The black reflection of the sword blade shone on the left lens. The scratch overlapped with the blade.
Ten centimeters from his face.
Allen's neck folded backward. His back pressed against the ground.
The greatsword's blade grazed his nose. Skin broke. Blood seeped out.
Time flowed at 0.5x. The greatsword's swing trajectory was lengthened.
Using the momentum of his backward lean, he pushed off with his right foot. His body slid back three meters.
Exiting Room 80.
The door closed before his eyes.
[Test Mode - Pause] Second basement level of the parking lot.
The coolness of the concrete floor seeped into his skin.
His phone vibrated in his jeans pocket.
Lina. He answered.
The background noise of the call included the clinking of a glass. She lowered her voice.
"Black Snake is recruiting. Not just in the Red Hook District. The whole of Brooklyn. They're pulling in D- and C-level freelance contractors from the gray area."
"How big is the team?"
"The number I heard is twenty." Allen's breath hitched for half a second.
"Twenty people." Lena took a breath on the other end of the phone. "Exploring a C-level dungeon? That's not exploration. That's siege."
"What did Guts say?"
"Guts used to work for Black Snake. He said he'd seen this kind of thing before. The last time Black Snake assembled a twenty-person exploration team was to clear out a B-level dungeon managed by a competitor. They stormed the boss room. Killed the boss. Took the core fragment. The dungeon went into hibernation. The competitor declared bankruptcy the next day." The call ended.
Allen slammed his phone face down on the ground.
His index finger traced a dark red powdery line on the concrete floor, the dried lizard blood from under his fingernail leaving a trail.
Victor Stone's trump card was revealed.
SilentBlade_7's reconnaissance. Eleven minutes to complete. No reward.
The target isn't resources. It's terrain mapping.
Twenty Awakened Beings of Rank C or higher.
Victor Stone's team isn't going to fight monsters. They're going to dismantle the entire dungeon's physical structure.
The Black Serpent doesn't need the output from the Brooklyn Ruins. They need this uncontrolled dungeon wiped off the map. Take the core, log out of the system, everything reset.
Open the management panel.
The red envelope is still hanging in the upper right corner.
[Collaborative Exploration Application Notification] Click Reject.
A pop-up window asks for a reason.
Fingers tap on the virtual keyboard.
"NYC-BK-0513 is currently in the upgrade testing phase. Internal environment parameters are extremely unstable. Hosting large-scale external teams poses serious security risks. It is recommended that the applicant resubmit after the dungeon is stably operational." Send.
[GWA Compliance Review System Processing…] Two seconds later.
[Reason Determination: Reasonable. Application Rejected.] Delaying tactics in place.
Victor Stone's legal team needs time to go through the process again.
But S-rank guilds never take just one path.
Bribe the night patrols in the Red Hook district. Cut off the power grid to the warehouse district. Create a regional gas leak to evacuate civilians.
A forced breakthrough only requires a vacuum period without witnesses.
Seventy-two hours is the official countdown.
The Black Serpent's countdown may only be halfway through.
Allen switches to the blueprint interface.
The topology diagram of eighty rooms unfolds on the screen.
Drag your finger to Room Zero—the area where the Heart of the Dungeon is located.
Path reconstruction.
Cancel all shortcuts. Cancel teleportation nodes.
The only path from the entrance to Room Zero must pass through all eighty rooms.
Room 80. The Abyss Watcher.
It is no longer the final boss. It is the gatekeeper.
Save configuration.
[Test Mode - Reload]
Countdown: Thirty-five hours.
Underground waterway area.
Water depth fifteen centimeters. Water temperature eight degrees. Completely dark.
Allen stood in the water.
The short sword's metal surface was riddled with tiny nicks.
A small eddy was formed in the water to his left.
A subtle tremor ran through the brickwork on the wall to his right, caused by scales rubbing against it.
He didn't move.
A golden notification popped up on the management panel.
[Level Up: D- Rank → C- Rank.]
[All Attributes Updated—Strength C-/Agility C/Constitution C-/Intelligence C+/Perception B-/Luck ???] Perception B-.
A direct jump from C-.
The water within a forty-meter radius transformed into a giant three-dimensional coordinate system.
Each ripple in the water represented a set of data.
Thirty-eight meters away. A deep-sea lizard flipped over, its tail displacing six hundred milliliters of water.
Twenty-five meters away. Two hagfish were entangled, their friction generating low-frequency sound waves.
His skin took over information gathering.
The C- rank Strength attribute made the water resistance negligible.
He no longer needed to use leverage to dodge.
Allen took half a step to the left.
The short sword was held horizontally.
Two seconds later, a mandible covered in barbs slammed precisely into the sword tip.
The force was overwhelming.
The blade sliced through scales, muscle, and bone without hesitation.
Pierced. Sword withdrawn. Corpse fell into the water.
Experience bar advanced.
Countdown: Two hours.
Tower area. Room 79.
A cylindrical atrium with a diameter of two kilometers.
Gravity parameter: 2.0x.
Allen stood on a raised concrete platform.
A crack ran through the ridge of the short sword's blade.
The physical limits of an E-rank weapon.
Above. Three dark figures hovered.
Twilight Raiders. C-rank.
This was the last bit of experience.
The first Raider swooped down from directly above.
Boosted by gravity, its speed broke the sound barrier. A deafening roar as the air was torn apart slammed into his head.
Allen's knees bent slightly.
His thigh muscles strained under the pressure of double his weight.
The short sword thrust vertically upwards.
They collided head-on.
The tip of the sword pierced the attacker's jaw. The cracks on the blade shattered under the immense impact.
Half of the broken sword remained inside the monster's skull.
Without pausing, he used the momentum of the falling monster's corpse to roll to the side, avoiding the attack of the other two.
His right foot landed on the edge of the platform, propelling him into the air.
The broken hilt struck the second monster in the back of the head, snapping its spine.
The third missed, its claws slicing through his afterimage.
Allen landed on the exit slab below.
The system notification sound drowned out the sound of the wind.
[Level Up: C- Rank → C Rank.]
[Dungeon Network Unlock Condition: 3/3.]
[Function Unlocked.]
[Test Mode - Exit] Second basement level of the parking lot.
Allen lay on the concrete floor.
His chest heaved violently.
His black hoodie was soaked through, water dripping from the hem.
The physical trauma of the test mode wouldn't carry over into reality, but the stamina depletion was synchronized.
He used his right hand to push himself up.
His left hand opened the management panel.
The golden icons expanded.
[Dungeon Network—Architects can manage and operate multiple dungeons simultaneously.]
[Second Dungeon Creation Cost: 50,000 BP.]
[Third Dungeon Cost: 100,000 BP.]
[The entrance location of each new dungeon can be specified within the architect's dungeon perception range (currently a 5km radius).]
[Note: Each new dungeon shares the architect's blueprint library but can have its own theme, monster configuration, and rule additions.] BP Balance: 134,500.
The number flashed in the upper right corner of the screen.
Fifty thousand BP. He could build a second one.
One hundred thousand BP. He could build a third one.
A map unfolded in his mind. Red Hook District. Five-kilometer radius.
Abandoned docks. Shut-down chemical plants. Unmanned subway tunnels.
Each location could be an entrance.
Each entrance could connect to his blueprint library.
A network.
Victor Stone is sending twenty men to destroy an underground city.
If this underground city is just a node.
If the entire underground of Brooklyn is connected to the same core.
Allen's gaze shifted to the far corner of the panel.
Global Underground City Anomaly Fluctuation Index.
The ever-rising zigzag line.
The end.
Touched the red threshold line.
Lower edge. Overlapped.