The synthesis progress bar is stuck at 7%.
A red warning pops up on the management panel.
[Synthesis interrupted. Catalyst missing. Synthesis of a D-grade artificial core fragment requires 1 E-grade core fragment as a crystallization catalyst. Current inventory: 0.] Allen's back jolted off pillar P2-17.
E-grade core fragment. He'd only ever handled one—the grayish-green crystal he'd salvaged from the Boss's room in the Ash Sewers, which he'd fed entirely to the upgrade path from F+ to E three days ago.
Inventory depleted. 20,000 BP already deducted. The progress bar is stuck at 7%, neither advancing nor retreating. Without the catalyst, those 20,000 BP are wasted.
The natural dungeons within a 5-kilometer radius flashed through his mind.
Ash Sewers—dormant, the core hasn't regenerated yet. Rat Nest—D-grade, managed by Black Serpent; he'd been there once before, going back wouldn't be harassment, it would be a declaration of war. The remaining two E-grade dungeons both bear serpent insignia.
Every dungeon requires a boss fight, every dungeon carries the risk of being discovered by the Black Serpent, and every dungeon requires him to be at least in D- status to have any chance of surviving.
The crafting interface flashed at the bottom.
A line of small gray text appeared below the progress bar. The font was ridiculously small; Allen had to bring his face to within fifteen centimeters of the panel to see it.
[Alternative Catalyst Path: Uses the Dungeon Architect's own core energy as a catalyst. Cost: 30% of the Architect's current health + 24-hour stamina recovery period. Risk Warning: This path is irreversible.] Trading his life for it.
The blue light from the diamond-shaped opening flickered on his face.
The old wound on his left thigh twitched under the bandage—not from pain, but his body was checking its records. When was the last time this leg was almost ruined? The night of the rat monster outbreak. Two weeks ago. The bandage wasn't even completely removed yet.
Thirty percent.
Three-tenths of full health gone, seventy percent remaining. He won't die. But within 24 hours, his attributes dropped by one sub-level, from D- to E+. He couldn't fight, couldn't run, and even getting up too quickly required support from a wall.
Another path: Clear out a natural dungeon. The Black Serpent's verification process, the output of a D-level boss, the chain reaction of identity exposure—each link had a failure probability of no less than 40%.
This path: It hurts. He'll be bedridden for a day.
Allen clicked on the [Alternative Catalyst Path] on the synthesis interface.
[Artificial Core Fragment Synthesis · Restart. Path: Self-Catalysis. Health Consumption: 30%.]
[Warning: This path will directly extract the symbiotic energy of the Architect and the Heart of the Dungeon. The process cannot be stopped.]
[Confirm? Y/N]
Y.
He felt nothing for the first half second.
Then, it felt like a hand was gripping the center of his chest from the inside—not the sharp pain of a broken rib. The bones were still in place, but the contents inside were being pulled out.
Bone marrow? No. Deeper than bone marrow.
Allen's back slammed into pillar P2-17, his head hitting the concrete. The dull thud echoed twice across the second basement level of the parking garage. His mouth opened, but no sound came out—his diaphragm spasmed, air trapped in his trachea for two and a half seconds.
The health bar on the management panel began to plummet from full.
Ninety-two percent.
Eighty-five percent.
Seventy-seven percent.
With each number, the throbbing in his chest tightened. Not from the outside. It felt like being peeled away from his very core—like someone inserting fingers into every vein, pulling along the flow of blood towards the diamond-shaped opening.
His vision blurred at the edges. His fingertips grew cold, his toes grew cold. His body was constricting peripheral blood flow, diverting all resources to his heart and brain.
Seventy-one percent.
Seventy percent.
It stopped.
It jumped twice. It stabilized.
Allen's head remained pressed against the pillar, motionless. The throbbing in his chest subsided within three seconds, leaving a dull, aching sensation. Like the feeling in his pectoral muscles after a hundred push-ups—but not muscle soreness, but something deeper inside had emptied out.
The blue light from the diamond-shaped opening converged before his eyes.
It spun. Twisted into a spiral. The color deepened layer by layer from the bottom—blue, indigo, cobalt blue, and then another shade deeper, nameless, a near-pure black, almost completely devoid of light.
The spiral spun smaller and denser, the light density increasing, a subtle, high-frequency vibration appearing in the air—not sound, but a molecular-level vibration, palpable even to the roots of his teeth.
Thirty seconds.
The spiral collapsed.
A fist-sized crystal floated above the diamond-shaped opening.
Deep blue. Its surface was so smooth it was devoid of any texture. There were no spiderweb-like aging cracks like those on natural core fragments—this one was new, alive. The internal light pulses pulsated, rhythmically synchronized with Allen's heart rate.
One heartbeat, one flash of the crystal.
Two heartbeats, two flashes of the crystal.
It grew from within his body.
The crystal settled in his palm. Warm. Not the temperature of stone, not the temperature of metal. Body temperature. Thirty-six and a half degrees. There was no temperature difference between it and the skin of his hand.
[D-grade artificial core fragment - synthesis complete. Quality: Self-Forged.] Allen held the crystal up to his eyes.
Blue light refracted onto the lenses, creating two bright spots, one on the left and one on the right, landing precisely at the position of his pupils. The internal light pulses pulsated, rhythmically steady—unlike his currently rapid heart rate.
No, they were the same. His heart rate was decreasing.
He was tracking the crystal's rhythm.
The description in the blueprint shop flashed through his mind.
"No need to conquer other people's dungeons. The architect himself is the mine." Allen stuffed the crystal into the inner pocket of his hoodie. He zipped it up. The sound of metal teeth meshing mingled with the dripping of water from the drainpipe.
He held the upgrade key in his hand.
But his BP balance was 8,700. The upgrade required 15,000. He was 6,300 short.
A countdown popped up above the management panel.
[Stamina Recovery in Progress: 23 hours 56 minutes. Attributes temporarily decreased by one sub-level during the recovery period (D-→E+).] Allen leaned back against the pillar. He closed his eyes. He did the math.
The automated operation of the ruined city, the default monster AI patrols, and the preset trap triggers. Without his manual fine-tuning of the targeted deployment of Fear Echo and the optimization of the Twilight Hunter's landing point, the immersion score would drop by 15% to 20%. But the basic BP output was still there—300 to 400 per hour.
Twenty hours. He'd accumulate enough. He'd act before the recovery period ended.
He tried adjusting his posture. His lumbar spine protested. The empty feeling in his chest lingered, like a machine missing a part but still functioning for the time being.
He could endure it.
Allen lay down. His back pressed against the concrete floor. The coolness of the ground seeped into his spine through his hoodie. Drains dripped overhead, each drop echoing as it hit the concrete at his feet.
The management panel shrank to a corner of his vision. The BP counter jumped a number every few minutes. The ruined city was still functioning. Twilight Hunters patrolled the rooftops, Rift Spiders spun webs on the overpasses, and Echoing Phantoms mimicked the footsteps of the previous group in the underground passages.
His city could kill without him.
Consciousness blurred at the edge of this thought.
— Sixth hour of recovery.
The notification sound from the management panel pulled Allen from his half-asleep state.
Not a blue border.
Not red.
Gray. The format was exactly the same as the unknown signal from two days ago.
[Unknown signal source reappears. Location: 280 meters south of the warehouse area] Signal signature similarity to the dungeon's core energy signature: 38%. Status: Moving. Direction—Approaching your dungeon. ] Allen sat up.
The speed exceeded his body's limits. His lumbar spine locked for a moment, the dull pain in his chest leaped two steps higher, and fine beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. His E+ attribute was like a coat a size too small; every joint reminded him—you're not D- anymore.
He stared at the dot on the management panel.
280 meters.
250.
220.
1.5 meters per second. Walking speed. Unhurried. Not chasing. Not patrolling. Walking.
The management panel attempted a deep scan—the signal was emitted, encountered something, and bounced back. An anti-scanning barrier. Exactly the same as last time. Impenetrable.
190 meters.
180 meters.
Stopped.
The same distance as last time. 180 meters.
Allen's back was pressed against pillar P2-17. Sweat trickled down his hairline, down his temples, and into his ears. E+'s perception range was only twelve meters—anything beyond one hundred and eighty meters could only be seen as a gray dot through the data on his management panel.
He couldn't see its shape. He couldn't see its size. He couldn't see if it was human, beast, or something else.
He only knew that it had a 38% overlap with the dungeon core's energy signature. Last time it was 37%.
It had increased by one percentage point.
A gray notification popped up. The font was extremely small.
[External signal source is attempting to establish a resonance channel with your dungeon core…]
[Resonance request blocked by the dungeon firewall.]
[Signal content (fragment intercepted): "...Fellow race…not an enemy…needs…dialogue…"] Fellow race.
Allen's ten fingers pressed against the concrete floor. His fingertips were icy cold. The emptiness in his chest twitched the moment that word appeared—not a physiological reaction. It was the inscription under the floorboards from three days ago resurfacing in his memory.
"The architect's seed... has been sown in the crack..."
He is the seed.
Is that thing 180 meters away also a seed?
No resonance channel. No response. No proactive action.
Allen suppressed all his instinctive curiosity. E+ attributes, 70% health, old wounds still healing. If this thing crossed 180 meters and reached him—he would even have difficulty standing.
He opened the signal archive module on the management panel.
Time, coordinates, movement speed, acceleration curve, frequency pattern of resonance request, fluctuation range of signal strength—extracted and archived item by item. Every data field was timestamped, accurate to milliseconds.
Next time it comes, he needs to be able to predict its location and time window.
The signal stopped 180 meters away for eleven minutes.
Allen counted six hundred and sixty seconds. Not a second off.
Then the light spot moved. Retreating along the same path. One and a half meters per second. Unhurried. The same speed as when it came.
Two hundred seconds later, the point of light disappeared beyond the five-kilometer boundary perceived by the underground city.
Allen slid off the pillar, his head hitting the concrete floor.
The water droplet hanging from the drainpipe on the ceiling finally gathered enough weight and fell, landing on the back of his left hand. Cold.
First time. A post on the forum. Five kilometers away.
Second time. Three hundred meters.
Third time. One hundred and eighty meters.
Next time will be closer.
—Eighteenth hour of recovery.
BP balance: 16,350.
The number quietly lit up in the upper right corner of the management panel. The shortfall had been covered, leaving a surplus of 1,350. The automated operation of the ruined city was more efficient than he had anticipated—although visitor traffic was low from early morning to morning, those who came were all high-level adventurers, with maximum immersion scores, and individual team BP contributions far exceeding the daytime average.
His phone rang.
Lina.
"Your dungeon's been upgraded?" No small talk.
"How did you know?"
"I was standing outside the warehouse." Her voice was low, as if she were covering a microphone. "The air's different. Before, when I passed through this area, it felt cool on my skin, like a refrigerator door opening. Now it's oppressive. It's coming up from underground, the soles of my feet are shaking. The whole street is shaking." Passive energy radiation from a D-level dungeon. Its radius is three times larger than an E-level. Within fifty meters of the warehouse's perimeter, any Awakened-level perception can pick up this signal.
No need to hide it anymore. Ever since the day the visitor traffic reached the top of the forum, the warehouse dungeon has been no secret. Now it's just gone from a "hot topic on the forum" to a "fact you can feel under your feet."
"Bring Guts. I need you to test the new boss."
"What level?"
"A-level." The background noise on the phone disappeared.
Even the wind stopped.
Three seconds.
"What did you say?"
"Not that you have to win. I have to see how long you can survive."
Four seconds. This time it was longer than three seconds.
Allen heard Lina inhale on the other end of the phone. Not a deep breath—it was the kind of air that seeped in through the gaps after her teeth had bitten something down.
"...Is your boss out of his mind?"
"Tomorrow. Two in the afternoon. Front door."
She hung up.
Allen stared at the screen where the call had ended. The screen wasn't locked. Lina was C-rank, Guts was D-rank. A-rank wasn't "high-rank" to her—it was another species.
He led the two into a room containing an A-rank monster.
Testing.
Testing the Abyss Watchers. Not them. But they didn't know.
Allen locked the screen. He placed the phone on the ground.
Closed his eyes. The last six hours.
—Recovery period reduced to zero.
Attribute rebound. D-. Full value.
Allen sat up from the concrete floor. No dizziness, no chest tightness. His body felt like a machine being fully recharged—no, clearer than before. After thirty percent of his life force had been drained and then replenished, the energy flow in his veins had changed. Smoother. Like a riverbed dredged.
A side effect of self-catalysis? Or a harbinger of an upgrade?
It doesn't matter.
On the management panel, the BP income records for the last six hours are scrolling.
A four-man B-rank team sneaked into the ruined city at 3 AM. Their setup was professional—a B-rank tank in the front line, a B-rank DPS, a C+ rank healer, and a C-rank controller. They stood in the entrance plaza for less than four seconds before starting their advance. Their tactical discipline far surpassed all previous teams.
They cleared the first twenty combat zones. The Twilight Hunter didn't scare them—the tank's reaction speed was fast enough, drawing a shield wall within 0.3 seconds for each aerial attack. The Rift Spider's web was frozen brittle by the controller's ice skills, shattering with a single step.
The Echoing Phantom tricked them once.
The healer fell for it. She followed a fake cry for help into the Mirror Corridor. By the time she realized the direction had completely reversed, she had already turned three corners in the underground passage.
The remaining three remained silent. Twenty-seven minutes had passed.
The Corrupted Sentinels blocked their path at Crossroads Thirty-Two. A B-rank attack sparked against the Sentinels' iron-gray armor, but the wound healed within two seconds. They attempted a detour—circling into the cross-hunting area between Twilight Hunters and Echoes of Fear.
Total annihilation.
[BP +8,200] Allen stared at the number. A B-rank team. Total annihilation. Not a single person reached the door to Room Fifty.
Current BP balance: 24,550.
He pulled the deep blue core fragment from his hoodie pocket.
Warm. Still body temperature. The internal light pulses were still beating, synchronized with his heart rate.
He pressed the crystal into the diamond-shaped opening.
The instant the crystal sank, blue light enveloped it, like water swallowing a pebble. No sound. No splash. Only the density of light around the opening suddenly increased by three orders of magnitude.
A confirmation box popped up on the management panel.
[Upgrade Path: Rank E → Rank D. Cost: Rank D Core Fragment × 1 + 15,000 BP.]
[Confirm? Y/N]
Y.
The ground beneath his feet convulsed.
It wasn't an earthquake—it was the Heart of the Dungeon expanding. Three pieces of concrete fell from pillar P2-17, the largest scattering dust next to Allen's shoulder. The diamond-shaped beam of light surged—shooting straight from the ground to the ceiling, burning a fist-sized white mark onto the concrete slab. The heat penetrated two layers of concrete.
Allen took a step back. The intense heat of the beam of light washed over his face, a dry, hot breeze condensing on his glasses before instantly evaporating.
The data lines on the management panel began to flash. One after another. The speed was three times faster than any update he had ever seen.
[Dungeon Upgrade in progress... E-rank → D-rank. Complete.]
[Room Capacity: 30 → 50]
[New Monster Slots: +8]
[Level 3 Trap Blueprint Unlocked] Allen's eyes stopped on the fifth line.
[New Feature Unlocked - Rule Imposition - Basic Version] He clicked on the description.
The text unfolded line by line.
[Custom rules can be added to specific areas. Currently available rule types:]
[-Disable the use of specific attribute skills]
[--Gravity Modification (0.5x - 3x)]
[--Perception Interference Field]
[--Time Limit Mechanism] Disable the use of specific attribute skills.
VictorStone. Strength type. S-rank.
If he stepped into an area where "strength-based skills are prohibited"—the most crucial column in his S-rank attribute panel would instantly drop to zero. His remaining constitution and agility wouldn't be enough to support the overwhelming power of an S-rank opponent.
Allen mentally simulated this for two seconds.
Then he suppressed the thought.
Not now. The probability of a D-rank rule enhancement taking effect on an S-rank target—he glanced at the small gray text at the bottom of the description—was less than fifteen percent.
To crush an S-rank strength-based opponent, the rule enhancement would need to be at least B-rank.
But the direction was right.
He didn't need to be stronger than VictorStone. He needed to get VictorStone into a room where "fighting" was useless.
Blueprint Library.
He scrolled to the top.
The Abyss Watcher's thumbnail was at the very top of the blueprint list. The lines of the jet-black armor outlined a two-and-a-half-meter-tall figure in the preview window, its dark red pupils gleaming through the helmet's gaps. Idle mode.
Allen opened the deployment interface.
[Abyss Watcher - Rank A Boss Monster]
[Deployment Requirements: Dungeon Level ≥ Rank D. ✓]
[Deployment Cost: 5,000 BP. Current Balance: 9,550. Sufficient.]
[Deployment Location Selection—] Allen switches to an overhead view of the ruined city. Fifty combat zones are scattered throughout the skeleton of the dead city. The outermost layer is the entrance plaza and main street network, the middle layer is a cluster of building ruins and an underground passage system, and the deepest layer— Room Fifty.
The heart of the ruined city.
To get here from the entrance plaza, you have to traverse forty-nine combat zones. The Twilight Hunter's rooftop hunting grounds, the Rift Spider's skybridge network, the Echoing Phantom's underground labyrinth, the Corrupted Sentinel's crossroads blockade, and two upgraded Rank E Boss nodes.
A Rank B four-man team was wiped out after clearing thirty-two zones.
Those who survived to reach Room Fifty—if any—had already traversed the entire dead city.
Every potion on their person was empty. Every piece of equipment was nearing its durability limit. The healer didn't have enough mana to cast another group heal. The tank's shield had cracked three times.
Then they would push open the last door.
[Deploy Abyss Watcher to Room 50? Confirm? Y/N]
Y.
The monitoring screen on the management panel automatically switched to Room 50.
The lights went out.
Not that the light source was turned off—it was being absorbed.
The phosphorescent moss on the walls began to wither from the edges, the green fluorescence fading in clusters, as if something was sucking it in. The twilight glow projected from the ruined city's sky was cut off at the threshold—the light stopped at that line, as if hitting an invisible wall.
Inside the threshold, pure black.
The darkness wasn't empty.
It was moving.
Allen stared at the monitor. The darkness converged in the center of the room, forming a slowly rotating columnar structure. The rotation wasn't fast—one revolution every three seconds—but with each revolution, the density of the darkness increased by one layer. From translucent to opaque. From opaque to light-absorbing.
A hand emerges from the columnar darkness.
Pitch-black armor gloves. The joints of the knuckles are seamless, as if cast from a single piece of metal. The surface of the plates reflects no light—even the night vision mode of the surveillance footage can only capture a silhouette.
Fingers come together. Gripping the hilt of a greatsword.
There is no gap between the hilt and the glove. As if they were grown together.
A broad blade. One and a half meters long. No patterns. No forging marks. No blood grooves. The blade surface is as smooth as a black mirror, yet it reflects nothing.
Then comes the shoulder armor.
Then the breastplate.
Then the helmet.
A two-and-a-half-meter-tall body emerges from the darkness, the tip of the greatsword embedded in the gravelly ground. The moment the tip enters the ground, there is no sound—no gravel flies, no cracks appear in the ground. The sword simply sinks in, as if into water.
Allen's hand rested on the edge of the management panel. His fingertips could feel the panel vibrating slightly—the frequency matching the pulse of the Dungeon Heart.
The status bar expanded on the right side of the screen.
[Abyss Watcher - Lv.1 (Initial State)]
[Rank: A]
[Strength: ??? Agility: ??? Constitution: ??? Intelligence: ??? Perception: ???]
[Trait: Adaptive Evolution - Cannot be killed twice by the same means. Regenerates after each kill, immune to attacks that cause death. Adaptation Count: 0/∞]
[Current Form: Initial State. Awaiting the first challenger.] Cannot be killed twice by the same means.
If you kill it with a sword the first time, the sword won't work the second time. If you burn it to death the first time, the fire won't burn through it the second time. Each death adds a layer of immunity.
The more ways to kill it, the harder it is to kill.
Allen scrolled to the bottom of the status bar. All the attributes were question marks. Not hidden—the initial state didn't have fixed values. The Abyss Watcher's attributes dynamically adjust based on the challenger's level. The upper limit of A-rank combat power is against A-rank challengers. The lower limit of A-rank combat power is against B-rank challengers. Always slightly stronger than the opponent, but never overwhelming. Giving the challenger hope. Then, just when the challenger thinks victory is imminent, adaptive evolution is activated.
Allen used to think this design was brilliant when he read this description in the blueprint instructions.
Now, looking at that two-and-a-half-meter-tall black silhouette on the monitor, he finds the design disgusting.
It's his own disgust.
The Abyss Watcher stands in the darkness. Every joint of the armor is locked in a standard stance. The greatsword hangs at its side. Motionless.
Then its head moves.
Slowly. Like a machine starting up and warming up. A very faint metallic scraping sound comes from the meshing of the neck and shoulder armor—the monitoring audio channel picks it up, a short spike jumps on the waveform.
A light shines from the helmet's gaps.
Dark red. Two dots. Not the kind of light from a glowing object—it's like two holes burned into the darkness, and something is watching from behind them.
It wasn't looking at the doorway.
It wasn't looking at the wall.
Its dark red pupils were fixed on the surveillance camera.
The image jittered for a frame. Not signal interference. The surveillance equipment itself resonated physically under that gaze. The status bar of the management panel flickered—the font on the entire interface shifted by 0.5 pixels before bouncing back to its original position.
A new note appeared at the bottom of the status bar.
The font was different from the standard format of the management panel.
Narrower. Denseer. Uneven character spacing. Not the system-generated standard text layout—it was as if something had squeezed a line of text into the gaps in the management panel's code.
["I'm here. Let them come."] Allen pulled his finger back from the edge of the panel.
He stared at the line of text for five seconds.
The blueprint for the Abyss Watcher didn't mention that it could talk. A-rank boss monsters have basic AI, capable of recognizing threats, planning tactics, and adjusting strategies during combat—but generating language information and writing it into the management panel?
That wasn't within the blueprint's functionality.
Who wrote this line of text? Was it the Abyss Watcher itself? The system? Or—the closed black eye in the lower left corner of the management panel?
Allen shifted his gaze to the lower left corner.
The eye icon didn't flash. It remained quietly closed.
In the monitor, the Abyss Watcher's dark red pupils were still fixed on the camera. It didn't move. The greatsword was embedded in the rubble, its armor plates perfectly still.
But the two red dots in the helmet's seams were like two nails, driven into the very center of the monitor screen.
Allen exited the monitoring interface.
The management panel returned to its standard display. BP counter, blueprint library, customer tracking module, external monitoring—all functional modules were running quietly.
That line of comments had disappeared.
The bottom of the status bar was clean, as if nothing had ever appeared.
Allen sat back down in front of pillar P2-17. He leaned back against it. The concrete surface pressed against the curve of his spine, just like every night before.
A drop of water dripped from the drainpipe.
He closed his eyes, mentally rehearsing the words "I'm here" three times.
Then he typed a line in the memo section of the management panel:
"Room 50. The Abyss Watcher. It's watching me." (Period added.)
He opened his eyes.
Tomorrow at 2 PM. Lina and Guts will be here.
He needed to see if the Abyss Watcher would speak when facing living people.