By four in the afternoon, there were news trucks outside the plaza.
By five, there were police.
By six, there were seven portals open across the city — Kael had walked from location to location through the afternoon, opening them in subway station entrances, park clearings, a university courtyard, the atrium of a shopping centre — and the Neutral Zone now held approximately fourteen thousand people, which was enough to generate a faint hum of contribution points accumulating in the corner of Kael's system window, though no one had fought anything yet.
By six-thirty, a government liaison named Park had reached him by phone.
"Mr. Duren," said Park, with the particular careful tone of someone who had been briefed on an impossible situation and was professionally obligated to engage with it anyway. "I've been asked to speak with you on behalf of —"
"I know what you're going to ask," Kael said. He was sitting on a bench in the university courtyard, watching a steady stream of students file through the portal he'd opened near the library entrance. "You want to know if I can close the portals."
"We want to understand the —"
"I can close them. But I need you to understand that closing them doesn't close the dungeon. The dungeon is inside me regardless. The timer keeps running. The demons are still there. Closing the portals just means we run out of time without enough fighters."
A pause. "What happens when the timer runs out?"
"The floor ruptures. The demons come through — not through a portal, through me. Through my chest, probably, given where I can feel them. And then they're here, and they're not going back."
Another pause. Longer this time.
"I see," said Park.
"I'm going to send the global announcement tonight," Kael said. "I wanted to give you warning. The system lets me broadcast to every communications device on the planet simultaneously. I'm going to use it."
"Mr. Duren, that kind of mass broadcast without coordinated communication strategy could cause significant —"
"Yes," Kael said. "I know. I've been thinking about that all day. But the alternative is that six billion people don't know the portals are there until the forty-second day, and by then we won't have enough people inside to clear the floors."
The line was quiet for a moment.
"What does the announcement say?" Park asked.
Kael looked at his phone screen, where he'd typed out the six sentences earlier in the day.
"It says what's happening," he said. "As simply as I can say it."
Park said they would need to be consulted. Kael said he understood. He hung up, looked at the system interface, and opened the announcement window.
He read his six sentences one more time.
Then he added a seventh. He looked at it for a moment. Then he pressed send.
Every phone on Earth lit up simultaneously.
Every television. Every computer screen. Every digital billboard, every smart display, every government broadcast system, every radio station mid-song. The planet's communications infrastructure, commandeered by a system built from a planet's dying awareness, delivered the same message to eight billion people at precisely the same moment:
HUMANS. MY NAME IS KAEL DUREN. I AM TWENTY-SIX YEARS OLD. I LIVE IN SEOUL, KOREA. I DID NOT CHOOSE WHAT I AM ABOUT TO TELL YOU.
THERE IS A DUNGEON INSIDE MY BODY. IT CONNECTS TO TWELVE FLOORS OF THE INFERNAL PLANE. IF THE DUNGEON'S FLOORS ARE NOT CLEARED WITHIN THEIR RESPECTIVE TIME LIMITS, THE DEMONS WILL BREACH INTO THIS WORLD. THE FIRST FLOOR HAS 29 DAYS.
I AM OPENING PORTALS ACROSS THE PLANET. THEY ARE SAFE TO ENTER. EVERYONE WHO ENTERS WILL RECEIVE A CLASS AND A SYSTEM INTERFACE. DEMONS ARE FOUGHT WITH THE WEAPONS AND ABILITIES YOUR CLASS PROVIDES. FOR EVERY DEMON YOU KILL, YOU EARN CONTRIBUTION POINTS. CONTRIBUTION POINTS ARE EXPERIENCE. EXPERIENCE MAKES YOU STRONGER.
WE NEED EVERYONE. NOT JUST SOLDIERS. NOT JUST STRONG PEOPLE. WE NEED CRAFTERS, HEALERS, BUILDERS, AND EVERY OTHER KIND OF PERSON, BECAUSE THIS IS GOING TO BE A LONG WAR.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO COME. BUT IF YOU DO, YOU WILL BE HELPING TO KEEP THE PLANET ALIVE.
I AM SORRY FOR THE INTERRUPTION. I AM SORRY I CANNOT TELL YOU MORE THAN THIS. I AM DOING MY BEST.
THE PORTALS ARE GLOWING. FIND THEM. COME THROUGH.
The seventh sentence, the one he'd added at the last moment:
YOU WILL KNOW THEM WHEN YOU SEE THEM.
For exactly four seconds after the announcement ended, Earth was quiet in the specific way it gets quiet when eight billion people are all reading the same thing at the same time.
Then it was not quiet at all.
Kael sat on the university courtyard bench and listened to the world change. His phone was already ringing again — not Park this time, but the number was a country code he didn't recognize. He let it ring. His upstairs neighbor, who had apparently not yet gone through a portal, texted him: dude is this really you? the bass player? from 6B??
He typed back: yes. sorry about the broadcast.
The reply came: no man this is incredible. are you ok?
He looked at the system window.
CURRENT NEUTRAL ZONE POPULATION: 28,441 AND RISING.
He typed back: working on it.
He stood up from the bench and opened portal number eight.
Over the next three hours, Kael walked Seoul in the dark, opening portals at every major intersection, transit hub, and public square he could reach. The crowds around them were enormous now — some people going through immediately, some standing outside in groups debating whether to enter, some filming and narrating to live audiences in the millions. Police had set up perimeters, not to stop people entering the portals but to manage the crowds gathering around them. Twice, Kael walked past portals he'd opened earlier and watched the steady human stream and felt something he couldn't quite name — not pride, not quite hope — a kind of grim, focused satisfaction, the feeling of a task properly begun.
By midnight, the system showed:
CURRENT NEUTRAL ZONE POPULATION: 847,229.
PORTALS ACTIVE: 12 (GUARDIAN MAXIMUM, CURRENT LEVEL).
CONTRIBUTION POINTS (GUARDIAN PASSIVE): 0 — NO COMBAT INITIATED.
FLOOR 1 COUNTDOWN: 28D 23H 03M.
Kael sat down on the steps of a subway entrance, ate half a protein bar he found in his coat pocket, and watched the portal above him pulse softly in the night air.
Eight hundred thousand people.
He needed billions.
He was going to need to level up.