The air outside the dungeon felt wrong in a completely different way.

  Inside, everything had been too clean—too crystalline, too alive in the polished, unnatural sense, like stepping into a gemstone museum that also happened to be breathing. Outside, the city air was loud again. Dust. Engine fumes. Sirens in the distance that never really stopped these days. The normal ugliness of “home,” which was strangely comforting after refracted light and silent halls.

  Kaede stood a little too close to Hifumi without meaning to, still half-expecting the ground to ripple or the sky to crack open above them.

  Hifumi exhaled through her nose, slow and shaky, like she didn’t want to admit her lungs had been locked for the past ten minutes. She kept her eyes on the gate behind them, as if it might follow.

  Liora walked ahead, spear resting over her shoulder like it weighed nothing. She looked calm. Annoyingly calm. The kind of calm that made Kaede want to scream, because surely someone should be screaming right now.

  And then Kaede noticed something else.

  She blinked once.

  The Chairwoman of the Hunters Association—Shino Akuma—was walking beside them.

  Except…

  …she wasn’t.

  Kaede’s mind stalled like an old computer trying to load a file that didn’t exist.

  The woman who had walked into the dungeon like a blade—tailored coat, crisp posture, controlled menace—was now in a greenish-gray tank top and bluish-green dolphin shorts, bare-legged, hair loosely sitting around her neck like she’d given up on it halfway through brushing.

  And she was eating.

  Not politely. Not daintily.

  Just… eating.

  A skewer. Something fried. Something that smelled like garlic and spice and made Kaede briefly remember she hadn’t eaten since yesterday afternoon.

  Hifumi stopped mid-step.

  Liora didn’t.

  Kaede’s mouth hung open.

  Hifumi’s voice came out small.

  “…Chairwoman?”

  Shino didn’t look at them. She took another bite, chewed with a calmness that should’ve been illegal, and said, like they were discussing a minor scheduling change:

  “Meeting in… ten.”

  Kaede’s brain finally caught up enough to produce words.

  “W-weren’t you just—”

  Shino swallowed.

  “…Professional.”

  Kaede nodded rapidly, because yes, exactly, thank you, that’s what she meant.

  Shino’s eyes drifted lazily toward Kaede, multi-ringed pink irises so sharp they looked like a target symbol.

  “…Yes.”

  Kaede stared harder, as if staring could force an explanation out of reality.

  Hifumi, awkwardly, quietly, did the only thing she could do in the face of absurdity:

  She looked to Liora for confirmation that she wasn’t hallucinating.

  Liora didn’t even turn around.

  “Don’t ask,” Liora said.

  Kaede’s voice cracked. “I wasn’t going to—”

  “It encourages her.”

  Shino took another bite.

  Kaede made a soft, strangled sound.

  Hifumi blinked slowly. “Does… does she always do this?”

  Liora finally glanced back, cigarette held between two fingers, smoke curling lazily.

  “She always can do this,” Liora corrected. “That’s the difference.”

  Shino’s earrings—long diamon pieces that swayed with each small movement—caught the sunlight and flashed.

  She chewed.

  Then, in the same slow tone, like she was discussing the weather:

  “We confirmed. Their claim.”

  Kaede snapped back into “work” mode on reflex, which for her meant “panic with purpose.”

  “O-okay. Right. Yes. Confirmed. The kingdom. The… gemstone kingdom.”

  She said the words, and they still sounded ridiculous out loud.

  It hadn’t been stone corridors. It hadn’t been dark tunnels. It had been architecture—pillars like amethyst, bridges like citrine, walls that looked like quartz veins grown into shapes that made sense only if the dungeon itself had an artistic obsession.

  And behind it all: the feeling that the place was aware you were there.

  Kaede hated it.

  She also couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  Hifumi rubbed her palms against her slacks as if trying to wipe off the memory of the air inside. “They didn’t lie.”

  Liora’s mouth twitched.

  “No,” she said. “They didn’t.”

  And that, somehow, was the problem.

  They moved quickly after that—through a controlled perimeter, past med teams checking returning hunters, past Association staff with clipboards and bright eyes. News drones hovered at the far edge of containment, held back by barriers and police tape. A small crowd had gathered because people always gathered when they smelled fear in public.

  Kaede kept her head down.

  She didn’t want to be seen.

  She didn’t want to be recognized as “that staff girl from the guild” who walked into a dungeon with Liora and The Chairwoman.

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  She didn’t want to deal with the fact that this might be the beginning of something much bigger than paperwork.

  The Hunter Association building swallowed them again—cold glass, metallic floors, bright sterile lighting. It was built to feel official. It succeeded.

  Inside the conference hall, the atmosphere had changed since earlier.

  Before, it had been argument. Ego. Posturing.

  Now it was that tighter thing that formed when powerful people realized they couldn’t just punch a problem until it went away.

  Rows of guild representatives filled the room. Hunters stood along the walls with arms crossed. Laptops were open. Holo displays flickered with footage captured from helmet cams—grainy clips of the lemon-faced guards standing perfectly still, the pink figure floating between them, and that gemstone shaft descending into light.

  Kaede sat at the back with Hifumi, feeling like she’d snuck into an adult meeting with fake credentials.

  Hifumi sat straighter than usual, not confident—just trying to look useful.

  Liora took her place closer to the front, posture casual but eyes alert.

  Shino—still in her tank top and shorts—wandered to the head seat and sat like she owned the building.

  Which, Kaede reminded herself, she kind of did.

  A guild master from the Eastern district slammed a palm on the table. “So you’re saying we negotiate with dungeon entities now?”

  A different leader scoffed. “It’s a trap. Every time. They want to lure our elites in and wipe us.”

  Shino stirred something in a cup and didn’t look up.

  One of the Association analysts spoke carefully. “They did not attack. They did not posture. Their behavior was… diplomatic.”

  “Diplomatic monsters,” someone muttered.

  Liora’s voice cut through, calm and sharp. “They didn’t claim to be monsters.”

  Silence.

  Kaede felt the room shift.

  Some of the representatives looked offended, like Liora had insulted the very concept of gates by suggesting something inside might not exist purely to kill them.

  Shino finally lifted her eyes.

  “Report,” Shino said lazily.

  Silence followed.

  Not the uncertain kind.

  The expectant kind.

  Several heads turned toward the back of the room.

  Toward them.

  Kaede’s stomach dropped.

  Hifumi swallowed beside her.

  Because they were the ones who had gone in.

  They were the ones who had seen it.

  Hifumi stepped forward before Kaede could spiral, moving with that quiet determination she had when she was scared but pretending not to be.

  Her fingers hovered over the console.

  Just a second too long.

  Then she pressed it.

  The screen flickered alive.

  Footage filled the room.

  The lemon-faced guards standing in perfect symmetry.

  The spiral descent.

  The gemstone corridors reflecting light like cut diamonds.

  And finally—

  The pink slime princess floating between them.

  A hush spread through the room.

  Kaede clasped her hands together in her lap so tightly her knuckles turned white.

  Hifumi’s voice came out small but steady.

  “They… didn’t attack.”

  She swallowed.

  “They waited.”

  Another screen displayed a map of the dungeon’s explored floors.

  And a third screen displayed a single sentence, typed in plain text.

  REQUEST: ASSISTANCE / KINGDOM UNDER SIEGE / DEMON GENERAL

  Kaede’s fingers clenched around her tablet.

  The sentence looked like something from a fantasy game quest log.

  And that was what made her skin crawl.

  Because it wasn’t a game.

  Shino’s voice drifted across the table. “They offered sanctuary.”

  A guild master leaned forward. “In exchange for what, exactly?”

  Liora answered before anyone else could.

  “For help.”

  Someone scoffed. “Help them kill their boss so we can progress. That’s what every gate is.”

  Shino tilted her head slightly.

  “No.”

  The room stilled.

  Kaede held her breath without realizing it.

  Shino continued, slow and clear.

  “This is not a typical gate structure. They are not standard dungeon ecology.” She tapped the footage with one finger. “They waited. They spoke. They made an offer. That suggests jurisdiction.”

  A man in a sharp suit—the Association’s chief operations officer—cleared his throat. “Chairwoman… if we accept—”

  “If we refuse,” Shino said, cutting him off without raising her voice, “progress halts.”

  A low murmur spread.

  “That gate’s been assigned to three guilds,” someone said. “We can’t just—”

  “We can,” Shino replied.

  And the murmur died.

  Kaede swallowed.

  This was what leadership looked like.

  Not screaming.

  Not flexing.

  Just stating reality until everyone else had to accept it.

  Liora leaned back in her chair, cigarette between her fingers, eyes narrowed. “The bigger issue is the claim.”

  A few heads turned.

  Shino’s eyes flicked toward Liora. “Which claim.”

  Liora’s tone stayed casual, but it was the kind of casual that didn’t allow jokes.

  “The system.”

  Kaede felt Hifumi stiffen beside her.

  Kaede whispered without thinking, “Please don’t say it.”

  Hifumi whispered back, “I think we have to.”

  Because that was the thing.

  The sentence the slime princess had said so politely, so calmly, like it was obvious:

  We were guided by the same system you use.

  It shouldn’t have been possible.

  Because the system was… the system. Hunters saw it. Normal people didn’t. It belonged to Earth, didn’t it?

  That was what everyone assumed, because assuming otherwise made your head hurt.

  Shino’s gaze drifted toward the footage again.

  “…Repeat the exact phrasing,” she said.

  Liora did, word for word.

  Shino didn’t react.

  No shocked expression. No raised brow.

  Only a slow, thoughtful silence.

  Then she spoke.

  “Then our operating assumption must change.”

  The room tightened.

  A guild leader snapped. “To what?”

  Shino’s voice stayed quiet.

  “That the system is not exclusive.”

  No one spoke.

  Kaede’s heart thumped hard, and she didn’t know why, because it wasn’t like she could see the system anyway.

  But the hunters in the room reacted in their own ways—some with narrowed eyes, some with a twitch of unease.

  An S-rank at the far wall shifted his weight as if suddenly uncomfortable in his own skin.

  A younger hunter whispered, “That’s… not possible.”

  Shino’s eyes turned toward him.

  “Everything is possible,” she said. “It is merely a matter of whether you are prepared.”

  Kaede hated that sentence.

  It sounded like the opening line to a disaster.

  The meeting shifted into planning mode.

  Not battle planning yet—not the fun stuff hunters liked to fantasize about.

  This was logistics.

  Multi-guild coordination. Rotation schedules. Restock points. Supply lines.

  Safe-zone negotiations.

  And because the dungeon kingdom offered trade, the Association’s civilian liaison division crawled out of whatever office cave they lived in and started asking questions that made hunters look like they wanted to throw themselves into a gate to escape.

  “What kind of goods?”

  “Is their food edible?”

  “Is their currency stable?”

  “What are the legal implications of commerce with non-human entities?”

  Liora looked like she wanted to stab someone with her spear just to feel something real again.

  Kaede, despite herself, found her fingers moving.

  Notes.

  Bullet points.

  Time stamps.

  The moment she had something to do, her panic softened slightly.

  Hifumi leaned closer and whispered, “We’re actually… useful.”

  Kaede whispered back, “Don’t say it out loud. The universe will hear.”

  Hifumi’s lips twitched.

  Kaede realized she was still exhausted.

  Still sore from paperwork.

  Still emotionally bruised from the previous arc.

  But here she was, watching the world pivot on a conversation with a slime princess in a gemstone palace.

  And it was terrifying.

  When the meeting ended, Shino stood.

  The room instinctively straightened.

  Even Liora’s posture sharpened a fraction.

  Shino looked around, slow and unreadable.

  “We will proceed,” she said. “Joint operation. Controlled. No heroics.”

  A few hunters looked offended.

  Shino’s gaze landed on them.

  “…No,” she repeated softly.

  The offense died.

  She turned to leave.

  Liora followed, cigarette already lit.

  Hifumi and Kaede gathered their things quickly because that was what staff did—follow the people who terrified the room.

  Kaede trailed behind Hifumi, still struggling to reconcile “Shino in dolphin shorts” with “Shino who just silenced an S-rank with one word.”

  They stepped into the hallway.

  Kaede glanced ahead—

  —and froze.

  Shino was now in full professional attire again.

  Tailored coat. Perfect posture. Authority incarnate.

  Kaede stopped walking so abruptly Hifumi bumped into her.

  Hifumi blinked. “What—”

  Kaede whispered, horrified. “She changed again.”

  Hifumi stared forward. Her mouth opened slightly.

  Liora didn’t even slow down.

  Shino reached the elevator, pressed the button, and waited.

  Then the doors opened.

  Shino stepped inside.

  The doors slid shut.

  Kaede exhaled shakily like she’d just survived an ambush.

  Hifumi whispered, “How did she—”

  The elevator doors slid open again a second later—wrong elevator, different floor—and Shino was already walking out of it down another corridor…

  Back in her tank top and dolphin shorts.

  Snack in hand.

  Bare legs.

  Lavender hair slightly messy.

  She didn’t even look in their direction.

  Kaede’s soul left her body.

  Hifumi whispered, “No.”

  Liora finally glanced back, eyes half-lidded, cigarette smoke curling.

  “I told you,” she said. “Don’t ask.”

  Kaede’s voice came out thin. “I… I didn’t.”

  “Good,” Liora replied. “Because you’ll never get an answer.”

  Shino, without turning her head, called back lazily as she walked away:

  “…she's right.”

  Then she disappeared around the corner, as if she hadn’t just shattered Kaede’s sense of physics.

  Kaede stared after her, mouth still ajar.

  Hifumi quietly placed a hand on Kaede’s shoulder.

  “Kaede,” Hifumi said, voice gentle and awkward. “If it helps…”

  Kaede’s eyes were wide.

  “…It doesn’t.”

  Hifumi nodded slowly. “…Okay.”

  And somewhere deep inside the city, behind glass and steel and normal human panic, a gate remained open—leading not to a monster nest, but to a gemstone kingdom waiting for their answer.

  And they had already given it.