My Class is Null, But I Always Get the Best Outcome Chapter 98: The Fixer

The city was still celebrating at eleven forty.

The celebration had spread beyond the central districts. People stood outside for no reason other than wanting to be outside. Food stalls filled every corner. Music from the eastern district carried across three blocks.

Laughter ca from everywhere at once.

Kai walked through the middle of it all in a black ski mask and recalled the feeling of being stabbed from behind. Everyone around him was celebrating sothing he had helped build. He was going to have a conversation about the person who had been a big help in trying to get him out of it.

He kept walking.

In the second district, he passed three young hunters standing outside an E-rank gate and not going in. Their equipnt was adequate, and their levels were close. They were just standing there, looking at the gate with the expression of people doing math that was not working out.

"I only need two more levels," one said.

"Sa," said the second.

Neither moved.

Kai looked at them for a mont. He rembered doing the sa thing and wondering whether the risk was worth it.

Eventually, you stopped asking.

He kept walking.

...

The nightclub was in the lower market district and difficult to find without a sign. The line outside made it easy to find.

The guard at the door had been doing this job for six years.

He had stopped angry people. Stopped people who were drunk. Stopped people who were well-connected and tried to use it. Stopped two hunters who had tried to argue their way in with their ranking numbers. None of them had gotten past him.

He saw the man coming from ten ters out. Dark gear. No guild badge. Moving at the easy pace of soone running an errand.

The guard straightened, and his arms relaxed, ready. The practiced look that said this door was closed before the conversation started.

"Private event," the guard said.

"I know," the man said.

And walked past him.

The guard grabbed his arm, but it felt like grabbing a steel beam. No, a steel beam would be easier to grab onto since he was level twenty-three. It felt sothing closer to a bridge support.

He pulled.

But the man did not stop.

He kept walking at the exact sa pace he had been walking, which ant the guard was now walking too, pulled forward by his own grip, taking three involuntary steps through the door he was supposed to be standing in front of.

His hand made a decision.

It let go.

The man kept walking without looking back.

The guard stood inside his own door and looked at his hand. His fingers were fine. Nothing had happened.

Sohow, he let go.

Not about the man but about his hand making a professional decision that his brain hadn’t arrived at yet. He had been doing this job for six years, and his hand had made the right decision before his brain did.

...

The Fixer looked up from his notebook when soone sat down across from him.

Nobody sat across from him without going through the process first. Nobody got through the process without his assistant confirming the slot, or sat in that chair without him knowing they were going to sit in it.

He looked up to see a man removing a black ski mask. It was the face under the mask that stopped him.

Not because the face was threatening. It was calm, which was the problem. In eleven years, he had learned to read danger through its signals.

Anger had a posture.

Fear had tells.

Desperation showed in the eyes.

This face had none of those signals. That face was a familiar one that could be seen on all the screens. And that face was the one he stabbed a dagger into before when he made the hit.

It was Kai Rosefield.

Whatever control the Fixer thought he had vanished imdiately. He realized he was holding his breath. He replaced it carefully, as though sudden movent might change sothing.

His two hunters were already moving. He saw them from the corner of his eye, both standing, both heading toward the table.

Kai didn’t look at them. He just looked at the Fixer with those pale blue eyes and waited like he had all night and had already decided how the night ended.

The two hunters stopped. The Fixer watched them stop and understood sothing that made his chest go cold. They had stopped because so part of them, the part that had survived dungeons and learned when sothing was past their level.

They had taken a very fast reading of the man sitting across from the Fixer and had reached a conclusion that their professional instincts would not override.

The Fixer studied Kai.

"I was wondering when you’d arrive," he said. His voice ca out steadier than he expected. He was grateful for that.

"Good," Kai said.

The room went quiet. Just the word, delivered by soone who did not need either of those things because he was already where he wanted to be. He was not managing this eting.

He was in it.

"Victor Hale," Kai said.

The Fixer set his pen down.

It was a small movent. He had used that movent ten thousand tis in this venue. Setting the pen down ant he was listening. It was a practiced signal that said the conversation had his full attention.

This ti, his hand didn’t leave the pen. His fingers stayed wrapped around it after he set it down, which was not the practiced version. Which ant his body had done sothing his training hadn’t.

He noticed and put his hand in his lap.

"You arranged to have killed," Kai said. "I’m being very polite."

The Fixer’s mouth opened. He started to say he hadn’t arranged anything, the automatic deflection, the first line of every difficult eting, the denial that bought ti while you built your actual position.

"You arranged it," Kai said. "Which is what I said... Now less nonsense."

The deflection was supposed to buy three to five seconds. It had bought him nothing because the man across from him had known it was coming before he used it. The man across from him wasn’t angry or outright threatening him. He was just sitting there being certain, and that was more terrifying than anything to the fixer.

"You’re ranked first in the city," the Fixer said. He was doing what he always did when he needed ti: building a picture of the situation out loud while he thought. "You cleared Divine Maze alone. The system nad you an Authority Candidate. Two months ago, nobody in this room would have known your na."

"That’s accurate," Kai said.

"And you’re here because soone stabbed you."

"You helped arrange that," Kai said. "Yes."

The Fixer watched him say it. Watched his face while he said it and saw there was no change in his expression.

"What happens if I say no?" the Fixer said.

"Then I leave," Kai said.

The Fixer blinked. Of every answer he had prepared, that was not among them.

"Then I find the next person in the chain," Kai said. His voice stayed the sa. He wasn’t threatening. He was describing what would happen the way you described the weather. "Then the next one. Then the next. Eventually, soone talks."

He paused.

"It always works that way."

The table to the Fixer’s left went completely silent.

The Fixer gazes at his glass. He had been reaching for it every thirty seconds since the conversation started, he’d noticed, and he kept not drinking from it. He kept reaching for the water, but he never drank it.

His eyes returned to Kai.

Kai didn’t blink.

The Fixer reached for his water again, and his hand stopped halfway. He made a decision.

"Victor never spoke directly to the assassin," he said.

When he finished laying out the chain, the three layers, the broker, contract manager, and asset handler, Kai was quiet for a mont.

The Fixer realized he had been talking faster than normal. He stopped and took a breath. He’d already said too much while Kai waited. The nightclub around them continued moving, but their corner of it felt strangely separate from the rest of the room.

"What you’re looking for doesn’t stop at Victor," the Fixer said quietly.

He heard the change in his own voice when he said it like he had crossed from professional caution into sothing he had very little practice managing. The Fixer’s eyes flicked toward the exits again. Then toward the windows and then back to Kai.

The Fixer laughed. "You think there’s a top."

Kai said nothing.

The Fixer rubbed a hand across his face. "There are doors."

Kai’s eyes narrowed slightly. "Doors?"

"People open one." The Fixer tapped the notebook. "They find another." Another tap. "And another." His gaze shifted toward Kai. "Most people stop after the first one."

"And Victor?"

The Fixer beca quiet again. "Are you sure you want to step into this–"

"I’m sure."

The Fixer closed his eyes and said. "Victor isn’t the beginning."

Kai watched him carefully, but he saw no lies. "Then what is he?"

The Fixer looked down at the notebook. When he spoke again, his voice was lower. "Useful."

Kai rembered Corwin using similar language. ’Interesting... The underworld is willing to use even a top-ranked hunter as a tool. Should I say it’s brave or just how the system is?’

The Fixer continued. "People think power looks like a man standing at the top." His fingers tapped the notebook once. "It doesn’t."

Kai listened.

The Fixer laughed softly. "You know what’s funny?"

"No."

"Three months ago, nobody would’ve answered these questions."

Kai leaned back. "Three months ago, it would be my sword asking questions... Be thankful it’s my mouth doing the talking."

For a mont, neither spoke, and then the Fixer looked toward the exits. Not because he expected soone to arrive, but because it was instinct by now.

The kind people developed when they lived too long in dangerous places. His eyes returned to Kai. "And if nobody talks?"

Kai didn’t hesitate. "Then I’ll keep asking."

The Fixer frowned. "Forever?"

"Until sobody answers... Even if I have to destroy this little world you guys called ho. Piece by piece."

The answer arrived without hesitation and emotion. The Fixer stared at Kai, whose blue eyes were still locked onto him. He had the feeling Kai was not joking and that it depended on his next few choices.

The Fixer looked away first. Kai wasn’t threatening people but describing the future. Then he looked at the notebook before giving up and pushing it across the table.

"Nas."

Kai opened it.

"eting locations."

Another page.

"Businesses."

Another page.

"People worth talking to."

Kai turned another page and saw it was nothing extraordinary or explosive. Just individual fragnts which were small enough to ignore by themselves. But large enough to matter when combined together, which was exactly what Kai needed.

He closed the notebook.

The Fixer released a slow breath, which Kai noticed was filled with relief, but he didn’t care. "Anything else you wish to share?"

The Fixer furrowed his brows before sighing. "You still don’t understand."

Kai tapped the table. "Then explain."

The Fixer stared at him and then laughed again, but this ti his exhaustion could be heard. "You’re looking at an assassin chain." He pointed at the notebook. "That’s the mistake."

Kai waited.

"The assassin isn’t important."

"Then stop talking about the assassin."

The Fixer blinked.

Kai tapped the notebook. "Tell what it is."

The Fixer t his gaze. "The fact that removing you beca sobody’s solution."

Silence fell for a couple of seconds while his eyes narrowed.

The Fixer leaned back. "Think about that... The question isn’t who held the knife." His gaze shifted toward the notebook. "It’s who decided the knife was necessary."

Kai looked at him for several seconds before standing up with the notebook in hand, while the Fixer’s shoulders lowered slightly.

Then Kai stopped. "Good."

The Fixer looked up. "Good?"

Kai folded the notebook shut. "That ans I’m asking the right people."

For the first ti that night, the Fixer genuinely wished he was sowhere else. Kai turned and started walking away.

Then stopped and without looking back. "Don’t leave the city."

The Fixer froze. "Why?"

Kai’s voice remained calm. "Because I’ll need to find you again."

And then he left. The Fixer watched the door close behind him. And suddenly understood that Kai Rosefield wasn’t investigating.

He was hunting.