"The last architect who didn't hesitate built the Rat's Nest." Allen withdrew his hand from the management panel. The blinking frequency of the black eye icon remained unchanged. The small text lingered on the screen for four seconds, then began to dissolve pixel by pixel from the bottom, unlike the way the "Voice of the Abyss" disappeared forty minutes ago—that time it was an instantaneous cut, this time it slowly dissolved.
It was left for him to see. To make sure he read every single word.
Rat's Nest.
NYC-BK-0447. Class D Natural Dungeon. Registered with GWA. Regularly cleared by guild teams on a rotating basis. It had just erupted last night, with over three hundred rat monsters surging from the surface; he used 21,000 BP to lay a cutoff line to stop them.
Natural Dungeon.
That's what everyone calls it. GWA's classification system, public databases, academic papers—all 13,000 known dungeons worldwide are classified as "Magical Natural Products." No one has ever questioned this classification.
"The last architect."
Not "the last dungeon." He was "the last architect."
His profession wasn't unique. At least not historically. Someone else had held the same profession—or a similar one—and used it to build a rat's nest.
A man-made underground city that everyone considered a natural disaster.
Allen marked the coordinates of the black icon in his notes. Bottom left corner of the management panel. The icon was still there, but the flashing frequency had decreased to once every five seconds. No more text appeared.
He didn't click the icon.
Not because he wasn't curious. It was because the phrase "the last architect who didn't hesitate" was itself a hook. The more attractive the thing you hand over, the more I want to check where the fishing line is tied.
His phone screen lit up. A push notification from the GWA website. Press conference countdown: 5 hours and 43 minutes.
Allen moved the management panel to the background. He closed his eyes. His head was pressed against a concrete pillar. This time, he really needed to sleep.
—His phone alarm rang at 9:55 AM.
Allen sat up in four seconds. The bandage on his left leg had loosened while he slept, and the yellow stain from iodine had turned the tear in his jeans into an irregular map. He ignored it. He opened his phone, found the official GWA live stream link, and clicked on it.
The loading page spun three times before the screen appeared.
The press conference room of the New York GWA branch. Standard setup—a podium, a blue backdrop, an eagle badge, and two rows of microphones. About sixty people were seated; the first three rows held press passes from mainstream media, while the back rows were filled with independent media and freelance writers.
Live stream viewership: 470,000. Still rising.
A woman walked onto the podium. In her forties, with short, shoulder-length blond hair, every button on her uniform fastened to the top. The nameplate on her chest reflected the light—Allen couldn't see the name clearly on his phone's small screen, but the three stars on her epaulets were crystal clear.
Deputy Director of GWA New York Branch.
"Good morning, everyone. Thank you for attending." A standard bureaucratic opening. Allen turned the volume down two notches to avoid echoing too much in the parking lot.
"Regarding the outbreak at the NYC-BK-0447 underground city in the Red Hook borough last night, I, on behalf of GWA New York, hereby issue the following statement." The woman's gaze wasn't on any of the reporters. It was on the teleprompter on the podium.
"At 11:47 PM last night, an outbreak occurred at the Class D underground city 'Rat's Nest' in the Red Hook borough of Brooklyn. GWA's monitoring system detected the abnormal signal immediately, and the rapid response team arrived at the scene 28 minutes after the incident. Thanks to efficient handling, the outbreak is now completely under control. There were zero casualties in the surrounding residential areas." Allen tapped his thumb on the edge of the screen.
Twenty-eight minutes. By the time GWA's armored vehicles arrived, most of the rats were already dead. The rapid response team's "efficient handling" was of the aftermath.
Zero casualties—that was true. But the reason wasn't GWA; it was the cutoff cable he'd spent 21,000 BP to lay.
The woman continued reading.
"The cause of the incident is currently under investigation. Preliminary analysis indicates that the core energy of NYC-BK-0447 has experienced abnormal fluctuations over the past two weeks, which is an uncontrollable variable in the natural life cycle of the underground city. GWA will increase the frequency of monitoring the underground city cluster in this area to ensure that similar events do not occur again." The Architect was not mentioned. The man-made fortifications were not mentioned. Gargoyles, ghost wolves, and the blue and white patterns on the ground were not mentioned.
A voice in Allen's head said: Of course not. To mention it would require an explanation. An explanation would require acknowledging the existence of a force they cannot control. GWA's legitimacy rests on the narrative that "we are humanity's only barrier against the underground cities." The fact that an anonymous underground city creator intercepted the eruption faster than they could—if made public, would not only shake a press conference, but the very foundation of the entire organization.
Q&A Session.
The first three questions were like a feeding frenzy—"Will GWA increase patrols in the Red Hook area?" "Will residents need to be temporarily evacuated?" "Were any Awakened injured during the eruption?"
The deputy director answered each question. His wording was smooth, his data precise, and his smile appropriate.
The fourth question.
A woman stood up from the fifth row on the left. She wore a khaki coat, had short hair, and a press pass hanging around her neck bearing an ID Allen recognized from the DeepRift forum—TruthPulse. Independent journalist. Forum verified account.
"Deputy Director, a large amount of online evidence suggests the existence of man-made underground city-type fortifications at the eruption site—gargoyle remains, ghost wolf energy remnants, and photos of blue-white energy patterns taken by GWA's own on-site team. What is your comment on this?" The sounds of keyboards and camera shutters in the press room simultaneously decreased by an order of magnitude.
The Deputy Director's shoulder didn't move, but a muscle above his collarbone twitched.
"We've noticed the various claims online." It was the same smile. The kind that's been glazed over. "Currently, there is no evidence to suggest the existence of any so-called 'man-made underground city force.' The traces found at the site are under further analysis, and we will release the investigation results at the appropriate time."
"When is the appropriate time?" TruthPulse didn't sit down.
"After the investigation, the next question." TruthPulse wanted to press further, but a reporter from a mainstream media outlet stood up and grabbed the microphone.
Allen's attention wasn't on the stage.
He was looking at the bottom right corner of the screen. The last row of the press conference room. The left corner.
A man in a gray suit sat there. The button on his left cuff—Allen brought his phone two centimeters closer.
Tighter than the right cuff.
Robert Chen.
He didn't raise his hand to ask a question. He didn't take notes. He didn't look at his phone. He just sat there, his gaze not following the deputy director on the stage, but scanning the fifth row—the spot where TruthPulse had just stood up.
Allen exited the live stream.
He scanned the comments and live chat for three seconds. Enough. Seventy percent of people didn't believe GWA's account. The top-rated comment: "When GWA arrived, most of the rat monsters were already dead. You call that timely intervention?"
The Architect's name was spreading beyond the forum circle. It was only a matter of time before it reached the edge of mainstream media's field of vision.
Allen locked his screen and opened the management panel.
BP Balance: 3,200.
Time to post a forum thread.
— Architect_00's third post went live at 10:11 AM.
Title: "Brooklyn Warehouse Dungeon Upgraded. Brand New E-Rank. Brand New Theme. Brand New Rules. Bonus Rewards for the First Five Teams to Clear." The post included a map showing the route. Reason for the closure: "Warehouse area road construction, some roads are closed, please use the recommended route."
The route was an L-shaped bend, bypassing the fan-shaped coverage area of the two-centimeter black surveillance patch on the north wall of the warehouse.
Fifteen minutes after the post, the first team arrived.
On the management panel, four green dots entered the warehouse area sequentially along the L-shaped route. Rank markings: E, E, D, D+. A standard E-rank dungeon strategy configuration: front-line tank, DPS, support, and a hybrid DPS/commander.
They jumped down from the crack at the main entrance of the warehouse.
Allen switched to the top-down view. The four green dots landed on the entrance plaza of the ruined city.
The entrance was no longer the gray stone corridor. It was a broken asphalt road. On either side of the road were the ruins of four-story buildings, their concrete walls cracked, steel bars protruding from the cross-sections. Lampposts leaned precariously by the roadside, their lampshades half-broken. The twilight-colored light from the thirty-meter-high sky cast long, dark strips in the shadows of the ruins.
Wind rushed in through the empty window frames of the buildings.
The four points of light paused in the entrance plaza for eleven seconds.
Allen opened the real-time voice pickup function in the customer tracking module—sound waves from inside the dungeon could be captured by the management panel.
The D+ level front-line warrior spoke: "…This isn't a dungeon, this is a city." The healer's reply was almost a whisper: "I don't want to go in."
Allen looked at the BP counter on the management panel. The "immersion score" generated by the four people just standing in the entrance plaza had already begun to accumulate—a new data dimension he had only noticed after the upgrade. The stronger the immersive the environment design, the greater the challenger's emotional fluctuations, and the higher the base BP return.
The four points of light began to move towards the main street.
Building 8. A half-collapsed office building.
The D+ warrior led the way, pushing open a crooked fire door and entering the corridor. Seven steps.
The healer's shout came from behind: "Wait, there's a trap here—" The warrior turned around. The corridor was empty. The healer was thirty meters away on another path; she had been sent out two minutes earlier to scout the flank.
Echoing Phantom.
The window shattered the instant the warrior turned.
A Twilight Hunter leaped from the fourth-floor wreckage platform, its twin daggers slashing across the warrior's shoulder armor. The metallic clang echoed three times through the corridor. The warrior stumbled and crashed into the wall; a second Twilight Hunter had already fallen from the ceiling duct at the end of the corridor.
The team was scattered into three different passageways within nine seconds.
The Echoing Trap activated at the end of the corridor—not a visual effect, but a direct, nerve-wracking "feeling of being watched." The healer's wrist shifted two centimeters the instant he cast his healing spell, and the beam struck the wall.
Total wipeout. Eleven minutes.
[BP+2, 800] Single team.
Allen stared at the number. Previously, in an F+ level dungeon, the average BP contribution of a wiped-out team was 800 to 1200. In an E-level ruined city—more than double that.
The immersion rating in the scoreboard was flashing. The immersion index of these four people in the ruined city was 3.7 times the average of all his previous challengers. The environmental design amplified the effects of the fog of fear and the echoing phantoms, amplifying emotional fluctuations, which translated into BP.
Design earns more money than brute force.
The second team entered at 12:40. A familiar signal icon popped up on the management panel, and the Phantom Mirror's scan data automatically matched—Wayne Drake. D+ level swordsman.
This time he wasn't alone. A four-person team. All D-level or higher.
Wayne paused for three seconds as he stepped into the entrance plaza of the ruined city. Eight seconds faster than the first team.
The management panel picked up his whisper: "Last time it was a church corridor. This time it's a city. This dungeon is growing."
He had experience from last time. He knew this dungeon played mind games. He made sure the team maintained a two-meter distance at all times, prohibiting them from splitting up, and confirming each other's positions every thirty seconds.
The Echoing Phantom fooled them twice. The first time he saw through it—the direction of the sound source was fifteen degrees different from his teammates' actual positions. The second time he didn't see through it because the Echoing Phantom had learned its lesson; it wasn't copying his teammates' words, but their footsteps.
The Mirror Corridor held them back for fifteen seconds. Vayne's sword struck the mirrored wall of the corridor, sparks flying, only then realizing the direction was reversed.
Finally, they cleared the dungeon. Thirty-seven minutes. The team member with the lowest health dropped to eleven percent.
[BP+1, 600] The dungeon completion loot customization system was activated automatically. A D-grade longsword appeared on Wayne's loot panel—72 centimeters long, with a center of gravity two centimeters back, suitable for his slashing swordsmanship style.
Allen watched Wayne pick up the sword on the management panel. His fingers rubbed the hilt for five seconds. Then he sheathed his old sword.
[Current BP Balance: 7,700] 2 PM. The third team entered. The fourth team was in the queue. The forum post's comment section had already exceeded three hundred posts.
Allen's attention shifted from the dungeon's interior to the external surveillance.
The Black Serpent monitor on the north wall of the warehouse. A data pulse every thirty minutes. Direction: Northeast. Four kilometers away.
He watched six cycles of pulses. Precise to the second. Each pulse lasted 0.3 seconds, with a stable data packet size. Standard low-power monitoring protocol—snapshot, compress, send, hibernate.
The Black Serpent was collecting data on the flow of people around the warehouse. The number of adventurer teams, their entry and exit times, and equipment levels. He could guess the content without even opening the data packets. VictorStone was conducting a feasibility assessment. How many people would this dungeon attract daily? How many resources would it produce? How much was it worth?
Let him see.
Allen opened the customer tracking module in the management panel and pulled up the entry and exit records for all teams today. Then he did something extra—he deleted the L-shaped detour route from the post and replaced it with a new one. The new route deliberately skirted the edge of the surveillance camera's coverage area.
The angle was calculated. The camera could capture the adventurers' silhouettes and equipment outlines, but not their faces. Enough for Black Serpent to confirm: the dungeon's visitor traffic was increasing.
Feed the data. Feed the kind of data that makes you hungrier the more you look at it.
His phone vibrated. A DeepRift forum notification. Not a comment alert.
A new post was pushed to his following list by the system.
Poster: Wayne Drake (Verified D+ Rank Swordsman)
Title: "Brooklyn Warehouse Underground City Second Test Report - This underground city is even more terrifying than the last one. But the loot is worth risking your life for. Five stars." The comment section is exploding.
Allen didn't read the comments. His attention was drawn to an anomaly that suddenly popped up at the bottom of the management panel.
Customer Tracking Module. New Data.
Not Lena. Not Wayne. Not Black Serpent.
A signal source that has never appeared before. Location: 300 meters south of the warehouse area. The level label only has one symbol—a horizontal bar. Unreadable.
The signal feature analysis automatically ran for 0.4 seconds before returning the results.
Similarity to Allen's underground city core energy signature: 37%.
Not zero. Not one hundred. Thirty-seven.
The management panel attempted a deep scan. The scan wave was sent out, hit something, and bounced back. A prompt appeared on the screen.
[Target signal source has an anti-scanning barrier. Insufficient scanning permissions. Recommendation: Upgrade underground city perception to level C or above.] 300 meters. The shadow perception's coverage radius was fifteen meters. The underground city perception could detect the signal's presence, but couldn't penetrate the barrier.
Allen stood up. He walked to the stairwell of the parking lot's backup exit. South side. Three hundred meters away.
Nothing to see. Brooklyn streets in daylight: pedestrians, vehicles, the gray facade of a six-story apartment building.
On the control panel, the light from the signal source paused for twelve seconds at three hundred meters.
Then it moved.
Southward. Slowly. Walking speed.
Two hundred seconds later, the light disappeared beyond the five-kilometer boundary of the underground city perception.
Allen's hand rested on the stair railing. The rusted iron pipes dug into his knuckles.
Thirty-seven percent.
AbyssWalker_01's post flashed through my mind.
"The Architect is not human." The closed black eye icon in the lower left corner of the management panel flashed.