The alarm pulled her from sleep at 5:43 AM.
Riri's eyes opened. No grogginess, no disorientation. Just immediate wakefulness, the kind that felt less like waking and more like a switch being thrown. She sat up. The Shadow-Weave gear had stayed comfortable through the night, fabric breathable enough that she hadn't overheated. HP and Stamina bars full. MP at maximum.
The city outside the windows was still dark, streetlights casting orange halos through pre-dawn fog.
Seventeen minutes until Hollow Grove unlocked.
She stood, rolled her shoulders, tested her range of motion. The new gear moved with her perfectly, no binding, no excess fabric catching on itself. She pulled a Greater Health Potion from inventory and clipped it to her belt. Added two more. The Hunter's Eyes ampule went into her jacket's inner pocket, easily accessible.
The Rat Fang Dagger materialized in her hand. She'd keep it until something better dropped. The Bleed effect on critical hits was still useful, even if her damage would come primarily from tamed creatures now.
System #2's interface flickered to life.
[Good morning! Ready to build your team?]
"Show me Hollow Grove's entry point."
[Closest entrance: Westwood Park, 1.2 miles from current location.][Dungeon unlocks in: 14 minutes, 37 seconds][Current weather: Light fog, 52°F, visibility reduced to 100 feet][Recommendation: Arrive early. First wave of Players typically floods the entrance within 5 minutes of unlock.]
Riri pulled the hood up, checked her gear one final time. Dagger secured. Potions clipped. Hunter's Eyes accessible.
She tested the Beast Tamer interface with a thought. [Tame Beast] responded instantly, information flooding her awareness: MP cost, success rate calculations, current companion slots. All of it accessible without fumbling through pages.
Riri headed for the elevator. The penthouse door locked behind her automatically.
The lobby was empty except for a night security guard who didn't look up from his tablet as she passed.
Outside, the fog was thicker than the report had suggested. Visibility closer to seventy feet.
She started running.
Her boots barely touched pavement before launching into the next stride. The fog blurred past, streetlights smearing into orange streaks. Her breathing stayed even, the Stamina Recovery Band doing its work.
Westwood Park materialized through the fog. The entrance was marked by a rusted iron gate, half-open, creaking softly in the breeze.
Five Players stood near it.
Riri slowed to a walk as she approached. Two women, three men, all mid-twenties, all carrying gear that looked freshly purchased. One of the men had a compound bow. Another carried a two-handed sword that seemed excessive for an E-Rank dungeon.
They looked up as she emerged from the fog. The woman with the bow did a visible double-take, gaze catching on Riri's face before dropping to the dagger at her thigh.
"You running Hollow Grove solo?"
Riri nodded once.
"You know it's designed for parties, right? Wolf packs coordinate. Foxes mess with your head."
"I know."
The compound bow woman exchanged a glance with sword guy. He shrugged, clearly uninterested in arguing.
"Your funeral," he muttered, then turned back to his group.
Riri moved past them into the park's interior. The fog thickened between the trees, turning the world into shades of gray and black. Her boots crunched on gravel paths turned slick with morning dew. The park was small, maybe ten acres, mostly old-growth forest the city had absorbed decades ago.
[Hollow Grove entrance detected: 200 feet northwest][Time until unlock: 4 minutes, 12 seconds][Warning: 23 Players currently gathered at entrance point]
More than she'd expected.
She spotted the entrance through the mist: a massive hollow oak, trunk split open to reveal stairs descending into darkness. Players clustered around it in small groups, checking gear, reviewing strategies in hushed voices.
Riri stopped at the edge of the clearing, staying in the tree line.
A girl near the oak's base was arguing with her party member about trap detection and who should take point. The discussion was getting heated. Someone else laughed too loudly at a joke Riri couldn't hear. A man in plate armor that had to weigh sixty pounds was doing stretches, metal creaking with every movement.
She leaned against a tree trunk, arms crossed. The bark was rough against her shoulders, cold and damp from the fog. Her breath misted in front of her face.
More Players arrived: a group of four, then two solo runners immediately recruited into existing parties. The crowd swelled to thirty, maybe thirty-five.
The oak began to glow.
Golden light seeped from the hollow interior, spreading across the bark in branching patterns like lit veins. The crowd quieted, conversations dying mid-sentence. The glow intensified, pulsing.
[Hollow Grove - Training Dungeon (Rank E) is now active][Entry permitted]
The crowd surged forward.
Riri stayed back and watched the mass of Players funnel into the hollow oak, pushing and jostling, everyone trying to get in first. The System generated loot based on contribution and clear rank, not entry order.
She waited. Let the crowd thin. Fifteen Players disappeared into the golden light. Twenty. Twenty-five.
The flow slowed. A few stragglers hurried past her position, late arrivals who'd probably overslept.
When the clearing emptied, Riri pushed off the tree and walked toward the entrance.
The hollow oak was massive up close, trunk wider than her penthouse bedroom, bark scarred and twisted with age. The split gaped like a mouth, stairs carved directly into the heartwood descending into shadow.
She stopped at the top step. Pulled the Hunter's Eyes ampule from her pocket, cracked the seal, and downed it in one swallow.
The effect hit immediately. Her vision sharpened, colors intensifying, details snapping into crisp focus. Individual water droplets clung to leaves thirty feet away. The fog became translucent.
When she looked down the stairs, she could make out the faint glow of HP bars in the darkness below. Dozens of them, scattered throughout whatever waited at the bottom.
All red.
[Hunter's Eyes active - Duration: 2 hours][Warning: Retreat disabled once you descend past the threshold.]
Riri descended.
The temperature dropped with each step. The golden light faded behind her, replaced by the bioluminescence of moss growing on the tunnel walls. The air smelled of earth and decay and something sharper underneath it, animal musk, recent kills.
Fifty steps down, the tunnel opened into a forest.
Not a cave. Not a subway platform.
An actual forest. Trees stretching upward into a canopy lost in shadow, underbrush thick and tangled, moonlight filtering through leaves that shouldn't exist underground.
[Welcome to Hollow Grove][Current Objective: Defeat the Alpha Direwolf OR Clear all hostile creatures (0/94)][Time Limit: 8 hours]
Ninety-four hostiles. Red HP bars scattered through the trees in every direction, some stationary, some moving in slow deliberate patterns.
Riri stepped off the tunnel's final stair. Dead leaves compressed silently under her boots.
Somewhere ahead, something exhaled. Low. Rhythmic. Not close yet.