Phong dreamed in Vietnamese again that night.
At first, he did not realize it was a dream. He was too tired for the usual border between waking and sleep to feel solid. The day had carried too many pieces: Emma's revised strategies, the Bronx Musketeers' suspicious request, the failure of the joined-dive format, the shadow of Josh and Kitahara, the Windriders' threat, the minotaurs' hunger, the pixies moving like famine with wings through unseen routes, and Alex sleeping beside him with her breathing finally even after another round of pretending she did not need rest. By the time Phong closed his eyes, his thoughts had already begun folding into one another like papers soaked by rain.
Then someone called his name.
"Phong."
The voice came from far away and close at once, the way voices did in dreams that belonged to more than the mind. It spoke Vietnamese, not the clean classroom Vietnamese of translation apps or second-generation guilt, but the heavy, intimate Vietnamese that carried weather, family, ghosts, and old river mud inside the vowels.
"Phong."
He stood in darkness.
Not empty darkness. There was texture to it. A feeling of distance, like standing inside a night so old that stars had forgotten where to hang themselves. Beneath his feet there was ground, but when he looked down, he could not see soil, stone, tile, or dungeon floor. Something held him up because the dream permitted it, and that was apparently all the explanation he would get.
The voice called again. This time, it was closer.
"Do you hear me?"
Phong turned.
A man stood before him.
He was close enough that Phong should have been able to reach out and touch him. Inches, maybe. Less than a step. Close enough to see the lines around his mouth, the faint hollows under his cheekbones, the old blood dried down his throat. Close enough to see that both of his eyes held double irises.
Phong stopped breathing for a moment.
Not one double iris hidden in a vertical forehead eye like the H'Re chieftain. Both of the man's ordinary eyes carried two irises each, one ring set inside another, two pupils nested in impossible balance. The effect was not grotesque. It was worse than that. It was sacred in a way that had gone wrong by surviving too much.
Around the man's right hand was wrapped a prayer bead bracelet made of eighteen polished wooden beads. They were dark from age and touch, smooth enough to hold a dull glow in the dream's lack of light. Behind him stood a black dog with three eyes and too many teeth, far more than any normal dog should have been able to fit in its mouth. The dog's lips did not fully close around them. Its third eye, set in the center of its forehead, watched Phong with a stillness that made barking seem unnecessary.
The man's throat had been slit open.
Inside the wound, something wriggled.
Phong did not step back. He wanted to.
His body, in whatever way bodies existed in dreams, insisted very strongly that stepping back would be wise. The man carried power. That realization settled over Phong gradually, then all at once. It was not the blunt pressure of a high-level monster. It was not the system's weight or the feeling of Alex calling Bai Hu's storm. It was not even the overwhelming authority of a floor boss, which Phong had learned to fear with the part of himself that still remembered being helpless.
The man's aura had more weight than a floor boss.
That should have been impossible, and yet Phong's instincts accepted it with the same certainty they accepted hunger or pain. The man before him felt like a sealed mountain, a buried temple, a verdict spoken by an ancestor who had learned how to kill gods and had regretted only the timing.
But despite standing only inches away, Phong felt distance between them.
A wall. Invisible, impenetrable, and absolute. It was not glass, not space, not mana, not anything the system would name for him. It felt like a law. Like something had been placed between them by a force that did not care how close their bodies appeared. Phong could see the man clearly now, more clearly than in any previous dream, but the clarity made the separation more painful rather than less.
The man looked at him. His mouth moved. The wound in his throat opened. The thing inside it twisted.
"I was too early," the man said.
The voice did not come cleanly from his throat. It arrived through the wound, through the dream, through the wall between them, and through some place Phong did not know how to name. Vietnamese carried it, but the meaning underneath felt older than the language.
Phong swallowed.
"Who are you?" he asked.
It took all the bravery he could muster to ask it plainly. Phong had faced monsters, politicians, dungeon races, and Pillars who treated geography like furniture. He had negotiated with queens, chieftains, kings, and things that could erase bodies by blinking. This was different. This was too personal to be politics and too powerful to be dismissed as a nightmare.
The man answered without hesitation.
"Vũ Vân Lôi."
The name entered the darkness and stayed there.
Phong repeated it silently. Vũ Vân Lôi.
Yet the moment the name was spoken, Phong knew the man had tried to say something else as well. A title, perhaps. A truer name. A relationship. A warning. The meaning pressed forward and struck the invisible wall between them, then broke apart before reaching Phong. Vũ Vân Lôi's double irises tightened with mild frustration, as if he had expected the barrier and despised it anyway.
Phong should have been more afraid.
He was afraid.
But beneath the fear was something else. Closeness. Instinctive and unreasonable.
The same gut certainty he had once felt when he chose to bet on Selena's courtesy, not because logic guaranteed safety, but because something in him recognized a line of dignity in her and stepped onto it before the world could explain. He felt that now with Vũ Vân Lôi. The man was terrifying. The wound in his throat was horrifying. The dog behind him looked like it could chew through a soul and still be hungry afterward.
And yet Phong felt close to him.
He breathed in slowly.
"What are the Night Kings?"
The question had been sitting in him since Alexis Valantris's message. Since the commander of a dead Human Federation had warned them about entities that recovered once humanity advanced enough. Since Séline remembered Cà Rồng's race as human. Since Kdiê's recording hinted at level 101, the system skipping 100, and something beyond the story divers thought they were living.
Vũ Vân Lôi's expression changed.
A sad smile appeared.
"The ones who failed to become emperors," he said, "then sold their souls for more chances."
Phong's first thought was the Sky Emperor.
He could not help it.
A giant jade dragon who behaved like order had teeth. A Pillar who could steal nuclear weapons from Earth. A being who gave a dragon tooth to Stone Age humanity, shaped destiny from above, and spoke with the patience of someone who expected obedience eventually. Emperor was in his name. If Night Kings were failed emperors, Phong's mind went there immediately.
Vũ Vân Lôi laughed.
It was not mocking. If anything, it was fondly tired.
"Not him."
Phong felt his face heat in the dream. "I didn't say anything."
"You thought. That was enough in a dream."
"That is invasive."
The man's smile faded into something more serious. "The Sky Emperor is many things. Proud, old, and dangerous. Bound to order until even mercy must pass through law. But he is not an Emperor in the real sense of the word. Say... maybe the closest being to the title alive right now."
Phong accepted that because he did not know enough to argue, and because some part of him believed Lôi was incapable of lying in this place. The man might be blocked. He might be incomplete. He might be speaking through a throat that had been opened by something terrible. But he was not lying.
Lôi lifted the hand wrapped in prayer beads.
"Underneath the level system," he said, "beneath the classes and premade skills the dungeon prepared so carefully, there is something else."
The eighteen wooden beads clicked softly against one another.
"Remnants of a system older than the one your world now uses. More ancient. More difficult. Less merciful."
Phong thought of Alex's Ballad of Blades. The first Emperor of Humanity drawing lake, mountain, delta, forest, animals, humans, and kingdoms not from mana alone, but from concepts, emotion, rebellion, solidarity, and the will of mankind to stand upright again. He thought of Thiên Võ Chân Vương, the True King of Heavenly Martial, walking the Road of Imperial Ascension with Bīng above his head. He thought of Zhen Wu Pavilion turning itself to crystal rather than becoming hosts.
"Cultivation?" Phong asked.
Lôi nodded once.
"A long-lost cultivation system. The dungeon buried it beneath levels because levels are easier to count, classes are easier to manage, and premade skills are easier to survive with. The world after catastrophe needed ladders with handrails."
"That sounds helpful."
"It was." Lôi's double irises shifted, the inner and outer rings moving in opposite directions for one unsettling moment. "It was also a cage made kindly."
Phong did not like how much sense that made.
Lôi continued. "After level sixty, those you call divers will begin approaching a choice, although most will not understand they are choosing. They may follow the trail the system prepared, continuing through classes, upgrades, titles, skills, and the visible paths laid before them. That road has power, safety, and design."
"And the other choice?"
"The unknown."
The black dog behind him opened its mouth slightly. Too many teeth gleamed.
"Those who choose the unknown may discover the old road," Lôi said. "It's not guaranteed. They might find nothing promised to them by the unkown. Many who seek it find only madness, death, or imitation. But the path remains in fragments, buried under ruins, memories, titles, broken secrets, and the bones of those who almost ascended."
Phong's mouth felt dry.
"What are the stages?"
Lôi's prayer beads clicked again.
"Đăng Tôn," he said. "Announcement of Sovereignty. The moment a cultivator declares the shape of their path loudly enough that the world must answer."
The darkness seemed to lean closer.
"Chân Vương. True King. One who has made sovereignty real enough to command a domain, a principle, a law, or a weapon beyond ordinary skill."
Thiên Võ Chân Vương's name flashed in Phong's memory.
"Thánh Hoàng. Imperial Saint. One who stands at the border of era and myth, not yet emperor, but too great to remain only king."
Phong's skin went cold before the next words arrived.
"Đại Đế. Emperor. The pinnacle. The one permitted by an era to rise above all others on the Road of Imperial Ascension."
The phrase struck him harder now. One emperor in each dungeon era. Yuan Zheng Zi's mournful question echoed through his thoughts: why had the True King not sealed himself for a second chance?
Phong looked at Lôi.
"The Pillars?"
Lôi smiled faintly.
"You are quick when frightened."
"Many have said so."
"The Pillars you know are Imperial Saints."
Phong's blood ran cold.
Sky Emperor showcasing of absolute power. Bai Hu and Hyeonmu immeasurable mana. The Monstrous Phoenix killing ten of thousands in a fit of rage. Em, chaos wearing a shape. Mr. Zero, who turned dungeon systems into business and announcements. Beings who could reshape history, physics, and survival.
And yet, they were only Imperial Saints. Not Emperors. Far from the peak.
The thought made the dream feel too small for his terror.
"There can be only one Emperor in an entire era," Lôi said. "Many may seek the road. Many may reach heights that make worlds kneel. Many may become saints, kings, sovereigns, monsters, legends, or disasters. But only one rises as Emperor."
"And the Night Kings are the ones who failed."
"They failed, and failure was not enough for them. They sold what should not be sold. They accepted second chances from places that do not give gifts. They recover when humanity rises because human ascension calls to their hunger. They see every new era as an opportunity to steal what they could not earn."
Phong thought of Alexis Valantris.
Her level 100. The first of humanity to slain a floor boss. The only one who reached 100 while others skipped from 99 to 101.
He thought of Alex, now Knight of the Aspect of War. He thought of Dominic at level 49, Yue Ting at 50, and everyone rushing toward level 60 without knowing that the ladder might eventually split beneath their feet.
He thought of himself, a level 1 Farmer, with a production class, standing outside the EXP path yet somehow dragged into conversations with Pillars, kings, and a wounded man whose aura weighed more than a floor boss. Which could only mean one thing... that guy, Lôi, was equal to an Emperor. At least, he was closer to that even than the Sky Emperor, and Phong was simply too small to tell the different, like an ant trying to comprehends if a tiger or a lion was bigger.
"This is too much," Phong said quietly.
"Yes."
"I am a farmer."
"Yes."
"I grow vegetables."
Lôi's smile warmed. "Yes."
"That was your cue to explain why this is not my problem."
"I was never good at comforting lies."
Phong wanted to laugh, but the sound stuck in his chest.
The thing in Lôi's slit throat wriggled again. The black dog growled softly, not at Phong, but at whatever moved inside its master's wound. Lôi's face tightened for the first time, pain passing across his features like a storm shadow.
"I have to go," Lôi said. "Back to my world."
"You have a world?"
"For now."
That answer carried too much.
Phong stepped forward on instinct, forgetting the wall until he felt it reject him. He did not collide with anything physical. He simply stopped, unable to move closer, while Lôi remained inches away and impossibly distant.
"What did you mean when you said you were too early?"
Lôi's double irises flickered. The invisible wall thickened as the man's mouth opened. Something tried to come through with his words.
Then the dream shuddered.
"I reached for what your era is only beginning to name," Lôi said slowly. "I saw the door before the road was ready. I knocked before the house had walls. That is all I can say."
"That is not enough."
"It never is."
Phong clenched his hands. "Why call me?"
"Because something that was yours was missing."
The words struck him strangely.
Lôi lifted the prayer bead-wrapped hand. One wooden bead glowed faintly, then dimmed.
"I returned it."
Phong looked down at himself. Nothing had changed.
He wore the same dream-shape of ordinary clothes. No new relic hung from his neck. No skill menu opened. No system notification rang. No light entered his chest. He felt no surge of mana, no hidden class unlock, no EXP exception, no plant mutation, no sudden evolution into whatever cosmic nonsense the dungeon might decide to call a farmer who had annoyed four sacred beasts.
Phong checked again.
There was still no "incredibly OP cheat skill to stomp everyone, Josh included" like in Isekai webnovels.
"What did you return?"
Lôi's expression softened, and for the first time, he looked less like a terrifying ancient cultivator and more like a man speaking to someone younger across a family threshold.
"What originally belonged to you."
"That is not an answer."
"It might save you one day."
"Still not an answer."
Lôi laughed quietly. "You argue like someone I knew."
Phong froze.
The wall between them trembled.
The black dog took one step forward, its three eyes brightening. The wriggling thing in Lôi's throat thrashed harder, and for a moment, Phong saw shapes behind the man: rain over a village, prayer smoke, a blade of lightning splitting a shrine roof, a river full of bodies, a woman crying out a name Phong could not hear, and double-irised eyes opening across a sky that should have been empty.
Then the images vanished.
Lôi stepped back, although he had never truly been close.
"Wake now," he said.
"Wait."
Phong hated how small the word sounded.
Lôi looked at him with those impossible eyes.
"When the time comes," he said, "do not mistake the system's silence for absence."
The black dog barked once. The dream broke.
Phong woke in darkness.
Real darkness this time.
The bedroom in the Tannenbaum clubhouse was quiet, softened by expensive curtains and the muted hum of mana-tech climate control. Alex slept beside him, one hand resting near his chest as if she had reached for his heartbeat in her sleep and found it. Her breathing remained even. Bai Hu's storm was quiet under her skin, for once not turning the room into a battlefield waiting for permission.
Phong lay still.
He did not move for several minutes.
His throat felt dry. His heart beat too hard. The name Vũ Vân Lôi remained in his mind with impossible clarity, along with the stages of a cultivation path buried beneath the dungeon's visible system.
Đăng Tôn. Chân Vương. Thánh Hoàng. Đại Đế. 4 realms of a bygone system belonged to another era.
He opened his status.
Nothing.
The system told him nothing had changed.
Phong closed the screen, then opened it again.
Still nothing.
He checked his hands. His pulse. His mana, such as it was. His seed pouch on the bedside table. The Seven-League Boots placed carefully near the wall. Little Fireball asleep in a nest of hoodie fabric on a chair, round and peaceful and not at all concerned that a man with double irises and a slit throat had just stepped through Phong's dream to return something the system refused to acknowledge.
He could not tell what had changed about him.
The system could not tell him either. Yet Phong knew Lôi had not lied. Something originally his had been returned, and the absence left by that missing thing had been so old that he had mistaken it for normal.
Alex shifted beside him.
Her eyes opened slightly.
"Phong?"
He looked at her.
For one heartbeat, he considered saying he was fine. He considered saving the explanation for morning. He considered letting her sleep because tomorrow held the elimination stage, spy games, public cameras, and a bracket that might be trying to make them reveal their secrets.
Then he remembered the first Emperor of Humanity, standing before the gods and calling the era of kneeling finished.
He remembered Lôi saying he argued like someone loved.
Phong reached for Alex's hand.
"I had another dream," he whispered.
Alex became fully awake at once.
Outside the window, the surface city slept under ordinary stars, unaware that beneath classes, levels, and premade skills, an older road waited for the strong, the desperate, and the doomed to find it again.
Phong held Alex's hand and tried to name the shape of what had been returned to him.
Nothing answered.
That frightened him more than any notification could have.