The dungeon began breaking down.

Stone shifted overhead with grinding sounds. A crack spread across the ceiling like a spider web, releasing thin streams of dust that drifted down through the stale air. Marcus couldn’t move as Kai’s foot was still pressing down onto his chest, enough to make resistance pointless.

And then the weight lifted.

Marcus coughed before trying to push himself upright, but he couldn’t. He sighed before giving up when he saw Kai staring down at him.

"You’re going to tell me who sent you to do all of this and everything about your bases," Kai said.

Not a threat. Just a fact.

Marcus laughed once, dry. "You think you’ve won?"

Above them, another section cracked. The stone broke loose and crashed to the ground nearby, closer than the last piece.

Marcus flinched instinctively, but Kai didn’t move.

And it was then that Marcus suddenly realized something uncomfortable.

Kai wasn’t angry.

That was the worst part.

Most people became emotional once violence started. Yet Kai had become calmer, even when the dungeon was collapsing around them.

"You’re out of time," Kai observed. "So decide how you use what’s left."

Marcus’s breathing slowed as he calculated their situation. His eyes tracked the spreading cracks overhead, then returned to study Kai’s expression. "You won’t get far either," he said.

"I already did."

Marcus’s jaw tightened. He looked at the deteriorating ceiling again, then back at Kai with an expression shifting toward cooperation.

"We were hired to slow you down. Nothing more." The words came faster now, casual in tone. "No one wanted you dead—this was just business pressure, standard guild territory management. You understand how these things work in the current market..."

Kai watched Marcus’s face while he spoke, noting the tells that didn’t match his casual delivery. The man’s jaw tightened between sentences in the specific way of someone managing their words rather than simply speaking. His eyes shifted slightly left when producing certain details.

Kai had spent years learning the difference between what people said and what they meant. The gap here was enormous.

He let Marcus finish his rehearsed explanation.

Then he activated the emulation.

[Class Emulation: Thread Caster – Partial.]

The Fractured Blade dissolved into silver threads that slithered outward like serpents. They wrapped around Marcus’s wrists and ankles in slow, deliberate loops, the tension increasing gradually until movement became impossible.

Marcus stopped talking mid-sentence.

Kai turned and walked toward the far end of the chamber.

"Where are you—" Marcus started.

"Have fun being crushed," Kai said without looking back.

The dungeon answered for him. A section crashed down from the ceiling, rocks scattering over Marcus, the impact filling the chamber for two full seconds.

Then silence returned.

Then another section fell, closer this time.

Marcus stared at the ceiling, then at Kai’s retreating figure, then back at the spreading cracks above. Stone dust rained down on his face.

"Wait."

Kai didn’t stop and kept walking, making Marcus tremble even more. "Wait! Okay, I will speak! J-just don’t leave!"

Kai paused before saying. "Then start talking."

"We weren’t always Ironpact," Marcus said. "We were the Bears gang before any of this." He exhaled. "We ran protection and collections. The kind of work that doesn’t get discussed in public. We were useful to people who needed things done without their names attached to the doing."

Kai’s eyes narrowed.

"When the gates opened, the families started looking for tools," Marcus continued. "People who already knew how to move quietly, apply pressure, shape outcomes. They didn’t want to get their hands dirty, so they used ours." He looked at the threads wrapped around his wrists. "We rebranded. Better name, same work."

Kai slowly nodded.

He had heard about people like them operating in the gaps between things that were official and things that simply happened. Now he stood in their dungeon with their blood on the floor. Now he was standing in their dungeon with their blood on the floor.

The world kept being smaller than it looked.

"Which families?" Kai asked.

Marcus hesitated.

The ceiling cracked, and a section came down between them, stone crashing and fracturing outward. Marcus flinched hard. The threads tightened the moment he moved.

"Which families?" Kai asked again.

"The Hales," Marcus said. "Primarily. Others as well, but mostly the Hales."

The name made Kai pause before his eyes became a bit colder. "Victor."

Marcus gave a short, humorless laugh. "You think he gets near something like this? His hands don’t touch it. They never touch it." He glanced at the ceiling. "But he mentioned you. By name. Said to make it difficult... Either you join us, or we make it so you give up–"

"And if I didn’t?"

"Well, we just have to make sure you did."

Kai was quiet for a moment. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

He thought about the first year of high school, when three older students had spent a week making things difficult for Victor. And then quietly transferred to different schools without explanation. He didn’t understand why it happened back when he was fifteen, but now he did.

Victor had been doing this since before the system existed. The system had just given him better tools.

"Make it difficult, huh?" Kai said quietly before looking at Marcus. "How’s that working out?"

Marcus didn’t say anything. Kai didn’t care, and asked another question. "How many people are part of Ironpact? Level range, class tiers?"

Marcus’s mouth closed. The threads tightened another increment, and he made a sound that wasn’t quite a word.

"Fine," he breathed. "We have three main bases. The main operation runs out of the Crane Building in the commercial district, seventh floor, which looks like a logistics company. Secondary is a warehouse in the northern industrial area, where the coordination happens for the gate rotations. The third is mobile, changes location every few days."

He was talking faster now, the dungeon’s continued deterioration apparently providing more motivation than the threads alone. "Our active member count is around sixty in this city, with the average level being ten and most of them being common class, with a few uncommon. While our top members... Which you just saw were in the twenties."

"Leader?"

"The leader is a man named Crane in the level twenties with a rare class."

"Why attack me with so many members?" Kai said.

Marcus looked at him. "Because after the first week it became clear that normal pressure wasn’t producing results." He said it with the specific tone of someone who had given this assessment to someone else and had not been believed at the time. "You don’t respond to inconvenience the way most people do. Most people hit friction, and they look for the easier path. You just adapt and work around."

Kai said nothing.

He supposed it was a fair way to put it. Friction was just part of how things worked. You accounted for it and kept moving.

He looked down at Marcus. A week of planning with a team of thirty, all of it aimed at one person. From Marcus’s perspective, that probably sounded impressive.

’Good to know,’ he thought. It was always worth understanding how other people saw you.

Something shifted in the ceiling above them, a low groan that came from deep in the structure rather than the surface.

Kai let the threads go. They came apart slowly, and Marcus pulled his wrists free, then looked up at him with the careful expression of someone trying to figure out whether things were about to get better or worse.

Kai looked at him for a moment.

Then his foot came down, and Marcus went still. Then he turned toward the boss’s drops and picked them all up.

They were all the expected ones, but he noted a pair of glasses.

[Item Acquired.]

[Mirror Life]

[Effects - Spatial Scan: Highlights active life signatures within range.]

He moved the glasses up and put them on. He saw the dungeon shift instantly as walls faded into outlines.

Heartbeats glowed faintly through solid stone.

Every living thing lit green.

Kai’s blue eyes shined. "...Useful."

The ceiling gave way above the chamber entrance in a full section collapse, stone crashing down and blocking half the passage. The dungeon was ending as Kai turned and moved through the remaining passage without rushing.

Soon, light appeared ahead before he stepped through it and out into the morning air. Behind him, the dungeon collapsed inward completely, and the gate crumbled behind.

’Victor and the Ironpact.’ Kai thought.

Somewhere in the city, the Ironpact still thought it was hunting him.

Kai kept walking.

Let them.