"System," Zen thought. "Scan Jax’s gear."

[Scanning... Foreign object detected.]

[Magical signature: Void Singularity Corruption.]

[Location: Outer left pocket of Aegis Backpack.] 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Zen’s jaw tightened. Kaelen hadn’t just bumped Jax to be arrogant. He had used a sleight-of-hand technique to drop the corrupted Aggro-Lure right into the unsealed side pouch of Jax’s heavy bag without him knowing.

"Are you okay, Jax?" Maya asked, looking worried.

"I’m fine," Jax grunted, adjusting his straps. "Let’s just get this over with."

"Attention!" Dean Alaric’s voice boomed over the speakers. "Squads one through five, step into the deployment elevator!"

Zen’s squad was team four, assigned to the D-Rank sector. They shuffled into the massive, heavy-duty deployment elevator.

A second later, Kaelen’s squad stepped in right behind them.

Kaelen was supposed to drop into the B-Rank sector on the other side of the facility, but Zen knew immediately that the arrogant noble had probably bribed an instructor to share this specific elevator car.

The metal gates slammed shut, and the elevator began a rapid, stomach-dropping descent into the earth.

"Good luck down there, Arclight," Kaelen whispered from the back of the elevator, grinning maliciously.

Zen didn’t look back.

The elevator hit the bottom floor with a loud, metallic clang. The front doors hissed open, revealing the D-Rank sector of the artificial dungeon.

It looked like a ruined, underground city block. Crumbling concrete buildings, rusted cars, and flickering streetlights created a maze of shadows. High above, thick reinforced glass separated the combat zone from the observation decks.

"Move out!" an automated voice yelled from the ceiling speakers.

Zen, Jax, Maya, and Valeria immediately sprinted out of the elevator, jogging down a dark alleyway to put distance between themselves and the other teams.

"Alright, Zen, what’s the plan?" Jax asked, finally dropping his heavy backpack onto the cracked pavement to catch his breath.

"The plan changes right now," Zen said.

He immediately grabbed Jax’s bag, reached straight into the unsealed left pouch, and pulled out a small, heavy steel box. The neon green snake logo of the Viper’s Den was scratched off the front, but there was a blinking red light on the top.

Maya gasped, stepping back. "Is that... a bomb?"

"Worse," Zen said coldly.

"Wait, Kaelen bumped into me," Jax realized, his eyes going wide. "He planted that on me! What is it?!"

"It’s a black market Aggro-Lure," Zen explained rapidly. "It’s designed to emit a frequency that pulls every monster in the dungeon directly to our location. He wanted us swarmed so we would fail the extraction."

Jax cursed loudly. "That bastard! Throw it on the ground, Zen! Smash it with your boot!"

"I can’t," Zen said, his eyes glued to the blinking red light. "It’s a high-grade military casing. If I smash it, the compressed magical energy inside will detonate like a bomb. It would blow our legs off. And there’s a bigger problem."

"What could be a bigger problem than every monster in the dungeon rushing us?" Maya asked, her voice trembling violently.

Zen didn’t answer. He watched as the blinking red light suddenly turned a sickly, glowing purple.

Thick, dark purple smoke began to violently hiss out of the seams of the steel box. The air pressure in the alleyway immediately dropped. A terrifying, ancient cold swept through the ruins, making the hairs on Jax’s arms stand up.

"System," Zen thought, taking a step back. "Give me a reading."

[Critical Warning. Void Singularity Corruption rapidly expanding. Environmental integrity failing.]

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.

Massive red emergency sirens suddenly flared to life across the entire artificial dungeon. The automated academy safety system began screaming.

"WARNING. UNREGISTERED ANOMALY DETECTED. CLASS-A THREAT. INITIATING TOTAL LOCKDOWN."

At the end of the alleyway, a massive, titanium blast door violently slammed down from the ceiling, completely sealing them inside the ruined city block. The heavy metal locks engaged with a deafening crash.

"INITIATING EMERGENCY STUDENT EXTRACTION..." the automated voice droned.

A beat of silence passed. No blue teleportation light appeared.

"ERROR. EXTRACTION FAILED. SPATIAL MATRIX BLOCKED BY VOID INTERFERENCE."

"Zen!" Jax yelled over the sirens, raising his tower shield as the purple smoke began to spiral into the sky. "What is happening?! Why aren’t we pulling out?!"

"A Void anomaly," Valeria said, her voice completely devoid of panic.

She stepped in front of Zen, her hand drifting toward her pocket. The air around her began to crackle with terrifying pressure. "Stand back, Zen. I will handle this."

"No!" Zen snapped, grabbing her shoulder.

Valeria froze, looking back at him in shock.

"The Vanguard Inquisitor is watching the cameras right now," Zen said urgently, leaning in close so only she could hear. "He thinks you are just a highly protected VIP. If you use whatever high-tier Vanguard magic you’re hiding to blow this sector apart, he’ll think we are the anomaly from the courtyard. He’ll call in the entire military to detain you. You’ll blow your undercover status."

"Then how do we survive this?!" Valeria demanded, her yandere instincts warring with his direct order. "Your core is broken! You cannot fight!"

Zen looked at the purple smoke, then looked directly at Jax. "We survive by using bait," Zen said coldly.

"Bait?" Jax asked, his voice cracking. "Who is the bait?"

"You are," Zen replied, shoving the smoking Aggro-Lure directly into the center straps of Jax’s heavy chest plate. "The artifact is already synced to your Aegis mana signature, Jax. As long as you are holding it, every monster in this corrupted sector is going to ignore us and hunt you."

Jax stared at the purple smoke, completely horrified. "Are you insane?! I might have scraped into Low E-Rank on the Aegis Path, and sure, I can take a hit, but I can’t tank an entire dungeon!"

"You don’t have to kill them," Zen said, his Emperor persona bleeding through his words, absolutely commanding and calm. "You just have to hold their attention. Keep your shield up and run. Maya, you are on strict healing duty. You do nothing but pump Vitality magic into Jax to keep his stamina up. Do you understand?"

Maya nodded frantically, tears welling in her eyes.

Zen turned back to Valeria. "Val. You are physical crowd control. Keep your power output low to match the rest of us. You strike fast, kill the stragglers, and do it strictly in the camera’s blind spots. Can you do that?"

"And what are you going to do?" Valeria demanded.

"The safety system can’t pull us out because the smoke from this lure just ripped a hole in the dungeon’s spatial barrier," Zen said, pointing at the expanding rift above the steel box. "I am going to get to the sector’s extraction beacon and manually rewire its teleportation matrix to seal that tear. It is the only way to safely defuse the lure without killing Jax."

Before anyone could argue, the concrete wall to their left violently exploded.

A massive, jagged claw made of pure shadow and bone reached through the rubble. A towering, corrupted Void Beast let out an ear-piercing roar, completely ignoring Zen, Maya, and Valeria.

Its glowing, hollow eyes locked directly onto Jax.

"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Jax whimpered, raising his shield.

"Run, Jax!" Zen yelled. "Now!"