Giant machines.
Moving forward.
In formation.
The dimensional rift ahead of them wide and blue.
Light and water dancing inside it.
Shadow beyond it.
A slow breeze pushed outward from it.
Steady.
Patient.
The world thinning at the edges where the rift met it.
Men in yellow and black.
Radioactive suits.
Faces behind masks that looked more machine than human.
Moving in formation.
Entering the dark.
The drones above them already inside.
Already mapping.
Already sending back.
They moved through the labyrinth without hesitation.
The map already made.
The path already known.
Someone had been here before them.
Left the way open.
All the way to the center.
The room still holding what the battle had left.
The crystals still throwing blue light across the red water.
Indifferent as ever.
The machines came apart at the threshold.
Breaking into their components.
Precise.
Rehearsed.
The tools came out.
Pickaxes.
Diamond tipped.
Finding the crystals first.
The blue ones.
The small ones.
Cutting them free.
Giant trucks behind them receiving everything.
Pistons moving.
In and out.
The sound of industry filling a place that had only known darkness and fighting and the sound of things dying.
The men in yellow and black worked without speaking.
Until one of them stopped.
His pickaxe finding something in the wall.
Something that wasn't crystal.
Black and silver metal.
Blue veins running through it.
Moving.
Slowly.
Like a heartbeat.
Quiet but present.
Alive in the way walls shouldn't be alive.
He stood there looking at it.
Then stepped back.
Called it in.
A voice somewhere responded.
Recording.
File 210.
The Trojan Horse operation was successful.
The alliance between Western powers and South Korea's nine guilds has been confirmed.
The final guild to complete the test was Blue Serpent.
Leader: Minjun.
Team successfully entered the dungeon and neutralized all hostile entities.
Bodies and materials have been extracted and transported to secure facilities for study and examination.
A pause.
The voice continuing.
Measured.
Professional.
The Eastern world has been the most severely affected by the spread of mana.
However this has also produced the highest concentration of awakened hunters.
This represents a significant strategic opportunity for both parties.
The spread of mana throughout the world continues to increase.
A large number of dungeons have been cleared.
At considerable cost.
Humanity still has a long way to go.
The machines kept working.
Cutting.
Extracting.
Loading.
The blue crystals disappearing one by one into the dark of the trucks.
The light in the room dimming with each one taken.
The black and silver metal in the wall still moving.
Still breathing.
Still keeping whatever time it had always kept.
Indifferent to the men around it.
Indifferent to the tools finding it.
Indifferent to being found.
The voice again.
Quieter now.
Like something said at the end of a long document.
At the bottom of a page nobody was meant to read twice.
Code name: Incursions.
God be with us.
Whatever comes next.
The rift outside pulsed once.
Blue and slow.
Like a heartbeat.
Like the metal in the wall.
Like something very large breathing in the dark.
Patient.
Waiting.
Not finished.