"Oh, another upgrade. This should be the max level, right?"
She studied the Data Dock notification on her Pangu Terminal. If Yangyang and the others had been here, the sight alone would have floored them.
None of them had ever seen anyone raise their Data Dock high enough to absorb Calamity Class Echoes. Not even the most obsessive collectors, the ones who'd spent decades hunting Echoes, had come close.
This was the theoretical ceiling of what a Pangu Terminal could absorb.
Theoretical being the operative word. No one had ever absorbed a Calamity Class Echo. Whether a terminal could even contain that magnitude of Frequency was anyone's guess. These were entities capable of leveling an entire region's Civilization with their power alone, and not a single one had ever dropped an Echo upon defeat. You could count the known specimens on one hand.
The math was brutal. Overlord Class Echoes already had a drop rate of one in a thousand. Extrapolating from that, Calamity Class couldn't be better than one in ten thousand, and there weren't ten thousand Calamity Class Tacet Discords on all of Solaris-3.
As for Threnodians, the tier above... those were flatly impossible for any terminal to absorb. Calamity Class was the hard limit.
And the only ones who'd ever reached that limit were the two of them.
"All thanks to your ridiculous luck," she said with a sigh.
They'd figured out the unlock condition now. Absorb five Overlord Class Echoes, and the Data Dock's ceiling rises to Calamity Class.
Simple enough to say.
Impossibly hard to do.
The number of people who could defeat an Overlord Class Tacet Discord was vanishingly small. But raw strength wasn't enough. Without extraordinary luck, it was a pipe dream. Five one-in-a-thousand rolls, back to back.
On paper, the requirement to upgrade the Data Dock to Calamity Class was collecting five Overlord Class Echoes. In practice, the real requirement was being both the luckiest person alive and one of the strongest.
"Calamity Class..." she murmured, something complicated crossing her expression as she stared at the new tier.
The memory surfaced unbidden: the Dreamless, encountered in that virtual space not long ago. Unlike Scar, who was all bark, that had been a genuine Calamity Class Tacet Discord.
Even now, with both of them far stronger than they'd been then, she had zero confidence they could win.
The sheer, absolute violence of that thing's power.
It left an impression that didn't fade.
And the virtual space had limited processing capacity. The Dreamless they'd faced was almost certainly a weakened version of the real thing. If it manifested in reality, it would be despair given form.
Abby's devouring ability could counter any Tacet Discord in theory. But in a real battle against the Dreamless, without wearing it down significantly first, Abby would never get the chance.
"I have a feeling we'll be fighting the Dreamless again soon. And next time, it won't be in some playground simulation." Her voice carried a weight that matched her expression. A sense of urgency had settled over her.
I'm still not strong enough.
She needed more power.
Then, in the next breath, the tension drained from her body. He'd pulled her into a gentle embrace, and something wordless and warm dissolved the pressure building inside her chest.
"If the Dreamless comes back, we'll make sure it doesn't leave. Whatever enemy shows up, we face it together."
"...Yeah. You're right. I'm glad you're here."
A smile tugged at the corner of her lips, and she leaned her head against his shoulder.
The sight of them pressed close together sent a certain glowing blue butterfly into a frenzy, its wings trembling with barely contained excitement.
Shorekeeper: (Oh! Beautiful. Perfect. This is exactly what I wanted to see! I wish... I really wish I could join them...)
Oblivious to the butterfly quivering on his shoulder, he savored the warmth of her against him and kept talking.
"Besides, we might have a better shot than you think. If we run into the Dreamless again, we release every Echo we've got. With our current forces and how much we've grown, it's not a guaranteed loss."
"Hm, you know what? You might be right. I think we could actually take it."
She blinked, gaze sweeping across the six Overlord Class Echoes standing in dutiful formation around them, then mentally tallying the hundred-plus Common and Elite Class Echoes stored in their terminals. Add their new Spatial Power to the equation...
It hit her all at once. Barely a single day had passed, but the gap between where they'd been and where they stood now was staggering. Overlord Class kills felt like swatting flies.
And Calamity Class... might not be out of reach.
"Thanks for that. It helped, really." She gripped the hilt of her newly purchased sword, eyes sparking with anticipation. "Though now that you mention it, I kind of want to go find a Calamity Class right now and see what we can do."
She was half-joking, of course.
Calamity Class Tacet Discords didn't exactly grow on trees. Jinzhou was vast, plagued by frequent Tacet Discord Tides, riddled with Tacet Fields, a perpetual warzone. And the total number of Overlord Class Tacet Discords across the entire region didn't break double digits.
This was a frontline territory where constant conflict bred stronger monsters than anywhere else. If even Overlord Class was that rare here, anything above it bordered on legend.
Calamity Class, one step below Threnodian. The stuff of myth.
And yet...
"Wait. I think Jinzhou actually has one."
"What? Seriously?!"
Golden eyes went wide. He nodded and took her hand, and they leaped skyward together, deploying their Flight modules.
"Follow me. I'm pretty sure I know where it is."
"Okay! How strong is it? Any intel?"
"Hmm, it shouldn't be that tough..." (Back in my old life, I used to stand on top of the thing and DPS it down. Swap to Jinhsi, hit a few basic attacks, pop her skill, done.) Not exactly a fearsome opponent, as far as he remembered.
Of course, that was in the game. Reality played by different rules.
If she hadn't brought it up, he wouldn't have thought of it at all. It was a random overworld boss with no story relevance, and its in-game difficulty was modest at best. If he hadn't flipped through the bestiary a few times, he'd never have known the thing was classified as Calamity Class.
They soared across the sky, layering Spatial Power on top of Flight to cover ground faster. Up here, with no obstacles blocking line of sight, they could chain short-range teleports to every point on the visible horizon.
The speed was absurd.
Thank you once again, Scar, for the generous donation.
Without Spatial Power, the two of them would never have managed to clear Overlord Class Tacet Discords across the entire Jinzhou map in a single day on Flight alone.
Before long, they arrived at their destination.
A frozen lake at Jinzhou's westernmost edge: Bell-Borne Ravine.
"Here. This is the place."
The two Rovers touched down on a cliff's edge and gazed at the lake below. The cold radiating from it was so intense that the surrounding earth had turned an icy blue, crystal formations creeping up the rock face like frozen veins.
Yet for all its killing cold, the lake didn't freeze what lived within it. The surface lay still and open, no ice in sight. Clusters of pink and violet flowers bloomed along the banks, and white doves circled endlessly above the frigid water.
At the center of the lake stood an enormous ancient bell.
"So... where's the Tacet Discord? Don't tell me..."
Her gaze fixed on that conspicuous stone bell.
"Smart. That bell is part of the Calamity Class."
He snapped a screenshot with his terminal first, then nodded.
This was the nesting ground of the Calamity Class Tacet Discord known as the Bell-Borne Geochelone.