Josh team was taken to an Ellison's healing facility before the shock fully left his face.
That alone told Josh how bad the injury was.
The Ellisons did not waste premium rooms on ordinary wounds. Their medical facilities were built for divers, CEOs, political liabilities, and people rich enough to demand that pain become someone else's scheduling inconvenience. The building looked less like a hospital and more like a luxurious lounge that had learned how to tend wounds. Marble floors, muted lighting, quiet staff. No screaming where visitors might hear it. Even the smell was wrong—too clean, too expensive, too determined to pretend blood had no place in the lives of the wealthy.
Olen was sedated quickly.
His missing leg remained the impossible center of the room.
Gone. Completely, utterly, gone.
Half his left leg from below the knee had simply failed to exist after Josh's blink carried him out of the H'Re chieftain's light. The healers had gathered around it with tense expressions, whispering to one another in technical language that did not hide their unease. Regeneration worked with wounds, damages, but the body had to remember what had been harmed first.
So, what could healing do when the world itself seemed to have accepted that the missing portion had never existed in the first place?
Josh did not stay for their discussion.
He had his own treatment done in a separate private medical room.
The cut from the Greencap captain's banner had been cleaned first. It ran from his left cheek, past the outer edge of the left eye, and up to the forehead. A shallow line compared to what Olen had suffered. Easily treatable. The staff offered scar removal before the blood had fully dried.
Josh refused.
He watched the medic's hand pause.
"I'll keep it," he said.
The medic hesitated. "Mr. Harlan, the procedure would be simple."
"I said I'll keep it."
No one argued after that.
The scar would stay.
As a reminder, he told himself, of his win against the Greencap cavalry.
A memorial that he had taken the war banners.
And an alarm that, unlike the cowards online now drooling over Team Nemean's legacy boss kill, he had gone into the dungeon and claimed something real.
It did not matter that two Brooklyn Knights were gone. It did not matter that Olen had lost half a leg. It did not matter that the H'Re chieftain's third eye had erased people like mistakes in ink. The prices were cheap. Lives were cheap. A relic was priceless, especially after the being proclaimed itself as Sky Emperor showed up and made toys out of humanity's defense.
Josh had taken those banners. He had won.
That was the version he could carry.
Kurosaki Kitahara entered while the final bandage was being removed from his cheek.
She looked at the scar once.
Only once.
Then at her son.
"I am impressed."
Josh said nothing.
Praise from his mother was never simple. It had weight because it had teeth hidden in it.
Kitahara moved to the chair across from him, elegant as ever, hands folded lightly over one knee. She did not look like a grieving widow. She did not look like a woman whose husband had died in the dungeon under circumstances no one could understand, except maybe for her and a selected few. She looked like the personification of "still water runs deep."
"You studied the footage of your failed push toward Death Peak," she said.
Josh's eyes narrowed slightly.
Kitahara continued, "You noticed the Greencap Bunnies were not part of the alliance that formed around the trolls, lizardmen, Kamohai, Tortura, and Wolven."
The words struck him strangely.
Those names: Greencap Bunnies. Kamohai. Tortura. Wolven. Those were strange names, no one had ever uttered them anywhere. Not in media. Not in press conference. Not in lectures, studies, reports, or statistics.
His mother said them smoothly, without hesitation, without the awkwardness of someone using foreign terminology for the first time.
Yet, he could tell immediately what she meant.
Greencap bunnies were the Killer Rabbits. Kamohai were the Sharkmen. Tortura were those Tortoise folks archers.
And Wolven were, likely, Wolf centaurs.
Then, he realized what this was.
The human, with all their baked in supremacy, had named the local races of the dungeon to their liking. They called native American savages, Vietnamese Annamites, Africans Negros. Degrading names, useful names that erased any semblances of culture and intelligence of the subjects, so they would have an easier time claiming "civilizing the stupid locals" while they colonized and extorted the them. Then, any resistances could be spun into a story of ungrateful, treacherous, traitorous locals who harmed their "saviors." Such good excuse to rally their people, unite the masses so the mothers would sacrifice their last sons in a war against the natives, all for the sake of the elites' profit reports.
Josh knew the patterns too well, having been an descendant of the Harlan - colonizers that came to the new world hundreds of years ago.
But Kitahara had used local names - names that the dungeon races used to call themselves. Names that carried their history, pride, and worth.
Josh looked over at her.
She noticed.
Of course she noticed.
She did not explain.
That, more than anything, confirmed there was something to explain.
"Come," she said.
She led him out of the medical room and through two security doors into a smaller private chamber deeper inside the facility. No windows, reinforce walls everywhere. A table, three chairs, a tablet mounted with layers of encrypted hardware twice as thick as the device itself, and a physical switchboard Josh had never seen outside intelligence briefings and very old corporate paranoia.
Kitahara entered a code.
Then another.
Then placed her hand over a scanner, scanned her face.
The screen remained black for three seconds. Static crawled across it before a connection opened.
At first the image was all broken light and fractured sound. A tunnel, perhaps. A fire-glow somewhere off camera. Then the picture stabilized.
A Greencap Bunny appeared on screen. Female. Armored.
Not like the captain Josh had just fought, whose gear had been ceremonial, martial, and tied to cavalry command. This one wore practical frontier armor, scuffed and repaired in several places. Her ears were shorter than the captain's had been, one nicked near the tip. A green cloak hung behind her shoulders, but it was darker, stained by weather and dungeon travel. Her eyes were sharp, suspicious, and already annoyed.
"Kurosaki," she said.
Not "Mrs. Harlan," or "madam." Kurosaki.
The familiarity hit Josh harder than it should have.
The Greencap captain's nose twitched.
"Just because we have a deal does not mean you may call whenever you like."
Kitahara smiled. Not apologetically, even when she said, "My apologies, Captain."
The Greencap's ears angled back. "You are not sorry."
"No," Kitahara admitted. "But I am useful."
That seemed to be an acceptable answer.
Josh stared at the screen.
A live encrypted call. With a Greencap officer. He would prefer a captured monster. Or a translated interrogation subject. He'd prefer them locked up like dogs and begged to serve those who were superior by god given right like the Harlans.
This was a partner. His mother partner. Kitahara had contacts inside the dungeon as well.
Just like Phong.
The thought came uninvited and left a bitter taste.
Phong had built his contacts openly with something Josh could not explain cleanly. He had dismissed it more than once as luck, manipulation, black mail, but the proofs were stacking against his idea that it felt like a splinter in his brain from time to time.
But his mother—
His mother had been doing something similar in secret.
Kitahara's version would have contracts hidden under smiles, leverage hidden under gifts, and knives hidden under every promise. But the fact remained. She had learned names humans did not know because she had bothered to speak with those humans called monsters.
And she had not told him.
Kitahara turned slightly.
"This is my son, Joshua Harlan."
The Greencap captain looked at him through the screen.
Josh felt, with sudden irritation, that she was not impressed.
"Another rich human," she said.
Kitahara's smile remained serene. "A very rich human."
The captain's expression changed by a fraction. Only a fraction.
But Josh saw it.
And Kitahara did too.
"He can provide food," Kitahara continued. "Medicines. Surface tools. Luxury goods. Weapons, where appropriate."
Now the Greencap gave Josh her full attention. It wasn't respect, but interest. And sign of interest was often the first crack in the opposing side, the first chance to leverage a profitable agreement
Kitahara gestured lightly toward the screen. "Captain of Pioneer Squad Seven, active near the Saitama gate."
Josh filed the location instantly. Saitama. Japan.
A Greencap pioneer unit near the gate there, and even bother to learn the surface location. Active, supplied, protected enough to maintain encrypted contact. His mother had an arrangement with a dungeon faction on another continent and had said nothing while he was publicly flailing to expose Phong.
He wanted to ask about Phong.
The urge came sharp.
Did the captain know him? Had word of the farmer spread to other pioneer squads? Did Greencap messengers carry his emblem, his plants, his stories? Was this captain tied to the same kingdom whose cavalry leader Josh had just disfigured and robbed?
He almost asked. Then stopped.
His father's old negotiation lessons surfaced.
Do not reveal your desire first. Do not ask the question that tells the other side what information you value. Make them sell themselves. Make them show what they need. Keep the innitiative.
Josh leaned back slightly, letting silence lengthen just enough to be useful.
"Why," he asked, "should I invest in you?"
The Greencap captain's eyes narrowed.
Kitahara's smile deepened by one invisible degree.
Good, Josh thought. He had asked the correct question.
The captain took a moment before answering. When she did, the annoyance remained, but the shape of her voice changed. Less irritation. More presentation.
"At first, Kurosaki and I were ordinary partners," she said. "I provided craftsmen and protection at the mine. She provided food, medicine, luxury goods, and weapons."
Josh glanced at his mother.
Mine. Another piece she had not mentioned.
Kitahara's face revealed nothing.
The Greencap captain continued.
"This was fair exchanges. Labors, protection for resources."
"Practical," Josh said.
"Yes." Her ears twitched once. "Recently, a regime change has likely occurred in the Greencap Kingdom."
Josh's attention sharpened.
The captain did not seem to notice, or pretended not to.
"Messengers no longer come to check on the pioneer squads. Reports are not requested, orders are absent, tribute schedules have failed, couriers did not return." Her mouth tightened. "That does not happen unless the crown is dead, captured, usurped, or too weak to speak."
Josh remembered the captain he had fought.
The way the Greencap cavalry had seemed distracted despite the ambush. Their leader's fury had intensified when their honors and civilians were threatened, but there was something else that demand his attention, making him restless and rash. Almost as if the battle itself was not their only concern. Almost as if they were already carrying news, uncertainty, or fear from elsewhere.
A regime change. Or worse.
The female captain on the screen leaned closer.
"I see opportunity."
There it was: the real pitch.
"My squad can go independent. And grow into something bigger." Her eyes glinted. "There are other pioneer squads on Floor One. Some loyal to a kingdom that may no longer exist. Some hungry, some weak, some led by fools who wait for orders from a silent throne."
"You want to conquer them," Josh said.
"I want to unite them under a new banner."
"Cut the political words. You can be prank here."
The captain gave him the first hint of a smile.
"Then yes. I want to conquer them."
Kitahara said nothing.
Josh studied the Greencap captain more carefully now.
She was not begging, and that mattered. She did not speak like a refugee asking for shelter or a mercenary requesting employment. She spoke like someone who had already begun imagining herself crowned and was calculating which tools she needed to make the image real.
"If I form a new Greencap Kingdom on Floor One," she said, "and you invest in that kingdom, your reach expands. My scouts know terrain your divers stumble through. My craftsmen know dungeon materials your researchers mistook for trash. My warriors can hold corridors, escort mining teams, secure food lines, and deny access to rivals."
She lifted one armored hand.
"In the age the Sky Emperor has begun, Celestial Skeletal will turn every floor into a race. Surface governments will chase bosses. Divers will bleed for fragments. Supply, intelligence, and controlled routes will decide who can hunt and who can only react."
Josh heard the echo of his mother in that.
Or perhaps his mother had learned some of it from the Greencap.
"That," the captain said, "is why you invest in me."
The room went quiet.
On the screen, firelight shifted behind the captain. For a moment Josh saw movement: other Greencaps, racks of tools, perhaps crates of surface goods. This was not theory. She already had a base, followers, and Kitahara's first layer of support.
She wanted more. This was how Josh knew the captain was the same as he was. She stacked all the odds she could in her favors before even taking a single step out.
Josh pretended to consider.
In truth, his mind was elsewhere.
He looked toward Kitahara.
His mother watched him with unreadable calm.
She had known enough to arrange this call. Known enough names, known enough factions, known enough to see Floor One not as a monster field, but as a political map.
The revelation settled into him fully then.
Why his mother had believed him when he said Phong was the one who murdered his father. Why his mother had greeted Phong on the streets of New York back then. She had known something no other elites bother to learn before the Sky Emperor. She was likely the one behind his father decision of contacting the lizardmen of Lake of Doom for protection contract as well.
She wanted to use resources and interests like a blade of water, so soft yet so flexible, to dissect what Phong had built.
Josh looked back at the screen.
"What do you need first?" he asked.
The Greencap captain's eyes brightened.
Kitahara's smile became very small.
Josh, however, still thought that his mother "water blade" approach was too slow.