"Melody."
She didn't respond. Her breathing was slow and even, her body turned slightly towards him, one hand resting near her face on the pillow.
"Melody." He put his hand on her shoulder and shook.
She stirred, blinking.
"W-What? Uh?" She raised herself up on one elbow, squinting at him.
The moment she registered the serious expression on his face, the sleep left her eyes entirely. She sat up straight. "What happened?"
"I got a new quest," he said. "And it's… bad."
"How bad?"
"I have to advance to C-rank within twenty-four hours." He paused. "Or to be more precise, twenty-three hours and fifty-eight minutes."
He could see the timer at the edge of his vision, already counting down the seconds.
"And if I fail… I lose all my stats."
Melody was quiet for a moment. She looked at him, then at the dark window, then back at him. She reached out and placed both hands on his face, her palms cool against his cheeks.
"It's okay." Her voice was calm. "You have me. We can do this as long as we're together."
He held her gaze. The words settled something in his chest that had started pulling tight the moment the notification appeared. "Yes," he said. Then, with more weight behind it: "Yes. We can."
He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead, then stood and moved to gather their clothes and armor from the corner of the room where they'd been left after coming home.
Melody didn't ask questions. She simply began to dress.
On a different night, he would have let himself be distracted by the sight of her discarding her night gown and wearing her clothes in front of him, but he had other things on his mind right now.
He handed her armor pieces as she needed them, and she clipped his sword strap into place across his back without being asked. They worked together, and in record time, they were ready.
"In the Scorched Forest at night," he said, thinking out loud, "the stronger beasts come out after dark, so the density of C-rank targets should actually be higher than daytime."
"If we can set up something to draw them towards us, maybe by shedding for them to sniff out or making an irritating sound, we can keep a steady stream of opponents coming rather than hunting one at a time."
Melody considered it. "That should be possible. But we'll have to be careful in how we lure them over. If we pull too many beasts at once, we might just be overwhelmed by sheer numbers."
"Then we'll have to find a way around it."
She gave him a look that said she wasn't entirely convinced, but she didn't argue. "We'll figure it out when we get there."
They left the house.
The city at this hour was quieter than daytime but never fully empty.
Torches burned at the street corners, illuminating the roads as small groups of Awakeners moved through the streets, heading to and from the dungeons or the pavilions which stayed open through the night.
The city ran on Awakeners, and Awakeners didn't exactly keep regular hours.
Above them, the sky was fully dark, marking it as a moonless night. However, the stars were out in numbers that Lukas had never seen back on Earth.
He and Melody walked side by side, their footsteps the only sound between them.
Soon, the city gates came into view. The guards on duty raised their eyebrows at the sight of two Awakeners heading out at this hour, armed and armored, but said nothing. Late-night hunting wasn't unheard of. Dangerous, but not unheard of.
Lukas paid the exit fee, and they stepped outside the walls.
The temperature dropped the moment they cleared the gate. The open ground beyond the city was cooler than the stone streets, and the Scorched Forest in the distance was a dark mass against a dark sky, its burnt trees indistinguishable from shadow at this distance.
They walked without speaking.
Partway through the open ground, a pair of shapes detached themselves from the tree line to their left, moving fast towards them.
They were two E-rank beasts, some kind of long-bodied scavenger that Lukas didn't bother to identify.
Melody drew her sword in one motion and bisected the closer one before it completed its lunge. Lukas stepped into the second, caught it in the air with his sword, and buried the blade through its skull.
Neither of them broke stride. They quickly reached the tree line and continued deeper into the forest.
At night, the Scorched Forest was a different place. The soot and ash that covered everything absorbed the little light from the stars above, making the ground nearly invisible underfoot.
The burnt tree husks rose around them like pillars of black, and between them, shapes moved.
Some of the hidden beasts kept stalking them, at least until they reached the territory of the forest known for the C-rank beasts. Then those beasts took over the stalking.
Soon, they were deep in the forest, surrounded on all sides by stalking beasts. They stopped.
"I should've brought a torch," Lukas muttered.
Melody said nothing, but she agreed with him.
A torch would have solved the visibility problem. It also would have solved the problem of announcing exactly where they were to every beast within a quarter mile. Which, right now, was actually more useful.
Melody inhaled slowly. Then she tilted her head back and yelled into the dark.
"Come onnnnnn!"
Her voice carried through the forest, bouncing off the dead trees and rolling outwards in every direction.
The shapes between the trunks froze for a moment. Then they started moving towards them. That was a challenge if they'd ever heard one.
Lukas watched them come.
Six shapes stepped out from the dark and into visibility.
There were two Zipper Bears, the beasts standing big and broad, moving with that deceptive speed that always caught opponents off guard the first time they saw it.
Three Deathstalker Scorpions, who sat lower to the ground, tails rising high over their backs. And one Armored Crocodile, built more like a weapon than a creature, its hide thick enough to stop most weapons.
And all six were C-rank.
Lukas rolled his shoulders, his sword already in his hand. Beside him, Melody unsheathed her claymore.
"I'll defend," she said. "You attack."
He nodded.
"Ready?"
"Ready."
The six beasts lunged.