1008 hours since the first accelerator fully charged.
The number jumped in the upper right corner of the management panel. Red.
AbyssWalker stood on the pebbles by the lake. Blue light flickered beneath its feet.
"I can help you," it spoke. The syllables spread across the windless lake.
"How?" Allen's right hand remained on the short sword at his back.
"I am an S-rank dungeon core. My resonance ability far surpasses your current architect system. If you allow, I can inject a portion of my energy into your dungeon network. The effect is equivalent to you building fifteen to twenty more dungeons with resonance coverage." Allen stared at the face composed of light mist. No features.
"Why are you helping me?" Allen asked. "You are a core planted by the Abyss. The Abyss wants to test humanity. Helping me stop the eruption is equivalent to stopping your creator."
"Because I awoke." AbyssWalker's shattered shadow extended half a meter outward from the ground. "When I woke up, I realized I didn't want to be a seed anymore. I wanted to be a tree." Allen removed his right hand from his short sword. He extended it forward.
AbyssWalker looked at the hand.
"You're asking to shake hands with an underground city."
"Yes." AbyssWalker raised his hand. His translucent limbs glowed with a crackling blue light. His hands touched above the moonlight and rubble.
An electric current shot from his fingertips to his cerebral cortex. There was no pain. It was pure data.
A massive amount of information.
The management panel interface was forcibly opened. A star map unfolded in his field of vision.
Not New York. It was Earth.
1230 points of light. The precise coordinates of each natural underground city.
Twenty-seven of these points shimmered with a dangerous dark red.
Allen withdrew his hand. A high-frequency tingling sensation shot through his fingertips.
"1230 dungeons. 27 eruption nodes. Six weeks."
"Yes." AbyssWalker's form began to fade.
"Can I build 100 by myself?"
"With my resonance replenishment, you need to build 80."
42 days. Two per day.
"This is your test." Before AbyssWalker completely dissipated, he left behind his last words, "Not the Abyss's test. Your own." The blue light dissipated. Only the faint sound of water lapping against the shore remained on the gravel path.
3:00 AM. Abandoned underground parking lot in the Red Hook District.
Allen sat beneath a load-bearing pillar on level P2. The external monitoring grid of the management panel unfolded.
No Black Serpent intrusion signal. No abnormal energy fluctuations.
The DeepRift forum icon flashed in the upper right corner. A pinned post with rapidly rising popularity.
Posted by: VictorStone_Official.
Title: Public Statement Regarding the Relationship Between Brooklyn Ruins and the Black Serpent Guild.
Text unfolds.
"After numerous exchanges and a personal visit, I have confirmed that Architect_00's dungeon possesses strategic value far exceeding conventional levels. The Black Serpent Guild has decided to cease seeking to manage or control the dungeon. Instead, I hereby declare, in my personal capacity, that the Black Serpent Guild will become the 'preferred client' of the Brooklyn Ruins. Our elite members will regularly enter the dungeon for training, according to the rules established by Architect." (A blank line is left for this paragraph. The last sentence is a separate paragraph.)
"I, Victor Stone, acknowledge The Architect as the sole dungeon operator in the Red Hook District. Any attempt to infringe upon this status will be considered a challenge to Black Serpent. —VS" Allen read this passage three times from beginning to end.
Victor Stone conceded defeat?
No. An S-rank Awakened One does not concede defeat.
If you can't conquer it, buy it. Destroying a dungeon with A-rank or higher defenses would come at a tremendous cost. Turning this dungeon into Black Serpent's exclusive training ground would yield far greater benefits than destruction.
From enemy to collaborator. And openly at that.
"Any attempt to infringe upon this status will be considered a challenge to Black Serpent." He was using his S-rank authority to deter other guilds from coveting the Brooklyn Ruins. Because this dungeon was now useful to him.
The forum comments scrolled at a rate exceeding ten per second.
"VictorStone actually admitted defeat?"
"Not admitted defeat. An investment. That old fox."
"TheArchitect now has an S-rank bodyguard???"
"So just how powerful is the Architect's dungeon that it turned Victor Stone from wanting to destroy it into wanting to be a client?"
Allen didn't reply to any posts.
His finger swiped across the management panel. He opened [Visitor Permission Management].
He found the ID VictorStone_Official.
He clicked. Marked as [High-Value BP Source - S-rank].
An S-rank Awakened player regularly runs the dungeon with an elite team, providing more than ten times the BP output of a regular C-rank team.
Victor Stone proactively filled the funding gap for the eighty dungeons.
4 AM.
Allen pulled an old laptop from a hidden compartment at the bottom of his first-aid kit. The casing was badly worn, and a dead pixel line ran along the left side of the screen. An F7 key was missing.
He inserted the USB drive Robert Chen had given him.
The screen lit up. A black password input box popped up.
Robert hadn't given him a password.
Allen's fingers hovered over the keyboard.
First attempt. He entered Robert's GWA employee number.
Enter. Red warning: Incorrect password.
Second attempt. He entered the phone number from Robert's business card.
Enter. Red warning: Incorrect password.
Allen stopped. Condensate dripped from the underground parking garage into a distant puddle, making a very faint ticking sound.
Robert had given him the USB drive, undoubtedly confident he could crack it. The password was a number that was meaningful to him and directly related to the core of the incident.
His fingers returned to the keyboard.
Entered: 20210315.
The date of the Manhattan Class S explosion three years ago.
Enter.
The progress bar blinked. A green unlock icon popped up.
The file directory expanded.
Photos. Communication logs. Internal memos. All at the highest level of security.
Allen opened a PDF titled "Operation Log of the Alert System 48 Hours Before the Outbreak."
He scrolled to the last page.
The signature field for the authorized person to force shutdown the system.
A name was printed on it.
Daniel Hawk.
The file photo next to it showed a face ten years younger. Less gray hair, sharper features.
Allen leaned against a concrete pillar.
Hours earlier, Daniel Hawk had stood in the community center corridor and told him, "The person responsible for shutting down the alarms died on the day of the outbreak." But he wasn't dead.
He was alive. Sitting in the chair of the director of the New York GWA branch.
The man who killed 23,000 people three years ago was Hawk himself.
Or, Hawk had delegated his authority to someone else, and that person died.
Whether it was, Hawk's words tonight contained a deadly lie.
His cerebral cortex began to work at high speed. The mental simulation outlined five possible paths:
First, send the USB drive's contents to Robert, exposing Hawke. Result: Hawke possesses Omega-3 privileges; Robert will be immediately purged, and Allen will be wanted throughout the city. A dead end.
Second, release the document publicly. Result: The public won't believe it, the GWA officially denies it, and Allen loses all protection. A dead end.
Third, confront Hawke directly. Result: He'll be silenced. A dead end.
Fourth, flee New York, abandoning everything. Result: A global outbreak six weeks later, everyone dies. A dead end.
Fifth, use the Abyss Watchers to assassinate Hawke. Result: An S-level alert is triggered, and the Brooklyn ruins are razed to the ground by the GWA's regular forces. A dead end.
All five paths are dead ends.
Allen stared at the face on the screen.
Hawk had proactively left the USB drive's clues to Robert, who then passed it on to him. Hawke couldn't possibly have been unaware that he would see the document.
This was a test.
He was testing whether Allen would lose control of his emotions after learning that his ally might be his father's killer.
If he lost control, he wasn't worthy of participating in the plan to stop the Cleansers.
If he held back, Hawke would have complete control over his bottom line.
Allen closed his laptop screen. The hinge made a dry, grinding sound.
The sixth path.
Do nothing.
Continue to cooperate. Continue to take Hawke's resources. Continue to build dungeons.
Suppress hatred in the deepest drawer, lock it. Until you accumulate enough power to crush Omega-3's authority.
The air in the underground parking lot was murky.
Allen stood up. He walked to the edge of the diamond-shaped opening.
Blue light spilled from below the opening, illuminating the edge of his sneakers.
The cores of the three dungeons were operating synchronously underground in the Red Hook Zone. BP was slowly increasing.
The management panel unfolded.
A global dungeon distribution map floated in the air in holographic mode.
One thousand two hundred and thirty points of light. Twenty-seven dark red.
Countdown: 1006 hours.
In the lower left corner of the management panel, the abyss's dark red eyes pulsed steadily.
He extended his index finger. His fingertip touched the location of New York on the map. Three faint blue dots flickered beneath his fingertip.
His finger slid across the holographic projection. Southward.
Stopped in Washington, D.C.
Distance: 370 kilometers.
"The fourth one." The syllables echoed in the empty parking lot.
A yellow warning message popped up on the management panel.
[Underground City Perception Range Limit: Current 5-kilometer radius.]
[Upgrade the Underground City Network to Grade B or higher to expand the remote deployment range.]
[Or personally go to the target location.] Five kilometers wasn't enough. He needed to plant underground cities all over the world.
Allen pulled up the hood of his hoodie. The rough fabric rubbed against his ears.
He turned and walked towards the ramp leading to the surface.