The message originated from within the dungeon.
Allen took a screenshot of the tracking results from the management panel and saved it to his notes. Then he closed the tracking interface. Now wasn't the time to deal with this.
He took out his phone and dialed Robert Chen's number.
It rang three times. He answered.
"Robert Chen?" There was a half-second silence on the other end. The background noise was the low hum of the air conditioner and the sound of turning pages.
"...Who are you?"
"An E-rank Awakened living in the Red Hook District. Tonight, Victor Stone brought eight people and stood outside my door for three minutes. You'll be interested in what he has to say." Four seconds. The sound of turning pages stopped.
Then Robert Chen said something Allen hadn't prepared for.
"Allen Grey." Allen's thumb pressed the volume button on the side of the phone, the pressure on his fingertip jumping from three Newtons to eight Newtons.
"E+ rank—no. Based on your demonstrated combat capabilities, D rank. Right?" A drop of water dripped from the drainpipe. The trajectory was vertical. The S-level pressure field had receded from its influence. The parking lot was quiet again.
"Your voiceprint is in GWA's database. Recorded on the day of the Awakening Ceremony. Ten thousand people were present, and every word spoken by each person as they stepped onto the altar is archived. You said 'I'm ready' on the altar. Two words, that's enough." Allen's head was pressed against a concrete pillar.
Two words.
His last words before stepping onto the altar during the Awakening Ceremony. One and a half seconds before the golden light swept over his body. He thought those words were drowned out by the noise of ten thousand people in the hall.
GWA's voiceprint acquisition accuracy was two orders of magnitude higher than he had estimated.
"You want to talk about Victor Stone," Robert's voice came through the receiver, "and I want to talk about it too. But I'd rather talk about something else." The closed black eye icon in the lower left corner of the management panel flashed.
"The dungeon in your basement. Shall we meet and talk?" Allen's thumb moved away from the volume button and rested on the edge of the screen.
"Not in your office."
"Then tell me."
"Red Hook District. Public place."
"Okay. Send me the address." Allen hung up. He searched on the map for forty seconds. Three blocks north of Coffin Street, a 24-hour laundromat. Two security cameras; one had been broken for at least three months, and the other had a blind spot of three square meters in the southwest corner of the shop. There was a two-person table and two plastic chairs in that corner.
He sent the address.
— One of the fluorescent tubes in the laundromat was flashing. The frequency was unstable, once every seven to twelve seconds. Allen sat on the plastic chair in the southwest corner, his left hand resting on the edge of the metal tabletop, a small piece of which was peeling off, cutting his hand.
Robert Chen arrived two minutes early.
A gray suit. The left cuff button was half a turn tighter than the right. Exactly the way he was dressed in the GWA press conference livestream footage. The bell rang as he pushed open the door. He glanced around the store—three washing machines running, a woman wearing headphones folding clothes, no one behind the counter.
He walked to a corner. Before sitting down, he moved the laundry detergent advertisement on the table.
Three centimeters. To the right.
The eye contact between them was now completely clear.
A professional habit. He needed to see every movement of the other person's facial muscles. Allen mentally labeled this action: an interrogator's subconscious.
"You're younger than I thought." Robert sat down, the bottom buttons of his suit jacket undone. "Twenty-two?"
"You're in the database."
"Yes. It's polite to ask." Allen didn't take the phone. He pushed it across the table. Screen up. The audio player's progress bar was stuck at zero seconds.
"Victor Stone. 11:37 PM tonight. Main street, Warehouse Street, Red Hook District. Three cars. Eight people. One S-class, two A-class, three B-class, two C-class. He stood on the street and spoke for forty-two seconds." Allen pressed play.
Victor Stone's voice flowed from the phone's speaker. Deep. Equal spacing. The sound of the washing machine masked some details, but every word was recognizable.
"…You opened a shop on my turf. I don't mind. But you publicly said you wouldn't work with me—this isn't a business decision. This is a slap in my face."
"You have forty-eight hours. Sign the contract—or your adventurer clients will find that Red Hook District has suddenly become very unsafe." The recording ended. The progress bar reached the end.
Allen had edited this in the external audio monitor on the management panel. All system notification sounds were cut off. Only Victor Stone's original voice and ambient noise remained.
Robert didn't move during the recording. No frown, no nod, no leaning back. His posture was the same as before he pressed play.
"What do you want me to do with this?"
"A formal GWA warning letter. Article 7 of the Awakened Code of Conduct. It prohibits high-level Awakened from using force or economic coercion to force lower-level Awakened to sign involuntary contracts. Deliver it to Victor Stone within forty-eight hours."
"You know Victor Stone is S-rank. A GWA warning letter for him—"
"It's not a constraint. It's a signal." Allen pushed his glasses up slightly.
"He's not afraid of the GWA. But he cares about the GWA's attention. An S-rank Awakened's freedom of action is based on the premise that the GWA 'doesn't pay special attention.' A warning letter won't stop him, but it lets him know—someone is watching. The cost difference between acting in the shadows and acting under the spotlight is three orders of magnitude." Robert tapped his index finger twice on the table. The sound of his fingernail hitting the metal was brief, mostly swallowed by the hum of the washing machine.
"Your analysis is accurate. For a D-rank Awakened."
"For any level of Awakened." Robert didn't refute. He pulled a folder from his suit jacket pocket. Brown kraft paper. Creases at the edges. He opened it.
Three photos.
First: An aerial photograph of an abandoned parking lot in the warehouse district. The location of pillar P2-17 is marked with a red circle.
Second: A close-up of blue and white stripes on an open ground. A set of spectral data—an energy signature analysis report—is printed in the lower right corner.
Third: Allen's profile at the alley entrance. A streetlamp shines from the left. His hood is up. Half his face and a pair of thin-rimmed glasses.
The source attribution is printed on the white border at the bottom. Handwritten. Claire DuPont. GWA Rapid Response Force.
"Allen. I'll save you some performance time." Robert laid the three photos out in a row on the table. The photo paper made a dry, scraping sound on the metal tabletop. A laundry detergent billboard was pushed to the corner of the table.
Allen's right hand slid under the table. Resting on the armrest of the chair. Fingers gripped the edge of the plastic, the pressure of knuckles making the cheap plastic produce a soft click.
Three photos. Parking lot. Texture. His face.
Claire DuPont had walked for less than ten minutes that night in the open space. Allen thought she'd only collected the texture and gargoyle remains.
She'd also photographed the alleyway entrance.
The hood of the window was blown open by the wind for less than a second. Claire was three hundred meters away. But standard equipment for GWA rapid reaction forces included a tactical recorder. Automatic capture. AI facial recognition.
One second was enough.
"If I wanted to grab you right now, do you think you could walk out of this laundromat?" Allen didn't answer.
The washing machine spun three times.
"But I'm not going to grab you." Robert closed the folder.
"There are two opinions within GWA about The Architect. The first—you're a threat and should be controlled. That's the majority opinion. The second—you're an asset and should be cooperated with." He pushed the folder in front of Allen.
"I'm the second type. But I need you to give me a reason to convince the higher-ups." Allen's hand slipped from the armrest of his chair and rested on the table. The edge of the photographic paper pricked his little finger.
"What reason?"
"A dungeon outbreak occurs, and you issue a ten-hour warning and independently deploy the defenses. GWA's system can only issue two to four hours' warnings. If your warning capability is stable and reproducible—that alone makes you worthy of GWA's protection, not control."
"You want me to demonstrate?"
"No demonstration needed. The next time there are abnormal dungeon fluctuations in the Red Hook area or surrounding areas, notify me in advance. If your warning is more than six hours earlier than GWA's system—I'll have leverage to negotiate with the higher-ups." Allen mentally ran through the risk model. Dungeon perception is a passive skill, with a five-kilometer radius and automatic detection. Give Robert a warning—without revealing the skill name, the data source, or any core function of the Dungeon Architect. Robert will only know that "Allen Grey can detect dungeon anomalies in advance." It could be a skill, equipment, or an intelligence network. The source doesn't matter. The result matters.
"Deal. You handle Victor Stone's matter now." Robert tapped his index finger on the table again. This time, only once.
"Within twenty-four hours." Allen didn't haggle. Twenty-four hours. Victor Stone's deadline was forty-eight. There was a twenty-four-hour buffer. Enough.
Robert stood up. The hem of his suit jacket fell, obscuring the outline of the GWA communicator at his waist. He pushed his chair back under the table. He took a step.
Stopped.
"Allen." The washing machine switched speeds at this moment. The hum lowered by half a note. A woman wearing headphones walked out of the store carrying folded clothes. The bell rang. Only two people remained in the store.
"Your parents—Paul Gray and Susan Gray." Allen's spine locked from tailbone to cervical vertebrae.
"Three years ago, the S-class underground city of Manhattan erupted. The official report said it was an 'unforeseen natural disaster.'" Robert's back was turned to Allen. The shoulder line of his gray suit cut two right angles under the fluorescent light.
"I didn't write that report. But I read it. Seven times." A pause. The washing machine spun halfway.
"Each time I read it, I found something wrong." He glanced back at Allen. The fluorescent light flickered just as it went out, so Allen couldn't see his face clearly. But his words bounced back and forth between the tiled walls of the laundromat, every word clear.
"That outbreak wasn't a natural disaster, Allen. Someone inside GWA detected the anomaly forty-eight hours in advance. The alarm was manually shut off." The washing machine switched back to high speed. The hum filled the store again. Allen sat in a plastic chair, his hands flat on the table, a photograph tucked under his right pinky. His ten fingers didn't move.
Manually shut off.
Someone sat in front of the GWA's monitoring terminal. They saw the anomaly. They reached out. They pressed the shut-off button.
Then twenty-three thousand people died.
"I can't tell you more now. But if you want to know the truth—you need to live long enough and climb high enough." Robert pushed open the laundromat door. A bell rang. The spring on the door slowly pulled the glass door shut.
The door closed.
Allen sat in the corner. The fluorescent light flickered again. The manila folder on the table was still there, the one Robert had left for him. Three photos. The parking lot, the lines, his own profile.
He looked down at his hands. Flat on the metal tabletop. The edges of his fingernails dug into his palms. Four curved white marks.
The alarm had been manually turned off.
Forty-eight hours. Someone inside GWA knew forty-eight hours in advance that Manhattan would erupt. Not a system malfunction. Not a signal leak. A hand reached out and pressed a button.
Paul Gray. Susan Gray. Twenty-three thousand names. A button.
The washing machine timer jumped to zero. The drum stopped. The store fell silent, save for the hum of the fluorescent lights.
Allen put the folder into his hoodie pocket. His old left leg ached as he stood up. He didn't stop. He pushed open the door. The bell rang.
The streets of Brooklyn. Dawn was breaking. The distant whirring of a sanitation truck could be heard.
— Parking lot, underground level two.
Allen didn't lean back against pillar P2-17. He stood beside the diamond-shaped opening and opened the management panel.
BP Balance: 18,400.
The cooldown for the Domain Expansion function was over. He scrolled down the function description. At the very bottom was a line of small print he hadn't noticed before.
[Advanced Application—Environmental Lockdown: Sets the domain expansion range to a closed structure (cage/sphere). All targets within the enclosed area are subject to environmental suppression corresponding to the dungeon level. Level E environmental lockdown applies full suppression to targets below level E, partial suppression to targets of levels D-C, and is ineffective against targets of level B and above. Cost: 8,000 BP (50-meter radius sphere).] Ineffective against targets of level B and above.
Victor Stone is level S. Two A-level thugs. Three B-level thugs.
Environmental blockade can only suppress those two C-level thugs.
Not enough. Far from it.
But E-level is now. D-level is next month. C-level is three months from now.
Allen wrote a line in his memo.
"Upgrade = Caliber." Deleted. Rewrote.
"Upgrade = Cage thickness." A blue notification suddenly popped up on the management panel. Customer tracking system. Not a notification of a new challenger's entry.
It was the tracking result he had saved in his memo—AbyssWalker_01's data, the backend comparison was complete.
Allen clicked on it.
The system automatically compared AbyssWalker_01's forum behavior traces, login time distribution, and IP address pattern. The result was in three lines.
First line: [IP address source tracking result: No fixed geographical coordinates. The signal jumped fourteen base station nodes in six hours, and the movement trajectory does not match any known human transportation methods.] Second line: [Signal characteristics highly match the core energy signature of the natural underground city. Match rate: 91%.] Third line: [Conclusion: The access source of this account is not any known human network device. Speculation—the account originated from within an underground city.] Allen's finger stopped at the last period of the third line.
An underground city.
On a forum.
Typing.
Saying "The Architect is not human."