"I know you're down there." Allen didn't move.
The darkness of the second basement level of the parking garage enveloped him completely. The blue light from the diamond-shaped opening was only enough to illuminate a three-meter radius of the ground. Pillar P2-17 blocked all view from the direction of the gap in the roller shutter door.
Theoretically, she couldn't see him.
"I saw your face." Lena's voice came from above, muffled by the two layers of concrete slabs, but every syllable was clear.
On the control panel, her green dot stopped directly above the gap in the roller shutter door. It didn't move further. It didn't go down. It stood there.
Allen's right hand loosened its grip on the hilt of his short sword.
She saw his face. At the alley entrance. For half a second, the hood was lifted by the wind. Half a face under the streetlight and a pair of thin-rimmed glasses.
The dynamic vision of a C-level assassin. In combat, twenty meters away, half a second of exposure window—enough for her to catch the outline of a face.
But there was a distance between catching the outline and confirming identity.
She said, "I saw your face," not "I know who you are."
Allen leaned against the pillar, offering no response.
Lina waited fifteen seconds.
Footsteps. From the gap in the roller shutter door downwards. Metal steps. High-top boots clattered on the rusty treads with each short, dull thud.
The green dot on the management panel began to sink. Ground floor. Slope. B1.
She was going down.
Allen mentally reviewed the options.
Run. Jump into the diamond-shaped opening in the backup passage, enter the dungeon, and use administrator privileges to close the entrance. She couldn't catch up.
The problem was his left leg. The bandage was wrapped three times, the iodine's effects were waning, and running would drag it. The distance from the pillar to the diamond-shaped opening was eleven meters. Her distance from B1 to B2— Footsteps came from around the corner of the slope. Closer.
He stopped running.
Allen emerged from behind the pillar. He stepped into the blue light emanating from the diamond-shaped opening. He stood there.
When Lena emerged from the bottom of the slope, the first thing she noticed was his shoes. Sneakers. Mud covered the entire upper, leaving only a small patch of white on the inside of the ankle.
Then came the trousers. A ripped tear. Bandages. Bloodstains dried brown.
Then the hoodie. Mud on the left sleeve, a tear in the right hood, a rat-monster claw mark on the chest that had frayed the fabric.
Then came the face.
Lina stopped at the bottom of the slope. About eight meters away.
The crescent dagger was tucked into a leather buckle at his waist. His hands were free. Not in a fighting stance.
The parking lot drainpipe was dripping. Drip. Drip.
"You're injured."
Not a question. A statement.
Allen glanced down at his left leg.
"A superficial wound."
"A D-class rat-monster's tail." Allen neither confirmed nor denied. She was there. She probably saw it. Lena took a step forward. Seven meters.
"Those things in the clearing. Gargoyles. Ghost wolves. The patterns on the ground."
There was a brief pause between each word. Not hesitation—but a prioritization of facts. A C-rank assassin's mind operates according to priorities even outside of combat.
"Exactly the same as that dungeon in the warehouse."
Allen stood in the blue light, his glasses reflecting the pulsating patterns of light from the diamond-shaped openings.
"What do you want to ask?"
Lina took another step. Six meters.
"You are Architect_00."
Not a question.
Allen stared at her for three seconds. Lena's tactical vest was zipped up all the way, revealing a new scratch on the collar—a rat-like claw. The crescent dagger sheath in her left hand was stained with blood, not hers.
Guts and the other two members of the Gray Raven team hadn't followed. She was alone.
At 3:30 AM, a C-rank solo adventurer, fresh from a D-rank dungeon raid, entered the second basement level of an abandoned parking lot alone, searching for someone she suspected was the "world's only dungeon creator."
Courageous enough. Or stupid enough. Or both.
"What if I were?" Lina stopped in her tracks.
Her right hand rested on the leather clasp of the crescent-shaped dagger at her waist. Not to draw the sword—her hand needed a place to land.
"Then you saved eight hundred people on Coffin Street tonight."
Allen didn't speak.
"Guts lives on Coffin Street."
Lina's voice dropped a half-tone.
"His sister and two nephews live there too. Fourth floor. Window facing west. The direction the rat monsters came from."
She paused for a moment.
"If you hadn't laid that line, Guts wouldn't have seen home tonight." Three drops of water dripped from the parking lot's drainpipe.
Allen adjusted his glasses. The frames had been sliding on his nose for days; they needed adjusting.
Allen pulled his phone from his hoodie pocket. A notification refreshed the management panel in the background—the rewards for the seven-day system mission hadn't been claimed yet. The golden pop-up window's border flashed silently in the corner of his vision.
He swiped his phone and tapped into the Blueprint Shop.
Reward Claim.
[A-Rank Monster Blueprint Issued—] Golden light overflowed from the phone screen. Not screen light—it was system projection. A semi-transparent blueprint card floated thirty centimeters in front of him.
Lina took a half-step back. Not out of fear. A professional reflex—to create distance when an unknown energy source appeared.
The image on the blueprint card was rotating.
A humanoid silhouette. Completely clad in jet-black armor. A broad-bladed greatsword in its right hand. No face beneath the helmet—only two dark red lights.
[Abyssal Watcher—A-Rank Boss Blueprint]
[Special Ability: Adaptation—After each defeat, the character respawns and becomes completely immune to all attacks used by the previous killer. Unlimited.] [Note: This monster cannot be defeated using repeated strategies. Each challenge requires a completely new combat approach. Theoretically—after learning from enough battles, this Boss will become invincible by any known means.] Allen stared at the last line.
A learning Boss. It evolves with each defeat. The more people fight it, the stronger it becomes. Ultimately—invincible.
Not a monster.
A weapon.
The blueprint card's light faded. Data was written to the blueprint library in the management panel.
Lina stood six meters away, both hands raised from the leather clasps of her daggers at her waist.
"What's that?"
Allen locked his phone. The screen went black. The blue light disappeared.
"Something you wouldn't want to encounter in a dungeon."
He glanced down at the corner of the management panel. Dungeon Upgrade Requirements: 10,000 BP + Core Upgrade Materials.
BP can be accumulated. Core Upgrade Materials—Dungeon Heart Fragments from Natural Dungeons.
A list of natural dungeons around Brooklyn floated on the right side of the management panel. Three E-rank. One D-rank.
E-rank. With his current D-rank strength, going in alone wouldn't be a challenge, it would be suicide. Lena's 95% success rate wasn't an exaggeration. He needed teammates.
He needed her.
At least for now.
His phone vibrated in his pocket.
Allen pulled it out. A private message from the DeepRift forum.
Not Robert Chen's garbled ID.
A new ID. Registration time—twenty-three minutes ago. ID name: SnakeBite.
The message contained only four lines.
"I represent the Black Serpent Guild. We've noticed your dungeon's… unique properties. Our Guild Master, Mr. Victor Stone, would like to discuss a partnership. Name your price." Allen's thumb hovered over the screen.
Victor Stone. S-rank Awakened. Guild Master of the Black Serpent Guild. The de facto controller of New York's underground economy—the Awakened Black Market, the smuggling of illegal underground resources, and the gray employment network of unregistered Awakened. He's seventh on the GWA's publicly wanted list. But no one has ever touched him, because his S-class combat power is New York's nuclear deterrent on the East Coast.
This man has come looking for you.
Lina is still standing six meters away. She can't see his screen. But she sees his motionless posture holding the phone—thumb hovering, shoulder slightly stiff.
"Bad news?" Allen flips the phone over, holding it face down.
Two drops of water drip from the parking lot drainpipe. The blue light from the diamond-shaped opening draws ripples on the concrete between the two.
"Do you know Victor Stone?" Lina's spine straightens segment by segment from her lumbar to her cervical vertebrae. At six meters away, Allen hears the scraping sound of her boots on the concrete.
"He contacted you?"
Allen doesn't answer.
He flips the phone back over. On the screen, at the bottom of SnakeBite's private message was a line of small gray text—a timestamp followed by an additional marker.
[This user has viewed your profile 12 times.] Twelve times.
"Name your price," Lena repeated the four words, her voice extremely low. "Victor Stone never spends money on anything. When he said 'name your price,' he meant—" She paused.
"He already knows your price."