"Lock…"
Carra's voice had taken on the measured quality of someone choosing their words with great care. "You are aware that your individual contribution to this outcome—"
"Was one monster," Richard said. "A large one, granted. But one."
"An A Rank—"
"You three cleared the horde."
Richard hadn't understood that Carra meant an "A-Rank" Monster. He thought she said it was "a Ran—" as if she was trying to tell him the Rank, but he cut her off before she finished.
"The horde was manageable once the leader fell—"
"The horde was not manageable before that point," Dort said unexpectedly, his low voice entering the conversation with the gravitational certainty of the man himself. "We were holding. Not winning."
Carra paused.
She looked at Dort, who was not someone who said things for conversational purposes.
Then she looked back at Richard.
