It was silence that woke him, not peace.
The rhythmic whir-chop-whir of the Reaper turrets had died, leaving a void that felt heavier than the noise.
Alex snapped his eyes open. 06:15 AM.
Checking the time, he sat up, wincing as his neck cracked. The Chitin Plating ground harshly against his collar, a reminder that he hadn't left his armor in days. The air in the stairwell had shifted; it was no longer cold, but hung thick and humid, tasting of copper coins sucked on by a dying man.
Below the railing, the kill zone had vanished.
A sculpture of frozen gluttony had replaced it. Shredded grey flesh, black ice, and severed limbs choked the stairwell, a meat plug so dense it buried the waist-high blades. The motors hummed angrily, locked against the resistance of frozen bone.
"Gluttons," Alex rasped, standing up. His boots peeled off the sticky concrete with a wet riiiip.
The AA-12 bumped against his hip as he moved, but he didn't bother checking the drum. Anything alive down there would have to dig through ten feet of its own kin just to reach him.
He focused, letting the blue neon digits flare in his vision. Static, beautiful, and absolute.
[Current EP: 15,450]
The dopamine hit harder than oxygen.
Yesterday, he had been scraping for single bullets. Today, the return on investment had finally paid out. Three thousand runners. Dozens of Elites. All processed into cold, hard currency.
"Passive income," Alex whispered, sitting back down on the blood-slicked step. A king didn't run errands; he built systems.
"System. Shop."
[Item: Cohiba Behike 56 (Single)]
Cost:50 EP
"Purchase."
A heavy cigar materialized in his hand. He bit the cap, spitting it into the corpse pile below. A gold Zippo (10 EP) clicked, and with a soft whump, a flame danced in the gloom.
Blue smoke curled into the stagnant air, fighting the stench of rot. Alex took a long drag, letting the smoke fill his lungs before exhaling.
"Shopping time."
He ignored the food tab for now, navigating straight to Warfare.
Shotguns were kings of the hallway, but Floor 15 had taught him a brutal lesson: bugs didn't respect walls. He needed reach. He needed something that could turn a blind corner into a dead end. He'd been eyeing this upgrade since Floor 5.
[M203 Under-Barrel Grenade Launcher]
Mount:Picatinny RailCaliber:40mmCost:800 EP
"Buy."
Weight settled onto his lap. Matte-black steel, smelling of fresh factory grease. He grabbed his MK12 SPR and slid the launcher onto the bottom rail.
Click-Thunk. Locked.
[Ammo: 40mm High-Explosive (HE) Grenade]
Radius:5 MetersCost:50 EP
[Ammo: 40mm White Phosphorus (Incendiary)]
Effect:Burns at 5,000°F. Water-resistant. Oxygen-independent.Cost:100 EP
"Fifty HE," Alex commanded. "Twenty Willy Petes."
[-4,500 EP]
A heavy crate thumped onto the landing. Inside lay the power to turn a room into a crematorium.
[EP Remaining: 10,900]
He wasn't done.
Guns killed monsters, but the real threat sat in a silo in Nebraska, waiting for a thermal signature. Riverside Gardens glowed like a flare on thermal optics. The Pylon generated heat; the battles generated noise. He needed to disappear.
[Base Module: Quantum Signal Jammer]
Effect:Scrambles external signals. Masks thermal/EM signatures. Creates a "Ghost Zone."Cost:5,000 EP
Five thousand. The price of an army.
Alex didn't blink. Invisibility beat armor every time.
"Purchase."
[-5,000 EP]
A hexagonal device appeared, humming at a low, headache-inducing frequency that vibrated in his teeth. It looked like alien server tech.
[EP Remaining: 5,900]
Still rich.
Clipping the M203-equipped rifle to his sling, he grabbed the grenade crate and tucked the Jammer under his arm.
It was time to climb.
Floor 24.
The airlock cycled with a sharp hiss.
Warmth hit him instantly—25°C. The Geothermal Pylon purred in the utility room, a mechanical heart beating for the building.
Luna was slumped over her workbench, asleep, her cheek pressed against a blueprint. Drool wet the paper. Her wheelchair hummed softly, charging from the wall outlet.
Alex set the grenade crate down with a heavy thud.
He walked to the kitchen island. One last purchase.
"Flexing."
[Item: Fresh Strawberries (1kg)]
Cost:50 EP
[Item: Kobe Beef Ribeye (A5)]
Cost:200 EP
[-250 EP]
Bright red berries and vacuum-sealed meat appeared on the counter. The smell was instant—sweet, floral, and utterly impossible in this frozen world.
Alex grabbed the strawberries and walked over to Luna, kicking her wheel gently.
"Wake up, Greasemonkey."
Luna jerked awake, grabbing a screwdriver instinctively. "I'm up! Is the generator down?"
"The generator is eternal." Alex tossed the plastic container into her lap.
Luna fumbled, catching it against her chest. She stared at the contents, eyes widening.
"Plastic?" she whispered, confused.
"Organic." Alex walked to the Pylon. "Wash them. I don't pay for sick leave."
Luna popped the lid, her hands shaking. She grabbed a single berry and bit into it. Juice ran down her thumb, staining her skin red.
She melted. Her shoulders dropped, and three days of freezing hell evaporated in a sugar rush. She looked at Alex, the lingering fear in her eyes replaced by something else.
[System Notification] [Loyalty Increased: 95% (Devotion)]
"Alex... this costs... a fortune."
"I made a fortune." Alex slotted the Quantum Jammer into the rack.
He connected the cables. Violet light pulsed through the room.
[Quantum Signal Jammer: Online] [Thermal Masking: Active]
"We're invisible," Alex said. "No satellites. Just us and the cold."
He threw the Wagyu onto the counter. "Steak tonight. Rare. Don't ruin it."
Luna nodded frantically, staring at the Jammer, then the grenades. "Stairwell clear?"
"Bill paid," Alex said. "Horde is dead. We have a window."
He looked out the window at the white void where the storm raged. He felt invincible.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
A red light flashed on Luna's console. The seismic monitor.
Luna froze mid-bite. Spinning her chair around, she typed furiously. "Alex..." Her voice dropped, terror returning to edge out the joy.
"Straggler?"
"No." Luna pulled up a graph. Lines spiked—rhythmic, slow, and massive. "The Jammer scrubbed the background interference, so the sensors are seeing deeper now. I'm picking up a heat signature in the basement. It didn't drop when the horde left."
She turned, her face pale in the violet light. "It's rising. Exponentially."
"The swarm last night... they weren't attacking. They were hunting."
"Hunting what?" Alex gripped his rifle.
"Biomass," Luna said, pointing at the floor. "They were dragging the bodies down."
Floor 15 smelled like a swamp.
Humidity beaded on Alex's Chitin Plating. The scent of mint and wet earth clashed violently with the ozone of the storm outside.
Dr. Chen was waiting.
The mad botanist vibrated by the central planter—a hollowed-out grand piano filled with black mud. A trash bag poncho replaced his lab coat, and his skin had turned a tough, greyish hue.
"Ready! Ready!" Chen hopped in place. "The Boss kept his promise! Look!"
He pointed at the dirt. Three mounds pulsed.
Actual movement. The soil heaved, rhythmic and wet.
Alex stepped into the mud, the M203 leveled. "Dig."
Chen fell to his knees, clawing at the earth until dirt flew. He pulled the first one out.
It was hideous.
The Crystal Potato (Gen 4) was the size of a human head, translucent purple with glowing blue capillaries. It was warm to the touch. It looked like a tumor harvested from a radioactive giant.
"Bug Meat Fertilizer!" Chen shrieked. "High Mana! High Protein! It mutated twice in twelve hours! I heard it screaming!"
Alex took it. Heavy. Dense as lead.
[Item: Mutated Crystal Tuber (Gen 4)]
Effect:+0.5 Constitution. +0.2 Strength.Side Effect:Severe Nausea.
Alex narrowed his eyes. +0.5 Constitution was massive. Five of these equaled a standard human's entire vitality.
"Harvest the rest."
Chen dug out two more. "My cut?" Chen licked dry lips. "Clause two. Ten percent."
Alex grabbed the big one and the medium one, kicking the small one toward Chen. "Don't cook it. Cooking kills the enzymes."
Chen grabbed it and bit into it raw.
CRUNCH.
Purple slime sprayed. He didn't savor it; he attacked it. He gagged, retched violently, then swallowed with a desperate gulp. "Gaaaaah! It burns!" Chen wheezed, eyes rolling back. "Good burn! The mana is kicking!"
Alex pulled his knife, slicing a chunk off the Gen 4. It had the texture of raw liver.
"Bottoms up."
He shoved it in.
Flavor exploded—chemical violence, like a 9-volt battery wrapped in rotting kale. His stomach convulsed, but Iron Stomach fired instantly, suppressing the vomit. Heat roared through his veins, making his bones ache and his skin tighten.
[System Notification] [Consumed: Mutated Crystal Tuber] [Constitution +0.5] [Strength +0.2] [Current Constitution: 2.0 (Superhuman)]
Alex gasped, leaning against the piano as the nausea faded. He felt solid. Heavy. Like a tank.
"More," Alex rasped.
"No more!" Chen wiped purple slime from his chin. "Soil depleted! Need bodies! Fresh ones!"
"You'll get bodies," Alex said. "Floor 20 is—"
RRRR-RUMBLE.
The building shook.
It wasn't the wind. It was jagged, tearing sound coming from the walls.
Alex froze. Perception 3.0.
Skritch. Skritch. CRUNCH.
Diamond-tipped drills boring through stone.
"Not the stairs," Alex realized, spinning toward the wall behind the piano. The wallpaper bulged, and the plaster cracked in spiderwebs. "Inside the walls."
"Chen! Back!"
"What?"
The wall exploded.
A massive, armored head burst through the drywall, mandibles snapping like industrial bolt cutters. Dark carapace, bull horns, and eyes full of hate.
[System Warning] [Enemy Detected: Siege Beetle (Level 3)] [Role: Breaker]
It shook off the debris and roared, a resonant sound that vibrated the fluid in Alex's ears. Behind it, deep in the tunnel it had bored, red eyes glowed.
Flanked.
"New delivery," Alex shouted.
Instead of aiming the rifle, his hand slid to the launcher's trigger. "Fire in the hole."
With a dull THUMP, the M203 kicked against his palm. The 40mm High-Explosive round sailed across the short distance, flying straight into the beast's open maw.
BOOM.
Overpressure hammered the room.
The blast didn't just kill the beetle; it unmade it. The heavy, armored head expanded instantly, followed by catastrophic structural failure. Chitin shards the size of dinner plates shotgunned across the room.
SPLAT.
Yellow hemolymph greased the wallpaper. The grand piano groaned under a sudden rain of wet, twitching meat. The Siege Beetle's massive body slumped, plugging the hole it had just chewed.
But the tunnel behind it hissed.
Red eyes glowed in the dust. A dozen of them. The breach wasn't sealed; a corpse just blocked the door. Scavengers chittered, already eating through the dead Beetle to get into the room.
Alex didn't wait for them to finish dinner. He reached up and snapped his helmet seal shut.
"Ventilation is on max," he muttered, racking the M203 slide. The spent casing clattered to the floor as he snatched a white-striped grenade from his bandolier.
[Ammo: 40mm White Phosphorus]
"Close the door," Alex muttered.
He aimed for the gap above the beetle's crushed thorax.
THUMP.
The grenade sailed into the dark tunnel.
CRACK-HISS.
There was no boom. Just the sound of the sun igniting in a closet.
Brilliant white light flooded the breach, and a roar of chemical fire erupted, defying the lack of oxygen. White Phosphorus didn't need air; it needed fuel. It found plenty in the crowded tunnel.
Screams echoed from the walls—not the chittering of bugs, but the high-pitched shriek of boiling biology. Smoke, thick, white, and lethal, vomited out of the gap.
"Back!" Alex kicked Chen, sending the botanist sprawling into the mud behind the piano. "Don't breathe it! That smoke melts lungs!"
The fire raged, eating the bugs, eating the drywall, and fusing the tunnel into a glass-lined tomb. Alex watched the glow through his visor. The thermal readout spiked to 2,000 degrees before stabilizing. Nothing was coming through that hole. Not today.
[System Notification] [Target Eliminated: Siege Beetle (Level 3)] [Target Eliminated: Iron-Shell Roach x15] [XP Gained: 850]
Silence returned to the garden. Only the sizzling of wet meat broke it.
Dr. Chen clawed his way up the piano leg. Mud and yellow slime smeared his face. He stared at the burning hole, then at Alex, then at the Gen 4 potato in his hand.
"The wall..." Chen wheezed. "They broke the seal! My humidity! Ruined!"
"Patch it," Alex said, reloading the launcher. "Use the corpse. Use the piano. I don't care. Seal the breach."
He walked to the window, watching the blizzard hammer the glass outside. He keyed his comms. "Luna. Status."
Static hissed, then cleared. The Quantum Signal Jammer was doing its job, scrubbing the interference clean.
"Seismic spike neutralized," Luna's voice was tight. "Floor 15. You clear?"
"Breach stopped. But the building is leaking."
Alex looked at the charred tunnel. The enemy wasn't mindless. They were probing. Testing the perimeter.
"Alex..." Luna hesitated. "I've been analyzing that thermal spike in the basement now that the Jammer gives us a clear signal. It's not just rising heat."
"What is it?"
"The pattern matches a biological incubation curve," she whispered, her voice trembling. "They didn't just drag those bodies down there to eat later. That heat isn't digestion."
A graph flashed onto Alex's retinal display. The line wasn't just vertical; it was rhythmic. Like a heartbeat.
"It's a nesting cycle," Luna said. "They're feeding a Queen."
Alex stared at the red line. His blood ran cold under the armor.
"They aren't soldiers," he realized. "They're worker ants."
"And the workers are done foraging," Luna finished.
He gripped the MK12. The 15,000 EP shopping spree suddenly felt like pocket change. The walls of Riverside Gardens weren't a fortress. They were an incubator.
"Get the turrets back online," Alex commanded, turning for the door. "Print ammo. All of it. We didn't win the war. We just survived the appetizer."