Day 88 of the Preparation Phase.
Forty-eight hours until the Hub opened.
Riri stood in the penthouse living room, two Luxury Lottery Tickets materializing between her fingers. She'd earned them across the past week from Daily Quests, the rewards System #2 handed out for tasks that other Systems made Players work considerably harder to complete.
Samael's arms wrapped around her waist from behind, pulling her back against his chest. His mouth found the curve of her neck.
Her pulse jumped.
"For luck," he murmured against her skin.
"I am Luck."
His amusement came back through the Bond, warm and certain. Two hundred and twenty-five Luck. Literally the luckiest Player on the planet, and she had the stat sheet to prove it.
"Then let's see what that gets you," he said.
She tore the first ticket.
The golden wheel materialized in the air before her, spinning fast, the cascade of options blurring past in honey-gold light. It slowed. Stopped.
[SSS-RANK: STAT POINT JACKPOT]
[+250 Stat Points Awarded]
[AMAZING PULL, HOST! That's a 0.3% drop rate! ♡]
Two hundred and fifty points. Fifty levels of allocation for a normal Player, handed over in one pull. Riri's mind was already sorting distribution before the confetti had finished falling from System #2's notification.
"Two hundred and fifty," Samael said. His satisfaction pulsed through the Bond before he added anything. "Your stat sheet just became genuinely unreasonable."
"It was already unreasonable."
"More unreasonable." His arms tightened. "Second ticket."
She tore it.
The wheel spun again. When it stopped, she read the reward twice before she said anything.
[SSS-RANK: CLASS SKILL UPGRADE TOKEN]
[Allows Player to upgrade one base skill/function of their class]
[Note: Upgrades are permanent and cannot be reversed. Choose carefully.]
A Class Skill Upgrade Token. For Beast Tamer, that meant core functionality. Companion slots. Taming rates. Bond strength.
Her mind went immediately and without detour to the most obvious application.
Active companions. Capped at three. She had four bonded creatures and had been rotating Vesper in and out depending on dungeon type for two weeks. But if she upgraded the limit to four active simultaneously—
"I can run the full team," she said.
"Four companions active." Samael's voice carried the particular quality it got when he was running numbers. "That's over twenty thousand combined Combat Power, just from your companions."
"Plus my fourteen thousand. Plus your twenty-three thousand." She turned in his arms to face him. "Nearly sixty thousand as a Bonded pair."
His eyes darkened with something beyond tactical appreciation. "Raid Boss-level threat assessment."
"Every Player in the Hub giving us a very wide berth."
"Even better."
The excitement hit her clean and uncomplicated, the pure pleasure of a plan clicking into place. She threw her arms around his neck, pulling him into a hug with enough force that he had to brace.
His quiet laugh rumbled through his chest against hers. "I'll take that as approval."
"Two hundred and fifty stat points and a full four-pet loadout." She pulled back enough to meet his eyes. "Forty-eight hours until Mandatory Missions. I want to see what all four companions do together before we're in actual death-game content."
"Theo's Raid invite," he said. "Three days ago. Garden of Eden."
She'd seen the notification when it arrived and dismissed it, too focused on grinding Kirin's levels. She pulled it up now.
[Raid Invitation: Garden of Eden]
[Rank: C]
[Recommended Level: 15-20]
[Minimum Players: 40]
[Boss: Tree of Sin - Sentient plant entity with area control abilities]
[Rewards: S-Tier gear guaranteed, SSS-Tier possible for MVP]
[Time Limit: 12 hours]
[Entry Window: 48 hours remaining]
Prep Phase finale event. The System handing Players one last premium gear opportunity before everything became permanently lethal.
"Plant-based enemies," she said. "Kirin's lightning will shred them. Loki tanks, Vermillion sustains, Vesper scouts and harasses."
"And I eliminate priority targets while you coordinate." His satisfaction was already settled, like he'd made the decision before she finished speaking. "Full power display before Mandatory content."
She activated the Token without further deliberation.
[Class Skill Upgrade Token activated]
[Select function to upgrade:]
[1. Active Companion Limit (Current: 3)]
[2. Taming Success Rate Multiplier (Current: Base Formula)]
[3. Companion Experience Gain (Current: Standard)]
[4. Bond Resonance Strength (Current: Level 1)]
She selected option one.
[Active Companion Limit upgraded: 3 → 4]
[You may now maintain four companions simultaneously]
[Note: Stamina drain increases with active companion count. Monitor carefully during extended combat.]
Her Status window updated.
[Active Companions: 3/4]
She summoned Vesper from the inactive slot. The fox materialized in a flicker of gold, landed on the sectional with his usual precision, yipped once in the direction of no one in particular, then turned to find everyone looking at him.
Four bonds settled into place beside her heart. All of them, simultaneously, for the first time.
Loki's mountain-weight. Vesper's quicksilver awareness. Vermillion's collective warmth. Kirin's lightning, crackling and young and restless.
Complete.
"We're doing this," she said. "Full loadout. Let's show the Prep City what a Bonded pair looks like when they're not holding back."
The dangerous smirk appeared. "Gladly."
The stat allocation took her less than three minutes. Calculated distribution, no second-guessing: 100 to Agility, 100 to Charisma, 50 to Intelligence. Her Agility hit 347. Charisma reached 328. Intelligence climbed to 206.
[Combat Power updated: 16,847]
Samael checked his own gear with the efficiency of someone who'd stopped thinking about each piece individually. His Combat Power sat at 23,691 before companion bonuses.
They left the penthouse together, hands linked, four companions falling into formation around them. Loki on Samael's left, pace steady. Kirin beside Riri, now Great Dane-sized at roughly six hundred pounds, his dark navy scales catching light differently than they had two weeks ago, flight-capable wings folded against his sides. Vesper on her shoulder. Vermillion circling overhead.
The streets were busier than usual. Players clustering in groups, forming last-minute parties, moving in the direction of the Garden of Eden's entrance in the eastern sector. The energy in the Prep City felt different with forty-eight hours on the clock. Sharper. Everyone who'd spent three months telling themselves they had time was now confronting the fact that they didn't.
People noticed them.
The rose-gold [BONDED] tags floated above their heads in text visible from fifty feet. Add four high-level companions and two Players who moved through a crowd like they'd already cleared everything in it, and it was difficult to look anywhere else.
Riri felt the attention through Danger Sense. Curiosity. Envy. Caution. One man stepped back from the edge of the walkway as Loki passed, and the wolf didn't so much as glance at him.
No hostile intent. Just people recalibrating their understanding of the power differential.
She could live with that.
The Garden of Eden's entrance was marked by a massive archway draped in flowering vines. Beautiful in a way that was slightly off, nature warped into something too symmetrical and deliberate to trust.
[Garden of Eden - Raid Zone]
[Current Participants: 37/40]
[Entry unlocks at 40/40]
Thirty-seven Players already gathered. Theo stood near the archway with Avery, and he raised a hand when he spotted them approaching.
Riri felt the shift in attention before she identified the source.
A man standing twenty feet from the entrance. Average height, average build, brown hair, entirely unremarkable except for the quality of attention in his eyes. Sharp. Calculating. The kind of intelligence that spent more time watching than speaking.
System #8,308,451,256 floated above his head in dim yellow text.
Marty Miles.
She'd read about him for months before Integration. The novel's original protagonist, the NEET who climbed rankings through manipulation and social engineering, collecting people who were useful and discarding them when they stopped being useful. A weak System leveraged through an exceptionally sharp understanding of what other people wanted.
His gear put his Combat Power somewhere around six thousand. No companions visible.
Not a threat. Not someone she needed to spend attention on.
She and Samael walked past him toward Theo. Riri felt Marty's gaze track from their joined hands to the Bonded tags, then across the four companions, then back to the tags. She felt the exact moment the picture assembled for him. His posture changed, just slightly. Shoulders drawing in by a fraction. The recalculation happening behind his eyes.
He'd just understood something about this world he hadn't understood thirty seconds ago.
Good.
"You came," Theo said, relief evident. "I sent the invite three days ago and didn't hear back."
"We were grinding levels." Riri nodded toward Kirin. "Wanted to test the full loadout before the Hub."
Theo's gaze moved across all four companions and stalled. "Four active. I thought Beast Tamers capped at three."
"Class upgrade. Just activated it."
He shook his head slowly. "Your team composition is probably worth fifteen standard Players."
"Closer to twenty," Samael said. Not a boast. Just accurate.
Avery spoke before Theo could respond, her tone focused. "The Tree of Sin uses area denial. Roots that trap, branches that drain life force, constant add spawns. Sparrow Spores attack in swarms and they're fast."
"Plant-based." Riri ran it through. "Lightning effective. Loki absorbs the roots. Vermillion counters the drain. Vesper scouts spawn points before the swarms form."
"And I remove the boss once the add pressure drops," Samael finished.
Theo looked between them. "You two already planned this."
"Three weeks of content together." Riri kept her tone even. "The planning is mostly automatic."
The Bond pulsed, carrying Samael's satisfaction at that, quiet and warm.
Two more Players approached the archway. The count updated.
[Current Participants: 39/40]
One slot.
Riri felt the shift in intent behind her before Marty spoke. Not hostile, but pointed. Calculated.
"I'll take the last slot."
He stepped forward, flanked by the two women who'd been standing with him. His expression was relaxed and agreeable. His eyes were doing several things at once.
Theo hesitated. Looked at Riri.
She shrugged. The Raid needed forty Players. She didn't care who filled the number.
"Fine," Theo said. "Stay in formation. This isn't a solo operation."
"Of course." Perfectly agreeable.
Riri filed the calculation behind his eyes away for later and turned back to the archway.
[Current Participants: 40/40]
[RAID ACTIVATION SEQUENCE INITIATED]
[Entry permitted in 60 seconds]
The vines covering the archway began to glow, green light pulsing through the stems in slow, rhythmic waves. Kirin's scales flickered with answering electricity, his body recognizing the plant energy as a target class he was built to destroy.
Samael's hand tightened around hers. Not checking on her. Just contact.
She squeezed back.
Forty Players. Four companions. One Bonded pair with nearly sixty thousand combined Combat Power walking into a C-Rank Raid that was designed for groups of people who were significantly less prepared.
The countdown hit zero.
The archway opened, and the smell of too-sweet flowers hit her like a wall.
They stepped through.