Chapter Sixteen: Level ???
Training became second nature faster than I expected it to.
Running stopped feeling like effort somewhere around the sixth week, laps stretching longer, faster, my breath staying even the whole way through in a way that used to take real work just to fake. I stopped sweating through the mornings entirely, which should have worried me more than it did, and started actually looking forward to the sound of my alarm instead of dreading it.
"You're getting faster than I can track clean," Marcus said one morning, watching me finish a set of sprints he'd timed by hand instead of trusting any interface to do it for him. He didn't say it like a compliment. He said it like a man doing math that wasn't adding up the way he expected.
Sparring picked up the same way. Where I used to eat two hits for every one I landed clean, the ratio flipped somewhere in the second month, until Marcus started actually working for every opening instead of handing them to me as lessons.
"You doing great, kid," he said one morning, gloves up, sweat finally starting to show on him for the first time since I'd walked through his door. "Keep swinging."
I kept swinging. He blocked, adjusted, blocked again, and when I finally landed a clean shot past his guard, he staggered half a step before catching himself, something unreadable flickering across his face.
He walked over to the heavy bag afterward without a word, unhooked it, and swapped it for one nearly twice the weight, the chain groaning under the new load before I'd even thrown a single punch.
"Again," he said.
I hit it. It barely moved, at first, and then it did, harder each time, until he was adding weight faster than made sense for someone who was supposedly still learning control instead of raw power.
He stopped me halfway through the fourth set, hand raised, watching me with an expression I hadn't seen on him before. Not pride, exactly. Something closer to calculation.
"What level are you," he said. Not a question, really. More like something he needed confirmed out loud.
I hadn't checked in weeks. Training had become its own rhythm, separate from stats and quests and the System's constant scrolling commentary on everything I did. I pulled up my interface anyway, more out of curiosity than anything else, and found the number sitting there where a clean, climbing digit should have been.
LEVEL: ??? I stared at it for a second, genuinely confused, before turning the display toward him so he could see it too.
"It says question marks," I said. "That's new."
Marcus's jaw tightened. He didn't look surprised so much as he looked like a man who'd suspected something and had just watched it get confirmed anyway.
"Question marks means the System stopped counting," he said quietly. "Or it can't count anymore. I've heard of it happening exactly twice in my whole career. Both times, it happened to climbers who ended up somewhere the rest of us couldn't follow." He studied me for a long moment, something almost careful in the way he said the next part. "You know how rare that is, right? Most climbers spend a whole lifetime trying to break past a hard cap. You broke the counter."
"Is that bad?"
"Depends who's asking." He pulled his gloves off, sat down heavy on the edge of the ring like the conversation had taken more out of him than the sparring had. "Good, if it means you're strong enough that numbers stopped being able to describe it. Bad, if it means whoever's still tracking things above your level bracket just started paying closer attention." He rubbed a hand over his jaw. "Pull up the rest of it. Full sheet. I want to see what's actually sitting underneath that question mark."
I hesitated, then swiped the display open wider, stats scrolling out beneath the unreadable level.
╔══════════════════════════════════════════════╗ CLASS PROFILE
╠══════════════════════════════════════════════╣
STRENGTH: 99
AGILITY: 99
INTELLECT: 89
LAUGHTER: ???
CHARISMA: off the charts, honestly, kind of a lot, LOL
WILLPOWER: ??
LUCK: 50/50 LOL
ABILITIES: "Funny Bag." "Put on a Show."
Marcus read it over my shoulder, brow furrowing at the last line, then furrowing harder at the ones after it. "Laughter," he repeated, like the word itself owed him an explanation. "That a joke stat, or something real?"
"Real, I think." I thought about the quest chain that had fired off over and over in that dungeon, stacking bonuses every time I couldn't stop laughing, about the party horn tucked somewhere in my inventory that the System had apparently decided I'd earned. "It goes up when I laugh. Mine, other people's, doesn't seem to matter which. I don't fully know what it does yet. Feeds the class somehow."
"And it's question marks too."
"Yeah."
"What in the hell is a Charisma stat that just says LOL at the end of it," Marcus said, squinting at the display like it might rearrange itself into something more dignified if he stared long enough. "System's not supposed to editorialize. I've never seen it editorialize."
"Apparently it makes an exception for me."
"And your luck stat is a coin flip. Fifty fifty. With another LOL attached." He shook his head slowly, somewhere between disbelief and reluctant amusement. "Kid, I don't know if the System's tracking you or making fun of you at this point."
"Would it be weird if it's both?"
He didn't have an answer for that. Neither did I, honestly, staring down at an ability list that read Funny Bag and Put on a Show like official combat classifications, sitting right below stats serious enough to have gotten me flagged by four separate guild recruitment departments.
He sat with that for a long moment, arms braced on his knees, looking at me like a man recalculating something he thought he'd already figured out.
"Ninety nine on strength and agility both," he said finally, almost to himself. "That's already past what most A rank climbers cap out at over a full career. Combined with a level and a resource stat the System won't even put a number on." He shook his head slowly. "Kid, I don't think question marks means the System stopped counting because it hit a wall. I think it stopped counting because it doesn't know where the wall is yet."
He stood, pulling his gloves back on like the conversation was over whether I was satisfied with the answer or not. "Just keep training," he said. "Whatever's watching, question marks or not, better version of you beats whatever they're expecting to find either way."
He held his hands up, ready again.
"Again," he said.
I hit the bag. It didn't matter anymore how heavy he made it.
Neither of us brought up the level again that day, but I noticed, walking home that evening, that he watched me go a little longer than usual before locking up the gym behind me, like he wasn't entirely sure, anymore, whether I still needed the two hours a morning as much as he'd started needing them himself.