That evening, they had dinner at Varlen's house — a modest but well-kept home three streets from the trade yard. Lira cooked. It was better than anything Yuki could make and he told her so and she pretended not to care and failed.
After the meal, with Kana and Hana asleep on Varlen's couch, Yuki sat with Lira in the small garden behind the house.
"Thank you," he said. "For today. For the house. For everything."
"You paid for the house."
"You found it. Negotiated it. Helped me furnish it. Set up the kitchen." He paused. "You've been taking care of us since the caravan."
"Someone has to. You'd be living in a cave forging swords if I left you alone."
"Probably."
She leaned against him. Warm. Familiar. "What's your plan? For the city?"
"Guild headquarters tomorrow. I want to see how the capital operation compares to Millhaven's. After that — libraries, markets, the academy if they'll let me in. I want to understand this place before the war gets here."
"It's already here," she said quietly. "The refugees started arriving last week. From the Veldmark border regions. It's only going to get worse."
He put his arm around her. She leaned in further.
One thing at a time.
The Veldara Adventurer's Guild was not the Millhaven branch.
The building alone told him that. Four stories of reinforced stone, occupying an entire block near the city centre. Carved emblems flanked the entrance — crossed swords over a shield, the guild's continental standard. Armed men and women flowed in and out at a steady rate, most of them carrying themselves with the confident ease of professionals.
The interior was a cathedral of organised violence. The ground floor was a massive common hall — fifty metres long, high-ceilinged, with notice boards covering entire walls. Quest postings were colour-coded by rank. Iron and Bronze filled the lowest boards. Silver and Gold occupied the middle. Platinum and above were posted on a restricted board behind the main counter, visible but out of reach.
The counter was staffed by six administrators, all busy. The queue was fifteen people deep.
Yuki walked in with his Millhaven Gold tag hanging from his belt. Kana was on his shoulders — she'd refused to be left behind and he'd lost the argument in under three seconds. Hana was at home helping Lira move in and set up the house. Yes, Lira had unanimously decided that she would be moving in as well. Her reasoning was simple, "Who will take care of the girls and you, if not me?" Yuki was pleased, and with permission from Varlen on the assumption that marriage would be next, Yuki could only scratch his head awkwardly at the choice being clearly made for him.
The noise level was significant. Dozens of conversations, the clatter of armour, someone arguing about a quest payout. The mana density in the room was higher than anywhere he'd been in this world — dozens of magic-capable individuals in one space, their signatures overlapping.
He joined the queue. Waited. Observed.
The adventurers here were different from Millhaven's. Better equipped. Better trained. The way they moved, talked, carried their weapons — there was a baseline level of competence that Millhaven's Iron and Bronze ranks hadn't had. These were career professionals, not frontier hopefuls.
He noticed the ranking distribution. Lots of Iron and Bronze — the bulk of the crowd. A healthy number of Silver. A handful of Gold, identifiable by their tags and the unconscious space other adventurers gave them.
Then the Platinum.
There were two of them. Sitting at a table near the back, away from the crowd. A man and a woman, both in their thirties, wearing gear that looked like it had been forged by someone who cared deeply about their craft. The man had a greatsword leaning against his chair — massive, single-edged, with faint runic inscriptions along the flat. The woman wore light armour and had a staff across her lap, the crystal at its tip pulsing with contained mana.
Yuki's mana sense read them automatically.
The swordsman's mana reserve was substantial. The highest he'd seen in a human — maybe three hundred Vals, if the textbook measurements were accurate. His body was reinforced at a baseline level that spoke of years of mana integration. Strong. Genuinely strong.
The mage was different. Her reserve was smaller — maybe two hundred Vals — but her control was exquisite. The mana flowing through her body moved in precise, efficient patterns that spoke of decades of formal training. Every channel refined. Every flow optimised. No waste.
So that's Platinum.
He compared. His own reserve — unmeasured, but after the bandit absorption, likely in the tens of thousands of Vals. Maybe higher. He'd never hit the bottom. And his mana had always recovered faster than he could spend it. His body reinforcement was orders of magnitude beyond the swordsman's baseline. His control, while self-taught and unrefined by academy standards, was backed by parallel processing and imagination-based casting that made formal efficiency irrelevant.
The Platinum-ranked adventurers were the best this world had produced. The peak. The ceiling that decades of training and natural talent could reach.
Yuki was standing in the queue with a fox child on his shoulders, and he was so far above that ceiling he couldn't see it anymore.
It's not a gap. It's not even a canyon. It's like comparing a candle to the sun — they're both light, but the scale isn't in the same universe.
He didn't feel good about it. The Platinums were impressive. Their dedication, their skill, their years of work — all of it was real and worthy of respect. They'd earned their rank through blood and discipline.
He'd earned his through a botched summoning and an accident.
Doesn't make it less real. Just makes it less fair.
"Next."
He stepped up to the counter. The administrator — a young man, efficient, already reaching for forms — looked at him. Then at the Gold tag. Then at Kana, who was perched on his shoulders with her silver tail hanging down his back.
"Transfer registration from a branch office?"
"Millhaven."
"Gold rank." The administrator checked something in a ledger. His eyebrows rose. "Gold rank in five days. That's... noted." He pulled a form. "The capital guild recognizes branch rankings but reserves the right to reassess. You may be asked to demonstrate for rank verification."
"That's fine."
"Any specialisations to register? Combat type, magic schools, support capabilities?"
Yuki thought about it. Swordsmanship. All eight schools of magic. Healing. Enchantment. Spatial magic. Parallel processing. Flight. Teleportation. Telekinesis. Mana-enhanced crafting.
"Generalist," he said.
The administrator wrote it down.
Kana leaned forward from his shoulders and peered at the form upside down. "He's really strong," she informed the administrator. "He killed a dragon."
The administrator looked at the fox child. Looked at Yuki. Looked at the fox child again.
"Is that so."
"And a hundred bandits. And a bunch of wolves. And he makes really good clothes."
"Kana."
"What? It's true."
The administrator stamped the form with the expression of a man who'd heard everything. "Welcome to the Veldara guild. Board's on the wall. Restricted quests require rank verification. Don't die."
Yuki took his updated registration and walked toward the quest board, Kana narrating everything she saw from her elevated position.
He scanned the Gold postings. Monster subjugations — larger scale than Millhaven's, targeting creatures in the forests and mountains near the capital. Escort missions for military convoys. Investigation quests — disappearances, anomalous mana readings, potential dungeon formations.
Then he looked up at the Platinum board. The restricted section. Quests that required the kind of power represented by the two adventurers at the back table.
A dragon nest clearance in the northern mountains. A demon-beast incursion near the western border. A request from the Confederation military for "exceptional individuals" to assist with "strategic defence operations."
He could do all of them. Every single one. Before lunch.
He looked away. Took a breath. Filed the information.
Start slow. Build trust. Don't walk in and break the system on day one.
He'd been in this city for less than twenty-four hours. The guild didn't know him. The Platinums didn't know him. Nobody here had seen what he could do, and that was an advantage he wasn't ready to throw away.
Gold rank. Take Gold quests. Build a reputation the normal way. Let the rank catch up to the reality instead of the other way around.
He pulled a Gold quest from the board — a monster subjugation in the forest east of the city, rated for a four-person Gold party — and walked it to the counter.
"Solo?" the administrator asked.
"Solo."
The stamp came down. Same expression as every other administrator who'd watched him take group quests alone.
Some things don't change, no matter how big the city gets.
That night, back at the house.
Kana and Hana were in the bath — their new favourite activity, now that they had a permanent one. Splashing sounds and occasional shrieks echoed through the house. Lira was in the kitchen, doing something that smelled incredible.
Yuki sat in the courtyard beside the pond. The evening air was cool. The golden fish made lazy circles beneath the surface. Petals from the flowering bushes floated on the water, caught in the fountain's gentle current.
He could feel the city around him. Thousands of mana signatures, most of them faint, a constant low hum of human presence. The Platinums at the guild were bright spots — noticeable, strong, but still just candles in the dark.
His own signature was — what? A bonfire? A furnace?
He'd been suppressing it since Millhaven, he realised. Unconsciously tamping down his mana output, keeping his presence small, blending in. The same way he'd learned to moderate his strength and his spells — holding back so the world didn't notice what he was.
How long can I keep that up?
In Millhaven, the answer had been "not long." The horde battle had blown his cover. The daggers, the bombardment, the healing — everyone had seen. Word would have spread by now. Millhaven's hero. The kid who held the north wall alone.
Here in the capital, he was starting fresh. Nobody knew him. Nobody had seen what he could do.
But the guild had his file. Five-day Gold rank. Solo quest completions. The Millhaven administrator's margin notes, whatever those said. Kana telling everyone within earshot about dragons and bandits.
The clock is ticking. Eventually, someone important is going to look at my file and start asking questions I can't answer.
He heard Lira call dinner from the kitchen. Heard Kana and Hana scramble out of the bath. Heard small, wet footsteps on stone floors and the sound of towels being fought over.
He stood up from the pond's edge and went inside.
But not tonight. Tonight, I have a kitchen that smells like home and a family that's waiting for me.
The questions could wait until tomorrow. They always could.