Grant's party had followed from a distance. They ran the wrong way when the floor split.
I could have continued toward the exit. Instead, I drove Minute Hand into a pillar, spread Pulse Thread across the falling chamber, and counted four human heartbeats through the stone. I used Split Beat until it felt like I existed in two places. One path carried Emma over the gap. The stored path kicked a falling slab away from Grant. Twentyfold Dash gathered the other two hunters beneath my coat just before the ceiling landed.
We reached the exit together.
Grant did not thank me. He stared at the floor where a piece of the collapsed unknown door glittered blue. While Emma checked the others, he slipped the shard into his torn glove. I saw him. I said nothing. Some traps worked better when the person believed they had stolen the bait.
Near the serpent's core, I found a clear crystal used by raid teams to record boss kills. Pulse Thread revealed an older vibration sealed inside it. I touched Minute Hand to the surface, and the crystal replayed the chamber from twenty minutes earlier. There was Grant's hand on my back. There was Emma telling him to stop. There was the door closing while the party laughed.
I put the crystal inside my coat.
Outside the gate, daylight hurt my eyes. Cars moved too smoothly. Phones glowed in people's hands. The association clock above the plaza had advanced twenty minutes since our entry. My reflection in the glass showed a scarred stranger standing beside a party of young hunters.
Emma asked where I was going. I looked toward the regional hunter headquarters. Twenty years of anger had become something colder and more useful than rage.
I told her I was going to report a crime.
The regional hunter headquarters had two entrances. The wide glass doors were for A-ranks and above. The narrow side counter was for everyone else. My badge still showed the face of a nervous twenty-year-old and the words F-rank porter, so the guards pointed me toward the side before I spoke.
I kept walking.
One guard caught my right arm. The other put a stun baton against my chest. Neither was cruel. They were doing what the building had trained them to do, which made the lesson simple. I reached Still Point. The baton discharged. Minute Hand's wire carried the current around my coat and into the metal door frame. I turned my wrist through the gap in the first guard's grip, placed two fingers against his elbow, and used his own pressure to sit him gently on the floor.
The second swung. Dead Second showed me the baton, the cameras, the frightened receptionist behind him, and the exact route that hurt nobody. I tapped the floor with Minute Hand. Pulse Thread ran through every metal support. The security gate clicked open as my vibration struck its release. I stepped past the baton, caught it, switched it off, and returned it handle first.
Then I asked to see Derrick.
The regional leader occupied the top floor. He came down because the lobby alarms were already attracting cameras. Derrick looked young for an A-rank, with a white training jacket and the relaxed smile of someone who had never entered a room where he was not the strongest. He dismissed the guards, examined my scars, and pretended not to be impressed.
I gave him my badge. I gave him the crystal. I explained the black door, the twenty years, and Grant's push.
Derrick watched the recording once. Then he asked where the rest of it was. I thought he meant another angle. He meant the part that would make my suffering believable. In his world, an F-rank could not survive twenty years. Therefore, I had not survived twenty years. The man standing in front of him had to be a monster, a thief, or a liar.
He said I was probably experiencing a dungeon illusion. He said Grant's joke showed poor judgment, but punishment required proof of real danger. When I pointed to my face, he suggested cosmetic transformation.
My hand tightened around Minute Hand. I had killed beasts for less. That was exactly why I loosened my grip.
Derrick sensed the decision and smiled wider. He offered a solution. If I could prove my strength in a duel, he would take the claim seriously. The duel would be public, supervised, and non-lethal. He wanted the building to watch its leader put an F-rank back in his place. I wanted every camera pointed in the correct direction.
So I agreed.
Word crossed the city faster than we reached the training platform. By the time the roof opened, reporters crowded the observation level. Hunters leaned over the rails. Headquarters staff filled the windows. Derrick rarely fought in public, and the story of a scarred F-rank forcing his way upstairs was already spreading.
Grant arrived wearing borrowed armor. Emma followed him. She looked sick with anger. Grant had sent reporters a shortened clip showing me entering the unknown door and emerging older. He claimed a boss inside had killed me, stolen my shape, and taken my badge. The missing moment was the shove. He had edited the wrong copy.
Emma stepped in front of the cameras and said she had watched Grant push me. No speech, no tears, just one clear fact. Grant called her confused. She repeated it. Derrick cut them off. He said the duel would reveal the truth.
The platform was a circle of reinforced stone surrounded by lightning rods. Derrick's ability was called Stormfield. Blue arcs jumped between his fingers and the rods. He explained that stepping outside the circle meant defeat, surrender meant defeat, and unconsciousness meant defeat.
I asked if embarrassment counted. The crowd laughed. Derrick did not.
He attacked before the starting bell finished. Lightning filled the platform in a web. It was not one bolt I could dodge. Every open path became another strike, and each rod redirected the field whenever I changed direction. Derrick had heard about my speed from Grant. He built a cage designed to punish straight lines.
Interval Step carried me through the first gap. The field closed ahead. Split Beat took me backward, but Derrick raised the stone beneath my landing point. He was not only powerful, he learned quickly. That made him more interesting than the Hour King and much less frightening.
I drew the wire from Minute Hand and let the tip scrape the platform. Pulse Thread showed the field as vibrations passing through the rods a fraction before each flash. Electricity looked random. The metal carrying it did not lie.
Derrick increased the pressure. Lightning struck my shoulder and threw me across the circle. The wolfhide coat smoked. Reporters gasped. Grant began smiling. I stayed on one knee. Derrick told me to surrender.
I wrapped the wire around my stiff left hand. It hurt, but pain and I had lived together longer than most marriages.
He summoned every arc into one descending spear. I reached Still Point. The platform went silent inside Dead Second. I could feel the lightning pattern through Pulse Thread before it arrived. Twelve rods, twelve paths, all meeting at my chest.
The rhythm was familiar.
I did not dodge. Minute Hand entered the stone. The wire connected the central plate to the first rod. Split Beat snapped a second loop toward the opposite side. When the spear hit, Still Point held my body at zero while the current raced through the paths I had prepared. Then I released the stolen pattern sideways.
Twelve lightning walls rose around Derrick. They formed a bright cage with openings no wider than a hand. He tried to command the field, but each movement sent his own power across the next opening. He had built a weapon that responded to motion. I had simply changed who stood inside it.
Derrick froze. So did I. Twentyfold Dash carried me between the arcs. Minute Hand stopped against the hollow of his throat. The lightning cage shattered behind me, and the starting bell finally finished ringing.
The whole duel had taken less than one second.
I stepped away without cutting him. For a moment, Derrick looked at me as if the floor had vanished. Then the cameras reminded him who he was supposed to be. He accused me of hiding an artifact. Grant shouted that Minute Hand had to be stolen. Derrick declared the duel inconclusive, because my method did not match my registered F-rank abilities.
That was when I understood. The association could measure mana, issue ranks, and build enormous headquarters, yet still be too small to admit one obvious truth.
I held the recording crystal toward the cameras and played the unedited memory. The shove filled every screen. Grant's face went white. Emma did not look away. The crowd heard him promise to abandon me after twenty minutes. They saw the door shut.
Derrick still refused the complaint.
I could have destroyed the platform. I could have dragged Grant to a cell myself. Instead, I put my old badge on the stone between us. I told Derrick that an association unwilling to protect an F-rank did not deserve the strength of an A-rank. Then I left, reporters chasing the recording behind me.
Grant showed Derrick the blue shard in his glove. Their voices were too low for normal ears. Pulse Thread carried them through the building frame. Grant wanted protection. Derrick wanted the power that had beaten him. They both believed the shard was a shortcut.
I let them believe I had not heard.