And the funny part was, I still felt like I was just getting good at it.
Grace approached me later near the central fountain, where Owen's old crystal cell stood empty because his new one hung somewhere inside the tower's night sky. She admitted she had been wrong about my power. I told her most people were.
She said the region would need structure now that communication was open.
I told her to enjoy that without me. No politics, no titles, no sitting in rooms arguing while monsters practiced door-to-door delivery. I was useful in alleys, dungeons, towers, and anywhere a bad person looked at a low rank and smiled.
Serena agreed. She said symbols were heavy and I was terrible at standing still.
Riley said I could stand still if there were snacks. He was not wrong, but I refused to reward accuracy.
For a few days, the city breathed. Real teams formed. Safe zone routes opened. Low rank players trained without being hunted every hour. The underground fight rings vanished, or moved far enough away to become someone else's future regret. Regional messages brought news from nearby cities. Some strong, some struggling, some silent.
I kept working. I walked patrols as an F-rank. I entered dungeons as a D-rank. I visited markets as a suspiciously rich C-rank. Every time someone reached for a weapon first, the red sparks came. Every time the red sparks came, I reminded them that the weakest looking person in the apocalypse might be carrying an S-rank under the hood.
My power kept advancing in small ways. Delayed reveal stretched from three seconds to four. Then five. My rank reflection lasted long enough to fill whole rooms with false targets. Shadow step merged with concealment until I could leave behind an F-rank afterimage that shrugged when stabbed. Predator reversal gained a second charge if the attacker mocked my rank first, which felt personally designed by comedy, but it was just another rule waiting for someone rude enough to trigger it.
Riley begged me to stop encouraging enemies to insult me, because collateral damage was bad for business. I told him insults were renewable energy. He sold earplugs.
Grace rebuilt her people into rescue teams and pretended not to enjoy sending me tips about player killers. Serena cleared high rank gates and pretended not to time her entrances so they looked dramatic. I pretended not to notice both of them pretending.
It was almost normal.
Normal lasted exactly long enough for me to get suspicious.
The first warning came from Riley, which was impressive, because his normal warnings were about his own prices going up. He found me near a collapsed bookstore where I had been using a dictionary as bait, because apparently player killers would steal anything with pages if they thought it had a skill inside.
He tossed me a little copper bell attached to a chain of monster teeth and told me not to ring it unless I wanted trouble.
Naturally, I rang it.
Nothing happened. Riley stared at me with the tired eyes of a man who had just watched his own common sense leave his body and walk into traffic.
Then my fake F-rank flickered. Not enough for anyone else to notice. Just enough for me to feel the concealment ripple, like someone had plucked a string tied to my soul.
Riley said Black Lantern crews had been selling bells like that near the old train depot. They told low ranks the bells could hide their locations from monsters. They told desperate players the bells could make them invisible to high ranked predators.
They were lying. The bells did the opposite. They marked weak players with a silent scent that monsters and player killers could track.
I looked at the tiny bell in my palm and smiled so hard Riley immediately took one step back. He said he hated that face. I told him that was fair, because I loved that face.
By sunset, I was walking toward the old train depot with the bell tied to my backpack, my rank displayed as F, and enough monster cores clinking in my pockets to sound like a charity box with bad judgment.
I made sure to pass through crowded streets first. I asked loudly if anyone knew where an F-rank could buy safe travel. I bumped into suspicious players on purpose. I dropped one core, picked it up slowly, and apologized to the air.
Grace would have called it reckless. Serena would have called it unnecessary. Riley called it marketing.
The depot had become half dungeon, half market. All bad idea. Train cars hung above the tracks without touching them, swaying in a wind that did not exist underground. The arrival boards flickered with destinations that did not exist anymore. One sign said the next train was going to childhood. Another said the next train was going to regret. I almost boarded that one just to see if it charged extra.
Players moved in nervous groups under the broken lights. Most kept their ranks visible. A few used cheap cloaks to hide their faces, which did nothing about the letters above their heads but made them feel mysterious, and feelings were important before getting arrested.
I bought a ticket from an unmanned kiosk using one monster core. The ticket printed with my visible rank on it.
F-rank passenger. Low priority seating.
I laughed so hard a nearby player pretended not to hear me.