Chapter 39

  Meanwhile, back in Redroot, the chaos had reached a new crescendo.

  The Guild’s outpost, once a dignified sprawl of command tents and armored caravans, now looked like a cross between a bureaucracy convention and a war council. Stacks of reports piled to the ceiling. Adventurers, bronze and silver and even a few gold-ranked elites, bustled in and out with increasingly wild-eyed expressions.

  “It’s a theme park,” one scout muttered, collapsing into a chair after a return from the dungeon’s edge. “I swear on my tier badge. It’s a theme park run by a Saint Stage sadist.”

  Vale—Guild gold-rank, ex-military, and the poor soul sent to handle this diplomatic quagmire—pinched the bridge of his nose as another report was slammed down.

  “People are lining up outside the dungeon,” the assistant hissed. “They sing to it. There’s a guy charging admission for fake guided tours.”

  “I know,” Vale said through clenched teeth. “I had to pay him to get through.”

  “Sir, one of the new rooms dispenses some kind of crunchy but soft substance which we have analysed to be some kind of corn that's been expanded somehow, just a few hundred grams of it are going for millions!”

  “I know.”

  “And we think... we think the floor responds to audience reaction. Like, actually shifts based on cheers and applause.”

  Vale stood, calmly walked to the back of the tent, and headbutted the canvas wall.

  “…Feel better?” the assistant asked after a pause.

  “No,” Vale said. “But at least the tent feels pain now too.”

  He turned back to the table, grabbing the topmost sheet. A projected map of the dungeon’s known structure. It shimmered faintly. A new floor had just registered.

  He stared at the flickering topography.

  “Why the hell is there a spinning wheel!”

  The assistant corrected him, “ The Core labelled it to be a “Ferris Wheel also its a spinning wheel with teeth.”

  “What!?”

  _____

  The Church, meanwhile, was only growing bolder.

  Mass pilgrimages now arrived hourly. Redroot’s streets flooded with robed faithful waving metallic banners. Hymns praising the “Divine Gearheart” echoed through the alleys. Vendors sold clockwork replicas of Ethan’s constructs, blessed with fake enchantments. Children spun pinwheels shaped like his crest. Even the stray dogs wore collars etched with holy scripture.

  Inside the half-built cathedral, the High Priestess stood on scaffolding above the central dais. The blueprints had been updated—again. Now the main altar revolved on a hydraulic axis and played sacred music based on mana fluctuations.

  “He has chosen whimsy,” she proclaimed, arms outstretched. “So whimsy shall be holy!”

  Acolytes below cheered. Someone fired confetti from a staff.

  Her second-in-command leaned in. “The Guild is getting… twitchy,” he warned. “They say the dungeon is turning pilgrims into participants. There are rides.”

  “Then they will ride with faith,” she replied, eyes wild. “Let them be judged by the circus of destiny.

  ____

  And far away, in the imperial court, the Emperor laughed so hard he nearly spilled wine on his robes.

  The illusion hovering above his desk played a looped sequence of the fourth floor—a parade of constructs in circus makeup juggling captured illusions of monsters, a sentient cannon announcing trivia mid-combat, and a glowing sign reading “NO REFUNDS” over a pit of harmless mana-slime.

  “They’ve made him a god, and he’s turned into a showman,” the Emperor wheezed. “Oh, I like him.”

  He sipped his wine, still chuckling.

  “Send the envoy,” he said. “And make sure they bring a gift.”

  The aide blinked. “What kind of gift, your majesty?”

  He considered.

  “…A unicycle. And plans for a mana-powered drum set.”

  The aide didn’t question it. Not anymore.

  ____

  Back beneath the dungeon, Ethan floated cross-legged in midair, a dozen illusory sketches hovering around him.

  “Okay,” he said, talking to no one again. “So the juggler boss will have six arms. Fireballs, knives, candy, illusions, and a singing voice. Too much? Nah. Never too much.”

  He grinned, not entirely sane.

  The Strategist flickered in beside him, holding an illusory clipboard.

  “I assume this is your way of maintaining psychological superiority?” the construct asked dryly.

  Ethan didn’t answer immediately. He pointed at one of the planned trap rooms—a literal funhouse where mirrors reflected your stats, but upside-down.

  “You know what the best part is?” Ethan said finally. “They’re going to talk about this. Not like they talk about monsters or danger. But like they talk about memories. The kind you don’t forget. The kind that haunt.”

  The Strategist sighed and said “So…. Im guessing this means you want even more fog machines?”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “You understand me so well.”

  ______

  The delving group he’d been assigned to wasn’t remarkable. A Tier 6 spearwoman with a knack for wind-imbued strikes, a dual-classed ranger-healer with a cocky streak, and two brothers—axe and shield—who never stopped bickering unless they were cleaving monsters apart. They called themselves “Stormreach” or something equally forgettable. It didn’t matter.

  Leo had joined them without protest, played the part of the quiet auxiliary—someone with utility spells and decent situational awareness. The ranger had sized him up and shrugged, the spearwoman gave him a nod. They didn’t ask too many questions. That suited him just fine.

  He let them lead.

  Let them burn through potions and confidence as they cleared the first few chambers of the dungeon’s upper floors. Let them chatter about loot drops, about taking on the second floor next time. Let them breathe easy.

  They were only on the schedule so he could get in.

  And now?

  Now they were a liability.

  It happened halfway through a chamber rigged with illusion traps.

  Tiny little golems- which looked quite similar to the primitive ‘projectors’ some of the humans he was studying had developed though even they were far more advanced than this medieval world-flickered in and out of existence, throwing light and shape in every direction. The axe brother yelled something about covering flanks.

  Leo didn’t respond.

  He simply moved.

  One moment, he was there. The next, his fingers flicked through invisible glyphs—old system code most mortals would never see—layered into the seams between reality and perception. The ranger spun too late, catching only a flash of gold before his mind fractured and fell into an eternal loop of static and silence.

  The brothers went down together, still confused. Their shields did nothing against system-level disruption.

  The spearwoman lasted longer.

  Long enough to understand.

  Her wind burst pushed Leo back a step, slicing shallow lines through his coat—but she never made it out of the illusion field. Not with the override script he slipped into the dungeon’s anchor nodes. Her last breath was a question, and he didn’t bother answering.

  When it was done, the dungeon was quiet again.

  Leo stood alone, the light of the runes dimming around him, his breathing even. His coat fluttered in the residual wind. Somewhere above, the system recorded the group's wipe as a tactical failure, recommending no disciplinary review. After all, the dungeon was ranked volatile.

  “Stormreach, wiped,” he murmured, mockingly respectful. “What a shame.”

  He retrieved what little gear was worth salvaging, marked their deaths as accidental, and proceeded deeper into the dungeon—alone, just as he preferred.

  Now that the group slot had served its purpose, there was no reason to pretend.

  No more disguises .

  No more witnesses.

  It was time to meet that dungeon

  _____

  Ethan lounged on a smooth slab of obsidian he’d shaped into a bench, the corelight gently pulsing beneath his feet. His focus wasn’t on any crisis or plan, just the open chamber in front of him—a training hall carved out of polished black stone, illuminated by soft, ambient glowstones that shifted through hues of silver and violet.

  The Sentient Knight stood in the center of the room, shield raised, blade in hand. Not a simple forged weapon, but a new iteration crafted from tiered alloys and enchanted to match the construct’s evolving capabilities. The blade shimmered with an edge that danced between steel and force, an aether-reactive filament running through its core. The shield, large enough to cover the Knight’s torso, bore an inlaid sigil Ethan had embedded during the last forge cycle—one of pure reinforcement and adaptive resistance.

  It moved with purpose now.

  No longer stiff. No longer a puppet. The Knight flowed.

  Ethan watched as it practiced a sequence he’d uploaded hours ago—only for it to begin deviating. The expected diagonal strike shifted midway through, parried an imaginary counterattack, and twisted into a reverse thrust that hadn’t been part of the drill. Its stance adapted, tightening, then loosening as it rolled its shoulder like a living soldier checking flexibility.

  He arched a brow.

  Interesting.

  The Manaspirit Binding had done more than just give the construct a mind—it gave it intent. He hadn’t realized how fast that intent could start refining its own movements. Not random flailing, but a clear, self-adjusting logic built around survival and victory. The Knight’s internal blueprint had started shifting too, altering microscopic decisions in its fiber-muscle tension, optimizing its joints mid-motion.

  Like biological evolution, Ethan mused, but without needing generations to see change. It was adapting itself. Iterating.

  He pushed off the bench, boots tapping against the stone floor, walking closer to the boundary of the Knight’s training space. The construct immediately paused and straightened. Its faceless helm tilted slightly, as if awaiting instruction.

  “You’re not just mimicking patterns anymore,” Ethan said, half to himself. “You’re choosing. Evaluating.”

  The Knight said nothing, of course. It couldn’t speak—yet. But something in the angle of its shield, the slight tension in its stance, made it feel like it was listening.

  Ethan felt the corner of his mouth tug upward.

  So this is what they meant by sentience…

  Then everything shifted.

  A pulse. Deep. Sharp. Like a single drop of ink falling into still water—but Ethan felt it across every inch of the dungeon. Not an explosion. Not violence.

  System interference.

  His heart dropped into a cold place.

  Ethan didn’t waste time. In less than a breath, he vanished from the training chamber and reappeared near the observation platform he'd built above the upper floors. Dimensional shifting within his domain came as easily as thinking now. He snapped open a sensory interface, runes flickering to life in the air like a spiderweb of data.

  There. Sector A-12. First floor, far western node. A sanctioned delve party had just triggered a flag—internal party kill. Not unusual, except—

  The system had suppressed the warning.

  It hadn’t reported the deaths.

  Ethan's eyes narrowed. “No. No, that’s not supposed to happen.”

  He pulled the logs manually, overriding safety buffers and encryption. This was his domain. The data appeared, redacted in real time by something higher in the system hierarchy. Higher than even the Authority tier the Silence had granted him.

  He caught a flash before it vanished—

  “Override accepted. Observation priority: Class 7 active. Continue protocol masking.”

  He clenched his jaw.

  That wasn’t Guild interference. That was Observer-grade masking.

  He exhaled slowly, forcing down the surge of ice in his chest.

  The delvers—five of them—had entered earlier under a valid slot. Their readings had been stable. Then, four vanished in the span of ten seconds. No dungeon traps had triggered. No constructs had engaged. The fifth signature?

  Still alive.

  Still moving.

  And heading deeper.

  “Who the hell are you…” Ethan murmured.

  He extended his perception—down, out, through the lattice of his dungeon like nerves firing in a massive brain. He found the fifth figure passing through a chamber of illusory fog. The Mirage Golems didn’t react. No traps triggered. The figure didn’t walk around them—it walked through them. Like he could see the seams of the illusion for what they were.

  The system registered him as Tier 6 Mortal.

  Ethan didn’t believe that for a second.

  Because the moment Ethan tried to focus on the figure, he felt something ripple back. Like someone looking back at him through a two-way mirror.

  He broke the link with a snap, staggered a step, and hissed.

  Not possible.

  His dungeon was meant to be veiled. Even Saint Stage beings couldn’t casually glance into the core systems. Whoever this was—they weren’t supposed to be here.

  The Knight stepped in beside him silently, its blade sheathed now. Ethan stared out into the echoing halls of the dungeon. His domain. His sanctuary.

  But something was already inside.

  And it wasn’t one of his.

  “…So that’s your game.”

  His fingers clenched. Runes flared. Commands echoed silently through his infrastructure. Traps shifted. Paths rewrote. Constructs re-tasked.

  The hunt had begun.