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

For a few seconds, nobody moved.

The battlefield sat still, broken buildings ringing the plaza, smoke drifting low through the cracked streets. Hunters stood exactly where their legs had given out, some sitting slumped against walls, some still gripping weapons, others having let theirs fall without noticing.

Everyone was exhausted.

Then the System appeared.

[Third Disaster Appeared.]

A few hunters stared blankly. Someone blinked. "...What?"

Another raised his head slowly. "Third... Disaster?"

Before anyone could process it—

[Third Disaster Passed.]

Silence. Complete silence.

A hunter stared at the notification, then at his friend, then back at the notification. "...What?"

His friend shook his head. "I don’t know."

Another pointed at the window. "Did it just say we passed?"

"Yeah."

"Without doing anything?"

"Apparently."

Someone glanced around slowly. "Did anyone fight something?"

A hunter several meters off raised his hand. "I fought a wall."

"That doesn’t count."

"It was a very aggressive wall."

A few people stared at him. Then someone laughed, small and disbelieving. Another joined. Then another.

And suddenly the whole city exploded.

Unlike the first disaster, there was no long stretch of stunned quiet. This time the celebration came instantly.

Weapons flew into the air.

"THREE!"

"WE PASSED THREE!"

"WE PASSED THE THIRD!"

"WHAT THE HELL?!"

Someone grabbed the hunter beside him into a crushing hug. "WE’RE ALIVE!"

"GET OFF ME!"

"I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!"

"I THOUGHT YOU WERE DEAD!"

"I’M NOT!"

They hugged harder. Another hunter simply collapsed backward onto the rubble.

"HAHAHAHA!"

Someone leaned over him. "Are you okay?"

He stared straight up at the sky. "No." He kept laughing. "I’m fucking fantastic."

A cluster of hunters started jumping in place. "WE PASSED THREE!" "THREE!" "THREE DISASTERS!"

"MYTHAL!" someone shouted.

"MYTHAL!" the crowd roared back.

"MYTHAL!"

"MYTHAL!"

One hunter grabbed his friend by both shoulders. "Didn’t we almost die yesterday?"

His friend wiped his eyes, laughing. "Who cares?!" He jabbed a finger toward the notification. "WE’RE ALIVE!"

"You’re right!" The first hunter laughed too. "WE’RE ALIVE!"

They slammed their shoulders together.

Nearby, someone started crying openly, not bothering to hide it, both hands pressed to his face.

"I really thought—" His voice cracked.

A friend knelt beside him. "Hey."

He shook his head. "I really thought I wasn’t going to see tomorrow."

His friend pulled him into a hug. "But you did."

He laughed through the tears. "...Yeah." He looked around at everyone still standing. "We all did."

The tension that had gripped Mythal for the entire disaster finally let go all at once. Hunters who’d spent the last hour barking orders were now screaming with joy. People too frightened to cry finally cried. People too frightened to laugh finally laughed.

One hunter dropped onto a chunk of broken concrete. "I’m never doing that again."

Another sat down beside him. "You know there’s probably going to be a fourth."

He turned slowly. "...Why would you say that?"

"Just being realistic."

"Don’t be realistic."

The second hunter laughed. "Fine."

"Thank you."

A third hunter walked past. "I’m quitting."

"You said that after the First Disaster!" someone called after him.

He stopped. "...And I’m serious this time."

"You said that last time too!"

"This time I mean it!"

"Liar!"

He flipped them off without turning around. Everyone laughed. The sheer absurdity of it was exactly what made the whole thing work. They should have been dead. Instead they were arguing about quitting.

Groups started settling together, leaning against ruined walls, lying flat across the cracked street, a few still too spent to stand at all. Naturally, the conversation drifted back over everything they’d survived.

"I still can’t believe the Red Storm," one hunter said, shaking his head.

"The Red Storm?" another answered. "You mean the thing that threw a building through the street?"

"...Yes."

"That wasn’t even the worst part."

"What was worse?"

"The Black Flood."

A third hunter laughed. "The Black Flood? You weren’t there when the ground disappeared."

"You weren’t there when the flood hit."

"I was there."

"Then why are you saying that like it wasn’t terrifying?"

"Because the Burning Earth was worse! The ground literally opened underneath us!"

"At least you could still see during Burning Earth."

"WHITE FROST!" someone shouted from the other side.

Everyone turned.

"You people don’t understand," the hunter said, shaking his head. "The cold wasn’t normal. My ability froze."

"So did mine."

"My weapon froze."

"Our mana conduits froze."

"Our transportation froze."

"Our healing stopped working!"

"Okay, okay!" someone said, hands raised. "White Frost was terrible."

A quieter voice added, "And then the Swarm came."

Everyone groaned.

"Don’t remind me."

"There were so many."

"I couldn’t see the street anymore."

"I couldn’t see anything."

Someone laughed. "I thought we were going to drown in monsters."

"Then Falling Sky happened."

Silence. A few nods followed. "...Yeah." "That."

"Things were literally falling out of the sky," one hunter said, pointing upward.

"And our anti-air defenses were getting destroyed," another added.

"I watched a missile hit another missile," someone laughed.

"You did?"

"Yeah."

"What happened?"

"I don’t know." He shrugged. "I was too busy running."

Everyone burst out laughing.

The stories kept building, each one making the whole thing sound more insane than the last. A hurricane. A flood. An earthquake. Fire. Ice. A monster swarm. Things falling from the sky.

One hunter counted them off on his fingers, then stopped, staring at his own hand. "...What the hell?"

"What?" his friend asked.

"We survived all of that." He looked around. "How?"

Nobody answered right away.

"Bad decisions," someone offered.

"Good decisions."

"Mostly panic."

"Definitely panic."

"A lot of screaming."

"Way too much screaming," someone laughed.

Another pointed toward the flickering defense network. "Elden. Elden kept that entire system running."

"If that network went down, half of us would’ve been dead," another agreed.

"Lily predicted the flood before it even reached us."

"She predicted the Swarm’s movement too."

"And the next attack."

"And every shift in the battlefield."

"I don’t even know how she does that," one hunter said, shaking his head.

"She’s terrifying."

"In a good way."

A hunter pointed off toward the eastern district. "Sera was there."

"Where?"

"Everywhere. Every time something broke through, she was there."

"She’s insane. She moved faster than I could see."

"She saved our squad."

"She saved ours too."

"At this point," someone laughed, "just assume Sera saved everyone."

That earned a round of laughter, and then someone added, "Raze saved us too."

The mood shifted slightly. "That idiot?"

"Yeah."

"He nearly blew us up."

"He also blew up the things trying to kill us."

"...Fair."

"I saw him destroy that monster near the western district. That thing was huge. Raze just looked at it and said, ’Move.’"

"And then?"

The hunter grinned. "Boom."

Everyone laughed.

"That’s basically his entire fighting style."

Then someone said, "And Kai..."

The noise dropped, not from fear, but recognition, everyone remembering something they hadn’t fully processed yet.

"I saw him on the eastern wall," one hunter said.

"I saw him in the southern district," another argued.

"He was at the eastern wall."

"No, he wasn’t."

"I saw him."

"You probably saw someone else."

"I know what Kai looks like."

Another laughed. "At one point I couldn’t even tell where he was. He was fighting that thing near the center."

"Which thing?"

The hunter just stared. "...Exactly."

Laughter rolled through the group. Then a more serious hunter spoke up.

"He saved my squad." The laughter faded. "We were trapped. The defense line broke. We thought that was it." He looked down at his hands. "Then Kai showed up."

"Same," another said quietly.

"Same?"

"Our squad too."

"He saved us near the northern district," someone else added.

"He saved ours near the flood zone."

A fourth hunter laughed. "At this point, I’m starting to think Kai was just running around saving whoever looked like they were about to die."

"Probably."

"That’s crazy."

"Yeah." A smile. "But that’s Kai."

One hunter suddenly raised his voice. "Wait!" Everyone looked over. "We’re making this sound like Kai did everything." He pointed around at the group. "Lily warned us." He gestured toward the network. "Elden kept the city alive." He nodded toward Raze in the distance. "That idiot killed half the things that got through."

Raze, overhearing, shouted back, "I HEARD THAT!"

Everyone laughed.

"Sera kept moving between the crisis zones," the hunter continued. "Mira organized our squads."

Mira, somewhere in the crowd, threw both fists into the air. "That’s right!"

"And all of us fought!" someone shouted.

A cheer rolled through the plaza. "YEAH!" "WE FOUGHT!" "WE SURVIVED!"

The hunter smiled. "So maybe it wasn’t one person." He looked around at everyone still standing. "Maybe it was all of us."

That got the biggest response yet.

"MYTHAL!"

"MYTHAL!"

"MYTHAL!"

Mira was having the time of her life, laughing, cheering, weaving through the crowd until she grabbed an exhausted hunter by both shoulders. "WE DID IT!"

He blinked. "...Yeah."

"We passed three!"

"Three."

"THREE!" She thrust both fists skyward. "WE PASSED THREE DISASTERS!"

Someone joined her. "THREE!"

Another. "THREE!"

Soon a whole cluster of hunters were shouting it together. "THREE!" "THREE!" "THREE!"

She laughed without asking how or why. She didn’t need to understand the System. Her friends were alive. That was enough.

Raze eventually stopped shouting long enough to actually look around. His eyes moved from one hunter to the next, injured, exhausted, filthy, some barely able to stay upright.

All of them alive.

His grin grew slowly. "Look at this."

The hunter beside him glanced over. "What?"

Raze gestured across the battlefield. "All these idiots are still alive."

"You’re one of those idiots."

"...Yeah." Raze grinned wider. "I guess I am."

They both laughed. He looked around again. "You know what we expected?"

Nobody answered.

"Bodies." His smile faded for just a beat. "A lot of them."

The hunter beside him went quiet.

Raze looked out over the ruined city. "But look." He gestured again. "They’re standing."

A hunter further off raised his weapon. "BARELY!"

Raze laughed. "Still counts!"

"I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS!"

"STILL COUNTS!"

Laughter rolled through everyone nearby. Then Raze noticed the notification still hanging over the city, and his expression shifted.

"...Wait."

"What?" the hunter beside him asked.

He pointed up. "The Third Disaster."

"Yeah?"

"How did we pass it?"

"No idea."

He squinted at it. "We didn’t even fight anything."

"Apparently we didn’t need to."

He scratched his head. "That’s weird."

"Who cares?!" someone shouted from nearby.

Raze looked back at the celebrating crowd, then at the notification one more time. "...Good point." He spun around immediately. "HEY!"

The hunter looked at him. "What?"

He grabbed his shoulders. "WE PASSED THREE!"

"I KNOW!"

"THREE!"

"I KNOW!"

"THREE!"

They dissolved into laughter together. The mystery stayed exactly where it was.

For tonight, nobody cared.

One hunter eventually climbed onto a slab of broken stone, raising both hands.

"MYTHAL!"

"MYTHAL!" the crowd roared back.

"WE SURVIVED!"

"WE SURVIVED!"

"THE SECOND DISASTER!"

"WE PASSED IT!"

"THE THIRD DISASTER!"

A brief pause. Then, all at once—

"WE PASSED THAT TOO!"

Laughter tore through the plaza.

"I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT WE PASSED!" someone shouted.

"WHO CARES?!" another screamed back. "WE PASSED IT!"

The whole city erupted one final time.

"WE PASSED THREE!"

"WE PASSED THREE!"

"WE PASSED THREE!"

Above the ruined skyline, the notification hung steady.

[Third Disaster Passed.]

Nobody understood it. Nobody knew why.

But for the first time since the world had awakened, Mythal wasn’t celebrating because it had merely survived.

It was celebrating because it had won.