AbyssWalker_01.
Allen's thumb was pressed into the screen, leaving a white mark on his fingertip.
Registered seventeen minutes ago. Number one post. Exactly the same pattern as Robert Chen's first contact on the forum—new account, one message, targeted delivery.
But Robert Chen's ID was a string of gibberish. This person used "AbyssWalker".
Abyss Walker.
Forty minutes ago, when that line of black text disappeared from the management panel, his fingertips were still cold. Now, the coldness crept from his fingertips to his wrist.
Allen exited the forum. He opened the system log in the management panel. He dragged the timeline to the exact moment that line of black text appeared—4:03 AM.
Log entry: Blank.
Not "Deleted". Not "Insufficient permissions". It was blank. There was nothing in the log column for that time period, not even a placeholder. The system log jumped directly from 4:02:59 to 4:03:01. The two seconds in between were completely cut off. Allen dragged the timeline forward and backward by ten minutes each. The Blueprint Shop access record at 4:02 AM was normal. The BP settlement record at 4:04 AM was normal. All the functional modules' operation logs were there. Only those two seconds were a clean void.
Not a trace of erasure. Erasure would leave overwrite marks. This had never existed.
"The first architect has awakened."
The first.
Allen typed a line in the memo on the management panel. His fingers paused twice on the virtual keyboard.
"System = tool or cage?"
After typing the question mark, he stared at the hook for three seconds. He closed the memo.
The drainpipe was dripping. The air on the second basement level of the parking lot smelled of a mixture of rust and damp cement. 4:20 AM. His left thigh bandage needed changing; the smell of iodine had faded to undetectable.
Not something to think about now.
Allen closed the system log and opened the dungeon main control interface.
Rank E. Thirty rooms. Five monster slots. Level 2 Trap Blueprint.
The theme customization icon was lit up in the upper left corner of the interface—unlocked during yesterday's upgrade, but hadn't been opened until now. Allen swiped his finger over it.
The list of available themes appeared.
Ruined City. Deep Sea Ruins. Volcanic Lava. Frozen Graveyard. Twisted Forest.
Each theme name had a preview description in small gray text. Allen only looked at the first one.
[Ruined City—Reconstructs the dungeon into a miniature, destroyed city. Includes: street network, building ruins (enterable), underground passage system, high-rise ruins (up to four levels). Three-dimensional combat space. Non-linear path.] Non-linear.
The previous F+ level dungeon was a corridor connecting fifteen rooms. Challengers would push from the first room to the fifteenth, the route was fixed, and variables were limited. Allen could only adjust monster density, lighting, and terrain details.
Ruined City is different. Thirty rooms are scattered throughout the skeleton of a dead city. Challengers, upon entering, don't face "Where is the next room?", but rather "Where am I?"
Allen chose Ruined City. A confirmation dialog box pops up on the management panel. Cost: 2000 BP. Current Balance: 5000.
Y.
The dungeon's reconstruction process is presented in accelerated animation on the management panel—the walls of the Graystone Corridor crumble, collapse, and rebuild. The ground sinks and rises, creating a varied terrain. The framework of buildings grows from the ground, with steel and concrete remnants piling up into four-story ruins. Streets meander between buildings, some dead ends, some leading to underground passages, and some connecting adjacent buildings at second-floor height via broken skybridges.
Forty seconds. Reconstruction complete.
Allen switches to a top-down view. Thirty rooms—no longer "rooms." Thirty combat zones, distributed across different locations in the ruined city. Some are at street intersections, some in stairwells inside buildings, some at forks in underground passages, and some on the rooftop of the fourth-floor ruins.
Challengers will be knocked down by objects on rooftops while walking on the streets. They will hear teammates' shouts coming from the wrong direction in the underground passages. He'd open the door to a seemingly safe building and find the gravity inside was three times that outside.
Allen opened the Blueprint Shop. Monster slots.
Five empty slots.
He spent thirty minutes choosing. Not because he had trouble choosing—but because each slot had to fit the spatial structure of the ruined city. Monsters weren't just random pieces scattered across the map. They were part of the city.
First slot. Twilight Hunter. Rank E. Humanoid, wielding dual short swords, adept at leaping between buildings and aerial attacks. Allen set their spawn points on ruined platforms above the third floor. Challengers wouldn't see them looking up from the street—the Twilight Hunters' skin color was almost identical to the concrete debris. Once challengers reached the shadows of the buildings, they'd leap down from the fourth floor.
Second slot. Rift Spider. Rank E. Web-controlling monster. Allen placed them in the skybridges and narrow alleys between buildings. The color of their webs was almost invisible in the gray tones of the ruined city. Challengers trying to take shortcuts across the skybridges would find themselves stuck in mid-air, while Twilight Hunters leaped down from the rooftops on either side. Third column. Echoing Phantom. E-rank. Allen placed four in the underground tunnel system. They have no physical form—they are sonic monsters capable of mimicking any human voice they hear. After the team spreads out in the underground tunnels, someone might hear a teammate shout "There's a way this way!" on the left, only to find it's a dead end, while the Echoing Phantom has already led the real teammate in another direction.
Fourth column. Corrupted Sentinel. E+ rank. Heavy armor. High health. Allen placed one at each of the three key intersections in the ruined city. They won't chase. They just stand there. Their 2.4-meter-tall, iron-gray bodies block the entire street. Challengers must either fight them head-on or take a detour—taking a detour means entering the hunting grounds of Twilight Hunters and Rift Spiders.
Fifth column. Empty.
Allen's finger paused for a second in the empty column. The Abyss Watcher's A-rank blueprint data lay quietly in the blueprint library. Waiting for the dungeon to upgrade to D-rank.
Trap.
The Tier 2 Trap Blueprint unlocked three new items. Allen read through the instructions one by one, marking the deployment locations on the overhead view of the ruined city.
Gravity Wells. Three sets. Placed at the widest, safest intersections. The challenger, chased through three blocks in narrow alleys, finally reached an open area to breathe a sigh of relief—the gravity beneath their feet tripled. As their knees slammed into the ground, the Twilight Hunter leaped from the rooftop.
Mirrored Corridors. Two sets. Placed at key forks in the underground passages. Upon entering the corridor, all directional perception is reversed. Left becomes right, forward becomes backward. The challenger thinks they are heading towards the exit, but actually goes deeper and deeper.
Echoes of Fear. Four sets. Scattered throughout the ruined city. Not visual interference—it directly injects the feeling of being "watched" onto the neural level. The challenger will continuously feel something staring at them from behind. Turning around, nothing. Turning around again, still nothing. By the third time turning around, the Twilight Hunter is already within three meters.
Allen adjusted the trigger range of the last set of Fear Echoes and exited edit mode.
[Dungeon modification complete. Current configuration: Ruins City theme, 30 combat zones, 4 types of monsters (including 1 E+ level), 9 sets of level 2 traps, 2 boss areas (Shadow Knight upgraded to E level, Mirror Knight upgraded to E level)]
[Current BP balance: 1,850] The external monitoring on the management panel suddenly jumped.
Four black dots rapidly approached from the main street of the warehouse district. The speed wasn't walking. Vehicles. Two vehicles.
Allen's back left the pillar.
The dot level labels appeared. C level. C level. D level. D level.
One of the C level dots had an additional mark—the management panel automatically identified it as "Guild Administrative Enforcer." Next to the mark was an icon. Black background, a coiled snake.
Black Serpent Guild.
Allen mentally reviewed the timeline. He cleared the Ash Sewers yesterday. He estimated it would take Black Serpent twenty-four hours to detect the anomaly—the sewers were inspected every two days.
Twelve hours. Twice as fast.
Either Black Serpent's inspection frequency was higher than publicly available, or someone had notified them.
Four points of light slowed down on the main street of the warehouse district. They stopped. Two cars.
Allen didn't stand up. He deactivated the external entrance display of the dungeon on his management panel. The blue light from the diamond-shaped opening went out. The entrance to the backup passage changed from a glowing diamond-shaped fissure to an ordinary concrete crack. The same went for the main entrance inside the warehouse—the light from the fissure disappeared, leaving only an inconspicuous crack in the floor.
The highest perception level among the four points of light. Allen checked the rating. D+.
Not enough. Discovering hidden entrances requires perception of B level or higher, or specialized detection skills. D+ perception could only see darkness and concrete pillars in this parking lot.
The four points of light got out of the cars. They split into two groups. One group of two walked towards the main entrance of the warehouse. The other group circled around to the north side of the warehouse.
Allen sat in the darkness of the second basement level, watching the moving dots on the management panel.
The group at the warehouse's main entrance went in. Flashlight beams swept across the warehouse interior on the external monitors—metal walls, gravel floor, abandoned shelves in the corners. The beam paused for two seconds when it hit a crack in the floor. One of the dots crouched down.
Allen's right hand rested on the hilt of his short sword.
The dot stood up. It kicked at the gravel beside the crack. The gravel rolled a few centimeters. No unusual reaction. A crack is just a crack. Something perfectly normal on the floor of an abandoned warehouse.
Two dots circled the warehouse. Eight minutes. They came out.
The group on the north side walked along the warehouse's outer wall. They checked the windows, drains, and the base of the walls. Fourteen minutes.
The four dots converged in front of the warehouse's main entrance. They stood there for thirty seconds. One of the C-level dots—the one marked "Administrative Enforcement Officer"—walked back towards the north wall from the main entrance. It paused for two seconds. It raised its arm and made a pressing motion against the wall. Then the four points of light returned to the car. The car started. It drove away.
Allen waited five minutes. He confirmed the points of light had disappeared beyond the surveillance perimeter.
He climbed out of the concealed exit of the backup passage and went around to the north wall of the warehouse.
A black circular patch. Less than two centimeters in diameter. It was affixed to a seam in a piece of sheet metal on the outer side of the north wall, positioned about fifteen centimeters above normal eye level—unnoticeable unless you looked down, but covering most of the view from the warehouse main entrance and the parking lot entrance.
A surveillance camera. Miniature. Awakened Technology.
Allen didn't touch it.
Tearing it off would be like writing on it: "Someone's here, and smarter than you." He left it.
He returned to the management panel and added a new layer to the external monitoring interface. Using the location of the Black Serpent monitor as the center, he drew a fan-shaped coverage area based on the patch's orientation and the standard viewing angle parameters of the miniature lens.
Outside the fan-shaped area was a blind spot.
From the parking lot backup exit to the nearest alley, the route through the blind spot required a L-shaped turn. Four more minutes.
Allen picked up a pencil stub from the floor—something he'd taken from the convenience store checkout—and drew a simple route map on the back of his left hand. Three lines, two corners, and an X marking the location of a surveillance camera.
The pencil stub left a light gray mark on his skin. It would disappear after washing his hands. But until it was washed away, he could see it every time he looked down before leaving the house.
His phone vibrated.
Allen took it out. It wasn't a forum notification. It was a push notification from the DeepRift homepage.
A pinned post in bold red text.
"[Breaking News] GWA New York Press Conference—Official Statement Regarding the Outbreak in the Class D Underground City of Red Hook District. Press Conference Time: 10:00 AM today. Spokesperson: Deputy Director of GWA New York."
There were already over a thousand comments. Allen's thumb swiped down.
First comment: "GWA is finally going to speak? It's been almost six hours since the outbreak."
Second comment: "I'd bet ten bucks they'll say 'under investigation' and then offer no further explanation."
Third comment.
Allen's thumb stopped.
Post ID: AbyssWalker_01.
"GWA won't tell you the truth. The Architect isn't human."
This was the same comment he'd seen in the search results five minutes earlier. But now, the number of likes on this comment had jumped from seventeen to two hundred and forty-three. The number of replies had increased from nine to sixty-one.
Allen clicked into AbyssWalker_01's profile.
Registered: Thirty-four minutes ago. Posts: 1. Replies: 0. Following: 0. Followers: Hidden.
The profile only had one line:
"The Builder has awakened. The Walkers have awakened too."
Allen flipped his phone over and placed it face down on his lap.
The parking lot drainpipes were still dripping. Drip. Drip. The rhythm hadn't changed. The temperature hadn't changed. The air on the second basement level still smelled of rust and damp cement.
But in the lower left corner of the management panel—an area he'd never noticed before—an icon was flashing.
Not blue. Not red. Not gold.
It was black.
Allen's finger hovered over the icon. The icon was shaped like a closed eye.
He didn't click.
The icon flashed a third time. A line of extremely small text appeared next to it, two sizes smaller than the standard font size of the system notifications, practically invisible unless you looked very closely.
Allen brought his face ten centimeters closer to the management panel.
"You're hesitating. That's good. The last architect who didn't hesitate built a rat's nest."