The dungeon felt louder after the flare incident.
Leaving the battles aside, the paranoia among the groups alone had grown beyond any control. Every route across the plains carried conflicting reports now. Patrols vanished everywhere on both sides and operators stopped lowering their weapons even around allied squads.
The war inside the dungeon had stopped resembling organized conflict.
Riven walked through the western forest sectors while Serena's squad followed several meters behind him beneath the dense canopy. The deeper parts of the forest muffled most sounds coming from the plains outside, but even here distant detonations still echoed faintly through the ruins scattered between the trees. Everybody in the squad was still reeling from recent events.
The loss from the previous night had settled heavily over the group despite nobody openly talking about it. Some of them were injured badly enough that their movements still looked stiff during longer marches. Others kept scanning the surroundings constantly like they expected another ambush at any moment.
Riven could understand why. Once people realized disguises and misinformation were being used inside the dungeon, every encounter became dangerous regardless of faction markings.
The Hollow Dogs and Obsidian Circle had already started turning suspicious toward their own patrols. That made the situation far more unstable than before.
Serena eventually moved beside him while stepping over a collapsed stone pillar half buried beneath roots and moss.
"We've been avoiding the main routes for hours now," she said quietly. "Where exactly are we going?"
Riven pushed aside a low hanging branch before answering.
"The northern crystal depots."
Her expression tightened slightly after hearing that.
"That area should still be under constant fire from both sides."
"It was until three days ago," he corrected. "Now both factions are too focused on each other to properly maintain resource control."
Serena stayed silent for a moment while processing that.
The deeper issue behind this war had never been hatred between factions. Everything happening inside the dungeon revolved around resources. The crystal growths produced here could slow deterioration inside stored skill stones after refinement. High-level operators paid absurd amounts for stable supply access because replacing damaged skills cost far more than maintaining them.
That was why the dungeon mattered so much to Blackvine's underworld in the first place.
And now both factions were bleeding themselves dry fighting over territory while neglecting the actual resource zones.
Riven intended to exploit that mistake completely.
The forest gradually thinned as the group moved farther north. Open grasslands slowly returned beyond the trees while ruined structures became more common across the terrain. No one really knew how these structures were formed inside dungeons, but they didn't care either.
One of Serena's squad members suddenly slowed near the front.
"Movement."
Everyone immediately stopped. Riven crouched slightly near the edge of the ruins while observing the plains ahead through gaps between broken stone.
Three transport beasts moved across the grasslands nearly half a kilometer away surrounded by armed operators carrying Obsidian Circle insignias. The formation looked defensive rather than aggressive. Several members constantly scanned the terrain while another maintained a detection skill across the outer perimeter.
"They're transporting resources," Serena stated the obvious.
Riven studied the convoy quietly.
The carts attached behind the beasts carried reinforced storage containers large enough for refined crystal transport. What interested him more was the condition of the operators themselves.
They all had damaged equipment, likely from constant battles and everyone seemed beyond exhausted at that point. They looked like they had been stretched pretty thin without any breaks or backup.
"They pulled guards away from resource sectors," he said after several seconds.
Serena followed his gaze immediately.
"You figured that out from one convoy?"
"They're using combatants for transportation duty." Riven pointed toward the rear formation. "That means their logistics structure is collapsing."
One of the squad members narrowed his eyes toward the distant convoy.
"Are we gonna attack them?"
"Not yet."
That answer surprised several people.
A few days ago, Riven would have targeted a convoy like this immediately. Serena noticed the difference too.
"Are you thinking of going for something bigger?" she said.
Riven stood slowly from behind the ruins.
"The convoy only matters because of where it came from."
The group continued moving north afterward while keeping distance from the transport route. The terrain became rougher as they advanced deeper into the abandoned sectors of the dungeon. Fewer signs of active patrols appeared here compared to the southern plains. That alone confirmed Riven's suspicion.
Both factions had started stripping operators away from peripheral zones to reinforce the impromptu warfront. He counted on them to make this mistake and they didn't disappoint.
Nearly an hour later, the group finally reached the outer edge of the northern crystal depot. Even Serena stopped briefly after seeing the area properly.
Massive crystalline growths stretched across the ruined landscape like frozen rivers of pale blue glass erupting from the ground itself. Some climbed through collapsed buildings while others spread across entire sections of the plains in jagged formations reflecting the artificial light overhead.
The density alone made the area absurdly valuable and it was almost completely abandoned. Only a few dead bodies remained near the outer harvesting zones alongside shattered mining equipment left behind during earlier fighting.
One of Serena's squad members stared across the crystal fields in disbelief.
"They abandoned all this?"
"They didn't abandon it intentionally," Riven replied. "The war pulled their attention elsewhere."
That was the weakness large organizations always developed eventually.
The bigger the conflict became, the harder it was to maintain awareness across every front simultaneously. Both factions were so obsessed with breaking each other apart that they stopped protecting the reason they entered the dungeon to begin with.
Serena slowly turned toward him.
"You knew this would happen."
"I hoped it would."
Even Riven hadn't expected the situation inside the dungeon to destabilize this quickly. But now that it had, the opportunity sitting in front of him was enormous.
The crystal farms alone could finance independent operations for months if managed properly. For the first time since entering Blackvine's underworld, Riven finally felt like he had found ground stable enough to start building something real.
He stepped into the abandoned crystal fields while examining the surrounding ruins carefully.
"Set perimeter rotations first," he ordered calmly. "After that, we start securing the area properly."
Nobody questioned him anymore. That realization settled quietly over Serena while the squad immediately began moving according to his instructions. Only a few days ago, they still treated him like an ambitious freelancer with dangerous ideas.
Now they followed his decisions instinctively during an active underworld war.
Serena watched him walk deeper into the crystal fields while pale blue reflections shifted across the ruins around him.
The dangerous part wasn't his strength. It was how naturally he adapted once chaos appeared around him.
All of a sudden, it didn't seem like such a bad idea to follow him just to see where he would end up. It would definitely be an interesting journey just from what she had witnessed until now.