The academy-wide notification ca through at nine in the morning on a Tuesday, cutting across every student’s datapad simultaneously with the priority header that the system reserved for ti-sensitive announcents.
**Heavenly Phoenix Academy — Ergency Dungeon Notification**
*A dinsional rift has been confird at grid reference 7-Echo in Celestial City’s outer sector, approximately twenty-two kiloters from the academy campus.
Classification: Hazardous-tier dungeon event.
Designation: Underworld Layer.
Monster density assessnt: High.
Monster level range: Primary zone 28–35, secondary zone 38–48.
The academy is opening voluntary participation for enrolled students. Dungeon raid assessnt scoring will be applied. All participants must register through the academy’s raid portal within three hours. Departure is four hours from this notice. Participation is individual or sect-based. Standard safety protocols apply. Ergency extraction beacons are mandatory equipnt.*
Lin Yi read it once. Then he opened the Celestial Legion group channel on his datapad.
...
Lin Yi: Joining the dungeon raid with the sect. Both of you register through the portal.
Wang Hao: Already reading the notification
Wang Hao: Underworld Layer. Hazardous tier. Level 28 to 48 primary range.
Wang Hao: That’s significantly above what most first years will attempt
Lin Yi: Yes, but that’s why it will definitely be mostly sects that will engage with this assessnt.
Shen Rou: I’ve looked at the Underworld Layer classification in the academy’s dungeon database. It’s a multi-floor underworld type with high monster density and environntal suppression in the deeper sections. The suppression field compounds with depth similarly to the Dragon God Tower’s pressure chanics.
Shen Rou: My combat output won’t contribute aningfully below level 35 monster zones. But I can navigate formation anchor points and provide real-ti threat analysis if we’re moving as a unit.
Lin Yi: We move as a unit. Register now.
Shen Rou: Registering.
Wang Hao: This is going to be incredible
...
The raid portal confird Celestial Legion’s registration as a sect unit at nine forty-three. Lin Yi checked the participating sect list. Crimson Vanguard had registered within eight minutes of the notification going out, which was what he expected from a sect that operated with that level of coordination. Azure Tide and Iron Bastion had registered shortly after. Several other sects and a significant number of solo participants rounded out the list.
He noted that Han Yue had registered as a solo participant.
He spent the remaining ti before departure checking his equipnt. Celestial Lord Blade. Grand Defense Ring. Spatial Storage Token. Ergency extraction beacon clipped to his left wrist beneath the ring. Advanced Energy Potions and Superior Recovery Elixirs distributed across accessible inventory slots rather than locked in the storage space.
Shen Rou knocked on his door at ten-fifteen with her datapad open to the Underworld Layer entry in the academy’s dungeon classification archive. She was wearing lighter equipnt than most combat-class students would bring, practical modifications that prioritized mobility over physical protection, which was the correct choice for her class.
"I’ve mapped the known floor structure," she said, when he opened the door. "The primary zone is three levels deep before the secondary zone begins. Each level has a fixed spatial boundary that the dungeon’s internal system enforces, which ans the monster density is constant rather than scaling with participant numbers."
"aning?" Lin Yi said.
"aning we don’t need to compete with other sects for monster clearance volu. The floor resets its density on a fixed tir rather than depleting as participants clear. Everyone who enters gets the sa density exposure." She paused. "For score purposes, kill volu multiplied by monster level grade produces the assessnt output. The faster a sect clears the density, the more tir cycles they can run within the raid window."
"How long is the raid window?" Lin Yi said.
"Four hours from entry," she said. "Sa as the expedition format."
Four hours. He had cleared sixteen levels in six hours of Grade 6 wilderness at a kill interval of minutes. The Underworld Layer’s primary zone housed level 28 to 35 monsters, which was below the Grade 6 ceiling but with higher density within a fixed space. The score output calculation favored volu over individual kill grade at the primary level. In the secondary zone, the level 38 to 48 range produced higher grade scores per kill, but the density was lower.
The math was straightforward.
"We go deep fast," he said. "Primary zone clearance, move to secondary, maximize secondary zone ti."
Shen Rou nodded. "That’s what I calculated too." She paused. "Most sects will spend the majority of their raid window in the primary zone. The secondary zone’s monster level is too high for most first-year participants to clear efficiently. So second and third-year sects will push into it, but their clearance speed will be limited by their combat output relative to the suppression field."
"Which compounds with depth," Lin Yi said.
"Significantly," she said. "I have the suppression coefficient data from previous Underworld Layer events in the academy’s raid records. The suppression at secondary zone level two is enough to reduce a level 40 hunter’s effective output by approximately thirty percent."
Lin Yi looked at her. "Thirty percent reduction at level forty in the secondary zone level two."
"Yes," she said. "It’s calibrated to create a natural ceiling for most participants. And the calibration assus a standard correlation between hunter level and combat output."
"My output doesn’t follow standard correlation," Lin Yi said.
"No," she said. "It doesn’t." She closed her datapad. "That’s why we go deep."
.....
The academy’s transit vehicles reached grid reference 7-Echo in just under thirty minutes. The rift was visible from the vehicle before they arrived, a vertical tear in the air approximately twelve ters tall, the edges of it crackling with the specific dark energy that characterized underworld-type dinsional events. The surrounding area had been cleared by Celestial City’s hunter response team, the standard protocol for hazardous-tier rifts that the academy had been authorized to run as an assessnt event.
Participants assembled at the periter. Lin Yi stood with Wang Hao on his left and Shen Rou on his right and looked at the rift with the sa attention he brought to most things that were about to be entered.
Wang Hao looked at the tear in reality and exhaled slowly. "Every ti," he said.
"Every ti what?" Shen Rou said.
"Every ti I think I’m used to dinsional rifts, I see one and I’m reminded that I’m not," Wang Hao said. He adjusted the grip on his abyssal fang blade. "It doesn’t stop looking wrong."
"It is wrong," Shen Rou said. "Dinsionally. The physics of the boundary layer are fundantally inconsistent with the surrounding spatial fabric." She paused. "That’s actually why they look like that."
Wang Hao looked at her. "That was sohow both comforting and deeply unsettling."
"Ready," Lin Yi said.
They entered.
The transition was imdiate and total. The outside world dissolved behind them and the Underworld Layer replaced it completely. The environnt was exactly what the classification suggested. Dark stone ground, the texture of deep earth that had been compressed over long periods.
And the monsters were already there.
Level 28 Underworld Crawlers, the primary zone’s standard density filler, were visible across the floor space in clusters of eight to twelve, moving with the slow deliberate pattern of creatures that hunted by sensing vibration through the ground. Each cluster represented approximately three hundred and fifty ters of separation from the next, which was the fixed density spacing Shen Rou had described.
Wang Hao looked at the nearest cluster. Eight Crawlers, each one roughly two ters long, armored in the dark chitin plating common to underworld-class monsters.
"Those are level 28," he said.
"Yes," Lin Yi said. He had already drawn the Celestial Lord Blade. The weapon’s golden runes ignited in the low light of the dungeon interior, casting a brief brightness across the stone floor around them.
"I could probably handle two of those," Wang Hao said. "Maybe three if they don’t attack simultaneously."
"You won’t need to," Lin Yi said.
He released Celestial Sword Qi.
The arc extended outward in a wide sweep, golden light cutting through the dark of the primary zone in a clean horizontal line that reached the first cluster, passed through it, and continued to the second cluster visible further in the space. Both clusters dissolved simultaneously. The chitin plating, the dark armor, the mass and density of level 28 Underworld Crawlers, none of it made any difference to the output that the Celestial Lord Blade produced at Lin Yi’s current level.
The datapad notifications appeared.
[Underworld Crawler ×8 Defeated]
[Underworld Crawler ×11 Defeated]
[Dungeon Assessnt Score: 190]
[Sect Score Distribution: 190 to each mber]
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