He looked down at the Diamond spies. They were setting up a small camp, using smokeless fire to brew tea. They looked like they were settling in for a long siege, content to wait weeks for the anomaly to resolve itself.
"At this rate," Lencar muttered, frustration bleeding into his voice and cracking his composure, "it will take them another seven to ten days to actually find the door. They're too careful. They're waiting for the dungeon to reveal itself naturally as the mana pressure builds. They are wasting my time."
He stood up, pacing on the small ridge, his boots making no sound on the stone thanks to the Strider's Plumes.
He felt like a director on a movie set where the actors had forgotten their lines and were improvising a lunch break instead of the climax. The stage was set. The props were ready. The loot was waiting. But the players were just standing around drinking tea and checking their compasses.
I don't have ten days, Lencar decided, stopping his pacing abruptly. In ten days, the political landscape shifts. Dominante might get spooked and move
He looked at the hidden entrance of the dungeon below. To the naked eye, it was just a solid wall of canyon rock, indistinguishable from the miles of stone around it. But to his mana-enhanced sight, honed by the theft of souls and the study of runes, he could see the shimmering distortion of ancient, powerful spatial runes bending the light around the massive stone doors. It was a curtain, and it was time to pull it down.
He clenched his fist. The black iron gauntlet beneath his cloak creaked softly, the runes etching into the metal humming with suppressed power.
"Fine," Lencar hissed, his eyes cold behind the wooden mask. "If you won't find the door, I'll kick it open for you."
He didn't want to do this. Direct interference was risky. If he was caught, he'd be branded a traitor by the Clover Kingdom for unauthorized dungeon entry, and a target by the Diamond Kingdom for interfering with their operations. He would lose his anonymity. He would be hunted by both sides.
But passivity was a greater risk. Stagnation was death. To wait was to surrender control, and Lencar Abarame refused to surrender control.
He took a deep breath, centering himself. He pushed away the fatigue of the workday, the worry about Rebecca's finances, the fear of exposure. He let the cold, mathematical logic of the Heretic take over, suppressing the human boy who just wanted to go home and sleep.
"I just need to deactivate the concealment runes on the Kiten Dungeon entrance," Lencar whispered. "A simple glitch in the system."
He tapped his ring.
"[Spatial Magic]: [Coordinate Shift]."
He didn't teleport to the ridge. He teleported inside.
The world twisted violently. The cold wind of the badlands vanished, replaced instantly by the stagnant, heavy air of the dungeon's antechamber.
Lencar appeared in the darkness.
The silence here was absolute, heavy with the weight of centuries. The air tasted stale, metallic, and charged with static. The only light came from the glowing bioluminescent moss clinging to the high, arched ceiling, casting everything in a ghostly, sickly teal hue. The pressure was immense—the weight of ancient, condensed mana pressing against his skin like deep water. It was a place that didn't want visitors.
"Now to find the entrance runes," Lencar noted. His voice echoed too loudly in the vast, empty hall, a trespasser's sound in a tomb.
He walked toward the massive stone doors that led to the outside world. From the inside, they were visible—huge slabs of granite, thirty feet tall, covered in glowing blue script. These were the anchor points of the concealment barrier. They were the lock that kept the world out and the dungeon in.
He studied them, running his gloved hand over the cold stone. The runes were complex, ancient elven designs that twisted space to hide the physical matter of the dungeon. They were a masterpiece of magical engineering, a self-sustaining loop of spatial distortion.
"I don't need to break them," Lencar analyzed, his eyes tracing the flow of mana through the carvings like a programmer reading source code. "If I break them, the structural integrity of the entrance might fail, causing a cave-in that seals this place forever. I just need to... irritate them.
He stepped back, calculating the precise amount of force needed. Too little, and the barrier would absorb it as background noise. Too much, and the doors would explode outward, potentially killing the spies outside and ruining the dungeon.
He summoned his grimoire. It floated beside him in the teal light, the pages fluttering with an eager energy.
"[Plant Magic]: [Iron-Root Parasite]."
He slammed his hand onto the stone floor.
CRACK.
Thick, metallic roots erupted from the stone. They didn't attack an enemy; they attacked the door frame. Lencar guided them with surgical precision, forcing the roots to burrow into the microscopic cracks between the containment runes.
"Expand," he commanded, pouring mana into the spell.
The roots thickened, turning from wire-thin tendrils into heavy cables. They pushed against the delicate mana circuits of the barrier, physically separating the flow of energy. They acted like wedges driven into a circuit board.
Hummmmm.
The door began to vibrate. The blue light of the runes flickered, turning an angry, unstable violet. The dungeon was reacting to the intrusion, its automated defenses trying to purge the foreign mana but failing against the physical intrusion of the roots. The system was confused.
"More," Lencar gritted his teeth, pouring his Stage 4 mana capacity into the plants. "Get angry. Scream for me."
He added another layer to the disruption. He needed a second vector of attack.
"[Wind Magic]: [Resonance Whistle]."
He created a high-pitched sonic vibration inside the antechamber. It wasn't a wind blade; it was a frequency. He tuned the pitch to clash with the spatial harmonics of the barrier.
SCREEEEEEE.
The sound was excruciating, a needle driven into the eardrum. The air began to shimmer. The walls shook, dust falling from the ceiling in thick sheets. The mana density in the room spiked, becoming a beacon of chaotic energy that would be visible for miles to anyone with even the most basic sensory magic. The dungeon was no longer hiding; it was broadcasting its location in a panic.
"That should do it," Lencar gasped, cutting the mana flow as the vibration became painful even to his reinforced body.
The dungeon was waking up. He could feel the pulse of it—a heartbeat of ancient power that was no longer dormant. The concealment barrier was flickering, failing to hide the massive accumulation of energy leaking into the atmosphere. The "Invisibility Cloak" was falling off, revealing the titan beneath.
"Time to go."
He didn't wait to see the doors open. If he was here when the barrier fell, he'd be crushed by the influx of outside mana or spotted by the spies who would be rushing the entrance in seconds. He had lit the fuse; he didn't need to be there for the explosion.
He tapped his ring.
"[Spatial Magic]: [Coordinate Shift]."
He vanished.
He reappeared on a cliff face two miles away, hidden deep within a cluster of scrub brush and boulders. The air was fresh here, free of the dungeon's stale taint.
He dropped to his stomach immediately, pulling the [Concealment Magic] around him like a blanket. He adjusted his mask, peering over the edge of the cliff toward the canyon floor, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
"Now," Lencar whispered, his eyes fixed on the spot where the air was beginning to ripple and tear. "Let's see who comes to dinner."