The woman's scream was a shard of ice in Leo's gut. The Skitterer lunged, a black-chitin blur of claws and mandibles. In that frozen moment, every instinct screamed at Leo to turn, to take the guaranteed safety of the stairwell door ten feet away. Sarah. The security office. Survival. The words flashed in his mind like warning signs.
But he didn't turn.
He couldn't. The sight of the two monsters toying with their prey, the raw, animalistic terror on the woman's face—it ignited something in him. It wasn't heroism. It was something far more mundane, something born from his years as a janitor. It was the sight of a mess that needed to be cleaned up.
His mind, now supercharged by a Level 2's Wisdom stat, didn't see an impossible fight. It saw a problem with variables. Two enemies. One victim. One glass wall. A large, mahogany conference table. And him, an unknown element with a broom-spear and a bag of janitorial tricks.
He didn't have a plan. He had the beginning of one.
Leo ducked back behind the corner, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He couldn't fight them head-on. He needed a distraction. A better one than a toppled floor buffer.
His eyes scanned the hallway. His abandoned janitor's cart was still where he'd left it, near the supply closet. On its top shelf sat a row of industrial spray bottles. One was filled with water. Another with glass cleaner. The third, a bright, lurid yellow bottle, contained a high-concentration ammonia solution for stripping wax off floors. The warning label on the side featured a skull and crossbones. Potent stuff.
He looked at the Skitterers through the glass. They were focused entirely on the woman, circling, enjoying her fear. He had a window.
He moved. There was no time for stealth. He ran, his work boots surprisingly quiet on the carpeted section of the hall, and snatched the yellow bottle off the cart. He also grabbed a roll of heavy-duty trash bags. He didn't know why, but his instincts told him to take them. He used [Waste Disposal] and stuffed both items into his inventory.
He ran back to his position outside the conference room. Peeking again, he saw the woman had scrambled onto the massive conference table, temporarily out of reach. The Skitterers were clicking in frustration below her. It had bought him seconds.
Time to go to work.
He pulled the yellow spray bottle from his inventory. He adjusted the nozzle from 'STREAM' to 'MIST'. He took a deep, steadying breath, his fingers tightening around the trigger.
Then, he stepped out from behind the corner, into the open doorway of the conference room.
"Hey!" he shouted. The sound was thin in the cavernous room, but it was enough.
Both Skitterers whipped their heads around, their multifaceted eyes instantly locking onto him. They had a new target. The one that smelled of broom-handle-in-the-eye. They hissed, a symphony of rage, and abandoned the woman completely.
Leo started backpedaling down the hall, holding the spray bottle out like a talisman. He didn't run. He moved just fast enough to keep a twenty-foot distance between himself and the charging monsters. They were fast, scuttling across the marble with a sound like a bag of knives being dragged across the floor.
He aimed for the lead Skitterer's head, at its cluster of glistening eyes, and squeezed the trigger.
Psshht! Psshht!
A fine mist of concentrated ammonia solution shot across the hall. The lead Skitterer ran right into it.
The effect was instantaneous and horrific. The monster didn't just get irritated. Its dozens of delicate eye-lenses, its sensitive antennae, and its respiratory orifices were all doused in a potent chemical designed to strip industrial polymers. It shrieked, a piercing sound of pure agony, and reared back, clawing frantically at its own face. It was blinded, its senses scrambled by a chemical onslaught it could have never evolved to counter.
The second Skitterer, momentarily confused by its partner's distress, slowed its advance. That was all the opening Leo needed.
He didn't press the attack. He spun on his heel and sprinted back towards the conference room. The woman was still on the table, her eyes wide with a mixture of terror and disbelief.
"Get down! Now!" Leo yelled, not breaking stride.
He ran past the doorway and slid to a halt beside the massive pane of glass that made up the conference room wall. It was floor-to-ceiling, a single, one-inch-thick sheet of tempered safety glass. Strong, but not invincible. He slammed the flat of his hand against it.
"Here!" he shouted at the blinded, shrieking Skitterer. "Come and get me!"
The monster, enraged and in agony, responded to the sound and the vibration. It charged blindly, a locomotive of pure instinct. The second Skitterer, recovering its nerve, followed close behind.
Leo held his ground, his heart in his throat. He watched the blinded creature home in on his position. Ten feet. Five feet.
He threw himself to the side, rolling out of the way.
CRASH!
The sound was like a thunderclap. The first Skitterer, moving at full speed, slammed headfirst into the tempered glass wall. The safety glass did its job, not shattering into shards but exploding into a million tiny, pebble-like cubes. A waterfall of glass cascaded to the floor as the Skitterer, its momentum carrying it through, tumbled into the conference room, stunned and tangled in its own legs.
The second Skitterer, right behind its partner, was not so lucky. It tried to stop, its claws screeching against the marble, but it was too late. It plowed into the falling curtain of glass pebbles and the flailing body of its comrade. The two monsters became a tangled, shrieking mess of limbs and broken glass.
Leo was already up, his broken broom-spear in hand. The woman, having scrambled off the far side of the table, was pressing herself into a corner.
[XP GAINED: +25 XP for successful environmental trap!]
A notification? For a trap? The System was rewarding his tactics. He didn't have time to appreciate it.
He charged into the room. The first Skitterer, the one that had broken the glass, was already recovering, shaking its head to clear the stun. Leo didn't hesitate. He raised his spear and brought it down with all his strength, aiming for the weak point in the chitin between its head and thorax. The sharpened oak punched through with a sickening crunch. The monster went limp.
[You have killed Lvl 2 Skitterer. +125 XP.]
One down. The second one had untangled itself and was scrambling to its feet, its head swiveling between Leo and the woman. It was smarter than the others. It saw Leo as the primary threat.
It hissed and spat a glob of green acid.
Leo was ready. He didn't even think. [Mop Up]! The acid vanished in mid-air, a foot from his face. His MP bar dipped. The Skitterer paused, its primitive brain trying to comprehend how its primary weapon had simply ceased to exist.
That moment of confusion was a fatal mistake.
The woman, seeing her chance, acted. She grabbed a heavy glass water pitcher from the conference table and hurled it with all her might at the creature's head. It struck the Skitterer on the side of its carapace with a dull thud. It wasn't enough to do real damage, but it made the monster flinch and turn its head for a split second.
Leo surged forward, closing the distance. He feinted high with his spear, then dropped low, sweeping the creature's spindly front legs out from under it. It tumbled to the ground with a screech. Before it could recover, Leo was on it, driving the point of his spear down into another eye socket.
The creature shuddered and died.
[You have killed Lvl 2 Skitterer. +125 XP.]
[DING! YOU HAVE LEVELED UP!]
[You are now Level 3.]
[You have gained +5 unassigned Stat Points.]
[Your HP and MP have been fully restored.]
Silence. The conference room was a wreck of shattered glass, dead monsters, and overturned chairs. Leo stood breathing heavily, his spear dripping with black ichor. The adrenaline began to recede, leaving a profound, bone-deep exhaustion in its wake.
He looked over at the woman. She was staring at him, her chest rising and falling rapidly. She was probably in her late thirties, with sharp, intelligent features now smudged with dust and tears.
"Is it… are they…?" she whispered, her voice hoarse.
"They're dead," Leo said. He was surprised by how steady his own voice was. He walked over and picked up the two motes of light from each corpse, absorbing four new items into his inventory.
The woman slid down the wall into a sitting position, burying her face in her hands. "Oh god. Oh god. I thought I was going to die."
Leo gave her a moment, then nudged an expensive leather chair with his foot. "You should sit. We need to go."
She looked up at him, her eyes finally focusing on him. Not just as a rescuer, but as a person. She took in his simple janitor's uniform, his makeshift weapon, and the intense, weary calm in his eyes.
"Who… what are you?" she asked, her voice filled with genuine bewilderment.
It was a good question. A week ago, he was nobody, a ghost who cleaned up after important people like her. Now? He looked at the dead monsters and the blue screen only he could see, which was patiently waiting for him to allocate his new stat points.
He offered her a hand. "My name is Leo. And I'm the janitor."
She took his hand, her grip surprisingly firm. "My name is Evelyn Reed. I'm a senior risk analyst for this company." She paused, a flicker of her professional composure returning. "Or I was. Thank you, Leo. You saved my life."
Leo nodded, his mind already shifting to the next problem. "You're welcome. Now, we need to get to the ground floor. It's not safe here."
Evelyn stood, brushing shattered glass from her suit. "The elevators are out, and I heard screaming from the stairwell about an hour ago."
"I know," Leo said. "But we don't have a choice. We move slow, and we move quiet."
He turned to leave, but Evelyn's voice stopped him. "Wait." She was looking at the ruin of the conference room, at the two massive insectoid corpses leaking ichor onto the expensive carpet. "What about… this?"
Leo looked at the mess. The old Leo, the meticulous cleaner, would have been horrified. But the new Leo, the Level 3 Janitor, saw something else entirely. He saw a resource.
A grim smile touched his lips. He pulled the roll of heavy-duty trash bags from his inventory.
"Don't worry," he said, his voice low and serious. "I'll take out the trash."