[Chapter 172. The Gates of Tartarus]

As Searanox prepared to leave the Spire, he paused at the threshold of the great hall and turned around one last time to face the hovering, uncertain crowd.

"The gear lying there is free for the taking," he said, his voice projecting easily through the vaulted space. He pointed a gauntleted hand toward the pile of rusted iron and leather his drone had deposited. "If you do not have your own weapons, you may take these. However, mark my words: when you return from the gate, you will put them back exactly where you found them for the next person to use. They are community assets, not personal property."

With that final instruction, he stepped outside, not waiting for a reaction. He didn't need to see the desperate scramble that surely followed. His travel drone shimmered into existence beside him, hovering a few inches off the polished granite. He turned to the four women who had followed him out. They stood in a ragged line, their faces pale, and on their chests, a simple, dull bronze insignia had manifested.

"Carmen," Searanox said, his eyes scanning the emblem. "How many points did it take for the System to grant you a Bronze rank?"

Carmen looked down at her simple tunic and touched the bronze emblem with a trembling finger. "A hundred points, I think?" she said, her voice sounding small and uncertain. "The notification flashed before we crossed the exit threshold."

Searanox processed the math instantly. A hundred points. If twenty people clear the dungeon together, they can each earn enough for a Bronze rank in a single run... It will be interesting to see if teams emerge that offer 'power-leveling' services to others in the future. A marketplace for survival.

"I see," Searanox said, his expression unreadable behind his shades. "By the way, you may take your belongings from the third floor of the tower and move them up to the fourth tonight. You have earned your place there."

The reaction from the four was instantaneous. The fourth floor—the level of the Fortress Tower they had once seen but been strictly denied—was a realm of luxury they had only dreamed of in the old world. Sarah was the most expressive; a wide, genuine smile spread across her face, her tired eyes sparkling with a greedy, feverish excitement that temporarily eclipsed the bone-deep exhaustion etched into her features. Lana and Carmen exchanged a quiet, relieved glance, their shoulders slumping as if a physical weight had been lifted. Only Vanessa remained stoic, but even she couldn't hide the flicker of something—relief, or perhaps a predatory pride—that crossed her face before being masked by her usual composed mask.

"Thank you, my Lord," Lana said. Her voice was sincere, finally free of the sharp, jagged fear that had dominated every interaction for the last several days.

Searanox didn't bother to reply. He gave a curt, dismissal-heavy nod before mounting his drone. Iris mounted behind him, her powerful, lean form pressing against his back, a dark silhouette against the light of the sun. As the drone lifted off, the sounds of the bustling crowd in the Spire faded into a distant, oceanic murmur. Below them, they could see the organized chaos of the residential districts—thousands of tiny, ant-like figures wandering the perfectly gridded streets, guided by the System toward their assigned homes.

"They are not your enemies, Searanox," Iris said softly, her voice a warm counterpoint to the drone’s low-frequency hum. "They are... flawed. They are weak. But their loyalty is not something you need to earn through fear alone. A little hope goes a long way."

"I prefer to manage my assets, Iris, not befriend them," Searanox replied. He kept his eyes fixed on the horizon, where the city’s defensive walls met the sky. "Loyalty based on need is far more predictable than loyalty based on affection. Affection is fickle; hunger and the desire for a warm bed are constants."

He watched as the four women exited the Spire far below, already arguing amongst themselves as they made their way toward the citadel.

The drone pivoted, banking toward another structure that stood out from the surrounding blocks. It was a massive, domed building situated within the inner circle, not far from the central wall. As they descended, Searanox noted that the area was eerily deserted. No citizens had ventured this far into the inner sanctum yet.

Before them stood the entrance to the Grand Labyrinth. Its architecture was imposing, constructed from a stone so dark it seemed to absorb the light around it. Despite its significance, the physical structure was far smaller than the Spire they had just exited, appearing more like a monumental tomb than a tower. The plaza surrounding it was open and clean, with enough space to muster a small army of at least a thousand soldiers.

"This is the Grand Labyrinth," Searanox said as the drone touched down just in front of the arched entrance. "From the System’s reaction and the way it was constructed, this must be of significance."

Iris’s grip on his waist loosened as they landed. She leaned forward, her muzzle resting loosely on his shoulder, her breath warm against his neck. "A Labyrinth is something special, Searanox. Not every city is granted one. The fact alone that Androxis houses a Grand Labyrinth is a feat of generation. It marks this city as a primary node for the System."

"I won't enter it now," Searanox said, stepping off the drone. "I simply want to see what we are dealing with. I have other, smaller dungeons waiting for me that need to be harvested."

He took a few steps forward and looked up at the dark stone archway looming over them. It was carved with incredibly intricate patterns that seemed to writhe if looked at for too long. The heavy, blackened stone doors depicted an angel and a grim reaper locked in a silent, eternal battle. The entrance itself was not a solid door, but a swirling vortex of dark blue and green energy, against which the violet glow of the city seemed pale and distant.

"What are the rules for a Labyrinth, Iris? How does it differ from the Spire?"

"Labyrinths are persistent worlds, not temporary instances," she explained, her tone shifting back to that of a clinical guide. "Once a monster is killed within a Labyrinth, it does not stay dead forever, but it won't respawn instantly. The Labyrinth births them anew over time. This makes them ideal for long-term, strategic operations, but also far more dangerous. The Gates of Tartarus, according to the limited data I can access, is a named Labyrinth which makes it one of the legendary kind."

As Searanox stared into the swirling vortex, a chilling sense of dread washed over him. It was a cold, hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach that he had never experienced before, not even when facing the world-shaking Gaia Turtle. The air around the entrance felt heavy, as if the gravity were twice as strong here, and the silence was so deep it made his ears ring.

"The Gates of Tartarus..." he muttered. The name was hauntingly familiar. A faint memory surfaced in his near-perfect mind—a fragment of old-world mythology. "The gates of hell."

"Hell is a fitting description," Iris confirmed, her voice dropping an octave. "Each floor is sealed by a powerful Boss entity that must be defeated to progress to the next level. This is not a place for the unprepared or the weak. The lowest recommended level for entry is ten, but the monsters on the deeper floors will grow exponentially stronger, without an upper limit. It is a descent into the infinite." She took a cautious step back from the vortex. "I have no desire to set foot inside there today."

Searanox turned toward her with a soft, predatory smile. "But you will, my dear. Not today, but soon."

He let his gaze travel along both wings of the imposing arched gate, taking in the terrifying detail of the carvings. The hall was by no means small, but with the massive, pulsing structure of the gate in its center, the space felt crowded—oppressively small, as if the Labyrinth were trying to swallow the room itself.

"I will restrict entry for now, just as I did with the Spire," Searanox continued, his mind already spinning with logistical safeguards. "I will claim its first clear. You will take the second, and the girls will take the third. We must monopolize the 'First Clear' bonuses for everything in this city. The knowledge of these rewards must stay a secret between us for as long as possible."

"It would be wise," Iris agreed, her tone supportive and calm.

"But not today," Searanox said, turning back to his drone. "I still have to catch up on the external dungeons outside the walls. They’ve been sitting idle for too long. You get off here, Iris. Find Samantha and Rayan. They handled the administration of the ruined city well enough before. Let’s put them to work again. I will change the layout of the Fortress Tower on my return; I already have some architectural adjustments in mind to better suit our new status."

Iris pressed herself against him one last time, her muzzle brushing against his neck in a silent gesture of affection before she dismounted. Without another word, Searanox engaged the drone’s thrusters. He flew off, leaving her to stand in the shadow of the Gates of Tartarus as he ascended into the cloudy, midday sky.

An hour of high-speed flight brought him back to the edge of the forest. The landscape felt wrong. The massive, black silhouette of the Magitech Fortress Tower that had once loomed over the trees and pierced the clouds was entirely absent. He arrived at the exact clearing where it had stood—now, it was nothing more than a barren patch of grass with a strange, circular formation of stone left in its center. It was as if the tower had never existed at all, leaving only a ghost in the dirt.

He flew lower, circling the site. The Node in the center was still there, glowing faintly with the brand of his guild.

`The System truly moved the entire structure...` The thought of such an undertaking was almost unfathomable. The System had taken a structure that would be considered a wonder of the old world and simply moved it hundreds of kilometers across the map in a matter of minutes. It was a sobering reminder of the absolute power the System held over physical reality.

Searanox lingered for a moment longer on the empty clearing, feeling a strange sense of nostalgia for the place where his journey into lordship had truly begun. Then, he turned his drone toward the first dungeon on his mental list.

The process of clearing the external dungeons was as simple and mechanical as it had been before. His drones did the heavy lifting, carving through the low-level beasts with crimson beams while Searanox watched from behind. However, there was one notable change when the final notification appeared.

A soft, golden light enveloped the silver emblem on his coat for a fraction of a second, acknowledging the contribution to his rank.

`It’s not even close of what I got from the City Dungeon.` He thought, his brow furrowing. `Even though it's technically the same level.`

He turned his gaze toward the North-West, where the Webbed Tunnels lay hidden beneath the canopy.

"That one should yield more," he muttered to himself. "Given the sheer number of spiders and their higher overall level, it’s time to see if the scaling holds true."

He accelerated, a dark streak against the gray sky, heading toward the next conquest.