Bash walked out of the thinning dust cloud, blades sheathed and sidearm cooling in his grip. The

  battlefield behind him was silent. The team ahead of him… just stared.

  No one spoke.

  Not one word.

  Bash finally broke the tension with a grin.

  “Well, is anyone going to help me collect these beast fragments, or am I doing it all myself?”

  The smirk on his face made Mirran choke on a laugh she did not mean to let out. Garret’s face flushed

  dark.

  “What was that?” Garret snapped.

  Bash tilted his head slightly. “I thought I heard you ask for help.”

  The smirk stayed.

  The glaring did not stop.

  Mirran stepped forward before anyone else gathered their thoughts. “You said you did not have any

  abilities.”

  Bash shrugged. “I do not. Everything you saw was gear based.”

  The team froze again. Bryn’s eyes widened. Cerny covered her mouth. Nixon blinked like he had

  misheard him.

  Garret finally found his voice. “What is your average tier rating?”

  “Just under T2S,” Bash answered casually.

  The entire group inhaled sharply.

  Garret sputtered. “And why are you just now telling us this?”

  Bash shrugged again. “I did not know it was necessary. Would it have changed how you treated me?

  Because if it would have, I am glad I got to see who you really are.”

  Silence again.

  Bash turned toward the carpet of insectoid corpses. “Now, am I collecting these fragments alone, or is

  someone going to help?”

  When he began walking, Myr snapped back into motion, his healer instincts kicking in.

  “Mirran, Cerny. Go help him. I will get these three upright.”

  The two ranged fighters hurried after Bash, still glancing at him with a mix of awe and a little fear.

  Together the three worked through the field, gathering fragments from hundreds of bodies.

  When they returned, the others were standing again. Healing had done its job. No one spoke, but they

  moved.

  The team pushed back toward the portal, tired, confused, and completely reevaluating their new

  teammate.

  They stepped through the portal in sequence.

  The Nexus debrief swallowed them all in its pale blue glow. Bash hesitated only long enough for SC to

  whisper, “Everything will be fine.” He entered the pod, connected, and waited through the familiar

  hum. The pod opened without alarms. SC confirmed she had masked his resonance perfectly.

  From there, they moved through the Ark’s lower concourse and into an internal teleporter bay. The

  room was dim and utilitarian, a stark contrast to the polished transport hubs in the upper districts. Myr

  keyed in their destination. A soft pulse of light washed over them, and the team shifted across the Ark

  in an instant.

  They exited the teleporter onto a dull metal walkway where the air felt stale and the lighting barely

  functioned. Two more turns carried them to the small side corridor they called home, and finally they

  stepped into their cramped guild base, shoulder to shoulder, silent, unsure what to say after what they

  had witnessed from Bash.

  Inside the cramped room, Myr held seven bags of fragments and cleared his throat.

  “Before we sort anything… Bash… we did not discuss how we divide the final haul.”

  He spoke hesitantly, as if afraid Bash would demand the lion’s share.

  “As you know,” Myr continued, “the council takes fifteen percent. After that we split everything

  evenly. If there are leftover fragments we store them until we can split evenly later.”

  Bash nodded. “Makes sense. Better than what I got in Eclipse Veil.”

  Garret spoke quietly, curiosity overcoming pride. “What did you get there?”

  “After the council took their fifteen percent and the guild took ten percent, the rest was split evenly.

  Except I did not get any. My payment was unlocking. And I never unlocked.”

  The room fell completely silent.

  Myr swallowed hard. “So you are fine with an even split?”

  Bash raised an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  The tension left the room instantly. Shoulders loosened. Breathing eased. Even Garret’s expression

  softened, though he tried to hide it.

  Myr shook his head. “It is just… you killed over seven hundred thirty T1A beasts. We killed maybe

  forty total.”

  Bash lifted a hand dismissively. “We are a team. Besides, I have no use for my share right now. If you

  do not mind me staying here a little longer, split my portion with everyone. Use it for what you need.

  Gear up. Fix what is breaking. Whatever helps the team climb.”

  The room froze.

  They stared at him as if he had offered to hand out relics, not beast fragments.

  Garret finally spoke, voice unsteady. “We… cannot really gear up down here.”

  Bash frowned. “Why not? You have enough now to start upgrading weapons.”

  Garret shook his head. “It does not work like that. The imbuers, all of them, are tied up servicing the

  blue and green guilds. Down here, if we want a new weapon, we have to commission a base guild

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  smith. That alone costs five hundred equivalent fragments. Then the imbuer charges another five

  hundred for the enchantment.”

  Myr nodded grimly. “And by the time we save enough for the imbue, the weapon is usually already

  damaged from use. Paying the full price to imbue a worn-out weapon… it becomes pointless.”

  “So most of the time,” Nixon added quietly, “we just… deal with it. Patch things up. Keep using the

  gear we have until it falls apart.”

  Bash blinked slowly, absorbing it.

  Then he shook his head.

  “I do not know how yet, but I am going to help you all get better gear. Because right now that is the

  only way we all move up.”

  The team brightened at his confidence. Bash continued.

  “And one more thing. We need to do a mission every day. More missions means more fragments. We

  beat the system by grinding harder than everyone else.”

  The team nodded in unison, a new fire in their eyes.

  ___________________________________________________________________________________

  Chaos had followed Bash’s blacklisting from Eclipse Veil, but six months later it felt like a distant

  memory.

  He kept a low profile, per SC’s advice, and avoided anything that would draw attention from the

  council. SC also briefed him on the medallion, the relic so powerful that she insisted he only use it

  under very specific conditions.

  “It is not something you can activate freely,” she told him. “When you can use it, you will know. It will

  change everything.”

  Bash did not like the cryptic explanation.

  “Having something I can use is better than something sitting in a void doing nothing,” he said.

  “It is not doing nothing,” she corrected. “It is literally suspended outside space. Safe.”

  That was the end of that argument.

  The daily grind became routine.

  Every morning the team convened in the cramped grey guild base. Garret, humbled months ago, now

  treated Bash with respect. Bryn sparred with him often and learned to adjust her mineral bursts based

  on how he fought. Nixon relied on him for lightning timing drills. Cerny and Mirran followed his

  advice on ranged positioning and echo synergy.

  Myr… grew closest of all. The healer modeled his timing after Bash’s combat flow and rebuilt the

  team’s formation strategy from the ground up.

  Because Bash elevated everything.

  With him on the roster, their earnings multiplied tenfold, sometimes twenty-fold.

  On the first week alone, the team earned more fragments than they usually made in two months.

  Bash convinced them to deposit ten percent into guild reserves, just like upper guilds did. They agreed

  instantly. With Bash around, no one complained because even after the tithe they all earned more than

  they ever had.

  Bash continued giving away his share, keeping only T2A or higher fragments. The others argued about

  it almost daily, but Bash knew the truth:

  His gear was so far above theirs that minor upgrades were meaningless. Even a single piece required

  tens or hundreds of millions of Tier 1 fragments to push further. Tier 1 fragments were dust to him.

  Over time Bash stopped feeling pulses from T1 creatures entirely. When the team faced T2C and T2G

  beasts, he felt a faint thrum, barely noticeable. The others never questioned it because their own cores

  reached saturation quickly with only one or two abilities. They assumed Bash simply had no resonance.

  He let them assume.

  They needed stability, not questions.

  Bash did try to reach out for help. He contacted Taren, Rixor, and Nyra, asking if their guild could

  upgrade gear for the Grey guild. The answer was always the same.

  “We don’t have enough pull yet.”

  So the grind continued.

  Every day they cleared portals. Every day their teamwork sharpened. Every day Bash carried the heavy

  burden quietly while helping them grow.

  Until one day, the team was returning from a standard grey portal mission, relaxed and laughing. Even

  Garret cracked jokes. Myr teased Nixon about missing a shot. Bryn slung an arm over Cerny’s

  shoulder. Bash walked behind them, listening, quietly amused.

  They turned the corner toward their guild base.

  The laughter stopped immediately.

  Two Green Spartors stood in front of their door.

  The closest was tall. Cloaked. The Eclipse Veil emblem stitched across his back in unmistakable silver

  thread.

  The team froze in place.

  Even Bash, who had stopped only because they had stopped, felt the weight settle in his stomach.

  Cerny whispered, “That is… Eclipse Veil…”

  Mirran swallowed. “What would they want… down here…”

  Garret stepped back instinctively, as if proximity alone might get him punished.

  Only then did Bash lift his eyes fully.

  His chest tightened.

  His breath stilled.

  Even from the back, he recognized the emblem. He recognized the posture.

  “Someone is here for you,” SC whispered in his mind.

  Bash felt it too.

  Everything he had been away from for six months… was now standing at his door.