The cursor blinked in the blank input box.
Thumb pressed the virtual keyboard.
"I don't have time to chat." Send.
Long press the power button.
The screen went dark.
Phone back in pocket.
The wind in the alley carried the acrid smell of sewers.
Allen straightened up, forcibly suppressing the soreness in his knees.
Forty-two days countdown. Forty-one days left.
—Red Hook District. P2 underground parking garage.
The light from the management panel shone on the concrete support pillars.
The sound of the virtual keyboard echoed in the empty space.
Seven days. Fourteen dungeons.
Target area: The five boroughs of New York, plus Newark, New Jersey.
The calculator module hung on the right side of his field of vision.
Basic creation cost per dungeon: 50,000 BP.
Fourteen dungeons. 700,000 BP.
Current BP balance: 53,400.
Over the next seven days, Victor Stone's elite teams and individual adventurers are expected to provide approximately 770,000 BP.
Total: 820,000.
Deducting 700,000 for construction costs, 120,000 remains as an emergency reserve.
There is no room for trial and error. No dungeon can be discovered or destroyed prematurely.
Jason stood three meters away.
"Boss. You're going to cover six districts in seven days? GWA's patrol network isn't just for show."
"So I need you and Lina to mark all the blind spots in the outer surveillance." Allen's finger traced fourteen red dots on the holographic map.
"First stop. The Bronx." Day 1. 2 PM.
Bronx District. Abandoned water treatment plant.
Rust covered the inner walls of the sedimentation tank. The bottom of the tank formed a cone that narrowed downwards.
Allen stood at the very bottom of the cone.
Shadow perception extended outwards along the tank wall.
Three meters. The perception range hadn't fully recovered.
Two kilometers above, Lena's green dot hovered at the edge of an abandoned factory chimney.
"The GWA patrol car just passed three blocks. Ten-minute security window," Lena reported through the headset.
Construction confirmed.
50,000 BP deducted.
Blue light surged from the cracks at the bottom of the pool.
Sixth dungeon. Grade F. "Sewage Throne."
Successfully linked to the Grade D natural core beneath the Bronx.
The management panel flickered violently.
A new line of golden characters covered the construction progress bar.
[Dungeon network nodes reached 6.]
[Network effect triggered: BP output of all nodes +15%.] The light from the text was somewhat dazzling in the dim sedimentation pool.
Network effect.
The output of a single dungeon is linear. Connecting them into a network results in exponential growth.
This means he can get more BP than expected within seven days.
Allen turned around and climbed up the rusty iron ladder.
"To Queens." The next day. The third day. Day Four.
The concept of time vanished in the dark underground spaces.
Flushing, Queens. Basement of an abandoned cotton candy factory.
Seventh. "The Sugar-Coated Trap."
Jackson Heights. Catacombs of an abandoned Catholic church.
Eighth. "The Altar Abyss."
Staten Island. Bottom of the Insect Valley landfill.
Ninth. "The Cradle of Rotten Soil."
Newark, New Jersey. Abandoned port warehouses.
Tenth. "Children of Rust."
Entry. Waiting for the intervening window. Injecting BP. Establishing resonance. Evacuation.
Assembly line operation.
Four days. Five underground cities.
The cost of continuous physical displacement began to accumulate in the nervous system.
The Bronx smelled of expired chlorine.
Queens smelled of musty peanut oil.
Staten Island smelled of decaying organic matter.
Newark smelled of diesel and metal oxides.
Night of Day Four.
Allen sat in the subway car returning to the Red Hook District.
The car swayed. A rhythmic clatter echoed from the rail joints.
He closed his eyes.
Just to block out the light pollution on his retina.
When he opened his eyes again, the station sign outside the window read: Canal Street.
Seven stops past.
His consciousness went blank.
His shadow perception automatically activated the moment he opened his eyes.
A middle-aged man in a brown leather jacket sat on the plastic seat opposite him.
A Class B energy signal.
The man's head was slightly tilted, his gaze fixed directly in his direction.
No hostility. But a probing intent.
The train slowed. The doors opened.
Allen stood up. He didn't look at the man.
He walked straight out of the car.
His leather shoes clicked on the platform tiles.
He walked three blocks. His shadow perception didn't pick up the Class B signal.
Perhaps just an Awakened one traveling the same way.
Perhaps an informant for the Cleaners.
It doesn't matter. He doesn't have the energy to counter-track.
Day 5.
Upper West Side, Manhattan. Abandoned heating tunnel north of Central Park.
Eleventh Underground City. "Winter Rift."
The moment the blue light faded, a bright yellow warning box popped up on the management panel.
Not a system notification. It's physiological monitoring.
[Architect's Physiological Monitoring Warning]
[Heart Rate: Persistently High.]
[Sleep Duration (Cumulative in 168 Hours): 9.5 Hours.]
[Cortisol Level: Dangerous Threshold.]
[Recommendation: Force 12 Hours of Rest. Ignoring this recommendation may result in—permanent sensory decline.] Allen stared at the yellow box.
His finger swiped across the virtual interface. He clicked the close button in the upper right corner.
The warning box disappeared.
He brought up the coordinates of the twelfth city. Brooklyn. Abandoned fire station.
3 PM.
The red iron gate of the fire station was half-open.
Allen stood in front of the door. His hand rested on the doorknob.
The door opened from the inside.
Lina stood in the doorway.
She wasn't carrying a dagger. Her right hand held a paper bag.
The bag bore the red chili pepper logo of the burrito shop in the Red Hook district.
Her left hand held a bottle of mineral water.
"You haven't eaten anything proper for two days."
Lina shoved the paper bag and water into his hand.
The warmth of the bag seeped through the fabric of his hoodie into his palm.
"Eat first, then build. Otherwise, I refuse to stand guard."
Allen lowered his head. He opened the paper bag.
A double chicken burrito. The steam mixed with the sour and spicy aroma of salsa filled his nostrils.
He took a bite.
The chicken and tortilla chewed in his mouth.
His right hand began to tremble.
Not from weakness.
His body was protesting.
Extremely tired muscles, upon contact with the heat, began to spasm uncontrollably.
The wrapper of the burrito made a soft, rustling sound.
Lina leaned against the doorframe.
"In your current state, any C-rank assassin could snap your neck."
"Then why don't you do it?" Allen swallowed his first bite.
"Because you're paid more."
Day Six.
The thirteenth dungeon was completed.
Total number of nodes reached seventeen.
A blinding golden light burst from the management panel.
[Network Effect - Level Two Trigger]
[All node BP output +35%.]
[New Feature Unlocked: Remote Monster Maneuvering – Instantly transfer monster units between any two nodes.]
[New Feature Unlocked: Resonant Pulse – Apply a stabilizing effect to the natural dungeon cores within its coverage area, delaying the awakening/burst process.]
Resonant Pulse.
Allen's finger hovered in mid-air.
Abyss Walker had said that a strong enough resonance could suppress the burst signal.
Seventeen nodes.
A holographic map unfolded in the field of vision.
Three natural core nodes around New York. The once menacing dark red.
Now, the color has downgraded.
Deep orange.
System label: [Active but Controllable].
Effective. Using an artificial underground city to suppress the rampage of the natural underground city. This path has been successfully paved.
That night.
Rift Park.
The water in the artificial lake silently collapsed.
Blue light condensed on the rubble on the shore.
Abyss Walker's form was clearer than before.
Stretchers of white hair fluttered slightly in the night breeze. The fibrous texture of his gray robe was visible to the naked eye.
"Seventeen nodes. Not bad." The faceless figure turned this way.
"My resonant energy has been injected into your network. The effect is equivalent to the coverage of an additional fifteen nodes."
"Your effective coverage is now thirty-two nodes." The map on the management panel refreshed automatically.
The pulse range expanded wildly outward from New York.
A radius of two thousand kilometers.
An invisible resonant net enveloped the entire East Coast of the United States.
On the map, more dark red dots turned deep orange.
"How long can this buy us?" Allen asked.
"Enough for you to finish the remaining hundred." Abyss Walker's form began to fade, blue speckles peeling away at the edges.
"Provided you finish before you collapse."
The light dissipated.
The lake returned to calm.
Day Seven.
North end of Harlem. Abandoned theater.
The Eighteenth Underground City.
A red velvet curtain hung to one side of the stage, its hem covered in mold.
The wooden floor creaked dryly underfoot.
Allen knelt on one knee in the center of the stage.
His finger pressed the confirm button.
50,000 BP deducted.
"The Final Act." Online.
Eighteen Underground Cities. Seven Days.
The five boroughs of New York, New Jersey, Washington.
All online. All resonating.
The global view of the management panel changed.
Scattered blue dots connected into lines. Lines intertwined into a network.
The entire network flashed synchronously on the map.
Bright and dark. Like breathing.
BP balance: 45,000.
The red warning from the physiological monitoring popped up for the third time. It occupied half the screen.
Allen immediately turned off notification permissions.
He lay back on the stage floor.
Dust was stirred up by the airflow, dancing in the moonlight filtering through the hole in the ceiling.
It was very quiet.
His shadow perception contracted within his body. There were no external energy signals.
He closed his eyes.
A wave transmitted into his brain.
Not from the external natural core.
From his own underground city network.
The cores of the eighteen underground cities, at the same time, emitted an extremely low-frequency resonance.
This sound was below the lower limit of human hearing.
Even C-level perception couldn't detect it.
But he heard it.
His creations were vibrating collectively.
The management panel lit up automatically.
A line of black characters appeared in the center of the screen.
[Network Core Consciousness - Budding Stage.] [Your dungeon network is showing initial signs of self-awareness.] Allen's eyes snapped open.