Akira's POV
The mission chip said D-rank, solo clearance, a standard interior, estimated forty minutes. I have done seven of these now. The rhythm of them was familiar enough that I had stopped building pre-entry plans and started trusting the calibration work instead, which was either confidence or complacency and I was fairly sure it was confidence.
I was wrong about the interior within thirty seconds of my entry. The mana density hit me at first, that specific pressure in the air that had nothing to do with atmosphere and everything to do with what had been accumulating in the space.
D-rank dungeons had a particular weight to them that was manageable, it was the kind of density my passive reinforcement handled without drawing on anything deliberate.
This was not that.
This was a B-rank density and I was inside a D-rank posting with a solo authorization and no team, and the gate had already closed behind me.
