Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 921: Unsettling Rumors

Yuna Park sat near the back of a half-empty evening bus, phone pressed to her ear and a fresh bruise on her throat. Her guild leader’s voice sounded warmer than it had in three years of employment.

That alone was enough to put her on guard.

”Rumors?” she managed.

”Unsettling ones.” Mercer gave the word room to breathe, an old negotiation-table habit, waiting for the other side to start filling silences. ”A friend sent me a note. Eclipse held some kind of recruitment circus on the city’s eastern edge today. Five hundred hopefuls getting tossed around a government training hall by monsters, and in the middle of it, allegedly, was a girl in a cap and a mask, organizing strangers into formations and skating on ice she’d laid down herself.”

The bus leaned through a corner, and Yuna watched the streetlights slide across the window, her reflection sliding with them, cap lost somewhere in that hall, mask still on.

”The account is secondhand, of course,” Mercer added, generous. ”Could be anyone, really. Slim build, oriental eyes, dark hair, twin daggers made of frost.”

’Deny it,’ her instinct suggested. ’It’s just hearsay.’

The phone buzzed against her cheek as another message landed in a sixty-person group chat named DEFINITELY-NOT-YUNA, where her deniability was being celebrated by name.

”It was me,” she said.

The line went quiet, and she took the small win of having surprised him and set it on a shelf that held very few others from Skyline.

”I appreciate the honesty.” Papers shuffled on his end, and she could picture the room without trying. Desk lamp, quarterly binders, blinds. He was still at work at this hour, and of course he was. ”You’ve always been straight with me, Yuna.”

Twice. He’d gotten her name right twice in one call, which she was fairly sure was a personal record.

”So let me be straight with you, because I’m worried. Eclipse is not a guild. It’s a stunt with a fan base. A tent, a monster the government can’t classify, a man the government had to invent a tier for because he was such an alien anomaly, and a legal disaster that simply hasn’t happened yet.

”You’re the highly valued cornerstone of this organization, Yuna. I planned to build everything around you. That’s why I won’t stand by while you throw a stable career onto a bonfire because the bonfire streams well.”

”They filled that hall with five hundred people in one afternoon,” she countered.

”And that’s exactly what frightens me.” A drawer opened and closed somewhere behind his voice, which rounded off into a fatherly register. ”But I didn’t call to scold you. If anything, some of this is on me. The board approved changes weeks ago and I sat on the paperwork. So let me fix that tonight. Highest tiered gates available for purchase are starting next quarter. A budget to invite outsiders into your own strike team. A pay revision, a significant one. And the spring banner campaign built around you, not just featuring you.”

There was a version of her, roughly twelve hours old, that would have traded fingers for half of that sentence.

She noticed the timing instead. The offer was generous, detailed, and exactly a minute younger than the rumor.

”You’re valued here,” Mercer said. ”You know that. Our only S-tier, our golden goose.”

Valued. Her mother had used the same word earlier today over the onions, and Yuna had swallowed it then, as she always did.

Now she finally picked it up and looked underneath, and the inventory was short and ugly. Her face on recruitment banners nobody had asked her about.

The training-cost spreadsheet angled toward her at every quarterly review, so the debt stayed fresh. Feedback sessions he scheduled after hours, with the blinds drawn, which she’d kept telling herself she could handle, because she was S-tier and professionals handle things.

The guilt that had climbed into the bathtub with her earlier today, the debt she thought she owed the guild that trained her, had died quietly somewhere in the hours since. Listening to him now, she couldn’t even locate the grave.

”I went to their assessment,” she said, ”and if Eclipse makes me an offer, I want to transfer. I marked the existing-contract box on the application. Their legal team handles the procedure, so everything will be official and above board.”

The fatherly warmth drained out of the call all at once.

”I see. Then let’s talk like adults.” The shuffling stopped, whatever he’d been pretending to organize having served its purpose. ”Your development ledger is open in front of me. Training, certifications, gear allowances, gate insurance, medical. The figure at the bottom has nine digits, and your contract, the one you signed, says that figure follows you out the door if you leave before year five.”

The bus stopped. The doors hissed, an old man shuffled off, and nobody got on.

”And until any transfer clears, if it ever clears, you remain mine to schedule. I hear gate-adjacent inventory work is very safe.”

”...” Yuna’s thumbnail found the seam of her phone case and pressed.

”And think, please, before that circus turns your head any further.” His voice was all patience again, and the patience had teeth. ”You’re S-tier on paper we printed. Level thirty. The monsters you auditioned for treat B-tiers as a warm-up. Even if Eclipse takes you, you’ll be a mascot at best and a casualty at worst. Here, you’re the cornerstone.”

A cornerstone spent its entire career cemented at the bottom of someone else’s building. Yuna had never once heard of a stone getting promoted.

”Sleep on it,” Mercer said, softer now, and the register was one she knew from behind closed blinds. ”Better yet, come by my office tomorrow. We’ll go through the ledger line by line and find a future that fits us both. I take care of the people I value, Yuna.”

Yuna closed her eyes instead of answering, and the afternoon came back to her in color.

The thunderclap that had folded the front rows to their knees, and two colossal middle fingers sculpted out of living lightning, pivoting in unison to point at the exits. The box she’d built out of sixty strangers, lanes and walls and arrows landing where nobody stood, until the fastest enemy she ever faced had to consider using a hand. Twelve meters of vertical concrete under her boots, frost gluing every stride. Kaiden Grey’s grin, so sharp that her survival instinct and her sense of fun had fired on the same trigger, at the same instant.

Her heart had spent the whole exam slamming against her ribs, and not once from fear. No gate Skyline had ever sent her into, not one dungeon in her whole safe career, had made it beat like a padded training hall with a plastic badge in her hand. She had been more alive today than in her entire time at Skyline, and the man on the phone was offering her more of the cage, just adorned with pretty flowers now.

She opened her eyes.

’He’s a scumbag,’ she thought, and the thought was as calm as arithmetic. ’He’s been one the whole time. I just kept filing it under handled.’

”No,” she said.

”Yuna...”

A short huff escaped her, disbelieving, and the mask did not muffle it nearly enough.

”We’re not on a first name basis, so please stop calling me like that. Also, I’m not coming to your office.” Her whole body was still shaking, and her voice, to her own quiet astonishment, was not. ”And that ledger is a waste of ink. I’m an S-tier. If Eclipse doesn’t take me, another guild will buy out the contract, nine digits and all. S-tiers don’t sit on shelves.”

Mercer laughed.

It came out warm and easy, the most honest sound he’d made all call, and it went on just long enough to tell her how badly she’d miscalculated.

”Oh, Yuna, Yuna, Yuna. Who taught you that? The fan forums?” Leather creaked as he settled back into his chair. ”Walk through it with me, then, since we’re talking like adults. You’re a level thirty who has never killed anything that wasn’t rated and insured in advance. Your entire market value is one aptitude reading from when you were eighteen. And readings stopped being gospel the day the world watched an F-tier put a hole in the sky, sweetheart. If the machine can miss that badly in one direction, every buyer on the market now wonders how badly it misses in the other.”

The window was cold against her temple. She didn’t remember leaning against it.

”And even if your reading is honest? The ceiling moved. There are SS ratings on record now. Even a few SSS. Those are what the big guilds want to bid on.” Mercer chuckled. ”Your letter was the summit once, and now it’s base camp, and base camp doesn’t command that kind of money. It barely commands a callback.”

”You make it sound like getting an SS or SSS is a matter of money. Only a few exist!” Yuna countered.