Sera was already at the gate when Kai arrived.

She looked at him as he approached before checking the ranking screen beside the gate. "Forty-four," she said. "You moved up again."

"Much faster than expected," Kai said.

"Your reaction isn’t really showing that you know how terrifying that speed is." She said with a raised brow. "Or did you expect this already?"

"Reaching this was only a matter of time, but I plan to rise higher." Kai looked at the gate. "What’s your rank?"

"Twenty-sixth," Sera said.

Kai looked at her and then said, "Amazing."

Sera hummed before turning toward the gate. "D-rank today. Let’s move."

[D-Rank Dungeon found.]

[D-Rank Dungeon: Windy Slope.]

[Recommended Level: 17.]

[D-Rank Dungeon: Active.]

The interior was wide-corridored and cold. The light came from somewhere overhead that was not a ceiling, diffuse and slightly wrong in the way dungeon light was always slightly wrong.

Movement came from ahead before they had taken ten steps.

The first creature was covered in thick dark plating with two sets of forelegs, its head flat and wide with a jaw that took up most of its face.

[Ironplate Crawler.]

[Level 15.]

Sera moved first.

Light gathered along her blade, and she drove it forward into the Crawler’s approach. The blade pierced into the creature’s body while Kai stepped around the left side, and the blade arrived at the gap between the plating and the ground.

And ended the Crawler.

The chain started.

[Distortion Applied.]

[Drop Quality: Optimized.]

[Amplification Complete.]

They kept moving without pause.

The second group came from a branching corridor, four of them, faster than the first and moving in the loose coordination of creatures that had learned to work together rather than simply converging on the same target.

[Fang Runner]

[Level 16.]

Roughly wolf-shaped but unnaturally long through the body, with elongated forelimbs that let them shift direction mid-stride fast enough to distort their approach angles.

Sera planted her shield construct across the branching point, and two of them hit it and stopped. The other two split wide, and Kai took the right one while Sera stepped past the shield and handled the left.

[Consecutive Chain: Active.]

[Output Adjustment: Increasing.]

The rhythm settled into something that did not require active coordination. Sera reading the space, Kai moving through what she created, the distortion finding the optimal point within the constraint of her positioning, the distortion adapting to the space she created.

They went deeper.

The next section was tighter, the corridors narrowing until the two of them moved in single file through the passages. A group of three waited, pressed against the walls to reduce their visible profile.

[Stone Fang.]

[Level 17.]

These were darker than the Fang Runners, their hide textured like rough granite. Sera’s light shield expanded to fill the corridor width completely. Kai stepped up behind her shoulder and struck through the precise gap she left, his timing matching her calculations perfectly.

Stone hide split under his blade. The creature dropped without a sound.

[Distortion Applied.]

[Drop Quality: Optimized.]

[Amplification Complete.]

[Distortion Output: Increasing.]

Then the ground shook.

Not from creature impact, but something deeper. Vibrations came through the floor and walls simultaneously—structural movement rather than surface disturbance.

Kai’s head turned sharply. "That wasn’t the dungeon."

Sera paused, her grip tightening on her weapon. "Then what—"

The second tremor hit harder, closer. The wall to their left cracked along a diagonal line running from floor to ceiling before an entire section collapsed inward. Stone folded into itself, taking part of the corridor with it. Not falling but folding, as the space had simply decided to stop existing.

Air pressure changed, making their ears pop as creatures poured through the breach.

Not from ahead but everywhere.

Gaps in the ceiling.

Cracks in the walls.

Passages behind them.

"That’s not normal," Sera said, raising her shield.

Kai blurred into motion. Instead of engaging fully, his blade flickered in quick, redirecting strikes that disrupted rather than killed, carving a path through the chaos. The distortion pulled in too many directions simultaneously, optimal points shifting faster than they could stabilize.

Another tremor echoed out further down the dungeon.

The collapse wasn’t random.

Sections were disappearing in sequence.

A flash of light appeared for half a second and was gone, too sharp and intense to be structural collapse.

Kai’s eyes narrowed in realization. This wasn’t natural.

The tunnel ahead simply vanished. A full section of the dungeon disappeared, leaving only compressed stone where passage had been moments before.

His consecutive chain was shattered.

Sera was already turning toward him before he spoke.

"Sera."

She moved instantly.

Stone crashed behind them as the ceiling cracked apart. Kai grabbed her arm and pulled her into his movement, his blade shifting to guide rather than strike. Not following the distortion’s optimal path but directing it toward the single route that remained open.

They dove through the narrowing gap as stone split around them. Sera cleared the opening just as the section collapsed with finality, sealing the passage as if it had never existed.

They stopped.

Kai released her arm. Both of them breathing, the dungeon around them suddenly still in the specific stillness that follows something that should not have happened.

"That wasn’t random," Sera said.

Kai looked back at where the tunnel had been. "No," he said.

Sera looked at the corridor ahead, the one that remained, then back at him. She had already reached her own conclusion, checking it against his. "Let’s finish the dungeon at least," she said.

"Yes," Kai said.

They rushed through the dungeon swiftly. On the way, they adapted to the dungeon inconsistently. Some sections were stable, and others shifted, passages that should have continued ending without warning, forcing reroutes through spaces that felt like they had been created recently rather than designed.

They reached the boss chamber and stopped.

The door was already open.

Sera’s expression shifted. "That’s not—"

They stepped inside.

The boss was dead and looked like it had happened a couple of seconds ago. Steam still rose from the corpse, the killing blows struck to its neck and stomach.

It was fast.

Whoever cleared the dungeon had left less than a minute ago.

"Someone was here," Sera said.

Kai looked at the damaged room and nodded.

And then the dungeon shook again, harder than any tremor before it, the ceiling cracking along its full length. With the boss dead, the dungeon was coming down.

"We need to leave. Now."

"Go."

They ran as the structure came apart around them. Sections dropping out, paths sealing shut behind them. The exit flickered ahead, and Kai stepped through the last gap as the ground behind them gave way, Sera a half-step behind him.

They crossed into daylight.

Behind them, the gate collapsed inward and folded into the space it had occupied until there was nothing there at all.

A few people on the street had stopped to watch, but not the crowd that usually formed after a clear. Just the specific stillness of people who had registered something unusual and had not yet decided what to do with it.

"That was fast," someone said.

"There were others in there?" another said.

Kai looked at where the gate had been as Sera’s voice rang out. "Someone cleared the dungeon while we were still inside."

"Is that possible?"

"Technically..." Sera crossed her arms. "If another team clears the dungeon first, everyone still inside dies with it."

Kai sighed before asking. "This doesn’t happen often?"

Sera raised a brow. "It was big news on the second and third day, how did you–"

"I was busy." Kai said as he recalled focusing on the debt and figuring out how his power works.

"Regardless, it seems we got unlucky and entered the dungeon while a team was already inside." Sera said softly. "It’s a bit unfortunate, though."

Sera glanced at him briefly. "You think it wasn’t accidental?"

Kai looked back at the empty gate space. "...I wonder."

’Or maybe it was planned.’ Kai thought, and he had a good idea of who the team might be.

Ironpact had been mapping his routes for days — which gates, which times. Enough to set this up. And it didn’t require knowing he was inside, only knowing which gate he’d pick on a given morning.

But he didn’t say anything to Sera because it wasn’t her fight to get involved in.

He looked at the gate space one more time.

Kai pulled out his phone and opened the route document he’d been building for days. The one with gate locations, Ironpact active zones, and alternate routes outside their territory. He added one more line at the bottom.

Unknown third party, possibly Ironpact.

"Let’s go find another dungeon."

Kai nodded as he closed the note and followed.

...

The clips spread within an hour.

Dungeon collapse footage.

Partial structural failures.

And then even more reports of players trapped during simultaneous clears. Far more than before as if it wasn’t an accident anymore. For the first time since the system appeared, people started wondering if the dungeons themselves were breaking.