Minh Truong didn't search for answers online.
He searched for gaps.
The woman's words echoed in his mind as he walked through the city the next day.
Look for the places it avoids.
At first, everything looked normal. Lifespans floated above pedestrians as usual—stable, corrected, obedient. Traffic flowed. Advertisements updated in real time. The system appeared intact.
Too intact.
Minh Truong slowed his pace and began to pay attention to what wasn't there.
He noticed the first blind zone near an old underpass.
The moment he stepped beneath the concrete arch, the interface faltered—not shutting down, not glitching, just… thinning. Lifespans still appeared, but the translucent residue layer beneath them weakened, fading like mist in sunlight.
Minh Truong stopped.
He took one step back.
The data solidified.
One step forward again.
The residue thinned.
His pulse quickened.
This wasn't random.
The system's observational depth dropped here.
He looked around. The underpass was unremarkable—graffiti-stained walls, dim lights, a smell of damp concrete. People passed through quickly, eyes forward, as if instinctively unwilling to linger.
Minh Truong lingered anyway.
The interface struggled.
Latency increased.
Correction attempts slowed.
Observer pressure weakened.
This place wasn't invisible.
It was expensive to watch.
Minh Truong moved on, mapping the feeling rather than the location. Another blind zone appeared near an abandoned library wing. A third inside a narrow alley where buildings leaned too close together, blocking the sky.
None of these places shared obvious features.
Except one.
They were all spaces people avoided without knowing why.
Forgotten.
Unimportant.
Low influence.
Minh Truong leaned against a wall inside the alley and closed his eyes.
The system didn't push back.
For the first time since Vol 2 began, he felt lighter—not free, but less constrained.
"So this is how you manage it," he murmured.
"You don't watch everything. You prioritize."
The interface flickered faintly, as if acknowledging the statement without confirming it.
Minh Truong opened his eyes.
A man stood at the far end of the alley, half-hidden in shadow. Ordinary clothes. Ordinary posture.
But no lifespan hovered above his head.
Minh Truong's breath caught.
The man noticed him immediately.
There was no surprise in his eyes.
Only recognition.
"You feel it too," the man said quietly. "Don't you?"
Minh Truong straightened. "The blind spots."
The man nodded once. "That's what we call them."
We.
Minh Truong's chest tightened.
"How many?" he asked.
The man hesitated—just long enough to tell the truth without giving a number.
"Enough to matter," he said. "And few enough to be hunted."
A distant sound echoed at the alley entrance. Footsteps. Voices. Normal people passing by.
The man stepped back into deeper shadow.
"Careful," he said. "The system doesn't like patterns forming in places it ignores."
Then he was gone—slipping past Minh Truong without a sound, leaving no data trail behind.
Minh Truong remained in the alley, interface dim but stable.
So this was the next phase.
Not rebellion.
Not confrontation.
But gathering in the margins.
And for the first time, Minh Truong understood the true danger of blind zones.
They weren't safe.
They were where the system would eventually look last.