One hundred and twenty-seven monsters. One man.
Allen watched the red dots converge on the management panel. They weren't fast—the movement speed of F-rank monsters was limited, even in Hunting Mode. But quantity made up for the lack of speed. From every corner of the fifteen rooms, Skeleton Guards, Ghost Wolves, Shadow Hounds, and Gargoyles flowed toward a single point.
Vane's green dot paused for two seconds.
Then it moved.
Not backward—forward.
Allen's finger tapped the panel.
A D-rank warrior's judgment. In the dark, the path back was uncertain, so moving forward at least provided directional momentum. Vane chose to attack.
The audio captured the first impact. The crisp sound of metal biting into bone—Vane's blade had struck something. A Skeleton Guard. The standard configuration of the first room.
"Is that it?"
Vane's voice echoed in the darkness. It carried a huff—not a gasp for air, but suppressed tension.
A second impact. A third. Continuous, rhythmic hacking. The power output of a D-rank against F-rank Skeleton Guards was a one-sided slaughter. One strike per kill; the sound of shattering bones became a constant drone.
Allen did not intervene.
He moved the monster status bar to the top left, taking up an eighth of his vision. The rest of the space was reserved for the internal view of the dungeon.
Vane cleared all the skeletons in the first room within thirty seconds. Eight of them. One strike each, with the last one crushed under his boot—the heel splintering the skull.
Allen flicked the lights on in the first room.
Not fully. He turned on a single light. The mineral lamp at the end of the corridor flickered for half a second before going dark again.
That half-second was enough for Vane to see the entrance to the second room.
It was also enough for him to see the Skeleton Swordmasters standing in two rows against the walls on both sides of the entrance.
The lights went out.
On the management panel, Vane's dot didn't stop. He charged into the second room.
Allen shifted his sitting position on the parking garage floor, stretching out his left leg. His knee popped.
Room two. Room three. Room four. Room five.
Vane took four minutes to clear the first five rooms. No injuries. Skeleton Guards posed less than a second of threat to a D-rank warrior. Throughout the process, Allen did not touch the lights, manipulate the terrain, or activate any traps.
Let him win.
Let him think he was winning.
Allen had temporarily lowered the monster density in the first five rooms—managerial authority allowed him to modify the spawn rates in real-time. What should have been eight to ten monsters per room was dialed down to three or five.
After clearing the last skeleton in the fifth room, Vane stood still and took two breaths. It wasn't physical exhaustion—it was the physiological reaction of adrenaline starting to ebb.
The audio captured his self-muttering.
"F-rank trash. A waste of my time."
Allen typed a line in the remarks column:"Psychological relaxation phase. Target has regained overconfidence."
The entrance to room six.
Allen restored all the lights. All fifteen rooms lit up simultaneously. The cold white light of the mineral lamps flooded in from both ends of the corridors, stripping Vane's silhouette out of the darkness.
Vane stood at the threshold of room six. He blinked twice—his pupils needed a second or two to adjust from total darkness to sudden brightness.
In those two seconds, Allen rearranged the corridor structure of rooms six through nine.
Managerial authority. Terrain manipulation.
The exit of room six moved from the north wall to the east wall. The entrance to room seven shifted from the south to the west. The corridor of room eight took a ninety-degree turn. In room nine—Allen blocked the exit for three seconds before reopening it, but directed it back toward the entrance of room six.
A looping maze.
Vane stepped into room six. Six Ghost Wolves emerged from the corners—their silvery-gray translucent bodies casting almost no shadows under the mineral lamps. Vane drew his blade. A horizontal slash. The first wolf was cleaved in two.
The second lunged from the back right. Vane dodged to the side and countered with a backhand strike. Clean and efficient.
Forty seconds. Six wolves wiped out.
Vane moved toward the exit—the one on the east wall. He should have noticed the direction had changed. But he didn't. After fighting in total darkness for four minutes, his sense of space hadn't fully recalibrated.
He walked into room seven.
Cleared it. Walked out.
Room eight.
The corridor turned. Vane paused.
"This turn..."
He walked forward fifteen meters. At the end of the corridor was a room entrance. He stepped inside.
Gargoyles. Two of them. Upgraded versions of the Granite Golems—larger than the ones he had fought before, with glowing patterns at their joints.
Vane took three minutes to resolve them. D-rank vs. F+-rank; difficult, but not lethal. His blade left a notch on the gargoyle's armor—not from a cut, but from a shock injury caused by a heavy impact.
He moved toward the exit.
The exit led to a corridor. At the end of the corridor—
Ghost Wolves.
Vane froze.
He had just fought Ghost Wolves. In room six.
He glanced at the wall on his right. The arrangement of the mineral lamps was identical to room six. The cracks on the floor followed the same pattern. Even the lingering chill from the dissipated Ghost Wolves—he remembered this temperature.
He was back in room six.
"...What?"
Allen watched Vane's green dot circle between rooms six and nine on the management panel. The first lap, four minutes. The second lap, six minutes—he began to slow down, trying to distinguish directions. By the third lap, he stopped in the center of room seven and didn't move.
A full minute.
The audio transmitted Vane's breathing. It had grown heavy. The frequency increased from fourteen breaths per minute to twenty-two.
It wasn't physical exhaustion. it was cognitive dissonance.
A D-rank veteran was lost in an F-rank dungeon.
Allen updated a line in the remarks column:"Terrain manipulation effect confirmed. Looping maze is effective against D-rank targets. Target has begun to show signs of irritation."
During the fourth lap, Vane started hacking at the walls.
His blade struck the stone wall, sparks flying. Stone chips sprayed onto his face. D-rank strength was enough to hack a half-inch-deep gouge into the rock.
But the wall repaired itself within two seconds. The crack in the stone healed from both ends toward the center, the sound of stone pressing against stone clearly audible.
Vane struck again. Repair. Again. Repair.
Fifth lap.
Allen released the structural lock on the looping maze. The exit of room nine pointed once again toward room ten—the correct direction.
Let him out.
When Vane burst out of room nine's exit, he was fast—not at a marching pace, but at the speed of someone fleeing. He ran three steps before realizing he was in a new corridor. He wasn't back in room six.
He stopped. Hands braced on his knees. His blade jabbed into the floor as a support.
He panted for twenty seconds.
Allen calculated on the panel—Vane had spent twenty-three minutes in the looping maze. He had fought four rounds of repetitive monsters. His physical stamina consumption was roughly thirty-five percent of his total.
Not much. A D-rank's stamina pool was three to four times deeper than an F-rank's.
But psychological consumption was not part of that calculation.
Room ten.
Vane stood at the entrance. At the end of the corridor was a stone door. A faint blue light leaked through the crack.
He pushed the door open.
Fear Mist triggered.
[Environmental Trap"Fear Mist" activated. Scope: Entirety of Room 10. Target count: 1. Hallucination intensity: Enhanced (Manual adjustment by Architect). Hallucination generating...]
When deploying the Fear Mist, Allen had turned the intensity from"Standard" to"Enhanced." In Enhanced Mode, the hallucination duration was extended from thirty seconds to sixty. The content remained the same—based on the target's deepest fear memories.
But the difference between sixty seconds and thirty was not a simple doubling. For thirty seconds, a D-rank veteran could hold on. For sixty seconds—the first thirty were resistance, the last thirty were drowning.
On the management panel, Vane's green dot stopped two seconds after entering the room.
Then he collapsed.
Audio.
No screaming. Not this time. It was a more primal sound—a continuous, low-frequency groan squeezed from deep within the chest. No melody. No words. The kind of sound made when a person curls up on the ground in agony.
Allen didn't know what Vane saw.
The system only noted:"Generated based on target's fear memories—Content: S-rank dungeon-related trauma."
Sixty seconds.
At the forty-second mark, Vane began pounding the ground with his fists. It wasn't a struggle—it was an attempt to overwrite mental pain with physical pain. The sound of fists hitting stone slabs came through the audio, strike after strike. The sound of knuckles shattering appeared at the forty-eighth second.
Sixtieth second.
The mist dissipated.
Vane lay on the floor. Face down. The knuckles of his right index and middle fingers were swollen—not shattered, but heavily bruised.
It took him five minutes just to stand up.
Five minutes. Last time, with standard intensity, his recovery time was fifteen to twenty seconds. Enhanced Mode multiplied the recovery time by fifteen.
The Shadow Knight was waiting at the other end of room ten.
Vane didn't call for a formation—there was no formation to call. He was alone.
When the Shadow Knight initiated its charge, Vane's parry was slow by 0.3 seconds. The residual effect of the Fear Mist—a delay in arm response. The Knight's blade grazed the outer edge of his left shoulder, slicing a hole in his tactical jacket. A shallow wound. Beads of blood seeped from the cut, invisible against the black fabric.
Vane took a step back. He steadied himself.
Then he switched his blade to his left hand.
Allen's finger paused on the panel.
Right knuckles injured—he switched hands.
D-rank veteran. Ambidextrous. It wasn't a talent; it was an instinct forged by six years of dungeon combat.
The Shadow Knight's Shadow Step activated. It teleported behind Vane.
Vane didn't turn around. His body tilted to the left—not an elegant sidestep, but a clumsy dodge where he practically fell toward the ground. The Knight's sword passed three centimeters above the back of his neck.
Vane used the momentum of his fall to roll half a circle, thrusting upward with his left hand. The tip of the blade slipped into the gap of the Shadow Knight's breastplate.
The Knight shattered into black smoke.
Room ten cleared.
Allen added a note in the remarks column:"Vane Tucker combat proficiency assessment: Exceeds the design limit of an F-rank dungeon. Enhanced Fear Mist + Shadow Knight Boss = still clearable. Conclusion: The subsequent rooms are the real deal."
Vane stood for ten seconds where the Shadow Knight had dissipated. He didn't pick up the loot. He didn't check the rewards.
He just stood there. Breathing.
Then he moved forward.
Room eleven.
Allen adjusted the lighting to dark red.
It didn't switch instantly—it was a gradient. The cold white mineral light shifted from a color temperature of 6000K down to 3000, then 1500, and finally compressed to a deep red. The entire process took eight seconds. Slow enough that Vane wouldn't notice in the first second, but fast enough that by the time he exited the corridor, he was immersed in blood-red light.
Then Allen activated the environmental sound system.
[Environmental Sound Effect—"Heartbeat" mode activated.]
A low, rhythmic pulsing sound resonated from the dungeon walls. It wasn't coming from one direction—the entire space vibrated simultaneously. The stone walls of the dungeon were contracting and expanding at a frequency of sixty beats per minute.
That frequency was exactly one beat slower than a normal person's resting heart rate. A human's subconscious automatically tries to synchronize with environmental rhythms—the process of having one's heart rate pulled slower induces an unexplainable sense of anxiety.
Vane paused at the entrance of room eleven.
He looked up at the ceiling. The red light turned the patterns on the stone walls into the color of blood vessels.
"Thump—thump—thump—"
The heartbeat.
His jaw muscles tightened. He walked in.
No monsters rushed him in room eleven.
Skeleton Swordmasters stood at the far end of the room. Four of them. Lined up in a perfect row. Holding curved blades. Motionless.
Vane approached them with his blade raised.
They retreated.
For every step Vane took, the four Skeleton Swordmasters took a synchronized step back. The distance remained at exactly five meters. No attack. No defense. Just retreating.
Allen watched this on the management panel. He had manually changed the monster AI to"Follow—Maintain Distance."
Don't hit you. Watch you. Follow you.
Vane stopped in the center of room eleven. He turned in a circle. The four Skeleton Swordmasters stood in a semicircle five meters away, blades at their sides. The light in their red eye sockets was steady.
"Come on."
No response.
"Fight me!"
The Skeleton Swordmasters took one step back.
Vane charged. He shattered the nearest one with a single strike. Bone fragments sprayed. The remaining three did not counter—they turned and ran. They ran into the corridor, disappearing into the depths of the dark red light.
Vane chased for two steps. He stopped.
In the darkness at the end of the corridor, six pairs of red eyes were floating. Shadow Hounds. Not approaching. Not attacking. Prowling back and forth at the edge of the corridor.
Vane stood where he was. Monsters in front, monsters behind. All within sight. All outside a safe distance. None of them attacked him.
The heartbeat. Thump. Thump. Thump.
Allen updated the remarks:"Psychological pressure test. D-rank target's stress threshold is higher than expected. Current methods are effective but have not reached peak. Maintain continuous pressure."
Room twelve. Room thirteen. Room fourteen.
The same pattern. Monsters appear—don't attack—follow—maintain distance—prowl at the edge of vision. Dark red lighting. Heartbeat sound.
Vane took eleven minutes to pass through room fourteen. Not because of combat—but because he repeatedly stopped, raised his blade, turned around, checked his surroundings, and then continued. Every three steps, he looked back.
A D-rank veteran's reflexes were fully activated. His body had entered a state of maximum alert. Muscles were constantly tensed. His blade was always raised. His stamina was being consumed in large quantities without any actual combat taking place.
Allen hadn't touched a single hair on his head.
Room fifteen.
At the end of the corridor was a large door. Wider than the doors of all the previous rooms.
Allen turned off the heartbeat sound.
Sudden silence was more terrifying than continuous sound pressure. Vane stood at the door for thirty full seconds.
He pushed the door open.
Four mirrored walls. The dark red light reflected between countless mirror surfaces, filling the entire room with Vane's own reflections. There was a"him" in every mirror. Every reflection's movements were delayed by 0.3 seconds.
The Mirror Knight stood in the center of the room. Full mirror armor. The helmet had no visor opening. Its entire reflective surface mirrored Vane's silhouette as he walked in.
Vane saw his own face reflected on that visor.
Lips cracked and dry. Blood on his left shoulder. Swollen knuckles on his right hand. Pupils dilated wide.
The Mirror Knight moved.
It didn't draw a sword—it pulled a weapon from its waist that was identical to Vane's blade. The curve, the length, the wear patterns on the hilt—exactly the same.
Vane's reaction was instinctive—a horizontal slash.
The Mirror Knight's response was the same action. A horizontal slash. The same angle. The same force. The two blades collided in the air. The vibration of the metal clashing traveled from the blade to the wrist to the forearm.
Vane felt a sense of displacement. That force—
It was the same.
He took a step back. The Mirror Knight took a step back as well. He swung. The Knight swung. He used a skill—Sundering Slash.
The Knight used Sundering Slash as well.
The same wind-up. The same trajectory. The same ground-cracking effect. Two sundering waves collided in the center of the room, sending stone debris flying.
A crack appeared in Vane's blade during the fourth collision—his blade. Not the Knight's.
Allen saw the data on the management panel. The Mirror Knight's attributes perfectly copied Vane's current state—not his full-health D-rank attributes, but the current Vane after the exhaustion of the looping maze, the weakening of the Fear Mist, and the fatigue of psychological pressure.
But the Mirror Knight was not fatigued.
It copied attribute values, not physical conditions. With the same strength value, the Knight's every strike achieved perfect mechanical output. Because of muscle fatigue, knuckle injuries, and irregular breathing, Vane's actual output was only about seventy-five percent of his panel value.
This was not an equal fight.
This was a man who had been repeatedly tortured for forty minutes fighting against his own full-status mirror image.
Vane was knocked back after the ninth clash. His heel hit the mirror wall. The reflection in the mirror flickered—that 0.3-second delay flicker. There was a Vane behind him. A Vane in front of him. Vanes everywhere.
The Mirror Knight activated Iron Wall.
Vane's second skill. A defensive technique. A full-body energy shield.
It used Vane's own move to block Vane's attack.
Vane cursed. The profanity captured in the audio was too foul for Allen to record. It wasn't an angry curse. It was despair.
But he didn't stop.
D-rank veteran. Six years in dungeons.
Vane switched the blade from his right hand to his left—for the second time. Because his right knuckles had completely given out during the thirty seconds of high-intensity clashing. They were swollen to a deep purple.
Blade in left hand. He changed his tactics. No more frontal clashing.
He started using his feet.
His boot heel kicked the side of the Mirror Knight's knee—the Knight didn't copy his leg techniques because there were no leg skills in Vane's skill tree. The Mirror Knight could only copy skills registered in the System panel.
Street fighting. Unregistered, instinctive combat.
The first kick threw off the Knight's center of gravity. The second kick swept its ankle. The Mirror Knight's mirror armor let out a metallic groan as the knee bent.
Vane thrust his blade into the opening created by the Knight's loss of balance. Left hand. The angle was off. It wasn't a textbook thrust. It was an upward jab, skimming the edge of the breastplate, forced through a dead-angle gap in the Iron Wall shield.
A crack appeared on the Mirror Knight's helmet visor.
Vane twisted the blade.
The Knight shattered into silver fragments. The mirror shards scattered across the floor, reflecting the dark red light and Vane's face.
[Room 15 cleared. Boss killed: Mirror Knight.]
Vane knelt among the shards. Both knees on the ground. The tip of his blade in his left hand pressed against the stone slab as a support.
The sound of breathing echoed in the empty room. Heavy. Ragged. Every breath came with a rasp from a throat pushed to its limit.
Allen recorded the clear time on the management panel. From entering room fifteen to killing the Mirror Knight—four minutes and eighteen seconds.
He won.
A D-rank veteran, after forty-seven minutes of repeated torture, had used a"street-style" technique not registered in the system to defeat his own mirror image.
Allen typed a line in the remarks:"Vane Tucker. Actual combat capability assessment adjusted to D+. System panel does not reflect all abilities. Need to note variables of non-system skills."
Then Allen activated the hidden door to room sixteen.
On the north wall of room fifteen, a seam of light opened silently. The hidden entrance. Only the one who defeated the Mirror Knight could see it.
Vane looked up.
He saw the seam of light.
He also saw four lines of floating text above the seam.
System notification format. White text on a blue background.
[How does it feel to fight someone your own size, Mr. Tucker?]
Vane's breathing hitched for a beat.
[The boy you beat up this morning was F-rank. He didn't even have a combat skill.]
The second line floated below the first. Same font size. Precise spacing.
[And you broke his bones.]
Third line.
[In my dungeon, everyone fights fair.]
Vane knelt on the ground. The shards reflected his face—lips cracked, blood dried into a dark brown on his left shoulder, right knuckles too swollen to form a fist.
He stared at those four lines for eleven seconds.
The management audio captured no sound. Total silence. Even his breathing stopped.
The twelfth second.
Vane stood up.
He didn't walk toward the entrance of room sixteen.
He turned around. Toward the way he came. Toward the exit.
He ran.
Allen watched the green dot on the management panel sprint back at the upper limit of Vane's D-rank speed. Room fourteen. Room thirteen. Room twelve. The monsters in the corridors all moved aside—Allen had retracted all Hunting Mode instructions in advance. It wasn't necessary anymore.
When Vane ran past the Phantom Mirror in the entrance corridor of the first room, the mirror automatically recorded his final full scan.
The data was no different from when he entered. Attributes unchanged. Skills unchanged.
The thing that had changed was not on the System panel.
Vane was head-first when he tumbled out of the diamond-shaped opening. Both hands hit the ground. His blade clattered onto the concrete floor. The blue light of the warehouse illuminated him.
He looked up.
Allen was sitting on a folding chair in the corner of the warehouse. The one Titan's Shield had left behind. He was holding a can of soda. The kind on sale at the supermarket. The half-price label was facing outward.
The two made eye contact.
The warehouse was very quiet. The blue light of the diamond opening pulsed rhythmically. Outside the corrugated iron walls, the sound of the March night wind in Red Hook occasionally drifted in.
Allen didn't speak.
He just raised the can to his mouth and took a sip. Then he set the can on the folding table. He tilted his head slightly.
Vane knelt beside the dungeon entrance. Both hands were still braced on the ground. His right knuckles were swollen out of shape. His tactical jacket was covered in blood, sweat, and stone dust.
His mouth opened once. Closed. Opened again.
"Who... who the hell are you?"
Allen stood up from the folding chair. He tossed the empty soda can into a plastic bin in the corner of the warehouse. The aluminum can hit the side of the bin with a hollow ring.
"Nobody."
He walked toward the side door of the warehouse. His back was to Vane.
"Just a No-Class."
The side door opened. The night wind rushed in from outside. Allen stepped into the darkness of a March night in Brooklyn.
The door closed behind him.
Vane knelt alone in the blue light. His hands were shaking. Not from the cold. Not from the pain.
It was because every wall, every monster, every second of light change in that dungeon was not random.
They were all watching him.
They were all waiting for him.
The night wind from the door gap kicked up dust on the floor. The Titan's Shield emblem on the corrugated iron door gave off a faint, cold glint in the darkness.
Vane Tucker crouched there for a long time without moving.
--- Titan's Shield Brooklyn Branch. The same night.
Jason Collins had waited behind the bar for four hours. The whiskey bottle was still on the table. The alcohol in the glass had already evaporated down a layer.
When the door was pushed open, Jason snapped up from his chair.
Vane walked in.
Jason took one look—and then his hand retracted from the table.
Vane's tactical jacket was torn at the left shoulder. The knuckles of his right hand were swollen to a bluish-black. There was dried blood on his pant leg. Stone dust clung to his boots.
But those weren't the reasons Jason pulled back.
It was Vane's face.
Jason had been with Titan's Shield for three years. He had seen Vane come out of C-rank dungeons with two bone spikes stuck in him, still cursing his teammates for being late while pulling the spikes out.
He had never seen Vane with this face.
It wasn't pain. It wasn't anger. It was empty. All the muscles in his face had gone slack. The scar on his chin was no longer tight.
Vane walked past the bar. He didn't look at Jason. He headed straight for the private rooms in the back.
"Boss."
Vane didn't stop.
"Boss, the dungeon?"
He stopped.
Three seconds.
"We're not going back."
"But the resources—the quality of those drops—Vane, that's E-rank gear coming out of an F-rank dungeon. If we give it up—"
Vane turned halfway.
"I SAID WE'RE NOT GOING BACK."
The three members on night duty in the base all looked up at once. One person's glass clinked against the edge of the table.
Vane's voice bounced off the ceiling of the base. That volume wasn't an effect of a D-rank deliberately using power. It was squeezed out by the involuntary contraction of his throat muscles.
Jason's mouth snapped shut.
Vane walked into the private room. The door closed. The sound of the lock turning clicked in the corridor.
Jason stood behind the bar. He held that glass of water with no ice. There were faint ripples on the surface.
It wasn't the table shaking.
It was his hand.
--- DeepRift Forum. 11:47 PM.
A new post appeared in the Brooklyn sub-section.
User ID: Anonymous_RedHook_07.
Title:"Someone from Titan's Shield just came out of that Red Hook warehouse dungeon. Went in alone. When he came out, his face was as white as paper."
The body was only three lines.
"I live near the warehouse district. Around nine o'clock, I saw a guy in a black jacket crawl out of the warehouse door. It's that Titan's Shield captain who was putting up the caution tape earlier."
"He knelt on the ground for at least five minutes."
"A young guy in glasses walked out of the side door. I didn't see his face clearly."
Below the post. The first comment. Twelve seconds after posting.
"Wait—that Titan's Shield captain, the D-rank guy? Beaten like this by an F-rank dungeon?"
Second comment. Twenty seconds.
"I told you that dungeon wasn't normal. Last time six of them went in and came out looking pale. This time he goes in alone?"
Third comment. Thirty-one seconds.
"'A young guy in glasses walked out of the side door'—Who is this?"
Fourth comment. Forty-five seconds.
"The point isn't the young guy. The point is—who the hell can make a D-rank awakener kneel at an F-rank dungeon entrance for five minutes?"
The post's popularity broke into the front-page top ten within fifteen minutes.
Allen did not check the forum. He sat by the P2-17 pillar near the secondary entrance on the second basement level of the parking garage. The data summary on the management panel was still refreshing.
[Vane Tucker Solo Challenge Summary:]
[Rooms cleared: 15/15 (including 2 Boss rooms)]
[Clear time: 53m 17s]
[BP contribution:+4200]
[Current BP balance: 14,150]
Four thousand two hundred. Solo. More than the six-man team—the high-intensity confrontation of the Enhanced Fear Mist and the Mirror Knight boss fight contributed a massive amount of extra BP.
Allen's finger slid across the panel, stopping at the overall evaluation page of the dungeon.
[Dungeon rank evaluation refreshing...]
The progress bar moved for three seconds.
[Evaluation complete. Brooklyn Warehouse Dungeon Rank: F -> F+.]
It had leveled up.
Allen closed the panel, took off his glasses, and wiped the lenses with the hem of his hoodie. There was a small smudge on the lens; he wiped it twice. He put them back on.
The second basement level was very quiet. There were water stain patterns on the concrete walls. A drainpipe in the distance was dripping. Drip. Drip. Drip.
The phone screen in his pocket lit up briefly. He didn't pull it out.
Sandwiched between the phone case and the back was a white hard-paper business card.
R.C.
Allen shifted his position by the pillar. He leaned the back of his head against the concrete. It was cold.
The drainpipe in the parking garage continued to drip.