A faint, crimson light shone through his eyelids. He couldn't turn it off.
Allen opened his eyes. The eighteenth drop of water dripped from the drainpipe in the underground parking garage. Water splashed onto the tips of his shoes.
He sat up straight. The crimson eyes in his left peripheral vision were still pulsating.
The management panel opened. The memo module.
His fingers tapped on the virtual keyboard.
Title: Global Coverage Plan.
Phase One: Thirty days. Red Hook District. Brooklyn Ruins, Coffin Fortress, Rust Tide—all pushed to Grade C or higher. Establish a regional defense network and BP production base.
Phase Two: Sixty days. The five boroughs of New York. Twenty underground city nodes, covering the key natural cores of Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx.
Phase Three: Ninety days. Global. One hundred nodes.
The progress bar was clear. Physical limitations at the execution level had blocked this path.
He only had two hands. There were only twenty-four hours in a day.
Leaving New York to deploy nodes across six continents required physical movement. GWA's flight controls, the entry screening of Awakened by various countries, the Black Serpent Guild's territoriality—these are walls.
He needs people.
Not adventurers. Executors who know what he's doing and can independently cut off tracking leads.
Dozens of names flashed through his mind, then he crossed them off one by one. Recruiting ordinary Awakened wouldn't buy loyalty with BP. Recruiting members of large guilds risked double espionage.
Only three remained.
Lina Walker. Robert Chen.
And that anonymous ID on the DeepRift forum. JC_Silent. Jason Collins.
His phone vibrated in his pocket.
Lina had arrived.
Allen stood up. He walked to the exit ramp on level P2.
Lina leaned against the door of a wrecked Ford sedan. She tossed a coin in her hand.
"I'm not here to talk business," Allen said, stopping three meters away.
The coin landed in Lina's palm. She looked up.
"I am The Architect." No preamble. No probing.
Lina's fingers froze in mid-air. The coin slipped through her fingers, hitting the concrete with a crisp sound.
"Not an agent. Not an employee." Allen looked at the coin on the ground. "I built that underground city. I tore down the walls of the Ash Sewers. I sensed the location of the Rift Herb myself." Lina didn't speak.
The wind from the underground parking lot rushed in through the vents, stirring up dust.
A C-rank assassin's muscle memory reacts faster than her brain. She drew the crescent dagger from its leather clasp.
Allen's left leg muscles tensed. Shadow Sense automatically activated.
Lina twirled the dagger halfway in her hand. The hilt facing forward. She offered it to Allen.
"My daily wage has increased. Doubled."
Allen looked at the worn leather hilt.
"I can't afford double the daily wage." He didn't take it. "But I can give you something else." Lina's hand remained where it was.
"Rift Herb, pick up according to mission contribution." Allen looked at her. "I'll pay for your brother's medical expenses. Provided you live long enough and remain useful to me." Lina's fingers tightened on the dagger. The skin at her knuckles turned white.
"There's one more thing," Allen said. "A global underground catastrophe is on the countdown. Three months. If we can't stop it, everyone will die. Including your brother." Lina shoved the dagger back into the leather buckle. The movement was heavy, the leather making a dull screech.
"You're a real bastard." She turned and walked towards the ramp exit. "Using my brother to tie me up."
"Not using." Allen stood still. "I promised you." Lina paused.
"Bastard." She walked up the ramp. Her steps were heavier than before.
The first piece of the puzzle was in place.
Allen took out his phone. He opened Robert's text message.
"Hawk talked to me. You know." Ten minutes later. The screen lit up.
Manhattan GWA headquarters. Robert sat at his desk. A red warning box appeared on his computer screen, indicating his highest level of access had been revoked. He picked up his phone.
"I know he skipped me. I also know he gave you classified asset designation. My investigative privileges are frozen from today."
"Are you angry?"
"I don't act on emotion. But I need you to tell me one thing—what did Hawk want you to do?" Allen's thumb hovered over the screen for two seconds. He typed.
"Protect the world."
"That sounds too vague. Be specific?"
"Prevent a simultaneous outbreak of dungeons worldwide."
"Like the kind three years ago?"
"A hundred times worse." The chat was silent for a minute.
"My investigative privileges are frozen. But my information network is still there." A new message popped up. "I can provide you with detailed internal data on natural dungeons worldwide—location, status, core anomaly signals. I can't get my hands on the guns, but I can give you the maps."
"Why?"
"Because if what you're saying is true, it's more important than my career." The second piece of the puzzle fell into place.
A network of C-rank assassins, A-rank investigators, and C-rank dungeon architects.
Allen switched to the text messaging interface. Open the DeepRift forum.
Log in to Architect_00.
Find JC_Silent's private message box.
"I know you're Jason."
Send.
"If you remember the lesson the Mirror Knight taught you—I have an even bigger lesson for you."
Send.
"Want to work for me?"
Send.
In a high-end apartment in Brooklyn. Jason, wearing the Black Serpent Guild uniform, stares at his phone screen. The dungeon that even the S-rank guild leader couldn't demolish, is now being directly targeted by the operators behind it.
Three hours later.
Allen's phone vibrates.
Jason's reply is only one line.
"Where do I show up?" Allen puts his phone in his pocket.
On the day of the Awakening Ceremony, the B-rank warrior who stood in the A-rank guild elite position and told him to go back to manual labor in front of ten thousand people.
Now, he has voluntarily surrendered the collar's leash.
The dark red eyes in the corner of the management panel suddenly flash violently.
The frequency breaks the previous steady pulse.
A new external information connection. Not a system notification. Not a text message.
It's a spatial oscillation directly impacting the Shadow Perception Network.
Rift Park.
Two in the morning.
Allen stood on the gravel path beside the artificial lake.
There was no wind on the lake. The water was completely still.
Blue light rose from the center of the water. The beam twisted and folded, coalescing into a human shape on the shore.
AbyssWalker.
Its form had changed. The last time they met, it was a wisp of light barely maintaining a human shape. Now, its white hair had a tangible texture, and the hem of its grey robe hung naturally in the windless environment.
It was adapting to the human physical dimension.
"You've found an ally," it said.
A statement.
"You can sense it?" Allen's right hand rested on the short sword at his back.
"Your dungeon network is expanding. With each additional node, the resonance between you and the nearby natural dungeons grows stronger." AbyssWalker took a step forward. The shattered shadows swayed on the gravel at its feet. "I can sense your emotional dynamics through resonance."
"You can sense my emotions?"
"Vaguely." AbyssWalker paused. "You've been oscillating between urgency and resolve lately. Occasionally there's anger. More often there's something… I'm not sure how to express it in Chinese. Pain, but not physical."
"That's called sadness." AbyssWalker tilted its head.
"Sadness. Because of your parents?"
"Because of many things." Allen cut the subject. Discussing human emotions with the embodiment of the Abyss's will blurred the lines between friend and foe. "You contacted me. New intelligence?"
"The Cleansers' schedule has been moved up." The lake's surface sank an inch.
"Not three months."
"How long?"
"Six weeks." AbyssWalker's white hair gleamed faintly in the darkness.
"They've implanted accelerators—artificial devices—in the cores of thirteen natural dungeons worldwide. These devices require six weeks to charge."
"Once charged," it raised its hand, fingers spread, "BOOM." Six weeks. Forty-two days.
One hundred dungeons.
At least two to three need to be built every day.
The current BP output rate, even pushing Coffin Fortress and Rust Tide to their limits, is barely enough to maintain this pace.
That's assuming no unforeseen events. The Black Serpent doesn't interfere. The GWA doesn't intervene. The Abyss Will doesn't overturn the table.
Such a scenario doesn't exist in reality.
"The locations of the thirteen cores," Allen said.
"My senses are blocked by the accelerometer. I only know the quantity, not the specific coordinates."
"Robert's map." Allen's mind raced. "He can detect anomalies."
"Time is running out, Architect." Blue snowflake-like noise began to appear around AbyssWalker's body; its duration in the real dimension had reached its limit. "You have to run." The blue light dissipated.
Only Allen remained on the gravel path.
The management panel popped up.
A dark red eye in the lower left corner stared intently at him.
BP balance in the upper right corner: 3,700.
Time to complete recharging of the first accelerometer: 1008 hours.