Phong surfaced again on a gray Tuesday.
Not because danger drove him up.
Not because grief shoved him out.
Necessity did.
He needed new clothes. Dungeon air left a mineral tang that never quite washed out. He needed a razor. Toothpaste. A haircut. Small human rituals that reminded him he still belonged to a species that used mirrors.
He stopped at Hà Nội Corner first.
The bell above the door jingled.
Long looked up from tamping espresso and split into a wide grin.
"Ah! The hermit returns!"
Phong let out a breath that almost qualified as a laugh. "You still handing out free drinks?"
"For you? Always."
Phong didn't argue.
Long built a robusta salt-foam coffee with exaggerated ceremony, narrating each step like a cooking show host.
"See this foam? Perfect peak. If it collapses, I retire."
Phong leaned against the counter and watched the familiar motions. The smell anchored him in place.
They talked.
Not about lawsuits.
Not about funerals.
Dungeon things.
"People say slimes migrating north," Long said, sliding the cup across. "Business slow near Riverdale."
"Slimes avoid my area," Phong said.
Long lifted a brow. "Oh? You tame them now?"
"Not tame," Phong said. "My land annoys them."
Long barked a laugh.
They traded rumors about the latest Shifting. About some part of Floor Three surfacing near the gate in Toronto for a blink. About an influencer who tried to livestream a boss fight and ended up sprinting for his life.
Normal gossip.
Human.
Phong stayed longer this time.
He didn't rush back underground.
Long noticed.
"Good," the older man said quietly while he wiped down a table. "Don't forget the sun completely."
Phong didn't answer.
He also didn't deny it.
He went to a barber. The very same who had cut his head since he was 10 and freshly arrived in the US.
Clumps of uneven, dungeon-grown hair slid to the floor.
Afterward he met his own eyes in the mirror.
Still thinner.
But no longer hollow.
He bought toothpaste. Fresh brushes. Simple cotton shirts.
Then when he returned to Hà Nội corner, Long handed him a box from behind the counter.
"Came yesterday," Long said. "You sure you don't want it delivered to a normal address like a normal person?"
Phong took the package.
"You're normal enough," he said.
Long scoffed, pleased anyway.
Inside sat the Steam Deck he'd ordered weeks ago and shipped to Long's café.
For the first time in months, Phong thought about recreation.
About doing something that wasn't survival or cultivation.
About disappearing into a game instead of soil charts and mana cycles.
The thought felt small.
And real.
Alexandra and Dominic hadn't visited in half a month.
The last Shifting displaced the Floor Two entrance again. Their team pushed deeper, traced a new route, and lost the stable path back to Floor One.
But they called.
Every day.
Short check-ins.
Battery conservation mode.
Dominic's voice crackled through cheap signal boosters.
Alexandra kept her tone steady, tired but alive.
"We're good," she'd said last night. "Don't let your potatoes conquer Manhattan while we're gone."
"They're considering it," he'd replied.
She'd laughed.
That mattered.
Selena, meanwhile, sounded frustrated.
"I don't understand," she said over a video call from a controlled observation zone. "Same soil composition. Same mana exposure. My seedlings rot within hours."
"What level are you now?" Phong asked.
"Four."
"EXP bar functioning?"
"Obviously."
Phong sat with that.
"You ever see anyone above Level One successfully cultivate dungeon-native crops?" he asked.
Selena hesitated.
"…No."
They let the silence settle.
A theory formed between them. It didn't need volume.
"Maybe the dungeon doesn't let predators farm," Phong said, careful with every word.
Selena's eyes sharpened. "You think progression state changes ecological interaction?"
"I think anyone with a functioning EXP bar gets tagged as part of the consumption cycle," Phong said. "Not the growth cycle."
Selena went very still.
"If that's true…"
"Then I'm an anomaly," Phong finished.
Level 1.
EXP bar a single dash.
No combat progression.
Invisible to low-level mobs.
Maybe invisible to whatever label the system used to sort roles.
Selena leaned closer to her screen. "You realize how big that is?"
Phong held her gaze. "I realize how dangerous that is."
Silence.
Selena nodded once.
"Secret?"
"Secret," he agreed.
Trust still came measured in grams.
Back in the dungeon, Phong made a decision.
The Moletatoes held steady.
The chilies produced.
Time to expand.
He cleared a larger section where Moletato tunnels had already loosened the soil.
He planted sweet potatoes beside the existing beds.
If he meant to farm, he might as well grow what he liked to eat.
Then he planted one lime sapling, smuggled in from a specialty grower like contraband.
One tree.
Risky enough.
Trees demanded time. Trees demanded stability.
He didn't know how dungeon soil treated wood and bark.
He watered it carefully with filtered dungeon water.
He adjusted pH by instinct and by notes.
Then he watched.
Days passed.
Sweet potato vines adapted fast. Their leaves thickened, and faint shimmer traced their veins under mana-heavy twilight.
The lime sapling struggled.
Leaves curled.
Edges browned.
Phong shifted it, inch by inch, closer to the Moletato-aerated zone.
The sapling steadied.
Interesting.
The Moletatoes didn't only feed him.
They terraformed.
He rigged grow lights on timed cycles to mimic day-night variation. Dungeon light wavered and stuttered, as if it couldn't be bother to commit to Earth's rules.
He ran the generator sparingly.
That night, inside the tent, he booted up the Steam Deck for the first time.
The startup chime sounded absurdly loud in the dungeon's hush.
He lay on the cot while goblins muttered somewhere beyond his cultivated perimeter.
For an hour, he wasn't a grieving farmer.
He wasn't an anomaly.
He wasn't building strategy.
He was just a guy playing a game.
He chose PvZ for obvious reasons. He farmed inside a dungeon. No zombies yet, but goblins and slimes tested his boundary often enough.
When he shut it down, silence returned softer.
He stepped outside.
A moonless dungeon sky pressed overhead.
His garden spread in front of him.
Chilies glowed faintly red.
Sweet potato vines sprawled with confidence.
One lime sapling held its thin green posture against alien soil.
The ground pulsed beneath his boots.
Not ominous.
Responsive.
He crouched and pressed his palm into the dirt.
Warmth answered.
Not just acknowledgment now.
Partnership.
Life kept going.
And this time, he chose how.
Phong woke to screaming.
Not human.
High-pitched. Furious. Offended.
He rolled off the cot, heartbeat snapping awake, hand already on the tent zipper.
Another shriek.
Then a thwack.
Then a sharp pop-pop-pop like firecrackers.
He stepped outside.
And froze.
A raccoon stood in the middle of his chili patch.
On two legs.
Holding a wooden baseball bat.
Swinging with disturbingly decent form.
"Back! Back, you spicy demons!" it screeched.
A green chili plant trembled.
Then launched.
The chili shot forward like a miniature rocket, trailing a faint streak of mana vapor.
Pop.
It detonated against the raccoon's thigh in a burst of red dust and heat.
"OW! WHAT THE?"
Another chili fired.
It smacked the raccoon square in the backside.
A very specific explosion followed.
The raccoon froze mid-swing.
Slowly turned its head.
"…You did not just—"
Three more chilies launched in coordinated retaliation.
They detonated against fur.
The raccoon shrieked and hopped in a circle, clutching its rear.
"THIS IS A WAR CRIME!"
Phong blinked.
The green chilies.
They never ripened red. They stayed green.
And apparently they became territorial.
To its credit, the raccoon swung again.
The bat cracked into a vine.
The vine snapped.
Three chilies answered like a trained unit.
Explosions peppered the raccoon's lower back.
The raccoon yelped.
"RETREAT! RETREAT!"
It tried to sprint.
A chili hit dead center.
A muffled explosion erupted from somewhere deeply unfortunate.
The raccoon dropped the bat and rolled in the dirt, clutching itself with theatrical despair.
"I yield! I yield, you sadistic salad!"
Phong finally stepped forward.
"Stop," he said, voice flat.
The chili plants stilled.
Leaves quivered once.
Then settled.
The raccoon lay on its back, panting, eyes wide.
Slowly it turned its head toward Phong.
"…You're the landlord."
Phong crouched.
Up close, he saw it clearly.
Not a dungeon mob.
No system targeting aura.
No hostile mana signature.
Just a raccoon.
Mutated.
Eyes too sharp. Posture too upright. Awareness living behind it.
Selena had mentioned this once.
Mana saturation sometimes accelerated neural complexity in animals exposed long-term.
Rare.
Documented.
"Are you done attacking my garden?" Phong asked.
The raccoon sniffed, offended. "Your garden attacked me."
"You walked into it."
"I was exploring."
"With a bat."
The raccoon bristled. "It's called preparedness."
Phong picked up the bat.
Plain wood, scavenged from somewhere in the ruins.
The raccoon winced as it tried to sit up. Its backside had singed into small circular patches.
"Those green ones are mean," it muttered.
Phong glanced at the plants.
Noted.
Green meant defensive variant.
He held out a hand.
The raccoon eyed it like a trap.
"…You going to explode me too?"
"No."
After a beat, the raccoon let him help it up.
It weighed less than expected.
Warm.
Its fur crackled faintly with leftover mana.
Phong carried it toward the fire pit.
"Name?" the raccoon demanded.
"I didn't ask yours."
The raccoon puffed up. "…Rico."
Phong nodded once.
He stepped into the tent and returned with a cooked Moletato, sliced and lightly salted.
He offered it.
Rico sniffed. "…This won't explode?"
"No."
Rico bit.
Paused.
Chewed.
Its eyes widened.
"…This is illegal."
It devoured the rest in seconds.
The crackle in its fur eased, not like a buff, more like a body settling.
Rico looked up.
"…You grow these?"
"Yes."
Rico flicked a resentful glance at the chili patch. "They started it."
Phong almost smiled.
"You can't walk through the green ones."
"Can I walk around them?"
"I'll allow it."
Rico considered this, grave as a judge.
"…Acceptable."
It hopped down awkwardly, retrieved the bat, then hesitated.
"…You got more of that potato thing?"
"Moletato."
"Whatever."
"I trade," Phong said.
Rico squinted. "For what?"
"Protein."
Rico puffed up like a king. "I catch fish."
"There's fish here?"
"Pond east side. You didn't know? Amateur."
Phong nodded slowly.
A stable protein source within walking distance.
Without leaving the dungeon.
"I cook," Phong said. "You bring fish."
Rico extended a small paw. "…Deal."
Phong stared at it, then shook.
Rico returned the next day.
He dragged two decent-sized fish across the dirt like trophies.
"See? High quality."
Phong cleaned them carefully.
He cooked them over the fire.
He traded half a Moletato again.
Rico chewed and studied him.
"…You're weird," Rico said.
"So I've been told."
"Most humans stab things first."
"They do."
Rico didn't reply after that.
Over the next week, a routine locked into place.
Rico patrolled the perimeter.
He complained loudly about the chilies while avoiding them like plague, both the red flakes in his meal portion, and the green angry ones.
He brought fish.
He occasionally delivered shiny objects of questionable origin.
Phong traded cooked food.
The Moletatoes tolerated Rico.
The chilies still held grudge.
Selena would combust if she saw this.
Dungeon agriculture that held territory.
Plants that defended borders.
Mana-mutated, semi-sapient wildlife that negotiated trade.
Phong sat by the fire one evening and watched Rico rinse a fish in a bucket before offering it like a professional.
Somehow he now bartered with a talking raccoon for protein.
And somehow it felt more honest than most of his recent interactions with humans.
The dungeon pulsed quietly beneath them.
This time it didn't feel hostile.
It felt inhabited.