The Bask family practically embodied the phrase "handsome men and beautiful women."
Teppi, currently weathering a midlife crisis with both children long gone from home, would've cut a genuinely dignified, mature uncle figure — had he simply kept his mouth shut. His golden beard, trimmed to exactly the right length, gave him the bearing of an old lion king, and the lines etched across his face read less like markers of age and more like something carved by the life he'd actually lived.
Leon, having worked through his own inner demons and gathered a genuine circle of good companions, cut a cheerful, effortlessly bright figure — blond, handsome, the sort of person who'd read as campus celebrity material at some beautiful other-world university. Star quarterback energy.
Except those fists, roughly the size of sandbags, made abundantly clear his personality ran considerably less sunny than his looks suggested.
Teppi was the family's deeply respected patriarch, a man of real influence and standing. Every word, every gesture in daily life carried its own weight — a permanent sternness, cultivated deliberately, to project authority.
Leon, meanwhile, had become something of a rising star around Bedford, easy to connect with, genuinely well-liked. Always wearing that bright, sunny smile in front of others.
Lately, Teppi had earned a modest reputation around Giant Stone Dungeon purely through his financial muscle. Leon had earned genuine prestige among local adventurers through his strategy-guide work.
And now — something genuinely bizarre had unfolded, leaving witnesses across both Sein Dungeon and Giant Stone Dungeon equally stunned.
That elegant, refined Teppi.
That cheerful, sunny Leon.
Both now stood in front of matching mirrors, screaming curses, flailing their arms, twisting their faces into genuinely grotesque expressions, throwing punches straight through the glass at each other —
Completely, unmistakably OOC, next to their usual public personas.
How to even describe it. A werewolf meeting a vampire, maybe?
No, no. Considerably worse than that.
"B-Boss? You okay?"
The adventurers Teppi had hired watched him rage into the mirror at Leon, cold sweat tracking down their faces, genuinely bewildered as to how that composed, handsome old man had transformed into a rampaging Tyrannosaurus rex.
Teppi didn't even glance back to acknowledge them. He kept right on cursing.
Worth noting the Super Vision Mirror's peculiar function here — it transmitted voices between both parties directly. Convenient, in a sense.
One drawback, though: once the mirror absorbed those voices, nobody outside the exchange could actually hear a word of it. Which meant, to everyone watching in both dungeons, Leon and Teppi looked exactly like two mentally unwell men screaming and gesturing at reflective glass.
Teppi's speech kept accelerating. He suddenly punched his own chest like something out of the Survey Corps, then jabbed a thumbs-down at the mirror.
Leon, gradually, went quiet. A cold smile settled at the corner of his mouth, and he drew a slow finger across his own throat, staring into the glass.
Behind him, Maru and Drew both raised middle fingers in perfect unison.
Strength in numbers — insult power scaled up several times over.
"CRASH!"
The mirror shattered across the ground with a sharp crack, glittering shards scattering across the floor, each one still catching the reflected light of the ongoing meteor shower overhead.
Teppi drew his fist back, lightly cut and bleeding from the broken glass. His expression settled into something dark, genuinely unpleasant.
Nobody nearby dared approach or ask what had just happened.
"Hey, hey. The boss looks a little upset. Think we'd get a bigger bonus going over there to comfort him?"
"'A little upset' doesn't cover it. Be careful — walk over there now and he might scream at you too."
"Hmph... hmhehehehe..."
Right then, Teppi — silent until this exact moment — suddenly started laughing. Hunched over, hands pressed to his own face, laughing exactly like an anime villain mid-monologue.
Everyone standing nearby felt a real chill work down their spine, goosebumps rising in sync.
Like some sort of black aura was leaking straight off him.
"Excellent. This is exactly what a proper Bask child ought to look like."
He turned toward his hired adventurers, picking out one particularly sharp individual who'd worked for him more than ten days straight.
"You don't need to follow me today."
"Huh? No — please, Boss! We've built a real bond over these ten-plus days!"
"I'm not firing you. Go — right now — and reach out to the most reputable adventuring parties in Giant Stone City. Ask if they'd be interested in an easy, well-paying job."
Once that man had been dispatched, Teppi turned to survey the rest of his current crew. He drew a slow breath.
"Any of you have connections to other adventurers? I want every single Silver-Rank fighter you can find!"
"Help me capture as many Minior as possible, and there's a serious bonus in it for every one of you. Keep whatever you earn from the altar exchange, too. All I want is my ranking held high!"
The group exchanged glances. Then, someone started cheering.
Soon enough, the entire Black Quarry had filled with adventurer applause.
Only moments earlier, father and son had been throwing punches through broken glass. And yet — they'd still, somehow, landed on a shared conclusion beforehand:
"Let's settle this on the Glory Stele rankings!"
"If I lose, I'll call you Dad!"
In his own strange way, Teppi really did carry zero pretension when it counted. Even a full-scale showdown with his own son couldn't shake his instinct for a good deal.
Wherever real money was on the table inside a dungeon, adventurer organization tended to hit peak efficiency, world over.
Giant Stone Dungeon already ran popular in its own right, sitting adjacent to a major city in the Warrior Nation. Its visitor count couldn't match the capital dungeon's, of course, but it pulled real numbers regardless — already welcoming a steady crowd daily.
Once word of today's Meteor Anomaly spread, entry numbers doubled almost instantly. Once outside mages confirmed, via long-range communication spells, that the anomaly had struck simultaneously across forty-plus dungeons, the entire adventuring world shuddered.
Giant Stone's entry count doubled again. And again. And again.
By now, the teleportation gate plaza sat completely, hopelessly packed.
All of this, in a single morning. Not even past lunchtime yet.
News of the anomaly rippled outward fast — through the Warrior Nation, and well beyond it, into several neighboring human nations. Every dungeon center touched by the phenomenon started pulling in adventurers from every direction.
Naturally, plenty had already noticed the Glory Stele. Every one of them running their own private calculations.
Thanks to the sudden flood of adventurers, Teppi's recruitment drive went off without a hitch. By the time lunch had wrapped, his "capture team" had swelled past a hundred strong — thirty Silver-Rank, the rest a mix of decent Copper-Rank fighters rounding out the numbers.
"Your job: capture as many meteor-creatures as you possibly can, bring them to the gathering point in the plaza, and wait for my order before anything goes into the altar. Nobody submits without my say-so. Understood?"
"Understood, Boss!"
"One more rule. Everyone's daily supply claim comes from [Sein]. No exceptions, no other dungeons. If you've got the means, go buy [Poké Balls] from other Sein-claim holders — I'll reimburse it. I'll cover your labor pay, and you keep everything the altar gives you on top of it. All you need to do is throw yourselves fully into this."
"No problem, Boss!"
"Perfect. Now that's the energy I like. Next — Poké Ball technique. Watch closely, I'm only demonstrating this once."
Once the briefing and quick training wrapped, Teppi led his capture team out in grand style.
Before leaving, he glanced back at the Glory Stele. Organizing everyone had eaten enough time that his own ranking had already slipped clean out of the top thirty. Leon was gaining fast. The top ten, too, had shuffled significantly. Only Roger and Temud managed to hold onto first and second, purely on the strength of an early lead.
"Now — it's time for the king to make his return."
With a considerably higher overall skill level across his crew, the capture operation ran noticeably smoother.
Nearly an hour later, Teppi returned with Poké Balls stuffed full of Minior. It took several full minutes just to dump the haul into the altar.
The Glory Stele flashed.
His ranking shot straight to first place.
Excellent. First to actually organize a real capture team — my instincts, and the Goddess of Fortune's blessing, weren't for nothing after all.
Genuinely encouraged, Teppi checked immediately for Leon's standing.
The boy's ranking had already dropped out of visible range.
A smile crept across Teppi's face. He led his crew straight back out for another round without pause.
Another successful return. Leon's ranking, still nowhere in sight.
Teppi's smile grew increasingly hard to suppress.
Of course. He had over a hundred people backing him. What did Leon have?
A handful of companions, that's all.
How could that possibly compete with me?
A third capture run. Another full haul on return.
Halfway back, though, the group ran into a meteor freshly crashed from above. The creature that crawled out of the resulting crater turned out to be, once again, the Fallingstar Beast.
A strange unease settled into Teppi's chest.
He shoved the cart of Poké Balls toward the group's rear and bellowed at full volume:
"Don't panic! Form up and attack! Block its charge, and we win!"
Over a hundred people. Even stacking bodies to do it, surely they could take this thing down.
Half an hour later —
"W-What the hell? Why does that thing use MAGIC too?!"
Teppi stumbled back into the plaza, alone, clothes shredded, a dozen-plus Poké Balls clutched to his chest. Genuine horror written across his face.
He'd never forget watching the Fallingstar Beast erase dozens of people in a single magical blast.
This thing wasn't just some weird bull-shaped creature?!
Looking at the handful of Poké Balls he'd managed to save, he let out a heavy sigh. A full cart's worth of captures, over a hundred hired people — wiped out entirely, in one stroke. He'd only barely escaped with what he could carry.
"Once again — the sole survivor."
He looked up at the sky, genuinely moved.
"As expected. Fortune truly does favor me."
He dumped every remaining Poké Ball into the altar. Losses this round had been genuinely catastrophic, but even a half-starved camel beat a horse.
And with the dungeon's closing hour approaching — at minimum, today's first-place ranking would hold.
"Let me admire the fruits of my labor."
His gaze shifted to the standings. The smile at the corner of his mouth froze in place.
[Leon Bask]
[Temud, Sword of Burning Fire]
[Teppi Bask]
"WHAT?!"
Teppi's current expression could only, fairly, be described as The Scream.
"This can't be right! Why is Leon suddenly first?! I was gone barely any time at all! How could he possibly—"
The middle-aged man's face twisted right back into that earlier grotesque shape, the pride he'd only just begun building thoroughly shattered.
"LEON!"
As for exactly how Leon had caught up this fast —
"Boss Darrick! Leon's party genuinely came to us for help. This time, we're making sure he takes first place, no question."
"Captain Luluwo! Got four more over here. Looks like the Firing Keep's spawns have dried up — should we head to Liurnia of the Lakes and regroup with Leon now?"
"Aunt Wienma — thank you so much for helping Leon. Once this wraps up, I'll do everything I can to promote your magic."
"Mr. Fingri — are we really only helping Leon here? Not competing for the ranking yourself?"
"Me?"
Fingri, walking along the road toward the Academy's gate town to link up with Leon, smiled.
"How could I possibly compete against thousands of people at once?"
"Dong — dong—"
The midnight bells rang out.
Every participating dungeon closed at once. Those that couldn't fully shut down at least stopped spawning fresh Minior.
The Glory Stele's rankings locked in place.
And when the final tally settled —
First place belonged to —
Leon Bask!