The ramp to Basement Level 2 wasn't a road; it was a throat.
Alex stood at the top, the M203 grenade launcher radiating warmth in his hands. The air rising from the dark tasted of sulfur, rotting meat, and the cloying sweetness of a hive.
[System Scan] [Ambient Temperature: 42°C] [Air Quality: Toxic (Spores)]
He checked his loadout. The MK12 was a scalpel; the AA-12 was a hammer.
But Luna's data screamed "Fortress." A Level 8 Elite ignored small arms fire. It ignored grenades. It possessed chitin thicker than a tank hull and regeneration that laughed at ballistics.
Alex checked his inventory space. Infinite. Time-stopped.
He looked back up the stairwell.
"I need a bigger hammer."
Turning around, he didn't descend. He ran up.
Floor 20. The Meat Grinder.
The cold here was sharp enough to freeze lungs instantly—a violent contrast to the humid jungle below. The Reaper turrets sat silent on the landing, their blades coated in frozen, black gore. The Labor Squad had shoveled the meat pile aside, leaving the machines exposed.
Alex walked to the left turret.
It was a monstrosity of welded steel, car batteries, and high-torque elevator motors—two tons of improvised industrial violence.
He slapped his hand on the cold motor housing.
"System. Store."
VWOOM.
Space buckled as air rushed to fill the vacuum. The two-ton machine vanished instantly.
[System Log] [Item Stored: Reaper Turret (Unit Alpha)] [Weight: 2,100 kg] [Status: Active/Standby]
Alex checked his mana. The storage cost was negligible.
"Pocket artillery."
He turned back to the stairs. Prep done. Now for the execution.
He descended rapidly, bypassing the ruined garage of the Ground Floor and stepping over the smoking husks of the Spitter Roaches.
When he reached the B2 ramp, he didn't just walk down. He activated [Thermal Void].
His body temperature plummeted, syncing perfectly with the ambient heat. To thermal sensors, he was invisible. To the hive, he was just another pocket of stagnant air.
B2 was a maze of storage lockers and maintenance rooms. The walls pulsed, thick veins of biomass running along the ceiling to pump nutrients down to the heart. Worker Roaches skittered past him, carrying chunks of frozen ghoul meat harvested from the upper floors.
They ignored him completely.
He followed the food. The path led deeper, past the boiler room and the foundation pillars, until he reached the Vault.
Basement Level 3. The Riverside Gold Vault.
Once home to the city's wealth—gold bars, bearer bonds, diamonds. The door was a circular slab of blast-proof steel, three feet thick, designed to eat a nuclear shockwave.
Something had ripped it off the hinges.
It lay on the floor, crumpled like tin foil.
Alex stopped in the shadows of a ventilation duct and looked inside.
The vault wasn't a room anymore. It was a cathedral of silk.
White webs draped from ceiling to floor, thick as steel cables, forming a funnel that led to a massive, pulsating sac in the center. Gold safety deposit boxes lined the walls, ripped open, their contents scattered. Millions in diamonds glittered in the mud, ignored by the new tenants.
And there she was.
[Boss Detected: Frost-Weaver Broodmother] [Level: 8 (Elite)] [Status: Gestating] [Danger Level: Extreme]
She was colossal—a spider the size of a city bus. Her abdomen was swollen and translucent white, pulsing with thousands of eggs. Her legs were armored in jagged, black chitin that looked like obsidian plate.
But her face was the nightmare.
Eight eyes arranged in two rows glowed with pale, blue hunger. Mandibles the size of scythes clicked rhythmically, dripping a clear, viscous neurotoxin that ate into the concrete floor with a faint hiss.
She wasn't exposed. A wall of webbing—dense, opaque, and layered—separated her from the entrance.
[Scan Complete] [Defense: Silk Wall (1 Meter Thick)] [Attribute: Ballistic Immunity. Fire Resistance.]
Alex watched as a Worker Roach scurried in, carrying a severed human leg. It approached the web wall, and the silk parted automatically to let it pass before snapping shut.
The worker dropped the meat. The Broodmother's mandibles flashed.
CRUNCH.
Bone snapped like dry wood, and the leg vanished.
She didn't just eat; she excreted. Her spinnerets dilated, dropping a small, black sphere. It hit the floor and uncurled into a Baneling—a suicide spider the size of a dog with a glowing green abdomen. It skittered sideways to join a swarm of hundreds in the shadows.
"Infinite reinforcements," Alex analyzed. "And a shield I can't shoot through."
M203 fire would be useless. The silk would catch the grenade, absorbing the explosion, and the Banelings would swarm him before he could reload.
He needed to bypass the wall. He needed to hit the head.
He looked up.
The vault ceiling was thirty feet high, made of reinforced concrete. Crucially, the webbing didn't cover the roof entirely. The Broodmother relied on the wall for frontal defense; she felt safe in her hole.
Alex holstered the MK12 and unclipped his heavy-duty grapple gun.
"Spider-Man time."
He aimed for a rusty bracket directly above the boss.
Thwip.
The hook caught silently. Thermal Void masked his heat, and the ambient hive noise—chittering, chewing, dripping—masked the click of the winch.
Alex climbed, ascending into the ceiling darkness until he hung inverted.
Below, the Broodmother feasted, having no idea that two tons of steel hovered twenty feet above her skull.
Alex checked his alignment. A slight swing positioned him directly over the junction of her cephalothorax and abdomen. The weak point.
He opened the Inventory interface and selected [Reaper Turret (Unit Alpha)].
"Special delivery."
[System Notification] [Dropping Item...]
Gravity took over.
Two tons of welded steel hit the vacuum, falling twenty feet in a heartbeat.
The Broodmother didn't look up. She was too busy tearing a torso apart.
CRUNCH.
The impact cracked the floor slab.
The turret slammed into the junction of her head and thorax, the kinetic force driving her body flat against the concrete. Chitin shattered like glass. Legs snapped outward, joints failing under the hydrostatic shock.
Blue slime geysered, coating the silk walls.
She wasn't dead, but she was pinned. Massive legs scrambled, claws digging furrows in the gold-strewn floor as she tried to lift the steel weight crushing her skull.
Alex hung in the dark, thumb hovering over the remote detonator.
"Spin."
WHIRRRRR.
Elevator motors screamed to life.
The Queen's Scythes—mounted on the underside of the turret—spun at 2,000 RPM. They were already buried in her meat.
SQUELCH-GRIND.
It wasn't a fight. It was an excavation.
The blades bored through the armored carapace, churning the Broodmother's brain, eyes, and venom sacs into a pressurized slurry. The thrashing stopped. Legs curled inward. The abdomen deflated as centrifugal force pumped her internal fluids onto the walls.
The Reaper sat atop the ruin, grinding bone against concrete.
Alex cut the power.
Silence returned. Heavy. Wet.
[System Notification] [Boss Eliminated: Frost-Weaver Broodmother (Level 8)] [Combat Rating: S (Execution)] [XP: +5,000] [Level Up! You are now Level 5]
A pillar of light erupted from the crushed carcass. Not white. Not blue.
Gold.
Pure, blinding gold.
Alex hit the grapple release and dropped.
Thud.
He landed on the bloody turret, his boots slipping on the blue slime. The Banelings froze, their pheromone link snapped. They shrieked—a sound of confused static—and the swarm broke, turning on each other in a frenzy.
Alex ignored them, reaching into the gore to pull the object from the light.
A sphere the size of a heart, made of shifting, liquid metal. It pulsed, syncing with the Pylon upstairs.
[Item Acquired: Territory Core - Evolution] [Grade: Legendary (Gold)] [Effect: Upgrades Territory Tier. Unlocks specialized rooms (Barracks, Lab, Foundry). Induces controlled mutation in inhabitants.]
"Jackpot."
He stowed the core. Looking at the turret—caked in slime but with only a dent in the casing—he nodded.
"System. Store."
VWOOM.
The machine vanished.
He looked at the Banelings tearing a weaker sibling apart. The silk walls shivered. Alex racked the AA-12.
"Clean up on aisle three."
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
Dragon's Breath swept the room.
Magnesium fire caught the silk, turning the web cathedral into a furnace. The heat spike registered instantly on his HUD.
Alex walked out, the fire roaring behind him.
[System Notification] [Dungeon Cleared: B3 Vault] [XP: +500 (Swarm Cleanup)]
He keyed his comms.
"Luna. Check the heat."
Static. Then a breathless laugh.
"It's dropping," Luna said. "The spike flattened. B3 is cooling down. You killed it."
"I evicted it." Alex wiped slime from his visor. "Prep the Pylon. I'm bringing home an upgrade."