Phong woke to antiseptic and ceiling tiles.
For a long moment he couldn't remember why breathing felt like pulling glass through his lungs.
Then pain surged in.
It returned in layers: ribs bound tight, scalp stitched, bruises spreading beneath gauze. His left eye sat wrapped. A monitor beeped steadily to his right.
Hospital.
Not the dungeon.
Not silver grass.
Not blood on the wind.
White walls. Fluorescent glare. New York City murmuring beyond reinforced glass.
His phone lay on the bedside tray.
Cracked screen.
Three percent battery.
He turned his head and paid for it instantly.
Messages.
From Uncle Minh.
We're parking.
Elevator is slow.
Be there in 5.
Timestamp: Yesterday. 14:12.
Nothing after.
Phong stared until the letters swam.
They didn't come.
They would have come.
His aunt would have stormed in and bullied the doctors in three languages. His uncle would have stood quiet but shaking, already on the phone with lawyers, with news desks, with anyone who might listen.
They would have come.
The shifting event never traveled beyond the Gate. The official statement already trended: "Localized Dungeon Instability Event - No Civilian Impact."
Localized.
Contained.
Safe.
When cameras zoomed into a dungeon, everything outside the frame disappeared.
Powerful companies operated in those blind spots.
Staged accidents.
Brake failures.
Muggings in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time.
Josh's face rose in Phong's mind.
Varsity jacket inside a death zone. Sponsor patches too clean. Son of someone important. He remembered overhearing it in a campus hallway: real estate, infrastructure contracts, extraction rights. Biggest university sponsor.
If his aunt and uncle had sued...
They would have emptied themselves into it.
They weren't rich, but they were stubborn. They had crossed an ocean with nothing. They would have burned their last dollar before letting someone break him without consequence.
The only reason they wouldn't be here...
They couldn't be.
Phong's chest seized.
The monitor spiked.
He tried to scream.
The sound tore at his throat, like the roar had returned to finish the job.
Only a strangled rasp escaped.
Tears burned down his unbandaged eye, and even that hurt. Every twitch set his face throbbing.
He did this.
If he hadn't gone into the dungeon.
If he hadn't set up shop.
If he hadn't been too weak to defend himself.
If he hadn't needed money.
Maybe he wouldn't have dragged his family into something they couldn't survive.
The door clicked softly.
Dominic Torres filled the frame like a moving wall.
No armor. A plain hoodie stretched over his shoulders. Bruises darkened his jaw. Dried blood stained the skin near his ear.
He carried a plastic bag.
No shield. No swagger.
Only worry.
"Hey," Dominic said, voice low.
Phong couldn't answer.
Alexandra stepped in behind him.
No mask. No vigilante coat. Jeans, dark sweater, hair tied back. Without the psychic rapier she looked younger. Human.
Her eyes swept the room in a heartbeat: monitors, IV lines, bandages.
Then they locked on Phong.
Guilt sat plain on her face.
Dominic dragged a chair close and dropped into it. The plastic bag crinkled.
"I, uh…" He cleared his throat. "Brought contraband."
He lifted a can.
Pepsi Max.
Condensation slicked the aluminum.
Phong stared at it without blinking.
Dominic's smile collapsed.
"They're investigating," Alexandra said, choosing each word. "Campus security filed a report. I gave a statement."
Her jaw tightened.
"Police published preliminary notes," she added. "Traffic accident. Likely cause: shifting-induced disorientation."
Of course.
Convenient.
Even the cause came with an excuse. Shifting-induced disorientation. A perfect blanket to throw over anything ugly. Blame the dungeon and wash your hands.
Dominic leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "You didn't deserve that. Any of it. You hear me?"
Phong looked at them.
Or through them.
A hollow thing wearing his face stared back.
The part of him that used to calculate margins on batteries and soda had gone silent.
In its place, one thought looped until it scraped raw.
They didn't come.
Dominic swallowed. "Your family…"
Phong's hand jerked hard.
The monitor shrieked.
Alexandra stepped back on instinct, as if he'd manifested a blade instead of panic.
A nurse rushed in, checked vitals, adjusted the IV. Voices blurred into a wash of urgency.
Dominic and Alexandra yielded to the nurse's guiding hands and slipped out.
The door shut.
Silence settled.
Night spread beyond the window. City lights blinked on like distant stars.
Phong stayed awake long after morphine dulled the sharpest edges.
His phone died hours ago.
No new messages.
No calls.
No confirmation.
No closure.
When his tears finally ran dry, nothing lifted.
No relief.
Only emptiness, like something essential had leaked out with the blood in the dungeon.
He turned inward, the way divers learned to do.
Status panel.
It flickered into existence.
Name: Phong Tran
Class: Farmer
Level: 1
EXP: —
Still no bar.
Still no skills.
A laugh tried to rise and broke halfway up his throat.
Of course.
Even now.
Then the panel stuttered.
A soft chime rang out.
New text bled into place beneath the barren stat line.
New Quest Available
Phong frowned.
He had never received a quest.
Not once.
The text steadied.
________________________________________
Quest: First Harvest
Objective: Grow and harvest 10 potatoes within the dungeon.
Time Limit: None.
Failure: None.
Reward: ???
________________________________________
He stared.
Potatoes.
Not revenge.
Not justice.
Not "Survive."
Not "Expose corruption."
Ten potatoes.
In a spatial anomaly that swallowed cities and roared like gods.
A broken sound slipped out of him, half laugh, half sob, and even that tore at his ribs.
The system chose this moment to hand him farming.
Grow.
Harvest.
He lay in a hospital bed, possibly alone in the world, and the dungeon wanted him to plant.
The room quieted again.
Outside, sirens wailed somewhere far away.
Inside, a Level 1 Farmer stared at a quest no one else would understand.
Ten potatoes.
…
Two months later, Phong walked out of the hospital with a discharge folder and a debt he had never agreed to owe.
Not money.
Blood.
The case had been "resolved."
That was the administrator's word. Calm smile. Polished suit.
Charges dropped.
In exchange, Josh's father - real estate magnate, dungeon infrastructure investor, donor to three hospitals and two universities - had "generously sponsored" Phong's full treatment.
The press release framed it as compassion. A life-saving act.
A doctor even squeezed Phong's shoulder and said, "You should be grateful. They moved fast. If lawyers got involved, you might not be here."
Grateful.
Phong nodded.
He learned silence hurt less.
________________________________________
He filed inheritance paperwork alone.
The house in Queens shrank without his aunt's voice bouncing off the kitchen tiles. The restaurant three blocks down, its red sign sun-faded, had already liquidated. Late rent. No operator. Suppliers gone.
Only the garden remained behind the house.
Neat rows.
Rich soil.
His uncle's pride.
His aunt's herbs still clinging near the fence in stubborn clusters.
Phong stood at dusk with his hands in his pockets, staring at dark earth.
He didn't cry.
He sold most of it.
The house.
The restaurant equipment.
The old delivery van.
He kept only what he could carry and what refused a price: a worn gardening trowel, a pair of work gloves, and a burlap sack of seed potatoes from the last supplier invoice his uncle had paid.
When he returned to the Gate, the air buzzed with the same manic energy.
Drones.
Sponsors.
College kids in fresh armor.
The Modern Day Gold Rush hadn't paused for anyone's funeral.
Phong hitched the sack over his shoulder.
No cooler this time.
No batteries.
No sodas.
Only potatoes.
The system was rigged. He understood that now.
The rich won.
They controlled courts, hospitals, narratives.
Chasing revenge against men who could rewrite headlines felt childish.
But the dungeon?
The dungeon didn't care about last names.
It didn't care about sponsorships.
It killed without preference.
It was the fairest chance he had to bite back.
He stepped toward the Gate.
"Phong."
He stopped.
Dominic stood near the barricade with his arms crossed. He looked heavier somehow, not in muscle but in the eyes.
Alexandra stood beside him. No mask. No blade. Just Alexandra Vogel: med student, vigilante when necessary.
They had both been there when charges vanished.
Press conference. Corporate father shaking hands with hospital board members.
Dominic had nearly shattered a podium.
Alexandra had tried to rally students, threads, legal aid groups.
It fizzled within a week.
Money shouted louder.
"You don't have to do this," Alexandra said.
"I do."
Dominic's gaze dropped to the sack. "That… what I think it is?"
"Seed potatoes."
Dominic blinked. "You're serious."
Phong nodded.
He faced them fully.
"Thank you," he said. His voice held steady, still thinner than before. "For trying. For speaking up."
Alexandra's jaw tightened. "We didn't try hard enough."
"You tried," Phong said. "That was enough."
He didn't say what all three of them knew.
The hospital had folded fast. Doctors who'd promised to testify changed their tone on camera. Records that had clearly described blunt-force trauma quietly shifted into "supersonic penetration damage."
Translation: it was the roar, not good old Josh.
Josh's father's company had donated a new trauma wing.
Dominic looked away first.
"They win," he muttered.
"For now," Alexandra corrected, but the fire in it had dimmed.
Phong adjusted the sack.
"I'm not fighting them," he said.
Both of them snapped their eyes back to him.
"I'm done fighting humans."
He backed toward the Gate.
"The dungeon doesn't care who your father is."
Then he turned and walked through.
________________________________________
Floor One greeted him with wind over silver grass and distant goblin chatter.
Low-level mobs glanced his way.
Then looked past him.
A slime oozed across cracked stone nearby, translucent gel wobbling as it flowed. It brushed his boot.
Paused.
Wavered.
Then drifted on as if he were a fence post.
Good.
At least that remained.
He went deeper than ever before.
Past Goblin Block.
Past the farming square.
Through broken arches choked in moss.
He reached a low basin where ruined buildings sagged into marshy ground.
Slime territory.
Divers avoided it. Slimes were weak alone but miserable in numbers. They corroded gear, ruined boots, dissolved dropped items. No one farmed here unless desperate.
Perfect.
Phong found a relatively dry patch between two collapsed stone walls. Silver grass thinned. Soil darkened.
He crouched and pressed his palm into the earth.
This time the sensation held.
Moisture.
Acidity.
Nutrient density.
The ground didn't feel dead.
It felt receptive.
He set the sack down and opened it with care.
Ten seed potatoes rolled into his hands, small and rough-skinned.
No glow.
No magic.
Just food.
He pulled the old trowel from his bag.
Metal scraped stone.
He dug.
The first cut into dungeon soil felt wrong, like slicing into something that noticed.
He kept going.
He turned the dirt. He broke clods. He worked until sweat slicked his temples despite the cool air.
A slime oozed closer.
It bumped his leg.
Paused.
Then flowed around him, indifferent.
Invisible. Useless in a fight. Perfect for this.
Phong carved shallow trenches in a steady rhythm, the same one his uncle drilled into him in the backyard.
Spacing matters.
Depth matters.
Roots need room.
He laid the first potato into the soil and covered it gently.
Then the second.
Third.
By the fifth, his hands blistered. Hospital-soft skin tore against rough earth.
He didn't stop.
By the tenth, dungeon dusk filtered red through broken arches.
He sat back on his heels and dragged air into his lungs.
Ten small mounds of turned soil marked the spot.
For a moment nothing changed.
No fanfare.
No glow.
No music.
Then a soft chime sounded.
His status panel opened without him summoning it.
________________________________________
Quest Progress: 0 / 10 Harvested
Growth Detected
________________________________________
Growth detected.
The soil beneath the mounds pulsed faintly.
Not violent.
Not like the roar.
Slow. Steady.
Like a heartbeat.
A slime drifted across one mound.
The soil hissed.
The slime recoiled as if it had touched a hot pan. Part of its gelatinous body dissolved.
It fled.
Phong stared.
He hadn't moved. He hadn't triggered a skill. He hadn't received a buff.
But the dungeon.
The dungeon had accepted the seeds.
Wind swept through the basin.
For the first time since the hospital room, something inside him shifted.
Not hope.
Not yet.
Direction.
He pressed his blood-roughened hand into the dirt again.
The ground answered with warmth.
Farmer.
Level 1.
No EXP bar.
No skills.
No justice.
Only ten potatoes in hostile soil.
And a dungeon that, for reasons he didn't understand, had decided to let them grow.