then he nodded. "You’re right."

They walked another block.

"Some guilds won’t cooperate," Kai said.

"No," she agreed.

"Mira can open most of those conversations. But some of them will hold out."

"Some will hold out for a long time," Sera said. "Especially the ones that benefited from the old system."

"Eventually we’ll probably have to force one."

Sera accepted this without arguing about it. "Probably." A pause. "But only after talking. Only after giving them every reasonable chance and every reasonable compromise. If we have to use force, everyone watching should already understand why."

Kai nodded. "If it looks like we’re forcing cooperation, we’ve undermined the whole thing."

"Yes," she said. "The first time we use authority to compel someone, the relationship changes. Every guild starts wondering if they’re next."

"So we make sure they’re not wondering," Kai said. "They already know the answer before it gets to that point."

She smiled. "Exactly."

...

The city continued around them as they walked. New hunters were jogging through the training district in a loose group. Guild members were coming back through the eastern gate with cores and materials from a morning run. A pair of construction workers were expanding a road junction that had been on the planning list since the B-rank phase and was finally getting worked on.

Sera noticed Kai looking at all of it.

"You keep checking everything," she said.

"I’m looking to see if everyone’s okay," he said.

She laughed. "You’ve become impossible."

He scratched the back of his neck. "Maybe."

Ahead of them a small girl tripped on the uneven edge of the pavement. Her older brother caught her arm before she hit the ground, pulled her up, and kept walking without making a production of it.

Kai smiled.

Sera looked at him. "What?"

He watched the two of them continue down the street.

"That’s why," he said.

She followed his gaze.

She did not say anything. Just smiled.

...

Leo opened the apartment door before Kai reached it.

"You’re late," Leo said.

"Meeting," Kai said.

Leo pointed at him. "Excuse accepted."

He stepped back to let both of them in and immediately started talking. Not about Authority. Not about the Abyss Watchers or guild cooperation initiatives or anything that had occupied the last several hours. School. Something Hana had said at lunch. A game that Dorn had somehow convinced the group to try that had not gone well for anyone involved. Kei’s ongoing feud with a training dummy that had apparently developed a personal quality to it.

Kai sat down and listened.

"Kei came over," Leo said, between other things.

Kai blinked. "Why?"

"He wanted to know if Authority changed your personality."

"What did you tell him?"

Leo grinned. "I said you’re still weird."

Sera laughed.

Mina came out of the kitchen. "He’s been waiting since this morning."

Leo pointed at her. "I wasn’t waiting."

Mina looked at him.

"Not that much," Leo said.

Kai looked around the apartment. The same table. The same couch. The same window with the same view of the same section of street. The same slight lean to the bookshelf where Leo had pushed too many things onto it at once three months ago and nobody had addressed this.

Nothing had changed.

Leo suddenly looked at him with the expression he used when he was asking something he had been thinking about for a while and was working up to.

"You’ll still train me, right?"

Kai looked at him.

"When you have time," Leo said quickly. "I know you’re busy now. I just wanted to know if it was still—"

"Of course," Kai said.

Leo visibly settled. Not dramatically. Just the small relaxation of someone who had been holding a question and had let it go.

Then: "Can Sundays stay the same?"

Kai blinked. "Sundays?"

Leo gestured. "Breakfast. Games. Whatever we do. Sera coming over."

Sera looked at Leo with the expression of someone who had been mentioned as part of a list and was deciding how to feel about this.

Kai smiled. "Nothing’s changing."

Leo grinned. Fully. The genuine one.

Mina appeared in the doorway. "That’s what I wanted to hear."

Kai looked at her.

"Authority isn’t your whole life," she said. She said it simply. Not as a reminder or a caution. Just as a statement of something she had already decided was true.

Kai nodded. "No."

Dinner was the same as dinner was. Leo losing a board game by a margin that required no actual strategy on anyone else’s part, just patience and not making Leo’s particular variety of mistake. Sera teasing him about the specific move that had ended it, which Leo insisted was a valid strategy and which Sera explained was not in terms clear enough that even Mina agreed. Kai helping Mina with the dishes while this continued in the background.

Normal. Entirely normal.

...

Later the apartment had gone quiet. Leo was in his room. Mina was reading.

Kai stepped out onto the small balcony that had a partial view of the northern district through the buildings.

Sera came out after a minute.

Neither of them said anything for a while.

The city was visible in pieces between the buildings. Lights in windows. The glow from the guild district further east. A maintenance vehicle moving through an intersection. The distant sound of something happening somewhere, too far to identify.

Kai said, "I used to think strength solved everything."

Sera was looking at the city.

He smiled. "Turns out most problems aren’t monsters."

She laughed softly. "Unfortunately."

He nodded. "Still."

He looked at the lights. At the ordinary ongoing life of a city that had survived two months of gates and a Mythical phase and a B-rank territory and an Authority selection and was still running its streets and opening its restaurants and sending its children to school in the morning.

"It’s worth protecting," he said.

Sera looked at the same thing for a moment.

"We’ll protect it together," she said.

Kai smiled. "Yeah."

The city was quiet below them. The kind of quiet that was not actually quiet but was the comfortable noise of a place that was not in crisis. People existing in the ways people existed when the immediate danger had passed and the next one had not yet arrived.

Tomorrow they would start building the Abyss Watchers properly. Mira would have already had her first conversation with Titan Forge by morning. Elden would have mapped out three potential office locations. Lily would have a training curriculum draft.

Tonight the city was just the city.

And for the first time in a long while, that was enough.