The fire burned low.
The air felt heavier now. Not from fear, but from scale.
A mountain-sized bull sleeping somewhere beneath Floor Two.
Diamond horns piercing unseen ceilings.
A whole biome growing on its back as if it were the land itself.
Les Cornes de la Terre.
Phong let the silence hold a few seconds longer.
Then he spoke.
Careful.
Measured.
"I can give you a version people will accept."
Dominic glanced at him.
Alex stayed quiet.
Élise and Camille waited.
"One that keeps everyone safe."
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
"You ran into an elite mob on Floor Two. Lost two members."
Élise's jaw tightened.
Camille dropped her eyes.
He kept his voice even.
"Dominic's team crossed paths with you during the retreat."
Dominic caught on immediately.
"Found you cornered," he added. "We pushed the elite back."
Jake nodded.
"That explains my injury."
Janet folded her arms.
"And why we pulled out early."
Phong nodded once.
"You team up for survival. Stay together until you reach Floor One."
Alex picked it up smoothly.
"After that, we escort you to a safe surface exit."
"No camp," Phong said.
"No alliance hub.
No chili perimeter.
No lizardmen."
No farmer.
Camille blinked.
"And you?"
"I don't exist in that version."
Simple.
Élise exhaled slowly.
It was clean.
Believable.
Logical.
It protected Dominic's team's reputation.
It protected them.
It erased Camp Stymphalian from the story.
Dominic rolled his shoulders.
"I don't mind being the hero in someone else's story."
Jake smirked faintly.
"Just this once."
Phong stood slowly and stretched.
"Sleep."
His tone shifted back to practical.
"You two will need short-term visas for the near future."
Élise frowned.
"Visas?"
"Yes."
Alex understood right away.
"If the French diver authorities hear you survived Floor Two without a proper report…"
"They'll dig," Janet finished.
"And if anyone even hints at a stable cross-border biome," Dominic added.
"Airlines won't like that," Phong said calmly.
The two girls stared.
He went on.
"If word spreads that dungeon gates can move people across countries more easily than normal flights…"
Camille's eyes widened.
"…whole industries panic."
Phong nodded once.
"Airline owners sit in the same tax bracket as Josh's father."
The weight of that wasn't theory for him.
He remembered too clearly.
Hospitals bending.
Legal systems folding.
People disappearing quietly because they had become inconvenient.
"In this system," he said evenly, "the rich have more rights than the poor."
Not law.
Reality.
"Public offices learn to read elite moods before they do their jobs."
Janet's jaw tightened.
Dominic looked away for a second.
Élise swallowed.
"So if this gets out…"
"You won't just be poking a guild," Phong said softly. "You'll be poking global transport money."
Suicidal.
Camille nodded slowly.
"We say nothing."
"Private," Phong said.
Not secret.
Private.
Different weight.
The fire crackled softly.
Outside, trolls shifted in the dark.
Lizardmen rotated their patrols near the pond.
The lime-oak rustled faintly in the night breeze.
The girls looked smaller now.
Not weaker.
Just more aware.
They had thought diving was the most dangerous part.
It wasn't.
Information was.
Dominic got to his feet.
"Get some sleep. Tomorrow we figure out paperwork."
Janet added gently, "We know people who know people."
Not elite people.
But enough.
Alex stepped closer to Élise and Camille.
"You're safe here."
A pause.
"For now."
That mattered.
Phong watched the flames a little longer.
He thought of his aunt.
His uncle.
How easily systems erased people with no leverage.
He would not let Camp Stymphalian become leverage.
He would not let this ecosystem turn into a product.
Not yet.
Not until it could defend itself politically as well as physically.
He finally turned toward the stone housing still under construction.
"Sleep," he said again, softer.
The girls nodded.
They moved toward their bedding.
Dominic started clearing dishes.
Joanne stacked cups.
Jake eased himself against a pillar.
Alex stayed beside Phong.
"You're thinking way ahead," she murmured.
"I have to."
She squeezed his hand gently.
Far off, beyond the lake, something huge shifted in the deep layers of the dungeon.
But here, the secrets held.
The alliances held.
And Camp Stymphalian stayed private.
---
Phong did not frame it as retreat.
He framed it as logistics.
"We're going up," he said the next morning.
Grocery run.
Comfort upgrades.
Paperwork.
And seeds.
Always seeds.
He had planned to wait.
The carrots were still mid-growth.
The sunflowers had only just reached knee height.
Strawberries and peas could have waited.
But Élise and Camille changed the equation.
Surface meant documents.
Surface meant temporary legal cover.
Surface meant getting ahead of rumor before rumor got ahead of them.
So this time, everyone went.
Not as a dramatic group.
Not as an obvious convoy.
Just a small party leaving the gate in staggered timing.
Phong walked beside Alex, their fingers loosely linked.
His mind kept circling back to decoys.
A small surface plot.
Normal soil.
Normal crops.
Carrots.
Lettuce.
Maybe strawberries.
No Moletatoes.
No Bonktatoes.
No chili artillery grid.
A farm that looked boring.
If anyone dug too hard into "Level 1 Farmer Phong," they would find dirt and produce.
Not alliance hubs and biome negotiations.
Because right now, the ruin was basically a death zone to outsiders.
Lizardmen guarded the lake.
Trolls claimed the mountain.
Treants patrolled their own forest line.
Divers had learned fast after the troll displacement months earlier. Wander too far from mapped safe routes and you became a statistic.
Lake Baratok was now informally tagged on diver forums as the Lake of Doom.
The troll ridge?
Death Peak.
Nobody wandered there for fun anymore.
Camp Stymphalian stayed hidden by reputation alone.
And by ecosystem politics.
As they neared the gate, the change hit again.
The dungeon mouth was no longer wild.
It was commercial.
A trade town had grown around it.
Fast food came first.
It always did.
A red-and-yellow clown sign glowed obnoxiously near reinforced gate scaffolding.
A smiling colonel sold fried chicken combos for divers needing "Protein Boost Packs."
A panda logo promised noodles in ninety seconds.
Fryer oil mixed with dungeon moss in the air.
Then came the wholesalers.
Costco banners.
Walmart trucks.
Lidl pop-up markets.
Bulk mana potion crates sat beside pallets of bottled water.
You could now use Amazon Prime for dungeon delivery.
One-day shipping.
Packages dropped at the gate.
"Amazon Choice — Beginner Spear Set."
"Top Rated — Dungeon Headlamp."
Cheap.
Functional.
Disposable.
The gate looked less like a portal to an unknowable ecosystem and more like the entrance to a mall built next to a war zone.
Phong exhaled slowly.
Now it all made sense.
Josh's father.
Investments in dungeon security.
Insurance.
Infrastructure.
Gate reinforcement contracts.
Logistics networks.
The naires, as Alex liked to call them.
Billionaires.
Millionaires.
Asset managers.
They did not fear the dungeon.
They saw portfolio spread.
If the dungeon became stable, it was revenue.
If it stayed unstable, it was an insurance play.
They poured money in.
Marketing teams shaped the story.
Media framed it all as "public safety investment."
For the people.
Always for the people.
The right to sell shovels in a gold rush had been reserved for giants like Amazon.
Phong had not been targeted at random.
He was a single scavenger chewing on a kill that belonged to a lion pride.
So he got the claws.
He got the fangs.
Phong had seen what "for the people" meant before.
Hospitals bending.
Cases vanishing.
Public offices looking up before they acted.
His grip tightened slightly around Alex's hand.
She noticed.
She squeezed back.
They stepped through the gate.
Reality shifted.
The light changed first.
Then the air.
It lost that damp mineral bite.
And then the noise hit.
NYC.
Car horns.
Sirens.
Street talk.
A subway rumble somewhere under the pavement.
Élise and Camille slowed at once.
For a moment, they looked more lost here than they ever had inside the dungeon.
Skyscrapers loomed overhead.
Digital billboards flashed.
One of them showed a Farmer Guild ad.
A smiling Level 4 farmer holding a glowing slime core.
"Break Your Limits."
Camille's jaw tightened.
They kept walking.
Rico rode on Phong's shoulder like an urban warlord.
Bruno trotted proudly.
Nyx took in everything with noble indifference.
Little Fireball peeked from inside a secure pouch.
People stared.
A talking raccoon in Manhattan still had value as a headline.
Phong ignored them.
They headed to groceries first.
Comfort food.
Real seasoning.
Star anise.
Cinnamon sticks.
Cardamom pods.
Black peppercorns.
Fish sauce brands that did not list sixty ingredients.
Fresh herbs.
Then seeds.
Strawberries.
He wanted sweetness in camp.
Something soft.
Something red that was not angry chili artillery.
Peas.
Mostly because the idea amused him.
He could already picture rows of peas along the outer line.
"Legally distinct pea-shooters," he muttered.
Alex raised a brow.
"What?"
"Nothing."
She smirked.
"Childish."
"Yes."
He did not mind.
Some humor was necessary when you lived between floor bosses.
They also stopped at a small hardware store.
Insulation sheets.
Better wiring.
Waterproof sealant.
If Camp Stymphalian was becoming real housing, it needed the last touches too.
Élise and Camille walked quietly, taking in the contrast.
Dungeon life had clarity.
Predator.
Prey.
Hierarchy.
Here, everything layered over everything else.
Money.
Media.
Politics.
Narratives.
A digital screen replayed part of Olen's speech.
Another showed Josh shaking hands with a senator.
Philanthropy gala.
"Investing in safer dungeon access."
Camille whispered, "It feels… staged."
"It is," Alex said calmly.
They stopped at a quiet café for a short rest.
Not Long's place.
Neutral ground.
The French girls officially entered NYC now.
Their phones caught local roaming service.
Temporary data access kicked in.
Paperwork emails started coming.
They were here.
Legally gray.
Politically invisible.
Protected by a Level 1 farmer and a web of monsters.
Phong looked out at the street.
People rushed by.
Delivery bikes.
Office workers.
Students.
None of them knew about Les Cornes de la Terre.
Or the Sky Emperor.
He felt the split sharply.
The surface world ran on profit.
The dungeon world ran on survival.
And he stood between them.
Holding strawberries.
Planning peas.
Building decoys.
Building fortresses.
Protecting secrets.
Alex nudged him gently.
"Overthinking."
"Yes."
"You always do that when you go quiet."
He smiled faintly.
"Just calculating."
She leaned into him.
"We'll handle it."
He nodded.
They would.
For now, it was grocery bags and paperwork.
Strawberry seedlings.
Pea seeds.
And the knowledge that Camp Stymphalian needed to look smaller than it really was.
As they stood to leave, Élise glanced back toward the gate in the distance.
"It feels strange," she said quietly.
"What does?" Phong asked.
"Knowing the most stable place we've been lately… isn't here."
He did not answer right away.
Then he said, softly, "Stability isn't loud."
They crossed the street together.
Strawberries in hand.
Peas in pocket.
And somewhere far below, a mountain bull slept.