Chapter 37: A New Type of Dungeon
The Abyss vanished in a blink.
One second, Ryo was drenched in blood and shadowfire, standing atop a mound of glitching beasts inside the collapsing simulation. The next—he was gasping on the real-world training floor, his body steaming, his limbs trembling, and Echo standing above him like a phantom made of static.
"Seventy-two hours," Echo said. "You're the first one to last that long in the Abyss on your first entry."
Ryo's chest heaved. "Felt like… a lifetime."
"It was," Echo replied flatly, turning and walking toward the exit. "Get cleaned up. Your real test begins now."
∎∎∎
After a short rest, Ryo was summoned back to the Protocol Tower's underground briefing chamber. The air shimmered with raw energy—Protocol signatures drifting like ghosts through the vents. Kael, though still only sixteen, no longer looked like a child in the eyes of the silent squad that stood with him.
Beside him stood Arin Vale, the sharp-tongued technopath from the Protocol Hunter Squad, and Shivra, a cold-eyed ex-dungeon assassin turned ally.
"We've received an emergency scan from the southern region," said Arin, tapping on a projected interface. "A gate opened three hours ago. Class B reading. But something's wrong."
The hologram flickered, revealing footage from inside the gate. Instead of the usual dungeon corridors, the interior resembled a warped urban city, upside down buildings, floating cars frozen mid-air, and screaming echoes of people trapped in data loops.
"A living city?" Ryo asked, narrowing his eyes.
"It's a Synthetic Dungeon," Shivra replied grimly. "Constructed from corrupted memory data. Artificial, unstable, and... aware."
"You mean it thinks?" Ryo asked.
"It doesn't just think," Arin said. "It learns."
Silence.
Then, Echo's voice cut through the feed—digitally warped and layered: "We believe this is a hybrid dungeon. Shadow-infused, coded by remnants of the old Overseer Protocols. This could be a prototype—a testing ground."
"For what?" Ryo asked.
"For what happens when the world itself becomes a dungeon," Echo replied.
∎∎∎
Mission Brief:
Squad: Ryo, Arin, Shivra, and two rotating protocol hunters.
Objective: Investigate the new Synthetic Dungeon, extract core data, and survive.
Risk Level: Unclassified.
Ryo stood at the gate's edge. The vortex shimmered—faintly pixelated, like a badly rendered dream.
He took one last look at the world behind him, then stepped through.
∎∎∎
The Synthetic Dungeon
The moment Ryo entered, gravity twisted.
He landed sideways on a shattered skyscraper wall, which now served as ground. The sky was blood-red, glitched symbols hovered in the air, and data flakes fell like snow.
"It's scanning us," Shivra muttered, her knives already drawn. "This place is sentient."
They moved carefully through the city, navigating floating streets and broken memory echoes—people repeating moments, endlessly.
"I remember this place," Arin whispered. "It's a mimic of Sector 9. Before the collapse."
"Then it's pulling data from our world," Ryo said, hand on his blade.
Suddenly, alarms screamed.
From the buildings above, shapes poured out—humanoids stitched together from corrupted hunter memories, wearing familiar faces with monstrous mutations.
"Is that…?" Ryo's heart froze.
One of the figures had his mother's face.
Corrupted. Twisted. Smiling.
"Don't let it get into your head!" Shivra shouted, slashing through the illusions. "These are memory mimics! They'll bait your emotions!"
But Ryo's hands shook.
The mimic tilted its head, and in her voice, said, "Ryo… you left us…"
He slashed through it, his shadows roaring—but the pain remained.
∎∎∎
As they pushed deeper, the environment warped.
The dungeon adapted to their tactics.
Ryo used shadows? Now the buildings cast none.
Arin hacked the dataflow? The dungeon firewalled in real-time.
Shivra used stealth? It spawned drones that tracked heat signatures.
"This thing is evolving faster than we can react," Arin cursed, sweat on her brow.
Then, at the center of the city, they found it:
A tower. Identical to the Protocol Tower from the real world, but twisted, darker, bleeding code from its windows.
At its base, a console flickered.
Arin approached it. "If I can hack this, we can maybe shut it down or at least trigger a collapse sequence."
"Do it," Ryo said, shadows pulsing beneath his skin.
As Arin worked, the dungeon responded. A shriek echoed through the air—and from the sky dropped a creature—
The Sentinel of Code.
Ten feet tall, armored in shifting data, with glowing binary wings and claws that phased in and out of existence.
Shivra lunged first, flipping into the air and lashing out with her twin blades.
It caught her mid-spin and slammed her into the concrete.
Ryo moved next, teleporting behind it, slicing with his shadow blade. It screamed—but not in pain. It was recording.
"It's learning your attacks!" Arin shouted.
Ryo gritted his teeth. "Then let's teach it the wrong moves."
He launched a flurry of feints, letting it adapt—and then struck with Shadow Breaker, a new protocol he hadn't used yet.
The blade pierced through.
It staggered, glitching violently—but before it could retaliate, Arin yelled, "NOW!"
She slammed her hand into the console.
Everything froze.
The city cracked.
The mimics screamed.
And the dungeon began collapsing in on itself.
"Gate destabilizing!" Arin cried. "RUN!"
∎∎∎
They barely made it out in time.
As they emerged into the real world, the gate behind them exploded—raining corrupted code across the horizon.
Silence. Then—
"We weren't supposed to survive that," Shivra said, clutching her ribs.
Ryo knelt, catching his breath. "It wasn't just a dungeon… it was a testbed. A prototype for something bigger."
Echo's voice returned through the comms. "And now that you've survived it, they'll send worse."
Ryo stood, shadows rippling behind him.
"Let them come."
Chapter End
Next Chapter: "The Monster Within" (Chapter 38) – Ryo's power begins to evolve… but so does the darkness festering inside him.