He checked his character sheet for the first time properly on the fourth day.
He had glanced at it before — it had been visible in the system interface since the beginning, accessible from a sub-menu — but he'd avoided dwelling on it, the way you avoid reading a medical report you've already been given the summary of. The summary was bad enough. He didn't need to stare at the numbers.
On the fourth day, sitting in a quiet section of the Neutral Zone's outer wall where Dr. Cho had requisitioned a series of alcoves for administrative work, he pulled it up and read it carefully.
GUARDIAN OF THE PLANET
Host: Kael Duren | Age: 26 | Level: 1
Class: GUARDIAN OF THE PLANET (Tier 1 of 12)
BASE STATS:
Strength: 12
Agility: 11
Endurance: 14
Perception: 16
Willpower: 19
Vitality: 13
GUARDIAN-EXCLUSIVE STATS:
Dungeon Affinity: 8 / 100
Planetary Bond: 3 / 100
Host Integrity: 94 / 100
EXP TO NEXT LEVEL: 1,200,000 / 1,200,000,000
(Note: Guardian class requires 100× standard experience to advance.)
CURRENT PASSIVE ACCUMULATION RATE: 4,831 exp/hour
ESTIMATED TIME TO LEVEL 2: 247 days
He looked at that last line for a long time.
Two hundred and forty-seven days to Level 2, at current rates, when the first floor needed to be cleared in twenty-eight days.
He ran the math, which was not encouraging. Floor 1 had to be cleared before the timer hit zero — which meant millions of people killing demons at an accelerating rate over the next twenty-eight days. The more demons killed, the more his passive accumulation spiked. The more people came through the portals, the higher the base rate.
He queried the system.
QUERY: If the Neutral Zone population reaches one billion active fighters, what is my estimated accumulation rate?
Calculation processing...
AT ONE BILLION ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS WITH AN AVERAGE KILL RATE OF 10 DEMONS PER HOUR PER PARTICIPANT:
BASE CONTRIBUTION POOL: 10,000,000,000 / hour
GUARDIAN'S 1% SHARE: 100,000,000 / hour
ESTIMATED TIME TO LEVEL 2: 12 days.
He stared at this.
QUERY: What is the current Neutral Zone population?
CURRENT ACTIVE PARTICIPANTS: 2,847,400
Two million, eight hundred thousand. Against a billion required for optimal rate.
He looked at his twelve active portals. Twelve — the maximum for his current level. Two million people had found them in three days, which was remarkable, and also not nearly enough.
He opened the next sub-section of his stat sheet: Guardian Abilities (Current Level).
Portal Generation: Maximum 12 simultaneous portals. Portal diameter and stability increase with Guardian level. Global Announcement: Unlimited uses. Unlimited content. Passive Accumulation: 1% of all contributions. Automatic. Dungeon Sense: Passive awareness of floor integrity, population, and countdown status. Barrier Reinforcement: (LOCKED — Unlocks at Level 2.) Guardian may briefly reinforce floor containment barriers from within. Floor Inspection: (LOCKED — Unlocks at Level 3.) Guardian may enter and exit any floor without restriction.
He looked at Barrier Reinforcement for a while. Level 2. He needed Level 2 for that, and Level 2 required a billion fighters killing demons at scale, and right now he had two million.
He moved to his combat stats.
They were modest. Strength 12, Agility 11 — about fifteen percent above the average human baseline, probably a function of the system applying a small uplift to the host body to keep the Guardian minimally viable. His Endurance was better — 14 — which he took to mean that whatever was happening inside his body was being physically managed, in part, by the host-integrity function that kept the dungeon contained.
Host Integrity: 94 / 100.
He had lost six points of Host Integrity in four days. The system had given no alert for this; he'd only noticed it just now. He queried it.
QUERY: What causes Host Integrity loss?
HOST INTEGRITY DECREASES AS A RESULT OF:
— Proximity of high-intensity demonic activity within the dungeon
— Countdown timers approaching zero without floor completion
— Physical stress to the Guardian's body
QUERY: What happens at 0 Host Integrity?
FLOOR RUPTURE BECOMES UNPREVENTABLE. THE HOST DIES. THE DUNGEON PERMANENTLY BREACHES.
QUERY: Is there a way to restore Host Integrity?
HOST INTEGRITY RESTORES AT A RATE OF 1 POINT PER COMPLETED FLOOR.
He processed this.
He had lost six points in four days. He would restore one point per cleared floor. He had twelve floors to clear. That meant a maximum recovery of twelve points, which would bring him back to — at best — 106, if no further degradation occurred, which the system had just told him was inevitable.
He was going to spend the entire dungeon war slowly dying.
He sat with this information for a moment, in the alcove, with the sound of the Neutral Zone's population carrying through the stone behind him.
Willpower: 19.
That was his highest stat, by a significant margin. He looked at it. He thought about what the system used Willpower for — the documentation mentioned it as the primary stat for Guardian-specific abilities, for barrier reinforcement, for what would eventually be floor inspection and dungeon manipulation.
He thought about the sensation in his chest, the dungeon's pressure, the claw that had pressed through his palm. He thought about the fact that his body was containing twelve floors of Hell and had been for four days and was still at 94 integrity.
He thought: Willpower 19 might be the only reason I'm still alive.
He pulled the stat sheet up to its full display and made himself look at every number. Not to feel bad about them. Just to know them. He had found, in his life before this, that the things that scared him most were always scariest when he was trying not to look at them directly. Once he looked — really looked, at the actual numbers, the actual shape of the problem — they became manageable. Not small. Not solvable. But manageable.
Estimated time to Level 2: 247 days (at current rates) / 12 days (at 1 billion participants).
There it was. The actual problem. He needed more people. Dramatically more people. He needed to open more portals, which required leveling up, which required more people. It was a scaling problem, and the only way through it was to keep driving the numbers up.
He closed the stat sheet and opened his portal interface.
He currently had twelve portals operating. The system showed him his next twelve planned locations — a list he'd been building for two days, researching population density and transport accessibility across six continents.
He had the locations. He just needed the level.
He queried:
QUERY: What is the fastest verified method to increase portal count beyond 12?
REACH LEVEL 2. AT LEVEL 2, MAXIMUM SIMULTANEOUS PORTALS INCREASES TO 50.
QUERY: Are there temporary methods to increase portal reach at Level 1?
AT LEVEL 1, THE GUARDIAN MAY DESIGNATE UP TO 3 PORTAL OPERATORS: INDIVIDUALS WHO RECEIVE A DERIVED PORTAL ABILITY AND CAN OPEN ADDITIONAL PORTALS ON THE GUARDIAN'S BEHALF. DESIGNATED PORTAL OPERATORS SHARE THE GUARDIAN'S PORTAL POOL. TOTAL PORTALS REMAIN CAPPED AT 12 UNLESS GUARDIAN LEVELS UP.
He had not known this. He read it twice.
He stood up, folded his metaphorical notes, and went to find General Abara and Dr. Cho.
He had three portal operator slots to fill, and he had some ideas.