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

The vision faded.

The burning city dissolved back into nothing, and silence returned around him.

Kai found himself standing once more in the endless blue, steadying his breathing slowly, one hand still half-raised from a fight that had never actually touched him.

The Candidate waited quietly beside him.

After a long moment, Kai finally asked, "...Just how strong is Tiamat?"

The Candidate looked at him, a faint smile crossing his face. "I could describe her."

He raised a hand slowly. "But it’s easier to show you."

Snap.

The blue world fractured, and instead of a single memory, countless fragments bloomed around them at once. Different cities. Different architecture. Different hunters wearing armor Kai had never seen a design for. Different eras stacked on top of each other like pages in the same book.

Every single one shared the same crimson gate somewhere in its skyline.

...

The Candidate gestured toward the nearest fragment. "This city believed invention would save them."

Enormous floating fortresses hovered above a battlefield that stretched to the horizon. Entire classes had been built around engineering alone, magic artillery lined up in rows, runic weapons the size of buildings, explosive arrays stretching across whole mountain ranges like veins of gunpowder.

When Tiamat appeared, the city unleashed everything at once.

The sky vanished beneath the explosions. Ancient chains erupted from the ground in coordinated waves, wrapping around all four dragons at once, and for one impossible heartbeat, even Tiamat herself was bound in place.

The city believed, for that single heartbeat, that it had won.

Then one dragon lifted its head. The chains shattered outward in a single motion, and the shockwave alone flattened every one of the city’s greatest weapons in the space of a breath.

The memory dissolved.

...

Another fragment brightened in its place. "This city chose a different path."

Barrier Masters stood in concentric rings around the crimson gate, Spatial Mages weaving alongside them, entire Reality Classes devoted to nothing but containment. Thousands of sealing formations activated at once, layer after layer wrapping around Tiamat until she disappeared entirely beneath overlapping walls of light.

Kai said quietly, "...They trapped her."

The Candidate didn’t answer.

A single crack echoed through the memory. Then another. Every formation shattered in sequence, faster with each layer, until the city lost everything it had built in less time than it had taken to construct.

...

A third fragment rose. "This city placed all of its faith in hunters."

Rather than weapons, every resource this civilization had went toward producing the strongest fighters it possibly could. The battlefield here held only a handful of figures, each one radiating power Kai had never witnessed in a single person before, not even in the strongest Authority Holders across Mythal combined.

The fight began, and the hunters moved fast enough that Kai could barely track them at all. Sword strikes split the earth open in long, glowing scars. Spears punched clean through the low-hanging clouds. Magic tore visible rents in the sky itself.

Even the dragons were forced backward, their wingbeats faltering beneath the relentless assault. One crashed into the ground hard enough to split the battlefield apart, carving a canyon across the earth. Another spiraled through the sky before recovering, scales scattering like burning stars.

The hunters never stopped.

Every attack flowed into the next with impossible precision.

One opened an opportunity.

Another exploited it and another forced Tiamat back again. For the first time since Kai had begun watching these memories...

Tiamat stopped advancing.

The battlefield erupted.

The city’s hunters roared.

Reinforcements raised their weapons.

Hope spread through the army like wildfire.

Kai found himself leaning forward. ’Maybe... Maybe they actually found a way...’

Then...

Everything changed.

Black flames exploded across the battlefield without warning. A hunter vanished inside them. A storm folded inward, swallowing another whole. One of the dragons crashed into the formation like a falling mountain.

The perfect coordination shattered.

Within moments...

The battlefield had gone silent.

Kai stared at the memory. "...They lost."

The Candidate nodded slowly. "They were that city’s greatest hunters."

Kai didn’t look away from the wreckage. "...Were they close?"

The Candidate went quiet for several long moments. "...I don’t know."

Kai turned to look at him. The Candidate was still watching the fading battlefield, expression unreadable.

"I’ve watched many cities reach this point," he said. "I’ve watched them challenge Disaster." A pause. "And they all reached the same ending."

He offered nothing more than that. He didn’t claim Tiamat couldn’t be defeated. He didn’t claim she could.

He simply didn’t know, and something about the honesty of that not-knowing sat heavier in Kai’s chest than a confident answer would have.

Kai looked back at the memory again, and a thought formed quietly on its own. They hadn’t looked weak. If anything, they were stronger than anyone he had ever imagined. Every swing had split mountains, and every spell had shaken the city.

Yet...

They still disappeared.

His mind refused to let the thought go. ’Then... What if. They simply never reached the level they needed?’

The Candidate glanced toward him.

Something had clearly changed in Kai’s expression.

But he neither agreed...

Nor disagreed.

...

Kai started thinking out loud. "So." He turned the idea over as he spoke. "If confronting her immediately keeps ending the same way, what if nobody enters the Disaster Dungeon at all?"

The Candidate watched him without interrupting.

"The dungeon stays sealed," Kai continued. "The city keeps clearing every other dungeon. We keep getting stronger. When we’re finally ready, then we challenge Tiamat."

Silence held for a moment.

The Candidate smiled, and the smile carried both understanding and something sadder underneath it. "I’ve seen a city make that same decision."

He raised his hand. "Snap."

...

Another memory rose around them. This city never entered the crimson dungeon at all. Massive walls surrounded it instead, elite hunters standing watch day and night in rotating shifts, the dungeon itself treated as forbidden ground marked off with warning banners that hadn’t faded in years.

Meanwhile, the rest of the city kept growing. Hunters cleared every other dungeon in the region. Resources kept flowing in. People kept training, kept improving, month after uneventful month.

The first month passed peacefully. Nothing happened.

The second month. Still nothing.

Kai watched the city’s hunters visibly strengthen across the timeline, techniques sharpening, formations tightening.

He found himself smiling. "...Maybe this is the answer."

The Candidate said quietly, "They believed so too."

Then, without warning: Crack.

Kai’s smile disappeared instantly. Hairline fractures spread across the crimson gate’s surface, faint at first, then widening with each passing second. The walls around it began to shake. Hunters rushed toward the gate on instinct, barrier formations flaring to life around the perimeter, but the crimson light behind the cracks only intensified further.

Kai whispered, "...No."

The gate exploded outward.

...

Darkness poured from the shattered gate in a wave, shadow-formed monsters flooding across the land in every direction at once.

The city reacted fast, faster than any of the others Kai had watched fall. They had clearly expected this exact possibility. Elite hunters met the first wave head-on, support classes reinforcing the defensive lines behind them, and the shadow monsters began falling in genuine numbers.

Kai exhaled. "They prepared."

The Candidate nodded. "They did."

Hope crept back in.

Then every shadow monster on the battlefield stopped at once, the entire chaotic fight going silent in the space of a single breath.

The battlefield fell completely silent.

Even the hunters hesitated as none of them understood why the monsters had suddenly frozen.

Slowly every shadow stepped aside as one as if something was telling them to. A path opened through the center of the battlefield.

Thousands of monsters stood perfectly still along both sides. Their heads lowered as though welcoming someone.

Kai felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise and felt the wind disappeared.

The thunder faded.

Even the floodwaters slowed.

Then a single foot stepped beyond the shattered gate and then another. Before long a figure with blue hair, golden eyes, and four dragons circling high above walked out of the gate.

She didn’t rush or roar.

She simply walked and every step carried an indescribable pressure. It wasn’t her magic or killing intent but something older.

It wasn’t killing intent.

Something that made the battlefield itself seem unwilling to move.

The Candidate spoke so quietly Kai almost didn’t hear him. "The city believed they could decide when the battle would begin."

A long silence followed. Then...

"...They couldn’t."

...

Tiamat stepped through the shattered gate without hurry. She didn’t charge. She didn’t roar.

She simply walked.

Storms gathered overhead within seconds, lightning splitting the sky in wide, deliberate arcs. Floods surged through the streets below, swallowing entire blocks whole. The dragons descended together, and the city’s carefully prepared defenses collapsed one after another, faster than they’d been built.

Kai watched every preparation, every plan, every month of hard-earned strength disappear in the span of minutes.

The memory faded slowly. Silence filled the blue world once more.

The Candidate finally spoke. "Disaster Dungeons cannot remain sealed forever."

"They eventually force themselves open."

Kai lowered his head, thoughts racing through everything he’d just watched.

Technology had failed. Sealing had failed. Waiting had failed. Every city had found its own answer, and every city had still fallen in the end.

One thought echoed through his mind, over and over, refusing to quiet down.

Just how strong would someone have to become to actually stop Tiamat?

The Candidate heard nothing, because Kai never spoke the thought aloud. He simply stared into the endless blue surrounding them both.

And for the first time since any of this had started, the true enemy no longer felt like Tiamat at all.

It felt like the clock that had already started counting down, somewhere behind everything they’d just seen.