A cold, volcanic fury simmered in Noctar's veins, a low-level system process consuming 90% of his mental bandwidth. His nosebleed had stopped but now it returned with a different intensity.
One hundred thousand.
The number echoed in his skull, a death knell for his hope of a quick karma cleanse. Byte had oversold this as a patch job, but it was a full-scale, ground-up OS rewrite. He'd been conned. Again. Noctar sighed and tried to calm down, he wiped his nose with a piece of the cloak and only when it stopped did he focus his eyes to the team of 5.
He barely registered the adventurers' final battle. He watched, dispassionately, as the now debugged, and truly adorable, Spatial Pupper yipped and teleported randomly around the square in a panic. Kaelen, a blur of focused motion, finally predicted its landing spot, his daggers flashing. The creature dissolved into a shower of light, and a stream of energy flowed into the assassin.
Noctar's Appraisal Eyes saw it clearly.
[KAELEN ACQUIRED: SKILL - SHORT-RANGE TELEPORT (C-RANK)]
[SKILL_PROGRESSION: 0/100]
His musings were cut short as Borin, chest puffed out with victory and residual adrenaline, stomped over. The tank's face was a mask of contempt.
"You!" Borin snarled, his voice echoing in the now-silent city. "You coward! You ran and left us to do all the fighting! What kind of S-Rank are you?!" Before Noctar could even form a words, Borin's massive, gauntleted hand shot out and seized him by the throat.
The physical pressure was nothing compared to the insult.
`// Want me to handle this?` S.A.R.A. whispered in his mind, her tone sweetly venomous.
`Do it.`
Noctar didn't struggle. He just leveled his ice-blue gaze on Borin, his expression one of utter, bone-chilling promise. His face was completely expressionless and the smear of blood by his nose gave him a very murderous look.
And the moment S.A.R.A unmuted his aura, Borin felt it. The same suffocating, soul-deep terror that had felled Finn earlier. It wasn't a wave this time; it was a needle, a precise, concentrated spike of divine menace aimed directly at his core.
His fight-or-flight instinct screamed ABYSS, ABYSS, ABYSS!
His fingers sprang open as if burned, and he stumbled back, crashing into Elara, his face pale as a ghost. His shield was raised high and his pupils dilated in unadulterated fear. Kaelen saw this and stepped forward ready to face Noctar should he turn against them now.
Noctar calmly rubbed his throat. "I told you," he said, his voice dangerously quiet. "I wasn't fighting your fight. I was fixing the problem that would have killed you all. That 'cute' dog was a system-level corruption. I patched it."
The team stared, shaken. They'd felt the edge of that aura. But belief was a hard sell. The concept was too alien for them to understand.
"System corruption? Patching?" Finn piped up, trying to regain some authority. "I don't know what game you're playing, but you were in a dungeon claimed by our guild, you're clearly an unidentified adventurer. You need to answer to the Hunter's Authority. We're taking you in."
To Noctar's surprise, the others, even a wary Kaelen, nodded. They needed to contain this enigma, and bureaucracy was their only tool. Noctar understood that and he wasn't going to fight it. In that instance, the dungeon timer came to an end.
An exit portal swirled to life in the center of the 5th floor's square. Before Noctar could decide on a course of action, compliance versus turning them all into fine red mist, Elara chanted a quick spell. Bars of shimmering, hardened mana erupted from the ground, forming a cage around him.
[SKILL_IDENTIFIED: ARCANE_CAGE - B-RANK]
[STRUCTURAL_INTEGRITY: 850/850. RECOMMENDATION: A SINGLE FOCUSED APPLICATION OF KINETIC FORCE AT 12% OF USER'S CURRENT CAPACITY WILL SUFFICE FOR BREACH.]
He could break out. Easily. But then what? Become a fugitive in a world he'd just arrived in, with 99,999 bugs still to find? No. Sometimes, the best way to debug a system was to work within its parameters. For now.
He offered no resistance as they led him, caged, through the portal.
The world shifted from the magical city square to a grassy field at the dungeon's entrance. The familiar hum of the dungeon's mana vanished, replaced by the open air.
And with it, the traveler's cloak vanished too.
It dissolved into motes of light, a temporary asset from a dungeon loot table, its timer expired.
The mana cage flickered and died, its purpose served. Noctar stood in the bright sunlight, completely and utterly naked once more, surrounded by the five members of the Lucky Tree guild, who were now staring with a fresh wave of shock and embarrassment.
A beat of profound silence.
Finn's eyes went wide. "Oh. Oh, right. The cloak was… dungeon-bound."
Noctar didn't move. He didn't try to cover himself. He just stood there, his divine physique on full display, his face an impassive mask of long-suffering resignation.
This was his life now.