Forty-seven minutes after the post went live, views surpassed two thousand.
Allen lay on the single bed in his apartment, holding his phone in front of his face, and refreshed the DeepRift page. The comments had jumped from eleven to thirty-six.
"Brooklyn warehouse district? Isn't that place only filled with F-rank and E-rank abandoned rifts?"
"OP, give us a detailed coordinate. Just saying the warehouse district is too vague."
"Probably another clickbait post. What kind of generous rewards could an F-rank dungeon have? Just a scam to send newbies to their deaths."
"Not necessarily. Someone I know in Titan Shield said one of their members came back with serious injuries in Brooklyn yesterday. They're keeping their mouths shut tight, not saying a word."
Allen stared at the last comment, his finger hovering over the screen for three seconds.
Jason hadn't made it public.
If a B-rank warrior was beaten half to death by an F-rank dungeon and came out—if he spoke about it, he'd be losing his own face. Allen bet on exactly that. But vague phrasing like"someone said" was already starting to ferment on the forum. Several veteran users were analyzing recent dungeon activity records in Brooklyn, and someone had even pulled up the GWA public database—"No new dungeon registrations near Red Hook in the last six months. This post is either fake or an unregistered wild rift."
Wild rifts. Natural dungeons not yet recorded by the GWA. These popped up occasionally. Usually, their rank was low, but because they hadn't been scanned or rated, their actual difficulty could be higher than the surface data suggested. Such dungeons were very popular among independent adventurers—no priority exploration rights for big guilds; first come, first served.
Allen placed the phone on his chest and closed his eyes.
The plan in his mind was already organized.
Step one: Expand the dungeon. Three rooms were too shabby. Challengers would finish in five minutes. The experience would be poor, and the operational rating wouldn't go up. Ten rooms was the upper limit his current BP could support.
Step two: Monster diversity. Skeleton Guards alone weren't enough. A single monster type would allow experienced adventurers to quickly figure out the patterns, reducing the desire for repeat challenges. He needed at least two or three different types of monsters, paired with a Mini-Boss as a clear threshold.
Step three: Clear rewards. This was the core selling point. Natural dungeon drops were completely random. Adventurers relied entirely on luck. But his system had a function natural dungeons lacked—he could set the drop rules. If he pulled the reward quality to a level higher than a typical dungeon of the same rank, once the word got out, adventurers would flock to him.
500 BP.
Allen opened his eyes and summoned the system panel.
The blueprint shop list expanded in the center of his vision. He scrolled from top to bottom and stopped his finger on three options.
[Room Expansion Pack (3 rooms -> 10 rooms limit): 300 BP]
Buy this first. 200 BP left.
He clicked confirm. The panel flashed, and a new building editor interface popped up—ten configurable room modules: corridors, branches, dead ends, circular paths. The number of combinations was so high it took him twenty seconds just to pick a"Structure Preset" template.
Linear progression. Entrance -> seven progressive difficulty combat rooms -> a rest area (he found from the template description that a safe zone could be set for short recovery)-> Boss room.
200 BP left. The Shadow Knight blueprint was 500 BP. He couldn't afford it.
Allen scrolled down.
[Ghost Wolf Blueprint (F-rank): 200 BP]
Exactly 200.
But then he would have nothing left. No Gargoyles, no Boss, and ten rooms with only Skeleton Guards and Ghost Wolves.
Not enough.
Allen closed the blueprint shop and opened another page of the management panel—"Operational Data."
[Current Clear Records: 1]
[Total BP Income: 500]
[Estimated Daily BP Output (based on current traffic): 0]
Zero. Because other than Jason's accidental fall, no one had come.
It had been less than an hour since the post. Tomorrow—if a few of those forum users were actually willing to check it out—he would have his first batch of"official customers."
But he needed to finish the expansion before the customers arrived. Ten rooms, at least two types of monsters, and preferably a Boss.
500 BP was simply not enough.
Unless—
Allen reopened the blueprint shop. This time he didn't look at the price, but at the detailed description of each blueprint.
Ghost Wolf, 200 BP. Gargoyle, 350 BP. Shadow Knight Mini-Boss, 500 BP.
Total 1050 BP. He only had 500.
But at the bottom of the blueprint description, there was a line of small grey text—
[Note: Blueprints take effect immediately after purchase. Monster deployment must be manually placed in the dungeon management interface. The maximum number of each monster type is determined by the dungeon rank and room count.]
He flipped to another page,"Test Mode."
[Test Mode Description: The Dungeon Architect can enter an independent instance of their own dungeon for testing. Monster behavior in the test instance is identical to the official instance. Killing monsters in Test Mode grants normal EXP, skill drops, and a small amount of BP. Deaths in Test Mode do not incur any penalties.]
Small amount of BP.
Allen sat up.
If he bought the Ghost Wolf blueprint for 200 BP first, and then used Test Mode to repeatedly farm the monsters in his own dungeon—Skeleton Guards plus Ghost Wolves—he could save up enough BP to buy the Gargoyle and the Shadow Knight...
He checked the time. 10:30 PM.
About six hours of the seven-day deadline had already passed.
Allen put on his sneakers and headed out.
The warehouse was two blocks from the apartment. Red Hook was deserted at night. Half the streetlights were broken. The air smelled of seawater and rusty metal. He walked to the side door of the warehouse and pulled it open with force—the iron door let out a piercing screech.
The diamond-shaped opening in the center of the floor was still there. The ghostly blue light pulsed steadily, dyeing the warehouse interior like an aquarium.
Allen summoned the management panel and purchased the Ghost Wolf blueprint.
[Ghost Wolf Blueprint Unlocked.-200 BP. Current BP: 300.]
Then he bought the room expansion pack.
[Room Expansion Complete.-300 BP. Current BP: 0.]
A low vibration came from beneath the floor—not violent, but he could feel the warehouse foundation shaking slightly. The dungeon was expanding. The three-room structure was stretching outward, splitting, and growing new corridors and spaces.
Thirty seconds later, the vibration stopped.
The management panel updated the map. Ten rooms were neatly arranged underground, the total area three times larger than before. Allen spent twenty minutes redeploying the monsters—Skeleton Guards assigned to the first five rooms, Ghost Wolves placed in rooms six through nine. The tenth room was empty.
No Boss. No Gargoyles. No more BP.
But he still had Test Mode.
Allen walked to the edge of the diamond opening and selected"Enter Test Mode" on the management panel.
[Test Mode Activated. You will enter an independent instance of the dungeon. Actions in this instance do not affect the official instance. Good luck, Architect.]
He jumped down.
--
Over the next eight hours, Allen died fourteen times in his own dungeon.
There was no power suppression in Test Mode. He faced F-rank monsters with his actual F-rank stats—theoretically an even match, but the premise of an"even match" was that both sides had comparable combat experience.
Allen had zero combat experience.
He died for the first time in the second room. Two Skeleton Guards rushed out simultaneously from both sides of the corridor. He didn't even have time to react before a bone spear pierced through his chest.
There was no pain."Death" in Test Mode was just a momentary black-out of vision, then respawning at the entrance. But the impact of that moment—the sensation of the spear-tip entering between his ribs—was real.
He died a second time in the fourth room. He began to learn to observe the Skeleton Guards' attack telegraphs—the right shoulder would dip slightly before a slash—but while dodging, he collided with the shield bash of a second skeleton behind him.
Third, fourth, fifth.
Every time he died, a brief"Death Analysis Report" popped up on his management panel—source of fatal injury, reaction delay time, avoidable probability. Allen spent thirty seconds reading the report after each respawn before re-entering.
After the sixth death, he killed his first Skeleton Guard. The system panel popped up an EXP notification—the number was small, but it was growing.
By the fourth hour, he could steadily clear the first five skeleton rooms. Battered, but alive. He summarized a basic melee pattern: don't tank, don't trade hits, use the corners and pillars of the corridors to create one-on-one situations and pick them off one by one.
Then he entered the sixth room—the Ghost Wolf territory.
Ghost Wolves and Skeleton Guards were two completely different things. Skeleton Guards were linear attackers with fixed movement patterns and simple AI. Ghost Wolves were pack hunters—they would flank, they would coordinate, and one wolf would distract you from the front while another lunged from the shadows at your neck.
Allen died five times in a row in the sixth room.
But each death made him understand these monsters better. Not by looking at data on a panel—but by remembering their speed, jump arc, and claw attack range with his body.
The sixth hour. Allen progressed to the ninth room.
The seventh hour. He stood for the first time in the empty tenth room, covered in blood (virtual damage from Test Mode, wouldn't carry over to reality), breathing hard, and weak in the legs.
A series of notifications popped up on the system panel—
[Test Mode Cleared. Total Kills: 47. Total BP Gained:+380. EXP Gained:+1200.]
380 BP. Combined with the scattered BP from clearing the earlier rooms, his total BP was back to—
[Current BP: 420.]
Not enough to buy the Shadow Knight. Still short by 80 BP.
Allen leaned against the stone wall of the tenth room, waiting for the residual sensation of virtual damage to fade.
One more run.
The eighth hour. The second full clear. It was much faster this time—he had already memorized the spawn points and attack rhythms of every room.
[BP Gained:+310. Current BP: 730.]
The Shadow Knight blueprint was 500, the Gargoyle 350. Only enough for one.
Allen didn't hesitate. He bought the Shadow Knight.
[Shadow Knight Mini-Boss Blueprint Unlocked.-500 BP. Current BP: 230.]
The Shadow Knight was deployed in the tenth room.
On the management panel, a black point of light lit up in the center of the Boss room. Allen switched to the monster details interface—
[Shadow Knight (Mini-Boss)· F-rank]
[Attributes: Strength F+/Agility F/Constitution F+/Intelligence E]
[Skill: Shadow Step—Short-distance teleportation behind the target. Cooldown 8 seconds.]
[Characteristics: High armor, medium speed, AI capable of active skill use.]
Shadow Step.
Allen stared at the skill name for a few seconds. If he killed the Shadow Knight in Test Mode—there was a chance for the skill to drop.
He started from the first room and cleared the entire dungeon for a third time.
The Shadow Knight was harder to fight than any normal monster. Its"Shadow Step" made Allen think he had locked in an attack angle three times, only to miss three times and get slashed from behind three times.
The first challenge against the Shadow Knight: death.
The second: death.
The third—
Allen made a counter-intuitive move during the Shadow Knight's fourth Shadow Step: he didn't turn to find the disappearing knight, but crouched down on the spot.
The knight's slash passed three centimeters above his head.
Allen thrust a short sword—a poor-quality F-rank iron sword dropped from a Skeleton Guard—upwards into the seam of the Shadow Knight's breastplate.
The knight's body shattered into black smoke.
[Shadow Knight Slain.]
[BP Gained:+120]
[EXP Gained:+800]
[Skill Drop!—Shadow Step· F-rank]
[Learn? Y/N]
Allen pressed Y.
A cool sensation spread from his fingertips through his whole body, lasting about two seconds. Then it vanished. He tried activating the skill—he just thought the words"Shadow Step" in his mind, and his body suddenly lost its sense of weight.
The next moment, he was standing by the wall three meters away.
There was no movement process. From point A to point B, there was nothing in between.
Allen looked down at his hands. They were shaking slightly. Not out of fear, but adrenaline.
Eight hours. Fourteen deaths. One combat skill.
He exited Test Mode and climbed back to the warehouse floor from the diamond opening.
The phone showed 6:42 AM.
The comments on the DeepRift post had jumped to one hundred and seventeen. Some were confirming coordinates, some were grouping up, and others were still shouting"clickbait."
Allen replied with an anonymous comment of just four words.
"Coordinates sent via PM."
He sent the exact coordinates by private message to everyone who had left contact info under the post. Nine people in total.
Then he used the remaining 230 BP to buy the Gargoyle blueprint, deploying them in the seventh and eighth rooms as a transition difficulty between the Ghost Wolves and the Shadow Knight.
Finally—clear reward settings.
There was a function page in the management panel he hadn't noticed before:[Clear Reward Rules].
The default setting was"Random F-rank Equipment x1." But beneath"Random," there was a tunable parameter—
[Reward Quality Correction: 0 (Default)]
[Available Range:-5 to +10]
[Description: Every 1 point increase in correction raises the average quality of clear rewards by approximately 10%. At a correction of +5, the F-rank dungeon rewards are equivalent to the average drops of an E-rank dungeon. At +10, they are equivalent to D-rank dungeon drops. Note: High-quality rewards increase BP consumption.]
Allen pulled the correction to +8.
[Warning: Current Correction is +8. Each clear reward distribution will consume an additional 150 BP. Current BP balance is insufficient for more than 1 high-quality reward. Suggested to lower correction or increase BP reserves.]
Allen didn't lower it. He needed the first batch of adventurers to get gear that exceeded expectations, then spread the word. Loss-leader marketing—lose first, earn later.
Everything was ready.
He sat by the warehouse door, waiting for the first batch of"official customers."
--
At 10:00 AM, the first team arrived.
Four people, all E-rank light-geared. The leader was a short, fat man with goggles pushed up to his forehead, holding his phone to compare coordinates. Behind him was a woman with a longbow and two young men with short swords.
Allen recognized their gear style—independent adventurers. No guild badges.
He shrank back into the shadows of the fire escape on the side of the warehouse, management panel expanded on the left side of his vision.
The fat man walked around the diamond opening, crouched down, and scanned it with an energy detector.
"F-rank. The signal is pure. Formed very recently—the timestamp shows less than forty-eight hours."
"The post said the rewards were good." The woman with the bow was skeptical.
"How good can an F-rank reward be? Let's take a trip. It's not far anyway."
The four of them jumped down.
Allen saw four green points of light enter the first room on the management panel.
Eleven minutes later, the second team arrived. Three people—a C-rank warrior and two D-rank supports. They wore grey coats of the Iron Wall Knights but had no official badges—likely associates or part-timers.
They saw the diamond opening and jumped straight in without bothering to scan.
Just after 11:00 AM, the third team appeared at the warehouse door.
Four people. Three men and one woman. Their gear was uneven—the lead brute wore a metal breastplate with visible welding marks, followed by two men, one with a hammer and one with a shield, looking like they had put their gear together from a hardware store.
The woman at the back was different.
Short pale-gold hair cut just below the ears. Black tight tactical suit, bracers, high-top tactical boots. Two daggers hung at her waist, the wrapping cloth on the handles worn white—long-used weapons. There was a faint scar from her left cheekbone to her ear; it was almost invisible in the daylight, but would reflect a bit of light at the right angle.
She walked differently from the other three. While the others were just walking, she was moving—footfalls were even, center of gravity always low, peripheral vision scanning every corner of the warehouse.
C-rank. At least C-rank.
Allen saw her data on the management panel—Lena Walker, C-rank, Class: Assassin, Team Name: Grey Crows.
The four of them jumped into the dungeon.
Allen opened three monitoring windows simultaneously.
--
The first team—the fat man's group—wiped in the sixth room. The pack hunting of the Ghost Wolves shattered their formation within twenty seconds. The four were teleported back to the entrance by the safety protocol. When they popped out of the diamond opening, every face wore the same expression: disbelief.
"That was F-rank?" The fat man sat on the floor, his goggles broken in half."What F-rank dungeon has that kind of Ghost Wolf coordination? They were flanking us! F-rank monsters can't have that kind of AI!"
Allen listened from the shadows and made a note on the management panel—"Ghost Wolf AI feedback: Independent adventurers believe F-rank shouldn't behave this way. Consider whether to reduce group coordination to decrease 'abnormality.' Conclusion: Do not reduce. Abnormality itself is a selling point."
The second team was stuck in the ninth room for a long time, but eventually cleared it. The C-rank warrior's personal strength was enough to tank the Gargoyles' physical attacks, while the two D-rank supports provided healing and buffs from the rear.
Clear rewards distributed—
Allen saw the drop results on the management panel.
[Clear Reward: Gale Shortbow (E- Rank)—Agility +12, Passive Skill"Wind Erosion"—Arrows reduce target movement speed by 10% for 3 seconds upon hit.]
E- rank equipment. From an F-rank dungeon.
The three people stood in the Boss room and stared at the bow for a full ten seconds. The C-rank warrior held the bow in front of him and inspected it three times.
"This... this is E-rank?"
"From an F-rank dungeon?"
"And it has a passive skill?"
Allen watched the three of them react behind the panel.
This was exactly the effect he wanted.
--
The Grey Crows' progress was the slowest, but the steadiest.
Allen focused his main attention on this team's monitoring window.
The lead brute—the management panel showed his name was"Gus," a D-rank warrior—was responsible for holding the line. His fighting style was crude but effective. The two D-rank male members, one melee and one ranged, coordinated reasonably well.
Lena Walker walked at the very back of the team.
No—not"at the back." Allen corrected his judgment after watching for a few minutes. Her position was always changing: she was on the flank when the team moved, she disappeared into the shadows when combat began, and after the monsters were distracted by Gus, she cut in from a blind spot. Her twin dagger attacks were so fast that even the tracking markers on the management panel had a fraction of a second delay.
C-rank Assassin.
The Ghost Wolf pack in the sixth room forced the Grey Crows into a hard fight. The first team had fallen here. But Lena handled it differently—she didn't get tangled with the pack. Instead, the moment Gus was besieged by three wolves, she circled to the outermost straggler of the pack and slit its throat.
Clean. No wasted motion.
Seventh room, Gargoyles. Gus's breastplate was torn open by a Gargoyle's claw, metal shards embedded into his skin. He gritted his teeth and kept fighting, but was visibly slower.
By the end of the eighth room, all four Grey Crows were wounded. Gus was the worst, his left arm almost unable to lift. One D-rank member was bleeding, the other's shield was cracked halfway through.
Lena's injuries were the lightest—a claw mark from a Ghost Wolf on her left calf. Not deep, but bleeding. She wrapped it quickly with a cloth strip and didn't stop.
Ninth room.
Gus went down. Two Gargoyles attacked simultaneously. He blocked the first but couldn't dodge the second—he was swatted away into a wall. The safety protocol activated, and he was teleported out.
The two D-rank members looked at each other, then at Lena.
"Lena, it's just the three of us. Still going?"
"The ninth room was this hard. The tenth—"
"Continue."
One word. She didn't look back.
The two D-rank members also fell at the end of the ninth room. One was ambushed at the neck by a Ghost Wolf, the other ran out of stamina in front of a Gargoyle. Safety teleported.
Of the four Grey Crows, only Lena remained.
Allen watched the lonely green light on the management panel pass the ninth room and enter the corridor leading to the Boss room.
She stopped in the corridor for about ten seconds. Allen switched to the corridor's camera view and saw her leaning against the wall, looking down to check the wound on her leg. The cloth strip was soaked through with blood.
Then she pulled both daggers from her waist and kept walking.
The Shadow Knight was waiting for her in the center of the tenth room.
Allen leaned against the warehouse wall, arms crossed, watching the live combat on the management panel.
Lena fought the Shadow Knight for eleven minutes.
Shadow Step was the biggest problem—the knight disappeared every eight seconds and appeared behind her. She was hit twice out of the first three times. By the fourth, she started to roll forward rather than turning to find the vanishing knight, creating distance.
The seventh Shadow Step, she didn't roll. She turned on the spot, daggers crossed in a block.
The sound of metal clashing came through the management panel.
The eleventh minute. The knight's HP dropped to 8%. Lena's state had also reached the limit—the management panel showed her stamina was below 15%, and her left leg was constantly losing blood.
The knight used Shadow Step for the fourteenth time.
Lena didn't block, didn't dodge. In the second the knight vanished, she made a judgment—thrusting her right-hand dagger straight behind her right side.
the tip of the blade entered the neck seam of the newly emerged Shadow Knight.
The knight shattered into black smoke.
[Grey Crows Cleared. Clearer: Lena Walker (C-rank Assassin). Clear Time: 52 min 38 sec. Clear Rating: B+.]
Allen watched Lena's green light stay motionless in the Boss room—she was likely sitting on the floor catching her breath.
Clear reward distributed.
[Clear Reward: Crescent Dagger (E-rank)—Attack +18, Agility +15, Passive Skill"Moon Shadow"—Attack speed increases by 20% in night/dark environments.]
An E-rank dagger. Not top-tier for a C-rank assassin, but coming from an F-rank dungeon—this quality was enough to drive any adventurer crazy.
All three teams were finished. The management panel updated its data—
[Today's Operations Data Summary]
[Total Challengers: 11 (3 teams)]
[Cleared Teams: 2 (Iron Wall Knights associate team, Grey Crows)]
[Wiped Teams: 1]
[Total BP Gained:+3200]
[Current BP Balance: 3150 (after deducting high-quality reward costs)]
[Operational Rating: C+-> B-]
B-. Just one small step away from the B rating required for the seven-day task.
Allen closed the management panel, jumped down from the fire escape, and circled to the front of the warehouse.
The time was 2:00 PM. The March sun was pale, and several old cars were parked in the gravel lot outside the warehouse. The first wiped team had already left. The three from the Iron Wall Knights were gone too—Allen had heard the C-rank warrior on his phone before they left, his voice loud enough to be heard half a block away:"...E-rank shortbow! With a passive skill! It came out of that F-rank dungeon! I haven't been drinking! You look at the forum post yourself..."
Allen pulled his hoodie low, hands in his pockets, pretending to walk out from the alley next to the warehouse.
The blue light of the diamond opening pulsed inside the warehouse. Passing from the outside, one could only see a bit of ghostly blue through the door cracks—if you didn't look closely, you'd think it was a broken LED light.
The warehouse door was pushed open from the inside.
Lena Walker walked out.
Up close, her condition was even more visible than the data on the management panel. Dark red blood soaked the cloth on her left calf, her tactical suit's right shoulder was torn, and a strand of pale-gold hair was stuck to her cheek with sweat.
But her pace was still steady, her center of gravity low—professional habits carved into her bones.
She held a new dagger in her left hand—Crescent. The edge reflected a cold gleam in the sunlight.
The two almost collided at the warehouse door.
Allen stepped aside. Lena swept her gaze over him—from top to bottom, in less than a second. Allen's hoodie, old jeans, worn-out sneakers, the complete"I'm just a passing civilian" kit.
Her gaze didn't linger on him.
Allen intended to walk straight past. But he noticed a detail—she wore a silver electronic bracelet on her left wrist. It wasn't an attribute detector used by awakeners, nor a common sports watch. That bracelet design was one he had seen in hospital ads.
An emergency medical contact bracelet. Usually worn by family members of patients with critical illnesses—the bracelet would vibrate to alert them when the patient entered a crisis.
"Your walk is bleeding," Allen said.
Lena looked down at her left leg.
"Small problem."
"Something inside the warehouse?" Allen pointed at the door behind her, acting like a curious passerby.
Lena sized him up. This time for two seconds longer than before.
"You're not an awakener?"
"I am." Allen paused."Theoretically."
"What does 'theoretically' mean?"
"Awakened, but not much use. Low level." Allen shrugged."You? Independent adventurer?"
"Can you tell?"
"No guild badges. Gear is cobbled together. And—" Allen looked toward the warehouse,"guild people wouldn't come to a place like this to farm an F-rank dungeon."
The corner of Lena's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile, more like a bitter confirmation.
"Life isn't easy for low-level adventurers." She slid the Crescent dagger into the sheath at her waist."Drops from F-rank dungeons usually aren't even picked up by street vendors. But this place is different—if you're an awakener, you can go in and see for yourself."
"I'd probably die in the first room."
"Then your level really is low."
She didn't ask"what class,""what level," or"which guild." Allen made a note for her in his mind—"The non-meddling type." This was uncommon among independent adventurers; most in the lower circles liked to pry into others' backgrounds because information was a survival resource there.
She didn't ask because either she didn't care or she had too many secrets of her own and didn't want to open that topic.
Allen bet on the latter.
"Hope your leg gets better soon." He took two steps toward the alley.
Lena didn't reply. She turned and walked in the opposite direction, her pace slightly faster than when she had first stepped out—the injury in her left leg caused a slight asymmetry in her gait, but she was consciously controlling it.
Allen stopped at the corner of the alley and looked back.
Lena had already reached the end of the street. In the gaps between her strides, her left hand touched the medical bracelet on her wrist—the motion was fast, not as if she were checking a message, but more like she was confirming it was still there.
Allen withdrew his gaze and pulled out his phone.
On the DeepRift forum, his post had surged to the third spot on the front page. Comments had broken three hundred.
"Holy crap holy crap holy crap! Just came out of that Brooklyn dungeon!! F-rank!! Dropped an E- shortbow!! With a passive!!!"
"Poster above is lying, right? An E-rank drop from an F-rank dungeon? You think the system is run by your family?"
"Not lying, here's proof [Picture][Picture][Picture]—look at the attribute panel screenshots for yourself."
"...Damn."
"The drops from this F-rank dungeon are fiercer than D-ranks! What the hell is going on??"
"Coordinates coordinates coordinates! OP, give coordinates!"
"Anyone know when this dungeon appeared? Can't find it in the GWA registry."
Allen locked his phone and walked through the alley toward the apartment.
He needed to sleep. Over the past thirty-two hours, he had only eaten a convenience store sandwich and two cans of coffee.
But as he reached the apartment building, his phone vibrated again.
It wasn't a forum notification.
It was a private message. From an ID he didn't recognize—"TitanHammer_JC."
The content was short.
"You're the one who posted? That dungeon is in the warehouse district, right? I've been there. I know what kind of place that is. We need to talk.-- J.C."
Allen looked at those two initials,"J.C."
Jason Collins.
He didn't reply. He put the phone back in his pocket, went upstairs, entered his room, and closed the door.
The management panel was still floating in the corner of his vision. He glanced at the live monitor before closing the panel—no anomalies within the 100-meter perception range of the warehouse entrance.
But on the forum, in the same minute"TitanHammer_JC" posted, another post appeared.
Poster ID: TitanShield_WayneTucker. Captain of the Brooklyn division of Titan Shield. D-rank.
The post wasn't on the public board—it was in Titan Shield's internal guild channel. Allen couldn't see it, but at that moment, in an office building in Midtown Manhattan on the fourteenth floor, a man with a buzz cut and an old scar on his chin was staring at the information Jason Collins had sent back.
Wayne Tucker put down his phone and took his feet off the desk.
"Jason."
"Yes, Captain." On the other end of the communicator, Jason's voice was an octave lower than usual.
"You say that dungeon is in the warehouse district. You say you've been in. You say you almost didn't make it out."
"...Yes."
"You're a B-rank."
Silence for three seconds.
"That dungeon isn't normal, Captain. The monsters inside—"
"An F-rank dungeon, and a B-rank warrior almost couldn't get out." Wayne interrupted him, the corner of his mouth twitching."Either you're lying, or there's something fishy about that place. Either way—"
He stood up and picked a blue-gold Titan Shield badge from the desk, pinning it to the lapel of his coat.
"Tomorrow, I'm going to see for myself."