The afternoon light struck them with a tangible force, warm, bright, and unremarkable. Caldmore city continued its steady hustle around them, vendors shouting as they displayed their wares, students moving in boisterous groups, and a pair of guards standing at the dungeon entrance, who looked up as the three of them emerged and then cast more scrutinizing glances.

Dominic squinted against the glare of the sunlight outside. His eyes had grown accustomed to the pale, colorless dimness of the void. This sudden brightness felt obscene, an intrusion. The world above ground remained completely unaware of what had just transpired beneath.

Suddenly, the system activated. Words manifested in the air before him, glowing softly with an unearthly hue.

[QUEST COMPLETE]

[THE TENTH FLOOR HAS BEEN CLEARED]

[RECOMMENDED CLEARANCE RANK: A AND ABOVE]

[PARTY COMPOSITION: E / SSS / SSS]

[THE SYSTEM DID NOT EXPECT YOU TO SURVIVE THAT.]

The last line hung in the air a beat longer than the others, as if the system wanted him to read it twice.

[REWARD: 800 GT TOKENS]

[BONUS: SHOP TIER 2 UNLOCKED]

[HIGHER GRADE ITEMS, ARTIFACTS, AND ROTATING INVENTORY NOW AVAILABLE]

[CURRENT GT TOKENS: 800]

[NEXT PULL: 500 GT TOKENS]

[PITY COUNTER: 0/40]

[NOTE: THE SYSTEM SUGGESTS YOU SPEND THESE WISELY.]

[OR DON’T. THE SYSTEM ENJOYS WATCHING EITHER WAY.]

Then, before he could close the notification, a second one appeared. This one had a different weight. Official. Less the system’s usual sardonic tone and more like a form being stamped.

[ADVENTURER RECORD UPDATED]

[DOMINIC KANE — FLOOR TEN CLEARED]

[RANK REVIEW TRIGGERED]

[CREST CARD UPDATE PENDING GUILD CONFIRMATION]

[NEW RANK: C]

[NOTE: FINALLY.]

Dominic read both notifications standing outside the dungeon entrance in the afternoon light. Florence was reading over his shoulder. He could feel her presence, the slight warmth of her, the iron smell of blood still fresh on her tunic. Theresa was on his other side, one hand resting on his arm for balance, her golden eyes moving across the text.

Florence let out a low whistle. "C-rank, Master’s moving up in life."

He looked at the notification for a long moment.

C-rank. Two months ago he’d been F-rank. The lowest. The joke of the academy. Now he’d make it all the way to C-rank. He checked his Crest card to confirm before allowing himself a smile.

He closed the windows.

"Let’s head to the guild," he said. "We need to process this before word gets ahead of us."

***

The same attendant from this morning was still standing behind the entrance counter. She looked up as they approached, her expression, which had remained professionally neutral all day, suddenly softened and cracked.

They appeared as if they had walked through a battlefield and kept pushing forward. Dominic’s tunic was scorched across the chest, with a blackened line where the edge of his shield had grazed him during the confrontation. Florence’s sleeves were torn at the forearms, revealing patches of scratched and stained skin. Theresa’s coat was smeared with a mixture of dust, dark soot, and what looked like dried blood. All three moved with slow, heavy steps, their movements stiff and deliberate, as if running on fumes after a long, arduous ordeal. On Dominic’s shoulder, Wobbly, was noticeably spherical, its body stretched tight over what seemed to be multiple dungeon cores embedded within it.

The attendant stared at them in silence. After a moment, she reached beneath the counter and pressed a rune that Dominic had never seen her activate before. A soft chime echoed softly in the back rooms, signaling that some form of secret protocol or communication had been initiated.

"The branch manager will see you personally," she said.

***

The appraisal room was a secure chamber nestled behind the main hall, its entrance concealed within a thick stone partition. Wards encircled every wall, ancient runes etched in silver and protected by layered spells, designed to detect scrying, prevent theft, and thwart tampering. Inside, the air was cool and still, carrying a faint scent of ozone and herbs. The appraiser was a woman in her fifties, with silver-streaked hair pulled back into a severe bun that emphasized her sharp features. Her eyes, discerning and watchful, missed nothing.

A brass plate on her desk bore the name ’Selin’ in elegant script. She possessed the calm of someone who had meticulously processed loot from every floor up to the fifteenth—an environment that had dulled her surprise after decades of exposure.

Then Dominic opened the spatial bag.

Two SS+ monster cores emerged first, gleaming softly with an inner light. He carefully placed them on the polished oak table, which was scarred from years of use.

Selin’s pen froze mid-word. Her gaze shifted from the cores to Dominic, then to the two women standing behind him, their expressions tense. Her eyes returned to the cores, weighing their significance with practiced composure.

"These are from an SS+ ranked monster," She said, not as a question but as a statement, trying to make sense of it all.

"Yes."

"These type of cores don’t come from floors one through nine."

"We know," Florence said from the wall.

Selin set her pen down very carefully. "You went to floor ten."

"Yes."

"Floor ten." She repeated it once more, this time more slowly, as if saying it again might somehow make the facts settle down and become less shocking. "The floor that killed forty-seven people in the first campaign. Why would you even do that? You three—" She stopped. Looked at Wobbly. "You three and a slime went to floor ten."

"Not a slime," Dominic said. "And yes."

Selin gazed at him for a moment, then reached for her pen. She hesitated, set it back down without writing, and slowly shook her head.

"I’m going to finish assessing what you brought before I ask any more questions. I have a feeling I’m going to need to sit down for the answers."

She assessed the cores with the slightly stiff movements of someone whose professional routine had been disrupted.

"SS+ was the high-end record for floor ten. The first expedition put it there." A pause. "You matched it twice."

The dark-infused armor plating was next. She took note of it, it value. Her hands remained steady, but her silent gaze carried a weight of its own.

She looked over the two wing membrane shards for sale, inspecting them carefully with a jeweler’s lens. Her eyebrow shot up sharply at what she saw. "Spell-forging material. Highest grade. These came off as something significantly above SS+."

"Because it is." Dominic said.

Selin opened her mouth, then closed it again, hesitating before making another note.

Dominic then reached into the bag with both arms extended, exerting effort as he heaved. The gold core landed on the appraisal table with a heavy, resonant thud that echoed through the quiet room. Selin’s ledger suddenly jumped in place, disturbed by the impact. A loose sheet of parchment slipped from the edge of the table and drifted softly to the floor.

She rose slowly, her movements deliberate yet unsteady, as if her body was reacting before her mind caught up. She walked around the table with measured steps. The core was roughly the size of a small boulder, its surface shimmering with iridescent gold.

It pulsed faintly, radiating a gentle, rhythmic glow. The mana emanating from it filled the enclosed space with a warm, oppressive heat, similar to the sensation of standing near an open furnace, intensifying the room’s already charged atmosphere.

Selin carefully circled it, refraining from touching it. Her usually impeccable professional composure, which she had maintained under pressure all day, suddenly vanished.

"This is an SSS+ core," she said. Her voice was quiet. Almost reverent.

"Yes, most likely higher than that but yes." Dominic replied.

"Floor ten doesn’t produce these types of cores."

"It does now," Florence said. She was leaning against the wall, arms crossed. The fatigue was still there, but so was a quiet satisfaction.

"This shouldn’t exist." Selin was talking to herself now, still circling the core. "The dungeon calibration on floor ten scales to party composition. To produce a core like this, the floor would have had to read..." She stopped walking. Looked at Florence. Then at Theresa.

Her face went pale.

"What did that floor sum—"

The door swung open with a faint creak.

Frank strode into the room, alert and tense.

He had received intel that they were here and had been roughed up. He hadn’t expected them to challenge floor ten. His first step was already taken, his body moving as if propelled by instinct, carrying the words he was about to speak, until his gaze fell on the gold core resting on the polished wooden table.

He froze abruptly. His mouth was still parted, words dying mid-sentence as if choked back by shock.

He stared at the shimmering gold core, then turned to Selin. She still stood upright, her face ghostly pale, eyes wide with a mixture of fear and shock that Frank had likely never seen in his years as branch manager. His gaze shifted to Dominic, then to Florence, Theresa, and back to Dominic, noting how they looked.

His jaw clenched tightly, a sign of restrained anger.

"You raided the tenth floor," he said.

"...Yes." Dominic answered.

"Without telling me! Did you even asked for information? Raiding without so much as a word. Without—" He stopped. Exhaled. Started again. "The tenth floor has killed expeditions, Dominic. The first campaign lost forty-seven people. Three S-ranks. Ten A-ranks. The second campaign only made it through by going in with overwhelming gear and minimal party size to trick the calibration. They still didn’t pull anything like that." He pointed at the gold core. "You walked in there with three people and a—" He glanced at Wobbly. "And whatever that is. Based on what? Assumptions?"

"We thought we could handle it," Dominic said. His voice was steady but he didn’t try to match Frank’s intensity. "True we had no idea the floor’s difficulty scaled to party composition, but we cleared it."

"You almost didn’t." Frank’s voice dropped. "I can see it on your faces, that you almost didn’t clear it."

Silence.

"But we cleared it," Florence said., closing the argument.

Frank looked at her, studying her face with a mixture of concern and weariness. H saw the deep lines of exhaustion around her eyes, the torn sleeves of her battered shirt, the faint burn mark still lingering on her jawbone, made him exhale slowly through his nose, releasing a quiet but heavy breath.

The anger still simmered beneath his skin, but it was the anger of someone who had been afraid and was now being forced to confront and process a fragile sense of relief. He pulled out a hard, wooden chair from the nearby table and sat down heavily, with little regard for elegance or control.

Selin remained standing by the pulsing gold core, her posture tense and alert. She looked at Frank with steady eyes, conveying both concern and readiness. Frank met her gaze, his expression shadowed by the weight of unspoken feelings.

"I was about to ask them what the floor summoned," she said quietly.

Frank closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. Looked at Dominic. "Continue the appraisal. We’ll talk about the rest later."