Allen paced back and forth on the second basement level of the parking garage for four minutes.
On the management panel, AbyssWalker's grayed-out message was still there. Unresolved. Like a scar on a screen.
To go or not to go.
Three reasons to not go raced through his mind. Risk of identity exposure. The other party's origins were unknown. A trap.
One reason to go.
Fellow travelers.
The Abyss Voice had said, "The first architect has awakened." This phrase wouldn't leave his mind. If AbyssWalker knew why the dungeons appeared on Earth, he needed that answer.
Allen pulled on his spare hoodie. Black. No markings.
The short sword slid into its sheath at his waist.
He expanded the external monitoring on the management panel to its maximum range.
He went.
Midnight. Rift Park.
Southeast corner of the Red Hook District. After the Cataclysm, a surface fissure ran through the center of the park. GWA had enclosed it with an energy barrier.
The fissure was still there. Five meters wide. Bottomless. A faint blue light emanated from the edge.
The park was deserted.
The hum of the energy barrier mingled with the sound of wind rising from the depths of the rift.
Allen stood ten meters from the rift's edge. Shadow perception was fully activated.
Within a fifteen-meter radius. No life form.
"You've come." The voice came from within the rift.
Not from below. It came from the light at the rift's edge.
The blue light coalesced before Allen's eyes.
A humanoid silhouette emerged from the light. Not walking out. It was woven inch by inch from within the light.
A humanoid. Appeared sixteen or seventeen years old. Gender ambiguous. Short white hair.
The color of its eyes was the same as the rift's light. Blue. A dark red glow flowed in its deepest recesses.
It wore a gray robe. It belonged to no era or culture.
Allen's gaze shifted downwards.
Its shadow was wrong.
The streetlight shone from the east. Its shadow did not face west.
The shadow shattered into seven or eight extremely thin black lines, extending in all directions. Each line ended in a crack in the concrete ground.
The management panel automatically scanned.
It bounced back. Anti-scanning barrier activated.
But this time, the pop-up window contained an additional line of information.
[The target has underlying structural compatibility with the Dungeon Architect System. Compatibility: 38%.]
[Inference: The target may be a core-derived entity of the Dungeon, or a partial carrier of the Abyss's will.] Not human.
Something that grew out of the Dungeon.
"I have no name."
It spoke. Its manner of speaking was peculiar. The pauses between each sentence were of varying lengths, as if translating a non-human thought process in real time.
"Your System calls me the Abyss Walker. That's what I use."
Allen didn't reply. His hand hung at his side, ten centimeters from the short sword at his lower back.
"I am the core of an Dungeon," it continued. "NYC-MH-0031."
Allen's finger stopped.
"Underground Central Park, Manhattan." It looked at Allen. "S-rank." The wind stopped.
"That massive outbreak three years ago... it all came from within me." The short sword was drawn from his lower back.
Shadow Step wasn't activated. Reason held back his muscle instincts at the last second.
AbyssWalker was an S-rank dungeon core. His D-rank combat power was ineffective against it. He couldn't even leave a white mark.
But the short sword was in his hand. His knuckles turned white.
"The outbreak three years ago... 23,000 people died."
Allen's voice was flat. Too flat. Without any inflection.
"My parents are inside." AbyssWalker looked at the short sword in his hand. A dark red light flashed in its blue eyes.
"I know." It didn't retreat. Nor did it defend.
"Natural dungeons aren't natural disasters," it said. "Every natural dungeon possesses an independent consciousness. We were planted. The seeds came from the Abyss."
"Purpose. To test your species."
"But most of us are dormant. Without self-awareness. Operating only by instinct. Generating monsters. Releasing resources. The cycle."
"A few cores have accumulated enough data in their operation. They are beginning to awaken." Fragments of shadow writhed on the ground. "I am one of the awakened cores." The tip of the short sword did not droop.
"You awakened. Then you erupted. Killed twenty-three thousand."
"It wasn't my choice to erupt." AbyssWalker's voice trembled for the first time. Very faint. Like a grain of sand thrown into water.
"The eruption command came from the will of the Abyss. I had no authority to refuse. None of the dormant cores did."
"The eruption is instinct. Just like your human hearts won't stop beating because you don't want them to." Allen grasped the chain of logic.
"But you awakened. You gained self-awareness. You could resist the eruption command."
"Yes. But I've already erupted."
It looked at the rift.
"After that eruption three years ago, my core entered a period of dormancy and reconstruction. I spent three years rebuilding my consciousness."
"Then I discovered… an Architect appeared."
"What does this have to do with me?"
"The Architect is the interface designed by the Abyss." It turned back. "You are the bridge between humanity and the dungeons. The Abyss planted the dungeons, waiting for a human to evolve the ability to resonate with them. That is the Architect."
"Wait a minute." Allen's brow furrowed.
"The Abyss planted the dungeons to test humanity. The Architect was part of that test. Then I—"
"You are one of the Abyss's pawns." AbyssWalker looked at him.
"But pawns don't necessarily move according to the player's wishes." The blade of the short sword reflected the cold light of the streetlamp.
"One last thing." AbyssWalker's fragmented image trembled in the moonlight.
"The Manhattan eruption. The Abyss's eruption command was indeed issued. But it shouldn't have arrived at that time."
It paused for three seconds.
"Someone. Someone among you humans. Accelerated the signal's propagation."
"From within your GWA." Robert Chen's voice echoed in Allen's mind.
"The alarm was manually shut down."
Not just shut down the alarm.
Someone manually accelerated the outbreak.
The warning was shut down. The outbreak was brought forward.
Organized mass murder. Disguised as a natural disaster.
The dagger in Allen's hand trembled slightly, no longer stiff.
Not fear.
It was anger. A cold, emotionless anger seeping from the depths of his bones.
"I came to you. Not for old matters." AbyssWalker took a step forward. Fragments of shadow dragged across the ground.
"I came to find you because the next test for the Abyss is about to begin."
"Not a D-level outbreak. Not an S-level one."
"It's a global, multi-point simultaneous event."
"The Abyss's will is evaluating the data from all the dungeon cores on Earth. If the evaluation results are unsatisfactory, all dungeons will erupt simultaneously." Allen's anger was extinguished by a bucket of ice water.
"When?"
"I'm not sure. But the signal has already started. Your system should have detected the weak, abnormal fluctuations globally. Didn't you notice?" Allen opened the management panel.
Filtering out all local data. He flipped to the global overview. A page he had never opened before.
[Global Dungeon Abnormal Fluctuation Index] A line graph.
Past three months. Stable.
Past week. Slightly rising.
Past twenty-four hours. Steeply rising.
The end of the line pointed to a red threshold line. There were still about two marks away from the threshold line.
He didn't know how much time those two marks represented.
AbyssWalker retreated to the edge of the rift.
The blue light began to engulf its form, rising from its feet.
Before disappearing, it uttered its last words.
"Architect. You can create dungeons."
"But can you create them fast enough?"
"When all dungeons erupt simultaneously, you don't need just one."
It completely merged into the blue light.
"You need a hundred." The blue light in the rift dimmed.
The park returned to silence. The wind regained its dominance.
Allen stood still. The short sword was still in his hand.
The line graph of the Global Anomaly Fluctuation Index continued to climb on the management panel.
He glanced down at his System panel.
Level: D.
What he needed. A hundred dungeons.
A new system notification popped up in the lower right corner of the management panel.
Gold border.
Not an achievement. Not a reward. It was a feature icon that had never appeared before.
[New Feature Preview—Dungeon Network] [Unlock Requirements: Dungeon Level ≥ C + Management Panel Upgrade + Architect Level ≥ C.]
[Current Progress: 0/3.] One hundred dungeons.
He can't even build the second one yet.